1.5 billion people can't be wrong...
I've been studying Mandarin Chinese for the past few months - my first serious attempt to learn a foreign language since my years in Spanish class throughout high school and college.
Well, this is a whole other kettle of fish.
Of course, there are the tones....Mandarin has four, which is not as onerous as the Vietnamese six (and even less so than Cantonese, which has nine). It still takes a tremendous mental effort to avoid saying 'horse' when you're trying to say 'mother'.
Pinyin is not the most helpful system of transliteration. The word 'to know' is written 'zhi dao' and pronounced 'Joo Dow'.
Finally there is the writing - thousands of characters to memorize. I am told that there is a system to all of this, but I haven't figured it out yet, and the explanations my teacher offers for each character are so arcane that they might as well be in secret code.
Still, progress is being made! I even recorded a podcast, detailing the proper way to greet a lady. Download it here.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Friday, November 23, 2012
On Re-Reading 'Lolita'
Now that I have a certain amount of spare time (when not working, studying Chinese, composing music, or navigating the New York mass-transit system) I've begun doing something I haven't done in some time: reading for fun.
There are those among us (mainly those who haven't read the book) who make it out as some kind of apologia for pedophilia. People still use the term 'Lolita' to mean a sexually precocious young girl, and the poster of the 1962 movie (which made her at least 15 instead of 12) doesn't help at all:
Actually, the book is a grand display of the unreliable narrator; a novel-length exercise in defending the indefensible. In short, a trick.
I say a trick because our anti-hero, Humbert Humbert, is many things other than a predator. He's clever. He's funny. He's highly educated. He seems self-aware. And he's a smooth talker. Is he ever! The narrative never lets up for an instant; showering you with classical allusion, puns, wry observations, self-pitying exculpations, and poetical descriptions of his passion for the doomed Dolores Haze.
He's also extremely perceptive; at least about the hollowness and absurdity of modern bourgeois sentimentality and taste. His status as a well-educated European provides him the distance necessary to see how bad it all is. Without the molestation theme the book could function as a hilarious satire on mid-century Americana kitsch. Of course, this perspective allows him to treat everyone else as less than real. Not a single character - other than HH and Lolita herself - ever rises above a caricature. The deaths of Charlotte Haze and Clare Quilty are presented as almost pure comedy. Even Lolita is treated with contempt despite Humbert's mania for her ('Mentally, I found her to be a disgustingly conventional little girl
On top of everything, we get the obligatory depiction of Lolita as sexually aggressive. She's the one who seduced him! Humbert even goes so far as to portray himself as rather conservative than not, acting like a typical overprotective father and refusing to let his Lo go on dates or even talk to boys on the phone when she is enrolled in Beardsley high school. The act which ultimately lands him in jail is not his kidnapping and abuse of Lolita but his murder of the man Humbert believes has acted in essentially the same way as himself.
The result is that many - perhaps most - readers are fooled. Sure, Humbert may be a rapist and murderer and a schemer - but at least he's not some middle-class boor! Besides, she was a slut anyway.
Occasionally, very occasionally, we have flashes of insight about the reality of his and Lolita's situation (he notes in passing that Lolita is crying herself to sleep every night) but these never stop him in his pursuit of his nymphet.
I am not inclined to read any symbolism into the story as a whole (Nabakov claimed to 'detest symbols and allegories') so I have to disagree with those who see Humbert as personifying Communism or dictatorship or some such thing.
Instead, Lolita shows us how bad people can get away with it for so long. If villains were dirty and ugly with Snidely Whiplash mustaches and were accompanied everywhere by screeching strings they would never get far. They can be evil because they have an unlimited capacity to justify themselves, and charm the rest of the world.
There are those among us (mainly those who haven't read the book) who make it out as some kind of apologia for pedophilia. People still use the term 'Lolita' to mean a sexually precocious young girl, and the poster of the 1962 movie (which made her at least 15 instead of 12) doesn't help at all:
Actually, the book is a grand display of the unreliable narrator; a novel-length exercise in defending the indefensible. In short, a trick.
I say a trick because our anti-hero, Humbert Humbert, is many things other than a predator. He's clever. He's funny. He's highly educated. He seems self-aware. And he's a smooth talker. Is he ever! The narrative never lets up for an instant; showering you with classical allusion, puns, wry observations, self-pitying exculpations, and poetical descriptions of his passion for the doomed Dolores Haze.
He's also extremely perceptive; at least about the hollowness and absurdity of modern bourgeois sentimentality and taste. His status as a well-educated European provides him the distance necessary to see how bad it all is. Without the molestation theme the book could function as a hilarious satire on mid-century Americana kitsch. Of course, this perspective allows him to treat everyone else as less than real. Not a single character - other than HH and Lolita herself - ever rises above a caricature. The deaths of Charlotte Haze and Clare Quilty are presented as almost pure comedy. Even Lolita is treated with contempt despite Humbert's mania for her ('Mentally, I found her to be a disgustingly conventional little girl
On top of everything, we get the obligatory depiction of Lolita as sexually aggressive. She's the one who seduced him! Humbert even goes so far as to portray himself as rather conservative than not, acting like a typical overprotective father and refusing to let his Lo go on dates or even talk to boys on the phone when she is enrolled in Beardsley high school. The act which ultimately lands him in jail is not his kidnapping and abuse of Lolita but his murder of the man Humbert believes has acted in essentially the same way as himself.
The result is that many - perhaps most - readers are fooled. Sure, Humbert may be a rapist and murderer and a schemer - but at least he's not some middle-class boor! Besides, she was a slut anyway.
Occasionally, very occasionally, we have flashes of insight about the reality of his and Lolita's situation (he notes in passing that Lolita is crying herself to sleep every night) but these never stop him in his pursuit of his nymphet.
I am not inclined to read any symbolism into the story as a whole (Nabakov claimed to 'detest symbols and allegories') so I have to disagree with those who see Humbert as personifying Communism or dictatorship or some such thing.
Instead, Lolita shows us how bad people can get away with it for so long. If villains were dirty and ugly with Snidely Whiplash mustaches and were accompanied everywhere by screeching strings they would never get far. They can be evil because they have an unlimited capacity to justify themselves, and charm the rest of the world.
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Monday, November 12, 2012
Democracy in....Action?
Last Tuesday I dropped by my local middle school to cats my ballot. The school is right around the corner, so i figured the process wouldn't take long. Wrong! I opened the door - CHAOS. Lines of voters snake around the tables in crazy zigzag patterns, intersecting and looping around like a knot that can't be untied.
So I wait, and wait, and wait some more...2 1/2 hours in total. The bottleneck is right in front of the voting booths, where the three election volunteers have to manually look up every person's name before they can vote.
The voting itself is pretty low-tech - just a little cubicle to shield your ballot from prying eyes. The form itself is very SATs; fill in the bubble. No stray marks! I vote for who you expect me to vote for and submit it, the end.
Now the election is over, a few observations:
- it seems pretty obvious that the old GOP coalition can't carry an election anymore. Not because they've moderated; it's just that their constituencies are aging and therefor dying off.
- On the GOP truly becoming the party of 'Greedy Old People', I do find it funny that the group which was strongest for Romney (the elderly) is also by far the biggest recipient of government aid.
- In the near future (unless we enter a second Era of Good Feeling) we're going to see a rift in one of the major parties. I couldn't say what the exact cause will be, but my bet it will be immigration.
So I wait, and wait, and wait some more...2 1/2 hours in total. The bottleneck is right in front of the voting booths, where the three election volunteers have to manually look up every person's name before they can vote.
The voting itself is pretty low-tech - just a little cubicle to shield your ballot from prying eyes. The form itself is very SATs; fill in the bubble. No stray marks! I vote for who you expect me to vote for and submit it, the end.
Now the election is over, a few observations:
- it seems pretty obvious that the old GOP coalition can't carry an election anymore. Not because they've moderated; it's just that their constituencies are aging and therefor dying off.
- On the GOP truly becoming the party of 'Greedy Old People', I do find it funny that the group which was strongest for Romney (the elderly) is also by far the biggest recipient of government aid.
- In the near future (unless we enter a second Era of Good Feeling) we're going to see a rift in one of the major parties. I couldn't say what the exact cause will be, but my bet it will be immigration.
Wednesday, November 07, 2012
Sandy Days, Wintry Nights
Sunday: The subway shuts down at 7pm. People scramble to make last minute arrangements. The supermarket is packed; they've sold out of bread and the lines stretch deep into the aisles. The supermarket intercom is playing 'It's Rainin' Men', which I find funny, if not in the best of taste.
Monday: Storm day. Kind of a disappointment for me; in my neighborhood there's not much wind and rain. We never lose power or even the internet. I end up spending most of the time watching movies with friends (The 39 Steps followed by Brazil).
Tuesday: Time to survey the devastation. Downed tree branches, general debris everywhere. We head to Red Hook but find it curiously normal-looking; the flooding has receded. We head up to Lower Manhattan and find it a ghost town; no power, not even traffic lights. We're supposed to be checking up on elderly residents but find ourselves caught in a catch-22: none of them can let us into their buildings because the buzzers don't work!
Wednesday: Still no subway form Brooklyn to Manhattan. I work from home for a few hours. I make a call out to Westchester and discover that they've lost power almost completely.
Thursday: They've established two bus lines from Brooklyn into the city; one from Atlantic Station and the other from Jay Street. Jay Street is closer so I go there to find a half-mile line waiting for me. The shuttle only goes up Lexington Avenue, so I take it to Grand Central and walk across the island to get to work. Our office is just over the line, and we still have power. Four blocks south, and nothing is open.
Coming back home I take the bus from Grand Central. The line there is tremendous; I wait about an hour and a half before finally getting on. Driving through a totally dark Manhattan is a strange experience.
Friday: Same story. It's eerie waiting in a cold, dark, windy corridor, then looking up and seeing a brightly lit Chrysler Building shining back, reminding you that you're in New York and not Soviet Russia.
Saturday: Time to give back. I join a group of volunteers in Canarsie as we hand out information packets to residents of southeastern Brooklyn who suffered most heavily from the storm. Many of them still don't have power, which drives them out into the streets and makes them easier to find. Some of them don't speak English, but my Chinese is good enough to direct them to the number they should call if FEMA is dragging their feet.
Sunday: This time I'm up in Harlem working with kids, doing the arts-and-crafts stuff I was never particularly good at. Some of the kids want to play Connect Four, which I'm much better at (though I try to give them a fighting chance).
Monday: Things more or less back to normal, at least where I am. Still, there's a lot of work that needs to be done - more volunteering scheduled for Wednesday.
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