A correspondence
I got a surprise email from a stranger yesterday. It read, in its entirety, so:
How appropriate that a smug, shitty, rightwing publication like “Butterflies and Wheels” shares the name of a sentence in a book that is key to the plot of an idiotic movie like “Shattered”. Both the ‘zine and the movie are worthless.
No greeting or signature or anything stuffy like that, just that rather random observation. It made me laugh a good deal, I must say. I also forwarded it to Jeremy, knowing it would cause him to grin sharkishly with delight. He’s always wanted abusive mail about B&W. In fact it’s really very sad: he thought there would be abusive email, he thought it would pour in and keep on pouring, he thought B&W would attract hostility and contempt as soon as anyone noticed it. He was looking forward to it. A month or so before he started creating B&W ex nihilo he had a nice little exchange about something at TPM Online with some guy in Prague, full of rough and tumble and raillery; he told me that soon I would be luxuriating in that sort of thing too. But…that was six years ago, and it never really happened. There haven’t been any really furious emails. Some mild dissents and criticisms, yes, but nothing like what Jeremy was expecting. Six years of waiting – so you can imagine how pleased I was to be able to forward him a genuine example at last.
Jeremy asked if he could reply, and I (being a byword for generosity, and besides I hadn’t been planning to reply) said sure. You’ll be wondering who sent the abrupt little note. It was the Unrepentant Marxist himself, Louis Proyect. Jeremy’s affable reply went as follows:
Dear Louis
It’s always lovely to receive fan mail from sophisticated and erudite readers such as yourself.
I’ve seen it said many times of you that you should stick to film reviewing. But I say no, Louis, no! I can see a role for you after the revolution – don’t worry, it’s just around the corner! – as a kind of ambassador of goodwill; a communist love machine, if you like, fostering a common humanity wherever you go, bringing joy to the masses, that sort of thing.
I know what you’re thinking. Nobody takes you seriously, right (except maybe that strange fella with the odd surname at Lenin’s Tomb – though come to think of it that might be you)? Don’t despair, I’m sure that will change! A bit of collective ownership, and you’ll be right up there in the pantheon of communist greats: Trofim Lysenko, Nadia Comaneci, Falco… and Louis Proyect.
Hey, it’s even possible that someday somebody will read your blog. Okay maybe that’s pushing it, but hope, Louis, hope!
Anyway, my friend – comrade even – please keep in touch; it has been a joy.
Love
Jerry (fraternal, of course – though, if I may say so, you look damned sexy in that picture of yours – xxx)
The unrepentant one replied, as elegantly as before:
Neocon scumbag, your “philosophical” credentials are one rung beneath those of Dennis Miller and Michelle Malkin. I once told Alan Sokal that there are a lot of creepy, crawly things drawn to his writings, you included.
Impressive, isn’t it. Substantive; well-reasoned; cogent; rigorous but civil; erudite. How could either of us not be persuaded? Jeremy admitted defeat:
Dear Louis, You Old Goat
You seem troubled, my friend. This is not good!
Has your life not turned out as you hoped? I imagine as you rage against the dying of the light that you look back and wonder whether you should have taken an alternative course. Perhaps you wish that you’d chosen charkhas rather than dialectics, Himalayan goat-herding rather than… what is it you do exactly?
But I say again, Louis, despair not! There’s still time. There are projects to complete. Indigenous peoples to patronize. Small archives to create. Your life has meaning, Louis, you must believe it. Do not fear the existential void, my friend, for you are… <--- dramatic pause - an unrepentant Marxist! This is lovely, isn't it - that we get to talk like this. I've lunched with Alan (Sokal) a couple of times. He never mentioned you. Odd that... Love Jerry, xxx
The UM shot back:
How are you spending the riches accumulated from sales of “Little Book of Big Ideas”, by the way?
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #756,628 in Books
I love how you are obsessed with how many people read or don’t read my blog. This kind of Norman Podhoretz desire to “make it” is an odd obsession of snot-nosed ambitious neocons like yourself. Too bad you don’t have Podhoretz’s dubious talents otherwise you too might get invited to pontificate like your hero Hitchens.
And there the matter will rest, because Jeremy is content to let him have the last word. But it’s interesting that people feel free to do this kind of thing, and it’s also interesting when people on the left, who presumably think they are working for a better world with more peace and harmony and solidarity, think the road to utopia is paved with vituperation. Proyect is very reminiscent of Bill Donohue of the ‘Catholic League,’ a guy so full of Christian compassion and mercy and agape that he tries hard to get students expelled and professors fired or perhaps kicked out of Minnesota, for trivial and invalid reasons. That’s why we thought the exchange worth publishing. It’s interesting that supposedly idealistic types give themselves permission to engage in various kinds of unprovoked bullying.
(I should add that I don’t feel the smallest compunction about publishing Proyect’s emails, because I never requested them.)
That passion, that untempered commitment to principle – it’s just, well, so *cute*! We don’t see the like often anymore.
Wow. Being an unreconstructed Marxist is worrying enough, but sending anonymous “you suck” emails to the editor (instead of commenting in the open)of a Web site puts one smack in Crazy Land. At the risk of asking what ought not be asked, just who *is* this Louis Proyect? Yes, I glanced at his blog (thanks, Ophelia, I have to wash my eyes now) and his self-description. But really, what’s his deal – has he any serious history in any circle worth noting?
And Jeremy, I don’t know you, but I think love you. Your replies to Louis were pure beauty. Still laughing. . .
Josh Jerry is prety much like that in person, he is a classy chap.
Those e-mails are surreal.
The only reason I even got online this evening was my nerdy fan-boy love of Joss Whedon and his amusing, weird Dr. Horrible project (www.drhorrible.com).
But this e-mail exchange is better than Dr. Horrible.
It might even be better than Firefly.
Yes, it’s that good.
To borrow shamelessly from Whedon: Louis, our days of not taking you seriously are rapidly coming to a middle.
G’night all!
I just love the Dylan Thomas quote that Jerry opens his second email with G.
I found the mix of movie reviewing and random arm-flapping, frothing at the mouth abuse interesting myself. Of course I haven’t seen Shattered so I will only be able to draw from Proyect’s opinion of B&W to conclude that the man is an idiot.
Still, I am glad to say that I beat Ophelia and Jeremy, for once. I received my first abusive and threatening e-mail back in 1997, in response to a (not very good) internet review of a (far worse) book. 11 years later, I still find a average 2 of the same (and for the same article) in my in-box every month!
Now that the seal is broken, maybe Jerry will see his wish fulfilled after all…
Perhaps the best response to the UM LP is Pope’s original satire on Lord Hervey (although I have sometimes wondered why B&W chose the satirical verse targeting a known homosexual as its title). Is that because Midgely used it in response to Dawkins?
Let Sporus tremble –”What? that thing of silk,
Sporus, that mere white curd of ass’s milk?
Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?”
I know nothing of LP. Can it be that he suffers from a Freudian affliction – viz., penis envy?
1997, Arnaud! Dang, I am jealous. I hadn’t even thought to try to annoy LP way back then. I doff my hat to you.
Ophelia, I was surprised and delighted to see Mr. Proyect’s exchange with Jeremy posted here. I know LP’s work well — he and I are alumni from the same college (though of different generations), and one of his primary occupations over the last few years has been posting far-left screeds and “debating” with the occasional center-rightist on our alumni message boards (famously described as the “little red whorehouse on the Hudson,” we don’t really stretch to far-rightists, but we do accept the occasional Democratic party voter). He even pointed out some sinister connections between one of my best friends and a cabal of neocon thinkers based in the Yale poli-sci department!
To me, though, LP represents the comforting realization that you can be an unrepentant Marxist and still thrive in the capitalistic world well enough to have seemingly-unlimited free time to lurk on websites and in chatrooms, and not be evicted from your home! Or maybe he just has a trust fund? Who knows?
David, well that’s fun to know. He does keep busy, doesn’t he! I may have to develop a friendly interest in him now.
(But I am terribly hurt that it’s taken him so long to get around to B&W. What am I, chopped liver?)
Eric —
The source is indeed from Midgeley’s comment.
“The web site takes its name from a comment made by the philosopher Mary Midgley in a footnote to an article she wrote called Gene Juggling. She had this to say about the work of Richard Dawkins:
Up till now, I have not attended to Dawkins, thinking it unnecessary to break a butterfly upon a wheel. But Mr Mackie’s article is not the only indication I have lately met of serious attention paid to his fantasies.
Richard Dawkins said of the footnote, correctly in our view, that it would be ‘hard to match, in reputable journals, for its patronizing condescension toward a fellow academic.’”
If you are interested in ‘patronizing condescension toward a fellow academic’, you will find some good examples in Chomsky’s linguistic writings, e.g. this on Peter Matthews, former Cambridge Professor of Linguistics:
‘Arguments of the sort Matthews presents are unfortunately all too common in the linguistic literature. They are based on assumptions that can only be regarded as pathological.’
(Chomsky, Lectures on Government and Binding, p.149)
This reminds me a more subtle example of patronizing condescension toward a fellow academic, from John Forrester (Reader in History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge) directed at Frank Cioffi (Professor of philosophy, Wittgenstein and Freud scholar, Essex and Kent universities, visiting professor Berkeley). In the Introduction to his book *The Seductions of Psychoanalysis: Freud, Lacan and Derrida* (1990), Forrester writes: “The ‘philosopher’ Frank Cioffi argues that Freud’s work could be refuted on the grounds that he was a ‘liar’.”
As it happens, for those who know Cioffi’s writings this sentence reveals more about Forrester than it does about Cioffi, since this put-down is contained in a sentence that provides a travesty of Cioffi’s position on psychoanalysis, as demonstrated in his anthology of published articles *Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience*. (Equally revealing is the fact that Forrester’s bibliography of some 20 pages contains not a single publication of Cioffi’s)
As a practising academic, it behoves me to remark that one is confronted in one’s professional reading, on a regular basis, with remarks and conclusions from fellow-academics which can only be interpreted, on the basis of one’s own knowledge, as what could charitably be called the product of pathologies….
Of course, it could also be said that it takes one to know one…
There are projects and there are Proyect’s aplenty to be dealt with at B&W.
Life never promised us there’d be no bells and whistles.
Markist “blubbing.” bleating Nubians always sound like they are complaining about something.
Louis, don’t go running amok too much- it will get you nowhere, kiddo.
Well, gosh, if you really want abusive email, I would happily redirect some of mine your way, so Jeremy could while away many happy hours answering them. I should warn you that I’ve so far received about 10,000 angry messages (seriously! I’m making a *conservative* estimate!) in the past week, all from aggrieved Catholics.
The rough and tumble is overrated, I’m afraid. Most of them are repetitive and, well, stupid.
Oh no no no no no that’s okay PZ thanks very much but really no no no. I think what Jeremy had in mind was more like angry social constructionists saying science is too so a bourgeois plot. Yeah I read (or skimmed) a few of yours and got bored after about five.
But there’s only one Louis Proyect…
Okay, I’m a bit confused. I read B&W regularly and I truly enjoy it. I’m also a liberal. I can honestly say I haven’t read anything on this blog that would lead me to believe it’s “conservative.”
Personally I’m more of Steven Colbert’s mind that “reality has a well known liberal bent.” But now atheism/secularism is part of the conservative movement? WTF?
Could someone help me make some sense of this odd claim?
Well you see – um –
No, actually, I can’t.