Constellation of Genius: A Review

Kevin Jackson has written a generous and amazingly insightful account of a year that defined a movement, and sets the benchmark for how good academic writing could be

When reviewing books I generally read up on other sites for stylistic guidance. I'm fine with my own pretensions of critique; I occasionally struggle to convey them in approachable English (that might be self-evident of course). I knew after I'd read Constellation of Genius that I wanted to talk about the success Kevin Jackson had achieved in weaving a discourse in modernism through the tapestry of characters, plots, subplots, cultural events and such that the year 1922 presented to the world.

Imagine my displeasure upon discovering Will Self had more or less done the same. What room was there now? A man whose work is itself an ode to the movement that dominated the early 20th century, I guess it now falls to me to pick up the leaves that Self has shaken from the tree. You can find the review here, incidentally.

Razor sharp elucidations aside, Self's essay does (obviously) prove a great jumping-off point for anyone wishing to know more about an era that gave us Ezra Pound, TS Eliot, James Joyce (the unholy trinity of Jackson's diary) and Virginia Woolf as well as those living through it - Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker plus dozens more. Comprehension and accessibility are not, per se, terms you typically associate with the movement, particularly if your entry point was Ulysses, discussed by numerous writers and reviewers throughout CoG.

Yet the humility constantly evident in Jackson's writing demolishes preconceptions; his generous, anonymous style has obviously been well honed in the day job (as a journalist for the BBC amongst others for the last twenty years) and although the depth and subtlety of what conjecture there is point to a writer who has thoroughly researched his subject, at no point does he intrude superfluously.

The great unrecognised ego of the academic writer is something Gore Vidal mercilessly ribbed in his heyday (app. the last half century), and if only more subjects were plucked from the dust jacket preserve with such a light touch I feel subjects as inherently interesting as this one would bear out a great deal more inspection. Jackson does have form here - his playful engagement with heavyweights like Dante and Ruskin bear the watermarks of substance through style of a mass media lexicon rather than university texts, and it all points to a lovely ambitious scope. It's also got a really nice cover - classic monochrome colour scheme and all Jazz Age fonts. Random House deserve much credit for doing their bit.

Jackson also recognises the slightly voyeuristic element present in all works documenting the perambulations of really, really famous people and ladles great dollops of backstory on many of his major players, even providing a potted history to those characters in the outer reaches of his 'constellation'. Harry Kessler, the son of an a prosperous Hamburg banker who became a patron to such luminaries of modern art as Edvard Munch was my favourite, but Jackson seasons the pot with delicious tidbits on Raymond Radiguet, Constantin Brâncuși, the former disciples of Dada, and even Charlie Chaplin.

Of equal merit is Jackson's quiet characterisation of the major players - Woolf in particular is done no disservice by the author but mere diligence and preparation of her life over the 12 months dissected lifts her off the page and presents her as a person inhabiting a sphere of intellectualism inhabited by very few, yet her temperament for her position is portrayed as almost snobbish, particularly after she reads Ulysses - or attempts to.

Constellation is a superb example of the right blend of wisdom, research, objective fact and an eye for a story coming together to chronicle a group of incredible individuals in a very human manner. 'Insanely readable' is how Self puts it in his review. He's the writer - who am I to disagree?

Academy Awards Article No: 236243614893

Beards, bow ties, Bond songs,  Ben Affleck... I'm out of Bs. Here's some pictures from the 85th edition of the Oscars

So. The Academy Awards, as they were (and will no longer be) known, were shown last night. I didn't watch them but of course I know what happened - as though it were pre-ordained, Daniel Day-Lewis won Oscar number three - a stupendous achievement, sarcasm aside - and Ben Affleck was bedecked with the unfortunate 'Comeback Kid' moniker until someone else equally famous really goes off the rails.

Ang Lee surprised a few people, and well done Jennifer Lawrence - I thought you were great in Silver Linings. But really, the reason I like these awards is the opportunity it presents to reacquaint reality with tabloid gossip throughout the year. Underneath the exquisite gowns, the miles of sequins and diamonds, and tuxedos I'll never be able to afford, there's a chance to see real human beings sort of acting like themselves - not their roles.

Mia Farrow amusingly - and not a little spitefully? - tweeted on the drug use amongst audience members and it's great when you suddenly recall that most of these guys and girls are actually made up of real, bodily parts. Incredible, I know. Here's a few photos of them behaving like themselves, whatever that is. That's surely the most interesting role of an actor, right? Avant!

Here's Mr Justin Theroux and Ms Jennifer Aniston, shortly to wed. This picture encapsulates both Aniston-camps - her legions of fans shedding a little tear for that touching intimacy as she straightens her fiancé's bow tie, her legions of detractors seeing the crazed spinster Aniston maintaining her clasp on fuzzy-wuzzy Justin through straightening his bow tie. 'She'll say she's doing him a favour here,' will write one blogger/ journo, 'but this is classic controlling behaviour. No wonder Brad left.'

To the left we have undoubtedly the most commercially successful singer in the world today looking quite distinctly like a grieving vampire (I prefer the long form over 'vampish'). Adele my dear, this dress is most unbecoming. I believe my maternal grandmother wore something similar to a hotel ballroom in Llanddudno for her husband's (and my grandfather's) 70th birthday. Spending time with other young multimillionaires must be a bizarre climate for even the most grounded of individuals, and Adele's rise to something approaching national institution amid adoration from vessels as diverse as Pitchfork and The Daily Telegraph is good going. She performed the Skyfall theme on Sunday evening to an apparently rapturous reception. How do you keep going when you've hit the front at her age? I'd love to see her disappear off the map a la Scott Walker, but something about that dress and much-fussed hair tells me that might not be at the forefront of her mind. Where will she be in five years?

Daniel Day Lewis. He deserves a sentence all to himself as he pushed himself into uncharted territory with his third Oscar win for his portrayal of a man only received through historical testimony. It's worth bearing in mind that Lincoln died a decade before Edison invented the phonograph, and therefore all the critique of Day Lewis's performance is based on found knowledge, not first-hand experience or recordings. There's an argument that says that makes the job easier, and it's a stupid one. Conceiving a Lincoln that captured the preconception of an audience of tens of millions is a huge challenge and it's no surprise to hear Day Lewis stayed in Kentucky character for months, including the entire duration of the shoot, to ensure an exact replica was created. The performance is typical of the man and makes him so interesting; his consummate ability to disappear completely beneath the emotions of his character is, to me, unparalleled in cinema, and he deserves all the plaudits he receives.

Jessica Chastain looks infinitely better as the model for classic Hollywood woman than aviator-totin' ball-buster Maya in Zero Dark Thirty (inc., aviators in the military - West Point needs an eyewear rethink) I strongly suspect this beautiful lady, along with January Jones and Christina Hendrix, have all come from some sort of internal lab within those famous hills that sculpts Golden Age actresses, then animates them one particularly stormy eve. I'm baffled.

Three guys, three different beards. The Oscars 2013 was most definitely the year where not shaving - for weeks - was the done thing. Viscount Bradley Cooper seems to be playing a millionaire playboy with combed back fringe and vulpine features, whereas President Affleck is looking veeeeerrrry stoic and perspicacious with that supremely well-trimmed effort. Professor Clooney meanwhile appears to have grown - literally - into his role as the godfather of serious American cinema. He was here on behalf of Affleck's Argo. Good work gents.

OK fine, here's new and improved Joseph Gordon Levitt in a charcoal grey tux with patent leather shoes and a narrow bowtie. Swoon all you want - but then look at the picture below! That's the JGL I know and love, the giant goof. And who's that mugging with him? Why, it's the only other beardless guy in Los Angeles, Daniel Radcliffe (ironic because he looks way better with one)! What a pair of silly faces - and metaphorical hats off to you both for not losing your gurnability in the face of critical and commercial success. Clooney, take some lessons from these two. You can take the  man out of Third Rock, but etc etc.

What I learnt from the Oscars 2013: Jennifer Aniston is still a really nice person and all those people who like to patronise her should just go suck a lemon or something.  Daniel Day Lewis deserves to enter acting lexicon in the same way Lawrence was permitted the adverb 'Olivieresque'. Jessica Chastain might be the human version of Jessica Rabbit. Adele should wear jeans and a t-shirt if someone advised her on that dress. And beards, when done well, instil hitherto unknown depths to all manner of gentlemen. Grow it back, Daniel. You just look better.

Pictures courtesy of The BBC, guardian.co.uk, E! Online, mirror.co.uk, Yahoo! Movies Australia, ABC News

The Fall and Rise of Ben Affleck

The Argo director completes a remarkable renaissance following Bennifer, Matt Murdock and 'jaw-droppingly awful' Gigli

There's a moment in Good Will Hunting, the film that brought Ben Affleck to the world's attention in a positive sense where Chuckie bawls Will out for his lack of ambition and apparent fear of committal and sacrifice. "Cuz tomorrow I'm gonna wake up and I'll be 50, and I'll still be doin' this shit. And that's all right," he says.

And for a long time, in a weirdly prophetic way, it almost looked as though this would be the pattern for the two leads' careers. Damon went on to huge success with the Bourne trilogy and stepped into serious, sober film making with Soderbergh and Clooney, focusing on smaller pictures which grooved on weighty subjects like liberty, morality and personal redemption.

Affleck, meanwhile, appeared to have got the short end. Whilst he drew flak for the shallow Pearl Harbour and disinterested Daredevil, his well-published relationship with J-Lo seemed to pull him into a spiral of poor choices and awful films. I've seen (some of) Gigli, and it deserved the hype, so to speak. Worse, it spoke ill of a promising career and gave the perception of an actor who treated pastiche with the subtlety of... Chuckie. If the shoe fits, right?


CGI in 1994 was not a pretty thing to behold.

Which might go a small way to explaining the interest in Affleck's renaissance as a director and his critical success with Argo, already an awards magnet and widely touted to get the Best Picture gong ahead of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln at Sunday night's Oscars ceremony.

Personally, I guess I'm here pleased here. I've found it almost impossible to dislike the guy, even in his nadir (admittedly the travails of his career didn't exactly keep me up nights). His unabashed honesty, which doesn't appear calculated is a good barometer in as bizarre an environment as Hollywood, and his work since that much, much reported split with Lopez appears to engage Affleck as an individual, channelling his experience into real human portrayals. It might also help that he's now married with three children.

It seems lots of his critics feel the same way, as though he were an errant child who just needed a bit of straightening out (that Good Will role was really prescient in more than one way). The aforementioned Argo currently holds an average critical score of 86 over at Metacritic, whilst The Town boasts a 74 rating and Gone Baby Gone holds a 72 rating.

The interesting thing about Affleck's return to the public eye is that his directing role seems to fit him better; there's a definite trend of better reviews as a director - typically mid to high 70s - than films he has only acted in, whereupon the score drops to mid-60s. It may be that control of his environment was all Affleck needed to make his mark. That's another reason I find him kind of endearing; like he was being asked to spin too many plates and was eagerly running around after them. Singular focus seems to have improved his output.


All this seems to prove a decent case for the maturation of the man first; the actor and director second. Perhaps Affleck should have made the move to directing earlier. He evidently has a real flair and particularly in his first two directed films, a locale, an ear for interesting conversation and an economic mentality towards plot. 

Perhaps it's merely the passage of time that has improved Affleck's radar. There's no doubt that spending years in the company of gifted actors and directors has rubbed off on his professional side; check out the getaway scene in The Town (above), in which the quick editing between angles and shots making the slow, hanging shot between robbers in rubber nun masks and confused police officer all the funnier.

An interweaving tale of fabricated stories and real-life drama, Argo seems to represent the ultimate statement on Affleck's career so far. His roles in Extract and Hollywoodland showed a man presenting elements of his life in his characters (his bartender role in the former is hilarious). As nailed on as he appears to be for the Best Picture this Sunday, it'd be great to see him repeat the trick in years to come.

Pictures courtesy of BlogWillHunting and Tumblr

Cannery Row: A Review

Steinbeck's slim volume is the best example of his understanding of the human condition thanks to its real-life inspiration

So I guess I'd consider myself something of a Steinbeck aficionado now. I've read all the big stuff, his trinity depicting the great melting pot of 20th century America, I've read various parts of A Life In Letters and now I'm reading Cannery Row, which I think - this may be controversial - is better than anything else he did.

The reason I love this more than I do East of Eden or Grapes is mainly to do with a preference for the narrative and chosen style, which obsessed Steinbeck to such an extent he would write letters to friends, agents and colleagues explaining in sometimes near-tortuous detail what he was thinking of concocting next. Letters offers Steinbeck's near-reverent belief in qualities central to literary tradition; redemption, faith, cynicism, strength and weakness.

All language you associate with someone who's won the Nobel Prize (spoiler - if you didn't know...) and inherent in the great writers; Dostoevsky for example immediately springs to mind. And part of me likes Steinbeck so much just for writing these letters, for understanding the power of expression and his honest appraisal of its cathartic quality (Steinbeck's honesty when discussing his abilities was brutal). They're contained in the introductions to  most of his work, including Cannery Row, and reveal what you always want when reading an author you connect with; their personality incarnate.



Ecologist Ed Ricketts, the inspiration for
 Doc in Steinbeck's Cannery Row

Ironic that Steinbeck was always cautious-even paranoid- about success and the adulation his major works brought but reading his pre-emptive thoughts on his composition are gently moving and make for rewarding reading. The Californian was by professional accounts a shy, almost insecure man, given to throwing his faith in with those he trusted deeply.

Amongst those are Ed Ricketts, immortalised in CR as Doc, the worldly researcher who lives in his lab and exhibits a patience which has an almost supernatural longevity with the bums and deadbeats of the Row. Ricketts was by trade a marine biologist which sounds for all the world to be a fine thing to call a job, when the description entailed going out to sea to study the life that resided there.

After the breakup of marriage number two, Ricketts was joined by the wounded and harried Steinbeck to explore the southeastern coast of the United States. Their discoveries and philosophic conclusions became the backbone to The Log of the Sea of Cortez.

It seems safe to say Steinbeck was not a man to take any part of his existence lightly when his letters give such strong evidence that it troubled him so heavily - although this would sometimes present itself in strange manifestations as when the author left Stanford without completing a qualification and instead finding himself as a labourer and part time journalist in New York City.

The great paradox central to that particular example shrinks when compared to the steady, unyielding labor afforded to work like East of Eden. But that's not so manifest here, and the better for it. What I really enjoyed about Cannery Row was the closeness; the conscious lack of echo, weight. The un-literary nature of the work, which for me in turn engendered a greater semblance of reality.

I found it disheartening, when reading through reviews of the novel, that nowhere was it considered the equal of its weightier forebears aside from the New Yorker, who claimed it as Steinbeck's best work. A question as fine as sand for sure, but the framework for literary merit seems (or seemed) to consist of how many references to the Old Testament you could get in there.

Sure, that's glib, especially considering I really enjoyed East of Eden and as a piece of literary journalism, Grapes still for me has no equal. But surely the lack of flesh and blood in his 'great' works, the relaying back to already fictional character, is of a different, maybe less powerful quality than a Doc or a Mack. Like the copying of a document, over and over again, the print fades and takes on a new form or dies.

Instead what I feel Steinbeck achieved through Cannery Row is a sense of inward peace; I don't think this work challenged him greatly, certainly not to the strenuous levels Eden certainly did, and the lack of it seems to have conversely produced some of his efficient writing, floating away from the land Steinbeck inhabited in much of his work.

Just this evening I was reading about the inspiration to Stephen King's Pet Sematary, a rather sinister tale of reincarnation which came from a road the Kings lived on during his tenure at the University of Maine.

Inspiration is for the inspired, perhaps. But for me, and perhaps if you want to write yourself, Cannery Row is a plaintive success in depicting human character. The great and pleasing irony is that it owes nothing to its forebears to achieve its success.

Picture courtesy of Stanford University and pbbookends.blogspot.com

Beware OK Cupid's Arrow

Online dating has given men and women the chance to redraw their personality - with potentially disastrous results.

Manti T'eo is probably not a name many British people, or indeed anyone outside the United States, has heard of. But the college football star is at the centre of the weirdest stories in recent sporting history. It also highlights the potentially perilous effects of looking for a relationship online.

T'eo, a Hawaiian, was regarded by many seasoned American football fans as a definitive first draft pick for the new NFL season (def: 'draft' is a more rigorously managed version of the football transfer market, presided over by the NFL to ensure a fair crack of the recruitment whip to all prospecting sides) and his form for his university, Notre Dame, was extraordinarily consistent.



 

But following the 'death' of his online girlfriend, now known to be a hoax by a former colleague of T'eo's cousin from college, his form plunged, the team were pulverised in their biggest game of the season, with their star player widely criticised, and the American sports media, including Time magazine, went into overdrive - over a person that never existed.

Online dating has steadily grown in popularity in the last decade to the point where one in five relationships now starts online. The immediate benefits are obvious and reflective of the internet's utilitarian genius; it allows a huge number of people to check each other out from anywhere in the world at no risk to themselves. In many ways, it's also considerably safer; there's no meetup unless you both want to, you can ignore the creeps who claim Mossad know their whereabouts (yes, really) and you can reply whenever you like; love doesn't have to be at first sight.

But perhaps the biggest draw for many, paying particular attention to those who have 'got to know someone' whilst half cut and listening to Chris Brown whether they wanted to or not, is the opportunity to describe oneself in more detail than 'I like sports and music, how about you?'

Why? Anyone can describe themselves however they want, right? If you want to soliloquize a la the Bard, you can (but don't expect a listener by the end, unless you're Byron etc). Yes, but the ability to describe through writing is the ability to edit oneself - and that's where the path divides into cupids and OKCupid.

For some, this is a perfect opportunity to finally reveal their talents and abilities; it may be that a chronically shy man who nonetheless loves house music can finally rhapsodise in the written form and reach - and engage - a whole new group of women who would have never looked at him twice in Revs. Communication through email becomes a chance to both convey an intellectual side via form and to discuss at whatever length you see fit (within reason of course).

For others, this can result in editing of the wrong sort.  We're not talking the nutjob 10% here - the great irony with these guys is they're are so convinced of their supreme abilities to woo the other sex that they rarely dress it up. You can spot them coming a mile off; here's a few examples.

1. Gym Freaks:  fuzzy photos badly taken on poor quality mobile phone cameras of half a torso turned toward a grubby mirror in blinky half light. Warning; this breed consider Costa coffee to be 'meeting women halfway' and it won't be long before you're both in a bar with his mates doing funny coloured shots and drinking beer from a bottle, whether you usually do or
2. The New World Order: Not Hulk Hogan's old day job, these guys and gals generally believe the government is acting either like or on behalf of an Illuminati-style cabal intent on dehumanising society, turning them into faceless drone slaves. The greatest irony here is that many of them are glued to computers 14 hours a day 'watching the skies', thus doing the job of... well, faceless drone slaves.
3. The Harvard Misogynist: Red-brick educated, generally 'stacked' guys who now have high-powered jobs which usually features words and phrases like 'challenging', 'rush' and 'intense'. Beware: this team of dudes do not consider the word 'chick' to be demeaning in any way to women and will high five their friends in front of you (not the women). If you see 'my mates would describe me as a joker who actually has a really caring side' click no thanks.

And that's just three. If you can give this asylum the swerve however, you're faced with a trickier proposition; which ones can you trust? Online dating can make a misanthrope out of anyone who has struck unlucky enough times and the power to edit your personality after repeated read-throughs doesn't compensate for actually having the personality of a WWE wrestler.

Worse still, it can result in complete fabrications. T'eo is a shocking example of the power online relationships can hold over people - particularly those used to loneliness or long periods without human contact - but his is a not an odd story. The fact 'catfish' is now on ITV2 as well as Urban Dictionary shows the crossover is gaining more cultural traction (look it up here, incidentally).

99% are intelligent and hardy enough to wait out a commitment until the first meetup. The sad irony here is the people who would most benefit from online dates - those too shy to purposely go out looking for it - are the people at most risk of being tricked by those bored or malicious enough to want to. Neil LaBute's brilliant, wrenching In The Company of Men springs to mind.

The explosion in popularity of online dating could be the first big step towards a radical shift in how relationships are formed, through aids designed to attune to human minutiae, increasingly blurring the lines between emotional sense and calculated skill.

It could also be just what's needed to change minds encouraged to believe that success is achieved through feats of amazing individualism, with a shrinking support culture through the proliferation of technology and social media (he writes, on a blog). Whichever you think it might be, both require that fundamental characteristic of successful relationships; emotional connections. Just ignore the guys with the shirtless vests and everything will be alright.

Picture courtesy of USA Today

We Need To Talk About Literary Fiction

The Bell Jar is coming to a coffee morning near you. But could Faber's 'repackaging' open the door to more classics being read?

The Bell Jar, a book I'd described as 'discombobulating', particularly the oft-quoted intro, was repackaged last week and released back into a world with its nose in a Kindle, reading Jackie Collins and thinking about who'd be the ideal presenter for Daybreak. Right?

And in probably less significant news that most likely only Guardian Culture section scourers will have observed, journalist Sam Jordison and his band of merry readers have decided on Proust as their next book for their online reading group. This part is devoid of sarcasm, by the way.

It seems to me that these topics interlock with each other and, I think, point to a great, positive future for the classics. I may be committing heresy here but if the Plath experiment goes well, maybe the publishers (Faber) could look at a few more of their untouchables and... well... touch them up a bit.

Regardless of the above however, the new cover is still horrendous. Based on the image to the right, I'm thinking Faber's design team works in a modern version of Frankenstein's lab, attaching jackets from middlebrow authors to more contentious work with all the insane zeal and panache of the eponymous doctor. Or should that be Dr Picoult? Perhaps these ladies will see a boost to their works on the back of Faber's decision to dress Plath's novel in such odd attire, but this new jacket is the equivalent of a Juicy Couture tracksuit.

It's fair to say that repackaging rings alarm bells for all the right reasons, usually. It's the literary equivalent of the 'reboot' that has recently pervaded cinema and particular the comic canon. Of course the bottom line in both industries is, um,  the bottom line and Faber have reported their new cultural positioning of the critically acclaimed proclamations of Esther Greenwood has gone down a storm. And that new Spiderman is way better than all the other ones.

Naturally enough the financial side here's perceived as a bit grubby - 'an increase in revenue', the most un-poetic language in the land. Yet everybody who claims reading as a hobby will have a conscious or unconscious interest in the future of books, and what can be done to refocus eyes and ears around them. Often the last thing of consideration is making the most money possible - and that's seems the right attitude for all sorts of practical reasons.

But all of the words I associate with a book - predominantly sensual terms - still represent the best foot forward vs the odourless, visually unobjectionable tablets gradually glazing eyes over and changing accounting practices in the optometry industry (maybe), and a book should make what it can of the visual element to attract itself to newer readers. Survival is, I guess, otherwise futile.

A lack of third dimension and more than a touch of dogma there, but hard to ignore. In that sense at least I agree with Faber. The other big reason I have for being the only guy in the 'mmm...maybe' camp relates to Jordison's on-going reading group who have made their way through some classics of the Western canon but, so far, nothing as big as Proust.

OK so they're only (only) reading Swann's Way, not the whole collection, but how many people have actually read Proust, Joyce, Eliot - and, for that matter, Plath? I've only read Joyce and Plath, and only one book by each. Here's a more general point; if that's what readers of the Guardian are reading, what about the rest of the country?

I admit something unconscious reared its head and just as quickly disappeared; that something felt sneering and a bit contemptuous. Basically prejudice - as if Proust should be for reading groups! But why? What do I know about reading groups? As soon as I gave this some basic consideration, I realised how foolish I'd been in not distinguishing principles from their practical applications, and perhaps there's an element of this behind the Plath debate.

Generally you don't appreciate a great by swaddling it in the pap Faber have dressed Bell Jar up in, and regardless of the marketing angle it's a strange decision to move a classic into middlebrow territory - yet it could an inspiring one, the bridge some would argue will join the worlds of genre and literary fiction.

OK, so the point is to sell more Bell Jar. But there's social utility here too - we're not talking collateral debt obligations (if anyone's a Michael Lewis fan I apologise for the plagiarism here, but it's an intelligent perspective). If in six months, those reading groups whom I sniffily dismissed are discussing a classic, Faber could justifiably point to a good deed done. It might put several comedians out of a job but would it be so terrible if Sophie Kinsella sold less and Stendhal, Lawrence (D.H), Yeats - i.e. the dark and sombre shelves of Waterstones marked 'classics' - sold relatively more?

Being reasonable, Kinsella, Vincenza et al are never going to go out of print, but a bigger share of readers' shelves claimed for literary fiction would still represent huge progress - and publishers would be back in business with a whole new range of books they could reintroduce to an intellectually starved climate. Plus, less Kindles. I just don't like them, OK?

Maybe it's snobbery or maybe it's protectiveness of what's rightly (my opinion) called a classic. It's a paradox, but it might be best for all, particularly those arguing the loudest, if this debate was parked on the shelf. It's beginning to look as fusty as some of the dust jackets on those works of literature Faber et al want to do something with.