January 24-26, 2023

Hiking around Harpers Ferry – McCarthy’s The Groves of Academe – Lockdown in Pyongyang – Evening statistics

On Tuesday I went with the Vigorous Hikers to do a circuit of over 15 miles along the battle area surrounding Harpers Ferry, beginning with Bolivar Heights, then going through the town, over the Potomac, ascending Maryland Heights via a back way, and having lunch at Stone Fort.  From there we descended back to town and took the trail along the Shenandoah that eventually leads to the Visitor Center and returned to the parking area by going over Bolivar Heights again.  It is a splendid hike, especially as Tuesday proved to be the first fine day we’ve had for nearly a week, and it gives a vivid impression of the various forces during the Civil War that besieged the unfortunate city of Harpers Ferry, which to this day has never recovered its former importance since that conflict.  Before the war it was a commercial city of considerable importance, but it was invaded multiple times, passing sometimes into the hands of the Union army and sometimes into the hands of the Confederate army, eventually destroying most of its resources; so that it is now a tiny town with a population of well under 500, and whose economy rests principally upon tourism.

It rained incessantly on the following day and I scarcely ventured out at all, passing the time by perusing a book that I had long intended to read, Mary McCarthy’s The Groves of Academe.  I had begun this effort with considerable good will, for I had heard much about its premise, which is a promising one.  An untenured English professor named Henry Mulcahy has received a letter of dismissal from the college President, Maynard Hoar.  Mulcahy is a good scholar but has notable defects as an instructor (failing to turn in attendance records, occasionally missing out on appointments with his tutorial students, etc.), so that his dismissal does not seem misplaced.  However, he hits upon the scheme of accusing himself, quite falsely, of having been a member of the Communist party, which thereby enables his sympathizers to claim that he is being discharged on account of political discrimination as they lobby for his reinstatement.  It is an intriguing theme, with numerous opportunities to satirize the pretentiousness, political correctness, and staff infighting that are prominent features of American college campuses to this day, and I was looking forward to reading the novel with great enjoyment.

Alas!  Mary McMarthy is not much of a novelist.  The greater part of the events that unfold during the narration are told as back story, at tedious length.  This tendency towards flat abstraction is carried to a startling extreme in the last chapter, in which Mulcahy and Hoar have a final confrontation.  It is a moment that could have held considerable dramatic impact, but the emotional intensity is drained out of it by McCarthy’s perverse decision to relate it at second hand, not showing the confrontation itself but having Hoar summarize it afterwards to a member of his staff. 

In addition, McCarthy does not handle dialogue well.  Every single remark that each of the characters makes is swathed in several complex sentences of exposition, making it impossible to get any sensation of the give-and-take of an ordinary conversation or any vivid impression of the persons carrying on their interchanges with one another. 

It is regrettable.  The novel should have been a good one.  It does, in fact, have the makings of being the basis of an entertaining movie, once a skillful screenwriter condenses some of the wordier speeches and omits the extraneous parts of the narrative.  The concept of many of the episodes is quite inventive.  One chapter, for instance, focuses on a conference on modern poetry sponsored by the college, to which several poets across the country are invited.  In the hands of an exuberant satirist it could have been riotously funny.  (It is a little surprising, in fact, that conferences of this nature have not been satirized more often.)  But it is not, despite some sharp observations about the eccentricities of the conference guests and the strain it puts on the members of the faculty who have the misfortune to host them.  The visiting poets and the faculty members alike are shadows, wraiths.  And, remarkably for a novel whose setting is a college campus, students make hardly any appearance at all.  Science departments, social science departments, student athletic competitions, and dormitories are likewise omitted.  All in all, it makes for fairly dull reading:  the ingredients are all excellent, but the dish is not worth eating. 

North Korea has ordered a five-day lockdown of Pyongyang for an unspecified “respiratory Illness.”   We have no clue as to what this illness might be.  None at all.  Of course not.

It can’t possibly be COVID, since, as we all know, no new cases were reported after July 29, 2022 and the North Korean government declared victory over the ailment this past August.  Kim Jong-Un has said so himself, and who would venture to contradict him?  Nobody in North Korea, certainly.  And,  it appears, the WHO is equally spineless, and with far less excuse, considering it is not in Kim Jong-Un’s power to execute any of its members; the organization will not even speculate on the extent to which the disease has progressed there.

At one point Pyongyang did report 4.77 million cases of fever, out of a population of 25 million, nearly 20% in all.  About the death toll it maintained a discreet silence.  It clearly is impossible to obtain reliable statistics from that country.  The likelihood is that COVID is running rampant throughout the populace, particularly since the North Koreans have a high rate of malnutrition and virtually no medical system to speak of.  Officially, Peru has the highest COVID death rate, which has claimed nearly 6½% of its population.  It seems likely that North Korea’s figures are similarly high.  But whether the disease has killed 1% of the North Koreans or 2% or 5% or 10% – no one knows.

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 674,207,917; # of deaths worldwide:  6,753,733; # of cases U.S.: 104,047,866; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,131,369.