Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Sunday

Alex Massie

Tales of the Booker

From our UK edition

The Guardian, bless it, has a super feature asking a judge from each of the Booker Prize's 40(!) years to recall their experiences as a member of the panel. It's a terrific read and well worth your time. (One surprise, to me at least, the amount of love shown JG Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur). Anyway, some highlights to encourage you to read the whole thing: 1969, Frank Kermode:Getting through the 60 was made easier by our not daring to take on Dame Rebecca [West]. "Miss Murdoch writes good and bad novels in alternate years," she said. "This is a bad year." Muriel Spark: "clever but too playful." And out they went.1974, Ion Trewin:We were three judges - AS Byatt, Elizabeth Jane Howard and me.

Alex Massie

You’re ever Alone with a Strand (or a government consultation)

From our UK edition

What a shower. From Simon Clark's Taking Liberties blog, comes this unsurprising element of the government's latest consultation on smoking: "Question 12: Do you believe that more should be done by the Government to reduce exposure to secondhand smoke within private dwellings or in vehicles used primarily for private purposes? If so, what do you think could be done?" This is, I assume, a consultation that only applies to England but doubtless there's something just as depressing and invasive being planned in Scotland too. The sad thing, of course, is that the Tories will be little, if at all, better. It's enough to make one consider moving to the Matanuska-Susitna Valley...

Saturday

Alex Massie

Biden Brings It

From our UK edition

Joe Biden is good and Conor Friedersdorf is right: "Victories won on style are pyrrhic for political parties, and poison for a nation. Because sooner or later, substance always matters."This is true. The Palin Punt is, in some ways, outrageous. In others it's designed to appeal to a somewhat adolescent view of politics. That's not necessarily the worst thing in the world; but nor is it enough. I understand why they want to hide Palin away for a week, so she can hit the books. But sooner or later she's gotta come out.

Alex Massie

Great Unfinished Novels

From our UK edition

Via Clive Davis, the Washington Post offers a list of five great unfinished novels. As you might expect The Man Without Qualities and The Last Tycoon are among those who make the cut. One that's missing: the novel that was shaping up to be Robert Louis Stevenson's masterpiece, Weir of Hermiston. What other novels should be on the list? Second question: which unfinished novels were better left that way? That is to say, which, had they been completed, would be the most painful or distressing to read? One that leaps to mind: Raymond Chandler's Poodle Springs. Chandler had only written four chapters when he died and technically, Robert Parker finished it or him.

Friday

Alex Massie

Sic Transit Gloria McCain

From our UK edition

Sad, really. That was my immediate melancholy reaction to John McCain's speech to the Republican convention in St Paul. This was not your daddy's John McCain; heck it weren't even the John McCain of 2000. McCain, I'm afraid, seemed a wee old man up there and his delivery - never a strong suit - was even worse than usual. unwittingly, no doubt, it gave the impression that his heart wasn't really in it. He seemed flat and oddly uninterested. Though McCain talked about the need to fix Washington his essential message that We messed it up, so it's our responsibility to clean it up may not be quite what voters want to hear when they have the alternative of selecting a party that hasn't been in power for the past eight years.

Alex Massie

McCain and Churchill

From our UK edition

In the comments to the previous post, Toby writes, astutely: As with Churchill, he [McCain] hankers after the Empire he knew in his youth. He feels uneasy about the falloff of his country from former greatness. But he is now closer to the Churchill of 1950 than 1940, and the American people are more in the mood the British electorate were in 1945. Dang, I wish I had thought to write that. It's true that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't over, but one senses that the public has tired of them and wishes they were and that, as in 1945, there's a thirst for a new beginning. Obama's task is to meet exhaustion with optimism.

Alex Massie

Honour amongst plotters

From our UK edition

Meanwhile, back in Blighty, former Home Secretary Charles Clarke says Gordon Brown is toast and the PM should "stand down with honour". Just what Labour needed as the conference season looms! Iain Martin's column in the Telegraph today is an entertaining survey of the current, hapless state of the Labour Party: adrift on the high seas, all faith in the skipper lost, but no idea how to organise a mutiny, let alone brave the consequences of such an insurrection: In their plotting, the PM's internal enemies have adopted one of their target's worst traits: procrastination. If Brown declines the opportunity to resign with honour, then Clarke promises that "we" - a group presumed to include former cabinet ministers such as Alan Milburn and Stephen Byers - will take action as yet unspecified.

Alex Massie

Cowgirl Sarah

From our UK edition

Virginia Postrel recalls visiting the National Cowgirl Museum and seeing an aspect of American history that helps explain Sarah Palin's appeal: The Cowgirl Museum showcased women of no-nonsense character, pioneer (and pioneering) achievement, physical daring, and unapologetic femininity. Full of inspiring role models, the museum presented a piece of feminist history that gets left out of the city-oriented accounts most of us learn...This all came back to me when I heard Sarah Palin's convention speech and thought about how so many smart--but parochially "cosmopolitan"--miss the enormous appeal of her persona. She may have wrangled fish rather than cattle, but she shares the cowgirl tradition. I think this both smart and, more usefully, right.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Hurricane Sarah

From our UK edition

Andrew Sullivan concludes his live-blogging of Sarah Palin's speech with an exasperated sigh: "Reality television has become our politics." Perhaps. More likely, politics has been a reality TV show since before John Logie Baird invented the damn goggle box. Because, yes, you choose the candidate you like best or the one that has impressed you most after a long, painfully drawn out period of interrogation, speculation and hype. Just like on American Idol. That is the way it works. Talent matters, but it's not enough without personality, authenticity, charm, something else... Of course Andrew's so committed to Obama that it's unlikely Palin could have done anything to convince him she's not painfully out of her depth.

Alex Massie

British Newspapers: Best In the World, Guv

From our UK edition

God bless the Daily Mail.  How can you resist a story headlined: Are We All Going to Die Next Wednesday? Of course you remember the rule: all headlines written as questions invite  - nay, have - the answer "No". But, admit it, in this instance you might have a look and see what this imminent, cataclysmic threat is...

Alex Massie

Obama’s Legislative Record

From our UK edition

Andrew, as one would expect, is defending his candidate: It was a great line: "Listening to [Obama] speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or even a reform, not even in the state senate." I guess we should thank Matt Scully for inserting the word "major." You can go look at Obama's State Senate legislative record here. And his US Senate record here. At last count, sponsorship of 820 laws in Illinois, and authorship of 152 bills and co-sponsorship of 427 in Washington. Let's take "authorship" at face value. So, in three and half years in Washington Obama has "written" 152 new pieces of legislation? And supported 427 more?

Alex Massie

The 2012 Republican Primary

From our UK edition

A (Democratic) friend sends me this entertaining scenario: Muscatine, Iowa 2012 Gov. Palin:  We are going to change America, change it from higher taxes, higher crime, and a quagmire in Afghanistan. fmr. Gov. Romney:  I know how to make change. I'm running on 20 years of a record of change, of commitment to America and conservatism, Gov. Palin is running on the strength of a speech from four years ago.  Are we going to have change with results, or change with a teleprompter?  We know what that has gotten us. UPDATE: Mike Crowley received the same email and beat me to posting it by three minutes. Damn you Crowley, damn you.

Alex Massie

Home is Where the Heartland Is

From our UK edition

Somewhere, Mark Penn is having a terrible day. He must feel like leaning out his office window and screaming, "I told you so, you bloody fools! But would you listen? Would you? No, no you bloody well wouldn't..." Remember the memo he passed around the Clinton campaign on March 19th 2007? You should, because I rather think the Republican party has. To recap, Penn noted that Obama's campaign for the Democratic party's nomination was supported by four factors: 1. Authenticity, 2. Left/Right appeal, 3. [Being] Black,  4. New and fresh. That was true then and it remains true today. But Penn also saw four weaknesses: 1. Lack of experience, 2. Lack of American roots, 3. Removed from working man/woman, 4. Phony/Just another politician.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Babies Everywhere…

From our UK edition

More baby news: Rachida Dati, the 42 year old French Justice Minister, is, like Bristol Palin, pregnant. As Art Goldhammer says, however, they do things differently in France. Dati says she has no intention of revealing the father's identity and offers this marvellous comment: "I have a very complicated private life, and that's where I draw the line with the press. I won't have anything to say on that subject." Meanwhile, the Times' Charles Bremner has a pop at French hypocrisy vis a vis privacy and the coverage of the Sarkozy administration: The complete silence on the identify of Dati's partner looks more like old-fashioned deference to the governing class. There was another, related, example of the deference phenomenon today.

Alex Massie

What does Sarah Palin need to do tonight?

From our UK edition

One by-product of the Sarah Palin affair is that her speech tonight is vastly more eagerly anticipated than the address John McCain will give on Thursday night. As any Broadway producer can tell you, it's quite something when the understudy takes top billing from the headline star. That's not always a good thing. Then again, she's the new kid on the block, whereas McCain's been around for decades. No-one in their right mind queued up to see John Edwards in 2004 or Lieberman and Cheney in 2000 did they? Sarah Palin is already ahead of them, then... So what does she need to do tonight? For what little it's worth: The Three Cs: Confident, Comfortable and in Control.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied…

From our UK edition

Radley Balko is right. Faced with the prospect of a global financial meltdown (perhaps!) this is the sort of cheery story we need. If this doesn't restore your faith in the United States of America, what can? State attorneys say John LaVoie should be forever barred from the massage business because he ran a house of prostitution camouflaged as a church. But in his latest court argument, the Tucson man says he hired women at Angel's Heaven Relaxation Spa — near University Medical Center — not to sell sex but to comfort the afflicted through the religious act of "laying on of hands."... LaVoie is now citing constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion.

Alex Massie

“Third Place is…” Not Bad Actually.

From our UK edition

This week's New Yorker carries a profile of Alec Baldwin. The piece is written by Ian Parker and really, it's quite splendid. It begins: Alec Baldwin, who stars in “30 Rock,” the NBC sitcom that has revived his career and done nothing to lift his spirits, has the unbending, straight-armed gait of someone trying to prevent clothes from rubbing against sunburned skin. He is fifty years old, divorced, and lives alone in an old white farmhouse in the Hamptons and an apartment on Central Park West—feeling thwarted, if not quite persecuted.

Alex Massie

Brooks on McCain

From our UK edition

Is it just me, or has David Brooks written a column this morning explaining that John McCain is fundamentally, irredeemably ill-suited to being President of the United States? My worry about [Sarah] Palin is that she shares McCain’s primary weakness — that she has a tendency to substitute a moral philosophy for a political philosophy. There are some issues where the most important job is to rally the armies of decency against the armies of corruption: Confronting Putin, tackling earmarks and reforming the process of government. But most issues are not confrontations between virtue and vice. Most problems — the ones Barack Obama is sure to focus on like health care reform and economic anxiety — are the product of complex conditions.

Alex Massie

Cooking Bullwinkle

From our UK edition

In the light of all the Sarah Palin entertainment, Matt Yglesias asks a good question: how should you cook moose anyway? He links to some recipes (Moose nose in jelly??) some of which confirm my suspicion that you should treat moose as though it were venison or, even, at a pinch, wild boar. Slow and low is almost certainly the way to go. So I'd hazard that this would be a pretty good moose feast: Marinade your hunk of moosemeat (leg? Loin? Does it matter?) for at least 24 hours in a bottle of country red wine, with plenty of garlic, juniper berries, salt, pepper, thyme, marjoram, bayleaves etc. Rosemary would work fine too. Basically any combination of strong herbs.

Alex Massie

Star Quality

From our UK edition

So the Republican convention gets back on track tonight though not quite as initially planned. George W Bush for instance will address the convention via satellite, not in person. One thing that has changed since 2004: back then it was the GOP convention that had star quality. In addition to the President, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger highlighted a convention that dwarfed anything the Democrats could offer. This time around? Not so much. Who else is speaking tonight? Fred Dalton Thompson and Joe Lieberman. Hold me back! Whatever one may say abut Lieberman - and there's lots one could, little of it polite - when it comes to speaking he's no Zell Miller. And Thompson? A man so lethargic  he couldn't inject any life into his own campaign, let alone McCain's.