I note this week a visit to the bank where I was mistaken for my wife's father.
I'd already achieved a seniority beyond years when our table of four at IHOP was granted an unbidden senior discount presumably based on my presence, spoiling a future long-cherished low-price meal at Bob Evans I was saving for my 55th birthday.
These days even the Flash, the original, mind you, Jay Garrick, the speedster who calls everyone 'son' and wears the Sancho Panza wash basin over his greying temples, betrays a certain defensiveness like when he said recently, "Experience makes a man more effective, not less, plus you're allowed to take afternoon naps."
Not so much, however, while you're still working, recalling, for example, the late night-no dinner meeting strategy, Elaine employed at J. Petermans, to force Morty Seinfeld out.
Age obsession is nothing new. According to Roman poet, Horace, circa 23 B.C:
Learn to live well, or fairly make your will;
You've played, and loved, and ate, and drunk your fill:
Walk sober off; before a sprightlier age
comes tittering on, and shoves you from the stage.
At this point in time, I consider myself well shoved by titterers.
So, what to do next?
A recent New Yorker article by Ben McGrath featured former Major Leaguer Lenny Dykstra, who in contrast to myriads of his compatriots who died broke, "wants to encourage athletes in their prime to set aside a half-million dollars a year in a customized retirement account, thereby insuring cash for life." I suppose that's all well and good, though it goes against the grain of our family tradition to 'buy high, sell low.'
On the other hand, in church last Sunday, while I was pondering the Book of Dykstra, the preacher serendipitously reminded the congregation that Jesus said, 'do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.' I've already evidently achieved such a higher degree of spirituality, since after building a substantial wardrobe over many years by buying $3.00 shirts off winter-clearance sale racks, folks have been telling me for a good long while, it doesn't look like I care what I wear.
Yet another Roman, Cicero, points to a middle way:
Hours and days, and months and years go by;
the past returns no more,
and what is to be we cannot know;
but whatever the time gives us in which to live,
we should therefore be content.
Many ancients were apparently greatly concerned about becoming ancient. I'm taking contentment to heart, doing some moderate planning, but certainly not on the Dystra plane where he's Gulfstream and I'm coach. I informed our financial advisor the other day, though I respect a certain need to save, it doesn't make sense to die with all the money still invested in mutual funds.
In that spirit, I just bought a GPS so when I venture out, I won't get lost, or, at least, less confused than usual. We're also building a screened-in porch so I won't have to venture out at all.
I'll be content to roost, overlooking the untamed steep slopes of our wild septic field, encounterning old and new authors alike, and trying to adequately convey in these pages, what Daniel Jenkins, a philospher at the Community College of Baltimore County, describes, as "a wonder about everyday objects, prompting an analysis of basic concepts about human beings and our relationships with the world." That should take up more than a few years.
I've just discovered, for one, the Irish poet WB Yeats, whose work, according to Seamus Heaney, "achieved its indomitableness through his devotion to style, and his conviction that by remaking his style he could remake his self."
It must not have been easy since Yeats himself wrote in Adam's Curse:
A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
I'm ready to stitch as long as my fingers are able to sew and the aspirin holds out.
Will retirement seem like one long vacation?
Of those places where extended leisure time is highly valued, Cyril Connolly writes, "on holidays Venice stopped work by law and there were plenty of holidays. And everyone went to church - another reason for the well-being. Nobody thought that life ended with death - an idea more depressant of vigor and serenity than any known to the mind . . . Even Casanova believed in God and prayed all his life."
Casanova might have been well served to move to Santiago, Chile, where the mayor's been handing out free Viagra lately to seniors, proclaiming, "an active sensuality improves the overall quality of life."
I don't know about that; I'm savoring the sedentary prospects of porch existence, where they'll undoubtedly be more reading than sex, but, you know, thanks to our friendly pharmacist, the latter can't be entirely ruled out.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Friday, May 23, 2008
Greater Regionalism
I note this week a raging controversy on the letter page of our local rag over the southern boundary of Northern Virginia. Friend Lisa asks, who cares? - yet this issues stokes great passion around here.
Our home is 65 miles south of DC; we don't consider ourselves to be citizens of No VA. When in Lynchburg, two years ago, the good old boys there, including the mayor, adamantly insisted we were Yankees. The letter in the paper last week claims the Mason-Dixon line lies in Quantico about 35 miles south of the city. Does anyone bid fifty?
Cleveland's Harvey Pekar advocates for a Regionalism, technical in nature; the pooling of economic resources for public transportation, sewers, police, etc., to derive the most bang from the buck; this works well where sister cities are co-joined such as Minneapolis and St. Paul. Pekar's concept carries within seeds which may foster cultural connections that supersede traditional prejudices.
Our annual Oriole's weekend is emblematic of a Mid-Atlantic cultural regionalism which exists within the space between Richmond and Baltimore.
Prior to leaving on Friday, I read of a historian's quest to idenitfy the grave of one of Thomas Jefferson's freed slaves in Petersburg - a man who later worked as a blacksmith, tinsmith and glass blower. An interweaved horror and romance permeates all here. It's found in the crumbling ruins of stone chimneys on the outskirts of a farm where we held an annual Hospice camp for grieving children; it's in the cabin in which we stayed for our anniversary last year which was originally the summer kitchen of a plantation. In reply to Friend Lisa's question, it is this volatile mixture which undoubtedly undergirds the borderline controversy.
Once over the Potomac driving north beyond the Harry Nice bridge, Southern Maryland, as seen from Route 301, broadcasts a tranquil 1950 panorama of roadside motels, crab fishermen and cows.
Baltimore, itself, reflects another legacy of unresolved conflict as much as its neighbor to the south. A glossy city magazine touts a residential complex at the corner of St. Paul and 33rd Streets, a neighborhood we'd formerly employed to house kids in town for a rally, cautiously locking them in after 6 p.m. Under a banner invitingly emblazoned "Neighborhood," the ad lists Barnes & Noble, Chipolte, Cold Stone Creamery and Starbucks. In so many Baltimore neighborhoods, I experience the same mix of pleasure, guilt and discomfort as when disembarking from a cruise ship that's landed on a island teeming with Third World poverty. Gentrification hasn't displaced the poor; they skirt, haunt, the periphery, no way in, no way out.
Our Orioles weekend routine remains uniform: catch the water taxi Saturday morning to Fells Point, another melded area of affluence and poverty, visiting an antique shop, a cut-price hoody-sneaker store, a mystery bookshop, a used CD outlet, and an Irish pub for a restful pint before boarding the boat to sail back to the Harbor.
This year, a new sighting: aggressive evangelical Mennonites; not the same kind as those gentle people who sell fresh baked bread at our farmer's market back home.
Saturday evening, at the top knotch Inner Harbor Barnes & Nobles, a former cherished refuge during a week-long office conference when after-hours socializing was otherwise the rule, I found, what else, Pekar's new graphic novel, on the history of the SDS. In one panel, Abbie Hoffman, after attending a debate, says he has no clue what anyone was talking about. These disputes between aging Maoists and New Revolutionaries, once thought vital, are no longer relevant, or even interesting. As Pekar points out, the SDS never found fertile grounds for revolution amongst a US proletariat, who while harboring legitimate labor grievances, still prefers, now and then, to achieve the American dream, not overthrow it.
It's sufficient in Baltimore to celebrate the blue collar Orioles - this season a scrappy bunch of overachievers, progressing, at last, beyond rebuilding years, to overcome a decade of managerial incompetence and no middle-relief.
I note an interview this week of a ballplayer who said, "We have another game, a newer game now. In this game, power has replaced speed and skill. I guess more people would rather see [?] hit one over the fence then see me steal second."
Was a rookie phenom speedster discussing Jose Canseco? Or a veteran base stealer speaking out on steroids or any number of the woes which currently afflict the national pastime?
No, it was Ty Cobb, in 1924, talking about Babe Ruth, in conversation with Grantland Rice, once the premier American sportswriter, now, almost impossible to find on any shelf.
Rice, a companion to immortals, like Ruth, Dempsey and Bobby Jones, dismissed all talk of good old days, writing, "Around each curve in life, I fully expect to meet and to love a great champion. I often find old favorites annoying when they carp and haggle over minute details of events that weren't clear even when they occurred 30 or more years ago. If I didn't look ahead to greater deeds in this speeded up age, I believe I would have withered away long ago."
After reading in the Fredericksburg rag, on Sunday, about a 75-year old farmer, who's donated more than a hundred antique tractors to the new Northern Neck Farm Museum, I knew another year's O's weekend and its new memories was history.
Greater Mid-Atlantic Regionalism, preserving its heritage, building the future, what a kick.
My hometown is 150 miles long.
Our home is 65 miles south of DC; we don't consider ourselves to be citizens of No VA. When in Lynchburg, two years ago, the good old boys there, including the mayor, adamantly insisted we were Yankees. The letter in the paper last week claims the Mason-Dixon line lies in Quantico about 35 miles south of the city. Does anyone bid fifty?
Cleveland's Harvey Pekar advocates for a Regionalism, technical in nature; the pooling of economic resources for public transportation, sewers, police, etc., to derive the most bang from the buck; this works well where sister cities are co-joined such as Minneapolis and St. Paul. Pekar's concept carries within seeds which may foster cultural connections that supersede traditional prejudices.
Our annual Oriole's weekend is emblematic of a Mid-Atlantic cultural regionalism which exists within the space between Richmond and Baltimore.
Prior to leaving on Friday, I read of a historian's quest to idenitfy the grave of one of Thomas Jefferson's freed slaves in Petersburg - a man who later worked as a blacksmith, tinsmith and glass blower. An interweaved horror and romance permeates all here. It's found in the crumbling ruins of stone chimneys on the outskirts of a farm where we held an annual Hospice camp for grieving children; it's in the cabin in which we stayed for our anniversary last year which was originally the summer kitchen of a plantation. In reply to Friend Lisa's question, it is this volatile mixture which undoubtedly undergirds the borderline controversy.
Once over the Potomac driving north beyond the Harry Nice bridge, Southern Maryland, as seen from Route 301, broadcasts a tranquil 1950 panorama of roadside motels, crab fishermen and cows.
Baltimore, itself, reflects another legacy of unresolved conflict as much as its neighbor to the south. A glossy city magazine touts a residential complex at the corner of St. Paul and 33rd Streets, a neighborhood we'd formerly employed to house kids in town for a rally, cautiously locking them in after 6 p.m. Under a banner invitingly emblazoned "Neighborhood," the ad lists Barnes & Noble, Chipolte, Cold Stone Creamery and Starbucks. In so many Baltimore neighborhoods, I experience the same mix of pleasure, guilt and discomfort as when disembarking from a cruise ship that's landed on a island teeming with Third World poverty. Gentrification hasn't displaced the poor; they skirt, haunt, the periphery, no way in, no way out.
Our Orioles weekend routine remains uniform: catch the water taxi Saturday morning to Fells Point, another melded area of affluence and poverty, visiting an antique shop, a cut-price hoody-sneaker store, a mystery bookshop, a used CD outlet, and an Irish pub for a restful pint before boarding the boat to sail back to the Harbor.
This year, a new sighting: aggressive evangelical Mennonites; not the same kind as those gentle people who sell fresh baked bread at our farmer's market back home.
Saturday evening, at the top knotch Inner Harbor Barnes & Nobles, a former cherished refuge during a week-long office conference when after-hours socializing was otherwise the rule, I found, what else, Pekar's new graphic novel, on the history of the SDS. In one panel, Abbie Hoffman, after attending a debate, says he has no clue what anyone was talking about. These disputes between aging Maoists and New Revolutionaries, once thought vital, are no longer relevant, or even interesting. As Pekar points out, the SDS never found fertile grounds for revolution amongst a US proletariat, who while harboring legitimate labor grievances, still prefers, now and then, to achieve the American dream, not overthrow it.
It's sufficient in Baltimore to celebrate the blue collar Orioles - this season a scrappy bunch of overachievers, progressing, at last, beyond rebuilding years, to overcome a decade of managerial incompetence and no middle-relief.
I note an interview this week of a ballplayer who said, "We have another game, a newer game now. In this game, power has replaced speed and skill. I guess more people would rather see [?] hit one over the fence then see me steal second."
Was a rookie phenom speedster discussing Jose Canseco? Or a veteran base stealer speaking out on steroids or any number of the woes which currently afflict the national pastime?
No, it was Ty Cobb, in 1924, talking about Babe Ruth, in conversation with Grantland Rice, once the premier American sportswriter, now, almost impossible to find on any shelf.
Rice, a companion to immortals, like Ruth, Dempsey and Bobby Jones, dismissed all talk of good old days, writing, "Around each curve in life, I fully expect to meet and to love a great champion. I often find old favorites annoying when they carp and haggle over minute details of events that weren't clear even when they occurred 30 or more years ago. If I didn't look ahead to greater deeds in this speeded up age, I believe I would have withered away long ago."
After reading in the Fredericksburg rag, on Sunday, about a 75-year old farmer, who's donated more than a hundred antique tractors to the new Northern Neck Farm Museum, I knew another year's O's weekend and its new memories was history.
Greater Mid-Atlantic Regionalism, preserving its heritage, building the future, what a kick.
My hometown is 150 miles long.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Choosing Beerbohm
I note this week the Virginia Department of Transportation is reducing the speed limit along a four-mile stretch of road from 45 to 35 mph after seven fatalities in five years.
This is the route we take on the way to the mountain retreat. When we start out, the anticipation of a peaceful weekend in the country is delectable. At the half-way point, we stop for an always surprisingly grand gourmet lunch in the same non-descript village. Well fed, we drive the steep winding roads, bordered by farms, woods and streams, up, over and down the pass, leading to our final destination. The only thing which can dispel the relaxing mood is an idiot on my bumper with a serious need for speed.
VDOT, I applaud you.
Have you ever logged the time it takes upon exiting the driveway to when you're first annoyed? I depart on workdays at 3:50 a.m. Even at this godforsaken hour, you'd be surprised, or not, how many drivers tailgate with their brights on, and leave their lights on, shining in your car, as they sleep in the parking lot awaiting the commuter train. Or those who stand on the platform smoking in front of the no smoking sign, and whom, upon claiming a seat, crank the volume to a level on their headphones so you can hear the tinny buzz while they simultaneously talk on a cell (though who the hell else would so chatty at 5:15 a.m. when they might still be abed?).
Friend Jill says the underlying frustration is lack of control, that is, how all the intricate planning, mapquest research, packing, etc., as meticulous as D-Day logistics, is easily ruined by the actions of morons unaccounted for in prior considerations.
As you age, it's worse. Like a dog who circles for a half hour to tramp down what would have been a forest floor but is now a pile of blankets on the living room carpet, the nesting dna activates, striving for supremacy in the failure of memory cells, which no longer recall, say, where you laid the sunglasses five minutes ago after you intentionally, conveniently, staged them on the buffet, so you could remember to pick them up on the way out.
All this climbs to a plateau where universals are lost in lieu of reclaiming control in small ways. The Sun reports on a parochial school, inner-city Baltimore, where drug dealers who formerly respected the territory are now dealing on sidewalks in front, even stashing dope in the grotto next to the statue of the Virgin Mary. A Sister responds, "We want our buffer zone back. In no way do we want to confront drug dealers. We just want to say this is our space. Find another space. Go someplace else."
Like the good Sister, I long to restore the sanctuary of an isolated privacy within a greater public space. To calmly drive through a mountain pass. To drink a cup of coffee in the garden behind the new Griffin bookshop minus the static of a neighbor's IPOD. To down a quiet pint of Guinness in an Irish pub without breathing the second-hand smoke of the blathering tootsie on the next barstool.
Or merely to read peacefully on the train in the morning. It could be summertime, or it might be age, when history tomes are laid aside, replaced by what Dorothy Parker calls 'little entertainments.' There still come rainy days to read Nuremberg interviews, but mostly, lately, its reading for pleasure.
When Max Beerbohm, in 1895, writes of Thackeray, "He blew on his pipe, and words came tripping round him, like children, like pretty little children, who are perfectly drilled for the dance," the essence of lesser ambition is so elegantly captured.
When you realize you won't change the world, kindness emerges sufficient. Beerbohm, again, sweetly defends an assumed feckless George IV: "When all the town was agog for the fete to be given by the Regent in honour of the French King, Sheridan sent a forged card of invitation to Romeo Coates, the half-witted dandy, who used at this time to walk about in absurd ribbons and buckles, and was the butt of all the steetsters. The poor fellow arrived at the entrance of Carlton House, proud as a peacock, and he was greeted with a tremendous cheer from the by-standing mob, but when he came to the lackeys he was told that his card was a hoax and sent about his business. The tears were rolling down his cheeks as he shambled back into the street. The Regent heard later in the evening of this sorry joke, and next day dispatched a kindly-worded message, in which he prayed that Mr. Coates would not refuse to come and view the decorations nevertheless."
Over the past few months, in prepping to teach Book of Acts Bible study, I've noticed the questions I'm devising are devolving to human scale as opposed to a presumption that anyone may know God's intentions. When Paul defends himself in court, for example, I ask the class not about the merits of his cosmic theological defense, but how, they, as an ordinary juror, might react to a talkative defendant, like Paul, in contrast to an accused, like Jesus, who says, little, or nothing, in response to questioning.
What might one find in little entertainments that's missing from the historical magnum opus? Tolstoy says, "Art is a human activity, consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of exernal signs, hands on to others feelings he has worked through, and other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them."
With every road taken, there are external and inner warning signs which convey allowances and constaints. Those who fail to heed, acting as if no one else exists, deny, through small irritations, the happy conduct of all good common lives.
That's what I find most annoying.
This is the route we take on the way to the mountain retreat. When we start out, the anticipation of a peaceful weekend in the country is delectable. At the half-way point, we stop for an always surprisingly grand gourmet lunch in the same non-descript village. Well fed, we drive the steep winding roads, bordered by farms, woods and streams, up, over and down the pass, leading to our final destination. The only thing which can dispel the relaxing mood is an idiot on my bumper with a serious need for speed.
VDOT, I applaud you.
Have you ever logged the time it takes upon exiting the driveway to when you're first annoyed? I depart on workdays at 3:50 a.m. Even at this godforsaken hour, you'd be surprised, or not, how many drivers tailgate with their brights on, and leave their lights on, shining in your car, as they sleep in the parking lot awaiting the commuter train. Or those who stand on the platform smoking in front of the no smoking sign, and whom, upon claiming a seat, crank the volume to a level on their headphones so you can hear the tinny buzz while they simultaneously talk on a cell (though who the hell else would so chatty at 5:15 a.m. when they might still be abed?).
Friend Jill says the underlying frustration is lack of control, that is, how all the intricate planning, mapquest research, packing, etc., as meticulous as D-Day logistics, is easily ruined by the actions of morons unaccounted for in prior considerations.
As you age, it's worse. Like a dog who circles for a half hour to tramp down what would have been a forest floor but is now a pile of blankets on the living room carpet, the nesting dna activates, striving for supremacy in the failure of memory cells, which no longer recall, say, where you laid the sunglasses five minutes ago after you intentionally, conveniently, staged them on the buffet, so you could remember to pick them up on the way out.
All this climbs to a plateau where universals are lost in lieu of reclaiming control in small ways. The Sun reports on a parochial school, inner-city Baltimore, where drug dealers who formerly respected the territory are now dealing on sidewalks in front, even stashing dope in the grotto next to the statue of the Virgin Mary. A Sister responds, "We want our buffer zone back. In no way do we want to confront drug dealers. We just want to say this is our space. Find another space. Go someplace else."
Like the good Sister, I long to restore the sanctuary of an isolated privacy within a greater public space. To calmly drive through a mountain pass. To drink a cup of coffee in the garden behind the new Griffin bookshop minus the static of a neighbor's IPOD. To down a quiet pint of Guinness in an Irish pub without breathing the second-hand smoke of the blathering tootsie on the next barstool.
Or merely to read peacefully on the train in the morning. It could be summertime, or it might be age, when history tomes are laid aside, replaced by what Dorothy Parker calls 'little entertainments.' There still come rainy days to read Nuremberg interviews, but mostly, lately, its reading for pleasure.
When Max Beerbohm, in 1895, writes of Thackeray, "He blew on his pipe, and words came tripping round him, like children, like pretty little children, who are perfectly drilled for the dance," the essence of lesser ambition is so elegantly captured.
When you realize you won't change the world, kindness emerges sufficient. Beerbohm, again, sweetly defends an assumed feckless George IV: "When all the town was agog for the fete to be given by the Regent in honour of the French King, Sheridan sent a forged card of invitation to Romeo Coates, the half-witted dandy, who used at this time to walk about in absurd ribbons and buckles, and was the butt of all the steetsters. The poor fellow arrived at the entrance of Carlton House, proud as a peacock, and he was greeted with a tremendous cheer from the by-standing mob, but when he came to the lackeys he was told that his card was a hoax and sent about his business. The tears were rolling down his cheeks as he shambled back into the street. The Regent heard later in the evening of this sorry joke, and next day dispatched a kindly-worded message, in which he prayed that Mr. Coates would not refuse to come and view the decorations nevertheless."
Over the past few months, in prepping to teach Book of Acts Bible study, I've noticed the questions I'm devising are devolving to human scale as opposed to a presumption that anyone may know God's intentions. When Paul defends himself in court, for example, I ask the class not about the merits of his cosmic theological defense, but how, they, as an ordinary juror, might react to a talkative defendant, like Paul, in contrast to an accused, like Jesus, who says, little, or nothing, in response to questioning.
What might one find in little entertainments that's missing from the historical magnum opus? Tolstoy says, "Art is a human activity, consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of exernal signs, hands on to others feelings he has worked through, and other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them."
With every road taken, there are external and inner warning signs which convey allowances and constaints. Those who fail to heed, acting as if no one else exists, deny, through small irritations, the happy conduct of all good common lives.
That's what I find most annoying.
Friday, May 9, 2008
No Hidden Membership Fees
I note this week its hard to tell the ads from the news on the radio. Sitting at the kitchen table at 5:00 a.m. listening for whether its going to rain, the next thing you know, an announcer is going on about the FX-21 Jet Fighter equipped with a GHS-19-XX Immersion Prolific Missile Armory System. Am I a potential customer for this? Do they sell them on the train platform like umbrellas?
For reasons unaccounted for, I'm drawn to read the less voluntarily full page spreads of oil companies in the national news weeklys touting their conservation records. I suppose it's a matter of wanting to believe, like granting the benefit of the doubt to a friend. Sometimes things fall apart no matter how hard your friend tries. When two Ecuadorians won the Goldman Environmental Prize recently, Oscars for conservationists, for demanding Chevron, the "People Do" company compensate peasants for polluting villages with billions of gallons of toxic waste, the corporation rented a room in the same hotel at the same time as the ceremony to denounce their erstwhile allies.
This is nothing new. In a 1946 letter to Arthur Sulzberger, chief of the NY Times, AJ Leibling complains an anti-union piece, falsely alleging an impending national strike, is underwritten by a representative of the National Association of Manufacturers. The reply received, "the problem you raise is indeed a difficult one and we're keeping at it," doesn't inspire confidence anything will be rectified soon.
In fact, more than sixty years later, after demonstrating to Google that an outfit was deliberately misleading those in search of something else, their reply, "We recognize your concern, but there is nothing Google can do to remove the offending content without the cooperation of the site's webmaster," has the same scant effect.
Back on the radio, driving to town the other day to return books-on-tape, I'm listening off and on to an interview with singer, Marie Digby, who says, "it's important to be young in the music business today; I'm not willing to spend five years on the road playing to live audiences; I want success quicker than that." I subsequently learn Ms. Digby gained fame posting an acoustic cover version of Rihanna's hit "Umbrella" on YouTube.
In contrast, Eric Clapton says in a 1985 interview in Rolling Stone, "Every Friday night, there would be a meeting at someone's house and people would turn up with the lastest imported records from the States. And shortly, someone showed up with that Chess album, The Best of Muddy Waters, and somthing by Howling Wolf. Then I sort of took a step back, discovered Robert Johnson, and made the connection to Muddy. For me, it was serious what I heard. And I began to realize that I could only listen to this music with people who were equally serious about it."
Clapton identifies the danger of a more in-depth approach: "I think what happens to an artist is, when he feels the mood swings that all suffer from if we're creative, instead of facing the reality that this is an opportunity to create, he will turn to something that will stop that mood. He won't want to face that creative urge, because he knows the self-exploration that must be undertaken, the pain that must be faced."
The Digby/Clapton difference is one I've pondered previously in these pages when considering homeschooling. There are those who disdain the practice by uniformly touting the benefits of socialization. Many of us look back upon School days as hell. Might we be far less scarred today for not undergoing such socialization?
Does Digby's unwillingness to earn her chops by embracing the Behind the Scenes Clapton-like rock ritual of personal near self-destruction eradicate her credibility as an artist? Or is she smarter and healthier than those who gone before? Friend Lisa says if YouTube was available to Hendrix/Joplin/Morrison, they'd have gone down that road too.
In an essay on Thomas Mann, Cyril Connolly writes of "influences that derive from the Flaubertian conception of art and the artist. Writing is a high calling exercising great labor and patience and a certain self-sacrifice from those who profess it. One can't expect to make much money, and one must be content to remain an observer of life and of one's own life, often deprived of the experiences which render more rounded and full those of other human beings. The artist is a being naturally isolated who cannot or should not seek admission to the organized body of society, he is an aristocratic ivory-towering hermit vowed from the his birth to sensibility, austerity, loneliness, and fame."
An isolated cyber-world, yet simultaneously accessible by the world, allows an artist the distance Connolly advocates while overturning his expectation of poverty. Somehow, isn't it Clapton, rather than Digby, though, who's more likely to channel experiences, harmful and otherwise, through art, authenticating the creation with a depth and credibility not possible from membership fees unpaid?
For reasons unaccounted for, I'm drawn to read the less voluntarily full page spreads of oil companies in the national news weeklys touting their conservation records. I suppose it's a matter of wanting to believe, like granting the benefit of the doubt to a friend. Sometimes things fall apart no matter how hard your friend tries. When two Ecuadorians won the Goldman Environmental Prize recently, Oscars for conservationists, for demanding Chevron, the "People Do" company compensate peasants for polluting villages with billions of gallons of toxic waste, the corporation rented a room in the same hotel at the same time as the ceremony to denounce their erstwhile allies.
This is nothing new. In a 1946 letter to Arthur Sulzberger, chief of the NY Times, AJ Leibling complains an anti-union piece, falsely alleging an impending national strike, is underwritten by a representative of the National Association of Manufacturers. The reply received, "the problem you raise is indeed a difficult one and we're keeping at it," doesn't inspire confidence anything will be rectified soon.
In fact, more than sixty years later, after demonstrating to Google that an outfit was deliberately misleading those in search of something else, their reply, "We recognize your concern, but there is nothing Google can do to remove the offending content without the cooperation of the site's webmaster," has the same scant effect.
Back on the radio, driving to town the other day to return books-on-tape, I'm listening off and on to an interview with singer, Marie Digby, who says, "it's important to be young in the music business today; I'm not willing to spend five years on the road playing to live audiences; I want success quicker than that." I subsequently learn Ms. Digby gained fame posting an acoustic cover version of Rihanna's hit "Umbrella" on YouTube.
In contrast, Eric Clapton says in a 1985 interview in Rolling Stone, "Every Friday night, there would be a meeting at someone's house and people would turn up with the lastest imported records from the States. And shortly, someone showed up with that Chess album, The Best of Muddy Waters, and somthing by Howling Wolf. Then I sort of took a step back, discovered Robert Johnson, and made the connection to Muddy. For me, it was serious what I heard. And I began to realize that I could only listen to this music with people who were equally serious about it."
Clapton identifies the danger of a more in-depth approach: "I think what happens to an artist is, when he feels the mood swings that all suffer from if we're creative, instead of facing the reality that this is an opportunity to create, he will turn to something that will stop that mood. He won't want to face that creative urge, because he knows the self-exploration that must be undertaken, the pain that must be faced."
The Digby/Clapton difference is one I've pondered previously in these pages when considering homeschooling. There are those who disdain the practice by uniformly touting the benefits of socialization. Many of us look back upon School days as hell. Might we be far less scarred today for not undergoing such socialization?
Does Digby's unwillingness to earn her chops by embracing the Behind the Scenes Clapton-like rock ritual of personal near self-destruction eradicate her credibility as an artist? Or is she smarter and healthier than those who gone before? Friend Lisa says if YouTube was available to Hendrix/Joplin/Morrison, they'd have gone down that road too.
In an essay on Thomas Mann, Cyril Connolly writes of "influences that derive from the Flaubertian conception of art and the artist. Writing is a high calling exercising great labor and patience and a certain self-sacrifice from those who profess it. One can't expect to make much money, and one must be content to remain an observer of life and of one's own life, often deprived of the experiences which render more rounded and full those of other human beings. The artist is a being naturally isolated who cannot or should not seek admission to the organized body of society, he is an aristocratic ivory-towering hermit vowed from the his birth to sensibility, austerity, loneliness, and fame."
An isolated cyber-world, yet simultaneously accessible by the world, allows an artist the distance Connolly advocates while overturning his expectation of poverty. Somehow, isn't it Clapton, rather than Digby, though, who's more likely to channel experiences, harmful and otherwise, through art, authenticating the creation with a depth and credibility not possible from membership fees unpaid?
Friday, May 2, 2008
The State v. 5 W's
I note this week the 35th anniversary of not more than 35 minutes of Journalism class. Hopped up on Jack Kerouac, Hunter Thompson, Tom Wolfe, linked by the Voice, the Stone, and a single dog-earred Berkeley Barb, to a whole world seemingly in revolution, the road undertaken as always where I'm concerned, marches at a distance, conveyed by words. When the first class covering the 5 W's was over, and a query to the professor about Thompson elicted no recognition, the honor of all New Journalism at stake, I exited stage left, no better reporter than I was coming in.
There never was a thank you card from Jack, Hunter or Tom, or the Revoluton, for sacrifices made on their behalf, and so a bureaucrat was born. No matter. Yet, though the way was once lost, perhaps its taken three necessary decades, to find it again.
For a real pro like A.J. Leibling, "it is impossible for me to estimate how many of my early impressions of the world, correct and the opposite, came to me through newspapers. Homicide, adultery, no-hit pitching, and Balkanism were concepts that, left to my own devices, I would have encountered much later in life. Through newspapers I acquired a vicarous knowledge, or perhaps more accurately an illusion of knowledge, of just about everything in the world from polar exploration to the mores of choir singers and the names of the ten greatest novels ever written."
By the time you attend college, Leibling advises, "the way to learn about journalism is in a class on sociology." Agreed - even an expert on the 5 W's, in the absence of -ology knowledge, wouldn't be able to adequately explain a recent AP article where a rather harmless and benign proposal to create a promotional Alabama wine trail hits a sour note with alert Baptists who respond they'd "support visiting old, historic churches, but as far as visiting wineries, we're on record as being opposed to any kind of alchohol related industry."
What's in, and not in, a recent obit in the local rag leaves much to psychologically analyze: "he greatly admired Winston Churchill and often quoted his speeches from memory in an accent and manner reminiscent of the man himself. He was convinced until the very end that Frank Sinatra was a draft dodger." He was never married.
A letter writer last week in the Farquier Times-Democrat took the paper to task for not widely covering the death of a man she says possessed a "depth of knowledge and understanding matched only by the bright fervor in his eyes and eagerness of manner as he spoke of the expanses of cherished farmland and the picturequeness of the villages and hamlets he wanted to leave forever." I would have liked to know him.
Another small country paper fifty miles West keeps obits shorter and sweeter describing a pair of recently deceased simply as 'groom,' and 'farmer,' words carrying a far greater meaning beyond their terseness in today's non-stop world.
Moving this past week from a rocking chair on the front porch of our annual parish retreat at Shrinemont in the Shenandoah mountains, to Oakland, on what is dearly hoped is the last in a series of wearying pre-retirement business trips, I note some local happenings there which might just have taken place in any small Virginia town: a film at the library on neighborhood garden plots; a Friends Church Quaker Heritage Day; native plant garden tour; Cerrito Creek restoration, a liturgical prayer celebration.
When asked in the Shenandoah Page News and Courier, "What will the Town of Shenandoah look like 10 years from now," a candidate replies, "small shops on First Street (tea rooms, coffee shops, sandwich shops, crafts, recreational programs utilizing River Park, blighted areas cleaned up," responses interchangeable in Virginia or California.
Now, to be fair, there are differences - the Town of Shenandoah will not likely declare itself a nuclear-free zone nor mandate fair-trade shade-grown coffee in those Main Street coffee houses, nor hold a 39th anniversary celebration of the seminal People's Park demonstration which jump-started the '60's protest movement, yet underneath it all, the same idea of preserving small town community, is just as relevant on the West Coast as it is in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
The notion's not as far-fetched as you might think. On the drive home from the parish retreat, on a lonely mountain pass, we stopped at a road-side store. As I bought a porcelain Jerry Garcia, California and Virginia met, in an American small town state of mind.
There never was a thank you card from Jack, Hunter or Tom, or the Revoluton, for sacrifices made on their behalf, and so a bureaucrat was born. No matter. Yet, though the way was once lost, perhaps its taken three necessary decades, to find it again.
For a real pro like A.J. Leibling, "it is impossible for me to estimate how many of my early impressions of the world, correct and the opposite, came to me through newspapers. Homicide, adultery, no-hit pitching, and Balkanism were concepts that, left to my own devices, I would have encountered much later in life. Through newspapers I acquired a vicarous knowledge, or perhaps more accurately an illusion of knowledge, of just about everything in the world from polar exploration to the mores of choir singers and the names of the ten greatest novels ever written."
By the time you attend college, Leibling advises, "the way to learn about journalism is in a class on sociology." Agreed - even an expert on the 5 W's, in the absence of -ology knowledge, wouldn't be able to adequately explain a recent AP article where a rather harmless and benign proposal to create a promotional Alabama wine trail hits a sour note with alert Baptists who respond they'd "support visiting old, historic churches, but as far as visiting wineries, we're on record as being opposed to any kind of alchohol related industry."
What's in, and not in, a recent obit in the local rag leaves much to psychologically analyze: "he greatly admired Winston Churchill and often quoted his speeches from memory in an accent and manner reminiscent of the man himself. He was convinced until the very end that Frank Sinatra was a draft dodger." He was never married.
A letter writer last week in the Farquier Times-Democrat took the paper to task for not widely covering the death of a man she says possessed a "depth of knowledge and understanding matched only by the bright fervor in his eyes and eagerness of manner as he spoke of the expanses of cherished farmland and the picturequeness of the villages and hamlets he wanted to leave forever." I would have liked to know him.
Another small country paper fifty miles West keeps obits shorter and sweeter describing a pair of recently deceased simply as 'groom,' and 'farmer,' words carrying a far greater meaning beyond their terseness in today's non-stop world.
Moving this past week from a rocking chair on the front porch of our annual parish retreat at Shrinemont in the Shenandoah mountains, to Oakland, on what is dearly hoped is the last in a series of wearying pre-retirement business trips, I note some local happenings there which might just have taken place in any small Virginia town: a film at the library on neighborhood garden plots; a Friends Church Quaker Heritage Day; native plant garden tour; Cerrito Creek restoration, a liturgical prayer celebration.
When asked in the Shenandoah Page News and Courier, "What will the Town of Shenandoah look like 10 years from now," a candidate replies, "small shops on First Street (tea rooms, coffee shops, sandwich shops, crafts, recreational programs utilizing River Park, blighted areas cleaned up," responses interchangeable in Virginia or California.
Now, to be fair, there are differences - the Town of Shenandoah will not likely declare itself a nuclear-free zone nor mandate fair-trade shade-grown coffee in those Main Street coffee houses, nor hold a 39th anniversary celebration of the seminal People's Park demonstration which jump-started the '60's protest movement, yet underneath it all, the same idea of preserving small town community, is just as relevant on the West Coast as it is in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
The notion's not as far-fetched as you might think. On the drive home from the parish retreat, on a lonely mountain pass, we stopped at a road-side store. As I bought a porcelain Jerry Garcia, California and Virginia met, in an American small town state of mind.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Magnum Opusitis
This past week a conversation with the wife turned on how a reviewer could read a book a week and still find time to write.
Dorothy Parker has one answer: "I don't want to review books anymore. It cuts down on my reading."
Post middle-age, if only for the sake of eyesight, choices must be made, and you need the local quack to innoculate against Magnum Opusitis. It means the end of history -- before my last booster, I arrived home lugging the thousand-page Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party. It took months to shake off like a bad flu. Parker notes the warning label, "to be read with a furrow in the brow."
Exposures to the disease come at least twice a year at the Central Rappahannock Friends of the Library booksale, espcially during the Friday night members-only feeding frenzy which only has one North American rival in the annual Filene's bargain basement wedding dress shoot-out.
Whether growling at the usually mild mannered second-hand book dealer from the friendly shop on the next block as he beserkedly hurls volumes by the yard into a cavernous Absolut box; leaping over what Aerosmith might generously describe as a fat-bottomed girl crawling under the table to ingest any stray morsel of literature that might have fallen down the back, or glancing furtively at what the 'professor,' grabs just before you can clamp your paws on it, a blitzkrieg of crazed Ralph Waldo Emerson devotees advances over small children and grandmothers alike until the pounding symphony cresendos as five hundred pound sacks come crashing down on the cashier's desk pausing only for one final brief quixotic culling of what you can't imagine ever possessed you to pick it up in the first place. Dante's Inferno - in the original Italian - what?
Reading tastes evolve gradually after eons of struggle. What might have emerged in early childhood as a predeliction for the gentle wisdom of small-town newspaper editors like Robert Qullen, who wrote, "As we grow older, our bodies get shorter and our anecdotes longer," may mutate, after decades of nerve wracking sixty mile commutes, to a fondness for an acerbic Cyril Connolly who was once accused "of arriving in time to spit upon the grave before the mourners had departed," after he'd written a mildly scatching review of recently deceased poet, A.E. Housman.
Perhaps book reviewers pressed for time might eliminate unnecessary inconveniences, say, editors, as much as possible. Trent Reznor recently proposed to his record company that they release the band's new album, as is, on-line, minus copyright protection, for $5. After he was turned down he left the company and started his own.
I can top that. I write for no recompense whatsoever and move straight to publication. Of course, there aren't any consumers either to worry about. A New Yorker movie critic wrote a few weeks ago that "user-generated content marks either a long-over due democratization of the arts, or, if you prefer, a mass proliferation of the mediocre."
I'm not sure I care. As a character in a Louis Auchinloss novel gripes, "You artists...can't look at a landscape or a bowl of fruit without thinking how you will put it on a canvas so that somebody else will see it as your landscape or your bowl of fruit. That is the inescapable vulgarity of art." What prospective talent this admittedly raw artist may possess is optimistically more akin to what Clive James describes as the capability of a jazz musician to notice and combine "other people's individual creativity into a larger vision." I'd contentedly replace 'larger,' simply with 'my,' and be done with it.
David Denby, another New Yorker movie critic puts it this way, "Like mystics or ancient philosophers, we long to perceive the secret and idiosyncratic pattern within chaos, the singular currents running through the tumultuous sea. We are denied this in life, since we can never recall everything in an event happening around us, no matter how many times we replay it in our heads."
The longer I keep at this, the more the patterns form out of currents, and what once was unconnected takes on a certain logical patina. A.J. Leibling points out a fella who joined successive splinter groups until he ran out of wood. Parker, as usual, has the last best word, "Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both."
Dorothy Parker has one answer: "I don't want to review books anymore. It cuts down on my reading."
Post middle-age, if only for the sake of eyesight, choices must be made, and you need the local quack to innoculate against Magnum Opusitis. It means the end of history -- before my last booster, I arrived home lugging the thousand-page Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party. It took months to shake off like a bad flu. Parker notes the warning label, "to be read with a furrow in the brow."
Exposures to the disease come at least twice a year at the Central Rappahannock Friends of the Library booksale, espcially during the Friday night members-only feeding frenzy which only has one North American rival in the annual Filene's bargain basement wedding dress shoot-out.
Whether growling at the usually mild mannered second-hand book dealer from the friendly shop on the next block as he beserkedly hurls volumes by the yard into a cavernous Absolut box; leaping over what Aerosmith might generously describe as a fat-bottomed girl crawling under the table to ingest any stray morsel of literature that might have fallen down the back, or glancing furtively at what the 'professor,' grabs just before you can clamp your paws on it, a blitzkrieg of crazed Ralph Waldo Emerson devotees advances over small children and grandmothers alike until the pounding symphony cresendos as five hundred pound sacks come crashing down on the cashier's desk pausing only for one final brief quixotic culling of what you can't imagine ever possessed you to pick it up in the first place. Dante's Inferno - in the original Italian - what?
Reading tastes evolve gradually after eons of struggle. What might have emerged in early childhood as a predeliction for the gentle wisdom of small-town newspaper editors like Robert Qullen, who wrote, "As we grow older, our bodies get shorter and our anecdotes longer," may mutate, after decades of nerve wracking sixty mile commutes, to a fondness for an acerbic Cyril Connolly who was once accused "of arriving in time to spit upon the grave before the mourners had departed," after he'd written a mildly scatching review of recently deceased poet, A.E. Housman.
Perhaps book reviewers pressed for time might eliminate unnecessary inconveniences, say, editors, as much as possible. Trent Reznor recently proposed to his record company that they release the band's new album, as is, on-line, minus copyright protection, for $5. After he was turned down he left the company and started his own.
I can top that. I write for no recompense whatsoever and move straight to publication. Of course, there aren't any consumers either to worry about. A New Yorker movie critic wrote a few weeks ago that "user-generated content marks either a long-over due democratization of the arts, or, if you prefer, a mass proliferation of the mediocre."
I'm not sure I care. As a character in a Louis Auchinloss novel gripes, "You artists...can't look at a landscape or a bowl of fruit without thinking how you will put it on a canvas so that somebody else will see it as your landscape or your bowl of fruit. That is the inescapable vulgarity of art." What prospective talent this admittedly raw artist may possess is optimistically more akin to what Clive James describes as the capability of a jazz musician to notice and combine "other people's individual creativity into a larger vision." I'd contentedly replace 'larger,' simply with 'my,' and be done with it.
David Denby, another New Yorker movie critic puts it this way, "Like mystics or ancient philosophers, we long to perceive the secret and idiosyncratic pattern within chaos, the singular currents running through the tumultuous sea. We are denied this in life, since we can never recall everything in an event happening around us, no matter how many times we replay it in our heads."
The longer I keep at this, the more the patterns form out of currents, and what once was unconnected takes on a certain logical patina. A.J. Leibling points out a fella who joined successive splinter groups until he ran out of wood. Parker, as usual, has the last best word, "Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both."
Friday, April 18, 2008
The Barber's Lament
I note this week a conversation in the barber's chair occasioned by the appearance of the book I held in my lap. He said he'd held one once. A paperback copy of VC Andrews, Flowers in the Attic. The sight of him holding even such a potboiler (used; $1) prompted his astonished niece to enquire solemnly, "you read books?"
I changed majors in college like socks. One month it was English. I commented in class once on a line of poetry written by a fellow student where it looked like he'd exchanged 'see' and 'hear' for deliberate effect. In order to fully grasp the picture, please envision the poet cooly sitting, Depp-ly, sporting a beret, gorgeous blonde inches to the northeast of his left shoulder, fawning professor by his side: there was no doubt we were in the presence of the star of Contemporary Modes of Modern Literature. His response, "someone actually thinks..." elicited grins if not outright smirks from Sophmore groupies. Is that why books intimidate? Is it why good common folks suspect readers, let alone writers, form an inaccessible hipster doofus clique? (If you're wondering, I switched majors to Sociology the next day, and stayed, until statistics...)
Some readers of this blog complain they don't get the references. I've been thinking about what I do here and why. The great English critic Cyril Connolly offered, "there are so few people who care about poetry in England, and fewer still who are critical of it, that one is tempted at first to make no comment." This was 1936. Cyril is the same fella who said, "There was a time when most people were ashamed to say that The Oxford Book of Greek Verse required a translation." He's got me there, and I suspect, everyone else in the world, except for, at most, ten people (excluding Greeks, themselves, of course).
It's dawning what I do is collect and share. Keith Richards (the coolest hipster of all?) says his epitath need only read, "I passed it on," referring to the blues and rock n'roll the Stones expropriated off Chuck Berry.
What started as a counter-response to the Puritan elements who destroyed our once unified parish, this blog's morphing into something not under my control. It therefore comes as a surprise I must reject, "When I am no longer controversial, I will no longer be important," as spoken by French artist Gustave Courbet, in the nineteenth century. To protest, only, for too long, bores writers and readers.
Like Dorothy Parker I similarly dismiss a responsibility in the way she alludes to Upton Sinclair's insistence to crusade by describing the urge as "a specialized soreness. He is off American authors because they do not always write of sweat-shops and child-labor, of mill-slaves and wages. Surely there is no denying that a great novel of social conditions would be a boon to American letters. But it does seem to be not especially useful to roar and stamp because certain authors choose to speak of jade and satin and the shining surface of old furniture."
Even Connolly, who creates the references others don't get, helps when he pens critics may charge writers of "triteness and banality, linked to being under the influence of popular trends -- imperialism, place nostalgia, games, beer. Now, I will not deny that many poems written under these influences have been bad, but they do not always make for bad poetry."
Such is a poem like John Henry Newbolt's 1897 Vitai Lampada:
There's a breathless hush in the Close tonight
Ten to make and the match to win
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play, and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat.
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame.
But his captain's hand on his shoulder smote
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"
The sand of the desert is sodden red-
Red with the wreck of the square that broke
The gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed its banks,
And England's far, and Honor a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks-
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"
This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the school is set,
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind -
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"
Talk about your trite. Talk about your imperialism. Talk about the banality of comparing the game of cricket to war. Yet, it moves me. I can't think of anything else, except Captain Smith's repeated exhortation on the sinking Titanic to "Be British," which captures more succintly what it means to be English in foolish and noble ways.
During the Civil War, Confederates spotted Union counterfeits easily since the bills looked better than the real thing. At the end of a path in an Irish woods I've passed through in Killarney, there's an ordinary tea room. Whenever I see the sentimental harmless kitsch of a Thomas Kincaid painting depicting a glowing cottage on the edge of a forest at twilight, I'm reminded of the tea room, and smile.
There are universals to which we involunatarily respond no matter the source. Philip Stanhope, the Fourth Earl of Chesterfield, wrote about dying, in 1770, "I feel the beginning of autumn which is already very cold. The leaves are withered, fall apace, and seem to intimate that I must follow them; which I shall do without reluctance, being extremely tired of this silly world."
A poem Alexander Pope wrote about the same time, at first glance, contains references totally out of our reach:
Oh! could I mount on the Maeonian wing,
Your Arms, your Actions, your Repose to sing!
What seas you travers'd! And what fields you fought!
Your Country's Peace, how oft, how dearly bought!
How barb'rous rage subsided at your word,
And Nations wonder'd while they dropped the sword!
I have no clue what a Maeonian wing might be. The remainder was equally meaningless until Connolly placed the poem in context by alluding to Neville Chamberlain returning from Munich, waving a piece of paper, declaring, "Peace in Our Time."
On the way to a family reunion last summer in Decatur, Illinois, we traversed highways along the Land of Lincoln trail. In Springfield, we toured the modest house in which he lived, and gazed in awe upon the small triangular desk where he wrote famous words. We then visited the massive Lincoln library to watch a hologram of a ghostly Lincoln gliding through the same house accompanied by stirring narrative and song. Which of the two experiences leaves the most indelible mark? That they both leave something can't be denied.
When I read an article incorporating references I don't know, I explore where they lead. In this, I seem to be alone. What I convey, inspired by subsequent findings, provides pleasure to the author, if not the reader, and so, that may be an end in itself.
Joyce writes in Finnegan's Wake that "Michael Roberts remembers forgotten beauty. He presses in his arms the loveliness which has long faded from the world. I desire to press in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world." To rediscover and post lost treasures doesn't turn the world on its head on as Sinclair Lewis would have liked, but, perhaps in an era when even a reader of VC Andrews is a suspect egghead, and someone who reminisces wistfully after gazing upon a Kincaid is by rights a connoisseur, it remains quietly useful to to pass it on.
I changed majors in college like socks. One month it was English. I commented in class once on a line of poetry written by a fellow student where it looked like he'd exchanged 'see' and 'hear' for deliberate effect. In order to fully grasp the picture, please envision the poet cooly sitting, Depp-ly, sporting a beret, gorgeous blonde inches to the northeast of his left shoulder, fawning professor by his side: there was no doubt we were in the presence of the star of Contemporary Modes of Modern Literature. His response, "someone actually thinks..." elicited grins if not outright smirks from Sophmore groupies. Is that why books intimidate? Is it why good common folks suspect readers, let alone writers, form an inaccessible hipster doofus clique? (If you're wondering, I switched majors to Sociology the next day, and stayed, until statistics...)
Some readers of this blog complain they don't get the references. I've been thinking about what I do here and why. The great English critic Cyril Connolly offered, "there are so few people who care about poetry in England, and fewer still who are critical of it, that one is tempted at first to make no comment." This was 1936. Cyril is the same fella who said, "There was a time when most people were ashamed to say that The Oxford Book of Greek Verse required a translation." He's got me there, and I suspect, everyone else in the world, except for, at most, ten people (excluding Greeks, themselves, of course).
It's dawning what I do is collect and share. Keith Richards (the coolest hipster of all?) says his epitath need only read, "I passed it on," referring to the blues and rock n'roll the Stones expropriated off Chuck Berry.
What started as a counter-response to the Puritan elements who destroyed our once unified parish, this blog's morphing into something not under my control. It therefore comes as a surprise I must reject, "When I am no longer controversial, I will no longer be important," as spoken by French artist Gustave Courbet, in the nineteenth century. To protest, only, for too long, bores writers and readers.
Like Dorothy Parker I similarly dismiss a responsibility in the way she alludes to Upton Sinclair's insistence to crusade by describing the urge as "a specialized soreness. He is off American authors because they do not always write of sweat-shops and child-labor, of mill-slaves and wages. Surely there is no denying that a great novel of social conditions would be a boon to American letters. But it does seem to be not especially useful to roar and stamp because certain authors choose to speak of jade and satin and the shining surface of old furniture."
Even Connolly, who creates the references others don't get, helps when he pens critics may charge writers of "triteness and banality, linked to being under the influence of popular trends -- imperialism, place nostalgia, games, beer. Now, I will not deny that many poems written under these influences have been bad, but they do not always make for bad poetry."
Such is a poem like John Henry Newbolt's 1897 Vitai Lampada:
There's a breathless hush in the Close tonight
Ten to make and the match to win
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play, and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat.
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame.
But his captain's hand on his shoulder smote
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"
The sand of the desert is sodden red-
Red with the wreck of the square that broke
The gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed its banks,
And England's far, and Honor a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks-
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"
This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the school is set,
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind -
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"
Talk about your trite. Talk about your imperialism. Talk about the banality of comparing the game of cricket to war. Yet, it moves me. I can't think of anything else, except Captain Smith's repeated exhortation on the sinking Titanic to "Be British," which captures more succintly what it means to be English in foolish and noble ways.
During the Civil War, Confederates spotted Union counterfeits easily since the bills looked better than the real thing. At the end of a path in an Irish woods I've passed through in Killarney, there's an ordinary tea room. Whenever I see the sentimental harmless kitsch of a Thomas Kincaid painting depicting a glowing cottage on the edge of a forest at twilight, I'm reminded of the tea room, and smile.
There are universals to which we involunatarily respond no matter the source. Philip Stanhope, the Fourth Earl of Chesterfield, wrote about dying, in 1770, "I feel the beginning of autumn which is already very cold. The leaves are withered, fall apace, and seem to intimate that I must follow them; which I shall do without reluctance, being extremely tired of this silly world."
A poem Alexander Pope wrote about the same time, at first glance, contains references totally out of our reach:
Oh! could I mount on the Maeonian wing,
Your Arms, your Actions, your Repose to sing!
What seas you travers'd! And what fields you fought!
Your Country's Peace, how oft, how dearly bought!
How barb'rous rage subsided at your word,
And Nations wonder'd while they dropped the sword!
I have no clue what a Maeonian wing might be. The remainder was equally meaningless until Connolly placed the poem in context by alluding to Neville Chamberlain returning from Munich, waving a piece of paper, declaring, "Peace in Our Time."
On the way to a family reunion last summer in Decatur, Illinois, we traversed highways along the Land of Lincoln trail. In Springfield, we toured the modest house in which he lived, and gazed in awe upon the small triangular desk where he wrote famous words. We then visited the massive Lincoln library to watch a hologram of a ghostly Lincoln gliding through the same house accompanied by stirring narrative and song. Which of the two experiences leaves the most indelible mark? That they both leave something can't be denied.
When I read an article incorporating references I don't know, I explore where they lead. In this, I seem to be alone. What I convey, inspired by subsequent findings, provides pleasure to the author, if not the reader, and so, that may be an end in itself.
Joyce writes in Finnegan's Wake that "Michael Roberts remembers forgotten beauty. He presses in his arms the loveliness which has long faded from the world. I desire to press in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world." To rediscover and post lost treasures doesn't turn the world on its head on as Sinclair Lewis would have liked, but, perhaps in an era when even a reader of VC Andrews is a suspect egghead, and someone who reminisces wistfully after gazing upon a Kincaid is by rights a connoisseur, it remains quietly useful to to pass it on.
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