Anybody remember the comic Sam Kinison? His schtick was to ramble along talking about something in a halfway normal voice, then suddenly distort his face into a feral snarl and scream three or four words, then drop back to normal again. It was quite funny, if a little alarming.
A similar effect -- I think of it as political Tourette syndrome -- befalls a lot of writers on politics and culture whenever the firing of some stray neuron brings the thought of Karl Marx to mind. I recently noticed a fine example in a book review written by one Bruce Thornton, author of _Greek Ways: How the Greeks Created Western Civilization_ ( http://tinyurl.com/27uqz).
Here's Thornton's normal voice:
"Along the way Miller gives an entertaining survey of everything from the mechanics of starting blocks to the layout of the festival sites--allaimed toward demonstrating the central place of athletics in the culture of the Greeks."
Then without warning his face goes mottled red, his eyes bulge, and he drops to all fours and chews the carpet con-brio for a paragraph or two:
"Unfortunately, the current interpretation of athletics--both classical and modern--reflects the anticapitalist prejudices of a worn-out Marxist cultural criticism. This received wisdom tells us that competition and hyper-masculinity are really nothing more than a training-program for the shock troops of capitalist and imperialist hegemony--although sports also provide a distracting and profitable spectacle for the oafish middle classes."
The fit quickly passes, though, and we return to the calm, even stagnant waters of book-reviewery.
I always enjoy seeing stuff like this -- it gives me a vivid mental image of old Karl's mischievous ghost roaming the Castle Gormenghast of contemporary middlebrow thought and every so often blowing a cold draft down some pop-historical Grubstreeter's poorly-barbered nape.
Posted by gracchus at May 31, 2004 02:57 PM | TrackBack