American kids
In praise of nerds
Jan 10th 2008
From The Economist print edition
“AND then, just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo, and bring back an It-Kutch, a Preep, and a Proo, a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker, too!” That typically nifty passage comes from Dr Seuss's “If I Ran the Zoo”. The book was published in 1950 and contains the first use of the word “nerd”. How very unfortunate that Dr Seuss, whose verbal pyrotechnics have given so much pleasure to so many children, should also have given them, however innocently, the ghastly label
“nerd”.
The precise meaning of the word (in its post-Seuss sense) is hard to pin down, as David Anderegg, a child psychologist and academic, argues in this thoughtful and warmly sympathetic book. It denotes a bundle of different qualities: “some combination of school success, interest in precision, unselfconsciousness, closeness to adults and interest in fantasy.”
But the word is no less powerful for its vagueness. Children intuitively understand what a nerd is, with terrible clarity. The bottom line, Mr Anderegg reckons, is that American kids grow up knowing that “nerds are bad and jocks are good”. (His focus is exclusively American: in many other countries academically high-
achieving children are revered by their peers.) And this matters because these stereotypes become the basis for choices that children make about their identity and future.
Copyright © 2008 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
Medieval ivories
Pause as you pass
Jan 10th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Ivories on show in London before they leave to live in Canada
IN THIS era of eye-blink attention spans, collecting medieval ivories—the passion for more than 40 years of the late Kenneth Thomson, the 2nd Baron Thomson of Fleet—seems contrarian. Yet industrialists and financiers have fancied such objects, many intended for religious contemplation, since J.P. Morgan and before.
Visitors to London's Courtauld Gallery, where 42 medieval ivories from Lord Thomson's collection of 75 are on view, will discover the allure of these often beautiful and always technically masterly works of art.
Provided, that is, that the visitor stands still. These creamy white objects are relatively small: the usable material from African elephant tusks, of which most are made, is seldom much more than 15cm (six inches) in diameter.
The ivories arrived at the Courtauld last September to be catalogued by its outstanding medievalist, Professor John Lowden. This prompted the present show. It is a rare chance to see the carvings before they, along with the rest of Lord Thomson's 2,000-strong collection (including European and Canadian paintings, Inuit sculpture and medieval metalwork), enter the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario when its new wing, designed by Frank Gehry, opens this autumn.
Mr Lowden has designed the Courtauld exhibition to encourage people to “look carefully and then think about why things are similar and why they are different.” Instead of grouping these anonymous carvings by country of origin (which is difficult to determine with certainty because craftsmen and tusks travelled to wherever commissions were plentiful), or date of creation (everything on view was made between the 13th and 15th centuries), Mr Lowden has gathered together objects of the same kind. There are Virgin and Child altar-statues; such personal treasures as combs, caskets and mirror cases carved with themes related to courtly romances; memento mori skulls and heads; biblical narratives. In this last group are the show's two stars.
The Dormeuil diptych, not seen in public since 1913, and named for the three-generation collecting family that used to own it, sold in November at Sotheby's for more than €4m (just under $6m)—a world auction record for a medieval ivory. It was bought by David Thomson, who added it to his father's collection. At 24.75cm by 31.4cm overall, this Passion diptych, made in Paris circa 1350, is the largest known example of the genre. Each hinged leaf is divided into three tiers packed with carefully observed and finely carved figures, from the delicately treading donkey Christ rides towards Jerusalem to an unnervingly jaunty chap prodding Christ on the cross.
In Mr Lowden's opinion, the Nativity and Last Judgment diptych is even more exceptional though it was bought in October 2005 for a mere €6,000. The low price reflected the long-held view that it was an early 19th-century fake. (Fakes are not uncommon: demand for medieval ivories was so great in the 19th century that carvers augmented the supply.) But, says Mr Lowden, “There are two kinds of fakes: those not good enough to have been done by medieval carvers and those too good to be true.” The Nativity and Last Judgment was in the second category. It was suspect because it was perfect technically and because it was unique. In the middle ages, tradition not originality was prized.
Mr Lowden had a hunch, however, and carbon-14 analysis supported it. The tusk dates from between 1030 and 1220. Next, his aesthetically acute forensic skills led him to works of undisputed authenticity with a number of similarities to this one, from the rolled cuffs on shepherds' sleeves to the positioning of Christ's hands. He has now dated it at 1300.
The study of the diptych was not undertaken with this aim but its conclusions vindicate Lord Thomson's approach. “Ken Thomson was unlikely to be swayed by the information offered either by art historians or dealers,” says Sam Fogg, a London dealer. “He chose works of art on the basis of how he himself
responded to the object...To build a collection like this is dangerous unless you have a good eye. He had a very good one.”
“Medieval Ivories from the Thomson Collection” is at the Courtauld Gallery, London, from January 10th until March 9th
Copyright © 2008 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
George MacDonald Fraser
Jan 10th 2008
From The Economist print edition
George MacDonald Fraser, inventor of Flashman, died on January 2nd, aged 82
HARRY FLASHMAN never knew George MacDonald Fraser. That was a pity, because Mr Fraser knew every scrap about Flashman, from the points of his swaggering moustaches to the tips of his gleaming spurs.
He knew him as a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward and, not least, a toady, ever able to make himself shine in the eyes of his braying superiors. And he revelled in him as perhaps the finest fictional rogue ever to grace the map of the British empire.
Mr Fraser had known him from the start of his career, when he was dragged bragging and hiccupping from the pages of “Tom Brown's Schooldays” and pitchforked out of Rugby; and he had followed him, like some devoted batman, through all his military campaigns, from Afghanistan to South Africa to the Indian wars. He had seen him frozen in a blanket in a corpse-strewn defile on the retreat from Kabul in 1842;
almost split neatly in two by a grinning Chinaman in a top-knot while running guns down the Yangtse in 1860; struggling in an Indian swamp, after the great ghat massacre at Cawnpore, with what looked like man-eating crocodiles; and charging, by accident, for the Russian guns at Balaclava. As Flashman accumulated the tinware—the Victoria Cross, the Queen's Medal, the San Serafino Order of Purity and Truth (“richly deserved”), both he and Mr Fraser knew it was sheer terror that propelled him, delirium funkens, plus a large measure of luck. The great hero of Jallalabad was, in fact, “yellow as yesterday's custard”. But he always emerged in splendour.
And with women. Every Flashman novel writhed with them, preferably all bum, belly and bust, giggling and bouncing at the prospect of an officer “who had raked and ridden harder than most”. After the beauteous Fetnab (who “knew the ninety-seven ways of love...though...the seventy-fourth position turns out to be the same as the seventy-third, but with your fingers crossed”), came Lola Montez and Cassie and Susie the Bawd; and, finest of all, the Indian princess Lakshmibai, her “splendid golden nakedness”
dressed in no more than bangles and a tiny veil. It was a serious disaster that could interrupt the tumbling for any long period of time.