Remembering Bobby Charles

Bobby Charles

p10569i7i9d

It’s been just over five years since Bobby Charles died. Here is his fascinating story on NPR. So many of his songs have resonance for me, a good-natured wistfullness despite the subject matter.

“He was so unpretentious and laid-back. On further investigation, you’d find out he wrote all these incredible songs.”

In his younger years, Mr. Charles raised all kinds of hell. His rogue’s resume included scrapes with the law, a busted marriage, and general excess.

“I don’t really have anybody,” Mr. Charles said in 2007. “I just don’t have a whole lot in common with the people I went to school with. I still love them as my friends, but I don’t have anything to say to ‘em. They wouldn’t believe half the (stuff) that happened to me anyway.

Here is one of the songs he co-wrote for Fats.

This was cut from The Last Waltz

The song mentioned in the NPR piece

A Confederacy of Dunces – quotes and extracts – 88

A Confederacy of Dunces

“You’re kneeling on Rex’s grave!” Ignatius shouted. “Now tell me what you and that debauched McCarthyite have been doing? You probably belong to some secret political cell. No wonder I’ve been bombarded with those witch hunt pamphlets. No wonder I was trailed last night. Where is that Battaglia matchmaker. Where is she? She must be lashed. This whole thing is a coup against me, a vicious scheme to get me out of the way. My God! That bird was doubtlessly trained by a band of fascists. They’ll try anything.”

“Claude’s been courting me,” Mrs. Reilly said defiantly.

“What?” Ignatius thundered. “Do you mean to tell me that you have been permitting some old man to paw allover you?”,

“Claude’s a nice man. All he done is hold my hand a few times.” The blue and yellow eyes crossed in anger. The paws closed over the ears so that he would not have to listen to more.

“Goodness only knows what unmentionable desires that man has. Please don’t tell me the whole truth. I would have a total breakdown.”

“Shut up!” Miss Annie screamed from behind her shutters. “You people are living on borrowed time in this block.”

“Claude ain’t smart, but he’s a nice man. He’s good to his family and that’s what counts. Santa says he likes the communiss because he’s lonely. He ain’t got nothing else to do. If he was to ax me to marry him this very minute, I’d say, ‘Okay, Claude.’ I would, Ignatius. I wouldn’t haveta think twice about it. I got a right to have somebody treat me nice before I die. I got a right not to haveta worry about where my next dollar’s coming from. When Claude and me went to get your clothes from that head nurse and she hands us over your wallet with almost thirty dollars in it, that was the last straw. All your craziness was bad enough, but keeping that money from your poor momma…”

“I needed the money for a purpose.”

“For what? To hang around with dirty women?” Mrs. Reilly lifted herself laboriously from Rex’s grave. “You ain’t only crazy, Ignatius. You mean, too.”

“Do you seriously think that Claude roué wants marriage?” Ignatius slobbered, changing the subject. “You’ll be dragged from one reeking motel to another. You’ll end up a suicide.”

“I’ll get married if I want to, boy. You can’t stop me. Not now.”

“That man is a dangerous radical,” Ignatius said darkly. “Goodness knows what political and ideological horrors lurk in his mind. He’ll torture you or worse.”

Oddment171-Ignatius-LeahPalmerPreiss

Indulgent Sympathy and the Impartial Spectator

adam smith

The into to Joshua Rust’s chapter:

Cognitive neuroscience is in the midst of what has been called an “affective revolution,” which places empathy at the center of a core set of moral competencies. While empathy has not been without its critics (Bloom, 2013; Prinz, 2011), both the radicals and the reactionaries routinely cite Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) as among the revolution’s vanguard. For Smith, justified moral judgment depends on the ability to sympathize—Smith’s term for the empathetic ability to imaginatively project into, or otherwise simulate the emotions of others. The impartial spectator is good at moral evaluation and the accurate assessment of the “fitness or propriety” of another’s sentiments “can be found nowhere but in the sympathetic feelings of the impartial and well-informed spectator” (TMS VII.II.i.49).

Smith presupposes that a sufficiently unsympathetic moral agent is bound to moral distortion. But some of Smith’s readers, including Fonna Forman-Barzilai and Emma Rothschild, assume that so long as our other basic capabilities are in place, ample sympathy guarantees justified moral judgment. Other readers affirm the necessity of sympathy for impartiality, while remaining silent on the question of sufficiency.

This essay aims to drive a wedge between the ideal of a merely sympathetic spectator and that of the impartial spectator. Having defined sympathy, I present independent grounds for thinking that an excess of sympathy might prompt judgments which diverge from that of the impartial spectator. I then return to the text to argue that Smith himself is wary of what he calls “excess” or “indulgent sympathy.” One can, thus, be a sympathetic spectator without being an impartial spectator. While I do not address empathy’s critics directly, this more robust notion of the impartial spectator would allow Smith to side-step at least some of the more superficial objections cast against those who would champion empathy. I conclude by presenting considerations which attempt to explain why sympathy occupies such a central place in the TMS, despite not being sufficient for impartial spectatorship. These considerations, in turn, shed some light on the relation between the TMS and the Wealth of Nations (WN).

Screen Shot 2014-12-03 at 4.13.38 PM

Live Twitter Q&A for Propriety and Prosperity

adam smith

Live Twitter Q&A on Monday 9 Feb at 8:30am PT, 11:30am UTC and 16:30 GMT.

Screen Shot 2015-01-28 at 12.25.34 PM

Dave_LM

The Significance of Shils

Edward Shils, sociology

The very excellent Stephen Turner on Edward Shils. Check out Shils’ classic book Tradition.

Editors

Walker Percy Wednesday – 19

walker percy

Typically each Wednesday I have been posting The Moviegoer quotes and extracts. It dawned upon me the significance of the day (WP fans will know what I’m referring to). So from now on all the WP quotes and extracts will be posted under the rubric of WP Wednesday.

6796218-M

A good rotation. A rotation I define as the experiencing of the new beyond the expectation of the experiencing of the new. For example, taking one’s first trip to Taxco would not be a rotation, or no more than a very ordinary rotation; but getting lost on the way and discovering a hidden valley would be.

 . . .

But, good as it is, my old place is used up (places get used up by rotatory and repetitive use) and when I awake, I awake in the grip of everydayness. Everydayness is the enemy. No search is possible. Perhaps there was a time when everydayness was not too strong and one could break its grip by brute strength. Now nothing breaks it—but disaster. Only once in my life was the grip of everydayness broken: when I lay bleeding in a ditch.

. . .

(The everydayness is everywhere now, having begun in the cities and seeking out the remotest nooks and corners of the countryside, even the swamps.)

. . .

My mother’s family think I have lost my faith and they pray for me to recover it. I don’t know what they’re talking about. Other people, so I have read, are pious as children and later become skeptical (or, as they say on This I Believe: “in time I outgrew the creeds and dogmas of organized religion”). Not I. My unbelief was invincible from the beginning. I could never make head or tail of God. The proofs of God’s existence may have been true for all I know, but it didn’t make the slightest difference. If God himself had appeared to me, it would have changed nothing. In fact, I have only to hear the word God and a curtain comes down in my head.

My father’s family think that the world makes sense without God and that anyone but an idiot knows what the good life is and anyone but a scoundrel can lead it.