Dr. Metablog

All-Awkward

While I admire the highly skilled, I am also much attracted to the guys who do a lot with less. It's good to throw 100 mph, but my hat goes off to the pitchers who succeed with little more than desire and guile.

I don't mean just baseball. I've been watching the NBA playoffs and I'm now prepared to name my All NBA Overachievers, guys, who, metaphorically, can throw 65 on a good day.

Center: Joakim Noah. The most awkward center in the league and one of the most effective. It's terrifying to watch him try to dribble the ball downcourt. His outside shot is, to say the least, unorthodox. But he works hard on every play and when he's knocked down, as is frequently the case, he bounces up like some mythological figure who draws strength from the earth. Plus there's not another center in the league who's fluent in French and Swedish. 

Forward. Paul Pierce. Can't run, can't jump, but is a perennial all-star and the go-to guy at the end of a close game. I've seen him play hundreds of games (since he was at Kansas, in fact), and I've never seen him "fill the lane." He can't get there in time. Great shooter, though, even if you can't figure out how he does it, year after year.

Forward.  Shawn Marion. He must have the ugliest shot in NBA history. He seems to hold it out in front of him and push it off with a stiff arm. And yet it goes in. He couldn't have gone to basketball camp as a youngster. He does everything "wrong" and yet he's tremendously effective. And he's an outstanding defensive player.

Guard:  Andre Miller. He's slow, he can't jump, he has no muscles in his arms, and he can't shoot 3-pointers. But he's intelligent, makes the right decisions, and throws the best alley-oop pass in the league. He's a marvelous player, way undervalued.

Guard.  Omigosh, I can't think of another active all-overachiever guard, so I'm going to go with Mark Jackson, now retired, who's the archetype. Not particularly athletic, not big, not quick, not a leaper by any means, and yet third on the all-time assist list. Smart though -- a Brooklyn boy.  

Earthquakes - Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc - King Lear

We all remember, and we're all still shocked and amazed that the late, unlamentable Jerry Falwell proclaimed that the 9/11 attacks on the US were caused by "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays, and the lesbians." How to understand either the logic or the brain of such a thinker? We moderns tend to reason in terms of cause and effect, and cause and effect just doesn't cut it with Falwell. Was he thinking something like, feminists cause sin (a debatable proposition) and Al-Qaeda wants to cleanse us, so they run the airplanes into the towers. That would be unbelievable nonsense, even for Falwell. Here's another attempt to divine his mind: feminists are dangerous and evil and therefore the good old US of A has become Sodom/Gomorrah/Ephesus and the Big Guy in the Sky is offended and therefore he engaged Al-Qaeda to punish the US for its sins by enabling or permitting those young Saudi jerks to fly planes into the towers in order to persuade us to repudiate the feminists. Does that make sense? Very little. 

Similarly, Pat Robertson deduced that Hurricane Katrina was all about abortion. In this case, the Ancient of Days didn't even bother to enlist human agents. Noticing that there were abortions being performed in the US, he let loose the winds from the caves in which he had confined them and instructed them to bust up the New Orleans dikes and drown a lot of people.   

Jerry and Pat are a pair of idiots, not only because they lack intelligence, but also because their view of the world is five hundred or a thousand years behind the times. They'd be mainstream in dark/medieval Europe when Attila the Hun and Timur (or Tamburlaine) the Great competed for the title of Scourge of God -- the flagellum dei. They pillaged and burned and raped over vast areas of the world not because they were  imperialists and conquerors but because they were instruments of god. They wreaked vengeance on our sins. It was orthodoxy. Cause and effect? Sorry, not part of the picture.   

The fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc  -- "after this therefore because of this"  -- means that just because B comes after A doesn't mean that A causes B. Just because an abortion is followed by a hurricane doesn't mean that the abortion caused the hurricane. Just because someone prays to one or another god and recovers from illness doesn't mean that the prayer caused the cure. The volcano isn't quiescent because we sacrificed the maiden. No religion, not a single one, can bear the light of post hoc. Fully honored, it puts them all out of business. Along with all the other varieties of magical thinking. 

All this hardly bears mentioning except that a couple of days ago, a 'senior Iranian cleric" Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, pronounced that very soon a massive earthquake will devastate the city of Teheran and that the earthquake will be caused by "women who do not dress modestly. [Such women] lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes." There's a chain of logic for you. A guy catches a glimpse of a lock of hair, or, god forbid, a bit of bosom, and boom -- earthquake.  But it's not his fault -- it's that his natural chastity has been compromised by them there female blandishments. Delilah all over again. Forget the movement of tectonic plates. The energy released in earthquakes isn't caused by subduction. It's ankles.The senior Iranian cleric has not correctly grasped the meaning of the demotic phrase, "the earth moved."

Sedighi is a boob and is even more presumptuous and illogical than Pat and Jerry. The earthquake hasn't even occurred and he's already blaming it on the outfits. He's launched a pre-emptive strike on post hoc. His is a fallacy so monumentally illogical that hasn't yet earned a name.     

It's instructive that Shakespeare, writing before the age of reason and before the scientific revolution, offered a full debate on the subject. In King Lear, Gloucester takes the traditional view. Eclipses, like hurricanes, are filled with meaning. Gloucester does not hold with reason or with the logic that he calls "the wisdom of nature."

"These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us: though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects: love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide. In cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason, and the bond cracked 'twixt son and father... We have seen the best of our time:  machinations, hollowness, treachery and all ruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our graves." 

Gloucester's bastard son Edmund dismisses tradition and argues scientifically and rationally.   

"This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune -- often the surfeit of our own behavior -- we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence, and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star. My father compounded with my mother under the dragon's tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major; so that it follows, I am rough and lecherous. Tut, I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing." 

Gloucester is, in our terms, superstitious and simple, but he's also orthodox and reverent. Edmund is realistic and rational, but he is also as loathsome a villain as Shakespeare ever created. Shakespeare is a late medieval writer, which is why he should not necessarily be looked to for moral advice but rather for great poetry, great stories, and aesthetic bliss.

Meanwhile, the "excellent foppery of the world" has become the province of fundamentalists of all stripes. 

Fever of Rome

Except for its title, which misses the mark, Edith Wharton's "Roman Fever" is an exquisite and near-perfect short story. I'm not sure if I would love it quite so much if I hadn't recently indulged myself with an Edithathon of 25 or 30 long novels, of which "Roman Fever" is a quintessence or distillation. Packed into a few pages is all you would ever need to know about formal, repressed, rule-bound upper-class New York society in which no-holds-barred competitiveness is masked by lifted-pinky manners. The story is so cleverly designed that the last satisfying sentence more than fulfills a reader's wickedest expectations. 

Mrs.  Ansley and Mrs. Slade, both well-tended New York widows who've pretended to like each other for a lifetime, chat on a Roman balcony. Each is expert at at one-upmanship. Their apparent friendship masks hatreds and sexual jealousies as obvious (once the curtain is lifted) and as brutal as those of lions living in the less habitable portions of the Kalahari desert.

I know of no work of fiction that is at once so polite and so ferocious. And so chilling. 

Our New Neighbor

Our new neighbor is a white-haired woman, seventy-five or eighty years old.  She has fair, wrinkled skin, uses lots of cosmetics, and dresses conservatively.  She carries a cane.

On the inside of her right ankle, she sports a faded red and black tattoo of Mickey Mouse. 

"Cat Got Your Tongue"

So it was 1946 and I was in first grade in P. S. 217 and I must have been throwing my massive seven-year-old weight around because one of the "class mothers" took me aside and accused me of quote picking on unquote her dear son Michael who was at least six inches taller than poor poor pitiful skinny me. I remember that I was astonished and taken aback but that I was still in my own head poised enough to think, what a jerk Michael must be to tell on me to his mother -- although frankly I don't know now and didn't know then what I could have done to earn her enmity or deserve the reproach. I was innocent! What I remember most clearly is that I was rendered quite speechless when Michael's mommy asked an explanation or apology from me and especially that she two or several times demanded of me, scornfully, "what's the matter, cat's got your tongue? Cat's got your tongue?" I had never heard that expression before and didn't know what it meant, but it sure added a deal of mystery to the confrontation. My tongue was still in my mouth and not in the possession of some feline and I was neither clever enough nor bold enough to stick it out at her. 

What does it mean, "Cat's got your tongue." It's still a mystery to me even today. Interestingly enough, the expression isn't of ancient origin and apparently dropped to earth only in the late nineteenth century. It's a puzzle, though. Why a cat?  But then, why "cat's pajamas?" Why "cat o' nine tails?" Why "cat's meow?"

In any case, I was nonplussed that Michael's mommy spoke to me so obscurely and I was indignant to be accused of misbehavior. In fact, sixty plus years later I'm still indignant.   

Is it possible that the cat-and-tongue episode stimulated my interest in language? 

I really don't know why this antique event swam out of the dark backward and abysm of the past. Just yesterday, when I mentioned it to Mrs Dr. Metablog, she recalled that one day, also in 1946, when she was in elementary school and she was not sitting as still as we were then expected to sit, she was accused of having "ants in her pants."  She's indignant.     

Strange Flesh

Plutarch makes much of Antonius' "hardness in adversity notwithstanding his fine bringing up." Shakespeare knew these words very well; in fact, his copy of Plutarch was open to this exact sentence when he mended his quill and began to compose the famous speech in Anthony and Cleopatra that begins "Anthony, leave thy lascivious wassails."

Here are Plutarch's words (exactly as they came to Shakespeare through Sir Thomas North's translation). The passage that particularly stimulated the playwright appears (thanks to the magic of word processing), in a font of vivid blue. 

"Hirtius and Pansa, then consuls [were sent by Octavius Caesar] to drive Antonius out of Italy. These two consuls... besieged the city of Modena, and there overthrew him in battle, but both the consuls were slain there. Antonius, flying upon this overthrow, fell into great misery all at once, but the chiefest want of all other, and that pinched him most, was famine. Howbeit, he was of such a strong nature that by patience he would overcome any adversity, and the heavier fortune lay upon him, the more constant showed he himself.... And therefore it was a wonderful example to the soldiers, to see Antonius, that was brought up in all fineness and superfluity, so easily to drink puddle water, and eat wild fruits and roots; and moreover it is reported that even as they passed the Alps, they did eat the bark of trees, and such beasts as man never tasted of their flesh before. 

Shakespeare kept the sense of the passage but put Plutarch's words into the mouth of Octavius Caesar, who despises, envies, but also fears Anthony, his absent rival.     

                                                        Anthony,

Leave thy lascivious wassails.  When thou once   

Was beaten from Modena, where thou slew'st

Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel

Did famine follow, who thou fought'st against,

(Though daintily brought up) with patience more

Than savages could suffer.  Thou did'st drink

The stale of horses, and the gilded puddle

Which beasts would cough at.  Thy palate then did deign

The roughest berry on the rudest hedge.

Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets,

The barks of trees thou browsed.  On the Alps,

It is reported thou did'st eat strange flesh,

Which some did die to look on.  And all this

(It wounds thine honor that I speak it now)

Was born so like a soldier, that thy cheek

So much as lanked not. 

Plutarch is shocked that high-born Antonius could bring himself to eat "wild fruits," but Shakespeare, ever willing to push an idea to the limit, makes Anthony's diet even more crude. "Thy palate then did deign [i.e. find worthy]/ The roughest berry on the rudest hedge" -- that is to say, Anthony eats not just "wild fruit," but the less palatable "roughest berry." In an even harsher transformation, Plutarch's "puddle water" becomes "the stale (i.e. urine) of horses, and the gilded puddle/ Which beasts would cough at."  It may be stoic to drink "puddle water," but it is a far greater challenge to a dainty constitution to survive on horse piss. As the passage continues, Anthony's diet becomes progressively more exotic. Plutarch says that Antonius consumed "beasts as man never tasted of their flesh before," and seems to imagine Antonius as an adventurer at the utmost boundary of culinary experience. But when Shakespeare suggests that Anthony ate "strange flesh/ Which some did die to look upon," Anthony becomes not just a soldier/explorer coping with natural adversity but a demi-god or some other kind of supernatural figure able to triumph over enchantment or magic -- one who can incorporate fleshly food that would kill at a glance men with natures less powerful than his own.  

Shakespeare characteristically intensifies, exaggerates, or hyperbolizes Plutarch's already extravagant tale. He raises the rhetorical ante. Whatever Plutarch proffers, Shakespeare doubles and redoubles. 

The animal theme that runs through this series of transformations begins with the evolution of Plutarch's phrase "by patience he would overcome any adversity" into Shakespeare's "patience more than savages could suffer." More patience than savages?  What would that be? Shakespeare provides an answer to an implicit, unspoken question, which is, What is a more, or worse, or a lower being than a savage? The answer seems to be "an animal" -- and consequently Shakespeare employs images of bestiality throughout this speech: the horses whose stale must be guzzled, the beasts who cough at the gilded puddle, the stag who browses the bark of trees under sheets of snow, and, climatically, the strange magical flesh that some -- but not Anthony -- die to look upon. In a characteristically Shakespearean paradox, as the passage proceeds Anthony becomes both more animal and more heroic -- at the same time both baser and yet more transcendent. 

And what is that strange and magic Alpine flesh?  It's impossible to say, and Shakespeare offers no clue. Perhaps it's mere hyperbole -- an author carried away by his own rhetorical power. Does Anthony violate the ultimate food taboo and become a cannibal?  Some readers have thought so, but the evidence is lacking. 

There is, however, a hint that Octavius himself thinks that the strange flesh episode is nothing more than a tall tale. "On the  Alps, it is reported.... " 

Wow! Still Another Nineteenth-Century Horsedrawn Vehicle

It's a patache, and George Sand (in The Miller of Angibault [1852]) offers a detailed account. The patache, it would appear, was a blast from the past even in the early nineteenth century. 

"Madame de Blanchemont left in a simple patache, that respectable relic of our forefathers' plain tastes, becoming rarer with each passing day. The one which it was Marcelle's unhappy fate to encounter was of the purest native construction and an antiquarian would have contemplated it with respect. It was as long and low as a coffin; no springs of any sort diminished its charms. The wheels were as tall as the cowl. The cowl itself was made of a sort of wattle and daub, so that every little bump rained clods of clay down on the travelers' heads. A thin but ardent little stallion drew this rural carriage quite nimbly, and the patachon, the driver, seated himself on the car-shaft with his legs dangling down."

The patache, which seems to be a country cousin of the "springless kibitka" combined with elements of the basket-carriage, may now be added to the long list of obsolete horsedrawn carriages. 

Noteworthy Pearlmans

The most famous, I think, must be Itzhak Perlman, who is the earth's most versatile and distinguished violinist -- and is also father of five next-generation members of the musical tribe. Almost as widely known but perhaps not so spectacularly talented, is Rhea Perlman, better known as Carla Tortelli, mother to many. The most brilliant of the clan, and certainly the most eccentric, is Grigori Yakovlevich ("Grisha") Perelman, the mathematician who solved Poincare's conjecture and then refused both the Fields Medal (the Nobel Prize of mathematics) and the $1 million Clay Millennium Prize. Grisha demonstrated what most of us simply take for granted: that any closed three-dimensional manifold where any loop can be contracted to a point is really just a three-dimensional sphere. There's also Ron Perelman, a consummate and ruthless corporate raider, once the richest man in America, now, alas,  fallen to 18th -- nor any longer contracted to nonce-wife #4, Ellen Barkin. The most amusing of all Pearlmans is surely Brooklynite S. J. Perelman, screenwriter of two great Marx Brothers vehicles -- Horse Feathers and Monkey Business. The most reprehensible of the cousinhood is certainly Lou Pearlman, accomplished Ponzi-artist and the mogul behind the bubble-gummy Backstreet Boys, whom he used and possibly sexually abused to the tune of $300 million -- and who is now serving a 25-year term in federal prison. Infinitely more respectable is the composer and conductor Martin Pearlman, who learned his trade at Cornell and who is a harpsichordist as well as the founder of the Boston Baroque. Nor should any Pearlman census overlook Ron Perlman, aka Amoukar the Ulam, who many years ago quested for fire. Nor sportwriter Jeff Pearlman, pitcher Jon Perlman, writer Edith Pearlman, film critic Cindy Pearlman; nor the great rhetorician of a prior generation, Chaim Pearlman.

And also: standing at the top of the heap in the world of fiction is The Wire's incorruptible Maryland Assistant State Attorney, Rhonda Pearlman.

Lascivious Wassails

In Anthony and Cleopatra, Caesar, who is disciplined and ascetic, both envies and scorns Anthony. In one of the play's greatest moments, Caesar apostrophizes his hedonistic, indulgent rival. "Anthony," he begins, "Leave thy lascivious wassails." "Lascivious wassails" is a most marvelous phrase -- not only because of its serpentine hissing, but because it is so colorful. In another context, the word "wassails" might signify conviviality, but in this case it is so contaminated by the wickedness of "lascivious" that it can only be taken to signify bouts of drunken excess. "Lascivious wassails" is glancingly oxymoronic and consequently embodies Caesar's confused and contradictory feelings toward Anthony.

It's an especially pertinent phrase because the speech that follows celebrates those qualities of Anthony which Caesar most admires (and which he simultaneously finds most threatening) -- his Spartan, soldierly ability to put aside luxurious food and drink and to subsist on "the bark of trees," and, if necessary, to drink from "the gilded puddle that beasts would cough at." 

"Lascivious wassails" is brilliant in its freestanding self and without doubt entirely appropriate to its context. It's one of Shakespeare's all-time-great encapsulations -- a condensed and beautiful phrase.    

Except that it's not Shakespeare's. Or, more precisely, it is probably not Shakespeare.

The Folio text of Anthony and Cleopatra seems to have been set from a transcript of Shakespeare's manuscript. It's the only early printing (there are no Quartos). In the Folio, the line appears this way: "Anthony,/ Leaue thy lasciuious Vassailes." "Vassailes" was, for the first hundred years of its existence, understood to mean "vassals." Caesar, it appears, wants Anthony to take leave of not his cups but his followers. In the fourth Folio of 1683, the irregular spelling "vassailes" was regularized to "vassals." "Wassails" did not arrive on the scene until 1724 and was the ingenious, inspired invention of Alexander Pope. Every single editor since Pope, no doubt taken with the beauty of the phrase, has printed "wassails." 

It's not as though "vassals" doesn't make sense. It's perfectly fine. It's just the "wassails" is better. In this instance, let's face it, Pope outdid Shakespeare. If not for Pope, it is highly likely that it would have been "lascivious vassals" until the end of time. Who beside a great poet would have thought of "wassails?" Certainly not I.

Editors aim for authenticity -- to print what they believe Shakespeare wrote. Shakespeare probably wrote "vassals" -- but "wassails" is so clever that editors cannot help but succumb. They follow the illogic that if it's brilliant, it must be Shakespeare. And so authenticity gladly yields to beauty.   

Other Shakespeare enigmas:  here, and here.