What is a "beigist"? The word seems to be an Exile specialty, and also shows up in Scandinavian and German languages. It roughly seems to mean "yuppy" or "poser".
Closest to a definition I could find? I'd ask them, but I suspect if you have to ask you are.
I've never seen the word before. From context, I'm imagining someone who sees the world in beige-colored glasses, so all the harshness and details are muted and dull.
That sounds about right, from looking at a few uses in context; it maybe means the bland, and those who love it.
In Dolan's second review, he says that analysis of cocaine residue in Po River sewage reveals that "every young adult in the place was coked, every weekend"; but Mark A.R. Kleiman says this is, um, full of shit.
I believe that hyperbole is a literary device commonly used by the eXile staff.
Oh man, those are hilarious.
"...lo, God says ix-nay on the igamy-bay."
He must be a joy when the family gets together for the holidays.
I wonder if he really disliked these books, or if it's just a rule that you have to hate everything you read. He panned The Corrections, too
That's not evidence either way. The Corrections sucked.
"Hyperbole" I think of as exaggeration, as opposed to "making shit up," which is what Dolan seems to be up to with the cocaine stats. These things are funny in limited doses, but when Dolan says in the second link "these are the fucking facts, asshole, and you're a pathetic sucker if you think that drugs are actually bad except for the impurities forced on it by the drug war,"* he's adopting -- you know what? -- a POSE. Ditto with his romanticization of Little's "honest man's honest death"; how fucking stupid is that?
I find it really easy to O.D. on the eXile's attitude.
*Not an actual quote. I'm no big fan of the drug war, either.
0.5% / 100%. Hyperbole. Slight exaggeration. Not even three orders of magnitude.
(I did think the Tory review was very good, and the Appelbaum was interesting if somewhat wrong-headed. And of course props to him for sniffing Frey's fakery out. And SCMT can't have any more of my drugs, after the mess he made last time.)
See also Neal Pollack:
You wanna fuck with my shit, Frey guy? I don't think so. Because I really don't give a flying anal gland about Danny Eggleston or Jonathan Safran Fuckface or David Foster Walrus. Not only do I not hang out with them, but I don't hang out at all. With anyone. No living being is worth my company except for my dogs, and only then because I like to fuck them. Oh, yes, I love fucking my dogs, and then I go to a boxing gym because I love beating up black people and then I fuck my dogs some more. So if you want to fight me, James Frey, then bring it on, because my fists are cast-iron and my screen saver reads "BRING IT YOU BEAUTIFUL MOTHERFUCKER BRING IT!" and my tattoo reads "SUCK MY COCK YOU WHORE." But it's not on my left arm. It's on my cock. Suck my cock tattoo that says suck my cock, James Frey, you whore.You wanna fuck with my shit, Frey guy? I don't think so. Because I really don't give a flying anal gland about Danny Eggleston or Jonathan Safran Fuckface or David Foster Walrus. Not only do I not hang out with them, but I don't hang out at all. With anyone. No living being is worth my company except for my dogs, and only then because I like to fuck them. Oh, yes, I love fucking my dogs, and then I go to a boxing gym because I love beating up black people and then I fuck my dogs some more. So if you want to fight me, James Frey, then bring it on, because my fists are cast-iron and my screen saver reads "BRING IT YOU BEAUTIFUL MOTHERFUCKER BRING IT!" and my tattoo reads "SUCK MY COCK YOU WHORE." But it's not on my left arm. It's on my cock. Suck my cock tattoo that says suck my cock, James Frey, you whore.
Gah, what a boner. Oh well, it's even better the second time.
The eXile is childishly gross, but the bar/whorehouses associated with the magazine—Doug & Marty's Boar House, the Hungry Duck—are just vile. (Girls drink for free until 1 am, at which point the guys are welcomed into the club—w00t!) The eXholes' fratboy attitude is too much for me.
SCMT: but if it sucked, he missed why it sucked. (Though the bits about Manhattanites being the new hicks was very funny.)
I like the way Pollack achieves that Erik Satie / John Cage minimalist effect with exact repetition.
I'm I'm more of more a of Steve a Reich per Steve son Reich my per self son my self.
Weiner has this guy pegged in 9. He's a poser. A talented, knowledgeable poser, but a poser nonetheless. The advantage of writing at a white heat of contempt is that you don't need to make any consistent sense. As evidence compare and contrast the Hartley review -- "isn't it amazing these tories feel no shame for blighting millions of lives" -- and the Applebaum review -- "this foolish woman is going on about the gulag when russians themselves don't care, plus what about the crimes of the British empire, for which she, as a writer for "The Spectator" she is in some way accountable for." What?
He is, however, funny. So thanks to Almeida for pointed us to him.
We agree! In fact I'm willing to ratchet up my "somewhat wrong-headed" about the Appelbaum review. "Nobody cares about the Chinese killed by the Japanese, why is that" is an interesting point, moving to "And no one should care about Stalin's victims" is not.
And he is funny.
"... the asses who think DeLillo's a good writer, insist Pynchon's ponderous shaggy-dog stories are a laugh riot. Frey's fans aren't as literate as those people, but I wouldn't say they're any more gullible."
Well, all right. But I don't think Dolan's writing is in itself all that wonderful. It's standard Hunter Thompson-style huffing and puffing, with intended meaning drifitng pretty far from the chosen words. First Frey's defenders are "fine soldiers in a stupid cause," the next paragraph they're "pitiful and despicable by turns." Also, I like War and Peace. The philosophy parts are slow, but that's still a wonderful book.
What saves Dolan is that he's right about Frey and apparently not so many other people caught on. Reading the quotes in Dolan's piece, it's appalling to think anyone ever finished reading Frey's work, let alone admired him for it. My favorite:
"Lilly with long black hair and pale skin and blue eyes like deep, clean water. Lilly whose father deserted her and whose mother sold Lilly's body for drugs when she was thirteen. Lilly who became a crackhead and a pillpopper and ..."
OK, I disagree with both Weiner and baa. Applebaum is not a good person, and anyone who spends any time at all throwing piss in her face is to be applauded.
Moreover, his argument strikes me as pretty straightforward.
1. This book is boring because no one cares what the Soviets did their people. Not even the Soviets.
2. This is not surprising, as, by and large, no one cares what happens to most other people.
3. By writing the book, Applebaum is making the claim that we should care. That claim fails.
4. At best, she is trying to guilt us into caring. Don't believe the hype. She's willing to overlook certain uncomfortable parts of the British Empire; you should, likewise, feel comfortable overlooking uncomfortable parts of the Soviet Empire. By the transitive law, feel free to overlook books devoted to documenting it, as well.
5. Where is the beer?
Where's the incoherence?
I agree with Tim.
Dolan has an Irish anti-British thing going, I think. It shows up in two pieces.
Gah, leave it to a couple of analytic philosophy types to dismiss someone interesting as "a poser" and "inconsistent." Where have I heard this before? Is he a poser? Maybe. Is he inconsistent? Probably. But are his reviews more worth reading than the timid stuff you'll find in the Times or the New Yorker? Yup. Who else is going to say that, whatever the merits of Applebaum's book--and he grants that she does a good job--people like her only dig up the dead to throw them in your face? I don't even care if that's true, because it's important to keep in mind.
Let me recommend Gary Belcher, "War Nerd" as well. I admit that I don't know if it's parody.
Isn't the importance of keeping it in mind at least a little bit related to whether or not it's true, ogged?
Dude, he's got interesting points -- I liked the bit about the 1% VAT in the Appelbaum review. But he's too concerned with establishing that it takes a really huge cock to gaze on realities that are too disturbing for all you beigists. I mean, an honest man's honest death? Are you really willing to defend that?
His reviews would be a lot more interesting if he had more than one gear. (The most interesting one I've read, the Wilsey, admits that the book has potential but nails what spoils it -- based on the sample I read, he's right.) He does get some insights in there, but so do the New Yorker reviewers, and his insights wouldn't be diminished if he was less predictable.
I do like War Nerd.
(BTW, have I ever dismissed continental philosophy for posing or inconsistency, or anything else, around here? I don't remember doing that.)
The guy's out-of-control writing style should be a warning not to take anything literally. The guy isn't really trying to sneak anything past you. And there are people at least that inaccurate who do try to fool you, and many of them are influential in government.
Was that a comment about Dolan or Frey?
Ah, "inconsistent," not 'incoherent." Right. I'm not even sure he fails there. This bit from the Hartley review,
"It's dazzling, this utter lack of shame, And it's worked for them. Their ex-victims just love them. It's conclusive proof that the saying, "Never apologize, never explain" is absolutely right,"
seem of a piece with the Applebaum review. He's just more comfortable with it by the time Applebaum comes around. But I agree with Weiner that he's only got one gear, and therefore he's less interesting.
I don't even care if that's true, because it's important to keep in mind.
I believe this is the same principle that drives people to color the rims of their CDs with green marker to make them sound better.
You're reinscribing norms, Matt! (No, you haven't, but things get marginalized even when the people doing the marginalizing mean well.) And I totally agree with John when he says "The guy's out-of-control writing style should be a warning not to take anything literally. The guy isn't really trying to sneak anything past you." What he's doing is very clearly a shtick or kind of performance so "not interesting, because one-note" is a good criticism, but "poser" seems to miss the point.
I was talking about Dolan. Frey seems like sickly crap, just as Dolan says. And he apparently was trying to sneak stuff past.
White people writing faux-colored-people memoirs is a genre by now. 2 or 3 fake Indians at least.
Carlos Castenada may have been the first.
he's too concerned with establishing that it takes a really huge cock to gaze on realities that are too disturbing for all you beigists.
On the money again, Matt. Kyle's analogy to Hunter Thompson is on point as well.
Contempt is fine, withering contempt is fine, and withering funny contempt is more than fine, but 'moderation in all things' and 'know thyself' first, right? Dolan is firing indiscriminately into a crowd. He is a poser, his pose is hardass who knows what's really what, and doesn't blink, yo. And predicatbaly, he's going to strike that pose even in contexts were it makes no sense; like the end of that Applebaum review that reads like a one-way trip to non-sequitor island.
like the end of that Applebaum review that reads like a one-way trip to non-sequitor island.
Not seeing it, but I'm pretty committed to my hatred of Applebaum.
I maintain that Dolan is trying to sneak stuff past. We may not be expected to believe that everyone in the Po basin is using coke, but we are expected to believe that lots of people are. And sometimes Dolan does have good points. (We can all agree, for instance, on "Frey is full of shit.") But though his shtick is amusing for a while, I don't think the unrelenting shtick does his points any favors.
Incidental points: I am disappointed that an incomplete version of this comment did not post when my cat sat on the keyboard. Also, the server was down last I checked, but you haterz would enjoy his review of On Bullshit.
I wouldn't read Dolan for hours on end, I agree about that. This much was plenty for this month.
Dolan's. (Sorry, thought it would be clear because everyone knows that my cat is not a 'he'.)
For the record, I'd like to note that I've never actually liked baa, and that yesterday I read Alice Munro's "Moons of Jupiter" and thought it was quite good.
Also, who stuck up for Adnorno?
My cat accepts the apology.
Why the Applebaum hating, SCMT? She always seemed harmless to me.
The non sequitur moment is the "how can you write about the gulag without referencing the crimes of the British empire since you write for the Spectator." Yeah! And what about KKK, Applebaum, why are you covering for them?
"formerly avid fans of Zek literature like myself"
WTF is that supposed to means? Can one be a formerly avid fan of slave/Jim Crow–era black literature? For what it's worth, from that point forward he makes it very clear that he did not read Applebaum's book.
In Soviet Russia, smasher, book reads you.
baa -
"how can you write about the gulag without referencing the crimes of the British empire since you write for the Spectator
That strikes me as a fair presentation of the Applebaum review, given his other reviews. But there is an internally consistent reading of that review - "Don't let Applebaum guilt you into pretending to give a fuck; none of us really do, not even Ann."
As to the Applebaum hating - I feel a particular irritation towards people who make their reputational bones on the great sufferring of others, make a feast of it, and then make clear that they were merely pimping another's pain for fame and profit. She should be better at pretending she has a soul if she wants to write weepy books (which I haven't read) about the gulag system.
When Durbin made the "gulag" comment on the Senate floor, she took to opinion pages to make clear that it was an inappropriate analogy. (I'd concede that.) And that's it - that was roughly her whole point. You might think that she would be specially positioned to illuminate the problems with the Administration's rough ride over the basic norms of civil liberties. Not so much. She could even say, "Hey, our policy of secret prisons, rendition, and ghost prisoners is problematic, but here are reasons X, Y, and Z, which indicate that there is a substantial difference between this and a gulag system beyond simple scope." Nope. Apparently, she saw her job as one of policing the word "gulag" and promoting her book.
The gulag system is dead, AFAIK. Either it sheds some light on present or future events or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then I'm with Dolan - who cares? Forget it, and read some PKD instead. If it does, let's hear it Ann.
SCMT, you also make it clear that you haven't read the book. You've read her columns and have good reason to distrust her, but it's not a weepy book. I understand and sympathize with the concern, but I don't think she's pulling a Steven Spielberg here.
Specifically: In part Dolan's case is that the Russians don't care enough to do the research or memorialize the victims, and that Applebaum has taken this as an opportunity to be seized. I think this is a distorted reading of Russia. Applebaum's documentation rests on an enormous amount of primary research, much of which yet remains to be done and rests in archives that are still hid under bureaucratic lock and key. Applebaum's book continually gives the hat-tip: the Russian academy, for cracking the politically sensitive vaults on Kolyma and Solovetsky, &c., and Dolan either didn't read the endnotes or doesn't believe them.
His other point, that Russians simply don't care, is also misleading. There may not be a monument to the victims of the Gulag, but people still respond viscerally to the monument to Dzerzhinsky. Solzhenitsyn looms massive in the public mind, Bulgakov is treasured, a good deal of theatre consider the Gulag. Dolan tosses off one, maybe two sentences comparing memory in postwar Germany and Russia and closes his case—doing disservice to each with regard to the respective, difficult work of reconstructing national and civic identies. "Germans cared, Russians don't" is a wimpy out on a complex issue.
Reading reviews of reviews of unread books reminds me of some of my favorite quotes from "Metropolitan":
from
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100142/quotes
Audrey Rouget:
"What Jane Austen novels have you read?"
Tom Townsend:
"None. I don't read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists' ideas as well as the critics' thinking. With fiction I can never forget that none of it really happened, that it's all just made up by the author."
and
Tom Townsend:
"You don't have to read a book to have an opinion."
Oh God. Mr B and I are the same person. Do you really want some much richer guy feeling bad for you? Poor Tom Townshend-- can't even afford a decent overcoat.
I'll meet you across from the undershorts counter.
I'm married to Fontana Labs (and his huge cock)! Yay!
That's my philosophy of movies. You can get the gist of a movie, except for the nude scenes and simulated sex acts, from a review that takes 5 minutes to read. You don't tie up a couple hours of your time, you don't pay any money, and you don't get sucked in to the emotional lives and relationships of people you can't stand. Win-win-win.
Smasher:
Yeah, as I said, I haven't read the book. And "weepy" was clearly the wrong word. I suspect I was looking for "dreary," but that's wrong, too. What I should have said is that writing a book about the gulag system assumes that there is something relevant about the information to the reader. It might explain the Soviet people by indicating the weight of a trauma they still feel. It might clarify the Soviet people's bid in a game of misery poker. Or it might be relevant to the wider world as an instructive example of clear evil. When you police the word in circumstances wholly unrelated to the Soviet people, you are making (or, I suppose, denying) the last argument.
But if it's relevant in that way, you shouldn't just say "it's inappropriate here." It really is the easy reference for something like ghost jails. You should define the differences, beyond scope. You are in a unique position to point out the what is instructive about gulag system, and what it might say about our own set of secret prisons and the like. (Perhaps it says nothing - but, then make that argument.) There is something ghastly about failing to do so.
Isn't there a list of people who deserve to be insulted even when they happen to be right? And isn't Althouse on it?
Case closed.
#57 gets it exactly right, if you think the only point of art is to follow the plot, she says, bitchily.
B, I did make an exception for nude scenes and simulated sex acts. My interest in film is not as one-dimensional as you claim. I'm hurt.
60: All female writers who have initials are AA are in fact the same person? This is revelatory.
Anne Applebaum very briefly, slightly crudely, makes the equivalent right-partisan point: Her point, brief and irritating, is that the left has never fully accounted for the mass institutional crimes of the Soviet system, etc., you've heard it all before. She quotes a passage by Sartre in which he seemingly discounts the crimes being reported from inside the Soviet Union as not being useful—it was only a paragraph or so, and could have been cut-and-pasted to Powerline without anyone blinking an eye.
Notwithstanding that (awful) slip, her book reflects the fact that the 90s saw a lot of sunshine entered into the archives—many of which remain sealed even now, and seem likely to stay that way, given political trends in R. What is relevant to the reader is that some of this information has not been made available previously, and much more of it is not available to the general American reader—that's really enough, if our purpose is, well, to understand the Gulag.
I guess I just don't think that the Gulag is sufficiently well understood that a single book can give a good accounting of it but also fit the system into a contemporary context. I suppose that you're holding her accountable to her status as a political commentator, but I think she was writing as a Russianist. (That's also why I let her off the hook as milking this tragedy—she clearly didn't happen upon Russia as a result of her search for a heart-wrenching tragedy, a la Steven Spielberg.)
Yeah, her too. Applebaum told me personally that I was despicable once, in an email, when I accused her of competing for the Nicholas Kristoff Defeated Liberal award. The high point of my celebrity so far. (There was a specific valid issue which I forget).
I suppose that you're holding her accountable to her status as a political commentator, but I think she was writing as a Russianist.
Yeah. I'm irritated because of her Bush-supportive commentary. I'm willing to believe that her book is valuable, standing on its own. I do wonder about the integrity of a person who can seize on a perfectly comprehensible analogy, argue that it is inappropriate because the gulag system was so much worse, and fail to address those issues that made the analogy comprehensible to most in the first place. That's fine if you're a political commentator. It may be fine if your a historian (though I doubt it). It's really shabby if you're playing at being both at the same time.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter. She's safely ensconced on the right. There will be no penalties on that side for anyone taking any position in support of this Administration. She is, in fact, to be congratulated for not being quite as odious as Ann Coulter.
when I accused her of competing for the Nicholas Kristoff Defeated Liberal award.
In what universe is Applebaum a liberal, old man?
Why is it wrong of Applebaum to note the left's blind eye for Soviet abuses, armsmasher? Sure it could be a talking point for Powerline. But it's true.
Doesn't she claim to be? Isn't she one of their tokens? They all look the same to me.
I'm pretty sure she's a neocon. Wrote for the Spectator, husband worked for AEI.
I can't believe that nobody has yet stood up for Harold Bloom against Dolan. Go on, somebody; make the pro-Bloom case.
I'm with baa. Stalin-loving lefties blow.
One does want to be sure that she isn't using the word 'left' in the sense it often gets used in the post-'Can there be a decent left?' literature, where sometimes it means people who want to overthrow all capitalism and sometimes it means anyone who voted for Kerry. See here, special emphasis on the first link.
Stalin-loving lefties blow.
How big of a group is that?
I'm fairly certain that no one on the left still thinks Stalinism was only a mild set of injustices. But hey, find a Stalin apologist and prove me wrong.
Why is it wrong of Applebaum to note the left's blind eye for Soviet abuses, armsmasher? Sure it could be a talking point for Powerline. But it's true.
If you're going to work the Gulag's contemporary significance, integrity requires that you play both sides of the coin. Liberals: soft on Stalin. Conservatives: re-opening the Gulag for business.
Here's an Applebaum column on torture:
"Does the Right Remember Abu Ghraib?" opposes the nomination of Gonzales as AG. There are a number of Applebaum columns opposing torture. They can be looked up. Outside of her anti-torture columns, though, Applebaum writes a lot of columns that really irritate me.
In any case, what's Dolan's case that the Russians don't care about the victims of the Gulag?
If I hadn't lived in Moscow from 2002 to 2004, I probably wouldn't have had the nerve to challenge Applebaum's mission, commemorating the victims of Stalinism.
Does he look things up? Fuck that, experience trumps all. I was in Russia, I know the Russians, I stared into their souls, I looked it up in my gut and that's why I have the guts to take Applebaum to task.
Further:
To her credit, Applebaum knows and admits that the Russians themselves aren't interested in commemorating the victims of the camps. She mentions that the only monument they have in Moscow is a single stone from the Solovetsky Islands. We lived a block from that stone, and for two years we walked past it nearly every day. I don't recall seeing anyone take notice of it, even once. It sat there, splattered with birdshit, facing Lubyanka -- completely forgotten. By contrast, the statue of Dzerzhinsky, though exiled to the Statue Garden by the river, is covered with curses and homage, just biding its time.
Ok, well there was this film in the 1980s, Solovki Power (sometimes it's spelled Solovky) about the gulag in those islands. It's very powerful, very moving, about the victims of the gulags. And it was a huge deal when it came out in 1988 because the USSR still existed. Here's a summary (from)
Solovky Power (1988) 87 min., 35mmThe first major Soviet film about the horrors endured by Stalin's tens of millions of political prisoners. Solovky, once a monastery, was the first island of what would one day be called "The Gulag Archipelago". This film combines archival footage with contemporary interviews of prison staff and survivors. As such, it not only revealed history, but itself made history, and was one of the cultural provocations that led to the collapse of Communism. "First rate film journalism of historical importance....Solovky Power is so good that it leaves the audience wanting to know more...."-Vincent Canby, The New York Times
Ok, so maybe the Russians did care about the victims of the gulag before 2002. So why don't they care about them now? I don't know too much about this, but my understanding is that there were a ton of Gulag memoirs in the 1990s, and people eventually got sick of them.
So I don't think Dolan's experience was wrong, but his experience isn't enough to make a worthwhile review from the standpoint of content. But most of the review is rhetorical posture anyway, so whatever.
Ok, I shouldn't begin so many sentences with "ok." In my defense, I'm very tired from driving all day.
I don't want to drive my cart over the ledge here, but the presence or absence of a memorial is a stupid litmus for the priorities of a society. My reading of the Russian soul is that what Russians need least are a whole bunch of new monuments to replace and contradict the gazillions of monuments they were provided by the Soviet regime. I just disagree (with Dolan, with Applebaum) that Russians are deluded about what the Gulag meant.
One of the important differences between remembrance in post-1945 Germany and post-1991 Russia is that Germany was, y'know, occupied. And split in two a couple of years later. The Allied powers had a big big say in how Nazi crimes were remembered.
As for Applebaum's book, which I've actually read, it seems to be written for the semi-specialist. The likely audience is big enough that it's worth doing for a trade publisher, but clearly it's not for everyone. Specialists will be reading the primary sources and the stuff from the university presses, but there's a valid role for something for a broader audience. (If Dolan's argument is that the book should not have been published because not everyone, everywhere will want to read it, that's just stupid.)
The book is at its best describing how accidental and haphazard many things about the gulag were, and when it's distilling many memoirs into something like a common experience. In survivors' memoirs, there's a bias toward quirks of fate and indoor job because those are the sorts of things that enabled people to survive and actually write memoirs. Those who weren't lucky just died.
The book is much weaker at the end when her present-day partisan preferences get in the way of telling a clear story. I think the same thing happened with the op-eds around the time of Durbin's remarks. Applebaum is a partisan Republican. That fact is more important than what she learned from writing her book. Which is too bad, because if she had been honest, she would have been more credible.
From the survivors' accounts and from the bureaucratic history, there are far more parallels between recent American actions and the build-up of the gulag than any patriotic American should be comfortable with.
The first big difference is the scale. GWOT prisons don't hold millions, and it's unlikely in the extreme that they ever will. The second difference follows from that: GWOT prisons will never play a significant role in the American economy, as the gulag did in the Soviet. The third difference is that the gulag was built up with the expressed purpose of terrorizing the Bolsheviks' enemies. This does not seem to be the case for the GWOT prisons.
But there are too many similarities: speed of growth, spread of repressive measures, people taken in on denunciations, people taken in error who then can't be released, sleep deprivation as an interrogation tool, people whisked from place to place on bureaucratic whim, and on and on. If an outside observer can't tell the differences between an account from Guantanamo and one from the Lubyanka, that's bad news for America. Because Applebaum likes Bush so much that she pretended not to see that, she lost a lot of credibility.
If you're into war memorials, Indianapolis is a great place to go. You run into them all over the place.