Speaking of TV shows, I was wondering if you had the pleasure (depending on your taste) of seeing the Netflix show, "Dark?" You'd probably get more out of it since it is in German and I don't understand a lick of it. For me, that's easily the greatest television show in the last decade but I am also enamored of science fiction. If you haven't, I warmly recommend it. I find it fortuitous or perhaps even providential that I was watching it while reading Maximus for the first time in Jordan Daniel Wood's class he gave online a year ago. As they say in the show, Der anfang ist die ende und der ende ist der anfang. Sic mundus creatus est.
"Dark" is one of only a few TV shows I have been willing to watch through multiple times. I don't typically care for time travel sci-fi, but "Dark" is so much more than a clever conceit.
I haven't rewatched it yet. Only been a year since I saw so I might be due for a rewatch. I wouldn't hesitate to call it a work of genius. For me, the best part about it was that it really had atmosphere. The music and the structure of the episodes pulled me in and really made me feel what was going on and not just like a spectator following a logical storyline. I added many songs to my playlist from the show, the score is spectacular. My only problem with Dark was the ending. Not bad, just could've been slightly better. The only show I've rewatched was Babylon 5. G'Kar and Londo have to be some of the most tragic characters in sci-fi television. It really went south to the end of the show and the author of it was close to greatness but just barely missed it. It's my second all time favorite sci-fi show after Dark.
Can confirm Dark is incredible, it also helps to have a genealogy tree of the characters after the first season, which can be found online. It's an incredibly densely plotted show.
Your musings on Better Call Saul came as a pleasant surprise–it is indeed a masterpiece. I'm both looking forward to and dreading the remaining episodes.
Speaking of pleasant surprises, I recently happened to watch Pig, the 2021 film with a notably irresistable premise (Nicholas Cage as a shaggy forest hermit going in search for his kidnapped truffle pig). I'm not a cinelogue by any means, but I was stunned by how good it actually turned out to be.
(At this point I suppose I should make a joke about Noah's son Ham saying something like that, but it's only just occurred to me and I can't think of a way not to make it sound forced.)
Thank you for your commentary on Rod Dreher's obsequious support for the racist Orban. I find this fascist strain that has infected American Christendom deeply disturbing -- and that might be an understatement.
Jimmy really is a fascinating character study. Funny, genuinely charming, creative, intelligent and frequently a sympathetic subject. Even when he uh...bends the rules....you almost can't help but hope he succeeds.
Chuck had him figured out though didn't he? Slippin' Jimmy was never more than a minor setback away from reappearing in all his self-destructive glory. And it was his observation that such self-destruction ruins not just him, but everyone tied to him that really stuck with me, as obvious as it may seem.
I've had far too many run-ins with Slippin' Jimmy-like people. They have an almost preternatural ability to spot the sucker at the table. What a horrible feeling it is when you realize you're the sucker. And what a disorienting experience it can be. Every interaction with them up until the moment of realization is re-interpreted under a dark cloud of bitterness and suspicion. Let it happen enough times and charity begins to sound like a cruel joke.
I'm not sure Chuck really had Jimmy figured out as much as his judgements of Jimmy tended to become self-fulfilling prophesies due to the brothers' complicated dynamic. Chuck's view of Jimmy, though perhaps largely accurate, is colored by resentment and in certain respects even by envy; he is constantly impressing upon his brother the notion that "Slippin' Jimmy" is the only self he could ever honestly claim to be, and this, obviously, is what we see Jimmy gradually taking to heart.
I know what you are trying to say. Every time Jimmy was kept out of the club and made to feel inadequate it propelled him further to the dark side. Maybe if Chuck had relented and approved Jimmy's employment with HHM, things would've turned out differently.
But ask yourself, how many opportunities did Jimmy need? He had a law degree and every chance to use it for good. He was given a cushy job with an established law firm and a clear path to becoming a partner. He had literally millions of dollars of sandpiper money coming his way and he still felt compelled to con an old lady just so he could get the money sooner. He survives disbarment only to immediately engage in nefarious activities. And on and on and on.
Yes, Chuck was condescending and showed no faith in Jimmy. But again I say, he was right wasn't he? Jimmy has agency, and his brother's lack of faith is a pathetic excuse for his behavior.
One of the more brilliant set-ups of the show is how we see Chuck suffering through his mental illness with Jimmy reluctantly playing along before eventually having to break the cold hard truth to him. And then the roles reverse, with Jimmy suffering through his own mental illness, that complete inability to suppress his penchant for dishonesty, and Chuck having to politely encourage his efforts before revealing the cold hard truth that Slippin Jimmy is still lurking in the shadows.
Just as Chuck's progress is undone by a triggering event, so too does Jimmy relapse after every encounter with adversity. It's a horribly depressing depiction of the relentlessness of sin and evil, but gosh darn is it accurate.
Bracketing all the dramatic and cultural praise Breaking Bad has received, it's easily one of the most compulsively watchable shows I've ever seen. So well done on every level.
Better Call Saul is not quite as compulsively watchable, but like much (all?) distinctly great art requires some real engagement, genuine focus, patience, and subjective production of intellectual insight and spiritual connection to really see it and appreciate it. I think that aspect of it is more blatantly part of BCS's portrayal than BB's.
Definitely. But this list is a little inaccurate in places. He hated Eliot with a perfect hatred. He praised Updike, but always only his prose. And the list omits a good number of writers that he commented on. Fitzgerald, for instance. And, of course, Chateaubriand. (And several others.)
Indeed, both Nabokov and Welles were quite skillful in insulting their peers (though none of them came close to the level of DBH’s masterful takedowns of Feser, which should really be collected in a separate book). Perhaps my favorite moment is Nabokov’s disparaging of previous English translators of Eugene Onegin, after which he produced his famous literal translation, disregarding both the metric patterns and the rhymes of the original. I still cannot decide if this was an act of genius or an epic trolling of the literary establishment, but I suspect that Pushkin himself would have issued another duel challenge for this.
The Onegin translation is a hopeless topic. It was wonderfully useful as a gloss, but what hell it would be if one could read verse narrative from other languages only in that form. I admire versifiers who produce good verse analogues of the originals, even if the poetry cannot be as inspired as in those originals; and there have been some very pleasant Onegins in English verse.
Exactly. It could be argued that Pushkin is among the poets most unsuited for rhymeless translation as the form of his poetry is so exquisite that it even surpasses the content. I believe that some of his lyric poetry, recited in original, may elicit an emotional response even among people without any knowledge of Russian. In the same way as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux’s sermons in French are said to have brought out tears out of his German listeners, while the translation of his words didn’t have nearly the same effect.
As for which writer loomed large for me early on, that would be Auden. Novelists included Tolstoy and, if you can believe it, Frank Herbert. Luckily, none of them particularly influenced my views of other writers.
New to the substack. Love the content. Might comment under some of what is helping me the most spiritually but for now just want to say thanks.
I also avoided watching Better Call Saul until a few months ago just because I didn't think they could possibly makes Saul's character interesting. In Breaking Bad he's basically just an empty shell of a human. But I gave in because the show started popping up everywhere and it's amazing.
Jimmy at the beginning was actually a lovable character, and unlike Breaking Bad where I think Walt was already pure evil from the very beginning and just got more opportunities to be destructive as the show went on, Better Call Saul actually shows the depressing moral decay of the main character.
Actually, I think WW starts out as a flawed man who's driven by desperation--but then also by pride and resentment--to do things he hadn't imagined he ever would. At first, however, there are still constraints of conscience. But every time he has to choose, he chooses against his conscience, until at the last he has none. That's what made the program so powerful.
Wow, thank you for all this. I loved Breaking Bad but never tried watching Better Call Saul. I thought it was some schlock spin-off. But now I'll start watching it right away.
Two questions: 1) Have you ever heard of/read a novel called Tintin in the New World by Frederic Tuten? 2) What do you mean that your career is winding down, or whatever you said there?
I don't know what being in one's fifties has to do with anything. In Tintin in the New World, he ends up traveling to South America and meeting several characters from The Magic Mountain. I read it a long time ago and remember it as diverting but pretty weird. I am pretty sure (spoiler alert) Settembrini and Naphtha fall in love.
Riight, I know the book's premise. I remember flipping through a passage with Cavdia Chauchat in it. But still haven't read it. He's very prolific.
In one's fifties, one is nearer the end of one's career than one was in one's twenties. That's all I meant. Honestly, no immediate intention of retreating to a hermitage in Bhutan.
Not directly relevant to this post (well, you did mention music once so I guess it's somewhat relevant), but have you ever listened to any Sufi qawwalis? I think you might love them.
Thank you for enlightening me re: Ty Cobb. I love baseball, I love the history of baseball, and I have always thought Cobb to be a monster., albeit a magnificent one. I've shared your paragraphs on Cobb with my baseball -loving sons for their enrichment.
BTW, as a Washington baseball fan, I love that Cobb believed Walter Johnson to be the best pitcher he ever faced. BTW (2), I can't wait for major league baseball to return to Washington some day. BTW (3) Yes, congratulations on the O's ascendance. Enjoy!
Walter Johnson was the best pitcher just about anyone of that period faced. A one-pitch pitcher, too.
I'd like to see truly major league baseball resume in DC in a form reminiscent of the Senators of the late 60's and early 70's. But, putting pettiness aside, I wish Washington's baseball fans well. (Not their team, mind you, but them.)
Speaking of native Americans and redressing past injustices, I was thrilled to read that Jim Thorpe was reinstated as the sole winner and gold medalist for his victories in the 1912 Olympics. Good things do occasionally happen 🙂
David since you are a great baseball aficionado and seem to know the mechanics of the game well. I wanted to ask you. Based on how the games went, Do you believe The White Sox threw the 1919 World Series?
Oh, what a tormenting question. I think some of them tried. I don't know what to make of Shoeless Joe--if he was trying to throw it, his natural talent defeated him.
You know, my great uncle (or something like that) Nixey Callahan pitched the first ever no-hitter in the American League (for the White Sox). But though my dad is a Cubs fan & I’ve seen two games at Wrigley & one at Coors Field, which I found a pleasant enough way to while away an afternoon, I have never been interested in baseball. College basketball is my temple. Well, the creaturely hypostases are metaphysically individuated.
I love baseball, but it has two main flaws as I see it. One intrinsic to the game, and one that perhaps owes more to it's evolution than the game itself:
1. There is a disproportionate importance placed on what amounts to a series of 1 vs 1 battles. Yes there are baserunners and fielders and catchers and so on, but it is essentially one pitcher vs one batter, with everyone else providing just (barely) enough of a backdrop to keep the game from becoming a glorified tennis match.
Basketball and football and American football are more "brutal" sports for all the reasons you've made clear in the past, but the process by which teammates must work together to become greater than the sum of their parts is a beautiful spectacle that baseball simply can't replicate. The greatness of a player like Ty Cobb is reduced to mere individual achievement (with team success ultimately outside of his control), whereas a Magic Johnson or a Xavi Hernandez or a Tom Brady is judged according to his ability to elevate the play of his teammates.
2. Somewhat related to the first point, there is no longer any "mystery" as to the value of any given player. Given that the game is ultimately a series of discreet 1 v 1 events, assigning value to each event is a relatively straightforward process. How well did Christian Yelich play last year? Just look up his WAR and you'll know (almost) everything you need to know. There is no impact on teammates to consider, no questions of fit or chemistry, little use for discussions of leadership or anything approaching the intangible. And so the game becomes a monotonous race to add as many high WAR players as possible before they become too expensive and are shipped out for prospects whose future WARs are still blessedly indeterminate (are there any other types of trades even made these days?).
Your first observation, Bob, is simply totally false. It suggests only a very, very superficial view of the game. No pitcher pitches by himself, but is part of a constantly shifting defensive alignment, and is part of a pitching battery and a larger strategy. No batter bats in a void. He is part of a collective effort of getting on base, advancing runners, scoring runs--even when that means giving himself up and giving up his own at-bat by way of a "sacrifice." There are no intrinsic flaws in the game, and it is the only game that so perfectly balances individual heroism and intricate team cooperation.
By extension, your second observation starts from a false premise. And, while WAR fascinates many analysts and even some organizational sorts (like Billy Bean), on the field it is of no importance whatsoever. You are right that it is something that has a deleterious effect in some front offices, but that was more true 15 years ago than now. If a manager is any good, moreover, he knows how to use players who--on the fictional statistical evaluations that determine WAR--don't look very impressive. So, yes, there are some GM's guilty of the way of thinking you mention, it is far rarer than you imagine.
Team cooperation doesn't necessarily entail the synergy of which I was speaking, and its intricacies in baseball are largely static. The shifts are all pre-planned by management, based on scouting reports compiled well beforehand. Pitchers are focused on producing swings and misses, or soft contact regardless of how the defense is aligned. Likewise, even if batters are part of a larger offensive strategy, the ability to execute a sacrifice or a bunt or any deliberate hitting action is nevertheless an *individual* skill which no other teammate can influence except in a marginal or indirect manner (I concede that skilled baserunners can create quite a bit of chaos). And that is before even mentioning that the sacrifice is virtually extinct because the math simply doesn't work outside of extremely high leverage situations (as any baseball purist ought to lament).
All of which is to say, there is scarcely any *dynamic* and fluid interaction amongst teammates that one is certain to see in basketball and football and American football. What is the baseball equivalent to an offensive line reacting in concert to a heavily disguised blitz post-snap? Or a receiver changing his route based on the coverage knowing his quarterback is on the same page. Or ten outfield footballers pressing the opposition in unison. Or five players either switching or help-and-recovering multiple times in a single possession to thwart a simple pick-and-roll action. And so on. These are examples of real teamwork, real synergy, real chemistry--intense and frequent interactions in a dynamic environment where individual skill can be complemented (and thus elevated) or rendered completely ineffectual, and where a mutual understanding between teammates developed over years of joint training (and deployed in the right system) can overcome an absence of exceptional individual skill.
Baseball in comparison has an almost trivial amount of teamwork. Pitchers train by throwing to catchers. Batters are by themselves in batting cages. Fielders can train alone taking grounders or fly balls. All of those skills are developed individually and their positive effects are almost perfectly additive. When team building there are no "systems" to consider, no hierarchy of egos to navigate, no questions of fit or chemistry. Ty Cobb would have been Ty Cobb whether he played for the Tigers or the Yankess or the Reds because his skills perfectly translated to any context because the game as it is designed can neither inhibit nor enhance such individual brilliance to any meaningful degree.
So no, I'm afraid my point still stands and my observation was correct.
As for WAR, I've been out of the sabermetric loop for a good while now, but I'm certain each team has their own proprietary "catch-all" stat which values players with even greater precision. You are of course correct that good managers know how to use all of their players correctly, but it doesn't refute my point: that almost every "event" in baseball can be quantified to an alarmingly precise degree. To use a crude example, maybe a player has a low WAR value in the aggregate because he can't hit a lick, but he's an adequate fielder and an expert baserunner. A smart manager will use him accordingly - late game substitutions and pinch-running and so on. But even his fielding and base running can be quantified, so again there is no mystery here. All that is left is projection: what can this player be if we make this or that mechanical adjustment to his swing or his throwing motion? Or what can he be with a proper strength and conditioning program? What he actually does though, and how much it impacts the team's chances of winning is (tragically) transparent.
I hate to tell you this, but all major sports use incredibly complex statistical models in strategy, and games like football and basketball suffer far more from interchangeable functions at the margins than baseball does. An NFL team can overhaul its offensive or defensive line at scrimmage every year with little change in results. All of them use players for specialized functions. Football is the game of largely anonymous linemen brought in for one specific play. In baseball you can’t do that as freely because no player can return to the game after substitution.
Your characterization of teamwork in baseball is simply not true, and I suspect you’re indulging in a willful simplification. And, while baseball does indeed (to its credit) emphasize certain individual talents more than perhaps any other sport, it is simply not true that Ty Cobb would have been the same on every team. He required team mates who knew how to bunt, to sacrifice, to take pitches in the right counts; he needed to be on a team that favored the speed game in late innings and knew how to hit and run, how to thwart the wheel play, and countless other things. Whitey Herzog’s Cardinals and Joe Torre’s Yankees and Earl Weaver’s Orioles played the game in such vastly different ways and with such distinctive team dynamics that there could never have been a shifting of players from one system to another while still producing the same results.
So, no, I still find baseball infinitely variable in team play. Even if I didn’t, I would still not grant that the vastly more limited “oblong game” is comparable in strategic variety, complicated interaction of elements and players, or beauty.
There are no intrinsic flaws in baseball. But there are horrible flaws in the current strategic prejudices.
Yes, sadly I'm aware of the ongoing statistical revolutions in other major sports (the steady proliferation of the 3-point shot threatens to ruin basketball) and individual player metrics are increasing in their sophistication. But again, baseball by its very nature lends itself to far more straightforward calculation. We can *almost* completely isolate the contributions of any individual by controlling for certain variables (park effects, batting average on balls in play, fielding errors, etc.) in a way that we can't for other team sports.
Tom Brady is probably the best quarterback to ever play....but how much of his success should we attribute to Bill Belichik's masterful coaching, or the strength of his offensive line, or the dominant defenses they had (more so early in his career)? We can argue and make our guesses, but we will never truly know for sure because there are too many variables to untangle with any sort of quantitative precision. There is no comparable obstacle in baseball, because Ty Cobb's performance at the plate will have almost absolutely nothing to do with how strong his team's pitching was, or how effective its fielding, or even (for the most part) how successful his teammates were at batting around him. Everything else you mentioned, the sacrifices and the bunts and the hit-and-runs and managerial tactics occurs at the margins and proves to be no more than a weak qualifier.
As for specialization (and by that I mean skills developed largely in isolation from teammates) it is simply far more prevalent and, more importantly, far more *impactful* in baseball than basketball/football/American football. Kickers/punters and goalkeepers excepted, I don't even see how that is arguable.
In any case, I don't wish to belabor the point. I've always had a romantic view of baseball, and I remember reading your essay when it was originally published at First Things. It is indeed a beautiful game, probably the most beautiful.
Just not quite perfect. (It did however inspire the perfect film--Field of Dreams, of course).
Again, I would simply say that baseball balances heroic individual performance and team play as no other sport does. Your point about Tom Brady is entirely correct. There’s the problem.
Baseball is the most unpredictable of the major sports in results. Football betting is based on point spread because it is rare that the winning team cannot be calculated within a 92% degree of accuracy. In baseball, for any game, 43% is the high tidal mark of algorithmic projections.
But the importance of individual excellence, and the clarity with which it is demonstrated by each batter, pitcher, and fielder at his position is one of the glories of baseball, and why it is infinitely superior to games of massed force moving in waves across an oblong.
And I think the balance tilts too far toward the individual, but I suppose there is no accounting for taste.
I'll leave you with one last thought: All of those words about Ty Cobb, and you didn't even mention he never won a World Series! For almost all of the baseball greats--Ruth, Mays, Gehrig, Williams--we remember the individual stats first - the career batting average, the home runs, the steals, consecutive games played etc. The World Series rings are almost an afterthought.
Compare that to Bill Russell, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw - the very first thing that comes to mind is how many titles they won. And there is never any discussion about Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, Patrick Ewing, or Dan Marino that doesn't begin and end with the fact that they never won the big one.
Speaking of TV shows, I was wondering if you had the pleasure (depending on your taste) of seeing the Netflix show, "Dark?" You'd probably get more out of it since it is in German and I don't understand a lick of it. For me, that's easily the greatest television show in the last decade but I am also enamored of science fiction. If you haven't, I warmly recommend it. I find it fortuitous or perhaps even providential that I was watching it while reading Maximus for the first time in Jordan Daniel Wood's class he gave online a year ago. As they say in the show, Der anfang ist die ende und der ende ist der anfang. Sic mundus creatus est.
Gosh. Maybe John Behr would like it too.
"Dark" is one of only a few TV shows I have been willing to watch through multiple times. I don't typically care for time travel sci-fi, but "Dark" is so much more than a clever conceit.
You have piqued my curiosity.
I haven't rewatched it yet. Only been a year since I saw so I might be due for a rewatch. I wouldn't hesitate to call it a work of genius. For me, the best part about it was that it really had atmosphere. The music and the structure of the episodes pulled me in and really made me feel what was going on and not just like a spectator following a logical storyline. I added many songs to my playlist from the show, the score is spectacular. My only problem with Dark was the ending. Not bad, just could've been slightly better. The only show I've rewatched was Babylon 5. G'Kar and Londo have to be some of the most tragic characters in sci-fi television. It really went south to the end of the show and the author of it was close to greatness but just barely missed it. It's my second all time favorite sci-fi show after Dark.
Can confirm Dark is incredible, it also helps to have a genealogy tree of the characters after the first season, which can be found online. It's an incredibly densely plotted show.
https://libredd.it/img/8dpj7j7k76u41.gif
Your musings on Better Call Saul came as a pleasant surprise–it is indeed a masterpiece. I'm both looking forward to and dreading the remaining episodes.
It's heading into some very dark terrain.
Speaking of pleasant surprises, I recently happened to watch Pig, the 2021 film with a notably irresistable premise (Nicholas Cage as a shaggy forest hermit going in search for his kidnapped truffle pig). I'm not a cinelogue by any means, but I was stunned by how good it actually turned out to be.
If it has a pig in it, I'm on board.
(At this point I suppose I should make a joke about Noah's son Ham saying something like that, but it's only just occurred to me and I can't think of a way not to make it sound forced.)
μὴ γένοιτο.
Thank you for your commentary on Rod Dreher's obsequious support for the racist Orban. I find this fascist strain that has infected American Christendom deeply disturbing -- and that might be an understatement.
Well it certainly sifts the Christians from the “Christian Nationalists.”
Jimmy really is a fascinating character study. Funny, genuinely charming, creative, intelligent and frequently a sympathetic subject. Even when he uh...bends the rules....you almost can't help but hope he succeeds.
Chuck had him figured out though didn't he? Slippin' Jimmy was never more than a minor setback away from reappearing in all his self-destructive glory. And it was his observation that such self-destruction ruins not just him, but everyone tied to him that really stuck with me, as obvious as it may seem.
I've had far too many run-ins with Slippin' Jimmy-like people. They have an almost preternatural ability to spot the sucker at the table. What a horrible feeling it is when you realize you're the sucker. And what a disorienting experience it can be. Every interaction with them up until the moment of realization is re-interpreted under a dark cloud of bitterness and suspicion. Let it happen enough times and charity begins to sound like a cruel joke.
I'm not sure Chuck really had Jimmy figured out as much as his judgements of Jimmy tended to become self-fulfilling prophesies due to the brothers' complicated dynamic. Chuck's view of Jimmy, though perhaps largely accurate, is colored by resentment and in certain respects even by envy; he is constantly impressing upon his brother the notion that "Slippin' Jimmy" is the only self he could ever honestly claim to be, and this, obviously, is what we see Jimmy gradually taking to heart.
I think that's right; and that's why Jimmy keeps sabotaging himself with the law firms willing to give him an office.
I know what you are trying to say. Every time Jimmy was kept out of the club and made to feel inadequate it propelled him further to the dark side. Maybe if Chuck had relented and approved Jimmy's employment with HHM, things would've turned out differently.
But ask yourself, how many opportunities did Jimmy need? He had a law degree and every chance to use it for good. He was given a cushy job with an established law firm and a clear path to becoming a partner. He had literally millions of dollars of sandpiper money coming his way and he still felt compelled to con an old lady just so he could get the money sooner. He survives disbarment only to immediately engage in nefarious activities. And on and on and on.
Yes, Chuck was condescending and showed no faith in Jimmy. But again I say, he was right wasn't he? Jimmy has agency, and his brother's lack of faith is a pathetic excuse for his behavior.
One of the more brilliant set-ups of the show is how we see Chuck suffering through his mental illness with Jimmy reluctantly playing along before eventually having to break the cold hard truth to him. And then the roles reverse, with Jimmy suffering through his own mental illness, that complete inability to suppress his penchant for dishonesty, and Chuck having to politely encourage his efforts before revealing the cold hard truth that Slippin Jimmy is still lurking in the shadows.
Just as Chuck's progress is undone by a triggering event, so too does Jimmy relapse after every encounter with adversity. It's a horribly depressing depiction of the relentlessness of sin and evil, but gosh darn is it accurate.
Bracketing all the dramatic and cultural praise Breaking Bad has received, it's easily one of the most compulsively watchable shows I've ever seen. So well done on every level.
Better Call Saul is not quite as compulsively watchable, but like much (all?) distinctly great art requires some real engagement, genuine focus, patience, and subjective production of intellectual insight and spiritual connection to really see it and appreciate it. I think that aspect of it is more blatantly part of BCS's portrayal than BB's.
It's a less condensed and nightmarish narrative--at least, at first--but I find it every bit as compelling.
Nabokov is a bit like Orson Welles in that reading his dismissals of other books/films and writers/actors is just so fun.
http://wmjas.wikidot.com/nabokov-s-recommendations
Definitely. But this list is a little inaccurate in places. He hated Eliot with a perfect hatred. He praised Updike, but always only his prose. And the list omits a good number of writers that he commented on. Fitzgerald, for instance. And, of course, Chateaubriand. (And several others.)
Indeed, both Nabokov and Welles were quite skillful in insulting their peers (though none of them came close to the level of DBH’s masterful takedowns of Feser, which should really be collected in a separate book). Perhaps my favorite moment is Nabokov’s disparaging of previous English translators of Eugene Onegin, after which he produced his famous literal translation, disregarding both the metric patterns and the rhymes of the original. I still cannot decide if this was an act of genius or an epic trolling of the literary establishment, but I suspect that Pushkin himself would have issued another duel challenge for this.
The Onegin translation is a hopeless topic. It was wonderfully useful as a gloss, but what hell it would be if one could read verse narrative from other languages only in that form. I admire versifiers who produce good verse analogues of the originals, even if the poetry cannot be as inspired as in those originals; and there have been some very pleasant Onegins in English verse.
Exactly. It could be argued that Pushkin is among the poets most unsuited for rhymeless translation as the form of his poetry is so exquisite that it even surpasses the content. I believe that some of his lyric poetry, recited in original, may elicit an emotional response even among people without any knowledge of Russian. In the same way as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux’s sermons in French are said to have brought out tears out of his German listeners, while the translation of his words didn’t have nearly the same effect.
Loved what I've read of Nabokov but hard to appreciate or accept his dismissal of Pasternak .
He dismissed him as a novelist, most definitely not as a poet. I have to admit, I agree with him on Dr. Zhivago.
Alas, I will not try to change your mind. Hopefully, you'll move toward the novel eventually, similarly to how you moved toward Man.
Perhaps a better translation would help? (i.e., neither Haywood/Harari nor Pevear/Volkhonsky) : https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/giving-doctor-zhivago-another-chance/
As for which writer loomed large for me early on, that would be Auden. Novelists included Tolstoy and, if you can believe it, Frank Herbert. Luckily, none of them particularly influenced my views of other writers.
New to the substack. Love the content. Might comment under some of what is helping me the most spiritually but for now just want to say thanks.
Harbor no hopes on that score. But I approve of your fidelity.
(Translation? Sir, you are laboring under a misapprehension.)
Hahahaha. No hopes harbored.
I also avoided watching Better Call Saul until a few months ago just because I didn't think they could possibly makes Saul's character interesting. In Breaking Bad he's basically just an empty shell of a human. But I gave in because the show started popping up everywhere and it's amazing.
Jimmy at the beginning was actually a lovable character, and unlike Breaking Bad where I think Walt was already pure evil from the very beginning and just got more opportunities to be destructive as the show went on, Better Call Saul actually shows the depressing moral decay of the main character.
Actually, I think WW starts out as a flawed man who's driven by desperation--but then also by pride and resentment--to do things he hadn't imagined he ever would. At first, however, there are still constraints of conscience. But every time he has to choose, he chooses against his conscience, until at the last he has none. That's what made the program so powerful.
Do you consider "The Magic Mountain" to be Mann's finest work, David? seen some argue that "Joseph and his Brothers" is his magnum opus?
I find the latter a bit absurd.
Wow, thank you for all this. I loved Breaking Bad but never tried watching Better Call Saul. I thought it was some schlock spin-off. But now I'll start watching it right away.
Two questions: 1) Have you ever heard of/read a novel called Tintin in the New World by Frederic Tuten? 2) What do you mean that your career is winding down, or whatever you said there?
I wasn’t predicting my imminent demise. I just mean that I’m in my fifties.
That’s not one of Tuten’s books I’ve read.
I don't know what being in one's fifties has to do with anything. In Tintin in the New World, he ends up traveling to South America and meeting several characters from The Magic Mountain. I read it a long time ago and remember it as diverting but pretty weird. I am pretty sure (spoiler alert) Settembrini and Naphtha fall in love.
Riight, I know the book's premise. I remember flipping through a passage with Cavdia Chauchat in it. But still haven't read it. He's very prolific.
In one's fifties, one is nearer the end of one's career than one was in one's twenties. That's all I meant. Honestly, no immediate intention of retreating to a hermitage in Bhutan.
Not directly relevant to this post (well, you did mention music once so I guess it's somewhat relevant), but have you ever listened to any Sufi qawwalis? I think you might love them.
Yes.
Have you ever read Rudolph steiner and is he a mad man.
I would tend to say yes to both questions.
Thank you for enlightening me re: Ty Cobb. I love baseball, I love the history of baseball, and I have always thought Cobb to be a monster., albeit a magnificent one. I've shared your paragraphs on Cobb with my baseball -loving sons for their enrichment.
BTW, as a Washington baseball fan, I love that Cobb believed Walter Johnson to be the best pitcher he ever faced. BTW (2), I can't wait for major league baseball to return to Washington some day. BTW (3) Yes, congratulations on the O's ascendance. Enjoy!
Walter Johnson was the best pitcher just about anyone of that period faced. A one-pitch pitcher, too.
I'd like to see truly major league baseball resume in DC in a form reminiscent of the Senators of the late 60's and early 70's. But, putting pettiness aside, I wish Washington's baseball fans well. (Not their team, mind you, but them.)
Speaking of native Americans and redressing past injustices, I was thrilled to read that Jim Thorpe was reinstated as the sole winner and gold medalist for his victories in the 1912 Olympics. Good things do occasionally happen 🙂
Better late than never.
David since you are a great baseball aficionado and seem to know the mechanics of the game well. I wanted to ask you. Based on how the games went, Do you believe The White Sox threw the 1919 World Series?
Oh, what a tormenting question. I think some of them tried. I don't know what to make of Shoeless Joe--if he was trying to throw it, his natural talent defeated him.
You know, my great uncle (or something like that) Nixey Callahan pitched the first ever no-hitter in the American League (for the White Sox). But though my dad is a Cubs fan & I’ve seen two games at Wrigley & one at Coors Field, which I found a pleasant enough way to while away an afternoon, I have never been interested in baseball. College basketball is my temple. Well, the creaturely hypostases are metaphysically individuated.
Sad. Very sad.
I love baseball, but it has two main flaws as I see it. One intrinsic to the game, and one that perhaps owes more to it's evolution than the game itself:
1. There is a disproportionate importance placed on what amounts to a series of 1 vs 1 battles. Yes there are baserunners and fielders and catchers and so on, but it is essentially one pitcher vs one batter, with everyone else providing just (barely) enough of a backdrop to keep the game from becoming a glorified tennis match.
Basketball and football and American football are more "brutal" sports for all the reasons you've made clear in the past, but the process by which teammates must work together to become greater than the sum of their parts is a beautiful spectacle that baseball simply can't replicate. The greatness of a player like Ty Cobb is reduced to mere individual achievement (with team success ultimately outside of his control), whereas a Magic Johnson or a Xavi Hernandez or a Tom Brady is judged according to his ability to elevate the play of his teammates.
2. Somewhat related to the first point, there is no longer any "mystery" as to the value of any given player. Given that the game is ultimately a series of discreet 1 v 1 events, assigning value to each event is a relatively straightforward process. How well did Christian Yelich play last year? Just look up his WAR and you'll know (almost) everything you need to know. There is no impact on teammates to consider, no questions of fit or chemistry, little use for discussions of leadership or anything approaching the intangible. And so the game becomes a monotonous race to add as many high WAR players as possible before they become too expensive and are shipped out for prospects whose future WARs are still blessedly indeterminate (are there any other types of trades even made these days?).
Your first observation, Bob, is simply totally false. It suggests only a very, very superficial view of the game. No pitcher pitches by himself, but is part of a constantly shifting defensive alignment, and is part of a pitching battery and a larger strategy. No batter bats in a void. He is part of a collective effort of getting on base, advancing runners, scoring runs--even when that means giving himself up and giving up his own at-bat by way of a "sacrifice." There are no intrinsic flaws in the game, and it is the only game that so perfectly balances individual heroism and intricate team cooperation.
By extension, your second observation starts from a false premise. And, while WAR fascinates many analysts and even some organizational sorts (like Billy Bean), on the field it is of no importance whatsoever. You are right that it is something that has a deleterious effect in some front offices, but that was more true 15 years ago than now. If a manager is any good, moreover, he knows how to use players who--on the fictional statistical evaluations that determine WAR--don't look very impressive. So, yes, there are some GM's guilty of the way of thinking you mention, it is far rarer than you imagine.
Team cooperation doesn't necessarily entail the synergy of which I was speaking, and its intricacies in baseball are largely static. The shifts are all pre-planned by management, based on scouting reports compiled well beforehand. Pitchers are focused on producing swings and misses, or soft contact regardless of how the defense is aligned. Likewise, even if batters are part of a larger offensive strategy, the ability to execute a sacrifice or a bunt or any deliberate hitting action is nevertheless an *individual* skill which no other teammate can influence except in a marginal or indirect manner (I concede that skilled baserunners can create quite a bit of chaos). And that is before even mentioning that the sacrifice is virtually extinct because the math simply doesn't work outside of extremely high leverage situations (as any baseball purist ought to lament).
All of which is to say, there is scarcely any *dynamic* and fluid interaction amongst teammates that one is certain to see in basketball and football and American football. What is the baseball equivalent to an offensive line reacting in concert to a heavily disguised blitz post-snap? Or a receiver changing his route based on the coverage knowing his quarterback is on the same page. Or ten outfield footballers pressing the opposition in unison. Or five players either switching or help-and-recovering multiple times in a single possession to thwart a simple pick-and-roll action. And so on. These are examples of real teamwork, real synergy, real chemistry--intense and frequent interactions in a dynamic environment where individual skill can be complemented (and thus elevated) or rendered completely ineffectual, and where a mutual understanding between teammates developed over years of joint training (and deployed in the right system) can overcome an absence of exceptional individual skill.
Baseball in comparison has an almost trivial amount of teamwork. Pitchers train by throwing to catchers. Batters are by themselves in batting cages. Fielders can train alone taking grounders or fly balls. All of those skills are developed individually and their positive effects are almost perfectly additive. When team building there are no "systems" to consider, no hierarchy of egos to navigate, no questions of fit or chemistry. Ty Cobb would have been Ty Cobb whether he played for the Tigers or the Yankess or the Reds because his skills perfectly translated to any context because the game as it is designed can neither inhibit nor enhance such individual brilliance to any meaningful degree.
So no, I'm afraid my point still stands and my observation was correct.
As for WAR, I've been out of the sabermetric loop for a good while now, but I'm certain each team has their own proprietary "catch-all" stat which values players with even greater precision. You are of course correct that good managers know how to use all of their players correctly, but it doesn't refute my point: that almost every "event" in baseball can be quantified to an alarmingly precise degree. To use a crude example, maybe a player has a low WAR value in the aggregate because he can't hit a lick, but he's an adequate fielder and an expert baserunner. A smart manager will use him accordingly - late game substitutions and pinch-running and so on. But even his fielding and base running can be quantified, so again there is no mystery here. All that is left is projection: what can this player be if we make this or that mechanical adjustment to his swing or his throwing motion? Or what can he be with a proper strength and conditioning program? What he actually does though, and how much it impacts the team's chances of winning is (tragically) transparent.
Bob,
I hate to tell you this, but all major sports use incredibly complex statistical models in strategy, and games like football and basketball suffer far more from interchangeable functions at the margins than baseball does. An NFL team can overhaul its offensive or defensive line at scrimmage every year with little change in results. All of them use players for specialized functions. Football is the game of largely anonymous linemen brought in for one specific play. In baseball you can’t do that as freely because no player can return to the game after substitution.
Your characterization of teamwork in baseball is simply not true, and I suspect you’re indulging in a willful simplification. And, while baseball does indeed (to its credit) emphasize certain individual talents more than perhaps any other sport, it is simply not true that Ty Cobb would have been the same on every team. He required team mates who knew how to bunt, to sacrifice, to take pitches in the right counts; he needed to be on a team that favored the speed game in late innings and knew how to hit and run, how to thwart the wheel play, and countless other things. Whitey Herzog’s Cardinals and Joe Torre’s Yankees and Earl Weaver’s Orioles played the game in such vastly different ways and with such distinctive team dynamics that there could never have been a shifting of players from one system to another while still producing the same results.
So, no, I still find baseball infinitely variable in team play. Even if I didn’t, I would still not grant that the vastly more limited “oblong game” is comparable in strategic variety, complicated interaction of elements and players, or beauty.
There are no intrinsic flaws in baseball. But there are horrible flaws in the current strategic prejudices.
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/08/a-perfect-game
Yes, sadly I'm aware of the ongoing statistical revolutions in other major sports (the steady proliferation of the 3-point shot threatens to ruin basketball) and individual player metrics are increasing in their sophistication. But again, baseball by its very nature lends itself to far more straightforward calculation. We can *almost* completely isolate the contributions of any individual by controlling for certain variables (park effects, batting average on balls in play, fielding errors, etc.) in a way that we can't for other team sports.
Tom Brady is probably the best quarterback to ever play....but how much of his success should we attribute to Bill Belichik's masterful coaching, or the strength of his offensive line, or the dominant defenses they had (more so early in his career)? We can argue and make our guesses, but we will never truly know for sure because there are too many variables to untangle with any sort of quantitative precision. There is no comparable obstacle in baseball, because Ty Cobb's performance at the plate will have almost absolutely nothing to do with how strong his team's pitching was, or how effective its fielding, or even (for the most part) how successful his teammates were at batting around him. Everything else you mentioned, the sacrifices and the bunts and the hit-and-runs and managerial tactics occurs at the margins and proves to be no more than a weak qualifier.
As for specialization (and by that I mean skills developed largely in isolation from teammates) it is simply far more prevalent and, more importantly, far more *impactful* in baseball than basketball/football/American football. Kickers/punters and goalkeepers excepted, I don't even see how that is arguable.
In any case, I don't wish to belabor the point. I've always had a romantic view of baseball, and I remember reading your essay when it was originally published at First Things. It is indeed a beautiful game, probably the most beautiful.
Just not quite perfect. (It did however inspire the perfect film--Field of Dreams, of course).
Again, I would simply say that baseball balances heroic individual performance and team play as no other sport does. Your point about Tom Brady is entirely correct. There’s the problem.
Baseball is the most unpredictable of the major sports in results. Football betting is based on point spread because it is rare that the winning team cannot be calculated within a 92% degree of accuracy. In baseball, for any game, 43% is the high tidal mark of algorithmic projections.
But the importance of individual excellence, and the clarity with which it is demonstrated by each batter, pitcher, and fielder at his position is one of the glories of baseball, and why it is infinitely superior to games of massed force moving in waves across an oblong.
And I think the balance tilts too far toward the individual, but I suppose there is no accounting for taste.
I'll leave you with one last thought: All of those words about Ty Cobb, and you didn't even mention he never won a World Series! For almost all of the baseball greats--Ruth, Mays, Gehrig, Williams--we remember the individual stats first - the career batting average, the home runs, the steals, consecutive games played etc. The World Series rings are almost an afterthought.
Compare that to Bill Russell, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw - the very first thing that comes to mind is how many titles they won. And there is never any discussion about Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, Patrick Ewing, or Dan Marino that doesn't begin and end with the fact that they never won the big one.
That should tell you something!