Like my Atlantic predecessor Henry David Thoreau, I greatly enjoyed the time I spent on Lake Chesuncook and around Mount Katahdin but my prose style's not really up to his standard.
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The Decline of The Atlantic
23 Oct 2007 05:36 pm
Comments (12)
I dunno about that. We had to read transcendentalist authors in high school. I agree with P.J. O'Rourke ... the only way to explain HD Thoreau is by invoking drug usage ... not that I encourage such behavior, but if y'all like Thoreau's prose style, that may be the way to go.
Meanwhile, us (back then) sexually frustrated high school students figured out that Emerson's writing is chock-full of references to masturbation.
Yes, there are many beautiful passages; thanks for linking to it.
There's also some especially interesting paragraphs at the end of this one, on the Indian camp. They are interesting to me because they bust some of the Romantics' "noble savage" myths of his own time, as well as some of the simplified myths you hear these days, about the supposed unanimous high respect of all tribes for life, taking only what they need from nature, etc.:
This Indian camp was a slight, patched-up affair, which had stood there several weeks, built shed-fashion, open to the fire on the west....They were smoking moose meat on just such a crate as is represented by With, in De Bry's " Collectio Peregrinationum," published in 1688, and which the natives of Brazil called boucan (whence buccaneer), on which were frequently shown pieces of human flesh drying along with the rest...Refuse pieces lay about on the ground in different stages of decay....They had killed twenty-two moose within two months, but, as they could use but very little of the meat, they left the carcasses on the ground. Altogether it was about as savage a sight as was ever witnessed, and I was carried back at once three hundred years.......I told them that I had seen pictured in old books pieces of human flesh drying on these crates; whereupon they repeated some tradition about the Mohawks eating human flesh, what parts they preferred, etc., and also of a battle with the Mohawks near Moosehead, in which many of the latter were killed; but I found that they knew but little of the history of their race, and could be entertained by stories about their ancestors as readily as any way....
The part that follows that, with his ponderings on the Indian languages is also intriguing.
well, he definitely has fewer typos and misspellings than Matt does.
Great stuff.
However, some things haven't changed at the Atlantic. The depth and quality of their prose would still benefit greatly if their top young writer went into the woods to live in a log cabin with no electricity, running water, or wireless internet access.
But we'd get bored without you. So send Ambinder instead.
Good root beer can be found on Lake Chesuncook.
The Cathedral trail on Katahdin is amongst the hardest I've ever hiked.
Though the scree-slope on The Flume in NH is also a bitch. Both well worth it, though.
"There's also some especially interesting paragraphs at the end of this one, on the Indian camp. They are interesting to me because they bust some of the Romantics' "noble savage" myths of his own time, as well as some of the simplified myths you hear these days..."
If you are interested in a movie about North American Indians that avoids these "noble savage" myths, check out The Black Robe
"There's also some especially interesting paragraphs at the end of this one, on the Indian camp. They are interesting to me because they bust some of the Romantics' "noble savage" myths of his own time, as well as some of the simplified myths you hear these days..."
If you are interested in a movie about North American Indians that avoids these "noble savage" myths, check out The Black Robe
Sorry for the double post, technical difficulties. Sorry for the double post, technical difficulties.
Everybody should take a walk with Henry David and then realize that what we experience has very little to do with "prose" or "style"? We merely witness a free man - the rest is a byproduct?
There are numerous people with good writing skills today - the problem is rather that they cannot see and have nothing to say. They have not freed themselves from mental slavery and medieval/religious social pressures..?
I keep repeating that Ancient Greece had hosted fewer literal people in total than live in single cities today... what comes out of today's millions of city's compared to what came out of Athens? Henry seems to think similarly. I have read only two people so far who understood the qualitative difference between the Greek tragedy and Shakespeare. Henry and Edith Hamilton both understood the difference between feeling a connection with nature and being nature. Ours (Shakespeare's children) is at best a one dimensional connection.
Seeking nature is almost blasphemy in the light of the only true God we have ever known off. Both Henry and Edith understood how far we have to go before we can claim to have reached new hights compared to earlier times and were therefore never impressed with the raw power, bigger better, of the barbarians.
nonono it has nothing to do with prose and style and language skills.. Matt - your prose is good enough and comes close to Henry. It is other things that people are not even aware off and do not comprehend and therefore cannot even compare that distinguish us from Henry?
Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps. When, formerly, I have analyzed my partiality for some farm which I had contemplated purchasing, I have frequently found that I was attracted solely by a few square rods of impermeable and unfathomable bog—a natural sink in one corner of it. That was the jewel which dazzled me. I derive more of my subsistence from the swamps which surround my native town than from the cultivated gardens in the village.Yes, though you may think me perverse, if it were proposed to me to dwell in the neighborhood of the most beautiful garden that ever human art contrived, or else of a Dismal Swamp, I should certainly decide for the swamp. How vain, then, have been all your labors, citizens, for me!
Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? I do not know of any poetry to quote which adequately expresses this yearning for the Wild. Approached from this side, the best poetry is tame. I do not know where to find in any literature, ancient or modern, any account which contents me of that Nature with which even I am acquainted. You will perceive that I demand something which no Augustan nor Elizabethan age, which no culture, in short, can give. Mythology comes nearer to it than anything. How much more fertile a Nature, at least, has Grecian mythology its root in than English literature! Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil was exhausted, before the fancy and imagination were affected with blight; and which it still bears, wherever its pristine vigor is unabated. All other literatures endure only as the elms which overshadow our houses; but this is like the great dragon-tree of the Western Isles, as old as mankind, and, whether that does or not, will endure as long; for the decay of other literatures makes the soil in which it thrives.
Henry's claims have hold true 150 years ago and more so today? The most powerful God can be seen and touched 24 hours per day and yet nobody believes in him? Henry has not been looking for better prose... Just like the Greeks were never looking for better decoration. That is the game of the modern West and ancient Persia and Rome - but not Henry and not Greece!
After having reread my last post I feel as if I sound too harsh and absolute. Fortunately - there are many bright writers - more than just Henry and Edith.
The Atlantic itself is a splendid celebration of free thinkers. The Atlantic hence fulfills a very important role and I am glad that after so many years - it has not lost its core religion of free thought.
Having said that - I do notice a tendency in journalism - not too show all sides of a the coin. I am personally fine with it - unless I feel that only popular opinion is represented.
For example - the fresh American Beef article is very interesting... but I wonder how the Atlantic can write so many words without, only once, explaining the viewpoint of a major party involved? The Article is written from the perspective of the average citizen or the average farmer but not from the perspective of the average organic farmer - described as vegetarian hippies?
What is the intention of The Atlantic? Are they in a political race where they only want to digest what the majority has already eaten?
When they first published Henry David - they had more guts! Henry was not representing the average citizen or the average farmer as The Atlantic does today oh so often. This is why Henry is timeless and the American Beef article and alls its citations are not and will never be.
Modern articles do not carry universal, timeless nature (laws) anymore... their focus is on single leaves and not on the tree?
Again - I do not believe the problem is a poorer prose... it is the the poor feed that journalists and citizens feed on these days.
My beef with American beef is that The Atlantic article can write page after page something like that:
The term "organic farming" implied a holistic approach to the ecosystem, the eschewing of chemical pesticides, and an allegedly more rigorous set of standards for certification. Backers of such an approach, Tucker explained, felt that that it would be far healthier, both for the environment and for consumers.Tucker pointed out, however, that the movement's main proponents tended to be "back-to-the-land" hippie types who also believed strongly in vegetarianism and were proud of the fact that they did not keep animals on their farms. The problem with this, Tucker explained,was that animals need to be an integral part of the organic farming system.
Perhaps most important is the part that livestock plays.... Nearly all organic theories put heavy emphasis on the maximum use of livestock so that good rotation crops such as alfalfa hay, which humans cannot eat, can be fed to animals. The manure then maintains the closed system. There is a contradiction between the aims of organic farming and the notion that we should cut back to a more vegetarian diet.
If you are somehow racist against hippies (as many here are in language) - that is one thing. After all - hippies are those citizens who live and practice what scientists (and the religions) are saying. Non-hippies are those citizens who read, discuss and publish science and religion but never practice it?
Or is Malcolm X's definition of hippies even better?
"Hippies are those people who behave more Negro than Negroes!"
Screw so called hippies - why not mention the good arguments of WorldWatch, WWF and the UN only once. For example that cow farts and burbs emit more CO2 than all cars on the planet combined?
Or that grass pasture is responsible for most soil erosion due to the unnatural manure of cows who come from the middle-east and are not made for other regions. Most manure of native animals is hard and round and keeps the acid inside. Cow manure is a soft mash that destroys the land. Grass pasture is further responsible for drastic species loss etc.
Forget "good prose", forget "original thought" - some modern day journalist should aim much much lower and attempt to represent all sides? The American beef article does not! It stays within its small farm land and practices slight intellectual inbreeding - as we do with all our cows.
Comments closed November 06, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Breakfasting on moose meat? God, what wankers.
Posted by Woody Bombay | October 23, 2007 5:44 PM