Emmet Larkin has passed away. He may have been the finest professor I had in my time at the University of Chicago; he taught me what it means to be a historian: to discover, interpret, and, perhaps most importantly, to maintain mental access to, a massive body of knowledge, and then to synthesize new understandings from that knowledge. It was an old-school sort of history: as Mr. Larkin said, you can't do really good history until you're in your forties; you just can't know enough until then. Such an approach doesn't fit well with the "publish two groundbreaking works by the time you're up for tenure" requirements of the modern academy, it hardly needs to be said.
But Larkin was of a different generation, the one that came to college (for him as for many, the first ones in the their family) on the GI Bill, with an understanding that work was central to life, achievement, recognition, awards were secondary. Ora et labora. He set his sights higher, no, broader, than merely slogging through archives and finding unpublished letters between bishops and cardinals (and translating them, contextualizing them, and, most importantly reading between their lines, knowing whose brother had married whose cousin seventeen years before…)
Today's scholars seek new interpretations, and crunch vast amounts of data in their databases, and do things, above all, quickly--someone else may be working on this and you might be scooped! No, Larkin's project was simple, vast, and, as he foresaw, unachievable: The History of the Catholic Church in Ireland. This was the work of a lifetime and more; even in 1997, he knew that he probably wouldn't finish.
But the inspiration to work, to toil in the library, to learn and to know and to know what you know--This was inspiring to a would-be historian. To think historically and precisely on any topic--to know why you know what you know--this was an achievement beyond the scale of his nine (excellent) books.
He challenged us on every front: "Who was the greatest American President?" he asked us one day (I can't remember the context), "and why?" Larkin's own answer was Lincoln--for he excelled in magnanimity. This story has a classical ring about it, as if from Plutarch or Aristotle; perhaps Larkin was already a Great Man, of the Sort They No Longer Make in his own generation, as much as he was to mine. Virtue and knowledge; ora et labora.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Monday, March 26, 2012
Barry-Roubaix 2012
The mud'n'the blood speak eloquently of the great fun had romping 62 miles across the back roads of central Michigan. The grease? 9 chain-drops. A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client, they say, and I suppose that applies to bike mechanics, too. At 39 seconds per (the schleck, the universal measure of time lost in a chain drop), that lost me five places. Sorry to say, it wasn't my mechanical fumblings that kept me off the podium but my climbing and my ability to stick to a paceline. The micro-pops of power that give a racer even the chance to compete for wins. Back to the workout schedule, back to the workouts. (Photo by Avi Schwab who had a damn fine day himself, top-halving the field in his first race.)
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Myth is the material; tragedy is what you make of it
The world of professional cycling saw two news stories of no small import this weekend. Alberto Contador was stripped of his 2010 Tour de France title (as well as all his professional results since then) for a positive blood test at the Tour, having been issued a "retroactive ban" from racing, which will expire this August. In other news, the federal prosecutors investigating Lance Armstrong's alleged doping announced quietly that they were dropping charges against Big Tex. (Why were the feds interested? Your US Postal Service sponsored his team, so government money was involved in supporting his racing.)
One case of the other shoe dropping (well, the other fuzzy red slipper dropping quietly as the UCI crawls back into bed with its sponsoring businesses, hoping that they didn't notice anything. Successfully, it seems; love is indeed blinding), one case of a ball dropping (there being no instant replay, we can argue for months over whether Armstrong's legal team should have been called for defensive interference or given credit for a blocked pass).
Such is the stuff that myths are made of. And epics and tragedies are made from. Red Kite Prayer had a somewhat pedestrian retelling of Lance Armstrong as Oedipus, but it aims too low--dragging the story of Oedipus down from myth, from the things a culture just knows and attempting to nail it to the facts (such as they might be [re]constructed) of the Armstrong case. No, the point is that Armstrong is already a myth; the facts---facts are for prosecutors when they have balls and institutional support and no political armtwisting to leave them the fuck alone; it's World Cancer Day, and cancer is a trump suit and…where was I? ... Armstrong is a myth. Contador is a myth. They're bigger than life, bigger than facts. Creations, created through words and culture (and money, but hey, this is modernity, we don't create our myths by annual animal sacrifice anymore).
Now take the myths and spin out tragedy and epic and, if you can, comedy.
Some enterprising Aeschylus can tell of Armstrong's cancer as preemptive punishment for the wrongs he's about to commit; the final act in the trilogy can redeem the character through "selfless"--thinly veiled penance--cancer work. Redemption and closure are options in drama, after all; this isn't real life--maybe like a sweet formulaic Shakespeare moment, the redemption can ring hollow (don't tell me that the Montagues and Capulets weren't slaughtering each other in the streets again before the star-crossed lovers' blood had dried). The broken family echoing across generations, that's just the icing so you know what kind of cupcake you're getting.
A Sophocles can treat Contador--the Spanish enemy, dark-skinned of course, with a stupid finish-line post-up and bad teeth, to boot--and force us to confront his humanity, make us all complicit in his crime and bring us through the muck to come out feeling smugly better on the other side of it (I'm sure if the New Yorker doesn't pick this up, then the Atlantic will; liberals love that shit).
This leaves Greg LeMond, Tyler Hamilton, and Floyd Landis for a Euripides, and a sophisticated (ah, sophistry, thy name is WADA) romp through philosophical oppositions: the clean and the dirty, the wet and the dry, the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the north and the south (of course; what's an American tragedy without north v. south?). LeMond, Hamilton, and Landis--each of them spinning, tumbling, but in orbit of Armstrong's gravity. LeMond crashing Lance's ("Cancer! I win. Cancer cancer cancer cancer.") press conference, melting into incoherence, every fiber of his being tied up in opposition to Armstrong; if LeMond is to be the greatest American cyclist, Armstrong can be nothing; if LeMond is clean Armstrong must be dirty and if Armstrong clean, then LeMond dirty--only narrative logic can explain LeMond. He has transcended humanity and entered myth.
Hamilton, equally twisted, and perhaps the most colorful of the bunch, bringing the brawl to an Armstrong bar (how West Side Story!), and opening a himself-themed restaurant (one gapes in adimaration of the heroic ego) whose centerpiece, no, whose omphalos, is its bathrooms--Armstrong bathrooms! Tread upon the symbol of my enemy while you defecate! Here is a master of the symbolic shambolic act.
In comparison to Hamilton, (how can you compete with a drinkin' man persona on the stage or screen or epic campfire telling?) Landis seems almost brutally pedestrian; he's the John Henry of the bunch, going up against not a mechanical steam engine but something more powerful, a story. Landis can hammer at facts all day and all night, in exquisite and heartbreaking detail. His soul slipping away is all subtext, of course; he's busy naming names and telling how it works.
This isn't the stuff for journalists anymore. Matt Rendell told the death of Marco Pantani, and for 320 pages, the story doesn't get out of the dirt; the facts are so… known. Cocaine, EPO, iron supplements, yeah, yeah, yeah, names dates times amounts.
The domineering Italian mother still convinced of his innocence; the girlfriends and "doctors" and psychologists and coaches, of whom Mama Pantani thought Marco innocent--now we're gtting somewhere, for they all tell stories, their stories all make sense only as stories, not facts. But the stories are better than the facts, and stories are what we make of myths, the things that we do to make the larger than life understandable while still larger than life. The Death of Marco Pantani, the Passion of Greg LeMond, the Twisted Saga of Tyler Hamilton, and the Ballad of Floyd Landis must be sung, not written.
One case of the other shoe dropping (well, the other fuzzy red slipper dropping quietly as the UCI crawls back into bed with its sponsoring businesses, hoping that they didn't notice anything. Successfully, it seems; love is indeed blinding), one case of a ball dropping (there being no instant replay, we can argue for months over whether Armstrong's legal team should have been called for defensive interference or given credit for a blocked pass).
Such is the stuff that myths are made of. And epics and tragedies are made from. Red Kite Prayer had a somewhat pedestrian retelling of Lance Armstrong as Oedipus, but it aims too low--dragging the story of Oedipus down from myth, from the things a culture just knows and attempting to nail it to the facts (such as they might be [re]constructed) of the Armstrong case. No, the point is that Armstrong is already a myth; the facts---facts are for prosecutors when they have balls and institutional support and no political armtwisting to leave them the fuck alone; it's World Cancer Day, and cancer is a trump suit and…where was I? ... Armstrong is a myth. Contador is a myth. They're bigger than life, bigger than facts. Creations, created through words and culture (and money, but hey, this is modernity, we don't create our myths by annual animal sacrifice anymore).
Now take the myths and spin out tragedy and epic and, if you can, comedy.
Some enterprising Aeschylus can tell of Armstrong's cancer as preemptive punishment for the wrongs he's about to commit; the final act in the trilogy can redeem the character through "selfless"--thinly veiled penance--cancer work. Redemption and closure are options in drama, after all; this isn't real life--maybe like a sweet formulaic Shakespeare moment, the redemption can ring hollow (don't tell me that the Montagues and Capulets weren't slaughtering each other in the streets again before the star-crossed lovers' blood had dried). The broken family echoing across generations, that's just the icing so you know what kind of cupcake you're getting.
A Sophocles can treat Contador--the Spanish enemy, dark-skinned of course, with a stupid finish-line post-up and bad teeth, to boot--and force us to confront his humanity, make us all complicit in his crime and bring us through the muck to come out feeling smugly better on the other side of it (I'm sure if the New Yorker doesn't pick this up, then the Atlantic will; liberals love that shit).
This leaves Greg LeMond, Tyler Hamilton, and Floyd Landis for a Euripides, and a sophisticated (ah, sophistry, thy name is WADA) romp through philosophical oppositions: the clean and the dirty, the wet and the dry, the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the north and the south (of course; what's an American tragedy without north v. south?). LeMond, Hamilton, and Landis--each of them spinning, tumbling, but in orbit of Armstrong's gravity. LeMond crashing Lance's ("Cancer! I win. Cancer cancer cancer cancer.") press conference, melting into incoherence, every fiber of his being tied up in opposition to Armstrong; if LeMond is to be the greatest American cyclist, Armstrong can be nothing; if LeMond is clean Armstrong must be dirty and if Armstrong clean, then LeMond dirty--only narrative logic can explain LeMond. He has transcended humanity and entered myth.
Hamilton, equally twisted, and perhaps the most colorful of the bunch, bringing the brawl to an Armstrong bar (how West Side Story!), and opening a himself-themed restaurant (one gapes in adimaration of the heroic ego) whose centerpiece, no, whose omphalos, is its bathrooms--Armstrong bathrooms! Tread upon the symbol of my enemy while you defecate! Here is a master of the symbolic shambolic act.
In comparison to Hamilton, (how can you compete with a drinkin' man persona on the stage or screen or epic campfire telling?) Landis seems almost brutally pedestrian; he's the John Henry of the bunch, going up against not a mechanical steam engine but something more powerful, a story. Landis can hammer at facts all day and all night, in exquisite and heartbreaking detail. His soul slipping away is all subtext, of course; he's busy naming names and telling how it works.
This isn't the stuff for journalists anymore. Matt Rendell told the death of Marco Pantani, and for 320 pages, the story doesn't get out of the dirt; the facts are so… known. Cocaine, EPO, iron supplements, yeah, yeah, yeah, names dates times amounts.
The domineering Italian mother still convinced of his innocence; the girlfriends and "doctors" and psychologists and coaches, of whom Mama Pantani thought Marco innocent--now we're gtting somewhere, for they all tell stories, their stories all make sense only as stories, not facts. But the stories are better than the facts, and stories are what we make of myths, the things that we do to make the larger than life understandable while still larger than life. The Death of Marco Pantani, the Passion of Greg LeMond, the Twisted Saga of Tyler Hamilton, and the Ballad of Floyd Landis must be sung, not written.
Monday, November 21, 2011
This Thanksgiving, let's talk about the economy
My fellow Americans [that's how one is supposed to begin these things, no?],
This Thanksgiving, we will gather with our families and give thanks for the many good things that we have. The first thing we always put, with varying (and not necessarily related) levels of piety and sincerity, is each other. Then we enumerate, or mention, or ponder, our stuff. But while we're all here, let's have a talk. There are some folks missing Thanksgiving because they're camped out in public parks and various other public places across the country.
I don't know what to make of them. But I do know that they want us to think. And they want us to act. It's probably fair to say that they don't exactly know what action they want. But if we're to have high-quality action, we've gotta talk. You'll be sitting down at the table with those who love you, despite the fact that you each think that each others' politics are absurd. Now's the time to have a few drinks (we're tipping back the pinot noir with our turkey. Probably some white wine before, and bourbon after) and open up a conversation.
Resolve to bring up the economy. Because it sucks; we can all agree on that. And we can't vote in a new government (regardless of our politics, I'm sure we can all find someone representing us that we'd rather not), so let's start getting out of the gridlock at the grassroots level. Bring up the economy with someone you know disagrees with you.
Get past the frustration, and ponder that the person you're talking to has some rational or emotional reason for the opinions you're hearing. The explanation is not just "they're frickin' nuts." "They want to end the economy as we know it." "They're just jealous." "They're just defending the status quo."
Lefties: recall that it took the modern economy for "dignity of the individual" to have any meaning. Read Deirdre McCloskey's Bourgeois Virtues.
Righties: recall that it takes respect for the dignity of others to make the modern economy work. Read Matt Taibbi's ongoing reportage series. Here's a good spot to begin.
Everyone, be thankful for the things that make this country great. Here's my favorite from the past couple of weeks: a bagel shop in New York, about to go out of business and getting white-knight investorship--from a pair of Pakistani cab drivers..
We come together at Thanksgiving--putting aside our differences is great and all, but how about resolving some of them?
This Thanksgiving, we will gather with our families and give thanks for the many good things that we have. The first thing we always put, with varying (and not necessarily related) levels of piety and sincerity, is each other. Then we enumerate, or mention, or ponder, our stuff. But while we're all here, let's have a talk. There are some folks missing Thanksgiving because they're camped out in public parks and various other public places across the country.
I don't know what to make of them. But I do know that they want us to think. And they want us to act. It's probably fair to say that they don't exactly know what action they want. But if we're to have high-quality action, we've gotta talk. You'll be sitting down at the table with those who love you, despite the fact that you each think that each others' politics are absurd. Now's the time to have a few drinks (we're tipping back the pinot noir with our turkey. Probably some white wine before, and bourbon after) and open up a conversation.
Resolve to bring up the economy. Because it sucks; we can all agree on that. And we can't vote in a new government (regardless of our politics, I'm sure we can all find someone representing us that we'd rather not), so let's start getting out of the gridlock at the grassroots level. Bring up the economy with someone you know disagrees with you.
Get past the frustration, and ponder that the person you're talking to has some rational or emotional reason for the opinions you're hearing. The explanation is not just "they're frickin' nuts." "They want to end the economy as we know it." "They're just jealous." "They're just defending the status quo."
Lefties: recall that it took the modern economy for "dignity of the individual" to have any meaning. Read Deirdre McCloskey's Bourgeois Virtues.
Righties: recall that it takes respect for the dignity of others to make the modern economy work. Read Matt Taibbi's ongoing reportage series. Here's a good spot to begin.
Everyone, be thankful for the things that make this country great. Here's my favorite from the past couple of weeks: a bagel shop in New York, about to go out of business and getting white-knight investorship--from a pair of Pakistani cab drivers..
We come together at Thanksgiving--putting aside our differences is great and all, but how about resolving some of them?
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
On growing up...or not
A friend invited me to a bike race today. It's a big bike rice, a mountain bike relay race out west. Right off the bat, let me tell you, I am STOKED. This is going to be a little mini-vacation, or maybe an extra-large weekend. What's a little funny about it is that it simultaneously has me feeling like a little kid, too excited to sleep. And a Big Important Adult: I have the grown-up freedom to take a weekend off.
So you grow up, in order to be a kid again.
So you grow up, in order to be a kid again.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Peasant Riding: An Invitation
“The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.”
This is the way I ride my bike: like a peasant. I aim for simplicity, and even rusticity--the fresh air of the country (to be found, for sure, in the city) and the rustle of trees over the road, the society of acquaintances associated with the village. The virtues I seek an acquaintance with? Self-reliance, hardiness, strength, bricolage, to name a few. The necessarily attendant vices? Miserliness, impatience, mistrust of the new(fangled)... I'm sure I'm missing many others. Coarse habits we have aplenty: Excess drinking, public urination, the stench of sweat. The simple graces, which I confess I'm still aiming for: An easy pedal stroke at high RPMs; a consistent line and pace in a group ride; a demure changing from sweaty and skin-tight clothing after a ride; a welcoming attitude toward strangers.
The early stage of civilization we aim for? England or continental Europe in the middle of the 20th century. An idealized version, to be sure, with no world wars or polio, no intra-club discord, flat tyres, rolled tubulars, or concussions. But a culture where commuting and training and riding-to-the-race ran together into riding somewhere. Where winter was the season not for boredom on the trainer inside, but for sloggingly spinning (or spinningly slogging?) a fendered fixed-gear in the snow. Where your racing bike + fenders and racks = your bike.
So I ride like a peasant, in the city, in the Information Age. I commute. Resistance on my training ride comes from hauling the kid-trailer. Or the kid. Or both kids. Or the dog. I sneak out in the morning or late at night, so as to have clear roads, clear mind, and a clear moment in the hectic schedule. I ride with friends; if they're faster, I struggle; if they're slower, I ride on the dirt or grass and let them ride on the pavement. Or I spin like mad. I do training rides to a bar (and recovery rides home?). I change out of my lycra (or at least pull on some warmup pants) when I get there. I get dirty with glee on a cyclocross course. I fiddle with my equipment constantly--but with secondhand parts. I have little patience for "data" (but it's so tempting for the going faster). I race, to challenge myself. I commute, for fun, thrift, and exercise. I ride like a peasant. Join me.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Run (!?!?) report
Just got back from a lunchtime run, with a few observations.
The park is overrun with adolescent ducks, about ready to head south for their first winter, the squirrels are all quite fat. The birds are slower than usual, too; I think they're putting on weight (insofar as creatures made mostly of feather and air are able to).
Discovery of the day: You can run under the Clarence Darrow Bridge (on the west side of the lagoon). Odd to realize that you've been in a place for years before finding something like this.
I've been running as a second (or sometimes only) workout for the past week and a half, as it's a quick way to get the heart rate up; more cardio fitness in less time than biking. (At least, that's the idea.) Did my "speedwork" on one of the bird trails, so as not to subject myself to embarrassment at how slow I am (instead, I'll talk about it on the internet so the whole world can laugh at me, with the exception of those--Hi, Mom!--who think I'm being charmingly self-deprecating). Realized this may have backfired when I was doing my recoveries at an even slower pace, with all the gasping and wheezing of maximum effort, in front of the golfers and fishermen.
Photo by Urbanrules, used, with thanks, under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license
The park is overrun with adolescent ducks, about ready to head south for their first winter, the squirrels are all quite fat. The birds are slower than usual, too; I think they're putting on weight (insofar as creatures made mostly of feather and air are able to).
Discovery of the day: You can run under the Clarence Darrow Bridge (on the west side of the lagoon). Odd to realize that you've been in a place for years before finding something like this.
I've been running as a second (or sometimes only) workout for the past week and a half, as it's a quick way to get the heart rate up; more cardio fitness in less time than biking. (At least, that's the idea.) Did my "speedwork" on one of the bird trails, so as not to subject myself to embarrassment at how slow I am (instead, I'll talk about it on the internet so the whole world can laugh at me, with the exception of those--Hi, Mom!--who think I'm being charmingly self-deprecating). Realized this may have backfired when I was doing my recoveries at an even slower pace, with all the gasping and wheezing of maximum effort, in front of the golfers and fishermen.
Photo by Urbanrules, used, with thanks, under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license
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