Portable Bohemia Newsletter Jan 15, 2025
Greetings from the Far Left Coast!
I picked up Shakespeare in Bloomsbury by Marjorie Garber after reading a review in the December 19 issue of The New York Review of Books (Alexander Legatt, You Only Live Twice). Garber’s book is an account of Shakespeare’s place in the intellectual and cultural world of the Bloomsbury group, Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, et al. I am only a short way into it, one of multiple projects I have haphazardly taken up like an overly enthusiastic sophomore enrolled in more classes than can be managed. Shakespeare in Bloomsbury looks like a good one.
Over time Shakespeare in Bloomsbury would come to play many roles: as a cultural inheritance and a social code; as an inspiration for work in genres as apparently different as fiction and biography, art history and economics; as a vehicle for expressing—and also masking—personal opinions; as a structure of feeling and a structure of thinking; and as an example of what G.E. Moore called a state of consciousness in a passage in his Principia Ethica…: “By far the most valuable things, which we know or can imagine, are certain states of consciousness, which may be roughly described as the pleasures of human intercourse and the enjoyment of beautiful objects.” The works of Shakespeare exemplified both these states of consciousness: human intercourse and aesthetic enjoyment. (Garber)
It may be time to add Virginia Woolf, whom I have somehow not yet read, to the reading list. Garber paints Woolf as a bardolater of the first order who read and reread Shakespeare for pleasure and held him in her thoughts near constantly. Phrases from his plays and references to him appear throughout her novels, which Garber illustrates in sometimes tedious detail. No less a bardolater than Harold Bloom averred that “any deep reader of Woolf will discover that her ambitions are Shakespearean, though she carefully approaches him from an oblique angle.” Bloom held that “her genius was double: as a visionary novelist, and as a superb common reader” (in his book Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds).
Woolf offered testimony about Shakespeare’s effect on her in private diaries:
I read Shakespeare directly I have finished writing, when my mind is agape & red & hot. Then it is astonishing. I never knew how amazing his stretch & speed & word coining power is, until I felt it utterly outpace & outrace my own, seeming to start equal & then I see him draw ahead & do things I could not in my wildest tumult & utmost press of mind imagine.… Indeed, I could say that Shre surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant. (quoted by Garber)
Another note of interest is Woolf’s preference for “Shakespeare read to Shakespeare acted” (Leggatt). The reader, as Woolf saw it, “can pause; he can ponder; he can compare.… He can read what is directly on the page, or, drawing aside, can read what is not written.”
This newsletter is not the place for a full-blown essay about Shakespeare and the Bloomsburians, a project for another time perhaps. I bring them up to provide context for two quotations from the early pages of Shakespeare in Bloomsbury worth sharing. The first is the passage from Woolf’s diary quoted above. The other is advice to students of literature by Leslie Stephen (1832–1904), English critic, man of letters, first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, and father of Virginia Woolf.
Never persuade yourselves that you like what you don’t like; not if it be Faust or Hamlet, or the Divina Commedia, or the Iliad. Sham liking is far worse than honest stupidity. But again, do not presume that your dislike to an accepted masterpiece proves it not to be a masterpiece.… Try again, and see if Shakespeare will not improve.
I am reminded of my principle that we do not have to like everything. To that might be added the corollary that we are well advised to recognize and reflect on the limits of our judgment. We may find ourselves rewarded by a second look. A Tale of Two Cities is a personal case in point. I read Dickens’ novel with relish in my thirties some fifteen or twenty years after being unable to plow through it as a high school student. I am presently embarked on a second try at Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, abandoned on the first attempt years ago, on the recommendation of an Australian friend in one of our sporadic exchanges of email.
The devastation in Los Angeles is beyond words. Nothing but sorrow. And fury at those who politicize suffering for their own ends. We know who they are.
Mainstream normalization of the convicted felon Trump proceeds apace. It is disheartening. For my part, I will observe January 20 as a day of mourning for the loss of our constitutional republic.
Amna Nawaz drew the short straw in PBS News Hour’s coverage of yesterday’s hearing on the nomination of the spectacularly unqualified Pete Hegseth to be secretary of defense. Nawaz interviewed Republican Senator Jim Banks (Indiana) who mechanically recited canned talking points that did not answer her questions (GOP Sen. Banks says). Some responses were simple evasions, others factually challenged. When Nawaz called him on it, Banks repeated the talking points that echoed Hegseth’s evasions and lies at the hearing.
Geoff Bennett’s interview with Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth treated Hegseth’s testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee with the gravity it deserves (Sen. Duckworth explains). Duckworth explained with specificity and detail why Hegseth is not qualified to serve as secretary of defense.
The immaculately coiffed Hegseth likes to describe himself as someone with “dust on his boots.” Duckworth pointed out, “Listen, I have dust on my boots as well. In fact, my boots are still in Iraq, where I left them 20 years ago and my legs were blown off in combat. So let's talk about dust on our boots.”
It's about not being competent. I asked him to name three different ways that a secretary of defense actually negotiates national security or security treaties with our allies. And he couldn't name a single one of them. I asked very basic questions that every secretary of defense should be able to answer. And he couldn't answer a single one of them, because he did not bother to do the homework.
He's so focused on being a culture warrior that he is forgetting what the job is. The job is to really lead a three-million personnel organization with a budget of almost $50 billion. The man has never even led an audit. The last time that he led an organization, he led it—he so badly managed its fiscal lead that they had to bring in forensic accountants.
Both interviews are worth watching in full.
Laken Riley Act.
The new Congress is acting fast to pass what's called the Laken Riley Act. Forty-eight Democrats joined every Republican in the House to pass a bill that would mandate federal detention if a person in the United States illegally is even accused of certain crimes. The bill is named after a nursing student in Georgia who was killed last year by a Venezuelan man who'd crossed into the U.S. illegally. (Simon, Legal expert)
Constitutional scholar Mike Johnson excoriated the 159 House Democrats who voted against this bill: “It is hard to believe after countless horrific stories like Laken’s, ANY House Democrats would vote against deporting illegal aliens who commit violent crimes against American citizens.” The reference to “countless horrific stories” is crude demagoguery. There are other stories and incidents, they are horrific, but it is a considerable reach to claim they are countless. Too many are just stories like the one of Haitian immigrants eating pets. These groundless claims contribute nothing to public safety.
Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat from El Paso, offers sound reasons for opposition to the Laken Riley Act (Weigel, ‘Numb to injustice’). So does libertarian law professor and Cato Institute scholar Ilya Somin, who discussed why he considers the act unjust with NPR’s Scott Simon. As Somin explained,
Normally, state and local prosecutors and police try not to arrest and prosecute people unless there is a high chance of securing a conviction. But in this situation, if police or prosecutors arrest or accuse an undocumented immigrant of theft, even if the accusation has little or no basis, that leads to mandatory detention by the federal government. So officials who are nativists or cater to nativist or anti-immigrant public opinion in their area can essentially use this to detain people who probably have not committed any crime and there's no real evidence against them, and the detention would be paid for by the federal government. So it's like a free lunch for nativists, local government law enforcement officials.
…the fact that somebody has broken the law does not necessarily mean that there should be mandatory detention, even without any kind of conviction or a trial. Doing that is a violation of due process, a huge wastage of law enforcement resources and not something we normally do any time somebody is accused of committing a minor crime. In this case, we're talking about even the most minor sorts of theft, like stealing a piece of candy, you know, from a store or just being accused of stealing it. (Simon, Legal expert)
Escobar lays it out for Semafor reporter David Weigel:
Imagine that Ken Paxton says, “I’m gonna sue, because I want to see even more expansive mandatory detention. Dallas County, Bexar County, Harris County, El Paso County, I want all of your local jails to be made available to help support ICE facilities.” We have already seen this happen in El Paso. The county jail would have to release prisoners who’ve engaged in aggravated assault, domestic violence, things that make us unsafe. They’d have to release people like that to make room for migrants.
Fear of accusation that they are soft on illegal immigration figured into the calculation of forty-eight Democrats who voted with Republicans to pass the act. This kind of timidity in the halls of Congress, the editorial offices of major newspapers and magazines, and among the intelligentsia contributes to normalization of Trump and MAGA. It will not end well.
Scott Simon, Legal expert says the bipartisan Laken Riley Act is unjust, wasteful and a Trojan horse, NPR, January 11, 2025
David Weigel, ‘Numb to injustice’: House Democrat explains why the Laken Riley Act sailed through, Semafor, January 11, 2025
What happens in Vegas may not stay in Vegas.
The Vegas Loop: Elon Musk’s Boring Company is constructing a planned 68-mile tunnel system beneath Las Vegas where drivers will ferry passengers around the urban core in Teslas.
Less Regulation: Despite its size, the project, because it’s privately funded, has not gone through the vetting typical of public transit systems, including lengthy governmental studies.
Musk’s Worldview: Musk says regulation often stymies innovation, a view that now has added significance given his new role advising President-elect Donald Trump on government efficiency. (Rothberg, Figler, Elon Musk’s Boring Company)
Musk loathes environmental regulations, declaring them “largely terrible.” He argues that it would be more effective to require companies to pay a penalty if they do something wrong rather than get permission in advance on the basis of governmental studies to assess impact on traffic and the environment. The technical term for the Musk approach is closing the barn door after the horse got out.
The Las Vegas project came after Boring “struggled to start digging” on similar projects in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Maryland that ran afoul of environmental regulations and public opposition. ProPublica reports that
Boring has skirted building, environmental and labor regulations, according to records obtained…from Clark County, the Clark County Water Reclamation District and Nevada Division of Environmental Protection…[that] show the company has been less than meticulous in handling the waste.
The paltry penalties levied for doing something wrong hardly figure to pose a deterrent for a company owned by Musk:
A truck driver was fined $75 when “a truck hauling waste from the project spilled gravel, rock and sand onto Interstate 15, slowing traffic for more than four hours during rush hour.”
A Boring contractor was fined $1,549 when without the county’s knowledge it “relied on a permit held by a county contractor to store muck near apartment buildings and the Commercial Center shopping plaza, along one of the busiest thoroughfares in central Las Vegas.”
In 2019, the company discharged groundwater into storm drains without a permit, resulting in a state settlement and a $90,000 fine. In 2021, state officials sent a cease-and-desist letter to prevent Boring from taking actions that could “cause unpermitted discharge of groundwater.”
And so on. Musk can be expected to use the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to promote his preferred policy of penalty, not permission, on behalf of oligarchs who chafe at any requirement that takes into account the general welfare and common good. A more fitting name for DOGE, retaining the acronym, would be Department of Government Elimination
Daniel Rothberg, Dayvid Figler, Elon Musk’s Boring Company Is Tunneling Beneath Las Vegas With Little Oversight, Pro Publica, January 8, 2025
Speaking of Elon Musk: Steve Bannon condemns Elon Musk as ‘racist’ and ‘truly evil’ (Chris Michael, The Guardian, January 12, 2025). Bugged by Musk’s advocacy for H-1B visas, Bannon has pledged “to take this guy down.”
Bannon further widened his aim to attack Musk’s fellow tech giants Peter Thiel and David Sacks for having South African heritage.
“He [Musk] should go back to South Africa,” Bannon said. “Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?”
There could be entertainment value in all this if the stakes were less weighty.
Do something department.
Human Rights Watch: ways to take action. The actions of Human Rights Watch supporters have helped hold human rights violators to account, change unfair laws, and save lives.
Jessica Craven, Chop Wood, Carry Water: newsletter “dedicated to saving democracy, addressing the climate crisis, preserving our freedoms, electing better lawmakers, and, in general, creating a better country—one simple action at a time.”
Memo from the literary desk, one thing leads to another department. While browsing the mystery section at the Central Library downtown a while back my eye hit on Havana Black, the concluding novel in Cuban writer Leonardo Padura’s Havana Quartet series, though not the last featuring Mario Conde, a “downtrodden, nostalgic, chain-smoking detective.” Born in 1955 Padura has garnered international recognition and numerous awards. Only a few of his novels have been published in Cuba, where he still lives, and those are rarely mentioned in the media, likely because “the island he depicts in his books…is a mix of economic deprivation, Afro-descendant syncretism, corruption, mischief, uplifting music and growing inequality—all seasoned by a revolution that marked the 20th century” (Rodríguez, Writer Leonardo Padura).
A subplot of Havana Black involves works of art by masters such as Matisse and Cezanne left behind and expropriated from wealthy Cubans who fled after the revolution or seized from those who were slow to flee. Chinese-mulatto Cuban Surrealist painter Wifredo Lam is mentioned in passing. My interest was piqued, being reasonably well-versed in the Surrealist movement and never having heard of Lam. An online search took me to a biosketch on the Museum of Modern Art’s website that calls him “a pivotal figure of Latin America modern art.”
I found two books about Lam at the library: Wifredo Lam and the International Avant-Garde, 1923–1982 by Lowery Stokes Sims and of all things a mystery novel titled An Exquisite Corpse by Helen A. Harrison. Lam turns out to an intriguing figure. Born in Cuba in 1902, his mother of mixed Spanish and black ancestry, his father a Chinese contract laborer who came to Cuba to work in the sugarcane fields, Lam split for Madrid in 1923 to study painting. There he made his mark as a painter, became involved in Republican politics, and fought in the Spanish Civil War. Near the end of the war he fled to Paris carrying a letter of introduction to Picasso given him by a Spanish painter of his acquaintance. Through Picasso Lam gained entrée into the Paris art scene and introduction to André Breton and other Surrealists.
Paris grew less welcoming when the Germans advanced on it in 1940. Surrealists were considered by the Nazis to be decadent artists no better than Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals. In 1941 Lam and his wife escaped France on a boat out of Marseilles bound for Martinique with Breton and his family, anthropologist Claude Lévi-Srauss, and others fleeing Nazi persecution. From there he eventually made his way to Cuba while Breton found refuge in New York.
This brings us to An Exquisite Corpse, where Lam is a murder victim in New York in 1943 (in real life he lived until 1982 and was in Cuba at the time events in the novel take place, as Harrison explains in an afterword). His body is discovered in his studio by his friend Breton in a distressing condition.
Lam lay on his back. Over his handsome face, a grotesque African mask stared up from the floor. One outstretched arm was stuffed into the folds of an umbrella, and the other sported a galosh. A large rubber chicken claw covered his left foot. His right trouser leg was rolled up to the knee, leaving his lower leg and foot bare.
Breton knew exactly what he was looking at.
An exquisite corpse.
The cops are baffled. Upon learning that Lam was Cuban, they suspect Cuban voodoo, Santéria. The Surrealists know better. The exquisite corpse points directly to them.
An Exquisite Corpse is lightweight, an amusing diversion. The name dropping is more entertaining than annoying. Depictions of historical characters are fairly accurate, in line with eccentricities and flaws of the Surrealists that are part of the historical record, including less than admirable attitudes and conduct exhibited by male Surrealists in their relationships with women.
The book also introduced me to Mercedes Matter, a minor character in the mystery, in the real world another in a roster of remarkable women Surrealists that includes Leonora Carrington, Dora Maar, Eileen Agar, Dorothea Tanning, and Meret Oppenheim. They were every bit as talented and outrageous as more celebrated male counterparts though they often get only passing mention in accounts of Surrealist adventures, escapades, and achievements.
I love this kind of thing.
Helen A. Harrison, An Exquisite Corpse, Poisoned Pen Press, 2020
Andrea Rodríguez, Writer Leonardo Padura chronicles life in Cuba as his detective ‘alter ego’ solves gripping crimes, AP, April 22, 2024
Keep the faith. Stand with Ukraine. yr obdt svt