Sunday:
Finished Rebecca Barry's Later, At the Bar today. A quick read, "a novel in stories." This allows for the dispensing of certain narrative requirements. There isn't much plot as such, just a series of interconnected stories that ends up a pleasing portrait of a community. The bar as such is not really central to the stories, though drinking certainly is. Given it's setting (upstate NY), and it's characters, it put me in mind a bit of Russo, but without any particular main character or central narrative. A few of the stories are real gems and all are good. I would happily have spent more time with these characters.
from George Will's column:
Two decades ago, the sociologist Daniel Bell wrote about "the cultural contradictions of capitalism" to express this worry: Capitalism flourishes because of virtues that its flourishing undermines. Its success requires thrift, industriousness and deferral of gratifications, but that success produces abundance, expanding leisure and the emancipation of appetites, all of which weaken capitalism's moral prerequisites.
The cultural contradictions of welfare states are comparable. Such states presuppose economic dynamism sufficient to generate investments, job creation, corporate profits and individuals' incomes from which comes tax revenue needed to fund entitlements.
But welfare states produce in citizens an entitlement mentality and a low pain threshold. That mentality inflames appetites for more entitlements, broadly construed to include all government benefits and protections that contribute to welfare understood as material well-being, enhanced security and enlarged leisure.
The low pain threshold causes a ruinous flinch from the rigors, insecurities, uncertainties and dislocations inherent in the creative destruction of dynamic capitalism. The flinch takes the form of protectionism, regulations and other government-imposed inefficiencies that impede the economic growth that the welfare state requires.
Monday:
The air is filled with smoke today and smells like burning plastic as the wind blows the smoke from wildfires in south Georgia into Atlanta this morning:
Forecasters at the National Weather Service said southeasterly winds sent the smoke over metro Atlanta, and a low-level inversion - where a layer of warmer air was on top of cooler air at the surface - pushed the smoke to ground-level.
We haven't had a good thorough rain in quite a while. Those fires could be burning all summer. It must be absolutely hellish down there.
Finished Portnoy's Complaint last night. My first Roth. It had its moments, but overall I'd describe myself as disappointed. I expect I will try one of his later novels though, but for now I'll add him to the list with Updike and Ford, which for now I suppose would be titled something like "great male novelists of the late 20th century that I apparently don't enjoy." Note: am I wrong or is Portnoy simply an impotent would-be rapist by novel's end?
My sweetie had a big weekend at the gym, setting two personal records (including a deadlift in the rack with 200 lbs). She has made much progress, thus proving that she is a very hard worker and that I have some idea what I'm doing as a trainer. When someone achieves some sort of a milestone, it is of course worth celebrating their accomplishment, but I have to remind myself that what is being celebrated is not simply a momentary success, which might be the result of luck or circumstance or what have you, but is rather the result of a long period of planning, implementation and effort. The visible result is simply the tip of a large iceberg shaped over time.
Regarding the Will quote, I find it interesting to think that Capitalism is self-defeating. Is this in Weber? I can't remember. I know some of you know this shit lots better than me.
I started reading Delilo's White Noise this week. I probably should have added him to my disappointments of the late 20th c. list. I really thought the first part of Underworld was brilliant, but the rest of the book could not keep up. And I did not care for The Body Artist, the only other novel I'd read of his. But I'm enjoying White Noise thus far. We'll see.
