AlterNet: 10 Greediest People of 2009

10 Greediest People of 2009

We've been thinking a lot about greed since we published The Love of Money: 56 Classic Stories About Greed.  Sam Pizzigati of AlterNet published a list of the 10 greediest people of the year. He writes:
"What determines which societies see the most greed and grasping? In a word: inequality. The more wealth concentrates, the more greed grows. The United States remains the most unequal nation in the developed world." [See his whole list]

Death of Truth?

Just as we approved the proof of Nothing But the Truth: 49 Classic Stories About Truth and Lies we got word that John Edwin Smith, described by the New York Times as an "author whose work tackled large questions about the nature of truth from a pragmatic, pluralistic and specifically American perspective," died at the age of 88. You can read the NYT obit here. 

The article went on to say that "Professor Smith argued for a more democratic stance: the search for truth, he argued, was an inherently social, communitarian enterprise."

The missing Tolstoy

Death Sentences: 34 Classic Short Stories About the Death Penalty came into being when I stumbled across a humorous Tolstoy short story, Too Dear, about the "Kinglet of Monaco," who, faced with the principality's first execution, found the expense of the guillotine and executioner beyond his means. Were there more stories like this? I soon found Chekhov's  The Bet, about a man who gambles on his ability to withstand solitary confinement. The rest of the stories were gathered in a matter of weeks.

The next short story anthology, The Love of Money: 56 Classic Stories About Greed,  also had a Chekhov, Gooseberries,  and a wonderful Tolstoy -- the gem of the collection -- How Much Land Does a Man Need?


So, when I started the third anthology, The Tug of War: 48 Classic Stories About War and Peace, I blithely went searching for my obligatory Tolstoy. You know -- the guy who wrote War and Peace. Nothing.  Not one stinking war story. After mulling it over, I figured out that his short stories are about more intimate relationships while the novels are more sweeping, more grand -- more about Napoleon than about his corporal.

Tolstoy will be making a reappearance in the next anthology, due out at the end of December -- Nothing But the Truth: 49 Classic Stories About Truth and Lies.  I'm delighted to have him back.

Different Choices

I'm laying out an anthology of stories about forgiveness. My friend and peaceCENTER colleague Rosalyn Collier is the editor. I found many, many stories for her and she selected 27 of them, but not "The Penance," by Saki.

I thought it was the best of the bunch. If it were MY anthology, why, I would have started off the whole book with that wonderful tale. I might have ended the book with it, too. It's that good: it deserves to be read twice. I would have printed it in gold type and featured it on the cover.

She didn't like it.

Anthologies are a deeply personal reflection of the anthologist's sensibilities. In The Tug of War: 40 Classic Stories About War & Peace, I couldn't bring myself to include a story by Rudyard Kipling. Kipling has earned a place in any anthology of war stories but I just couldn't do it. I tried justifying his absence by complaining that his soldiers' heavy dialect is all but incomprehensible. Here's an example, from The Madness Of Private Ortheris: "'No! 'Tisn't the beer," said Mulvaney. "I know fwhat's comin'. He's tuk this way now an' agin, an' it's bad--it's bad--for I'm fond av the bhoy." Honestly!

But let's face it: I dislike Kipling. He squeaked into a footnote with a verse from The Commisariat Camel  that was referenced in a story by Stephen Crane, but that's as much as I could stomach. If I do penance, perhaps the Kipling lovers will "unbeast" me, to use Saki's phrase. Did I mention that that is a darn good story?

Flower-gathering

A recent gift was the CD version of the Oxford Shorter English Dictionary. My friend Ann bought the books for her computer-less parents and gave the disk to me. Bliss! Now I can look up everything.

The word anthology comes from From Ancient Greek ἀνθολογία, which mean "flower-gathering." 

The flowers, anthos,   refer to the stories.  The OED says that the logy part comes from the Greek logos,  meaning account, relation, ratio, reason(ing), argument, discourse, saying, speech, word; and that it is related to to legein choose, collect, gather, say. This reassured me, as I was afraid that it perhaps referred to the noun "logy," meaning "dull and heavy in motion or thought."

Much better to be gathering the flowers of discourse!

Another Truth Story

Our next anthology, Nothing but the Truth: 49 Classic Stories About Truth and Lies, is awaiting the arrival of the final proof and should be available on Amazon by Christmas. Here's a story by Henry George that I found too late to include in the book: it speaks directly to the theme of truth and lies:

Justice in the Desert

Before the Cadi of an Eastern city there came from the desert two torn and bruised travelers.
     "There were five of us," they said, "on our way hither with merchandise. A day’s journey hence we halted and made our camp, when following us there came a crowd of ill-conditioned fellows who demanded entrance to our camp and who, on our refusing it, used to us violent and threatening words, and, when we answered not their threats, set upon us with force. Three of us were slain and we two barely escaped with our lives to ask justice."
     "Justice you shall have," answered the Cadi. "If what you say be true, they who assaulted you when you had not assaulted them shall die. If what you say be not true, your own lives shall pay the penalty of falsehood."

* * *

     When the assailants of the merchants arrived they were brought at once before the Cadi.
     "Is the merchants’ story true?" he asked.
     "It is, but — "
     "I will hear no more" cried the Cadi. "You admit having reviled men who had not reproached you, and having assaulted men who had not assaulted you. In this you have deserved death."
     But as they were being carried off to execution the prisoners still tried to explain.
     "Hear them, Cadi," said an old man, "lest you commit injustice."
    "But they have admitted the merchants’ words are true."
     "Yes, but their words may not be all the truth."

* * *

     So the Cadi heard them, and they said that when they came up to the merchants’ halting place they found that the merchants had pitched their camp around the only well in that part of the desert, and refused to let them enter and drink. They first remonstrated, then threatened, and then, rather than die of thirst, rushed upon the merchants’ camp and in the melee three of the merchants were slain.
     "Is this also true?" asked the Cadi of the merchants.
     The merchants were forced to admit that it was.
     "Then," said the Cadi, "you told me truth, that, being only part of the truth, was really a falsehood. You were the aggressors by taking for yourselves alone the only well from which these men could drink. Now the death I have decreed is for you."

From, Utility and futility of Labor Strikes,  by Henry George

Article in The Cleveland Recorder,  September 5, 1897