Andrew Sullivan

Country Noir 101

Court Merrigan defines the literary genre of “country noir,” which is all about “the small, the local, the defiant and the defeated”:

Over and against the overweening hubris of the American Dream, country noir looks to the broken-down farmhouse, abandoned in a pasture, with its dreams long gone and broken. It flips the bird to social conscience, ideology and utopian hopes, turns to the bar for another red beer, contemplating the tottering of social order against the meth epidemic, the plight of returned veterans abandoned by their country, the fate of fugitives. There is no epic sweep to these stories, no recourse to a mythology which sweeps us all along to a manifest destiny.

Country noir occurs beyond the aegis of the city and the suburbs. Its rural settings bring the actions and characters into sharp relief, stripping away social context and revealing its humans as naked, trembling, and very horribly fallible. Eschewing social commentary and symbolism, country noir prefers to dwell in the more homely environs of story.

No crusaders appear. Characters may be victims, passive or flailing, of vicious social circumstance, but while there may be a good deal of awareness of the haves, they will remain have-nots. The swindling Bible salesmen in Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People,” for instance, certainly has some idea what he’s missing out in the pleasant homes he visits. Many lives in country noir works are worn out over amounts of money that would be beneath the notice of the prosperous; from Rueben Bourne accidentally murdering his son in the wilderness after going broke in Nathanial Hawthorne’s “Roger Malvin’s Burial” to the unnamed fugitive in Scott Wolven’s “Atomic Supernova” eking out a living in the Nevada badlands recycling metal and running drugs, the characters of country noir works are generally not economic winners.

(Image: Genealogy of country noir via Electric Literature)

Listening To Lit

TransPose is an experiment that translates text to music:

The text of a novel — with the first experiments including To Kill a Mockingbird and Alice in Wonderland — is segmented into four parts, the octaves determined by the “joy and sadness densities,” and the length of notes set by the density of those emotions. These emotions in turn are determined by a database of words linked to eight different sentiments, including joy, anticipation, anger, disgust, trust, fear, surprise, and sadness. So the sections of the book each get an emotional profile.

Most literature is obviously a bit too complicated to make this an accurate exercise, but based on the preliminary selections it isn’t far off. The TransPose piano pounds out a piece for A Clockwork Orange in the key of C Minor — with the first emotion fear and the second sadness — at a tempo of 171, while The Road clods along with the same emotions at a tempo of 42, and The Little Prince is sprightly in C Major with its emotions of trust and joy. As [project creators Hannah] Davis and [Saif] Mohammad state in their joint research paper on the project, they anticipate applications such as “audio-visual e-books that generate music when certain pages are opened — music that accentuates the mood conveyed by the text in those pages,” as well [as] film soundtracks or even a “tweet stream that is accompanied by music that captures the aggregated sentiment towards an entity.”

The View From Your Window Contest

You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts. Be sure to email entries to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book or two free gift subscriptions to the Dish. Have at it.

New Hope For FGM Victims

Saira Khan introduces the recently developed procedure of clitoral reconstruction, which promises to reverse at least some of the damage done to women who have been subjected to clitoridectomy:

The surgery itself is fairly simple.

As the science community has recently learned, the clitoris is much larger than the small accessible part. An unerect clitoris can be up to 9 centimeters long, meaning that most of the clitoris is actually within the body and inaccessible without surgery. So theoretically, underneath the scar tissue on a woman who has experienced female genital mutilation is more clitoris.

To restore part of the clitoris, the doctor opens up the scar tissue, brings some of the clitoris back up into position, and sews it in place. The recovery process for the surgery is long, painful, and arduous; it can take up to a few months for skin to grow on top of the newly restored clitoris leaving the woman very sensitive for some time. [Dr. Pierre] Foldès says he cannot guarantee orgasms from the restoration but it does have the potential to bring back some sensation.

Still, the surgery has not gained much traction in the U.S. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists believes there is not enough research to support the surgery yet.

A Little Book’s Big Impact

Reviewing Mao’s Little Red Book: A Global History, a collection of academic essays about the text that some claim is second only to the Bible in terms of print circulation, John Gray revisits where the collection of the Chinese leader’s sayings came from:

Originally the book was conceived for internal use by the army. In 1961, the minister of defence Lin Biao – appointed by Mao after the previous holder of the post had been sacked for voicing criticism of the disastrous Great Leap Forward – instructed the army journal the PLA Daily to publish a daily quotation from Mao. Bringing together hundreds of excerpts from his published writings and speeches and presenting them under thematic rubrics, the first official edition was printed in 1964 by the general political department of the People’s Liberation Army in the water-resistant red vinyl design that would become iconic. With its words intended to be recited in groups, the correct interpretation of Mao’s thoughts being determined by political commissars, the book became what Leese describes as “the only criterion of truth” during the Cultural Revolution. … Long terms of imprisonment were handed out to anyone convicted of damaging or destroying a copy of what had become a sacred text.

Gray goes on to express disappointment that the contributors “seem anxious to avoid anything that might smack of a negative attitude towards the ideas and events they describe” – and basically ignore the human costs of Maoism:

Reading the essays brought together here, you would hardly realise that Mao was responsible for one of the biggest human catastrophes in recorded history. Launched by him in 1958, the Great Leap Forward cost upwards of 45 million human lives. “When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death,” Mao observed laconically. “It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.” He did not specify how those condemned to perish would be made to accept their fate. Ensuing events provided the answer: mass executions and torture, beatings and sexual violence against women were an integral part of a politically induced famine that reduced sections of the population to eating roots, mud and insects, and others to cannibalism. When Mao ordered an end to the horrific experiment in 1961, it was in order to launch another.

In a recent interview, however, the volume’s editor offered a more positive assessment of Mao’s writing:

I think one thread that does come through is because it is an authoritative text, in some ways we describe it almost like a religious text, even in its circulation. The only books that are comparable to it are things like the Bible and the Koran. As a religious text, you can imagine that maybe it holds a kind of power over the believers. But on other hand, you can see in places where the book was adopted, including in China, there is almost a religious reformation. It is almost like an education in the liberal arts, and education in rhetoric. Because the text can be used to argue for so many things, in a way it breaks down that kind of authority and allows people to begin to articulate their own desires, their own beliefs in a way to begin to speak freely. We can view this text as a tool of totalitarian dictatorship. But it has this ironic quality of emancipating people’s minds and teaching them how to think and speak freely.

(Photo of a 1966 French edition of Mao’s Little Red Book, via Wikimedia Commons)

A Poem For Saturday

Dish poetry editor Alice Quinn writes:

From May 17th through September 7th, The New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx presents Great American Gardens and The Women Who Designed Them, an exhibit highlighting the achievements of some of the most prominent women in early 20th century landscape design.

A poetry walk on the grounds features poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, who was the star poet of their generation. She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1923, and in the middle of the Great Depression, her collection Fatal Interview, published in 1931, sold 35,000 copies within a few weeks of its release.

Nancy Milford, author of Savage Beauty, a superb biography of Millay, describes the poet as the herald of the New Woman, “She smoked in public when it was against the law for women to do so, she lived in Greenwich Village during the halcyon days of that starry bohemia, she slept with men and women and wrote about it in lyrics and sonnets that blazed with wit and a sexual daring that captivated the nation…. Her performing self made people feel they had seen the muse alive . . . .”

This weekend we’ll feature some of the poems on the grounds of The New York Botanical Garden from now until September 7th beginning with a mock self-portrait, Millay as seen by a neighbor. Her poems compliment a riveting historical exhibit in the library rotunda and a spectacular floral exhibit in the conservatory, a recreation of Beatrix Farrand’s 1926 masterpiece in Seal Harbor, Maine, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden.

“Portrait by a Neighbour” by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

Before she has her floor swept
Or her dishes done,
Any day you’ll find her
A-sunning in the sun!

It’s long after midnight
Her key’s in the lock,
And you never see her chimney smoke
Till past ten o’clock!

She digs in her garden
With a shovel and a spoon,
She weeds her lazy lettuce
By the light of the moon,

She walks up the walk
Like a woman in a dream,
She forgets she borrowed butter
And pays you back cream!

Her lawn looks like a meadow,
And if she mows the place
She leaves the clover standing
And the Queen Anne’s lace!

(From Collected Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Holly Peppe, Executor, The Millay Society. All rights reserved. Photo is Carl Van Vechten’s 1933 portrait of Millay, via Wikimedia Commons)

The View From Your Window

Ocean Park, Washington, 12 pm

Should Washington Rank Colleges?

Jonnelle Marte brings us up to speed on the debate:

In August, President Obama announced a new college ratings system that will factor in cost and student debt. The White House also made a push last year to give families better access to information through the College Scorecard, an online tool that lists data on employment, default rates and graduation rates for each college.

But some researchers and education advocates say the new rules don’t go far enough. While the information being compiled on career training programs is exactly the kind of information they say should be available for families comparing colleges, advocates say that information should be made available for all college degrees, not just vocational programs.

Robby Soave has his doubts about the plan:

In a statement that likely set zero college administrators at ease, a White House advisor clarified that this policy would only hurt the bad universities:

“He is not interested in driving anybody out of business, unless they are poorly serving the American people,” said Cecilia Muñoz, the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. “In which case, I think he’s probably pretty comfortable with that.”

White House officials claim to be increasingly concerned about rising student debt levels, as is the general public. Certainly, college administrators—especially those who work at taxpayer-subsidized universities that spend millions of dollars on fancy stadiums and luxury hotels—should expect a reckoning. But it’s hard to believe the federal government could cobble together a central database with valid insights about which colleges deserve to be driven out of business. Constructing such a system is probably a little harder than rating a blender.

But Rebecca Schuman is ready to give the ratings a chance:

[H]ere’s why I still hope Obama’s plan will work. The very fact that the ratings’ most vocal detractors are college presidents—who often rake in millions while their students crumble under debt—should tell us Obama is onto something. North Virginia Community College president Robert G. Templin Jr. claims we shouldn’t “take a sledgehammer” to the American higher education system across the board. I say that a system that currently survives on nearly three-quarters contingent faculty laborhas more than earned a sledgehammer—or at least a thorough audit from the body that’s providing a healthy percentage of its revenue. And that’s why I’m truly baffled at colleges being so affronted at this apparent government intrusion. If you funded an industry through $150 billion in loans, wouldn’t you demand some accountability?

Tom McKay considers the stakes:

[C]ollege rankings would give you, your children and your friends and relatives more information when applying, including whether or not your institution gets graduates jobs or is competitively priced. However, the real meat of the system would be congressional approval to tie loans to the ratings. If it works, it will help students pull through college and land jobs more easily. It could also help alert applicants to schools with advertising campaigns that are misleading or outright lies. If it’s a mess, it could harm already-struggling schools, many of which serve minority students.

Maya Angelou RIP, Ctd

Gary Younge fears that with the death of Angelou, “America has not just lost a talented Renaissance woman and gifted raconteur. It has lost a connection to its recent past that had helped it make sense of its present”:

At a time when so many Americans seek to travel ‘color blind’ and free from the baggage of the nation’s racial history, here she stood, tall, straight and true: a black woman from the South intimately connected to the transformative people and politics who helped shape much of America’s racial landscape. A woman determined to give voice to both frustration and a militancy without being so consumed by either that she could not connect with those who did not instinctively relate to it. A woman who, in her own words, was determined to go through life with “passion, compassion, humor and some style,” and would use all those attributes and more to remind America of where this frustration and militancy was coming from.

Joshua DuBois stresses her impact on others:

Perhaps more than anything else, Dr. Angelou was a teacher – ”a teacher who writes,” as she would say. She taught little black girls to do all of the things that no one expects little black girls to do. She taught little black boys to love themselves, and look beyond their own front porch to the hope of a broader horizon. And she taught every single one of us to make good use of pain, and weave that pain in as yet another plot line in our own, triumphant, stories.

Forrest Wickman notes Angelou’s profound influence on hip-hop:

Over the decades, each new generation of rappers has referenced Angelou’s poetry, often in reference to their shared struggles. When Nicki Minaj faced opposition as an up-and-coming female rapper, she rhymed about it in a song called “Still I Rise,” presumably after Angelou’s poem about hate directed at black women. She wasn’t the first to name a song after Angelou’s poem. On Tupac’s own “Still I Rise,” he rapped, “I was born not to make it, but I did/ The tribulations of a ghetto kid/ Still I rise.”

Angelou also had an effect on Shakur in person. In an interview with George Stroumboulopoulos, Angelou remembered meeting Shakur, though she didn’t know who he was (“I don’t know six-pack,” she remembers joking at the time, in reference to 2Pac’s name), and conveying to him how important he was to the black community. According to Angelou, her message to him made him weep.

A reader passed along a video of Angelou telling that story to Dave Chapelle – watch it here. Meanwhile, John McWhorter steps back from a weighty review of her work with mixed feelings:

Angelou’s writings are the product of a worse and blissfully bygone America. White readers who feel enlightened enough about race issues to have wearied of being lectured about them may be put off by these books today. And a black person likely would not, and really should not, write a memoir in this style today. I must admit a guilty relief that the last volume ends in the late 1960s. …

During a fracas with white school administrators in The Heart of a Woman, Angelou asks: “How could the two women understand a black mother who had nothing to give her son except a contrived arrogance?” “Contrived arrogance” is exactly what Angelou seeks to give her readers. An outsider today might read this as the same kind of lordly superciliousness that my roommate sensed in Odetta. But contrived arrogance was once a useful and even natural form of defense against bigotry.

But Alyssa, comparing I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings with another modern-day classic, Casablanca, comes to the contrary conclusion:

If you read the former or watch the latter after first being exposed to their many imitators, it is easy for both to seem like cliches. But while Casablanca entered the flow of the culture, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings changed the course of that river, letting new tributaries feed into it, providing new jetties from which readers who did not see themselves in much literature could set sail in its waters.

The View From Your Window

Yangon, Burma, 6.34 pm