John,

The Guy That Skedaddled: Female Troubadour Kasey ChambersI wonder what kind of music you listen to. Right now I'm listening to Kasey Chambers, one of these female folk troubadours I love— like Patti Griffith, Kathleen Finder (Canadian and thus overlooked) and the much-adulated Lucinda Williams. They're always caterwauling about the man that got away, the desolation of the passing scenery, the difficulty of telling the emotional truth in a strait-jacketed world: that kind of essentially adolescent angst, which I imagine leaves you unmoved.

I envision you listening to Schubert or someone equally upstanding. Or wait, perhaps it's Wagner you love—another, like Waugh, who didn't much like us "terrible Yids." Having just checked out Kesher Talk, where they are busy discussing Jewish Self-Hatred on the Right (as opposed to same on the Left, which is well-known and was recently exactingly and somewhat pedantically documented in that report the American Jewish Committee put out, which took the likes of Chomsky and Joel Kovel to task), I am feeling particularly Jabotinskyesque tonight.

First off, I was somewhat surprised to find that you, in all your proud conservatism, sound like such a proper British Lefty on the subject of Israel. Reminds me of the current incarnation of Hitchens, who has nothing good to say about his former opinions except for the qualms he continues to feel about the creation of a Jewish state, presumably because Israel—unlike any other country that has been created from scratch— exists on the non-justifiable basis of imperial occupation, of having taken land that wasn't completely unclaimed and there for the taking.

Unlike Zimbawe, say, or all of Europe for that matter. But I attribute his views on the subject of Israel to his having been under the charismatic and intellectually corrupting influence of Edward Said. I sat late into the night on the balcony of Hitchens' s room at the Plaza Athenee after the National Book Awards, trying to get him to reconsider his views both on Israel and Susan Sontag, whom he venerates in the way only an idol-smasher could venerate. The conversation was sparky and lubricated by I think two bottles of wine but there was no budging him. I will only add that he must be one of the few men left in the Western world with a chivalrous streak left in him; I can't remember the last time a man left his hotel room (replete with sleeping wife) to accompany me outside and see me into a cab.

Major Poet, Minor Prick: Philip LarkinBut what I was really trying to get to, before being led astray (someone once told me that I live in parentheses) is that I don't buy your sleight-of-hand reasoning in defense of anti-Semitism. I didn't say I wanted Waugh booted out of the literary canon because of his fairly unrelenting Jew-bashing, the way Tom Paulin (now there's a real Jew-lover for you) thought Larkin should be banned from being taught in the schools because of his letters. Ditto for T.S.Eliot and Virginia Woolf.

No one's arguing that there's anything wrong with disliking Jews "in the generality", as you coyly put it—hell, most Jews would sign on to that agenda—but once you've said that, it seems to be a hop, skip and jump to writing off a historically sustained, single-mindedly murderous (and ultimately genocidal) animus towards a small group of people as an "expression of negativity."

I don't think there is a thinking Jewish person—other than those who are compulsive denigrators of their own tribe or who have moved to Greenwich and have managed to pass themselves off as faintly Hebraic of origin a long, long time ago— who doesn't feel the threat of anti-Semitism as something very much alive. And, finally, at least on this subject, I'm glad you consider yourself a philosemite and that you have a trail, both paper and pixel to prove it, but I often get the feeling that non-Jews declare themselves philosemites the better to mutter darkly about Jews without feeling guilty, as though the whole bunch of us were nothing more than troublesome and somewhat gauche relatives.

I am referring to your defense of Britain's atmosphere of "mild and genteel anti-Semitism" but essentially accommodating attitude toward their own Jews. What's so great about that? And why are Jews always supposed to be happy with crumbs? All in our insane wish to appease the feeling of envy we arouse in others, which you vaguely admit to suffering from yourself, covetously eyeing "zichrono livracha" (in the case of my—or any woman's—death, it would be zichrona livracha," you Samuel Johnson-quoting one-upper) and citing the lame punchline of some Cold War joke ("Darn Jews get the best of everything") as though it were a side-splitting observation. Since when has appeasement ever worked?

But here I've gone on at book-length and subverted the idea behind our blogging to begin with. I knew I wasn't meant for the iWorld. I'm sure James Wolcott would have something catty to say about this. Yglesias, on the other hand, seems blessedly free of the vituperative impulse that marks so much of the blogosphere. His is an equable spirit—unusual in one so young. I thought his analysis of why in some sense we could be said to have "won" the war in Iraq if one ignores the fact that it is an unwinnable war and thus a "hollow victory" was intriguingly put and blessedly free of insinuations about private (as in Cheney & Co.) oil interests having fueled the whole thing. I could warm up to him.

Book Jacket Designer: Chip KiddLess so Hit and Run, which seems to be composed of snippets of opaque interest—a little like bumper stickers—although some of the chat is above-average. When I dipped into Design Observer, I was mainly struck by how there are so many worlds within worlds out there, all of which have their own iconic figures and are impenetrable to outsiders. I read the essay on the disappointments of the latest design show at the Cooper-Hewitt with some interest, but then found myself lost in a sea of unrecognizable (to me) names of designers and projects. The only one I recognized was that of Chip Kidd—and that's only because he designs book jackets. It's probably even truer of the literary world, which exists in a self-inflated universe all its own, in spite of the fact that no one reads.

I would like to conclude by noting that my new iPod has arrived and my 17-year old daughter actually deigned to show me how to use it this evening, so there is hope for Luddites everywhere. Now I can listen to Kasey Chambers refusing to be rejected by a boyfriend as I sit on the crosstown bus. I've noticed, by the way, that the pitifully few comments that showed up about our exchange the last time I looked were either patronizing (instructing me in the uses of blogging) or snickering (pointing out that I had asked Michael to exchange the hideous photo of me for a slightly less unattractive one.)

You they seem to be more careful about/in awe of. But it's a masculinist world (I know there's no such term, but perhaps there should be, like the newly coined "weightist"), don't we masochistic feminist intellectuals all know it.

So good night, John. Don't let the bedbugs bite. Perhaps we'll meet someday somewhere, even though you say you never go anywhere and my daughter has me pegged as a loner. Sleep—or rather sleeping pills—awaits me, the better to unravel the something sleeve of my cares or however the phrase goes. I'm sure you have it at your fingertips.

Lehitraot and zei gezunt,

Daphne

I dunno, I'm tired of protecting the sensibilities of the gay community, when they so clearly are not in need of protection—at least not around the enlightened urban audience Wolcott's blog presumably addresses.

Non-Normative Love: Read my Slate essay on polygamous MormonsIf I may quote myself in a column I wrote for Slate, "the new homophobia is heterophobia." Which of course is not to say—let me rush to appease any irate, politically-correct reader standing at the ready to club down all traces of prejudice on my part—that I don't think homosexuality doesn't remain problematic (i.e., non-"normative" and thus open to ridicule and attack for many Americans, and for many Europeans and Asians and Muslims, for that matter). But that's not the same as mandating the issue of sexual preference or race out of existence by either not addressing it at all except on the red-necked or long-legged far Right, or walking on eggshells around it.

I have—not too sound like a parody of someone who says I have many gay friends but...—so many gay male friends that my 17-year old daughter doesn't realize that there is any other kind of male. When I was watching the last Democratic convention with one of these aforementioned friends I went ballistic on the whole issue of gay marriage. It struck me then, and continues to strike me, as a red herring, not to mention as some sort of baiting of the culture at large, which is busy getting divorced and reconsidering the entire prospect of marriage. (I'm thinking of that news-breaking statistic that 51% of the country is now officially single).

Also, I think it's at troublesome, at the very least, to both mock the very idea of marriage as a delusional and retrograde "straight" institution, as many gays have done, and then happily go and claim its financial/property benefits on behalf of the tiny minority of gay marriages that exist in this country.

The problem of course is with the use of the hideous term "faggot," which was intentionally snarky and what Coulter is all about in the first place, isn't it?

So far, so bland with Kesher Talk. Possibly the trouble with blogging in a nutshell is that not that many people have truly interesting minds, at least not interesting on many topics. And I know I am a Luddite and that the solitary art of writing an essay or a book is not nearly as instantly gratifying as scribbling away at these blogs, but still, I wonder: Does anyone other than a late-rising member of the chattering classes—anyone who is gainfully employed, say, in drilling teeth or writing up legal briefs—have the time to read, much less write these things?

The Idler: Samuel JohnsonIf I may quote the ever melancholy and ever endearing Samuel Johnson: "It is little wonder that any fashion should grow popular by which idleness is favoured and imbecility assisted."

I can't imagine, for instance (and I don't mean to be unkind, merely realistic) that anyone other than his father is interested in what song lyrics ran through Shmoikel's head this past Saturday. More importantly: what kind of a name is that to foist on your son? I ask this not from any assimilated-Jewish remove, since I was raised in an Orthodox family and have one brother who has moved to the "right," as they call it, and lives in a community where Yiddishized nicknames (like Schloime or Avrumele) are more common than Andy or Bobby.

My now-defunct father (I always liked the opening line of that e.e. cummings poem, "Buffalo Bill's defunct"), a shul-going, weekly Talmud class-attending German Jew thought that if you live in America, you should give your children American names as well as Jewish ones. I still agree with that idea, notwithstanding the belligerent Jewish-is-beautiful style that now prevails.

Are Hit & Run’s posts meant to be bulletins from the front—in which case, which front?—or a kind of online Utne Reader? I could dilate on my feelings about smoking and its various bans. (I'm not a smoker and my mother died this summer of lung cancer, as it happens; she wasn't a smoker but both her father and my father were chain-smokers.) I do believe people choose their vices and I know that smoke is annoying, but I still don't get why smokers aren't allowed specific areas in restaurants, the way they used to be. I always feel sorry for the smokers, who huddle outside office buildings in the cold, puffing away defiantly, like expelled members of a community…

To My Dolorous and Hazy Darling: On Nabokov's masterpieceWhich brings me to what I'd really like to talk about which is your essay in the National Review about Lolita. (Full disclosure: I don't subscribe to the magazine and it was sent to me by none other than Michael Weiss, a Jewcy editor, who wants to make sure I mention that he once located a Nabokov anagram* of Kingsley Amis, who, as he points out, wrote the “best bad review of Lolita,” in Ada, or Ardor.)

But I feel like one of those Oscar presenters who goes on too long and the music starts up, so all I'll add at this point is that very close toward the ending there is a description that is breathtaking even for such a virtuoso of images as Nabokov: “This then is my story. I have reread it. It has bits of marrow sticking to it, and blood, and beautiful bright-green flies…”

As long as you’re considering Lolita’s dispassionate but not un-judgmental –I know you're not supposed to be judgmental anymore, at least not about things you don't like or approve of—portrait of a pedophile, do you remember the fuss that was kicked up a few years ago when a new version of the Kubrick movie was being filmed by Adrian Lyne? P.C. anxieties were aroused about the young actress who was playing Lolita. Weren't there disclaimers and scenes that had to be cut?

Ah, Hitler. Eternally of interest. I agree with Yglesias about the Munich analogy being absurd, but does he recall how many times the Hitler comparison was used about Bush? No one protested it much then. I've always wondered whether there is any truth to the factoid or rumoroid that Hitler had only one testicle or that some close relative of his—grandfather? grandmother? –was treated by a Jewish doctor.

Hitler Studies: To read or not to read?I do remember reading in a fascinating history of hospitality that had Hitler placing carefully selected reading matter, including erotica, on his guests' bedside tables when they visited him at his country chalet. He also made sure that there were meat dishes on the menu even though he was a vegetarian. (And a big farter, apparently, according to his doctor—because of all the beans, you see).

I can't figure out on the basis of the reviews (Lee Siegel’s seemed to be mostly his trying to strut alongside Mailer) whether The Castle in the Forest is worth or not worth dipping into, but I wrote a review in The New Yorker some years ago about Ron Hansen's novel, Hitler's Niece, which I thought was excellent and overlooked. I reviewed it together with a non-fiction account of this niece, a beauty named Geli, who either committed suicide or was killed by Hitler.

Auf Wiedersehen,

D.

"Sunny Sexless Nerveless Pastel": Ellen's eh hosting of the OscarsHere's my question about Wolcott: why does any print journalist or writer need a blog? Doesn't Wolcott get enough space to air his sometimes interesting, sometimes merely snappish thoughts and mini-thoughts in Vanity Fair? He can be funny but he's rarely unpredictable–sort of like Frank Rich with fangs. And didn't his one and only novel (who am I to talk, having fallen into a Henry Rothian silence after the publication of my one and only novel over two decades ago) feature something about a cat, either on the cover or in the plot? I hate and fear cats and never entirely trust people who like them.

I do entirely concur with his points about Ellen DeGeneres being astonishingly bland in her hosting role at the Oscars; she even repeated one un-funny joke, as both my daughter and I noticed. That all said, I'm completely uninterested in hearing about or reading about Ann Coulter at this point; she seems like a parody of herself, and clearly would never have captured the limelight (what is the blogosphere form of limelight?) if not for those incredible legs and that endless blonde hair.

Don Juan of Flask Walk: The great Kingsley AmisShe makes conservatives look like blowhards, the lot of them, which plays nicely into the unreflexive views of the Left. And yes, it was nice to read the bouquet he tossed to Clive James, although I found James' defense of Kingsley Amis in the TLS on the occasion of the Zachary Leader biography beyond bizarre. Instead of analyzing his somewhat thwarted promise as a writer and his paralyzing phobias, James defends Amis' bedroom habits, of all things, insisting that Amis wasn't a compulsive womanizer so much as an appreciator of the infinite variety of womankind. And that every female he ever bedded not only knew that he saw them in all their uniqueness but forgave him because of it.

I don't buy it. But I do think James' piece on The Sopranos is one of the best High/Low essays I've ever read.

Hit & Run seems like a well-intentioned and thoughtful site, but a little on the earnest side. Of course earnestness is infinitely preferable to hipness or archness or knowingness Neal Gabler wrote a perceptive piece in the LA Times not long ago on "Hollywood in Decline" in which he referred to "an ever-growing culture of knowingness, especially among young people, in which being regarded as part of an informational elite — an elite that knew which celebrities were dating each other, which had had plastic surgery, who was in rehab, etc. — was more gratifying than the conventional pleasures of moviegoing."

Hollywoodland in Bad Decline: Sunset Boulevard saw it comingThe "print archives" features articles that remind me of old-fashioned articles, the kind I used to read inside the covers of a magazine at night in bed. In that sense, it's refreshingly retrograde and I liked two pieces I read, one on "Enforcing Virtue" by Cathy Young, which was fairly nuanced in its analysis of what she calls "the tension between liberty and morality." Not revelatory but not plagued by the typically intransigent Left/Right ideological agendas, either.

The piece that really interested me but proved a bit wispy was called “iWorld". I must admit that I have been obsessed with getting an iPod and learning how to download music on to it for the last two years. I was given one as a gift and I think I bought the second one, but one went missing and the other was appropriated by my daughter. Two days ago I decided to attempt to get control of the situation once again by ordering a new iPod, which has yet to arrive, although the iPod skins have arrived ahead of the gizmo itself. Now I have to learn how to use the damn thing, which my daughter has terrorized me into believing is beyond my limited technological grasp. This is no country for older people, the young in one another’s arms, communing with their white earbuds, the birds in their trees...

Snooze Gate: Wilson-Plame, who cares?Don't have much of an opinion about Kesher Talk, at least yet, except that I'm tired of Jewish puns—if that's what they are—being used for the names of magazines, blogs (like this one), etc. It seemed to fall between the stools of the particular (as in tribal) and the general (as in the larger political scene). I never followed the Wilson-Plame affair with quite the scandalized ardor so many others seem to have felt as they watched it unfold. I mean, I'm glad justice was served and Cheney seems ever more like a malign version of the Wizard of Oz, but—and I hope I don't sound too blaise when I say this—it seems like another example of corruption in the corridors of power rather than the paradigmatic, Ur instance. It’s one of those incidents that people who don't generally get exercised about political malfeasance mostly because they don't follow politics with any but glancing attention batten on to. But even as I write this, I see the righteous Bush-bashing elite-gathering to air their views on NPR or the Sunday morning chat shows, none of which I tune in to.

Speaking of names of things, from whence comes Design Observer? I was expecting comments on the latest designs, sort of like a blog version of Wallpaper, and instead I got come cultural comments— on Evelyn Waugh and The King of Scotland—that have only the thinnest link to issues of aesthetics. I thought the movie was very strong and Forest Whittaker is a great talent but didn't I read somewhere that Idi Amin’s son complained that the actor didn't bear any resemblance—physical or psychological—to his father?

As for Waugh, he’s infinitely compelling in the way that people with astringent but vulnerable sensibilities always are. But then, I am always brought up short by the knowledge that he wouldn't have warmed to either me, as a Daughter of Zion, or God knows, this blog. This is evidence of either serendipity or synergy (remember how excited people once were by the prospect of synergy?) or simply old-fashioned coincidence, but just tonight, while reading a piece about the late and memorable Caroline Blackwood—who played muse to and married several gifted men (including Lucien Freud and Robert Lowell) before going off and writing her own chilly novels and acid-dipped journalism (she and I were quite friendly for a period, but she was possessed of a quite breathtaking destructive streak that suggested her heart had been permanently broken early on and never quite cohered again)—I happened Not Quite Decca, Darling: Waugh correspondent Nancy Mitfordupon this comment in a letter Waugh wrote to Nancy Mitford upon hearing that Blackwood had married Lucien Freud: "You know that poor Maureen's daughter made a runaway match with a terrible Yid?"

I've heard a lot about Matt Yglesias and I know Matt’s father, Rafe, so I'll be diplomatic and say that from my brief perusal thus far I wasn't bowled over. I didn't think the level of dialogue about Giuliani was particularly insightful. He is authoritarian; he did make the city safer, at least for the upper-middle-classes; I don’t recall Dinkins as having been particularly active on any front; and I can't claim to know enough about the architectural logistics of the city's emergency response center or the World Trade Center to know whether he should have put the center in WTC 1 or 2 instead of 7. Do these bloggers have blueprints of the buildings in front of them?

Can we talk about Lolita and your National Review essay tomorrow, even if none of these blogs mention the book?

Daphne