From the Editor

One of the more oft-misused quotes taken out of context is Santayana's "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  First published in 1905 in The Life of Reason Volume I, Santayana’s words have been used in political and economic debates to suggest that the idea of progress is possible and prudent and, in effect, could give the present and future power over the past. As can be told from the Depression era memories now being evoked by the likes of Bernard Madoff, the fall of Bear Stearns and the mortgage/job crisis that is being blamed for the world’s economic recession, the past is here again but wearing different shoes (size 10 to be exact).  Now here, I have misused the quote this time in a shoe debate.

Being a fan of the 2d Law of Thermodynamics, myself, I find it prudent to withhold judgement about these latest events as being good or bad -- for change, the irreversibility of nature, is the thing to keep your money in and makes the world go round.  And besides, as far as I can tell, people for the most part don’t learn a damn thing by brooding over the past.  Moreover, as can be seen in Gibbons's The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire the past just clips along a hundred years a time.  It’s a marvel, how inert time can be.

What is reassuring about these unassuring times is that the theme of the day has literary legs – what makes American literature tic, for example, from O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape (1922)  to Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross (1982), from Gatsby (1925) to Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities (1987), from Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) to Oliver Stone’s Wall Street (1987), from Nathaniel West's The Day of the Locust (1939) to Wlliam Kennedy's Ironweed (1983), not to mention Steinbeck, Upton Sinclair, Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, Edith Wharton, et al.  It seems to be American literature's most defining characteristic (and apparently an obsession in the 1980s), but of course the theme is in British literature, too, from William Blake to Alfred Tennyson, George Eliot to Rebecca West.  However, the abuses of greed and the sin of mammonism, now that Empire has faded (though that legacy is still very much evident in the world), has been, in world opinion, transferred soley to the shores not far from Staten Island. The twin towers there not-now-withstanding.

Unfortunately, the front pages tell us there is an objective correlative to the theme, the metaphoric and plot driven counterparts in the metaphysics of Charles Ponzi (1882-1949) [pictured here] as in "Ponzi scheme", DB Cooper, Charles Keating, Rod Blagojevich, and too many others in recent memory.

Perhaps the theme has legs in empire, and empire has always been the favorite whipping boy of history and social struggle.  For the 2d Law of Thermodynamics to work properly, there has to be a steady supply of Babylons.

Which brings me finally to my point -- forget the neurosis of Wall Street, the fear driven enterprise of roller coaster rides, and numbers manufactured to back the knack for making money.  Instead, turn to the relevance, look to the preponderance of literary research as a guide for investment, easily accessible in the MLA Bibliography's Economic index. 

Let's do the numbers.  Searching the term "greed" yielded 1436 entries from 1884 to the present; that is, literary research having to do with theme of greed.  A more time-specific search yielded a more startling prophecy.  From 1884-1988 (that is 104 years), there were only 49 entries; from 1989-1992  28 entries, and then here the research begins to spike, reflecting the academic's world view and interest in "greed" -- from 1993-1996 172 entries, and then the whopping 326 entries from 1997-2003 and the catastrophic 544 entries from 2004 to the present. 

And it's a world view that ranges far outside the narrow field of American literature and the 20th century, risking perhaps a redundant remark -- from the work of Thomas Middleton to Shakespeare, from The Book of Job to Chaucer, from Spenser's Mother Hubbard tales to Dickens, and ranging in time from the middle ages to present.  My favorite MLA title that tells the tale is "Devil Take the Hindmost: Chaucer, John Gay, and the Pecuniary Anus" by Tiffany Beech appearing The Chaucer Review (41.1) in 2006. [ See, right , the eponymous bronze statue that stands on the Wall Street.]  So forget the Dow, the S & P, the Nasdaq, and these troubled times, too.  Charles Schwab meet Tiffany Beech.

My other point is this: now that I have proven that the past is invincible to change -- if George Santayana were with us today, I'd vote for him, though I doubt it would make any difference. His name reminds me of childhood.  Happy Holidays!

                                                                                     Tom Douglass