Thoughts on the passing of J.D. Salinger

I used to have opinions about J.D. Salinger's work, but I don't know what they would be anymore.

I read Franny and Zooey first of Salinger's works when I was 12 , on my librarian mommy's recommendation. She'd been a teenager in the early 1960s when Salinger-mania was at its height. I'd read almost nothing but children's literature up until then -- the Allentown Public Library wouldn't let anyone under 12 check out books from the adult section, and I confess I was far more excited about being old enough to check out adult books than about becoming old enough to drive, vote, or drink legally when those birthdays came. Franny and Zooey offered a glimpse of a world I'd never seen before. The Glasses were more brilliant than anyone I knew, certainly. I felt inadequate reading all of those casually tossed off references to Eastern mysticism. Not to mention how I envied their radio quiz show successes! (This was three years before my glory days on local public television quiz bowl.) But I felt a little bit neurotic and a misfit in the same way that Franny Glass was. I didn't like her smarmy date one bit either. I knew she deserved better. I wondered if we could be friends in real life, and if we'd each feel less angst if we knew each other.

Drawn to the Glasses' strange world, I raced through Catcher in the Rye and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters within a year or two. In ninth grade, I was assigned to read Catcher again in English class. I know now that it's impossible to assign a novel to sixteen kids that age and expect most of them to like it. Predictably, most of my classmates didn't. The popular girls leaned back languidly, running their French manicured hands through their perfectly highlighted hair, and sighed, "Like, Holden is so negative about everything." One or two of the most prudishly religious of the lot would throw in something apparently sincere about all of the cursing. I felt proudly edgy being comfortable about it and wondered if (despite my then-steady Rush Limbaugh habit) if that means I was fated to end up somewhere on the left side of the spectrum. Our teacher, perhaps anticipating David Brooks's stuff six years later on Establishment Kids, allowed that it might be generational and that the novel was "dated" in places.

A year later, an acquaintance of mine ("Madame Merle") took the class and read the book. "It's so trite," she sighed dramatically. "Do you know what Marks said that the theme of the class is? Loss of innocence. That's so trite. Once you're educated, you're not innocent anymore."

That was wrong -- or, at least, oddly phrased. It's possible to have a head full of literary and artistic knowledge and still be as innocent as a lamb about any number of practical subjects. In fact, I blush now to think just how innocent I was when that conversation took place.

I found Merle fascinating and simultaneously deeply aggravating. I couldn't decide if I wanted to like her or how the hell one would go about managing a friendship with someone as obviously mercurial as she was. (In this post from my old LJ, I recount the story of a particular teacher whom she worshiped. She was the girl who convinced herself that a 60-year-old European history teacher was in love with her and wanted an affair.) But she oozed sophistication. She wore suits and four-inch designer heels" to class every day and put her hair up in a sleek chignon because it made her feel more like Grace Kelly. I slouched around in clogs, corduroys, and sweaters from J. Crew, attire which was both comfortable and minimally socially acceptable. On days when you could pay to wear jeans for charity, I'd happily fork over the $1 to help the Somalians; she never did. Merle had a quasi-professional acting career outside of school, and in it, she played the female cultural conservative intellectual to perfection. I had a tattered copy of The Road to Serfdom, of which I actually understood about one quarter.

I don't wonder about 90% of the people I knew in those days, although quite a few of them have friended me on Facebook. I wonder about Merle every two weeks or so. Alas, her real name is quite common and doesn't Google well.

Merle thought we should be reading more Shakespeare and Aeschylus. As I delved deeper in more sophisticated literature, I wondered if she wasn't right. Maybe Salinger was just self-indulgent pablum, a misbegotten attempt by the adults to convince us that they were really cool and knew what we were thinking. I found myself agreeing with Merle that it would have been better if they hadn't tried. So I left Salinger alone on my bookshelf for years and immersed myself in other authors instead. I don't think I've read him since.

What do I think now from the height of wisdom of twenty-eight? Of course I care about opportunity costs in assigning literature. Aeschylus and Shakespeare probably are better choices. But Merle's sophistication seems more obviously fake, more of a transparent pose, than it did then. So does her patron's. As I slowly grow less fixated on impressing the New Criterion crowd, I wonder if I'd like Salinger more again. I wonder if I'd just enjoy his sketches of a world very different than the one I grew up in for what those sketches are.

Interesting photos

Interesting juxtapositions of old photos with modern scenes. The one of the Willard (above) is my favorite, although there are others of familiar places in D.C., including Union Station and Thomas Circle.

Obligatory plastic bag follow-up post

The Wall Street Journal on whether establishments that sell body frosting count as "retail food establishments" that have to charge their customers the $0.05, as well as other complexities of its administration.

On hipsterdom

Pnin and I spar occasionally on what counts as a hipster. It all started when I was telling him about one of my friends from undergrad who's moved to Pittsburgh, and how Clarissa Dalloway occasionally talks about how great it would be if our entire circle would just pack up and move to Pittsburgh to join him. Pnin protested that that sounds horrible.

"I know. It would break my heart to be away from the libertarian movement. But Pittsburgh is apparently kind of cool and hipster."

"Cool? Hipster? Pittsburgh? Only if you consider old, falling-down factories to be hipster," Pnin protested.

"Well, the hipsters have taken over the falling down factories and made them into studios and microbreweries and things like that. I hear they first moved to Philadelphia because they couldn't afford Brooklyn anymore. And then they couldn't afford Philadelphia anymore either, so they settled on Pittsburgh instead. Being a hipster in Pittsburgh was sort of ironic. Except now there are enough of them that maybe it isn't ironic anymore. I don't know."

"Our neighborhood is more hipster than Pittsburgh," Pnin sniffed back.

"No, dude, it really isn't. We live in Clarendon, for crying out loud. "

"Why? We have bookstores and trendy coffee shops and a lot of restaurants. It's a very hip neighborhood. More hip than Pittsburgh."

"It's too corporate."

Pause."I know, you're going to say something snarky about limited liability and pass-through vs. entity level taxation. I took Business Associations too, you know. But hipsters don't like anything owned by large chains like Barnes and Noble. They see them as inauthentic or something. And no, they're not sophisticated about limited liability and taxation and what have you."

"But Barnes and Noble is cheaper than independent bookstores like Kramerbooks," Pnin continued. "And hipsters should value being frugal and doing what they want, and not worrying what other people think of them. So because I shop at Barnes and Noble and don't care about what other people think of me, then I think I'm more hipster than the hipsters."

I conceded that he wears generally appropriate glasses, but that otherwise, he is not a hipster.

Well, along comes the ever helpful American Scene to help shed light on this key question. See also Ivy Gate. The comment about "Maybe if you let Julian Sanchez dress you" is spot on. At some point during the hipster discussion, we were each trying to come up with someone we both knew who exemplified the platonic essence of libertarian hipster, and at exactly the same time, we said "Julian Sanchez," while conceding that the Wilkinson/Howley duo was not far behind. Also, possibly James Poulos, though Ilya claims not to have met him or to remember meeting him. I have only met Ross Douthat once, though he did once live in a group house with one of my ex-boyfriends for a while. (They lived together before I was dating said ex-boyfriend, though.) Suffice it to say: totally not hipster.

Still, entertaining and instructive as the TAS comment thread is, perhaps the readers of this humble blog might be able to help. What is a hipster? Is Pittsburgh plausibly hipster? What about Clarendon? Etc.

sotu (ii) -- reactions

10:25: Krauthammer: "strained and unctuous." "feel pain," channeling of Clintonism. Where is Kenneth Anderson to talk about therapy and the overclass, when you need him? Washington = seven times, as pejorative.

10:26: McDonnell, my governor, is doing the Republican response. Interesting choice.

10:28: Ilya: "My boss!"

10:29: Ilya: Scott Brown instead? Me: that would be glibly triumphalist.

10:30: A.B. Stoddard of The Hill, whoever she is -- shallow optimism? Ilya -- it's his job. You're supposed to be optimistic! Saying "things really suck" is impolitic.

Steve Hayes: no pivot centerward. Comprehensive climate legislation. Seriously? Ditto health care.

10:32: Ilya: this speech was missing a "drill, baby, drill."

10:33: Ilya: who are these people in the VA State House? Me: People cooler than us. Ilya: They don't look cool.

McDonnell's twin boys are fraternal. No?

Ilya: If you can avoid saying anything about how women should stay at home, I'll be happy.

McDonnell: meaningful work, dignity that comes with it. Am getting distracted, thinking of IJ right to work cases.

10:34: McDonnell has blue tie, Obama red. Did they plan the color reversal?

Ilya: there's an ethnically balanced group of people sitting behind him. Also, woman, and military dude.

10:35: Jefferson quote. Ilya: hear, hear!

10:36: Ilya: would that Republicans meant it about limited government a few years ago. Yes. Me too. Me too.

10:37: I don't want cooperation. But the VA State House building is nice.

Buy health insurance across state lines! YAY!

10:38: Why do we have to be energy independent, Ilya? Ilya: we don't.

10:40: choices, charter schools, all to the good.

10:41: commends daughter for military leadership. This is good, esp. given his earlier remarks about women.

Scott Brown reference.

10:42: "equal opportunity."

10:43: Me: "Republicans are so palatable when they're in opposition." Ilya: also, there are good Jefferson quotes. Would that they had ruled by these principles for the past eight years.

There is a Scripture quote, just so that the two of us don't sleep TOO easy.

10:45: liberty, property, and "innocent life." Me: just so that I don't find Republicans too palatable. Ilya: well, that was sufficiently oblique that it would appease the faithful, without a lot of people getting it.

Maybe.

10:47: Yes. Better than Jindal.

10:49: Juan Williams: McDonnell = pragmatist, someone who can find common ground. Yes, I agree.

liveblogging of State of the Union

9:00: Cannot remember how to work TV, due to not having watched anything but Netflix DVDs for four months.

9:01: Yell at Pnin to come upstairs and fix the TV. Pnin fixes it.

9:02: Start flipping around channels, trying to get to one that has the State of the Union. It occurs to me how much dumber the rest of the country that does not obsessively read the Volokh Conspiracy and the Atlantic is. Apparently, people are fascinated by thin, beautiful, and vapid teenagers, and also grotesquely, by the morbidly obese. Recall reading piece in Dartmouth Review kvetching about the anti-intellectualism of confusing St. Augustine of Hippo w/St. Augustine of Canterbury. Remember having read it and thought, "Yes, but, like, dude, what about reality television?" Renew this thought.

9:10: Am frightened by Sarah Palin's eye makeup. Perhaps more so than I am by her ignorance.

9:15: Grandiloquent historical appeal. Passing the health care bill is like the Civil War. Or someting.

9:17: Is doing annoying thing where he cites to specific towns in key battleground cities that are having hard times.

9:19: He's "never been more hopeful about America's future than tonight."

9:20: The American people need "a government that matches their decency." I agree, but I don't think that that phrase means what Obama thinks it means.

9:21: Now he's talking about shoring up banks.

We all hated the bank bailout.

Me: Didn't he vote for it?

Ilya: Yes.

Obama: I hated it like a root canal.

Me: What was the polling on it?

Ilya: 60/40.

Hm. Root canals don't poll that well.

9:22: We've recovered most of what we spent

Me: Did we, really?

Ilya: That's an exaggeration.

Biden is grinning.

Everyone is standing up applauding.

9:23: If we're going to have an anti-bank populist for president instead, couldn't we please have Andrew Jackson instead?

9:24: Did we cut taxes for 95% of working families, Ilya?

Ilya: Probably not, though a lot depends on definitions.

9:25: I think Megan McArdle had a good post on the 2,000,000 figure of people working who otherwise woudln't be. Will Google shortly.

9:27: Can't find post. Maybe it was someone else. Wake up briefly because O. has just started calling for a new jobs bill.

Am briefly debating abbreviating his initials as "BHO," then realize that I generally stop reading anything by a conservative who uses the Hussein.

9:28: The "small business" thing reminds me of my old job.

He is pandering to Allentown, Pennsylvania. Oh good. My parents will be flattered to know that they're real Americans.

9:29: Something with banks and credits. Couldn't he just do an across the board payroll tax holiday? Wouldn't that be better?

Also, a tax credit to businesses that hire people or raise wages. But would it not make more economic sense for some to invest in capital or r and d instead? Thus, payroll tax holiday, rathe than futzing around with jobs.

9:30: Eliminate capital gains tax on all small businesses. This is actually something I think I might be able to support.

He's building infrastructure.

9:31: You could also just create jobs by paying people to dig holes and then fill them in again.

9:32: Or you could just have a tax policy that treated out sourcing and in sourcing equally. And not be a bloody protectionist. Grrr.

Calls for Senate to pass jobs bill.

9:33: Can't afford another "expansion." I am thinking of the Hayek rap video. I normally try to disassociate myself with "End the Fed" libertarians, as they seem kind of crankish, and I am somewhat invested in trying to be reasonable and Vulcanish and not a crank. But maybe they are right about the boom and bust cycles. C.F. the Keynes v. Hayek rap video that like every one of my Facebook friends has posted to her news feed in the last two days.

9:36: What financial info do consumers need that they do not already have? What are they not disclosing to the SEC? Are they already not one of the most regulated sectors of the economy?

Also, miracles of aggregation?

9:37: Can we just leave innovators alone? Can we not encourage them that way?

9:38: I may actually be sort of okay with expanding the use of nuclear power. And at least he says "nuclear" right.

Also, w/opening new offshore areas for drilling.

9:40: More stupid protectionism about keeping jobs in the country.

9:41: There is truth to what he just said about trade deals.

I'm fine with enforcing the rules and making sure trade partners live with the rules. I say this. Ilya points out that this is a code word of protectionism. As opposed to the non-code words for protectionism he's been using all evening.

9:42: National competition to raise schools. Will fund only "success." This is problematic: it's hard to divert away money from schools that are struggling and failing. Poor kids tug on people's heartstrings. Even mine. But if he actually follows through on this, I might support it.

9:44: He has causation backwards re: education, I fear. The reason college grads do well is in part because they're a disproportionately talented group.

9:45: This thing about student loans is kind of pandering to me, but I'm not buying it.

9:46: Why do we want to encourage re-financing of mortgages, exactly?

At minute 36: Finally, health care. Notice how he ducked it til now.

9:47: He didn't take on health care because it was good politics. Ilya: maybe he THOUGHT it was good politics, but he was wrong.

9:48: Michelle Obama is taking on the problem of childhood obesity. Ah, the nanny state.

9:49: How do you extend coverage and drive premiums down? Only if more healthy people come in, Ilya says. But if the people who don't have health insurance are disproportionately unhealthy are out of the pool, should not the opposite happen?

9:50: Americans will lose their health insurance during this speech. Briefly picture my commissioner firing me in a fit of displeasure, possibly incurred by having to listen to this speech; shiver at prospect. Take sip of drink to feel better.

9:51: If anyone has a better idea for how to reform health care... I want to be the Cato publicity coordinator right now. HELP PEOPLE BUY INSURANCE ACROSS STATE LINES. SEVER INSURANCE FROM EMPLOYMENT. Ilya points out McConnell is smirking. I can never remember which McConnell is the federal judge and which one is the Senator.

9:53: Did the wars drive up the deficit that much? Ilya points out, at least he mentioned the prescription drug benefit.

9:53: Obama: CRISIS! Thus... LEVIATHAN! (With apologies to Higgs.

9:54: Is freezing government spending, except for the huge entitlement programs that he isn't. This is kind of against self-interest to care.

9:56: Bipartisan commission to reform Social Security. Ilya: what was wrong with the one chaired by Daniel Patrick Moynihan a decade ago, except that it recommended privatization? Also, it is against interest for me to say too much about the words "bipartisan commission."

9:57: There are random women in the audience wearing bright yellow suits. Am thinking of Nicole Kidman in Kill Bill.

9:58: No, we didn't cut spending for eight years. We INCREASED IT, as you JUST SAID A FEW MINUTES AGO.

9:59: Common sense. You, sir, are no Thomas Paine.

10:00: I don't know what I think of stepped up lobbying disclosure laws. And people organized as lobbying organizations are people too for First Amendment purposes.

10:01: Ilya: so you, Mr. Obama, should not be influencing elections, since you're among America's most powerful entities.

10:02: Congress publish earmark requests online. A minor gimmick. Ilya: this is not bad, but it won't change anything.

"None of these things will happen if we don't reform how we work with one another." Ilya: then don't reform anything.

10:03: We disagree about the role of government in our lives. Well... yes.

10:04: Well... the parties are vicious because the stakes are so high. And the more powerful government, the higher the stakes.

10:06: Monthly meetings with both Democratic and Republican leadership. Ilya: it would be fun to be at one of those meetings. Yes.

10:07: Ilya: is not protecting our people one of our values?

I have always felt sort of bad for Janet Napolitano. Her remarks about the system may have been inartful, but I worry she was right. Optimal number of terrorist attacks may be higher than zero, hard truth though that is.

10:08: Nancy Pelosi looks a bit maternal as she's looking over his shoulder.

10:09: Combat troops out of Iraq by August. Are combat troops the same thing as troops? Ilya: they are not, in fact, the same thing.

The war is ending, and all the troops are coming home. Eventually. Note the lack of an end date.

10:10: Suddenly start wondering: what writers do I like are liveblogging this?

10:11: When she's not fighting childhood obesity, MO is helping military families. Because politicians opposed military families before this, as Ilya says.

10:12: I don't actually know anything about security policy, so this part of the speech is sort of tolerable.

10:14: Haiti. Who is dude the camera is zeroing in on? Ilya; maybe Haitian ambassador.

10:15: Ilya: exit rights! Let the Haitians vote with their feet! You know, we stand on the side of freedom and dignity, except when letting people come here.

The Constitution doesn't actually say anything about people being created equal. Just to be clear.

10:16: There were two sentences about civil rights. I screamed and writhed in physical pain and could not type because of said writhing. So there's no substantive commentary on them.

10:17: Or we could have an immigration policy that is actually logical and therefore enforceable, and then we could enforce it. That could work, too.

10:18: Democratic v. Republican values -- echoes of Washington's Farewell Address. Say what you will, he's a good rhetorician.

10:19: Sometimes, bankers take risks, and they get rich. And they invest their profits! Or spend them and funnel them into the economy! And that is wonderful.

10:20: Returning to broadly historical theme.

10:22: Ilya and I are getting distracted from all the high-minded rhetoric and are looking at Google Image photos of Scott Brown on my laptop.

Also, camera zeroing in on Harry Reid.

10:23: I want to be one of those people who is inspired by politicians. I envy supporters their euphoria. I haven't been since the mid-90s, when I defended Thornburgh against Wofford. Someday, I will get excited about an actual politician. Today is not that day.

Should the Senate Be Apportioned Based on Population?

I love maps, even (especially) those of fake places. So I encourage anyone to click through to James Fallows's blog for a larger version of what the United States would look like if the 50 states were redistributed into 50 entities of equal population (a bit over 5,000,000 people each.)More here and here.

Some scattered thoughts:

1)I am squinting and can't figure out if Allentown would be in Philadelphia or Susquehanna. If anyone is better at reading tiny maps than me, please comment and tell me.

2)I understand that, as someone whose friends mostly align with Team Red, I am supposed to hate this proposal. We are supposed to love the Electoral College, and liberals are supposed to hate it. As the Founders fretted, making NYC and the SF Bay separate cities would skew the political system in favor of city dwellers. We would thus disrupt the integrity of the yeoman farmer class or something.

Maybe; I am not so sure. It seems a bit arrogant -- and dare I say it, un-conservative -- to presume to know, for all time, the right way to balance the interests of different classes and different regions. Maybe city folk are more freedom-loving than they were in the 18th century. As my beloved Artist Formerly Known as Ilya has written in some ways the educated classes are most friendly to liberty. So, too, breaking up California so that the suburbs get more electoral votes might benefit Republicans. I'm also not really sure how reshuffling votes in the Rust Belt changes the electoral calculus. I defer to real experts here.

3)For traditional American federalism to work, there must be states. Duh. But can federalism work if the states are not the same states for all time? Like, if the boundaries of the states were redrawn every 25 years -- as one of Yglesias's commenters suggests -- would it matter? What the commenter sees as a bug in the scheme, I see as a virtue -- if state governments have to disband every few years, they can't screw nearly as much up. (No Johnstown flood tax in place for 100 years!) On the other hand, would the lack of stable states make the central government all the more powerful?

4)Or is the real problem that there would be interest groups fighting for control of the redrawing process every 25 years or so? And that the new districts would be gerrymandered to meet their interests?

5) If interest groups were constantly fighting about state boundaries, would this be a less harmful use of their time than what they are doing now?

6)Some of the names of the new fake states are cool. Coronado! Allegheny! Pamlico! Tombigbee! I completely support any public policy that involves coming up with new place names that are better than the older ones. (I spent a lot of my childhood sitting around coming up with better names for places in my town than the ones that existed. This, again, is why I grew up to be not a Burkean.) Also, if officials are sitting around debating the merits of Susquehanna v. Lancaster v. Pennsyltucky for a given swath of the country, that's probably good -- it means they have less time to do things that are actively harmful.