A few years ago, Phil A. and some friends of his said that they thought David Brooks was OK, as conservative columnists go. I don't know other conservative columnists, but I loathe David Brooks. At the time I couldn't quite explain why. His column today on Al Gore — "The Vulcan Utopia" — gives me an opportunity.

First, something so obvious it's easy to miss: he doesn't deal with the substance of Gore's book; instead he attacks Gore on style. Gore, we are told, is a "robot." (Haven't we heard that before?) The evidence: he thinks machines are important; his prose style is clunky. Ergo, Gore is not made of flesh and blood, he doesn't understand emotions, passions, relationships. This is as mean, unscrupulous, and spurious (and, unfortunately, as effective) a strategy as questioning someone's patriotism. It's impossible to prove and impossible to refute, and it sweeps away all substantive issues.

Brooks cloaks his essential frivolity in smug invocations of virtue and justice. (He does this in all his columns, or at least all the ones I can bring myself to read.) These are empty catchphrases in his mouth, though I must say I'm surprised he mentions "justice": that brings the conservative doublethink to new heights. "Virtue" of course is an old favorite with them, though Cheney almost ruined it when (in an implicit slap at his predecessor) he sneeringly called conservation efforts a mark of "personal virtue."

To be sure, "family, friendship, neighborhood, and just face-to-face contact" are important, but how is that relevant to public policy? (Brooks once wrote a column arguing that what the poor really need is "connections." Rich and powerful ones, naturally.) Emotions are important too — Brooks mentions fear in particular — but what should be the role of emotions (which emotions?) in politics and civic life? Republicans can't talk about this with any honesty, because they owe too much to fear (and greed, and hatred). Brooks's glorification of emotions is a veiled defence of Republican demagoguery.

And if emotions are important (and they are), why doesn't Brooks go after rational-choice economists?

Does Brooks disagree with Gore's view of television? If so, why doesn't he argue against it, instead of merely holding up Gore's words for ridicule?

It's strange to read a political columnist who, in the first paragraph of every column, negates the premises for rational argument and then descends to innuendo and name-calling on the level of "your mommy dresses you funny" (Gore is "exceedingly strange"), all the while pretending that he's taking the high road. It's strange to hear someone talk about virtue, while heaping scorn on an exhortation to do good. I know Brooks is considered a moderate, a "reasonable" Republican, but I don't think that's a fair description of someone who offers, in column after column, a defence of demagoguery and an attack on Enlightenment values.

February
Sense and Sensibility (Austen)
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, with selections from the Journals, Sermons, and Correspondence (Sterne)
Macbeth (Shakespeare)
Passing (Larsen)
The Thieves of Ostia (Lawrence)

March
We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families (Gourevitch)

April
Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana (Gadda) (took me forever to get through)
The Scarecrow and his Servant (Pullman)

May
A History of the Roman World 753-146 (Scullard)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Baum)
The Marvellous Land of Oz (Baum)

I'm attending some lectures on the Inferno, and I'm forced to confront, yet again, my dislike of this masterpiece. It reminds me of Paradise Lost, which (hem, haw) I dislike for similar reasons:

The constant tone of denunciation, the pressure of hatred. I understand that there's genuine political passion and intelligence behind it, but I find it wearying, page after page of something at once diffuse and oppressive. (The fact that the first work by Milton that I read cover to cover was his Defensio pro Populo Anglicano may have colored subsequent experiences.)

A pomposity that pervades the whole and that makes even the good parts seem hollow and graceless. (Maybe if I read them out of context I'd appreciate them more; but I feel like a failure if I don't read works cover to cover.)
Some of Milton's word choices just make me grit my teeth. In a Milton lecture I once muttered under my breath, "atrocious," just as the lecturer was saying, "It's wonderful, isn't it?"

(this just for Dante) The thinness of the format — characters drift onto the scene, have their little outbursts, and then disappear for good. It all seems third hand.

Reading ancient epics throws into relief the poverty of these Christian epics. In the Æneid, for example, Virgil is able to inhabit so many different characters; even bit characters come to life and seem to speak as themselves, not through some editorialist's puppet. (And I actually find Virgil's Latin easier than Dante's Italian.)

Or take the battles in the Iliad: yes they're tedious, but the monotony seems meaningful; all the details of blood and sweat are so idiosyncratic and finely observed, at once so random and so revealing that I don't doubt it all happened exactly as Homer describes it. The battle scenes in Paradise Lost look like videogames next to the Iliad.

Another thing I don't like are the long explanations of astronomy or topography, which I can never follow (because I get so bored). It's like reading instruction manuals for home appliances, or pages and pages of stage directions. The fact that scholars are so taken with these passages, and spill so much ink debating the most mechanical points makes me suspicious. ("They must have nothing better to talk about"... "If they find this interesting, we'll probably disagree on everything.)

Another epic I don't like is The Faerie Queene. Don't even get me started on that!

I complained to Beatrice about Dante, and she tried to explain why she liked it. I found her more convincing than the lecturer (partly no doubt because she has no professional stake in the matter; and because she hasn't been preaching these things for 50 years, so she can conceive of disagreement). She recited her favorite bits and it was then that I thought if I only read excerpts I might conceive a fondness for the Inferno at least.

She says I should read Orlando Furioso. He's been on my list for years.

I loved Faust, so it's not as if I hate every modern epic. Or even every Christian epic: I liked Paradise Regained.

Miranda Gaw is reading Northanger Abbey, on my recommendation, and liking it. When I saw this I ran to get my own copy, so that I could relive the experience at the same time that it was all happening to her. (That's how badly I want to be reading books with people.) My copy fell open to this page:

'My horse! oh, d— it! I would not sell my horse for a hundred. Are you fond of an open carriage, Miss Morland?'
'Yes, very; I have hardly ever had an opportunity of being in one; but I am particularly fond of it.'
'I am glad of it; I will drive you out in mine every day.'
'Thank you,' said Catherine, in some distress, from a doubt of the propriety of accepting such an offer.
'I will drive you up Lansdown Hill to-morrow.'
'Thank you; but will not your horse want rest?'
'Rest! he has only come three-and-twenty miles to-day; all nonsense; nothing ruins horses so much as rest; nothing knocks them up so soon. No, no; I shall exercise mine at the average of four hours every day while I am here.'
'Shall you indeed!' said Catherine very seriously, 'that will be forty miles a day.'
'Forty! aye, fifty, for what I care. Well, I will drive you up Lansdown to-morrow; mind, I am engaged.'
'How delightful that will be!' cried Isabella, turning round; 'my dearest Catherine, I quite envy you; but I am afraid, brother, you will not have room for a third.'
'A third indeed! no, no; I did not come to Bath to drive my sisters about; that would be a good joke, faith! Morland must take care of you.'
This brought on a dialogue of civilities between the other two; but Catherine heard neither the particulars nor the result. Her companion's discourse now sunk from its hitherto animated pitch, to nothing more than a short decisive sentence of praise or condemnation on the face of every woman they met; and Catherine, after listening and agreeing as long as she could, with all the civility and deference of the youthful female mind, fearful of hazarding an opinion of its own in opposition to that of a self-assured man, especially where the beauty of her own sex is concerned, ventured at length to vary the subject by a question which had been long uppermost in her thoughts; it was, 'Have you ever read Udolpho, Mr. Thorpe?'
'Udolpho! Oh, Lord! not I; I never read novels; I have something else to do.'
Catherine, humbled and ashamed, was going to apologize for her question, but he prevented her by saying, 'Novels are so full of nonsense and stuff; there has not been a tolerably decent one come out since Tom Jones, except the Monk; I read that t'other day; but as for all the others, they are the stupidest things in creation.'

And so it goes for pages, one long drawn-out dissonance after another, delicious and painful and funny but also — poor Catherine — a bit sad too.

I'm reading L.M. Montgomery's Emily of New Moon with a long-term student, a middle-schooler. (My assignment: to teach whatever I want. She's a very good student, so it's not a question of remediation.) We take turns reading out loud. I read it when I was in middle school, and it made a huge impression on me. It's sentimental, and there are frequent patches of purple prose (which I thought very fine back in the day), but on the whole I'm delighted and astonished by just how good it is — much better than Anne of Green Gables, which is saying a lot — the Anne books, at least the first two or three, deserve their reputation. The descriptions in Emily of New Moon may be too rich, but they're very imaginative and well-written, and the dialogue is great — especially the way Emily tries to redefine terms in arguments in which she's being bullied. And her eagerness to make friends, her interest in underdogs and outcasts, her curiosity about old family stories and town legends — it's all very good. Last but not least, she wants to be a writer, and there's a lot on the impulse to write and the process of writing, all of which is accessible to a middle school student without being in the least condescending.

Maybe I'm getting carried away, but I think the Emily books offer an education in Romanticism: I have in mind Emily's appreciation for natural beauty, her fascination with fragments and unfinished things, again her sympathy for misfits, her constant fight against the philistines of Blair Water. I think it was under the influence of the Emily books that I sought out anonymous poetry. (In fact for about a year I scorned poetry by known authors.)

And she's a free thinker: I remember that in Emily Climbs she boards with a very strict Presbyterian aunt who's active in her church, and a local newspaper assigns her to review the new pastor of her aunt's church. She thinks his sermons are incoherent and formulaic invective, but of course she can't say that. So she writes both a dishonest review, and (for her own satisfaction) an honest review, and by mistake sends in the honest review, which gets published. Her aunt is incensed, etc etc. It's very funny.

When I read her father's deathbed farewell I coughed and sniffed and all but burst into tears, until my young student said gently, "Maybe I should read."

I went to hear André Schiffrin, the editor, talk about his new book, A Political Education. He said some interesting things about Yale and Cambridge in the 1950s, and some things about what's happening to publishing (which I'd heard before, but he made it sound very dire). At one point he said that independent publishing was a key — perhaps "the key" — to democracy. Now I'm all for independent publishing houses, but I felt a twinge of resistance: surely other things are more important, like intrepid journalism, civic associations, and, of course, schools that produce curious, skeptical, articulate citizens. I felt a bit churlish for taking exception, but afterwards I was able to put my finger on the reason for my resistance. Schiffrin thinks we need new ideas in order to make political progress, and how would those new ideas be propagated if not through books? I don't agree; I think the pursuit of new ideas is a huge diversion. The ideas are all there, we just need the will, the energy, and a healthy capacity for indignation.
But we all try hard to justify what we do.

A piece of very good news:

A middle school student I tutored pro bono for almost a year between 2005 and 2006 won a full scholarship to one of the best New England boarding schools!

!!!!

She's homeless, so (as Kaveri says) two birds with one stone.

The first essay she wrote for me was on the topic "The best things in life are free. Agree or disagree." (I did not choose it! It was randomly assigned!) She agreed, and adduced the example of public libraries. Still, it was a cruel assignment.