March 18

Most successful businessmen, in my observation, are "Social Darwinists" even if they have no familiarity with the concept; it's their way of justifying their place in the scheme of things, and the actions they take to get there and stay there. So every now and then it is helpful to be reminded what a crock Social Darwinism is:

Although....moral objections are clearly relevant, the most devastating counterargument to the Cachet of the Cutthroat is that it is simply wrong....Over time, the strongest and most productive individuals, communities, and nations all tend to be especially rich in these supposedly soft-hearted characteristics, while the most cutthroat societies collapse in a state of corruption and acrimony–their "winners" ultimately hoisted on their own petards.

http://www.democracyjournal.org/j_wes_ulm_social_darwinism.html

These days, I often think of the famous Ferris wheel scene in The Third Man, in which Harry Lime looks down at the amusement park crowd and explains to Holly Martins how things really work:

Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare?

Our current overlords are spending almost all their time calculating how many dots they can afford to spare -- and it is a lot of dots.

David Cairns, with his usual eye for the hidden gem, has found a 1958 French drama about the slave trade, Tamango, made by blacklisted American director John Berry and pairing Curt Jurgens and Dorothy Dandridge in a power-imbalanced inter-racial "romance":

http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/1562

Steve Donoghue celebrates the literally incomparable 18th century poet Christopher Smart, who among much else wrote my cat Claire's favorite poem, "For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry" (part of the much longer Jubilate Agno):

http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/stevereads/2010/03/penguins-on-parade-christopher-smart/

Robert Pinsky agrees with Claire as to the poem's quality:

http://www.slate.com/id/2231535/

Moving ahead some decades in English poetry, here are ten good books about Percy Bysshe Shelley:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/oct/17/top10s.shelley

Displaying the proper orneriness of all true poets, the PoemShape blog asks of "leagues, guilds, associations, societies," educational institutions, MFA programs -- What's in it for me? Not much, is the fear:

http://poemshape.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/poetry/

The legend of Kaspar Hauser, having inspired storytellers and film-makers for centuries now, is to be the subject of a new opera by Scottish composer Rory Boyle:

http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/stage-visual-arts/shedding-light-on-the-dark-1.1013849

Ambroise Thomas's old opera Hamlet is having its first revival at the Met in 113 years, showing off the prowess of baritone Simon Keenlyside:

The opera is also a star vehicle for the right baritone in this punishing title role. Simon Keenlyside, the Ralph Fiennes of baritones, was the acclaimed Hamlet when this production was introduced, and he dominated the evening here. His singing was an uncanny amalgam, at once elegant and wrenching, intelligent and fitful. Handsome, haunted and prone to fidgety spasms that convey Hamlet’s seething anger and paralyzing indecision, Mr. Keenlyside embodied the character in every moment, and you could not take your eyes off him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/arts/music/18hamlet.html

Designer Julian Montague has come up with a mesmerizing series of book designs for an imaginary Sixties-vintage Penguin paperback series "concerned with the study of invertebrates and other animals as they relate to architecture and psychology":

http://ajourneyroundmyskull.blogspot.com/2010/03/wildlife-incursions-into-modern-cover.html

A new actual book on insects, Hugh Raffles's Insectopedia, sounds fascinating:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/science/16scibks.html

One of Raffles's themes seems to be the influence of the natural world on artists, which is also visible in the paintings of Alberto Di Fabio on display at the Gagosian Gallery in New York:

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=36912

http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-03-18_alberto-di-fabio/

Among notables born on this date are poets Wilfred Owen and Stephane Mallarme, German dramatist Christian Friedrich Hebbel, novelists Richard Condon and John Updike, President Grover Cleveland, editor George Plimpton, Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, composers Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Gian Francesco Malipiero (Italy), theater composer John Kander, French film directors Rene Clement and Luc Besson, Alice in Chains member Jerry Cantrell, country singer Charley Pride, guitarist Bill Frisell, jazz saxophonist Courtney Pine, and actors Edward Everett Horton, Robert Donat, Queen Latifah, Peter Graves, Jack Warden, and Brad Dourif. One of the saddest clips on YouTube (but beautiful, too) is of Jerry Cantrell and a wasting Layne Staley harmonizing on "Got Me Wrong" on MTV Unplugged in 1996, one of their last appearances together before Staley succumbed completely to his heroin addiction (dying finally in 2002) :



Words from Staley's last interview are heartrending:

I'm not using drugs to get high like many people think. I know I made a big mistake when I started using this shit. It's a very difficult thing to explain. My liver is not functioning, and I'm throwing up all the time and shitting my pants. The pain is more than you can handle. It's the worst pain in the world. Dope sick hurts the entire body.