Monthly Archives: November 2006

William Styron

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Eric Homberger has written a nice obituary of William Styron. I loved this description of how and where he wrote:

Styron wrote his books in longhand using a No2 pencil on yellow lined paper. A good day’s work might see him complete two or three pages of manuscript. A quotation from Flaubert was displayed in his study: “Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work”.

I see now where I went wrong. I’ve been trying to avoid becoming bourgeois all my life. Sigh.

The Boston Globe obit adds something else about his craftsmanship:

Mr. Styron wrote in longhand on yellow legal pads, striving for 500 words a day. He preferred to write just one draft of a book, getting each page just right before proceeding to the next, rather than revising a completed draft. His own harshest critic, Mr. Styron had a self-described “neurotic need to be perfect each paragraph — each sentence, even — as I go along.”

The New New Middle East

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Richard Haass’s sobering article in Foreign Affairs opens thus:

Just over two centuries since Napoleon’s arrival in Egypt heralded the advent of the modern Middle East — some 80 years after the demise of the Ottoman Empire, 50 years after the end of colonialism, and less than 20 years after the end of the Cold War — the American era in the Middle East, the fourth in the region’s modern history, has ended. Visions of a new, Europe-like region — peaceful, prosperous, democratic — will not be realized. Much more likely is the emergence of a new Middle East that will cause great harm to itself, the United States, and the world…

Haass is the President of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was chief of the Middle-East desk of the National Security Council for George Bush Snr, and director of policy planning in the state department during Dubya’s first term. Sidney Blumenthal (not the most reliable of sources IMHO) thinks that his views reflect those of James Baker, the man currently leading a survey of the policy options available in Iraq. The Foreign Affairs article is long and detailed. Haass produced a more accessible summary of it for the Financial Times. Thankfully, it remains outside that organ’s odious paywall.

Exploring the web

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I wrote a post on the Guardian‘s Comment is Free Blog about the newly-announced partnership between MIT and the University of Southampton to study “Web science”. Extract:

Ah, poor Southampton (or Soton, as it’s known on the net). It’s about to learn that entering into a “partnership” with MIT is like marrying into the British royal family. As Ry Cooder might put it, you get to ride in the white Lincoln Continental with the red upholstery, but you must learn always to walk two paces behind your “partner” and never, ever assume that you have any rights to the fawning and adulation that followed upon your elevation. MIT doesn’t do partnerships in the normally understood sense of the term; what it does do are pragmatic or strategic liaisons that are deemed to be in its institutional interests. Ask the ancient University of Cambridge, which knows a thing or two about this. Gordon Brown put up £64 million of UK taxpayers’ money to lubricate a partnership between Cambridge and MIT. Guess who got the lion’s share of the loot?

Realpolitik on yellow paper

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From the Economist’s review of Margaret MacMillan’s new book, Seize the Hour: when Nixon met Mao.

Some of the most revealing discoveries Ms MacMillan has made in her researches are the haiku-like memos Nixon wrote on his yellow pads. One, which he scribbled before the talks started, begins:

What they want:

1. Build up their world credentials

2. Taiwan

3. Get out of Asia

What we want:

1. Indo China (?)

2. Communication—To restrain Chinese expansion in Asia

3. In future—Reduce threat of confrontation by China Super Power

What we both want:

1. Reduce danger of confrontation & conflict

2. A more stable Asia

3. A restraint on USSR

Note the question-mark after “Indochina”!