The letter

In the summer of 1999 my morning commute went thus: I would walk up St. Marks Place to the N/R subway under Broadway, which took me to the Financial District, home of the whopping equity bubble.

Just off St. Marks and 2nd Ave, I would stop by the Porto Rico Importing Co. to pick up a coffee. At the time, I still smoked, and because it is hard to light a cigarette with matches while holding a scalding beverageI always used those free flat matchbooks from grocery stores because the half-life of any lighter in my possession was measured in hours., I would first set the cup on the window ledge of a bank just next to the store. The cigarette and coffee lasted exactly as long as it took for me to get from there to Broadway. My commute was well-rehearsed.

One drizzly morning, the window ledge had an old, damp letter lying on it. Absent an owner, I took it. Two things were immediately clear: It was addressed to a Margaretha Lennerbring, living in Stockholm, and it was mailed in 1970. I couldn't read Swedish, but I knew several people who did. I showed it to them. It was a love letter! A young Swedish man doing his military service had written to his girlfriend

Lucidor turns out to be a renowned 17th-century Swedish poet, not the least for having composed some of the country's favorite drinking songs..

I kept the letter. Over the past four years, I've come to feel responsible for it, and these last 9 months, as my Swedish has gotten progressively better, I have returned to it periodically, as a yardstick for my comprehension.

I have a theory as to why it was on the ledge that morning: In 1999, the corner of St. Marks and 2nd Ave still had second-hand book peddlers on the sidewalk. The peddlers feature tangentially in the 1992 King Missile cult spoken word/song hit Detachable Penis (Lyrics). I imagine somebody bought a book there, found this incomprehensible letter in it, and discarded it. Perhaps they couldn't bring themselves to actually throw it in a garbage can, so they left it on the window ledge, feeling guilty, not wanting to favor the cause of entropy (our common enemy).

This letter has been important to someone, important enough perhaps even to drag it across the Atlantic. All would be clear were I to find Margaretha. To that end, the Swedish studies task I set myself yesterday was translating the letter in full:

Page 1


H‰ssleholm, 1/7/70 (the night before)

Hey sweetheart,

Thanks for the letter, it was really kind of you. I was in such a good mood all Monday thanks to your letter. It's really great that you have already met Timo, and, by the way, say hi to him for me.

I have been to Sergels- and Hˆtorget [Shopping center in Stockholm].

Here at PZ [P2? army regiment?] it's the same shit as usual, lying and crawling in shit, and last night (Tuesday) we thoroughly cleaned our whole [military] company, although it was not approved, so we can do it all again, unfortunately.:

Page 2


It is not so fun to go home to Halmstad when you aren't there, the only fun thing was when I, Kent and Gustav (Kent's father) worked on Kent's boat and drank beer (and I thought of you, you sweet "witch"). I'm sorry, I didn't mean to call you a witch. On Saturday we were in Mellby, first at Christer's house, and we were all in a good mood (Christer, Kent, Roger, and I), although after a few hours in Mellby, Liza came with another boy, whom I've never seen before, and then Kent became angry (I think it was jealousy) and we went home early.:

Page 3


On Sunday we continued to work on Kent's boat until 5pm and then I had to dash home to eat and then I took the train to H‰ssleholm. By the way, little Maggan didn't come down because Ryden and I were at her aunt's place (I think) and she said that Maggan had hurt herself and so couldn't come, but we got a free snack [fika] out of it.

Now you have to wait a moment because I am going to take a smoking break. I'll be back soon, darling. Now I have smoked.

I'll write a letter before I come up to you because I must figure out train schedules:

Page 4


and connections so that I can tell you when I come up to Stockholm so that you can come and meet me at the station. I can perhaps already come on Thursday noon, if that's okay with you, because I long for you so much. I get paid about 350 kr now in wages because we will definitely go to Gˆteborg LV 6 on July 27.

Kiss and hug from Bengt and I hope that you don't forget me.

Write soon darling and I will read your letter many times so that I stay in a good mood. Bye [Maggan...?] sweetheart.:

Here are the most important clues, then:

• It is addressed to Margaretha Lennerbring, who lived at an address in Gamla Stan, Stockholm. Today, it is student housing, and most likely it would have been when the letter was written. Perhaps "Lucidor" refers to a building, floor or university society named after the poet.
  
  Update (29/6/2003): It does indeed: The building is called Lucidor, and here it is on the web.
  

• The author writes from H‰ssleholm, where he is doing his military service.
• They both seem to be from Halmstad or nearby Wellby, where they have friends in common.
• The letter was written and sent on July 1, 1970. If Margaretha was around 18 then, she'd be around 50 today.
• She seems to have just arrived in Stockholm: The author refers to a previous letter, wherein she must have mentioned that she had "already" met a common friend (Timo).

While there is plenty of information here, there are also plenty of questions, namely:

• Did she take the letter with her to New York, perhaps as a bookmark?
  
• Did she come back to Sweden or did she stay in the US?
  
• Is she married to the author? There is nobody with her name in Sweden, according to a cursory search on Eniro, but she would likely have dropped her maiden name if she got married.
  
• If she did not marry the author, how did the relationship end?
  
• What does PZ or P2 signify? Is there a military connotation?
  
• What or who is a Maggan?
  
  Update (30/6/2003): Maggan is the diminuitive for Margaretha, says Joachim.
  

So, does anyone reading this know these people, or know how to find them? Or perhaps someone can answer some of the military or university clues? There seems to be only one Lennerbring living in Sweden — perhaps I should send him a letterUpdate Dec 1, 2003: The story continues here.. Posting this information here is not as passive as it seems; I expect Google to hoover all this up, and between now and 20 years from now I am sure I will get searches that refer to this post, perhaps even a Lennerbring googling him or herself. I can wait.

Apple of my iSight

Much as I try to get people to blog, I try to avoid blogging about blogging. It's a bit too meta for me. Same goes for all things Apple; I love 'em, everybody near me eventually caves in and buys one, but I try not to blog this particular passion of mineIt seems like there is a disproportionately large percentage of Mac-using bloggers, both in Sweden and NYC. Thinking different is a bloggable trait, is my guess..

In this case, however, I'd like to note a particular feature of Apple's new iChat AV application that I have not seen mentioned elsewhere. I've been using my Canon Elura DV camera as the iChat video input, and it works flawlessly. I've been videochatting with Matthew and Kim in New York; Matthew and I have even used it to gloat or despair while playing Scrabble online.

But today, I was using my DV camera to do some logging and capturing in FCP when I started to wonder if I could send that video feed over iChat. I fired up a one-way video stream to Felix (who "only" has voice, the second class citizen that he is), and sure enough, he could see the rough cuts, with sound, while we commented away via text. In other words, whatever is on a DV tape can be monitored live by any iChat AV user.

Sure, the quality is much lower than full-blown DV, but what a collaborative tool! You can now show rough cuts or edited works in real time to clients, and elicit live feedback. This is going to make the video crowd very happy.

I'm sure that with a bit of tweaking, it should be possible to get a video-in feed that comes off the television. This way, It'll be possible to follow the baseball World Series live off American TV, should I be so inclined, and should Matthew be so kind.

Fear and loathing in Hummelmora

Last weekend I was witness to the most important Swedish ritual of the year — Midsommar — wherein small children are converted to socialism whilst adults revel in the ungodly pursuit of booze.

My midsommar took place on the Stockholm Archipelago, which was constructed to maximize the amount of coastline, so that a waterside summerhouse could be had by all according to need, not greed. Joachim and Elise and their two-year old, David, invited me.

Before setting off, I was instructed by my hosts to report to System Bolaget, the state organ in charge of alcohol dissemination. I have a love-hate relationship with this monopolistic institution. Although I am against monopolies in principle, there is something to be said for the state deriving significant income from my drinking habits — clearly, our interests align in his case.

Most System Bolaget stores look like pharmacies. You take a number; while waiting for your turn, you may peruse giant glass-cased display shelves of wine organized by color, region, price and type. Go to the counter, where a functionary takes your order and fetches it from their stock. At first, I would simply ask for the vintages or brands I craved, but now I have discovered another advantage to the monopoly regime: Since I am not about to buy this alcohol anywhere else, store employees are actually quite happy to discuss my purchase at length. They even have a help line.

Let me just repeat that. They even have a help line. In other words, whereas other countries might subsidize AA centers, in Sweden a government employee will gladly help you plan your next blinder.

On the ferry to Ljusterˆ, which was chockablock Thursday afternoon as the city emptied, the boozing started in earnest. On deck, in the rain, a man cradled his case of oversized beer cans, going through them at an impressive rate, but careful to keep the empties so he could recycle. His pal decided to gift ferry passengers his guitar music, and he was soon joined by a chorus of woken, wailing babies.

Two hours later, I was on "dry" land again, with dry in scare quotes as it was still raining, and would do so for most of the weekend. The upside, however, was that we could take David snail hunting. The modus operandi was to place one of David's toy animals within talking distance of a snail, and then to engage it in conversation. David did most of the talking: "Hej snigel! Hej? Hej! Hej snigel?..."

On June 20, Midsommar day itself, we were prepped for the ritual dancing around the maypole (majstÂng), which symbolizes the pivotal role the state plays in Swedish society. First, we all drank shots of aquavit purchased at System Bolaget. Then, the children were carted off by tractor, probably to a re-education camp, while the adults made their way to the festivities:

Before proper homage could be paid, the maypole had to be raised. For this, foreign labor was required, so I volunteered, and together with other Swedes we hoisted the great green branches of government. Those who work for the state even got to wear branches on their head:

Just in time, the children reappeared, and they proceeded to do a dance where they act out how they are but small helpless deaf frogs (sm grodingen, ej ˆron), in need of welfare.

Afterwards, back at the summer cottage, many of the invited guests took part in an impromptu soccer match in the rain. It was eerily like the last scene in Tillsammans/Together. The object of the game, much like with parliamentary proceedings here, was to ensure a draw for the sake of the children. We quit when the score was 14-14.

June 20 was also the day that one guest, Ludwig, turned 5. He got a cake and a bug examination kit, so we set off to find some bugs. We soon found an ant and a milkweed bug, and I suggested we put them together in the same box to see who would win a fight to the death. We never did find the answer, for Ludwig kept on rescuing the ant. I think he will grow up to work for SIPRI. There was no sun, so the magnifying glass proved useless.

There was some hope, however, in the form of Ludwig's younger brother, Erwig, who the next day was caught using his boot heel as a WMD on snails. They performed an ostracism on him, and by now he's probably been cured of all antisocial impulses.

With every passing day, I get closer to the dark underbelly of Sweden's soul...

Shifting allegiances

I've been down on the United States for the past few weeks. When the missing-WMD meme hit mainstream on the weekend of May 30, I was moving house, and I kept coming back to the implications in my head as I loaded boxes into the car, feeling slightly nauseous at the thought of having been played so thoroughlyThe moment I decided to trust the US government: the Powell speech at the UN.. My blog post earlier that week had been measured, but it hid a burgeoning sense of betrayal.

As the Iraq war started, I had challenged myself and others not to move the goal posts post-factum to justify whatever the outcome might be. "This nation acted to a threat from the dictator of Iraq. Now there are some who would like to rewrite history; revisionist historians is what I like to call them." Bushism is what I like to call that, even though the second part of what he said is literally true. It sounds like he thinks revisionism is a morally suspect activity.

To be fair, Andrew Sullivan does see the need for an inquiry.To no avail; feel the least bit queasy now about this gulf between the promises and the evidence and you're a "revisionist historian" according to George Bush. The Little Green Footballs of this world do not even feel the need for a congressional inquiry because, the argument seems to be, as winners we can write the history of this war, and the history will now show that the war was justified even for humanitarian reasons alone — just look at all the mass graves.

For the record, that is called dissembling, for it ignores the opportunity cost of not spending that money elsewhere for humanitarian purposes. Once we concede that there was no immediate threat from Iraq to the US and its allies, we need to ask what would be the most efficient way to spend $100 billion (and probably a lot more) and 250 soldiers' lives (and counting). A third of Americans polled, including the President, seems to think WMDs were indeed found in Iraq.How could we get the biggest bang for the buck? If we had left Saddam to kill his 10,000 people a year, we could be saving millions of lives instead by flooding Africa with cheap AIDS drugs. Or we could ensure a moderate and stable Pakistan by buying every Pakistani kid a high-school education. Or we could eradicate an entire disease. My point is not that we should do this. It is merely that the humanitarian claims of the neo-con apologists are as bogus as the WMD claims.

So, I've been down on the US. But I've learned to be wary of such shifts in affiliation. Too often, in the past, my emotional allegiances depended on where I happened to live. When I left Switzerland aged 6, I wanted to be Swiss, not Belgian. The first time I left New York, aged 13, I wanted to be American, not European. But by the time I moved to Australia at the age of 15, though, I had figured out what was going on: the people I was trying to integrate with assumed (uncritically) that they were living in the best of all possible societies. I had to participate in the vernacular that maintains this belief (national stereotypes, food preferences, sport team preferences and even sport preferences) in order to play along. Eventually, I would come to believe it, and it would feel goodThere is nothing controversial in this. it's at the base of Donald L. Horowitz's excellent Ethnic Groups in Conflict..

Now, however, I make a point of recognizing this impulse in myself, and compensating for it. I make a point of recognizing it in others. It's also why I tend to defend Europe in the US, and the US in Europe: Most anti-Americanism and old-Europism is borne from national allegiances that are irrational, pre-rational if you will, and they do not withstand scrutiny. But it was getting harder to defend the US here in Europe — until yesterday, when I found my bearings again in an unlikely place.

I was listening to last week's show of A Prairie Home Companion on NPR while making dinner, and as Garrison Keillor led a local Oregonian band into some good ol' country & bluegrass with a genial quip aimed at Republicans, I realized what my mistake had been. The US is not some monolithic agent. It is a complex and splendrous kaleidoscope of culture and ideals and optimism and fear; a fascinating experiment, 200+ years old, that can occasionally go awry, as with the neo-cons currently. I know all this, of course, but it's easy to lose sight of such self-evident truths when not immersed in the culture day-to-day.

May I introduce Miss Philips?

Zed and Clarice swept through town over the weekend, bringing Georgian cognac The cognac came labeled with a strange and wonderful script I had never seen before.

and taking with them most of the contents of Sˆdermalm's thrift shops. Clarice had a Berlitz European phrase book from 1974 with her, with a chapter for Swedish:

The section on dating in particular suggests the 70s were a simpler time, before pickup-line inflation, when smoking was a language common to all, when the romantic (and the optimistic) could hope to get lucky during a night on the town armed with nothing more than this Berlitz guide and courage-through-lager. I wonder if the editors field-tested their lines. I imagine they assumed a typical "date" would go something like this:

Of course, the "datee" would only be able to nod yes or no, since the "dater" wouldn't understand actual Swedish responses Some helpful phrases for dating in Georgian.. However, there is this helpful icebreaker:

The highlighted part especially seems like a good idea, though the more logically aware might hit a serious philosophical impasse if they ever needed to look up the phrase "Just a minute. I'll see if I can find it in this book" in order to use it.

Updated links page

I've updated the links page, adding many new links and taking out the ones I never visited (and hence you probably never did either). I also did a redesign, which you will like better once you are used to it. For those who absolutely hate it, the old links page is still here.

Also, if you've been using this page as your start page and there are sites you visit regularly but can't find here, please signal them and I will consider adding them.

The Economist, the euro, Sweden, Germany

The Economist focuses on the Nordic region in a special report this week. I scanned the part where it reports on Sweden's upcoming euro referendum:




Elsewhere this issue, The Economist is not at all impressed with Germany's performance as the supposed economic engine of the eurozone: "Only partly in jest, The Economist suggests that a better question is not whether Britain should join the currency zone, but whether Germany should leave." Very interesting reading, and relevant to Sweden's decision whether to join EMU; does Sweden really want to have the same interest rate required to get the German economy back on its feet?

Rubadubbing the wrong way

NYCulture vulture Felix Salmon reviews Dramaten's New York production of Ibsen's Ghosts at BAM, directed by Ingmar Bergman. He can't get over the fact that they've decided to offer simultaneous translation from Swedish ‡ la UN instead of surtitles ‡ la Opera.

The idea of dubbing any performance, as opposed to sur/subtitling it, is not just plain irritating, but wasteful, and unimaginative in its use of modern technology.

Irritating, for the same reason that dubbed movies are irritating. Actors' voices are an integral part of the performance. Dubbing replaces part of the performance, while sur/subtitling complements it. And — not that Felix is in any danger of learning Swedish — it insulates the viewer from new languagesThe French, Germans and Spaniards — all notorious film dubbers — speak far worse English than the Dutch, Flemish and Swedes..

Astonishingly, I've actually met people here in Europe who prefer dubbed films. There is less information to process; it's easier, they say. I wonder if Bergman — who not only likes to control every aspect of a production, but who is known to condescend — assumed Americans couldn't handle surtitles. Too many notes, so to speakImagine applying the same logic to Opera: simultaneous translation of La BohËme into English, helpfully read out to you through a headset..

Wasteful, because the performance, whether on screen or live, is a fixed text. Having translators would make sense if the words were improvised, but having them grope for the same mot juste every performance seems silly. From Felix's description, it seems they didn't even have a fixed text to read from.

An unimaginative use of modern technology, and not just because the deaf have no recourse, as they do with sub- and surtitles, to text versions of the spoken wordI love Swedish DVDs of Swedish movies because they all have Swedish subtitles; perfect for learning..

I have no idea how much it would cost to buy or rent a surtitling system as with the opera. It can't be that much — it's glorified trainstation timetable technology. But perhaps the systems are just not portable enough for limited runs. In which case, how about setting up a little Wi-Fi network in the theatre and renting out Palms/Pocket PCs with a push technology app on it? You'd have the entire script right in front of you, with a little dot, much like with karaoke machines, running alongside it. You could even have the original Norwegian script, if you're a devout Ibsenist, or the director's written commentary to follow. This last feature, instead of having you walk out half-way, might have you come back for seconds.

EU: A bigger picture

How do get from where we are now to the ideal global society?

But first, what is the ideal global society? For me, it's a world government, perhaps a more muscular UN. It's the principle of subsidiarity enacted along the US federal model, with countries democratically choosing almost all policies themselves, such as taxes and legal systems, but with the International Court of Justice as ultimate arbiter, enforcing such non-negotiable rights as freedom of speech, gender equality, freedom of religion... all the stuff we already take for granted in the west.

It's completely free trade, free movement of labor and capital. It's an aid and development program that is closer in size to 5% of global GDP than the current 1%. It's a UN standing army, with a good track record of extinguishing hot spots, so that individual countries no longer feel the need to keep their own army. And it's as many currency areas as are needed.

Now, how to get from here to there? Perhaps we should think of the EU and the US as good cop, bad cop. The idea would be that the EU holds the carrot, a shining example of democratic multilateralism at work, while the US holds the stick, engaging in the thankless task of dragging the stragglers kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

The problem with this analogy, in addition to it being belabored, is that the bad cop is being very cavalier with the (international) law, bending it in order to save it, supposedly, while the good cop is selfishly keeping the carrot all to itself.

Or, at least, that is the impression the EU is in danger of giving. First off, anybody who has taken international trade theory knows that retaliatory tariffs hurt both sides. Even unilateral free trade regimes benefit both sides for slightly counterintuitive reasons that are most convincing with a little effort. Yet Europe is still in a mercantilist mood, where trade with the outsiders is a zero-sum game. This looks bad.

Second, CAP.

Third, it is nitpicking which countries to let in. It's great that Poland is in. But Turkey should be next, and Israel, and why not Lebanon, and Palestine (now there is an incentive) and those countries ringing the Mediterranean? Giscard d'Estaing argues they are not Christian enough. That is such a silly argument it deserves no retort, but I couldn't help myself. If Europe wanted to be a real good cop, it should allow in contiguous countries based purely on standards of democracy and human rights. Anything else is beneath contempt.

And yet, EU architects are queasy. Such an EU would be too big to govern effectively, they sayThe only reason I can think of why they might think a big EU is "too big to govern" is that they mean, "too big to govern by the current big countries in the EU." That, however, is not a very democratic impulse.. Such an EU would have a diluted sense of identity, it would no longer be Europa Universalis. No it would not. But their concerns do raise the question of what the EU should be: the embryo of a future ideal global society? Or a fortress, defending our Christian heritage from the barbarians at the gate?

Obviously I much prefer the first option. The EU as an embryonic global society is also the reason why I don't think political unions should dictate currency areas: as the EU grows, it would be economic suicide to get every new member to join EMU. Using the slippery slope argument here is a no-brainer: If a single currency is not enough for a growing EU, when do you add another, and on what basis? Obviously not out of political considerations; the answer, of course, is optimal currency areas. I, for one, think the eurozone has already expanded beyond its ideal size.

Others prefer the second option — Fortress Europe — and in many ways it is a lot simpler and more reassuring. One continent, one history, one nation, one currency... I unfortunately have a deep mistrust of nationalism, including the common European garden variety. Other might not. Well, then, if they must have a European club, at least make sure it is not at the expense of the rest of the world. At the very least, scrap CAP, trade barriers, and barriers to labor mobility for those outside the EU.

Sweden in EMU: Better late than early

I would like to break out a comment posted in response to my arguments against Sweden joining the EMU from a few weeks back. Gustav Holmberg writes, among other things, "As a no-sayer, I think you must come up with a constructive alternative to the European Union." I'm not sure if that burden is mine; I am quite content with the present setup for Sweden — in the EU and outside the EMU. However, implicit in Gustav's criticism is that if Sweden does not eventually join EMU, the EU will become an unworkable proposition for Sweden, outcast that it will beMeanwhile, Anders does some great line-by-line refuting of pro-EMU arguments on his blog, here and here [Swedish]..

So, against my better judgment, here is a constructive alternative to the EU: Basically, it's an EU where you can be an EMU outsider and an EU insider. Is that too much to ask? Why would that not be feasible, given that monetary policy is officially divorced from the political sphere anyway? For the near to medium-term future, this is what the EU will be in any case; the slew of new countries joining will be doing so only on a political level, not on a monetary level. And both the UK and Denmark have opted out of EMU for now.

It is possible that the UK and Denmark eventually join, as do the newcomers, and that the EU's mandarins remain adamant that all members join EMU. What should Sweden do then? It should join, then, and it should do so for the wrong reason, which is that it will otherwise be politically marginalized (go ahead, you may call this bullying). Luckily, PM Persson has stated that Swedes will get to keep voting to join EMU until they get it right, so there will be plenty of opportunities in the future to give in and adopt the euro.

But why wait? Why not just vote to join now, and reap the prestige of being an early adopter? I have two reasons why not, although the first one alone should suffice: First, because I think the euro is an economic experiment that will fray at the edges over time. I think that in the next 10 years, the euro will be tested in ways that make clear it is not a good idea for Sweden and other non-core members to be part of EMU. Better, therefore, not to rush into something that is practically impossible to undo. Better to watch and wait; if the eurozone is not the optimal currency area for Sweden, then this will become obvious over time. If I am wrong, Sweden can join with the likes of PolandI am willing to wager 50 euro that Sweden and the UK outside EMU will grow faster than the eurozone average over the next 10 years, mainly because I think Germany is experiencing an economic malaise and has no action plan, and ECB policy will need to take this into account..

The second reason involves where the EU is going at the moment. Both sides have made this referendum a vote of confidence in the political project that is the European Union, even though it should not be. But because it is, a yes vote would be seen as a great boost to the EU as a political project.

But what kind of political project is it? Well, Gustav mentions that the EU's Common Agricultural Policy is a problem. To me, however, it's a deal breaker. CAP eats up 45% of the entire EU budget — 45 billion euro, or the cost of a Gulf War every other year. In other words, almost half of all EU monies is spent on something that actively contributes to third world poverty and delays modernization in Europe proper, in order to buy the political support of narrow rural interest groups. 35% is spent on structural and cohesion funds, compensating, if you will, for the negative effects of CAP. That leaves 20% of the funds doing something useful. Whatever the intentions may be, this is a catastrophic waste of money.

Voting yes would amount to an applause for this state of affairs. That is exactly the wrong message for Sweden to send. Sweden can and should use its considerable moral authority to tell the French (mainly) that this is not okay; that if they expect Sweden's full commitment to the EU, the EU should stop spending 45% of its money on patronage activities, clear bribes to get rural interests on board. This is not the kind of legitimacy the EU as a project should be seeking, nor should Sweden be rewarding this kind of behavior.

Mo' Moses

I took some pictures on a family jaunt to St. Catherine's Monastery in the summer of 2002. The trip itself was blogged here. I have just recently gotten myself a film scanner, so I made some hi-res scans of the more architecturally expository pictures, as well as some landscape shots. It's not really meant as art; I took these more out of an impulse to document.

Summer of the mind

There is something Platonic about summer in Sweden. On one level, it is an abstraction, a collection of ideal things about summer, much as I remember summers from childhood, even though they could never have been like this. But it's a fact that the light here is yellower, the sky brighter blue; it's like looking at an old color photograph of summer, lens flare and all. And just as with a photograph, there are no flies (yet), and no humidity, and the sun in the late afternoon seems fixed in the sky —†it will hover there for as long as you care to look.

Summer in Sweden is also a summer of the mind. It's brilliant daylight outside at 5 am, and by then you feel as guilty as sleeping till noon in New York. People go to work early, but then spend most of the day rooted in parks and on terrace cafÈs — human sunflowers. After work, behind the Kungliga Biblioteket in Sˆdermalm, they'll play a mysterious game that involves setting up a miniature wooden set from The Lord of the Rings, then taking turns destroying it by throwing wooden sticks at is, playing Sauron. It goes on for hours. I sometimes go to watch, pretending to read my first Swedish-language novel, a Henning Mankell detective thriller. My main fear: At the end of the novel the detective will tell me whodunnit, and I just won't get it. Is there a word for butler in Swedish?

Great reads

Here are some great reads I've come across over the past week:

An article by Dan Bilefsky in the Wall Street Journal details how Antwerp's Hassidic Jews are being displaced by Jain Indians as the city's predominant diamond traders. This came as a complete surprise to me — I've obviously been out of the country too long —†but I suspect most Belgians are not aware of this shift either; the Hassidic diamond cutters remain an iconic presence in the institutional memory of the city.

It makes sense that an industry so dependent on trust would be dominated by people bound by strict moral codes. With uncut diamonds so easily pilfered by employees, western-style companies don't stand a chance in this market. The Jain, however, are more than just incorruptible: they've managed to coopt the forces of globalization, cutting their diamonds much more cheaply in India, while Antwerp's Jews are still debating whether they should open shop on the Sabbath.

A few weeks ago, the New York Review of Book had a landmark appraisal of the animal rights movement at age 30 by Peter Singer, the renowned philosopher who popularized the movement. This article continues the NYRB tradition of camouflaging suasive essays as impartial book reviews, but it makes for fascinating reading. Unlike much that is written by and about animal rights advocates, Singer avoids emotional appeals, restricting himself to the philosophical arguments, knowing full well they have the best chance of leaving an impact.

Singer charts the movement's success in curbing animal testing, but points to the relative lack of animal welfare concerns on US factory farms, especially when contrasted with conditions in Europe. As if to prove his point, one of Sweden's largest supermarkets is presently phasing out the selling of factory-farmed eggs. Their advertising prop: A narrow human-sized cage [Swedish] at Slussen, a busy commuting point in Stockholm, inviting you and 6 friends to climb in and experience factory farming from the chicken's perspective.

In 1992, Norman Rush wrote Mating, one of my favorite novels. He's just come out with Mortals, set in Botswana a few years after Mating, and it promises to be as good a read, perhaps even better.

Until I get my hands on itUpdate (2003/06/03): Found it at Hedengrens! I snatched the (only?/last?) copy. I'm reading it now., I'll have to content myself with this excerpt. But what an appetite whetter it is! Novelists can only appeal to experiences held in common by the readership; what Rush excels at is finding emotional states to articulate which otherwise seem so peculiar and private that we internalize them. Here is an example:

But I'm fine, he thought, trying not to relive a moment from the walk home that had made him feel fragile. Near the school was a rundown property whose occupants kept a goat. The goat had run up purposively to the fence as Ray came by and for an instant Ray had thought something monstrous was happening, because the goat's tongue seemed to be a foot long. He'd been frightened until he'd realized that it was only a goat eating a kneesock. Iris could be asleep. He would look for her, softly.

That second of near-panic because the brain has formed a preliminary conclusion from visual data that jars strongly with everything you know as normal — it's a state I've felt before. I vividly remember one such episode: I was 11, we lived on 66th and 3rd in New York in one of those twenty-something story white-brick buildings built in the 60s, and our penthouse had a terrace that ran all around the exterior of the apartment. One night, while I was studying at my desk facing my window, I looked up and noticed the reflection of my dad standing behind me, looking over my shoulder. I turned around, but he was not there. The second it took to figure out he was standing outside on the terrace, looking in, was terrifying. I thought I had seen a ghost.

John Updike somewhat sniffily reviews the novel in The New Yorker, with a faux neutrality betrayed by a tone of regret, words that are slightly sharpAccusing Rush of logomania is rich coming from a man who wrote the famously prolix Rabbit books., and this question left rudely unanswered:

Are C.I.A. novels literature? I haven't read many, but Rush seems to have the lingo down pretty well, and the little subterfugal tricks.

One wishes he would just come out and say that he did not like the novel.

The piece on Slavoj Zizek by Rebecca Mead in the New Yorker is a much more interesting critique, but only if I am right in my suspicions that it is sublimely ironical, in the sense that it purports to be a friendly portrait of the man when instead it aims to lay bare the banality of much that he espouses.

And I don't just mean all that uncritical fawning over Lacan, "the French Freud", famously defrocked Thomas Nagel's hilarious essay on Sokal's exploit: "It is not always easy to tell how much is due to invincible stupidity and how much to the desire to cow the audience with fraudulent displays of theoretical sophistication. Lacan and Baudrillard come across as complete charlatans, Irigaray as an idiot, Kristeva and Deleuze as a mixture of the two. But these are delicate judgments."as a French Fraud by Sokal in his 1996 hoax in Social Text. To me, the sign that a reading between the lines is in order is a retelling by Mead, a New Yorker, of Zizek's elevator riff in a fashion completely devoid of sarcasm:

[Zizek] has also noted that the "close door" button in an elevator does nothing to hasten the door closing but merely gives the presser a false sense of effective activity. Like many of Zizek's observations, this is the kind of insight that forever changes one's experience, in this case of elevator riding ...

With apologies to Zizek, noticing that the "close door" button does not work is something every New Yorker living above the 5th floor figured out by the time they were seven. In fact, you can spot out-of-towners in an instant if they reach for the "close door" button. Slovenia obviously has few high-rise buildings. And when Mead comments that "he may appear to be a serious leftist intellectual, but is it not the case that he is in fact a comedian?", I think what we are seeing is a backhanded compliment: philosophers of the absurd are just comedians who take themselves way too seriously.