A Poem for Today: Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my works. Ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Dynamic Detroit: The Decline and Fall of the US Automotive Industry

Diego Rivera Detroit Mural

“This life, to be known and appreciated, must be experienced as Detroit commoners live it, and witnessed with their vision. Then it appears as the best that America has to offer.”

“Detroit calls up the most intelligent and energetic laborers of the land, even as California lures the bums. Candidates for jobs are rigorously culled in the great shops. The survivors are, beyond question, the pick of plain Americans.”

“…Detroit was agitated by the Dionne quintuplets to a degree reached by the folk of no other region. The appeal was simply to Detroit’s ruling spirit – mass production.”

“This is the Detroit of the Detroiters: first, of course, the automobile capital of the world; then, the city of champions – Joe Louis, the Tigers, the Redwings; …the patriotic community that put on the most monstrous of American Legion parades; the music capital that presents Gargantuan outdoor festivals of song; the financial center that produced the most prodigious banking crash of the Depression;… the scene of the colossal spectacle and the nations’s hugest crowds; the city that calls itself Detroit the Dynamic.”

You can read the whole article here. It makes you think. Times change. The changes aren’t always in the direction of “progress.” If what’s happened to Detroit is what Greenspan refers to as “creative destruction,” then the destruction part has spun out of control. The last time I was driving through the area, I heard a radio announcer scornfully proclaim there was no one left in Detroit now but the mice. May the day never come when a radio announcer can say that about America.

H. G. Wells, H. L. Mencken, and the Baby Boomers

H. G. Wells

Now, I enjoyed reading “The Time Machine,” and “War of the Worlds” once upon a time, but never game them a second thought as serious works of literature. They certainly never impressed me as the sort of thing Mencken would waste time reviewing. My curiosity was duly piqued. I got the book. As usual, the Sage of Baltimore was right. “Clissold” is the genuine article.

If you’re a baby boomer, you’ll be fascinated. Wells wrote the novel when he was about 60, and it’s full of interesting insights and observations about the significance of reaching that age, what a post-60 future might look like, his observations on how others that age were dealing with life, etc. As with any great work of literature, I’m sure you’ll find reflections of your own thoughts as well, assuming you’ve managed to attain such a ripe old age.

Again, as with all good novels, “Clissold” is full of anecdotes that were surely drawn from Wells’ life experiences. For example, he tells the story of his visit to Geneva during the heighday of the League of Nations in 1922. There, among a host of other interesting types, he tells of meeting an old Indian. In his own words:

“I remember a charming Red Indian from Canada with a wonderful belt of wampum; it was a treaty all done in beads; by it the British Government gave sovereign dominion for ever and ever to the remnants of the Five Nations over a long strip of country running right through Canadian territories, territories in which prohibition and all sorts of bizarre moder practices now prevail. The Canadians were infringing the freedoms of that ribbon of liberty by sending in excisement and the like. So the Five Nations, with a grave copper face, wampum treaty very carefully wrapped in tissue paper, were appealing from the British Empire to mankind.”

As the cliche goes, “he couldn’t make stuff like that up.” And sure enough, one finds several references to the incident on the Web, for example, here and here. You’ll find more on wampum, along with a fascinating history of the Five Nations here.

There is much other food for thought in “Clissold,” including a rather heavy handed exposition of his world view and his rather Rand-like version of what mankind needs to do to save itself, a summary of which may be found in the Wiki article linked above. A closer look may be found here. Another chapter is devoted to a review of the news media of his day. Modern connoiseurs will surely find it fascinating. Other than that, I can only echo Mencken’s recommendation. This novel is well worth a read.