Gore Vidal on the creation of the universe

In honor of the late Eugene Luther Gore Vidal Jr., 1925-2012, a writer you may love or hate but must admire, I offer this review that I wrote 9 years ago:


Creation by Gore Vidal
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A 600-page travelogue on a long-gone world. Cyrus Spitama, half-Greek, half-Persian grandson of Zoroaster, boyhood friend of Xerxes, travels across the vast Persian Empire of the 5th c. BC, to India — where he marries a king's daughter and converses with holy men of various persuasions, most memorably with Gautama Buddha himself — and thence on to Cathay (China), where he becomes the prized slave of an impoverished duke, listens to Lao-Tze, and comes to know the aged Confucius intimately (they go fishing together). Finally he manages to return to Persia, in time for Xerxes' assassination and the ascension of his crippled son Artaxerxes, who sends him on as ambassador to Athens, where he hears Thucydides' distorted pro-Greek version of the Persian wars, chats with the young Pericles, and dictates his memoirs to his grandson Democritus. Lots of action, even more philosophical discussion, but only sporadic, unsustained narrative tension — ideas, rather than characters, are Vidal's main concerns here. Cyrus, one of the few purely fictional characters to appear, is seeking to solve the riddle of creation, a paradox for Zoroastrians, solved by reincarnation for Buddha, an event that never occurred for Lao-Tze, and an issue beyond human knowing and thus not worth exploring for Confucius. In an epilogue, Cyrus' grandson Democritus sums up his famous solution to the problem — all is matter, made up of "atoms," ceaselessly recombining to create new things. Fascinating as popular history of philosophy, but lacking the sustained, complex character development that Vidal achieves brilliantly in Burr. We get intriguing glimpses of Pericles, Xerxes and the others, but the only truly complex and fascinating characters are Atosa (Darius the Great's wife and mother of Xerxes) and Confucius.

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Antidotes to economic/psychological depression

In response to my article about the "indignados" of Spain, friend and colleague Christopher Leo writes:

You and I have been through this movie before. The rotating protests are reminiscent of the late sixties, except that then there was one clear focus, the war in Vietnam. This time it's about many things, and no one thing in particular. Hard to guess where it's going to lead, if anywhere. 

Swarming rallies convoked by SMS and Internet are a worldwide phenomenon now. Even if the protests were completely ineffective in changing policies, they at least serve as an antidote to severe psychological depression among the millions who are suffering sudden decline in economic possibilities. (See Increasingly in Europe, Suicides ‘by Economic Crisis’ - NYTimes.com.)

Thus the protest rallies are an example of what Gramsci liked to call "optimism of the will". There are other antidotes to depression available: Jihad, neo-Naziism (as in Greece today), religious mysticism, drugs, alcohol etc. Lots of opiates for the people are on the menu. Of all of these possibilities, the big, rapidly assembled protest rallies against perceived injustice, where people of diverse class and ethnic backgrounds discover a common cause, seem to me by far the most healthful, both for the individual  and for the society.

Sustained anger and racist hatred are hard on one's health (see Anger Effects on Your Heart: Heart Disease, Atherosclerosis, and More), drugs destroy your physical and emotional defenses, and mystic ecstasy doesn't help much with practical problems. Political protest in an atmosphere of solidarity not only feels better, it may — just may — help bring about a more equitable system.

America, a Spark Away From Riots of Its Own

Some readers of the blog may have got the impression that I'm a pretty smart guy; if so, I'm about to disabuse you, by talking about something I don't fully understand: the great economic collapse, how and why it is happening and what to do about it. Why? Because unless I spell out my tentative and possibly mistaken perceptions, I won't have a chance to correct or develop them.

Probably the most important post-World War II development has been the freeing of finance capital from its former bonds. As long as there have been markets, even before the birth of capitalism in England in the late middle ages (E.M. Wood, The Origin of Capitalism), there has been credit — "finance" —in some form.

But even as late as Marx (who died in 1883) or even Lenin (1924), there were some constraints on finance capital, national loyalty being one of them. Thus J. P. Morgan was hailed for his "civic responsibility," demonstrated most dramatically in the Panic of 1907.

But finance capital has broken free and now dictates to its former masters: trade, state, local authorities of all kinds, traditional loyalties.  It is a collective organism, like an anthill or a beehive or a city, e.g., London today, where the impulse toward mass action overcomes whatever rationality or notion of self-preservation its individual components may possess. Finance capital no longer recognizes any nation, but acts on its own only to aggrandize itself. And since it thinks of nothing but its own appetite, it does not hesitate to consume and destroy the industrial and commercial systems on which it feeds. If left entirely uncontrolled, the parasite will destroy its host — and then even bankers and security traders will despair.

Which is why things may not go quite to this extreme, that is, to the total self-destruction of the system. But we're getting close. Some financiers are able to raise their heads above the tumult (see links to Soros below) and see the dangers and may be willing to cede some control. But the forces of destruction are so strong and states (national governments) so timorous they (states and financiers) are acting too late to prevent great devastation — high unemployment in Europe, starvation in Africa, and turmoil everwhere.

And that of course is what is stimulating other and opposite movements of mass organisms, collective movements impelled more by rage than by sense, also overwhelming the rationality of individual participants and also possibly destroying the systems that sustain them. From Somalia to Athens to London and many other places. O, if we could just channel all that furious energy into a real revolution, establishing a truly sustainable system for reproducing social life! It will happen, surely, but  — if we continue to behave as our species has over the millennia — only at the last possible moment.

(See Ford Releases Report on German Subsidiary and WWII.) These days, such operations — financing all sides in a war, for example — seem to be simpler to execute. And with the ease of moving money instantly, globally, through the Internet, patriotic concerns and the powers of states to regulate transactions have all but evaporated.

Three steps to resolving the eurozone crisis | George Soros

Germany must defend the euro | George Soros

America, a Spark Away From Riots of Its Own

Empire’s Last Gasp — A Two-Act Scenario; Charles Degelman returns to classic texts by Marx and Lenin

It is probably true, as Charlie Degelman suggests, that Marx and Lenin provide pointers, but a lot has happened since them and so we're going to have to try to figure this out without them.

For my earlier comments on "good and bad capitalism" and related issues, click on keyword "capitalism" below.

And here's something to listen to while you ponder these problems: Ry Cooder: No Banker Left Behind - YouTube

Your author in Greece

Leo & Gef team up in the Archaeological Museum of Athens

Two images, both by Susana, from our trip to Greece at the end of December.

In the harbor of Nauplion

The lion reminds me of Leo Arslan who works with me on my writing.


We had to stop in Nauplion, even if briefly, because I'd heard so much about it from my friend and expert on all things Byzantine, Diana Wright. (Check out her blog, Surprised by Time.) It's a small town in a lovely setting.

Olives for breakfast, rockin' in Syntagma, reading in Istanbul

καλή χρονιά!

 
Thanks to Susana for preparing this comprehensive (except that  she left out the part about the eastern Mediterranean breakfasts — yummy!) report on

SUSANA AND GEOFFREY’S HOLIDAY IN GREECE AND ISTANBUL

DECEMBER 2010-JANUARY 2011 

Athens’ Syntagma Square was ablaze with festive lights. The Municipal Band, clad in bright red uniforms, was entertaining the crowd before the fireworks started at midnight on December 31^st. When Geoff and I started dancing to the tune of Bill Haley’s old chestnut, Rock Around the Clock, the crowd parted, forming a circle around us. What I saw through the lens of my Flip as I turned around to record the human fence were the sad faces of lonely young men. Then I realized that they vastly outnumbered the families and few tourists. Their darker skin suggested they could be illegal immigrants entering Europe through Greece via Turkey. Just for that night, they dejectedly filled the country’s most important civic space. 

We would start the new year in Santorini, before going on to Istanbul. It was bereft of tourists, and very few restaurants were open, just like tourism-based villages on the Spanish coast near us, so we got to peacefully enjoy the beautiful view from our little hotel at the edge of the volcano’s caldera and the fast disappearing wine-producing landscape on the island’s east side. By the time 2010 ended, we had spent several days traveling to Mycenae, Nafplion, Epidaurus, Delphi and Meteora, using Athens as the base. Although it has about the same population as Madrid (3 million), Athens felt more provincial, its old center in Plaka retaining the flavor of the smaller town in the Acropolis’ shadow.

Unlike Istanbul, where the physical layers of history are commingled, in Athens every fragment of a ruin within the city, however small, is isolated and identified, making me think about Victor Hugo’s archdeacon’s famous phrase: “The book will kill the edifice”, meaning that the printed word would kill architecture. Clearly, Greek ruins are an example of the opposite. Were it not for the endless printed words about Greek mythology, history and the romantic experience of ruins before the advent of mass tourism, we would not be able to summon up a resonant experience from the forlorn reconstructed column barely erect on the ground littered by smaller stones waiting to be identified. The Acropolis was an exception, not only because the masterful spatial sequence followed by the Panathenaic procession to the Parthenon can still be retraced, but also because site and building collaborate into a powerful experience where perception and knowledge are indissolubly entwined. 

Bernard Tschumi Architects

The new Acropolis Museum, which provides all the services of a modern institution, uses the dimensions of the Parthenon to form a core around which replicas of the Elgin marbles are displayed. But, whereas the Parthenon is angled on its site so that visitors immediately see both length and breadth, the museum is a structure with heavy-handed proportions and a rigidly frontal, axial composition. Then as a gesture to acknowledge the three-dimensionality of the original, the museum’s upper floor is simply cranked to correspond to the Parthenon’s siting on the Acropolis, but with no spatial or visual connection to the levels below, making the gesture awkward rather than elegant. 

The significance of place and natural landscape was reinforced at the other major archeological sites we visited, including Meteora, where six medieval monasteries continue to be occupied atop impossible rock formations of very difficult access. Some of them preserve the woven baskets used to raise people and supplies to the top, while others have modernized, using service elevator platforms to supplement the hundreds of steps carved on the rock. The monks hire staff to deal with the visitors in their monasteries, while the nuns do the dirty work themselves. Geoff was delighted to find the Archangel Michael, who causes the janissary Mehmet to have an identity crisis in his A Gift to the Sultan, depicted in one of the churches’ Byzantine frescoes, which are mostly devoted to scenes of gruesome martyrdom.

In Istanbul we were comfortably ensconced in a huge Teşvikiye apartment loaned by a dear friend. This was a good place to come back to after hours of walking in the rain and record cold weather, and to be able to imagine what if would be like to live in this extraordinary city. Geoff already had a mild flu when he presented A Gift for the Sultan to a literary circle of university alumnae. Most of them had already read the book in a pdf version Geoff had sent to the event’s organizer. It was a very pleasant and rewarding evening, with intelligent, probing questions – and a man who identified himself as a writer and translator who will try to interest his publishers in Geoff’s book. When we returned to Madrid via Athens we both had runny noses, sore throats, and happy hearts.

A mini-odissey and a Great Idea

We're flying to Athens this evening, and plan to see as much of Greece as we can between now and the 2nd of January, when we continue on to Istanbul. We're excited about this adventure: our first view of Greece (I'm sure it won't be our last), and a return to Istanbul, a grand city.

All my research into the Eastern Roman ("Byzantine") Empire in its last decades has made me especially sensitive to the complicated, many-layered relationships of Greeks and Turks, adding to my excitement about this visit. I've been trying to learn a few Greek phrases and to familiarize myself with the alphabet at least well enough to be able to sound out street signs. I hope to understand their thinking a little better, and being in the original homeland after trying to understand their "Byzantine" phase should help, before I resume thinking about the explosive implications of the Μεγάλη Ιδέα — the "Megali" or Great Idea that emerged in the 19th century, of recovering under Greek control all the lands their ancestors once held, including Constantinople and most of Anatolia.

On that "Idea", as experienced by Turks in their fierce "War of Independence" of the 1920s , I've begun reading Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar 's exquisitely written novel whose protagonist, Mümtaz, is orphaned and thereafter deeply affected by that war. If I ever return to the themes of A Gift for the Sultan, it will be to take them up in a later period, perhaps the 20th or 21st century.

We've never been in Istanbul in winter, and we see that it will be even a little colder than Madrid (it's almost one degree further north). But no matter. We have friends there, and even the loan of an apartment, and I'll be doing a reading from A Gift for the Sultan before a group of Turks who surely will catch all the subtle references in the book.

I'll tell you what I think I've learned when I get back. Until then, Happy New Year!