IDENTITY THEFT, ITALIAN JUSTICE AND THE TURNER PRIZE

8.xii.09

First I hear from a contributor that some creep has been using his name and flogging his own writing as C.M.'s. Strictly speaking, there's only one posible defense against literary identity theft. If someone cares to use Joseph Conrad as his pseudonym he must, like Borges' Pierre Menard, write just like the original. The trouble with this story is that the thief in this case knew the man whose identity he was stealing, had in fact been a class-mate. Challenged, he said he just 'liked the name' and then said it was the name of a distant relative in Ireland. Nothing new about literary fraud. I gather blogs are wide open to intrusions of this kind. If another Keith Botsford wants to post here, what would the appropriate response be? One likes to think that one's style, turn of mind, peculiar curiosities, one's 'angle' is inimitable. But Pierre Menard simply wrote Don Quixote all over again, word for word. Such is the post-modern Fate

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The Guardian newspaper in the U.K. has introduced a new concept to history: a headline which reads 'A New Renaissance'. The re-birth of a re-birth? To think that once, many years ago, the Guardian was a true guardian of good writing.

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A brouhaha is stirring in the American depths over the conviction of Ms. Amanda Knox in an Italian court. The marvelously smug Hillary Rodham Clinton had to duck the issue, but not Maria Cantwell, one of our distinguished senators. It would seem the prevailing opinion in some circles that Italian courts are somehow inadequate to the task of trying persons who commit murder within their jurisdiction. Now, Italian courts may be all sorts of things: they can be slow, they favor eloquence over content among lawyers, they are certainly slow, they have quaint customs and wear funny hats, and the judiciary is highly politicized, but none of this indicates that they are incompetent. They are rather dogged and bureaucratic, but they also have some admirable traits which I should like to see adopted in our own: they are polite and civilized, they cannot hand out death sentences, appeals from their decisions are automatic, and the system under which individuals are brought forward for prosecution, via an examining magistrate who must weigh all the evidence before allowing a prosecution, strikes me as admirable. There are no 'elected' district attorneys with a political status to maintain, no jurisdictions (like Mississippi's) where lawyers can congregate to make a case for massive tort payments, and no lawyers who advertise for class-action suits to increase their billings.

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The Turner Prize has just been given to the painter Richard Wright for painting the walls of an 'architectural space' with gold-leaf that will disintegrate within months. After some years of winners who 'situate' themselves in the art world by lying in an unmade bed, 'install' themselves by running wideos, who exhibit here a brick there a brick or mummify animal parts in tanks, this year's prize has been hailed as a 'triumph'. If all the British Sunday papers, the heavyweights, so thunder, the public will follow. Some may wonder where the art involved in painting has gone. This is not to reflect on Mr. Wright's art, for I have only seen the wall in question on Google, but I do marvel at the unanimity of critics: do they all go to the same spa to get their brains washed by Saatchi, the Tate or the egregious lovers of the spurious in the New York Times?