I let a friend of mine talk me into starting my own blog. So far I don't seem to be Luddite-stupid enough to plead that I can't figure out the technology, but I won't rule it out for the future. So here we are. I'm going to start out, on the principle of so-far-out-it's-in, skylarking as a Stalinist apparatchik. But is this anything more than an irrelevant joke, in my trademark dubious taste? What is it that attracts me so much to the propaganda of the past, the more blatant, the better (e.g. my collection of vintage guidance counsellor films)? I suppose it lets us imagine that there were times of greater certainty. Also, pat as it sounds, there are parallels between the intellectual culture of Stalinism and today: elected officials seem more and more interchangeable, castrati with their arias of impotence. The debate is not between ideologies as such but rather a debate about whether ideology should matter at all, since we know all the answers, we've reached the end of history, there's just a little tinkering left to do, etc. However, like any kidnapping carried out as a practical joke, one could take this comparison too far. By "New Socialist Realism," I mean two things: 1) to evoke nostalgia for the officially sanctioned, carefully censored, utilitarian and universally comprehensible culture of post-revolutionary Russia and China. There anyone could get a decent job writing about how production was booming. And 2) to denounce all plagues of formalism, vanity, ass-kissing, obscenity, decadence and elitism. I've recently started a new teaching job: introducing young college students to literature. I tell them to read (doctrinally sound) stories and then I ask them what they think and they giggle. For this they pay me. In the field of indoctrinating our youth, production is booming.

Until next time, comrades.