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Pirates: they're just like us!

From an absolutely delightful New Yorker review of Peter T. Leeson's The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates comes this relevant quote:

[Even] in piracy's golden age people were aware that an unregulated marketplace invites predators. During the South Sea Bubble of 1720, speculators claiming to be able to make wealth out of debt fleeced British investors and ruined many banks. Pirates who spent that year killing and plundering, Nathaniel Mist grumpily wrote, could salve their guilty consciences, if they had any: "Whatever Robberies they had committed, they might be pretty sure they were not the greatest Villains then living in the World."

"That was weeks ago, motherfucker!"

The New Yorker article about Rahm Emanuel was fascinating, but as with most things, my favorite parts are about our president.

Obama's managerial instincts tend toward a looser operation, with lots of staff and outside input. ... [But] early in his Senate career Obama also learned the perils of not having one strong manager in charge. When he arrived in Washington, in 2005, he told one of his senior aides, "My vision of this is having six smart people sitting around the table batting ideas around." A month and a half later, tensions erupted between Obama's Chicago staff and his Washington staff, making it difficult for them to agree on his schedule. Obama was frustrated that no single person was able to make decisions. The aide reminded him, "Don't you remember: 'six smart people sitting around the table'?" Obama replied, "Oh, that was six weeks ago. I'm not on that now."

Clowns

Yikes... I've enjoyed another cartoon from the New Yorker. It's a trend.

David Foster Wallace: "Wiggle Room"

From the latest New Yorker, "Wiggle Room", an excerpt from David Foster Wallace's unfinished third novel The Pale King, as well as a long & really, really sad essay/profile about DFW, "The Unfinished", that talks about his depression and his attempts to fight it, as well as this unfinished novel:

The novel continues Wallace's preoccupation with mindfulness. It is about being in the moment and paying attention to the things that matter, and centers on a group of several dozen I.R.S. agents working in the Midwest. Their job is tedious, but dullness, "The Pale King" suggests, ultimately sets them free. A typed note that Wallace left in his papers laid out the novel's idea: "Bliss—a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious—lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom."

A walk and a bottle of wine

I've never read any of Ian McEwan's novels, but I enjoyed the profile of him in last week's New Yorker nonetheless, particularly this part:

Perhaps the one thing that McEwan shares with his more Romantic peers is a love of the long walk. At sixty, he has probably rambled more miles than any English writer since Coleridge. For four decades, he has canvassed the Lake District and the Chilterns—the chalk hills between London and Oxford. Outside England, McEwan has conquered swaths of the Bernese Oberland, the Atlas Mountains, and the Dolomites. Usually, he walks slightly ahead of a companion, and his knapsack contains two stainless-steel cups and a very good bottle of wine.

That sounds pretty much like the perfect way to enjoy a walk.

Will Oldham and R. Kelly

I almost skipped the profile of Will Oldham in last week's New Yorker, mostly because I kept confusing him with Todd Oldham (I know, I'm dumb).

But so anyway, what got me interested was when I saw this while scanning the article:

And he played a police officer in "Trapped in the Closet," the multipart comic opera by the R. & B. singer R. Kelly, who is one of Oldham's favorites. [1]

And so, of course, I ended up reading the whole article. I'm easy: I might even read a New Yorker theatre review if it mentioned R. Kelly.

[1] The episode in question, by the way, was number 15, from the second series of episodes (also known as the episodes that really disappointed me).

Soup (and faith) with Prince

Last week's New Yorker had a brief & strange article about Prince in Talk of the Town. My favorite part was this bit about his Jehovah's Witness faith:

He attends meetings at a local Kingdom Hall, and, like his fellow-witnesses, he leaves his gated community from time to time to knock on doors and proselytize. "Sometimes people act surprised, but mostly they're really cool about it," he said.

Brando

I loved this quote from the recent New Yorker article about Marlon Brando (sadly, not online), about Brando's attempts to reconnect with himself/his family in the 80s (emphasis mine):

At home in Beverly Hills, he saw a psychiatrist several times a week, slowly learning to "be the child I never had a chance to be." At the same time, divorced again and the father of nine (by his own count; the actual number is uncertain), he was trying "to get to know my children better." The efforts involved in these two ventures--becoming a child, becoming a father--were rarely compatible.

David Sedaris: "Undecided" in the New Yorker

David Sedaris starts out writing about undecided voters and, as with a lot of recent Sedaris stories--or is this just my imagination?--ends up in a depressing family anecdote.

I told my father that I had voted. "[My mother] let me," I said. "And I picked Nixon."

"Well, at least someone in the family has some brains." He patted me on the shoulder and as my mother turned away I understood that I had chosen the wrong person.

Ordinary firmness

McCain supporters in North Carolina heckle early Obama voters:

That's classy.

It also kind of reminds me of Jill Lepore's recent New Yorker article about how we used to vote:

Voting in America, it's fair to say, used to be different. "Are you not a man in the full vigor of manhood and strength?" a member of the House Committee on Elections asked another Harrison supporter who, like Kyle, went to the polls but turned back without voting (and who happened to stand six feet and weigh more than two hundred pounds). The hearings established a precedent. "To vacate an election," an election-law textbook subsequently advised, "it must clearly appear that there was such a display of force as ought to have intimidated men of ordinary firmness."