The latest blurb on Jonah Goldberg’s new book is drawing yet more commentary. I swear, I’ve not seen this much nervousness about a book that hasn’t yet been release in a very long time. Let’s be clear about something. The book has gotten almost entirely positive reviews on its merits, even though some reviewers have continued to dispute Goldberg’s premise. No one is treating Goldberg’s book as a shoddy piece of tossed-off partisanship or political hackery save the folks who have yet to read it.
Via memeorandum today is more blog commentary about Goldberg’s book, all of which suffer from either plain ignorance about the book itself or a simple misreading of the blurb.
Nevertheless, the book has James Wolcott widdling himself in anger, even though he’s not read a single paragraph. His criticisms are based solely on a review by the New York Times, which you just know is going to take a book critical of the left seriously and give it a fair reading. Of course, that’s what I’ve come to expect from Wolcott who widdles himself if the guy taking his order in a restaurant bears even a passing resemblance to Dick Chaney His opinions aren’t worth the newspaper he has to put under his chair while he’s blogging. Ditto Cernig who uses Wolcott’s post to bolster his own and misrepresents Charles Murray’s book for good measure. Again, we’re seeing some pretty ignorant commentary, and I use that word literally. Wolcott and Cernig have little to no idea what the book actually says nor can they fairly sum up any of Goldberg’s arguments because they just don’t know what they’re talking about.
Bill Quick’s criticism isn’t ignorant. It’s based on a couple misreadings of the blurb. First, he attributes Murray’s statement to Jack Fowler, the one who quoted them. Then he misrepresents this part of the blurb entirely:
My first reaction was that he is engaging in partisan hyperbole. That turned out to be wrong…It will affect the way I think about that history—and about the trajectory of today’s politics—forever after.
Quick’s summation, “I started out stupid but Jonah opened my eyes”, is simply not what he was saying and it’s hard to even pull that from the blurb. Murray is very clearly saying two things. First, he has an initial reaction to the premise of the book that reading the book dispelled. Second, Goldberg’s book gave him a different lens with which to view part of history that he had not considered before. That’s hardly “stupid”. In fact, it strikes me as a very intelligent way of approaching a book. It’s clear that Murray had an opinion, but he was willing to let the arguments made in the book, along with the sourcing and scholoarship of the book, change his opinions if they were strong enough to do so. Then he was smart enough to let a strong argument take up residence in his thinking.
Isn’t that what you want someone to do when they read a book? What’s the point of reading a book if you’re not willing to let the book change your opinions? I just don’t see how Murray’s approach to the book could be framed as “I was dumb, but not now..”. I like Quick’s writing a lot, but I think he missed the entire point of the blurb in his post.
The more I read about the book, especially the reactions from the allegedly open-minded left, the more I want to read it. I have a Christmas gift-card burning a hole in my pocket. It looks like Jonah Goldberg’s book might just be the thing to buy with it.
Yeah, it looks like I missed that one a bit. Thanks for the catch.
I still think my interpretation of Murray’s reax is at least thinkable, though. A lot of things are dismissed as “partisan hyperbole” that shouldn’t be, precisely for the reasons I mentioned.
No problem.
I think that Murray’s initial reaction is an understandable one. Heck, the two posts I’ve made on the book thus far have gotten pretty much that initial reaction. Unlike most I’ve encountered here, though (yourself excluded, of course), Murray was willing to read through the book before he made up his mind.
I’m still not sold on your interpretation. I think you may have sold Murray a bit short.
It may be my perspective, Jimmie. I’m looking forward to reading Jonah’s book, but frankly, the ideas it espouses aren’t earthshaking. In fact, they’ve been chewed over many times at Daily Pundit.
For starters, anybody seriously into the Second Amendment battles is well aware of the similarities between Nazi and US gun control laws. We’ve also had the “fascism discussion,” wherein the fact that it was called National *socialism* (and for a damned good reason) is well understood. (And the Germans, in fact, created the welfare state, via Bismark – Hitler was merely standing on the shoulders of giants).
I’d be willing to bet that the large majority of Jonah’s “hyperbole” is accepted as simple historical fact in substantial and knowledgeable parts of the conservative intellectual world.
So my initial reaction to somebody who brushes off Goldberg’s hypothesis as “partisan hyperbole” is not to be awed by the man’s intellectual breadth, even if it is Charles Murray doing the brushing. The difference with Murry is that he read the book and changed his mind. But many won’t. Because why would you want to waste your time with partisan hyperbole?
Murry, to his credit, did surmount that. I have a lot of respect for Murray’s work. But the ability to reject something like Goldberg’s book out of hand, even for a moment, betrays a narrowness of knowledge and a willingness toward closemindedness, even if he did overcome them.