i guess i sort of stop blogging when i'm writing other stuff. anyway, i'm supposed to conduct a little faculty discussion today on ian buruma's theater of cruelty, a collection of his essays having to do with war and books on war from the new york review of books. i've been reading the nyrb since i was a child, and so i read most of these essays as they came out. i have to say they kind of slid by without making a big impression. i was vaguely impressed by buruma's nice prose style and his knowledge especially of matters having to do with ww2 and the holocaust. reading a stream of his essays together makes me realize something: i think that, despite these strengths, ian buruma is not very good.
in every single essay he takes the 'on the one hand; on the other hand' approach. this gives an impression of balance and rationality. however, almost every single time out, it amounts to this: flat contradictions. was leni riefenstahl a nazi monster? yes and no. were her films propaganda? yes and no. is there a difference between art and propaganda? yes and no. he of course discusses sontag's famous essay on riefenstahl. even if sontag was wrong, she was extremely definite. was sontag right about riefenstahl, according to buruma? yes and no. (but buruma really does this: he slut-shames leni mercilessly, all but resorting to the word 'ho', a whole line of attack that is irrelevant to anything else in the essay or in the issues. he's more generous, say, or just not at all worried, about the sex life of jean cocteau.) or: was the right approach in occupied france to resist, collaborate, or pretend the whole thing wasn't really happening? yes and no; yes and no; yes and no. every essay does this. it's pitiful: weak-kneed as well as logically ridiculous: cowardly. but solidly written.
also it is one measure of what i feel is a sad decline in the nyrb: sontag to buruma is a slide from excellence to mediocrity. or how about this month: we've got michael tomasky on the republican presidential field. tomasky is a partisan hack: like a left bill o'reilly but less fun. every sentence is a collage of weasel words and pejorative bitch-slaps. there's not a moment of actual dialogue with people on the other side, just a constant drumbeat about stupid the other side is (=how smart we are; michael tomasky's great theme is how smart michael tomasky is). unlike buruma, there's nothing particularly good about tomasky's prose. anyway, i don't think it's really an intellectual publication anymore.
