Forgiveness by Vladimir Jankelevitch, translated by Andrew Kelley

This is a re-release of Jankelevtich's 1967 answer to Hannah Arendt on the nature of forgiveness and  memory. I'm using this for a paper I am writing on restoring political community using the ex ante exploration of political wrongs.  For such a grave topic, Jankelevitch is remarkably playful, and this translation manages to capture the wordplay we are likely to see in the original.  As one of the reviewers blurbed on the back notes, Jankelevitch's project here concerns the "inexhaustible goodness of forgiveness." (Edith Wyschogrod who has written another book I need to get my hands on--An Ethics of Remembering).

Penelope Maddy, UC Irvine professor of philosophy of science: large cardinals, and sensible philosophy of mathematics

Maddy has written some of the most sensible philosophy of science (mostly mathematics) I have ever read. She combines talking about modern set theory (a viewpoint from what is called the Cabal, sort of UCLA, UCI, and UC Berkeley mathematicians, Maddy and some others), and discussions of the axioms of set theory and the large cardinals, with reference to the usual gang of philosophical (dead white men).

Her discussions of set theory are quite wonderful, and in more recent work she has been developing a philosophy of mathematics that is much more recognizable to mathematicians, less totally influenced by too simple examples and too abstract questions. (I'm sure she would not approve this past sentence.)

Floating around in the background are attempts to settle the Continuum Hypothesis, one way or the other. Is the set of all sets of natural numbers the size of the continuum, or not. Steel of Berkeley says yes, Woodin of Berkeley says it (the set of all sets) is  much larger. I don't pretend to understand much of this. Tony Martin of UCLA is one of this group, and he has written very sensibly on the nature of mathematics.

The most curious feature of this endeavor is lies in the realm of what is called descriptive set theory. It is possible to develop a hierarchy-1 of sets (the large cardinals), and that hierarchy-1 corresponds to a hierarchy-2 of descriptions of sets that would seem to not have anything so directly paralleling hierarchy-1, but in fact they seem to follow each other precisely. What's also amazing to me is that these various large cardinals are useful for other parts of mathematics, and in Woodin's hands they lead to a claim about the Continuum Hypothesis that is not proved yet ("just" lacking a proof of the "Omega Conjecture").

I've been reading detective thrillers again...

Some recommendations:

Daniel Silva, Gabriel Allon novels
Elizabeth Ironside, A Good Death
Val McDermid, detectives are a policewoman and a profiling psychologist
Joe Nesbo, the latest Harry Hole
Benjamin Black, latest Quirke
Thomas Perry, especially the Butcher Boy books, and also Jane Whitehead books
Lawrence Block--I don't recall the title of the one with the sober policeman
Michael Connolly
David Baldacci


There's more. I read these sort of like eating Lay's Potato Chips, or as least as they advertise. During my last bout of reading these, I went to my local gun store in Culver City--very respectable--to see what  a Glock, Sig Sauer, and other such were like. Too many, and they suggested I go to a gun range and try out and see "what I liked."  I am struck by the gun details in most of these novels--models, sizes, etc. There should be a guide to guns for those reading these novels. Often, the guns are nothing ordinary, say something that the Army might use, with monster bullets, or something for elephants wearing bullet-proof vests.

In any case, I realize now that on TV they don't mention the kind of weapon they are using, the brand etc. Maybe to identify what the killers used?

The Thrill of the Chaste: The Allure of Amish Romance Novels

When I was an undergraduate, I did a minor in American Studies, and I took a great class on the romance novel.  This is an interest that hasn't waned, even though I seldom read them now.  People who don't read romance novels do not really understand just how big the sales can be for Amish romance novels, and I find this topic endlessly fascinating: I know romance novels are big business (I have friends who write them and make much better livings than everybody else I know who isn't an entertainment lawyer or real estate mogul)....I had no idea that the Amish genre was as big as it is.  From John Hopkins University Press comes   arguably the best title I've encountered in ages--The Thrill of the Chaste: the Allure of Amish Romance Novels by Valerie Weaver-Zercher.   I'm not really capable of saying anything intelligent about the critical literary analysis, but there is enough material here for the nonspecialist that  I certainly kept on reading.

 The takeaway thesis is that Amish romance novels fit beautifully in the oppositional, fundamentalist, and consumerist  Christian mindset of contemporary American evangelicals.  These novels trade in on markets serving contemporary American Protestants nicely; the romances are an antidote to the fast-moving, technology-oriented, gender-bending, hyper-sexualized mainstream where these readers feel alienated and adrift.  These romance readers are served up cherrypicked quaintness of a social and religious subgroup shorn of their details: brides and quilts and storybook farms. Skipped over  are the practices within Amish tradition that splatter up against evangelical modernity: pacifism (not extended to their animals, btw) and communism. (Yes, communism).  The effect is the superficial sharing of a counter-modern narrative that is no way based on deeper consensus about values other than the mainstream is big, scary, corrupt, distressingly cosmopolitan and decaying. The novels are written, Weaver-Zercher notes, like many others in genre fiction--for readers who are already convinced of their lifestyle and beliefs and want those mirrored back to them in wholesome, unchallenging ways.

Valerie Weaver-Zercher wrote up this essay on Bonnet-Rippers for LARB that is also worth reading. 

Two novels on aging

Two novels that I've read recently left me breathless.  One of our brilliant PhD students pointed me to The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey by Walter Mosley, and the second book I picked up was Emily, Alone by Stuart O'nan.  Here's Ptolemy Grey reviewed, to great effect, by the LA Times, and here is Emily, Alone reviewed in the New York Times, which apparently didn't review Mosley, despite his considerable stature.  Grr.

Read both books.  They squish up your heart and get deep into your blood.

One is a story about an 91 year-old black man in Los Angeles who takes an experimental drug knowing it will kill him but does it to be able to regain the cognitive ability he has lost due to dementia.  He does so to find out who killed the one person who kept him moored to the outside word--his grand-nephew Reggie. Amid the squalor and pain of Grey's life, the death provides him with a purpose and the means for his own much-desired exit.

Emily, Alone is a second novel about Emily Maxwell; I have not read the first, but I shall.  Emily is a white lady, country club member,  widow, an Indiana Republican, and much younger and healthier than Ptolemy Grey, but sharing in the gradual unmooring of her life as she faces the loss of her lifelong friend and the reality that she is the only one left who remembers 'the old days."

Both unbelievably good books by fine writers.

The Last of the Doughboys by Richard Rubin

This is a book that my husband, Andy, bought and left sitting around.  Richard Rubin did a considerable amount of work chasing down the last living American veterans of WWI, all centenarians, and as he relates in the NPR story below, it was a race against time.

The result is The Last of the Doughboys: The Forgotten Generation and Their Forgotten World War, and it is a terrific read.  This is war, up-front and personal; no drones; no watching from the comfort of a living room with the camera directing your eye.  The stories are both uplifting and heartbreaking, all the more so because all these gentlemen have subsequently died during the the time Rubin took to compile the interviews and write the manuscript.  I'm very grateful he had the chance to do this work before time silenced them.

The part that is interesting from a policy perspective concerns just why and how WWI and these men became largely 'forgotten.'  I get the sense from my students that they see WWII and the Civil War as wars with valid causes, but that the origins of the First World War are so badly explained that casual observers only remember a few points from their high school western civ class--something to do with a bunch of ill-advised treaties and an unfortunately assassinated Archduke. It's sad because you can draw a line between  the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) and WWII via the uncomfortable formation of  European and colonial nation-states, and thus learn a lot about how the national boundaries we have came to be.

Mr. Rubin appeared in NPR to talk about his book.