English Is "Not OK"
Also: Waugh’s debt to Gerhardie, the novels of O. Douglas, and more.
The word “evil” is out. So, too, is “perversion.” If something is morally wrong, Kit Wilson points out in The Critic, we now say that it is “not OK”:
Have you noticed that strange new verbal tic going around: that everything we once considered “wrong” or “evil” is now simply “not okay”?
Spend an hour online and you’ll see what I mean. Overturning Roe v Wade was “not okay.” Church sex abuse scandals are “not okay.” Body-shaming is definitely “not okay.” The more somebody disapproves of something, the more “not okay” it is — perhaps warranting a firm “Not Okay” or even, under exceptional circumstances, “NOT OKAY.”
Bizarre, non? Our moral debates are supposedly more polarised and tempestuous than ever, yet increasingly we seem unable to express our outrage with anything other than the feeblest, clenched-teeth dribble. What’s going on?
Wilson explains that we can blame emotivism for this. In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre defined emotivism as the view that one’s feelings—rather than an objective standard—determine right and wrong.
But what is unusual, as Wilson notes, is that moral debate has become increasingly vitriolic at the same time as the language of that debate has become thinner. Moral outrage is the order of the day on Twitter. Every third tweet is a denouncement of this person or that group. Those denouncements, though, are often expressed in bad-faith identitarian language and modern jargon.
The word “racism,” for example, is now used to harm or cow political enemies rather than to refer to the belief that some races are superior to others. “Fascism” is thrown around like Han’s minions in Enter the Dragon. “Critical race theory” has become a bogeyman—a vague terror that could strike anywhere unexpectedly. I am no fan of CRT, but if you are upset that it uses obfuscation to manipulate people, you should probably avoid using obfuscation to manipulate people.
Carl Trueman writes about this phenomenon at length in his magisterial The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Trueman points out that the weaponizing of supposedly descriptive words and emotivism are connected:
When it comes to moral arguments, the tendency of the present age is to assert our moral convictions as normative and correct by rejecting those with which we disagree as irrational prejudice rooted in personal, emotional preference. That is precisely what underlies the ever-increasing number of words ending in -phobia by which society automatically assigns moral positions out of accord with the dominant Sittlichkeit to the category of neurotic bigotry.
Trueman provides a compelling history of how we got to this point and how the idea that feelings determine facts and morality has become so widespread. He doesn’t do prognostics—the book is a work of social history—but towards the end, he does say that a society that “has had to justify itself by itself,” rather than appealing to a sacred order or tradition, has never “maintained itself for any length of time”: “Such always involves cultural entropy, a degeneration of the culture, because, of course, there really is nothing worth communicating from one generation to the next.”
That’s a downer, and it can be paralyzing to think about nebulous things like “saving culture” or “saving the West.” But it doesn’t mean that using language more precisely is a waste of time. I refuse to use the word “gender” to refer to someone’s sex. Maybe you should reintroduce the word “duty” into your household? Don’t shy away from words like “sin” and “evil,” but don’t misuse them either, and fill your mind with things worth loving rather than things you love to hate.
The Los Angeles Times asks if “Arabic-language pop can conquer America?” That title is somewhat misleading. The music discussed in the piece—that of rising star Elyanna—is very much American pop sung in Arabic, so it is “Arabic-language pop” not “Arabic pop,” which is too bad. I’d be far more interested in the latter. But Elyanna and her record label are not particularly interested in conquering America. They are interested in conquering the Arabic world: “In the spring of 2021, under the banner of Universal Music Group and Republic Records, Slaiby, who is from Lebanon by way of Canada, launched Universal Arabic Music. With his facility in the Arab internet as his secret weapon, he’s positioning himself as a Svengali of Arabic pop. And Elyanna, UAM’s marquee act, could be his trailblazing protégé.” Something tells me that anything perceived as an American import won’t be particularly successful in the Middle East, but I could be wrong!
Suzannah Lipscomb reviews Amy Richlin’s Arguments with Silence: Writing the History of Roman Women and discusses the dangers of recovering silenced figures of the past: “To find women, Ramirez suggests, we must move beyond texts. For the early Middle Ages especially, restoring women to history involves triangulating findings from archaeology, osteoarchaeology, material culture and DNA. This means the close examination of surviving stuff — the bed burials of early medieval noblewomen, the so-called Loftus Princess’s gold and cloisonné jewels, or Jadwiga of Poland’s fourteenth-century ivory casket . . . Nevertheless, women who have enough burial stuff to be identified in death, were, like the women on coins, nearly always women of status. When it comes to writing the histories of these elite, well-known women, there is the further danger of hagiography — either because they have literally been canonised, like Hildegard and Jadwiga, or because, as in Jadwiga’s case, they have become secular saints hijacked for nationalist purposes.”
The Czech novelist Bohumil Hrabal liked to adopt stray cats, which, Michael Hofmann writes in a survey of Hrabal’s work keyed to a new translation of his memoir All My Cats, he “bred and bred” and then “put violently to death.”
David Bentley Hart is a gentler soul, at least with animals. In Roland at Midnight, he has created a “Platonic dialogue in the form of a beast-fable, wherein the author and his erudite canine grapple with the disenchantments of modernity, the reductionism of physicalist theories of mind, and the future potential for a human culture that’s clearly, to most of us, in its death throes. If all of this sounds eccentric — and Roland in the Moonlight is gloriously eccentric — that’s to lose sight of Hart’s central concern. As Roland says, ‘So what you need to do now […] is raise the deeper question: not, say, Can animals be saved? but Can persons be?’” Ed Simon reviews.
In Spectator World, William Boyd writes about Evelyn Waugh’s debt to William Gerhardie: “In a letter written later in life when Gerhardie had hit hard financial times and the literary world was getting up a collection of funds for him, Waugh sent in his check and added: ‘As you no doubt recognized, I learned a great deal of my trade from your own novels.’ Waugh read Gerhardie when an undergraduate at Oxford — Waugh’s first novel, Decline and Fall (1928), was very Gerhardian. In the 1930s Waugh admitted to a mutual friend, ‘I shall never be as good as he. I know I have great talent, but he has genius.’”
Santi Ruiz reviews a new book on urban development: “Attending a recent house party on New York's Upper East Side, I talked with a man who referred to his job as a ‘field specialist.’ Pressed, he explained that he organizes canvassing efforts against new urban development. Gesturing at the little apartment around us and the skyscrapers beyond, he said, ‘It just takes one corrupt politician paid off by developers, to turn some lovely neighborhood into this.’ If, unlike that field specialist, you think the existence of New York City is generally a good thing, you will enjoy M. Nolan Gray’s Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It, a slim book that articulates the historic and economic case for YIMBY (Yes In My BackYard) politics.”
How much longer will Netflix last? “The streamer parted ways with a whopping 1.3 million subscribers in the U.S./Canada market between April and July — nearly two percent of its total member base in what’s known as the UCAN region. And in the Europe/Middle East/Africa region (aka EMEA), Netflix lost roughly 800,000 subscribers. Until relatively recently, many analysts still thought UCAN and EMEA both had room for robust growth. That they’re both now starting to shrink suggests that’s unlikely. What’s worse, it might also mean Netflix’s long-term growth potential in younger markets such as Asia and Latin America may be much smaller than many had presumed.”
Ted Gioia remembers street drummer Gene Palma: “Against the odds, he had his street music honored in his own lifetime, and preserved for the future on film. I call Gene a drummer, but that’s misleading. It implies that he required drums. But all he really needed were the drumsticks.”
As I noted in Saturday’s email, I am bringing back reader recommendations. I am asking for your favorite summer reads so far. The first one comes from Vera Vaughan Hough, who recommends the novels of O. Douglas, the pen name of Anna Buchan, who was also the sister of novelist and historian John Buchan, who served as Governor-General of Canada. Vera writes:
The novels paint a fascinating picture of life in Glasgow and environs (with jaunts to Edinburgh, London, Oxford, India, and Canada) and give glimpses of life in a Presbyterian manse, valiant attempts to fairly portray the rigid class system (including maintaining one’s standing when poor and striving to be accepted once rich), and lots of delightful detail of food, decor and dress. I finished by reading her memoir, Unforgettable, Unforgotten, which was like an answer key to the real-life inspirations for the fictional stories.
They are all available on Kindle, and as the best books do, have now enriched my to-read list in multiple directions: less-known Robert Louis Stevenson, the Waverly novels of Walter Scott, John Buchan’s work, and some forgotten popular books such as Royal Flush and A Flat-Iron for a Farthing.
Check them out, and thanks, Vera!
Send recommendations to prufrock@substack.com. Again, we all know the classics we should be reading, but I am looking for newer books (published in the last two years) or older books—like the ones above—that have fallen by the wayside.
I'm preparing to lead a discussion on Lewis' The Abolition of Man, Michael Ward's After Humanity (a guide to the Abolition of Man) and The Communist Manifesto. The essay at the top of the page is most helpful as I prepare - thank you!