Seinfeld Ethnography (48)—These Pretzels Are Making Me Thirsty

Click here for an introduction to the Round and Square series Argonauts of the Seinfeldian Specific.
One year ago on Round and Square (25 April 2011)—Managing History 

[a] Salty RF

Click below for all "Seinfeld Ethnography" posts: 

George Eats Trash     No Soup for You     Elaine Exclaims    The Puffy Shirt    Poppie's Pizza     Mr. Bookman

Marine Biologist         The Doorman          Opposite George   Newman's Mail   The Bootleg         Marriage
Just Dessert               Sleep Desk             Late Coffee            High Stakes        Motor Oil              Downtown 
Code Cracking           Nonfat Yogurt          Bad Boy                 It's Not You         I Can't Be...          Exploding Wallet
Elaine Flies Coach    The Close Talker     The Alliance           Broccoli               Coated Culture    Dinner Party
George's Friend        Jerry's Haircut          Face Paint             Mustachioed       Smoking              East River
Pool Man                   Dunkin' Joe              Life Lessons          Reckoning          Dog Medicine      Shower Heads
Looking Busy            George Tips             Kramer's Job          Empty Tank        Bathroom Book
Click here for the reference to the "Argonauts" title, below.

Argonauts of the Seinfeldian Specific

George is under stress. He's parking cars, engines are overheating, and he needs relief. Then Kramer walks into a Woody Allen movie. George is apoplectic. Take a look.

These Pretzels Are Making Me Thirsty 2:28

"What's wrong with that? I had a different interpretation."

[b] Lea/r/age RF

Yes, and it is a stressed interpretation. Although we don't get the full context of George's travails here, we certainly get a sizable dose of his angst. George is parking cars and Kramer walks into a movie line. George is the latest in a long line of frustrated workers ready to crack—one way or another. Visions of Charlie Chaplin dominate for me, and George does seem to have an oddly Costanza-ish version of the assembly line going here.

Above all, though, it is the line itself. Think about "interpretation." Elaine's is somewhat emotional in a mildly thespian sort of way. Kramer and Jerry? Milquetoast. But Georgie, we hardly knew ye. That is the voice of Lear III.ii, raging against the winds of nature and society. George—fumbling keys and gulping Shasta soda—speaks across the ages. I can imagine the pudgy little figure as Julius Caesar (from veni, vidi, vici to et tu...?) or Mao's sublimated rage (let a hundred flowers bloom) or even Richard Nixon (I'm not a crook, and you won't have Nixon to kick around anymore). In my interpretation, stress is the wind that rustles the branches of the lyric.

So what is it to "interpret" a line? George's case seems to tell us that emotion is not learned or practiced as in (as I interpret them) the failed lines of Kramer, Elaine, and Jerry. It is authentic, and flows from the heart of lived experience. His life is a car-parking hell, and:
                             ...these pretzels are making him thirsty. 

What does it mean to "live" lines rather than (merely to) "recite" them? There is something big going on here that we will only begin to examine today. It has everything to do with the way we talk about "book learning" and "life experience." This little clip from a twenty year-old television series speaks, if we really think about it, to some of the most important sets of assumptions we have about our world and how we come to know it.

[c] Torrents RF

Note well that I am not saying that experience makes for the best acting, writing, or other sorts of performing. Far from it; I'm on the fence on this issue. On the other hand, I am pointing it out as a place where our assumptions tend to gather, like puddles after a rainstorm. Some writers (I am thinking of the novelist John Gardner) scoff at the idea that one needs life experience to write well. Just read and write he said (and wrote) many times. Every emotion you need...you experienced by the time you started kindergarten. What you need is technique (and practice). I have a hunch that he would say the same thing if he were an actor.

          It's the sheer act of writing, more than anything else, that makes a writer...
          One can be fooled by the legend of, say, Jack London, and imagine that the 
          best way to become a writer is to be a seaman or lumberjack. Jack London
          lived in an age when writers were folk heroes, as they are not now, and an
          age when technique was not quite as important as it is now. Though a tragic
          and noble man, he was a relatively bad writer. He could have used a few 
          good teachers.[1]

Them are fightin' words, as we say back home (sometimes—when English teachers are sleeping). This is one of the great dividing lines in all of human life. How much of it all is about living, and how much is about learning? Some especially diligent readers of Round and Square will know that this is a topic very close to my intellectual heart-mind (心), and we are better for reflecting upon it almost every day of our lives. Like life itself, it's complicated.

George had no idea what he was starting here.

[d] Mangamotion RF

And if you think this is just a namby-pamby humanities discussion about interpretation, think again, buster. The issues here lie at the heart of our lives. It is everywhere in our politics, business, and family life. Can a quarter-billionaire understand the lives of students with loans by reading policy papers? At least one critique thinks not. Can someone who has never been a parent understand the importance of vacation time (or public education levies...or family tax incentives)? Can someone who has not lived or traveled abroad understand the complexities of a global world? If those questions seem like little hypotheticals, you need to slide the "on" button on your Kindle (or buy a newspaper...or swipe that iPad screen). They are all related to the big question behind pretzeled emotion. George is on the side of lived experience. We knew he wasn't about book-learning, in any case.

So what's wrong with that? It's my interpretation!

***  ***

There are a number of directions we could go from here. We could look at the cultural implications of pretzels (and, at least with regard to twisting complexity, we will). More fruitful avenues might address issues of stress, performance, practice, and, well, stress. We have three readings, and all focus on various levels of stress in the world around us. The first is an entry in Bronislaw Malinowski's personal diary from 1915 in the Trobriand Islands. When it was published in 1967, the anthropological world was shocked that the great ethnographer had feelings...and frustrations (and even went to the bathroom...and wrote about it). Stress is a constant through the four years of his diary, and a compassionate reading can tell any anthropologist a great deal about the fieldwork process. 

[e] Cri de 心 RF

We skip from early ethnography to plate tectonics with John McPhee's resonant portrayals of how stress works in plate shifts. You might ask "what is geology doing on this blog?" There are so many ways I could answer that, but let me just remind you that geology is just a wonderfully long-vision form of history. Stress has everything to do with history. Just ask Catherine or Mao (or Alcibiades)...or San Andreas. 

Finally, we end today with one of the most resonant poems in the Chinese lyrical tradition. Li Qingzhao lived through one of the happiest marriages ever recorded in Chinese history, as well as the loss of her husband. She also lived through the tectonic shift of the Song dynasty, as it was forced southward by northern forces. Li Qingzhao knew stress, yet the lyrical output was a thing as beautiful as the Sierra Nevada.

A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term

[d] Stress ADV

Bronislaw Malinowski (1915)
Saturday, 1.24.15 [sic]
Yesterday, Friday, I felt quite rotten. In the afternoon and evening I suffered from characteristic lack of energy, which makes even trifles—like repacking plates, putting things tidy, etc.—appear a monstrous cross on the Golgotha of life. Yesterday at noon I took arsenic + iron, and today since midday I have been feeling better. Yesterday morning I got up as usual. Photos: making of boats; the street; 4 women. Most of the photos poor. Omaga [brought] letter from Cowley. Around 10 Omaga and Keneni came. Talk about taboo and its connection with magic practices. After lunch I waited for Pikana; happy he didn't come, and read Mexico. Very tired. With a very great effort (today, now, in the afternoon, I do not feel sleepy in the least, and I am impatient to go out, to get dressed, etc.—whatever the price, this is the result of arsenic: it is worthy of gratitude and an altar)[.] I went out after having collected the medicines I wanted to give Keneni's son (he has an abcess on the lg) in exchange for bird-of-paradise feathers. He did not come out of his hiding place. 

Went to Dini's where I discussed baskets. Came back fairly early, monstrously tired; sat behind a little rock at the ogobada and watched the sunset. Very weak. Stuffed myself too much at supper. Then I had and inspiration—I wrote a poem [...]. Igua massaged me and told stories in delightful Motu, about murders of white men, as well as his fears about what he would do if I died in that way! I fell asleep feeling very poorly. My heart a bit restless. This morning I did not feel well at all. I could barely drag myself to the village—characteristic dullness and sleepiness. I tried to obtain stones from Aba'u....Before noon Omaga came and told me about his black-magic secrets. After lunch, read Mexico—right now (4 P.M.) I feel fairly well and am about to go to the village. Today at noon I have myself a shampoo, bathed, and performed a basic evacuation—all this did me good.[2]


Plate Tectonics and Stress

[e] Plates ADV

John McPhee (1998)
The westernmost range of the Basin and Range Province is the Sierra Nevada, which has risen on a normal fault that runs along the eastern base of the mountains. The fault has experienced enough earthquakes to give the mountains their exceptional altitude. The most recent great earthquake there was in 1872. In a few seconds, the mountain range went up three feet. In the same few seconds, the Sierra Nevada also moved north-northwest twenty feet. That would help to fill in anybody's discrepancy.

Perhaps a sixth of the total motion between the plates is contributed by the other faults in the San Andreas family. Each is strike-slip, active, right-lateral—that is, viewed from one side of the fault, the other side appears to have gone to the right.

→

____________________________

←

In a general way, you can demonstrate their relationship to one another with a deck of cards. Hold the deck, side up, between the palms of your hands, and slide the hands, pulling the right side toward you, pushing the left side away, and keeping pressure on the deck. The cards will respond by slipping, sticking, locking, sliding. Some may slide more than others. There may even develop a primary break. In any case, the fifty-one slips between the cards are, as in California, a family of right-lateral strike-slip faults. If one has moved more than the others, in effect you may have cut the cards, and you could call that cut the San Andreas Fault. But all the cards, to varying extents, have contributed slip to the total motion.[3]

A Melancholy Tune (Autumn Sorrow): Despair
Li Qingzhao (c. 1130)

[f] Searching ADV

     Searching, seeking,
               Seeking, searching:
     What comes of it but
               Coldness and desolation,
     A world of dreariness and misery
     And stabbing pain!
     As soon as one feels a bit of warmth
     A sense of chill returns:
     A time so hard to have a quiet rest.
     What avail two or three cups of tasteless wine
     Against a violent evening wind?
     Wild geese wing past at this of all hours,
     And it suddenly dawns on me
     That I've met them before.

     Golden chrysanthemums in drifts—
     How I'd have loved to pick them,
     But now, for whom? On the ground they lie strewn,
     Faded, neglected.
     There's nothing for it but to stay at the window,
     Motionless, alone.
     How the day drags before dusk descends!
     Fine rain falling on the leaves of parasol trees—
     Drip, drip, drop, drop, in the deepening twilight.
     To convey all the melancholy feelings
     Born of these scenes
     Can the one word "sorrow" suffice?[4]

Notes
[1] John Gardner, On Becoming a Novelist (New York: Harper & Row, 1983), 77.
[2] Bronislaw Malinowski, A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term [Translated by Norbert Guterman] (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), 73-74.
[3] John McPhee, Annals of the Former World (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1998, 598-599.
[4] Victor Mair, The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 339-340.

Bibliography
Mair, Victor. The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature. New York: 
     Columbia University Press, 1994. 
Malinowski, Bronislaw. A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term [Translated by Norbert Guterman]. 
     Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967.
McPhee, John. Annals of the Former World. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1998. 
Gardner, John. On Becoming a Novelist. New York: Harper & Row, 1983.

NEXT
Wednesday, May 2nd
George's Swooshing Pants
Conformity and its discontents. We'll discuss them (and food poisoning) next week on Argonauts of the Seinfeldian Specific.

Primary Sources 1A.02—Good Morning, Mother 媽媽早

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Primary Sources."
One year ago on Round and Square (24 April 2011)—Durkheim & Mauss Primitive Classification
Click here to access Round and Square's "Primary Sources" Resource Center  

[a] Morning in Taiwan RF

Over the course of the next year or so, Round and Square will take readers step-by-step through a very particular kind of primary source—the elementary school readers used in the mid-1980s in the Republic of China educational system. Every schoolchild on the island of Taiwan read these texts back then, and they are the foundation for understanding matters of education, acculturation, language acquisition, and translation. They were also the source of a very large chunk of my early anthropological and historical education. 

I encourage readers of Round and Square to follow these posts whether or not they read Chinese. It is clear enough where I begin speaking to language learners (the section called "Language Notes" at the end). Everything else, with the exception of the actual Chinese text, can be understood by anyone who takes the time to think about what an entire education from the ground up might be like. The introduction to this series explains these matters thoroughly, and will be posted soon. In the meantime, take a look at how first-graders (for that is where we begin) started to read their world in Taiwan a generation ago. This is "textbooks from history," and there is much to learn.

The second written text in a child's Republic of China education (in 1985) is brief and seemingly simple. It has the echoes of the first reading, which students would have studied (and been tested on) a few days before. It plays a little with grammatical "reversals," in which a construction is turned on its head to remind the student of the many ways things can be said...or written. And then it ends with a grammatical rock'em-sock'em punch. Who can compare to her? The English words are simple, but it will take the college students of Chinese in North America and Europe at least a year to get comfortable with the five characters at the end of the text.  
Now that's culture (and language). 

2—Good Morning, Mother

Good morning, mother. You are the best.
My wonderful mother always gets up early.
Good morning, mother. You are the best，
My wonderful mother—no one can compare.

二     媽媽早

媽媽早。媽媽你真好。
我的好媽媽， 天天起得早。
媽媽早。媽媽你真好。
我的好媽媽， 誰也比不了。 

二     你    好     我     的     比     不     了

                                  媽     真     誰 

Text in Simplified Chinese (简体字)*

二 妈妈早

妈妈早。妈妈你真好。 我的好妈妈，天天起得早。

妈妈早。 妈妈你真好。 我的好妈妈， 谁也比不了。 
 *A simplified text is unthinkable in an ROC worldview. I don't "work" for them, though, and am including it for two reasons. First, an almost disturbingly large number of my students these days can't read traditional characters. This is a travesty, but I acknowledge (grudgingly) the reality. Second, it should be an eye-opener for students on either side of the "simplified/traditional" divide. Just look. Finally, if you want to read anything written before 1950, you need to learn traditional forms. Get over it. It's not political. It's literature...and politics and history. If you can only read simplified forms, you can read what (Mao) wrote, but not what he read. Think about it.

[b] 你真好 RF

History and Culture Notes
Never forget that these books are intended to grow a certain kind of young Republic of China citizen. The fact that the nuclear family dominates in these early texts is unmistakable. While it could be argued that this reflects the experiential world of the children at this age (without doubt), there is clearly an ideological component, as well. The rhetorical tone has something Americans might recognize as a "Dick and Jane" heterosexual nuclear family unit quality to it, and it weaves its way through all six grades of the elementary school readers (and far beyond, I should note).

The mother-daughter relationship bears mentioning here. The text is brief, but note the family and gender dynamics of the early texts in these first-grade (first semester) readers. There is a fairly conscious balance, even though gender roles (note that the mother has a wash rag in her hands) do not push the interpretive limits very far.

Translation Notes
As for language-and-culture, let's take the obvious translation issue (this is relevant whether or not you know Chinese). The characters 媽媽 are read "mama." I have translated them as "mother." This was not a difficult decision for me. I interpret the phrasing as personal and familial, but have regarded the tone of the text as formal. I could have written "mama" in English, but it didn't seem to fit the picture or the rhetorical setting for these first few texts. There is room for interpretation here, as there is with translations of 好. I have rendered those as "best" and "wonderful," depending on the situation. I am open to the variations, but these "felt right" for me after living with these texts, in a manner of speaking, for a quarter century.

[c] The cultural (m)other RF

Language Notes
We start with the most basic of grammatical patterns. It is hard to beat "媽媽早" for simplicity. Even the next sentence (媽媽你真好) is fairly basic, but it at least has a modifier thrown in—Mama...you are really great. If this were a slower course, it might read 媽媽早，媽媽好. O.k., or not...

It gets a little bit more complicated from there, but never forget that every schoolchild knows all of this already, since she learned to speak, usually at home, in her first five years. Note the way in which the textbook writers use variations on 好. Now we have 我的好媽媽—my wonderful mother. After that, we echo the first text, which speaks to the virtues of getting up early. So mother gets up early every day (天天起得早). The beginning of the last couplet (as it were) repeats the possessive use of  in a family relationship (我的好媽媽)...before the blockbuster.

Yup, we end with "My ethereal mother, who could compare to likes of thee?" Sort of. The last five characters are worth pondering, especially if you are a little fuzzy on some of the more idiomatic constructions in Mandarin Chinese (which, at least in my day, were not covered very deeply by the first- and second-year textbooks). 誰也比不了 is a phrase you had better learn if you plan to live in Chinese. It is everywhere—like katakana in Japan. The only "easy" issue for the beginner is the first character, 誰 ("who"). Most non-native speakers do not automatically think to include 也 (also). The phrase 比不了 just needs to be memorized. Period. If you don't, it will haunt you to the end of your language-studying days. It is a slippery little fish, so don't assume that one translation will hold in all cases. We'll hook 'em as we see 'em in this series, but pay attention.

What could compare to that? Nothing compares to that.

[d] 誰也比不了 RF

Primary Sources 1A.01—I Get Up 我起來了

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Primary Sources."
One year ago on Round and Square (23 April 2011)—The Prologue of the Canterbury Tales
Click here to access Round and Square's "Primary Sources" Resource Center  

[a] First RF

Over the course of the next year or so, Round and Square will take readers step-by-step through a very particular kind of primary source—the elementary school readers used in the mid-1980s in the Republic of China educational system. Every schoolchild on the island of Taiwan read these texts back then, and they are the foundation for understanding matters of education, acculturation, language acquisition, and translation. They were also the source of a very large chunk of my early anthropological and historical education. 

I encourage readers of Round and Square to follow these posts whether or not they read Chinese. It is clear enough where I begin speaking to language learners (the section called "Language Notes" at the end). Everything else, with the exception of the actual Chinese text, can be understood by anyone who takes the time to think about what an entire education from the ground up might be like. The introduction to this series explains these matters thoroughly, and will be posted soon. In the meantime, take a look at how first-graders (for that is where we begin) started to read their world in Taiwan a generation ago. This is "textbooks from history," and there is much to learn.

The first semester of first grade starts with the beginning of the day. The sun rises "early" and our young student wakes up early, as well. The very first text a student read back in 1985 focuses on getting up and getting started. It is a quintessential beginning (like sunrise on Mt. Tai). Learning the first sets of characters begins with the cycles of the cosmos, and good human habits begin by following the patterns of nature. 

1 —I Get Up

The sky brightens, and I get up; the sun also gets up.

I rise early. The sun also rises early.

I get up early every day. The sun also gets up early every day.

一     我起來了

天亮了，我起來了，太陽也起來了。

我起得早，太陽也起得早。

我天天早起，太陽也天天早起。

來     了     天     太     也     早

                 我     起     亮     陽     得 

Text in Simplified Chinese (简体字)*

一 我起来了

天亮了， 我起来了，太阳也起来了。

我起得早， 太阳也起得早。

我天天早起， 太阳也天天早起。 
*A simplified text is unthinkable in an ROC worldview. I don't "work" for them, though, and am including it for two reasons. First, an almost disturbingly large number of my students these days can't read traditional characters. This is a travesty, but I acknowledge (grudgingly) the reality. Second, it should be an eye-opener for students on either side of the "simplified/traditional" divide. Just look. Finally, if you want to read anything written before 1950, you need to learn traditional forms. Get over it. It's not political. It's literature...and politics and history. If you can only read simplified forms, you can read what (Mao) wrote, but not what he read. Think about it.

History and Culture Notes

Never forget that this is the start of everything—the beginning of a life of reading for a little first-grader on the island of Taiwan. It would be roughly October of 1985, and students would already have learned the basics of pronunciation over the course of the early autumn. Only with this text does the long path to reading Chinese characters begin in earnest. This is the beginning.

It should not be lost on anyone that themes of earnest effort and drive are embedded in this first text. Ben Franklin had nothing on the Republic of China first-grade readers. 

Language Notes

Note the heavy use of 了 in this text's first lines, and do not forget that it is the first full character-reading text a first-grader would have seen (or at least on which she would be tested). The emphasis on completed action is significant. The English translation seems clunky to me with "I got up," and that underlines all sorts of interesting issues with language, culture, and translation.

It is also noteworthy that first-graders are being introduced here to the adverbial use of 得. Many "de"s will follow and (remember you heard it here) some of them will be highly problematic.

Note the play on words from the second to the third lines. 我起得早 gives way to 我天天早起. The play of these three grammatical patterns on the first page of Chinese reading signals just how important they are.

[b] Sunrise RF

Hurtin', Leavin' and Longin' (48)—Harper Valley PTA

Click here to read the introduction to the Round and Square series "Hurtin', Leavin', and Longin'..."
One year ago on Round and Square (22 April 2011)—Chinese Management/Bustin'Stuff

[a] Back home RF

Tom T. Hall is a story-teller, and knows how to put a good one into just a few lines. Jeannie C. Riley was a wonder who took this one hit through the roof in 1968. Note the year. The times...well, there was a change in the air. A young man from Hibbing, Minnesota had said so a few years earlier. Who knew that—amidst protests at the White House, Walter Cronkite's own critique of the war, urban riots, and two assassinations—even the backwater towns of rural America were changing? Tom T. Hall's story (and Jeannie C. Riley's memorable renditions) tell a tale of dramatic change happening even in sleepy hollows like Harper Valley. Take a listen and, in this case, do check out the videos. It'll be good for your personal philosophy of history. Times have changed just as much as they haven't. Trust me. For readers unfamiliar with American public education, a PTA is a "parent-teacher association," which forms the backbone (at least in theory) of the local school system.

Harper Valley PTA/Vintage 1 (2:57)
Harper Valley PTA/Vintage 2 (3:09)

Harper Valley PTA

Songwriter: Tom T. Hall

Artist: Jeannie C. Riley

I want to tell you all a story about a Harper Valley widowed wife
Who had a teenage daughter who attended Harper Valley Junior High
Well her daughter came home one afternoon and didn't even stop to play
And she said, "Momma got a note here from the Harper Valley P.T.A."

[b] Track to the Future RF

The note said, "Mrs. Johnson, you're wearing your dresses way too high
It's reported you've been drinking and a-runnin' 'round with men and going wild
And we don't believe you ought to be bringing up your little girl this way"
And it was signed by the secretary, Harper Valley P.T.A.

Well, it happened that the P.T.A. was gonna meet that very afternoon
And they were sure surprised when Mrs. Johnson wore her mini-skirt into the room
And as she walked up to the blackboard, I can still recall the words she had to say
She said, "I'd like to address this meeting of the Harper Valley P.T.A."

Well, there's Bobby Taylor sittin' there and seven times he's asked me for a date
And Mrs. Taylor sure seems to use a lot of ice whenever he's away
And Mr. Baker, can you tell us why your secretary had to leave this town?
And shouldn't widow Jones be told to keep her window shades all pulled completely down?

Well, Mr. Harper couldn't be here 'cause he stayed too long at Kelly's Bar again
And if you smell Shirley Thompson's breath, you'll find she's had a little nip of gin
And then you have the nerve to tell me you think that as a mother I'm not fit
Well, this is just a little Peyton Place and you're all Harper Valley hypocrites

No I wouldn't put you on because it really did, it happened just this way
The day my Mama socked it to the Harper Valley P.T.A.
The day my Mama socked it to the Harper Valley P.T.A.

  ***  ***

[v] Rural RF

I'd like to address this meeting of the Harper Valley PTA...

And the crap hits the fan from there. While only a few people will recognize "...this is just a little Peyton Place" these days, everyone understands the follow-up: "...and you're all Harper Valley hypocrites."

Everyone "gets" hypocrisy, and this blockbuster number one song had every bit as much to do with the swirling waters of 1968 as much bigger issues in the news. Not a little of this has to do with the fact that the song was everywhere (number one on the Billboard Country and Pop charts) even though it hovered beneath the historic events coursing through the year. It was in the water, as we (still) say back home.

Unlike the events in Chicago, Washington D.C., and Saigon, this little scene played out in Anytown, U.S.A. Mrs. Johnson takes exception to being told how to dress, date, and raise her daughter, and the whole town comes in for criticism. Through this little story we can see a world in change. A strong single mother? That was challenging ground to till in those days, and "widowed" might just as well be "divorced" in the changing landscape of rural America. This song plays it safe, but everyone knew something big was going on.

Harper Valley's secrets flow out of the bottle from there, and the shaky borders of gemeinschaft would never be as sturdy again, for Tönnies's sake. Even as a young student of social theory (this was called dinner table conversation in my household), it was hard to miss that Mrs. Johnson was socking it to the powers-that-be. It occurred to even my young mind that the song was profoundly cynical about the happy lives in small town America.

[d] Crossroads RF

It just so happened that my dad was teaching sociology at Edgewood College, and I was entranced by the titles of the books on his shelf—Street Corner Society, Small Town in Mass Society, Tally's Corner, Amish Society, The Levittowners, and Village Japan. There were was a whole bunch of "society" and not a few "corners." 

This was also the first time that I ever heard of Talcott Parsons and his functionalist approach to social analysis. I also heard my dad utter the words "conflict theory" for the first time. Conflict? How could that occur in little towns where everyone works together? That was the mantra from thinkers ranging from Richard Nixon to Mao Zedong in the late-1960s. And now—more than a decade before I read Marx (or even Weber), Jeannie C. Riley was blowing this little fourth-grader's cozy view of bucolic, rural integrity (it was not all that hard to understand the word in several senses even back then) right out of the water.

I have never been the same since. "Conflict" and even "passive-aggressive" became workable concepts for me. 1968 could make even an elementary schoolchild a cynic, and the world would never be the same. I lost a bit of innocence in 1968, growing up in Madison, Wisconsin...watching the news and listening to the radio.

[e] Cropped RF

***  ***

Suffice it to say that you won't find (m)any East Asian poems about a single mother telling off small town know-it-alls. We'll have to look for contrast today, and I have found a nice juxtaposition in Sei Shōnagon's elegant Pillow Book. It is as difficult to summarize the eclectic and elaborate contents of this book as it is to understand the intricacies of Harper Valley social life (which has more in common with tenth-century Heian Kyō than I had considered up until now). There are extended narratives, snatches of lyric, and lists. I give a small sampler here. They blend and weave in startling ways with the lines of Tom T. Hall and Jeannie C. Riley.

Sei Shōnagon's Pillow Book (tenth century)
24 Things People Look Down On
The north side of a house.
A person with a reputation for excessive good nature.
A very old man.
A loose woman.
A crumbling earthen wall around an establishment

[f] Elegant RF

39
A preacher ought to be handsome. It is only when we keep our gaze fixed firmly on a good-looking monk's face that we feel the holiness of the text he expounds. If the man is ill-favored, our gaze wanders and we lose track of what he is saying. For this reason, it seems to me that listening to an ugly monk's sermon may actually lead us into sin. But I must not write these things. Although it might have been all right when I was a little younger, the thought of sin terrifies me now. When I contemplate my own sinful heart, I wonder about the honesty of those who make a point of being first to arrive wherever there is a sermon, informing us that sutra expositions are holy occasions and that they themselves are bursting with piety.  

49 Elegant Things
A young girl's trailing white summer robe, worn over a lavender chemise.
Shaven ice, mixed with vine syrup and put into a new metal bowl.
Fallen snow on plum blossoms.
A sweet infant eating a strawberry.
A duck egg, broken.
Crystal prayer beads. 

65 Bridges
The bridges of Asmutsu, Nagara, Amahiko, Hamana, and Hitotsu. The Sano Boat Bridge. The bridges of Utashime, Todoroki, and Ogawa. Anything spanning a ravine or providing passage across the face of a cliff. The bridge on Kiso Road. Horikawa Bridge. The Raven Bridge. The Lover's Meeting Bridge. The floating bridge at Ono. Yamasuge Bridge (and interesting name). Utatane Bridge. 

74 
Special trysts are especially enjoyable in the summertime. The short night slips by before the lovers can get a wink of sleep. The latticed shutters have been left up, and the garden looks delightfully cool. As the couple exchange a few essential last words, a crow flies directly in front of them, cawing in a loud voice. Most amusingly, they suddenly feel very much exposed.[1]

[g] Span RF

Notes
[1] Helen Craig McCullough [translator and editor], Classical Japanese Prose: An Anthology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 165-167. 

Bibliography  
McCullough, Helen Craig [translator and editor]. Classical Japanese Prose: An Anthology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990.

NEXT
Sunday, April 29th
It Would Be You
It's hard describin' a heartache... Next week, Gary Allan will try, and the literary-theoretical implications are wide and deep. If we're talkin' 'bout a heartache...there will be plenty of room for metaphor, metonymy, and even a little dash of synecdoche. Stay tuned.

Fieldnotes From History (39)—Head Tales

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Fieldnotes From History."
One year ago today on Round and Square (21 April 2011)—The Ending of Argonauts of the Western Pacific

[a] Back track RF

Part of an occasional Round and Square series that follows the blog’s main theme (east meets west, round meets square, and past meets present), these snippets from my early fieldnotes are reproduced as they were written by hand—and then revised on an ancient desktop computer—during my first fieldwork stay in Taiwan (1985-1987).  All entries are the way that I left them when I returned to the United States in 1987—some nicely-stated and some embarrassing. Although the series began with my assumption that the entries can stand alone, I have found that separate comments and notes might help readers understand a world that is now, well, history. These are always separate from the original fieldnote.

[b] Beak to the Future RF

Comment

I am ambivalent about this fieldnote. It is not particularly deep, and the potential "sensationalism" makes me a little uneasy now, twenty-six years later. There's nothing like eating the exotic (partaking of the other) to get people worked up. It is not lost on me that there is a profusion of crappy books and articles about China these days that focus on this sort of thing. The "othering" of heads is not something to which I wish to add.

On the other hand, I do not want to take another approach that a number of sinophiles favor—papering over cultural differences, and especially those that cast Chinese culture in a problematic light from the perspective of Westerners. I wrote this note because I saw "heads" everywhere back then—and more of them on a dinner table than I had ever seen in my life. Understanding that was my top priority. I was naive enough to assume that should settle it.

The duck heads haven't gone away as I have continued in Chinese studies. They are a common beer house appetizer, and have done as much to further "ethnographic" conversations I have had as anything else. Not that it matters, but full disclosure compels me to say that I have never gotten over my resistance. I don't eat them. I must admit that I am not above ordering a plate and a pitcher in the hopes of stimulating conversation among peers, though. I should not be shielded from criticism.

[c] Eyes RF

The contrast between food that "stinks" (this is a cultural and individual—olfactory—matter) and food that shocks is one worth contemplating. Fermented beancurd, on the one hand, and fish or duck heads, on the other, are not the "same thing," just because we might find them repellent. 

I had already begun to think about these matters a few years before, after reading Claude Lévi-Strauss's The Savage Mind and Marshall Sahlins's Culture and Practical Reason in college. This note only begins to tap into the analytical issues that flow from there. I urge anyone interested in these matters to read these two books and start working back through the details of the world we see (and eat).

Notes

This trip was with the Hsiung family, but the second paragraph touches upon an earlier lunch with the Chen family (these are common surnames). I included the experience in the same note because I couldn't stop thinking about heads and head-parts.

[d] Heads up RF

The second paragraph has some useful detail, but there is a bit of overkill, too. The quotation is from King Lear III.vii (one of my favorite texts, even back then). It really wasn't necessary (but it's a great play and a great scene; the "vision" theme in Lear is wonderful).

"I love fish eyes" is something I have heard from more than a few Chinese friends. Interestingly enough, every time I have told this story to Western students over dinner in China (I have overseen several groups over the years) a seemingly macho young man has headed straight for the eyes and popped them into his mouth. This has happened four times (four different people). In every case, the triumph was followed by unease and lengthy silence. Culture (and the culinary) is like that. So is individuality.

_____________________________________________________

2 February 1986
Taipei
When it comes to Peking Duck, nothing is left to waste. This has gotten me thinking about heads in the kitchen, as well as on the table. I let my host have his fill of the duck head and most of the fermented doufu. The latter is all about texture and smell. The former, though, is more problematic. Eating heads is not peculiar to Chinese culture, but it certainly is new for me. Cultural barriers still tower over my understanding, and this is one area that remains particularly fuzzy.

Some of my friends are quite passionate about heads, and this appears to be the other side of a significant cultural gulf. For example, the Chen family—very wealthy, urbane, and discerning when it comes to culinary matters— took me to a Taiwanese restaurant one afternoon a few weeks ago. Among other things, we ate a whole fish, which is the common way of preparing the beast here. Skillfully wielding her chopsticks, Mrs. Chen lunged immediately for the head and poked out the eyeballs. (“Out, vile jelly. Where is thy lustre now?”). Chomping happily, the iris presumably tucked in her gums, she turned to me and said: “I can’t help myself. I love fish eyes!”

[e] Tails up RF