Happy birthday, big brother.

Facing 40 and miffed because you haven't made your mark on the world? Maybe you're older - you're over the hill and you think that genius is synonymous with youth? You've missed your chance? My brother turned 40, Friday. I'm not too far behind.

Rapsberries to Keats "Ode on a Grecian Turn": "Beauty is youth, youth is beauty. That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know." Hubris to be sure, but the youth of today would have us believe it.

No. There is still hope for us old farts according to Daniel H. Pink. His story, "What Kind of Genius are You?" in the July edition of Wired Magazine declares that genius comes in two varieties: The guys who bloom early - the prodigies - like Mozart, Picasso and F. Scott Fitzgerald. And there are the guys who bloom later: Mark Twain, Beethoven, Alfred Hitchcock, me - and, well you, too.

Ok, that was just to see if you were paying attention. Of course, I'm a late bloomer. No one, except you has heard of me yet. Ergo, I must be a late bloomer. You must be too.

Well, really the point of Pink's story, is that genius is not just a game for the young. But then, I would be skeptical that there are only the two kinds of intelligent people. Isaac Asimov wrote well into his nineties. John Kenneth Galbraith did as well. Both men are from vastly different disciplines.

As I said, Keats be dammed.

Why Orwell Matters

On the occassion of the belated birthday of George Orwell, June 24, I picked up Christopher Hitchens 2002 book, "Why Orwell Matters". Given the current political climate in this country: a vaguely sinister, perpetual war in far away places; government suspicion; distrust; fear; spying on Americans; imperial presidency - one might imagine that the father of doublespeak would make every one's short list of favorite google subjects.

It's not that Orwell admired oral political mire. Rather, from a writer's point of view, it seemed he was more interested in playing with language. Perhaps. He was a writer's writer - Almost like a British Hemmingway - A Rudyard Kipling antidote. (A who? A what?)

Note: Hemmingway, the archetypal American writer, lived in Cuba and associated with Castro (There are SOME idiosyncracies). Hemmingway also had five wives and cats with extra toes, by the way. Idiosyncracies, as there are with Orwell. Hitchens writes: "Thus, the Orwell who is regarded by some as being as English as roast beef and warm beer is born in Bengal and published his first articles in French."

From Hitchens' point of view, Orwell was a counter-colonialist Brit who allowed himself to be claimed by neither wholely the left or the right. In that respect, he was a true Hitchens' style hero. Hitchens' own political leanings are as vague as the sexual appetites of a certain pirate captain who is making waves these days.

Anyway, it's clear, then, without a book why Orwell (should) matter today. We've read "Animal Farm" and "1984". Just because those are SO last century, doesn't mean they aren't prescient today (where's my dammed dictionary). What's not clear is why Hitchens' book matters. Even for us literary geeks - the book is full of names that don't even make this schoolboy's list of household names. It's all so Kafka-esque.

Anyway, happy birthday, George.