Is math the worst? (and if it is, whose fault is it?)

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A student asked me on the AP Lit discord:

 hey mr jepson, do you think the study of literature has any of these problems?

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I wrote kind of a lot (for discord) in response, so I thought I’d share it with a second audience:

Hoo. I have a LOT to say about this.

For one, when you’re in the academy, no matter your field, you’re reaching levels of specialization no one else has reached. That’s literally what’s meant by a PhD in the 21st century.

But as lonely as specialization can be, I suspect he’s right that it’s a bit worse in math.

But! It’s also true that that’s part of what attracts people to pure math in the first place. To think a thought no one has every thought before? That’s oxygen, baby.

HOWEVER, in the old days of pure math, you could theorize brilliant things and then the next generation(s) of students would make the proofs. That’s not how it works anymore.

Now the genius work and the grunt work have to be done by the same person.

Is that better or worse? I don’t know.

I also agree that a lot of math teaching is all about memorizing crap and not actually understanding math.

We’re trying to get you to pass tests, not to really truly do math.

He mentioned this but the name of measurements replacing the goal has a fun name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart’s_law

This drives me CRAZY in education. So much of what we do is stupid testing in order to give you grades and I hate it.

I wasn’t joking when I said that I’ve observed that the essais* do more to make you (my students) better writers than just about anything else I do. The only things that might do more is when I get to sit down wit someone at lunch and work one-on-one with them on their writing. Even then, you’ll learn more if we, say, go over your college-application essays than, say, your Two Gentlemen essays.

Most of the “school” stuff we do is not where you will do most of your learning.

But most English teachers get trapped in the same morass that math teachers do: teaching little tricks and techniques so we can test you and show you “learned” something rather than helping you find the joy or writing or mathing.

How terrible! The joy of the subject matter should be our main goal!

But how do I grade joy? Can’t do it. So 60% of our grade is stuff that thrown against some rubric the College Board tested over a decade and says is proof you’re smart.

Such a dumb system.

So, to get back to your question, @[asker], sadly, it is worse in math. But that because even with back English classes, there’s a better chance people will escape into adulthood with a love of story and sound than with a love of sum and superset.

Which is a tragedy because every single person should be able to enjoy the beauty and pleasure of a nice piece of math, same as they can with a nice piece of Robert Frost.

(If you’re one of the people who’s feels you can’t enjoy math, I think these books are a lovely reintroduction to what makes math fun and pretty. Ironic, given the state of the drawings. Here’s book one: https://bookshop.org/a/8076/9780316509046)

(Or at the library: https://ccclib.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S154C1765792)

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* essai — The essai (pronounced incorrectly) is an assignment I give almost every week. (We write every week but sometimes it’s an AP-style essay.) It’s inspired by Montaigne and his original concept of just trying stuff out. Writing without too much worry worry about what you’re doing. Here’s the assignment. Write for forty minutes without stopping. You do that, you get 100%. I give a prompt but you don’t have to follow it. But my prompts are so interesting you’re genuinely interested to discover what you’re going to write. Students are, on average, more proud of their essais than of anything else. And they write amazing things. They are easily the best reading I get to do as part of my job. Granted, these are advanced students on the cusp of adulthood but imagine how other students could do who haven’t been bullied into believing crap like the five-paragraph essay is “writing.”

A theological argument against A.I. as it now exists

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Substack tells me that my AI/tithing post is Thubstack’s most popular. As twice the other week I was approached by friends about it, I guess that must be true. People do not often approach me about the stuff I throw on the internet.

Anyway, the second fellow wanted to tell me that his corporate overloads are demanding that he and his colleagues figure out how to integrate AI into their jobs. But! so far! it’s only slowing them down and making their jobs harder. (This seems to be true for everyone in all fields—even for coders, the people AI can supposedly best assist.) By the way, this fellow doesn’t work for an AI company. So the bossmen have been paying money with the wild belief that, contrary to all evidence, AI will make them more money than they’re spending on it. Not likely, but the good news is: all that money may help one lucky AI company keep their lights on a little bit longer. I’m a big fan of charitable giving.

As for the first fellow who approached me, his career is deeply entwined with AI. It’s not an exaggeration to say that AI as currently constituted may not have happened without his genius. And he is a genius. Make no mistake. But, outside Victor Frankenstein (really, only outside the book version of Victor Frankenstein), creators are compelled defend the worthiness of their creations. And that’s what he wanted to do in response to my post.

Interestingly, in his email, he rhetorically equated AI with Mormonism. That is:

me : mormonism : : him : ai

Which feels telling in retrospect, even though his questions were all about where the artificial fits within a Mormon worldview—after all, is not all truth part of one great whole?—the assumption being, I think, that if it is all one great whole, then “artificial” becomes an artificial category. If God can work through human hands, why not through human tools? These are reasonable questions and made me feel I should get a bit more precise as to what I think the problems with AI are.

In my previous article, I argued that anything worth doing is worth doing oneself. Tools may assist a person in doing a thing, sure, but people seem attracted to AIs because they imagine they will allow them to avoid doing the thing. Which, I suppose, makes their argument simply that those things are not worth doing. Honestly, this is how I feel about much assigned schoolwork and probably lots of corporate work as well. But maybe the better solution is just do not do those things? Don’t make kids write a paper that’s boring! Boom!

Anyway, I’ve since found something the Church is using AI for that I find reasonable. If you go to FamilySearch now, on many of the deceaseds’ pages, you’ll find something like this:

It’s adequate and simple enough that it’s unlikely to get anything important wrong. Plus, it’s easy to replace with something you yourself have written should you be so inclined. I don’t know how much they’re spending on this (or how much the contracted AI company is losing regardless), but maybe this is worth doing? It seems reasonable, anyway, so long as it doesn’t prevent people in North Carolina from drinking water. It’s not really offering anything you couldn’t discover with another click or two and twenty seconds of reading, but okay.

Another “reasonable” use I saw at church recently was related to our ward’s upcoming 100-year anniversary. As part of that, we’re writing a history and someone on the committee inputted forty-years of ward newsletters into ChatGPT and let it write a couple chapters. These things were terribly written: filled with cliches, poor editorial decisions, factual errors, the sorts of repetitive writing seventh graders use to reach a pagecount, etc. But it was a start. Since then, members of the ward have put in…I would guess well over two hundred hours rewriting it (including research, deletions, additions, corrections, smoothings, and so on). It was helpful to have that awful beginning to get us started, but it did not save us time in the long run. It’s a current debate whether as to it was actually worth doing at all. Personally, I suspect we wouldn’t have met our deadline if we weren’t rewriting a draft that appalled us. Which is a fun irony as using AI also took us more total hours. Ha ha ha. Procrastination strikes again!

My friend (the first fellow) also brought up one of his favorite metaphors that he’s been using for over a decade now:

“Is a beaver dam artificial?”

I suppose that depends on how you define “artificial” which I am (obviously) avoiding, but I love the comparison of an LLM to a beaver dam because that comparison highlights exactly what is problematic about LLMs.

Which finally brings us adjacent to the promise of my title. So let’s pause our beaver-talk while I suggest a few examples of what’s so bad, theologically, with AIs. The most terrifying things that I’m witnessing include:

• The whole point of life on Earth from a Mormon point of view is to learn by exercising agency. What I witness pretty much every single time I hear “ChatGPT” in a sentence is someone surrendering their agency. They’ve surrendered an opportunity to think a thought or to create something new, then been impressed by (see next bullet point).

• LLMs are, necessarily, dedicated to the averagization of human culture. They’re pattern machines that model themselves after extant patterns. While you can throw tweaks into their behaviors, they work by matching what’s come before. That’s why they can only be as good as the data that is (stolen and) fed to them. It’s why they need the entire internet to sound smarter than one of Janelle Shane’s bots. It takes a great deal of people (and some fancy programming) to make AI sound smart. But even then, only when you don’t look closely. Or when you yourself (see next bullet point).

• AI products are accelerating the enshittification of civilization. You can find reasonable/angry people on YouTube ranting about this, but we all know it’s true. Deepfakes don’t make civilization better. Grok’s political opinions don’t increase the health of democracy. Salt substitutes aren’t making people healthier.

Another friend of mine recently wrote this:

…my primary belief [is] that human identity and consciousness consists of attention and intention.

Attention and Intention are at the core of almost every metaphysical practice. Religious ritual, magical practice, meditation, journaling, whatever you might have as “that thing that moves you beyond the basic existence of production and consumption.”...

The interplay of attention and intention is to me why the doomscrolling-algorithm practice is demonic and destructive. Forget the neurological aspect of it, it’s an active practice in de-soulment. You are turning off all intention. Doomscrolling is nihilistic in that it gives up all will and forfeits it to the ba’algorithm.

There is no attention to be paid here—because attention implies agency and doomscrolling is not something we (and I’m including myself here purposefully) actively choose....

There is no intention to be made here—because intention implies a purpose or something that is gained either at the end or through the medium of the activity. The end of a doomscrolling session is never because you have reached some level of satisfaction but because some other thing beckons you.

This is as simple and coherent an explanation as could be made. LLMs are designed to accelerate the ba’algorithm’s work. While pattern machines are already proving helpful at letting oncologists get through more images (good) and pick nonwhite people out of a crowd (not good), there are also some reasonable arguments for human interaction, for instance, AI’s potential to help the lonely, it may also accelerate our disenfranchisement with ourselves as lovers, as parents, as members of the entire human project. (I mean—it definitely will if there’s money in it. Capitalism isn’t built to care about the future.)

And this brings us back to beavers.

While its true that the Luddites hated machines that took away their ability to do a craft (although it was more complicated than that), ultimately most human-invented tools have ultimately provided more opportunities for thinking and enrichment; LLMs, as currently used, persuade us not to do such things. Or, rather, it allows people to pretend they’re thinking and creating when in fact they are not. It allows people to lie to themselves.

But what do beaver dams do? Well, they do more than just give beavers a place to raise baby beavers.

• Beaver ponds create wetlands which are among the most biologically productive ecosystems in the world, An entire food chain is created in a beaver pond. Beaver ponds become magnets for a rich variety of wildlife. From important game species like wood duck, mink and otter, to vulnerable anadromous fish like rainbow smelt, steelhead and salmon, biodiversity thrives due to beaver ponds. Beaver dams also protect downstream spawning areas from sedimentation, and create cool, deep pools which increase salmon and trout populations.

Let’s pause here for a moment to point out that what beaver dams are doing are increasing the potential for agency—they’re creating an ecosystem that allows duck and mink and otter and smelt and steelhead and salmon to do their thing. To have offspring after their kind. To have joy. But sorry for interrupting.

• When beavers and their dams are present, 160 percent more open water is available in times of drought.

• Beaver ponds act as a natural filter system, helping to improve water quality by trapping sediment and pollutants before they reach larger waterways. These wetlands store large amounts of carbon dioxide which helps to reduce global warming.

• Beavers regulate water flow, preventing sudden floods.

• Beaver ponds store groundwater.

• Beaver ponds reduce erosion and sedimentation that typically damage culverts, bridges, and stormwater systems.

• A lack of beavers results in increased intensity of drought and wildfires in the west as fires spread rapidly across parched landscapes.

In other words, beavers’ dams do a great deal of work, they do a great deal of good. In short, they are what AI boosters claim AI is / will be rather than what AI has proven to be so far. It’s an old joke (and gives the robots too much credit), but SMBC probably told it best:

(Nothing against plumbers.)

Look. Saying you have emails ChatGPT can write is admitting your job consists of emails that do not need to be written and do not need to be read. I’m not sure that’s how we should live our lives anyway. Perhaps—just perhaps—what these LLMs are revealing is that much of the world capitalism has built us is already contrary to a life well lived. Perhaps we are discovering that tasks we have called important are just glorified averaging. Perhaps we have spent hours and hours and hours engaged in tasks that never needed to be done.

Students who cheat, who use a machine rather than writing their own work? Perhaps that’s because their human instincts correctly recognized the assigned work wasn’t worth their time. (Or perhaps they’ve been fooled into believing it’s not worth doing which may be worse.) Teachers using AI to make assignments that are a waste of students’ time are committing a sin orders of magnitudes greater.

I go on accreditation teams to examine schools. The accreditation agency recognizes that much of what they have us do is a waste of time. How do I know this? Because they tell us to write our report by feeding the schools report into AI. Which implies they assume schools are using AI to make those reports and suggests they use AI to read our reports. If no human needs to be involved, it ain’t worth doing.

My teams so far have eschewed AI and we thus actually get to know the schools rather than simply appearing as if we do.

Of course, don’t take my word for it. Even OpenAI, which is constantly making absurdly optimistic predictions about AI, has said LLM hallucinations are a mathematical certainty. In other words, AI producing bad outcomes (lies?) is, according to OpenAI itself, a permanent state of affairs.

But it’s not just that LLMs are liars from the beginning. There’s also no question that some people absolutely and openly see LLMs as a means of controlling those who must be controlled. Which is all of us. Because billionaires are a rounding error.

(Had to give them a single pixel because otherwise they wouldn’t exist. Billionaires did not earn their pixel.)

It might seem I’ve gone far astray from my original promise to discuss the theological implications of AI. But I haven’t.

In a moment where Nvidia is trading chips for OpenAI stock, thus either bleeding OpenAI for whatever VC they have left or tying themselves to the ship about to sink in hopes that will prevent it from sinking—in a moment where our entire economy is “not in a recession” entirely thanks to spending on AI—in this moment, in other words, we need to reassert our humanity. Each of us needs to assert our humanity as individuals, and we need to assert belief in the actual true real imaginable humanity of everyone else as well.

Part of what AI salesmen try to tell us is that AI will increase human dignity. Instead of doing menial tasks, we’ll be free to accomplish great things. Each of us! Individually!

But instead, so far at least, they’ve offered soma. They’ve offered products that would remove our intention. They’ve offered products that would devour our attention. They‘ve offered products that would slowly remove our ability to create, our capacity to choose, our drive to be agents unto ourselves.

And as a Latter-day Saint?

Such is the purpose of life, baby. To create—to intentionally create and choose and become. To do what we can to allow others their dignity as they too create and choose and become. That’s why we’re here. That’s why God put us here. That’s what it’s all about.

That is my theology.

And even before we get to how this system is flooding more and more of our economy to fewer and fewer of our people, it’s why I can’t boost AI.

Prop 50: measuring morality in a time of immorality

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Since long before I told people to vote yes on Prop 11 and yes on Prop 20 and no on Prop 27, I’ve been an advocate of better and more fairly solving democracy’s eternal problem of politicians choosing their voters rather than voters choosing their politicians.

(I’d like to link to a famously good Washington Post article on gerrymandering [I did post the article’s image below] in case if you’re not up on the scuttlebutt, but my WaPo account expired today. I canceled a couple weeks ago because I had enough with billionaire manipulation of its editorial pages. Still a lot of good reporting happening there, but I decided my meager journalism budget should be spent elsewhere. I want to go local, but the San Francisco Chronicle, the best option, is significantly more expensive than what I’d been spending. Anyway. Instead I’ll link to this hour of radio that gives a solid example of how awful things can get.)

Anyway, given my history as an outspoken advocate for fairly drawn lines, you’d think I’d have a clear argument against Prop 50. If you haven’t been paying attention to the intersection of national and California politics, here’s the official description:

Hhhhhh.

So Texas’s legislature, under the direction of our pathetic would-be-dictator of a president, redistricted to let Texas send fewer Democrats to Congress in 2026 in hopes of avoiding the expected backlash against Republicans come midterms. It’s not the only Republican-run state doing this, but Texas is the biggest. And Texas had more Biden voters in 2024 than any other state in the nation (save one), so diluting the political power all those blue voters could make a huge difference nationally, when it comes to preserving a Republican majority in the House of Representatives.

But there’s that save one I mentioned above: California. The only state that also had more Trump voters than Texas. And, thus, California has the power to gerrymander its Republicans with every degree of antidemocratic harshness that Texas is doing to its Democrats.

(Were every state to do this to the fullest extent, the Democrats would likely win the battle of the cheaters, as Democratic-run states have the largest population. Repubs would hold onto their nobody-lives-there advantage baked into the Constitution [as currently written], but it would be an ugly and stupid fight regardless, one that no one could win.)

But unlike Texas, California legislators do not have the power to play dirty without the permission of voters. Which is why we got a flier this week featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger pleading with us to vote no by reminding us of a well established truth: two wrongs do not make a right.

I agree.

Yet, Prop 50 would expire in 2030, after which we’d go back to our nonpartisan line-drawing committee.

In the meantime, perhaps we Californios could heroically prevent an unmoored Republican Party from tossing a quarter-millennium of gradual democratic improvement into the ash heap of history. In other words, two wrongs, even if they don’t make a right, at least may not allow the first wrong to win the day unchallenged.

Since I last wrote about this topic, a lot of math has gone into improving the problem of proper line-drawing (not that the Supreme Court cares). With some real work, we could make things better. (Let me link to this again.) But right now, we have a minority party led by a maniac deadset on destroying what makes America great. And the opposition party is floundering in foolishness—or at least they certainly look foolish.

We need healthy parties that engage in an intentional way. I’m not sure how we fix this. Maximizing partisan gerrymandering is clearly a stop-the-bleeding sort of fix (at best) and not a legitimate attempt at healing America.

So. Should Californians vote for Prop 50?

I honestly, genuinely do not know.

I’ve been intending to write this essay for a while, but I was hoping I would figure out the answer first. Voting has now begun and I still do not know. Let’s reason together, shall we?

● The Republican Party is engaging in dirty politics, including gerrymandering at a national level. Democrats doing the same where they can does get us closer to a proper distribution of representation throughout the nation as a whole.

● Just because the other guys are engaging in immoral actions does not justify the normalization of immorality. An eye for an eye was done away with by higher law long ago. The only path toward righteousness is righteousness, and we cannot let evil persuade us to sacrifice our moral standards in the fight against evil. That will only accelerate evil’s spread, and acceleration of evil will never bring greatness to a nation.

● This is a crisis moment. With one party actively engaged in dismantling the rule of law, siccing armed mercenaries upon American citizens, discarding legal precedent, etc etc etc, all while controlling all three branches of government? Whatever hailmary can be thrown is surely worth throwing.

● While Prop 50 is set to expire in 2030, there will always be another crisis. If we become accustomed to compromising moral standards for short-term victories, those standards will gradually dissolve until we do not stand for anything.

● While this temporary change will help approximate a proper balance between parties at the national level, many Californians will, at their local level, have their voices diluted. The influx of Democratic representation at the expense of Republican voters will—even if for only five years—disenfranchise many Californians in exactly the same way Democrats are accusing the other side of. Again, two wrongs are two wrongs.

● Although hyperbole is everywhere, nothing in my lifetime matches the damage to the American experiment being inflicted by Trump and his cronies. It’s when things are most dangerous that the heaviest tools must be employed.

● Hyperbole is right. Although the president and attorney general and many of the loudest Republicans may broadcast an intense disinterest in the rule of law, most Americans on both sides of the divide believe in America. They doubt the good intentions of the other side, sure, but they still believe in Constitutional rule themselves. Like Indiana Jones, maybe we just need a little faith to take the step to give the other side a chance.

● Are you kidding? Are you following the news out of Texas?

● So we should just vote to break the democratic system we’re so proud of out of . . . revenge?

● No. To save it.

We could just say that excuses are the last resort of the guilty and take the high road. Or we could embrace the exceptionalism of this moment and fight gerrymandering with gerrymandering. Both are compelling arguments.

I had assumed that writing this post would solve the mystery of how to vote. I’m disappointed that is not yet true.

I think I have decided that a NO vote is the morally correct option. But just as World War II was a good war, maybe this is when we (metaphorically! metaphorically!) pick up our muskets and go to war? I don’t know.

I wish I could read the future.

How are you voting / would you vote were you in California?

Please explain your answer. I want to understand.

When you bookend with original grace and socialist revolution, things are going okay.

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081) Original Grace by Adam Miller, finished September 7

This was a serendipitously confluent book to follow Meritocracy Mingled with Scripture. Both preach a similar love-your-neighbor gospel from the perspective of how God would manifest his love to us. They fit together nicely even though their rhetorical positions are deeply different.

Anyway, Adam Miller posits that we of the Restoration, for all our verbal rejection of Original Sin, still think and behave as if sin is the driving engine of life on earth and the source of our suffering. Then he suggests imagining what it would be like if we felt that grace was the engine of life—but not, of course, the source of our suffering. What would such look like in our lives if that's what we truly believed?

In the process, among other feats, he redefines justice as God's means of providing grace according to his law. And sin as a failed relationship to grace. When we fail to accept God's grace, that is sin. When we fail to provide grace to others when we see they are in need, that is sin.

Anyway, the thinking in the book is great, as is its use of analogy. Describing ongoing creation in terms of the spreading seafloor? Beautiful.

What I had no idea of coming into the book is how deeply Miller would rely on his father's telling of his own stories to provide a grounded structure for what could be untethered theology. Miller's father spent the final, painful years of his life sending long biographical and testimonial texts to his progeny and Miller relies on them to explain our relationship to God. It's quite a wonderful thing.

And all this in just 110 pages! 

two weeks

 

082) The Skull Beneath the Skin by P.D. James, finished September 9

P.D. James has been on my to-do list for quite a while, but if you'd asked me to guess what I'd read first, I would have said Children of Men or Death Comes to Pemberley as we own both and I'm intrigued by both's premises. But this one turned up for free somewhere and I mean, come on.

 

 Getcherself t'Etsy and buy this copy so you can open the front cover and see what that punchcut reveals.

Anyway, I've heard good things about James and I am happy I've finally given her a chance. Her work's a fancy mix of straight genre pleasures and "literary" thinking. The early chapters alternate povs like normal thrillering. In fact, most of the surface details feel like the cliches of the last 50 years of mystery and thriller. Which is why I didn't see how any of the characters could be the murderer without cheating. As we'd spent time inside everyone's head, it felt like she'd painted herself into a corner. But revealing that some core clues had in fact been red herrings, and having new information occur after the multiple-povs era had come to a close (and having that information be deeply impactful) allowed her to present a lot of twists and resolutions a) without cheating and b) alongside indirect commentary on society's true ills.

I wouldn't call it a masterpiece of modern literature or anything but it's surely a tour de force of what can be done withing the traditionalist restraints of a given genre. It was, in fact, pretty great.

I'm sad to see this was this detective's last outing. 

a year more or less (perhaps quite a bit more or less) 

 

083) Sock Monkey Treasury by Tony Millionaire, finished September 11

Tony Millionaire's work is so wonderful and strange. He writes wonderful things for children and drunken things for adults and then you have a collection like this which manages to be all these things and more, sometimes all at once.

He is one of American comics' great poets. A symphonist of violence and nonsense. A beacon of hope in a world gone mad. 

Sometimes our world feels no more mad than Uncle Gabby's. And I would be happy to have him name the angel at the edge of the world.

two or three days 

 

084) The Sleepover by Michael Regina, finished September 16

This is a surprisingly scary little middle-reader comic that manages to kill its monster and redeem her too.

Perhaps weirdly, it reminded me of My Best Friend's Exorcism.

Recommended! 

an evening 

 

085) The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare, finished September 23

We watched it a couple weekends ago, now I've read it solo, and I'm about to read it two more times with classes.

It's Shakespeare season! 

friday monday tuesday 

086 & 087) The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare, finished September 29

I always worry but it's always fun to read Shakespeare in class. Even a second-tier play? Absolutely. giving kids permission to notice Shakespeare's weak spots is empowering and, done correctly, only sets them up to look forward to more in the future.

four school days

 

088) The Iron Heel by Jack London, finished October 1 

The Iron Heel is "a truer prophecy than either Brave New World or The Shape of Things to Come," said George Orwell, and it's easy to see how this novel may have influenced Nineteen Eighty-four. It essentially tracks the early hears in which Big Brother (the Iron Heel) take over society, destroying much in their path, and setting up the systems of an Inner Party, Outer Party and the meaningless proles. The result of The Iron Heel, as recognized by the book itself, is centuries of Nineteen Eighty-four. But the rhetorical voice of The Iron Heel and Nineteen Eighty-four's appendix both offer proof-positive that the Iron Heel (Big Brother) ultimately must fail.

I should say now that The Iron Heel is a thrilling read. It feels so relevant to 2025 that the simple plot is no barrier to rushing headlong through the pages in thrall. The description of income disparity is now. The description of institutions that see as their first duty the continuance certain economic benefits for certain portions of society is now. The frustration and anger is now. The inability of many who are doomed to recognize their doom is now.

There are some parts, naturally, where London guessed wrong. He almost made me a Marxist as his charismatic lead explained the theories, but it went off the rails just as Marxism went off the rails IRL. But we tend to forget how close to accurate it was. Violence did break out between labor and capital. The change of our economy from agrarian/rural to tech/service creates different outcomes that weren't so easy to see in 1908, but the mirror and warning are just as relevant and prescient. This book has aged well, in short. Sure it's been eclipsed by Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-four, but perhaps its time to put an American novel back in the conversation.

One wild example of how the book is now is the characters' discussion of the 1903 militia bill which allows the federal government to nationalize the state militias and turn them against the citizens of another state. Talk about a Trumpy idea.

The novel purports to be a manuscript written in the 1930s and covering the couple decades prior presented by a scholar 700 years in the future after the Brotherhood of Man brings about a socialist utopia. (One thing I admire about this book is it has optimistic dreams of a utopian future, but the path to utopia is paved in a dystopian pessimism; the contrast serves the aims well.) The future editor of the manuscript has voluminous footnotes, some of which were funny to me (did you know grub means food? fake means false???) and others which astonished me, such as this quotation from Abraham Lincoln:

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

Abraham Lincoln, ladies and gentlemen.

The book is filled—by both the manuscript's author and its editor—with quotations real and part of the fictional world. And, in one case, part of a poem London put in the novel in part with hopes that this would uncover the author's identity. (No luck.)

I'm now going to share two quotations reasonably construed as spoilers but which, together, demonstrate how well the book can unsettle a reader.

1__________________________________

The oligarchs...were going through a remarkable...development.... They were taught, and later they in turn taught, that what they were doing was right.... They looked upon themselves as wild-animal trainers, rulers of beasts. From beneath their feet rose always the subterranean rumbles of revolt. Violent death ever stalked in their midst; bomb and knife and bullet were looked upon as so many fangs of the roaring abysmal beast they must dominate if humanity were to persist. They were the saviours of humanity, and they regarded themselves as heroic and sacrificing laborers for the highest good. They, as a class, believed that they alone maintained civilization. It was their belief that if ever they weakened, the great beast would ingulf them and everything of beauty and wonder and joy and good in its cavernous and slime-dripping maw. Without them, anarchy would reign and humanity would drop backward into the primitive night out of which it had so painfully emerged.... In short, they alone, by their unremitting toil and sacrifice, stood between weak humanity and the all-devouring beast; and they believed it, firmly believed it. I cannot lay too great stress upon this high ethical righteousness of the whole oligarch class. This has been the strength of the Iron Heel.... [F]or the great majority of the religious, heaven and hell are incidental to right and wrong. Love of the right, desire for the right, unhappiness with anything less than the right.... [S]o with the Oligarchy. Prisons, banishment and degradation, honors and palaces and wonder-cities, are all incidental. The great driving force of the oligarchs is the belief that they are doing right. Never mind the exceptions, and never mind the oppression and injustice in which the Iron Heel was conceived. All is granted. The point is that the strength of the Oligarchy today lies in its satisfied conception of its own righteousness.

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The inner doors to the entrance were locked and bolted. We could not escape. The next moment the front of the column went by. It was not a column, but a mob, an awful river that filled the street, the people of the abyss, mad with drink and wrong, up at last and roaring for the blood of their masters. I had seen the people of the abyss before, gone through its ghettos, and thought I knew it; but I found that I was now looking on it for the first time. Dumb apathy had vanished. It was now dynamic—a fascinating spectacle of dread. It surged past my vision in concrete waves of wrath, snarling and growling, carnivorous, drunk with whiskey from pillaged warehouses, drunk with hatred, drunk with lust for blood—men, women, and children, in rags and tatters, dim ferocious intelligences with all the godlike blotted from their features and all the fiendlike stamped in, apes and tigers, anaemic consumptives and great hairy beasts of burden, wan faces from which vampire society had sucked the juice of life, bloated forms swollen with physical grossness and corruption, withered hags and death’s-heads bearded like patriarchs, festering youth and festering age, faces of fiends,crooked, twisted, misshapen monsters blasted with the ravages of disease and all the horrors of chronic innutrition—the refuse and the scum of life, a raging, screaming, screeching, demoniacal horde.

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Whhhoof!

Besides the fact that these are individually terrifying for distinct reasons, the way they fit together like pieces of a puzzle only heighten the total horror.

I occasionally think I want to start a collection of public-domain classics with an essay or three giving the text a strict Latter-day Saint reading and hoogolly but would this book be part of the series.

The socialists preach and atheistic gospel that, save missing God, sounds very much like what the Book of Mormon and Doctrine & Covenants teach about wealth and its distribution among the rich and the poor. That deserves serious consideration.

But then the Iron Heel and the socialists both get engaged in secret combinations—and what happens next? Hundreds of year of death, violence, and misery. 

Yeah. If there was money in it, I probably have twenty pages exploring this. I suppose I could try floating such an essay in Ships of Hagoth or Wayfare to see if there's interest. Would you be interested?

I should go through these writeups and see if I can re-identify others that would be part of the collections....

Anyway, I'd like to say more about things important (female narrator!) and trivial (Danites!), but when I started this journey I wrote one paragraph per book and I still recognize that as wisdom. 

perhaps as long as ten days

 

 

 

Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings!

001) Beowulf translated by Maria Dahvana Headley, finished January 1
002) Cthulhu Is Hard to Spell: Volume Three, finished January 1
003) Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (translated by Megan McDowell), finished January 8
004) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris, finished January 11
005) You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown, finished January 12
005) Into the Headwinds: Why Belief Has Always Been Hard—and Still Is by Terryl Givens and Nathaniel Givens, finished January 24
006) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: Book Two by Emil Ferris, finished January 25

Maybe we should just pretend this set begins and ends with Wednesday Addams

007) Chas. Addams Half-Baked Cookbook, finished January 29
008) Monica by Daniel Clowes, finished February 3
009) The Unexpurgated French Edition of Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland, finished February 19
010) Peach and the Isle of Monsters by Franco Aureliani and Agnes Garbowska, finished February 20
011) Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, finished February 28
012) Comic Poems edited by Peter Washington, finished March 7

Love, Beauty, and a complete lack of sasquatch 

013) Love that Dog by Sharon Creech, finished March 11
014) Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper, finished March 21
015) Antelope Spring by John Bennion, finished March 24
016) Shelley Frankenstein by Colleen Madden, finished March 28
017) Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew #21: Double Take, finished April 5
018) The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clark, finshed April 8
019) Rave by Jessica Campbell, finished April 13
020) The Creeps: A Deep Dark Fears Collection by Fran Krause, finished April 14

Do not ask what she does with the babies.

027) Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito, finished April 21
028) Somna: A Bedtime Story by Becky Cloonan and Tula Lotay, finished April 23
029) Shadow Life by Hiromi Goto and Ann Xu, finished April 24
030&031) The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, finished April 25
032) Raised by Ghosts by Briana Loewinsohn, finished April 26
033) Ephemera by Briana Loewinsohn, finished April 26

Brighter and brighter until we all get our heads lopped off 

034) Brighter and Brighter until the Perfect Day by Sharlee Mullins Glenn, finished April 27
035) Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett, finished May 3
036) The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, finished May 5
037) Equus by Peter Shaffer
038) Travesties by Tom Stoppard, finished May 8
039) The Art of Intimacy: The Space Between by Stacey D'Erasmo, finished May 10
040) A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt, finished May 16

Criticism & Comics

041) Arts and Inspiration: Mormon Perspectives, edited by Steven P. Sondrup, finished May 18
042) The Waiting by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, finished May 19
043) Odessa by Jonathan Hill, finished May 22
044) Barnstormers: A Ballad of Love and Murder by Tula Lotay and Scott Snyder, finished May 22
045) Bingo Baby, finished May 26 

Books on the Fourth of July

046) Final Cut by Charles Burns, finished May 28
047) Fever Beach by Carol Hiassen, finished June 12
048) How to Talk to Your Succulent by Zoe Persico, finished June 17
049) Poetry Comics from the Book of Hours by Bianca Stone, June 24
050) Night of Camp David by Fletcher Knebel, finished June 25
051) The Serial Killer's Son Takes a Wife by Michael Libling, finished July 3

An old friend makes some introductions (and more)

052) The 5th Generation by Dale Jay Dennis, finished July 7
053) To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, finished July 10
054) Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout, finished July 25
055) Meet Monster: The First Big Monster Book by Ellen Blanca and Ann Cook, illustrated by Quentin Blake, finished July 26
056) Last Pick by Jason Walz, finished July 29
057) Death Comes to Eastrepps by Francis Beeding, finished August 2

A lot of comics and then not Twain

058) Gilt Frame by Matt Kindt and Margie Kraft Kindt, finished August 2
059) Monkey Meat: The First Batch by Juni Ba, finished August 3
060) Abbott by Saladin Ahmed and Sami Kivelä and Jason Wordie, finished August 4
061) Mendel the Mess-Up by Terry LaBan, finished August 9
062) Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees by Patrick Horvath, finished August 9
063) James by Percival Everett, finished August 13

The last books read before school starts

064) Stranger Planet by Nathan W Pyle, finished August 13
065) Jumping Jenny by Anthony Berkeley, finished August 13
066) Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson, finished August 18

Two dozen is a reasonable number of eggs, too many donuts

067) Monte Cristo by Jordan Mechner and Mario Alberti, finished August 20
068) What We Don't Talk About by Charlot Kristensen, finished August 21
069) The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy (translated by Lynn Solotaroff), finished August 23
070) The Village Beyond the Mist by Sachiko Kashiwaba (translated by Avery Fischer Udagawa), finished August 23 
071) Meritocracy Mingled with Scripture by Justin Pack, finished August 24
072) God's Man: A Novel in Woodcuts by Lynd Ward, finished August 27
073) He Done Her Wrong: The Great American Novel and Not a Word in It—No Music, Too by Milt Gross, finished August 27
074) The City: A Vision in Woodcuts by Frans Masereel, finished August 27
075) The Invention of Sound by Chuck Palahniuk, finished August 28
076) Destiny: A Novel in Pictures by Otto Nückel, finished August 28
077) The Piano Lesson by August Wilson, finished August 29
078) Passionate Journey: A Vision in Woodcuts by Frans Masereel, finished August 30
079) Madman's Drum by Lynd Ward, finished August 30
080) Murder Mystery Mystery Murder by Ben Abbott, finished September 3 

PREVIOUS OTHER YEARS IN BOOKS

2007 = 2008 = 2009 = 2010 = 2011 = 2012 = 2013 = 2014 = 2015
2016 = 2017 = 2018 = 2019 = 2020 = 2021 = 2022 = 2023 = 2024

 

Do you remember? (the fun films we watched in september)

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I think it's safe to say that everything watched this month has a reasonable claim at being a classic or one sort or another. Some by any standard (Double Indemnity) and some by very . . . particular standards (Dick).

How would you rank them?

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Baby Face (1933)

This is the first film my son's watching for his film class during this his first year of college. And, may I say, interesting way to open the year? I'm interested to hear what the professor has to say tomorrow.

This is such a pre–Hays Code movie. Barbara Stanwyck is sleeping her way to the top, just as Nitzsche would want. I'm not quite sure how to interpret the ending, but I suppose it is a harbinger of Hays to come.

It had some cool shots and nice setpieces, but I'm not sure I liked it. But it certainly has something to say. If there's nuance in that something, I hope future mulling turns it up.

THEATER
Cinemark Century Hilltop 16

Jaws (1975)

With this viewing, Jaws joins the other seventeen movies I know I've seen in theaters twice. Absolutely worthy of the attention.

I went with my wife, brother, and 8yrold, all of whom were seeing it for the first time. Kind of wild the 8yrold wanted to come; kind of wild my wife managed to avoid it all the times we've watched it at our house.

Anyway. It blows my mind this was once the highest grossing film of all time, but no doubt it's a great film. Felt more like an adventure movie than a horror movie this time, but that's not to knock the scary moments, including one of the greatest jump scares in movie history.

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All the President's Men (1976) & Dick (1999)

We were rewatching All the President's Men for film group and I felt that it was only fair that IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARD I share Dick with all who wanted to watch it.

All were delighted.

And I do believe I was right—it was even better following immediately upon the heels of its predecessor.

It's interesting to note how in some ways they are quite the same and other decisions could not be more different. Nobody famous appears in AtPM unless in archival footage on a tv. Dick is littered with them. And of course one is a drama peppered with elements of the 70s paranoid thriller and chockfull of exquisite and patient shots. The other is a fairly broad comedy that is bright and colorful and cheerful and funniest when most paranoid.

The final reveal of info via text has never been done better than in 1976. The final reveal of info via text for Dick had to've been workshopped and had tons of options for them to choose from and they went with the one that's most visually fun at the expense of options that I belive had to've been funnier and truer to the characters. But whatever.

My only real complaint is that the Sixpence cover of "Dancing Queen" over the final credits isn't more Sixpencey. It's pretty much just ABBA with Leigh Nash's voice. Which is great! Don't get me wrong! But I would love to know what a true Sixpence-sounding cover would have been like.

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Double Indemnity (1944)

Don't date Barbara Stanwyck. That's the big lesson this month. She may work her way to loving you, but good luck that meaning you get a happy ending.

I last saw this c. 2002 and I've been saying it's great ever since. Not exactly a controversial opinion, but I'm glad to say I was right.

How happy when both the book and its movie can both be masterpieces.

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North by Northwest (1959)

So good! Holy smokes I loved it. The thrilling parts were so thrilling and the sexy parts were so sexy. The cast? Amazing. Incredible shots. Terrific score. I do not know what I was thinking in 2023. Makes me wonder if I made a similar mistake last month.

Anyway, great films deserve multiple watches. Especially if you're not sure the first time. All those people can't be totally wrong.

Incidentally, was this the last major movie to have such a huge 48-star flag? And was that overhead shot of the UN building based on Diebenkorn?

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The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

It took me over a decade, but thanks to Largesse's desire we've finally rewatched this movie—one that has since arrival become, I think, a plurality of cinephile's favorite Wes Anderson. I was a bit underwhelmed on first watch (in large part because some of the incidents of violence were staged such that it threw me entirely out of the movie. This time, perhaps prepared for such, I loved it. I don't know if it's my "favorite" but it's terrific and it really worked for me, aesthetically and emotionally and humorously.

The killer roles by Ralph Fiennes and Saoirse Ronan make me want to write a post arbitrarily ranking the best one-off performances in the Anderson canon. Maybe I'll do it. It'd be a fun distraction from the things I should be writing.

*Top*Twenty* one-off performancesin Wes Anderson movies

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Having just rewatched The Grand Budapest Hotel and having admired the exquisite performance of Ralph Fiennes—a performance some say was robbed of an Oscar nomination and others say is the finest performances in any Wes Anderson film—I got to thinking about another thing people say: How curious it is that a director so famed for reusing actors over and over has never again tapped the Fiennes well.

I almost wonder if some of these one-off performances are somehow sacrosanct to Anderson, and thus he cannot use the actor again? Some, of course, are unavailable absolutely (Gene Hackman, Bruce Willis), but I do think some of these actor-role combos are so perfect they have already reached the apotheosis of what can be done in a Wes Anderson film and thus—they should not be used again.

Who knows. Maybe.

Anyway, that set me to thinking about all the terrific performances by actors Wes Anderson has only used once.

The internet loves a good ranking, so that’s what I’m doing now. Ranking the best performances by actors who have appeared in only one Wes Anderson film. (If someone on this list appears in another Wes Anderson film later, you’ll be able to accurately judge the date of this post even if you recover it amongst our postapocalyptic wreckage.)

To make the options more manageable, I have determined to ignore all kids (whether the actor or the role), even when they are terrific. Which is often.

Also, someone must make a “leading”-enough appearance to qualify. I admit this is a fuzzy line. For instance, I am including Margot Robbie even though she appears in only one scene because a) she’s great in that scene b) that’s a vital scene c) she is the unquestioned star of the scene and d) reading an article about her excellence in that scene the same day I rewatched Grand Budapest is why I am writing this post.

I also decided to ignore people whose one appearance was not in a feature. In part because, although I’m up for watching “Hotel Chevalier” again someday, it feels like rewatching it without rewatching The Darjeeling Limited is a mistake; and I don’t remember Natalie Portman’s performance well enough judge without rewatching. Plus, I think she’s naked the whole time? Let’s give the woman some privacy.

Incidentally, I don’t plan to rewatch anything for purposes of this post. Which means performances from, for instance, Darjeeling or Steve Zissou, may get overlooked. I mean. The idea that I’m making a list for which Cate Blanchett is eligible and not included seems insane. Go watch Black Bag and I promise to finally revisit Steve Zissou, deal?

Still. I certainly hope you will insist on drawing my attention to vital work I have overlooked. Or, in my foolishness, thought was subtwenty. (However, if the person you recommend appeared in two movies and you just forgot like I forgot [prelistmaking] that Saorsie Ronan’s in The French Dispatch, that’s on you.)

1. George Clooney in Fantastic Mr. Fox

It can be difficult to compare voice work with “regular” acting but I think we can make a strong argument that Clooney’s effortless cool and capacity for heartbreak makes this the single strongest performance in the Wes canon. It takes all of Clooney’s best skills and distills them to their essence. And here they are. In a movie with some of the best voicework ever and a could-be overwhelming visual aesthetic, George Clooney carries the entire thing. Amazing.

2. Gene Hackman in The Royal Tenenbaums

Often credited as Hackman’s final great performance, we also have to consider that it just might be his greatest performance. It kinda sounds like he didn’t understand what Wes was all about, but he inhabits this world like the sun in the solar system. And like the sun, it doesn’t matter if he understands what’s going on. The planets have to understand him.

3. Ben Stiller in The Royal Tenenbaums

Maybe the single greatest line delivery in a Wes Anderson film is “I’ve had a rough year, Dad.” The line work not because of Ben Stiller alone, but he’s so good and this movie was almost a quarter century ago and that this is his only appearance might be more amazing than for anyone else on the list.

4. Danny Glover in The Royal Tenenbaums

The other old guy in The Royal Tenenbaums is vital to the movies success. Where Royal is wild and crazy and seeking mercy, Henry is stolid and calm and capable of being the embodiment of justice. I’m not sure Danny Glover gets the props he deserves for providing the foil Hackman needed to reach his heights.

5. Ralph Fiennes in The Grand Budapest Hotel

With the exception of George Clooney as Mr. Fox, I’m not sure any other character in any other film has as much responsibility for their film as Fiennes does here. M. Gustave possesses unflappable veneer which makes his occasional cracks all the more significant—which in turn make his triumphs and catastrophes all the more deeply felt. Plus, does anyone has as much insane dialogue to deliver (outside the Dahl shorts, naturally)??

6. Michael Cera in The Phoenician Scheme

Cera is the first person on the list whom I expect to drop off it sooner rather than later. He was supposed to be in Asteroid City (I’m guessing in Steve Carell’s role [see below] but it’s fun to imagine him in any of them) and consensus is he fits into Wes’s world as well or better than anyone (Wes himself has said this), but it doesn’t change the fact that as of today, it’s his only Wes Anderson role, and he killed it.

7. Olivia Williams in Rushmore

If The Royal Tenenbaums represents full immersion into Anderoniana, the Rushmore is the last chance to see regular film interact with it. And Williams offers us a performance filled to the brim with realized humanity as she deals with purely Andersonian creations (by which I mean the two male leads). Although their performances are topnotch, it’s her eyes brimming with tears that will last forever.

8. Meryl Streep in Fantastic Mr. Fox

Streep : Clooney :: Glover : Hackman. Plus, she has a couple line deliveries that pierce the heart and make the stakes of her character’s silly fairytale world truly life or death

9. Mia Threapleton in The Phoenician Scheme

It’s easy to note that Wes likes to hire the children of famous people, but the thousands of auditions landed on Threapleton and she turned in a pure Anderson performance. She is the emotional heart of this movie and she does it through nearly unbroken stoicism. As such, she’s like the less-fun version of M. Gustave.

10. Margot Robbie in Asteroid City

I already discussed her above and linked to an entire article expounding her virtues, so let’s leave it at that.

11. Bruce Willis in Moonrise Kingdom

How many Bruce Willises are there? The man who was miscast in Die Hard only to make the film a bonafide classic was miscast again in Moonrise Kingdom only to let his weary sadness permeate this joyful picture so every spoonful has a depth of flavor only experience and failure can provide. I’m referring to the character of course and not to Mr. Willis.

12. Maya Hawke in Asteroid City

Another nepobaby who slays. Her face work is so good here. And in combination with her out-of-her-league voice makes her among the most memorable characters in a film filled with them. The brief moment we see her as the actor is an entirely different person. I’m not sure I even realized it was her on first viewing.

13. Alec Baldwin in The Royal Tenenbaums

The movie predates 30 Rock so I was unable to recognize what was, for most Americans, a recognizable voice. I was fine not knowing. Wes Anderson’s not above a literate narrator and there are excellent ones in Grand Budapest and Isle of Dogs, but in his solo turn in a Wes movie, Baldwin gives the definitive example.

14. Gwyneth Paltrow in The Royal Tenenbaums

Of all the Tenenbaum children, Margot might be the most iconic visually. They’re all sad, but her sadness is ineffably cool such that we’d almost be willing to trade places with her if only we looked so good. We want all three of them to come out of this better than they went in, but Margo, if she hasn’t fallen the furthest, has certainly fallen the largest number of ways.

15. James Caan in Bottle Rocket

Caan wasn’t the Wes choice; he was demanded by the producers. And he clearly had no idea what kind of movie this was going to be. How could he? It’s the first one there was. But he brought energy and madness all his own and it works. It often feels like he’s in a different movie, but maybe that’s why petty crooks under him can’t grasp the lessons he’s teaching.

16. Jude Law in The Grand Budapest Hotel

Tom Wilkinson as the elder version of the character just missed the list, which is a shame as they two together are part of their success. Regardless, Law’s role is largely to set off F. Murray Abraham’s performance and he does this admirably. He keeps the story rolling without requiring more for himself. An excellent straightman.

17. Matt Dillon in Asteroid City

A small role but deadpan funny. Imagine if Michael Cera had been given this one.

18. Steve Carell in Asteroid City

Another small role, but I’m not sure the joke of his schemes would work so well without his patented blend of brash confidence and absurdity.

19. Timothée Chalamet in The French Dispatch

Who knew he could do beautiful idiot so well?

20. Henry Winkler in The French Dispatch

It was hard to rank these final spots—who’s in, wh'o’s out—but Winkler’s brief turn as a dopish art collector was great. We hope to see him back in Andersonville, don’t we?