On not understanding Ian McEwan's philosophy of life

(Spoiler alert, in case anyone actually wants to read this novel...)

I don't really grok Ian McEwan's view of life. Oh, he's a fine prose stylist, I grant that. But I read On Chesil Beach on the train back from Massachusetts yesterday and was reminded of this point. Like his Atonement, the novel centers around a single catastrophic incident that has tragic ramifications on the characters' lives for decades to come. Specifically, it's the tale of the love lives of young Edward and Florence, newlyweds ensconced in a lovely hotel on Chesil Beach on their wedding night in 1962.* We learn that they are both virgins and that Florence may be timid to the point of frigidity. There is a hint of incest in her past, like the NYT review says, but it's far from clear. Their first attempt goes badly, the two of them argue bitterly, and Florence packs up and goes home to her parents. They're divorced on grounds of non-consummation. Edward then drifts through life aimlessly, and he apparently never found a woman he loved as much as Florence. The End.

This would all be very moving, except that I do not find it convincing that such single catastrophic incidents ever have tragic implications for decades to come. I mean, Edward could have written Florence a letter. He could have gone to her and tried to talk to her. She could have talked to him. Florence's mother was an academic -- yes, a fairly conservative anti-Communist academic, but one suspects not a total Victorian either. Couldn't she have sat her daughter down that first night and been, like, yes, the first time is scary and weird for a lot of people, but you really can work through this if you really love the guy? Really, one wonders, do two people this lacking in basic communications skills (as therapeutic argot would have it) have any business trying to get married at all? This incident therefore really shouldn't be regarded as a tragedy, but a positive blessing -- it's hard to power through this sort of mess in the best of circumstances. And if things never worked out for Edward better, well, then it's because he was a callow loser.

See also my anti-Lori Gottlieb blogging. There was a chapter in her odious magnum opus where she quoted all of these sad women who kept reminiscing about the one perfect guy whom they let get away on their twenties, all because they were too damn picky. And I read it and was not very convinced. Like, they didn't really think that there weren't hundreds of times that they could have reached out to the guy and tried to do something about it? And that if they didn't, things were probably meant to happen that way? And, like, it also did not occur to them to shrug and say "Hindsight bias" in response to all of this maudlinness?

Perhaps it is only because I have been extraordinarily fortunate that I've never been able to sigh grandly and declare myself the victim of a single turn of fate. But I do not think so; it would have been fun to be an ill-used heroine at various points.

I am also trying to figure out if my unwillingness to believe in dramatic turns of fate has any particular left/right ideological valence. I don't think so, but I'd appreciate feedback.

Notes on visiting Amherst

I am visiting Amherst for Pnin's 15th reunion this weekend. It is sort of extremely like Dartmouth, actually, to the point that it is a little bit scary. Each institution has many similarly very nice red brick buildings, built in or around the 1920s, with similar architectural flourishes, though I admit it is a bit odd to see so many former fraternities turned into regular dormitories. It's a bit history stripping and so forth.

The library is also decidedly uglier what I can tell. Another point in Hanover's favor, as I've long been convinced that if there were a heaven, and if I were actually nice enough to deserve to go there, it would have to be a place very much like Baker Library at Dartmouth, especially the Tower Room or else the English literature library in Sanborn House.

The used bookstores are good. Again, remarkably similar to Hanover's.

Amherst may be slightly more left wing. This is far from dispositive evidence, but I found packets of tissues for sale in the college bookstore made to look like newsprint and titled "The Wall Sneeze Journal." I'm not sure if that is meant to insult the WSJ or not, and also, whether it would be amusing or needlessly insulting to buy any to give to friends who write for said publication. Also for sale there: Obamamints, or Yes We Can(dy). But this may cut the other way: perhaps this is not the best thing to give to Obama supporters.

There was a farmers' market/craft fair thing of sorts going on on the town Green this morning. I was almost sad that there were no lefties protesting the war in Iraq. There was a group of Iraq war protesters that could be trusted to stand around and demonstrate at pretty much any such event that was ever held in Hanover. And, like, the war is still going on. Did they just run out of steam sometime around 2003, a development that would make me feel a bit superannuated, but oh well? Did they decide to stop once Obama got elected, despite his less than pacifistic record so far? Granted, there were some people who looked to be student age arguing about whether George W. Bush should be convicted of war crimes as I was getting my iced coffee, which did make me feel kind of at home and suitably non-geezerish.

There are also lots of small children at Pnin's reunion. This is also nicely confirming my sense of non-geezerishness, what with my not having any.

Note also that Amherst and Dartmouth score remarkably close to each other in revealed preference college rankings.

Domesticity

Isabel: Pnin, are you having wine with dinner tonight? We have the Echelon Pinot Noir that you like from Trader Joe's.

Pnin: Maybe I shouldn't. I have to grade exams.

Isabel: I'm not sure that fact cuts the way you think it does. Wine will make grading more bearable.

Pnin: Hm, maybe you're right. (Pauses, pours himself glass of Pinot Noir)

Very good sentences about libertarians

"If returning to the gold standard is unthinkable, is it not just as extreme that President Obama claims an unchecked power to assassinate, without due process, any American living abroad whom he designates as an enemy combatant? Or that Joe Lieberman wants to strip Americans of their citizenship not when they are convicted of terrorist activities, but upon their being accused and designated as enemy combatants? In domestic politics, policy experts scoff at ethanol subsidies, the home-mortgage-interest tax deduction, and rent control, but the mainstream politicians who advocate those policies are treated as perfectly serious people."

Conor Friedersdorf in Newsweek

Miscellany

1)Why I find the libertarian tribe more tolerable than most of the rest of D.C.: "Lucky for them, libertarians are somewhat less subject to the pernicious effects of Washington, D.C., as evidenced by the greater degree of intellectual honesty and ideological diversity seen at those institutions. It helps when your party is never in power, when your social circles comprise people beyond your relatively small ideology who expect that you'll disagree with them, and when stubborn individualism is a guiding light of your philosophy. It isn't that these institutions are perfect, or untouched by the corruptions of the Beltway, but based on my limited knowledge I am impressed by them and much of the work they do, and I'd say so bluntly if I weren't."

OK, so I sort of agree with Julian Sanchez and Ezra Klein that Friedersdorf overstates the case against D.C. I agree with them both that it's fun and valuable to be able to thrash out ideas with other people interested in the same things. The bit about libertarians just made me smile.

2)I'm sorry, but almost 1 out of 10 young women gets pregnant on her first year onthe Pill? Like... in the sense that if this were true, there would have to have been an epidemic of pregnancy sweeping across the Hanover plain that I somehow failed to notice... really? Could someone with more spare time than I have at the second please dig into this and explain what the deal is?

3)More Kentuckians think Rand Paul is too liberal than think he is too conservative.

4)The Htipiti spread at Zaytinya is seriously amazing, as is the crispy brussel afelia. The little crab cakes are also very, very good. Everything else was good but far less memorable.

assorted frivolities

1. Visited the senior Archers this past weekend. Latest notes on the wedding industrial complex: Mama Archer tells me of her struggles to find an appropriate mother of the bride dress. "They all look... very Spanish Inquisition," she told me. "I feel like I'm dressed like a person in one of those Spanish paintings that I looked at in art history classes in college. It's like, here's me in my Spanish Inquisition outfit, here's Torquemada, there's the dead Jew." Pause. "You probably shouldn't quote this out of context. I might be misunderstood. I really wanted to say this to the salesclerks, too, but I'm sure that they' might have been insulted. Also, that they might not have understood." Relatedly, sometimes I suspect that my neuroses are not my fault.

2. Due to weight fluctuations (of the good kind), suddenly I can fit comfortably into a lot of wool skirts that I purchased c. 2004 and perhaps not much else. I apparently did not believe in buying clothes that were not wool skirts to be worn with tall boots back in 2004. While this development is flattering to my vanity, wool skirts were infinitely more useful in, like, Hanover six years ago than they are in D.C. in May. Still, I fear that this moment is likely to pass, and that I need to wear all of the wool skirts this week before it flees again. Except that the air conditioner in my office is not really functioning, which makes this plan even less practical that it sounded in the abstract. Oh well.

3. Should law schools give away the first year? Or, perhaps more precisely, let people walk away after 1L cost free, but charge them heftier prices over the second and third years? It's an interesting idea. It certainly would make attending a lower ranked school more attractive than it currently is -- if you do well and/or find something non-competitive you like, you can stick around. If you don't, you're essentially out only your opportunity cost for a year of not working. But at least you're not deeply in debt from the year.

4. Daria is on box DVD! (via) This is incredibly exciting, and I confess to being extravagant and shelling out $44 for a used copy on Amazon immediately. I fear my Pnin has not been introduced, and that he might need to be.

quotable quotes

"Much of the lawyer's craft involves the thoughtful resolution of indeterminacy."

-- Bruce Ackerman, We The People: Transformation