something about "Herodias" by Gustave Flaubert

The short piece, "Herodias," appears in Gustave Flaubert's 1877 work, Three Tales. (The other two tales are "A Simple Heart" and "Saint Julian the Hospitalier.") "Herodias" concerns the characters and events surrounding the beheading of John the Baptist.

Flaubert casts as the central figure Herod Antipas, now commonly known as King Herod. At the time of the events, however, Herod was probably referred to as Antipas, and he was seen as more of a governor, a regional figure, than a king. Flaubert depicts Antipas as a weak ruler manipulated by his wife, the title character, Herodias, a princess from a powerful family of vassals of the Roman Empire.

Antipas was unpopular, perceived by his public as sycophantic and idolatrous. Added to the ruler's frustrations was John the Baptist's high-profile condemnation of the marriage to Herodias—a scandal; to marry Antipas, Herodias divorced her first husband, Herod II, Antipas's half-brother.

In Flaubert's telling, Herodias uses her daughter, Salomé, to seduce Antipas and persuade him to take John's head. Flaubert deals us a story rich in politics, sex, and violence, then combines them all in the climactic scene of Antipas's seduction and John's beheading.

something about the weather and power outtages

The soil in the Mid-Atlantic sops up the irony and becomes poison. Blood loosens the ground, and roots stay exposed in the late season of water-cooled air. The thickest trunks pull away when a hellacious wind comes and weakens their will. Yours breaks. Though you're lit up at night, still the main attraction is fallacy.

something about "Billy Budd, Sailor" by Herman Melville

Billy Budd, Sailor is Herman Melville's last novel. It tells us the story of a handsome, well-liked, naive young sailor, Billy Budd, who was drafted into the British Royal Navy in 1797. While at sea, the ship's master-at-arms, John Claggart, grows deeply envious of Budd and falsely accuses the young sailor of organizing a mutiny--an especially serious charge given that the recent mutinies in the Royal Navy have led to martial law at a time of ramped-up fears of French aggression. When confronted by his accuser in the presence of the ship's captain, Budd clocks Claggart, who drops dead. In the text, Budd's shocking, violent turn seems to erupt from a desperation born of his stutter, which renders him powerless to defend himself with words in the moment. A court martial ensues, and although nobody believes Budd was organizing a mutiny, the officers sentence the young sailor to death. To not execute him would risk encouraging actual mutiny and, therefore, national security. Melville's prose is characteristically and wonderfully eccentric, but the events and themes (law and reason?) in this very slim novel feel undercooked. It was published posthumously and should probably be considered unfinished. The book's latter portion reads like a coda rather than a conclusion.

Note: Is Claggart's accusation leveled out of maliciousness or out of a self-deceiving need?

something about snoops

Some people like estate sales, wandering through a stranger's home, seeing pieces of another life. Some people like being in the office when everyone else is gone or reading a letter written to someone else. You feel distant, tempted to feel, almost involved, but still in control.

something about "On Bullshit" by Harry G. Frankfurt

Frankfurt begins this meditation on bullshit by examining the definition offered in Max Black's 1985 essay, "The Prevalence of Humbug": bullshit is the "deceptive misrepresentation, short of lying, especially by pretentious word or deed, of somebody's own thoughts, feelings, or attitudes." Frankfurt gets his footing here, but says this definition fails to adequately capture "the essential character of bullshit." Frankfurt next mines a few bullshit-related anecdotes and quotes to uncover his theoretical understanding of bullshit. The somewhat oversimplified synopsis of that understanding is that what is essential about bullshit is that (1) the bullshitter cares not for what is true or false, like the liar and the honest man (in fact, the bullshitter could be saying things that are more or less true and still be bullshitting) and (2) the bullshitter says whatever suits him at the moment in an attempt to deceive his audience about what he is up to and who he is.

The prose in "On Bullshit" is crisp and graciously plain; Frankfurt's essay, an exploratory philosophical analysis, manages to avoid philosophy jargon and name dropping.

Note: This is good:

One who is concerned to report or to conceal the facts assumes that there are indeed facts that are in some way both determinate and knowable. His interest in telling the truth or in lying presupposes  that there is a difference between getting things wrong and getting them right, and that it is at least occasionally possible to tell the difference. Someone who ceases to believe in the possibility of identifying certain statements as true and others as false can  have only two alternatives. The first is to desist both from efforts to tell the truth and from efforts to deceive. This would mean refraining from making any assertion whatever about the facts. The second alternative is to continue making assertions that purport to describe the way things are but that cannot be anything except bullshit.

something on "Here at The New Yorker" by Brendan Gill

Here at The New Yorker is a collection of anecdotes about personalities that contributed to and shaped the The New Yorker. The book also includes some short fiction and nonfiction pieces reprinted in full, as well as cartoons and sketches. This is a book you can keep bedside and leaf through leisurely before sleep. All of it is entertaining; some parts are laugh-out-loud funny.

Note: I enjoyed James Thurber's The Years With Ross a little more than Here at The New Yorker.

something about the mentor

You could say there was something pitiful about her. And, superficially, you wouldn't be wrong. She had these big, scared eyes (the right one maybe popped in a little lower than the left). Under different circumstances, you might have wondered if she was in shock—those eyes always wide, reflective, lacking presence, suggesting vulnerability. She spoke aimlessly, ceaselessly. In groups, she ticked her head like a chicken and registered each person's face, seeking approval there.

something about "The Thanksgiving Visitor" by Truman Capote

The Thanksgiving Visitor returns to the childhood days Truman Capote wrote about in his previously published semi-autobiographical short story, A Christmas Memory. This time, a schoolyard bully, Odd Henderson, menaces young Buddy. To his horror, Buddy's older cousin, Sook, invites Odd to Thanksgiving dinner in hopes of ending the boys' feud. At dinner, Buddy attempts to publicly humiliate Odd, but this revenge scheme fails. Buddy learns about cruelty, the lesson of Two Wrongs, and the dignity of empathy.

After his failed attempt at revenge, Buddy sulks in the shed. Capote writes:

The door to the shed was ajar, and a knife of sunshine exposed a shelf supporting several bottles. Dusty bottles with skull-and-crossbone labels. If I drank from one of those, then all of them up there in the dining room, the whole swilling and gobbling caboodle, would know what sorry was. It was worth it, if only to witness Uncle B.’s remorse when they found me cold and stiff on the smokehouse floor; worth it to hear the human wails and Queenie’s howls as my coffin was lowered into cemetery depths.

Note: The Thanksgiving Visitor was first published in the November 1967 issue of McCall's magazine.

something about "On Her Trail" by John Dickerson

Nancy Dickerson was the first female national political television reporter. In the 1960s, she became a household name while covering the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Nancy created space in media and popular culture that was expanded by Barbara Walters, Katie Couric, Megyn Kelly--generations of intelligent, powerful women.

Nancy's son, John Dickerson, wrote On Her Trail, a book about his mother, who died in 1997, and his relationship with her. This book is a wonderful read that is three-fifths traditional biography and two-fifths memoir.

Although the telling is done with love, John does not mythologize his mother. Quite the opposite. Their relationship was rocky until John got a foothold in the Washington press corp and Nancy reluctantly reached retirement. Although she has passed, the relationship lives on. In telling her story, John checks her along the way, calling out her shortcomings (and his), which has the effect of humanizing the both of them.

The advertising copy calls On Her Trail "part remembrance, part discovery"; that description is accurate. John Dickerson shares memories, but much of the book comes out of his research into his mother's personal records. He discovered in her early journals a playful young woman that rarely surfaced after she relocated to DC and broke into journalism. John's writing is clean and personal, touching on the themes of ambition, dreams, beginnings, choices, family, love, and regret.


Note: John Dickerson, also a successful journalist, was a great host on CBS' "Face the Nation" and now co-hosts the network's morning show.

something almost true

I was a member of a show-business family. We were in a movie that was nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award. I got blackout drunk at the awards ceremony. Early the next morning, I asked someone what happened. He answered, "You won!" I was disbelieving. He added, "Yeah, and you spoke! You gave a speech!" More disbelief; plus anxiety. He showed me a transcript of what I said, and, of course, it was incoherent. I felt ashamed; this would be my legacy.

Note: The ceremony included a great live performance of scenes from the movie version of Pink Floyd's The Wall.

something about Nathanael West's novella, "A Cool Million"

With A Cool Million, Nathanael West mocks and perverts the Horatio Alger myth. The novella unravels the sad story of Lemuel Pitkin, a poor 17-year-old kid from rural New England. When creditors threaten to foreclose on his family home, young Pitkin seeks the advice of the local banker, Shagpoke Whipple, an opportunistic former president of the United States. At Whipple's urging, Pitkin heads out into the world to make his way. But the world thoroughly abuses and victimizes Pitkin: he is robbed, arrested, and beaten; he loses limbs and teeth; even his naive sweetheart is raped and prostituted. Pitkin learns nothing for his trouble and soon dies a humiliated failure. As if that was not enough, Pitkin's death is exploited by Shagpoke Whipple in his political comeback as head of the National Revolutionary Party.

Whipple, embarking on his second act, attributes his initial downfall to conspiring outsiders:

I blame Wall Street and the Jewish international bankers. They loaded me up with a lot of European and South American bonds, then they forced me to the wall. It was Wall Street working hand in hand with the Communists that caused my downfall. The bankers broke me, and the Communists circulated lying rumors about my bank in Doc Slack's barber shop. I was the victim of an un-American conspiracy.

At his nationalist rallies, Whipple evokes Pitkin's story to stoke popular fear and animosity toward immigrants, intellectuals, international capitalists, and political opponents.
 
With this conclusion, West suggests that belief in the Horatio Alger myth inevitably leads to a second myth that explains the failure of the first. The second myth, the Lemuel Pitkin myth, reinforces in the minds of the struggling, embittered white population the idea that they have been cheated out of the American dream by un-American and international forces. The two myths inform a reactionary movement of hostility, fear, and dangerous nationalism.


Note: Can a perception of the past serve as a vision for the future?

something about placelessness

Bending off the highway is an unremarkable, two-lane road that aims toward the river. Going that way you pass a guileless elementary school; a fire station; a frayed church; a pasture (often harboring horses); and another church (this one sturdy and featureless). Then you drive amid woods, turns, and threats of deer crossing. Driveways that draw up to the road fall between these filmy landmarks, and my attention flits down to the houses as I speed this way. House after house withholds the greeting I wish would welcome me, and a low-scoring shame fills the void of no warm memories.

about the battle rhythm

Another dead-inside Monday morning wiggles greasily, greasy into the house and fills it with humid, permanent light. The light shows me what it will be like when my skin is ashen and I'm old and I smell of it.

something about "Potomac Landings" by Paul Wilstach

Paul Wilstach shares with us the life of the the lands pinning in the Potomac River. The encyclopedic Potomac Landings is written with care and traces of affection. Much of national importance in America is rooted in the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area (also known as the DMV) along the river. Bits that I found particularly interesting include how many wealthy people settled the area, the plantations, the way children of rich men established estates near each other, and the way those estates became counties.

Covering little bits of everything, Wilstach gives us a book to leaf through. He occasionally indulges in details about, for example, oil lamps. But the bulk of the text traces plantation and estate operations, well-heeled families, social conventions, the landscape, agriculture, architecture, and legal developments.
 
I especially enjoyed stumbling upon brief passages in which the author reveals his talent for literary writing. For example:

So, in brief, civilization came to the Potomac, seated itself at the river's mouth, and began its slow sweep up the shores from point to point, and from creek to creek. It came upward like the tide whose ebb and flow had for ages been as the river's respiration and life. If however, the flow of this tide was slow as centuries, its ebb was eventually just as inevitable as the ebb that twice daily perpetually bares the sandy beaches and the landing piles along its way.

Notes:
-Potomac Landings was published in 1920. I read a 1937 edition.
-The book is somewhat Maryland-centric.

about a late afternoon in November

The woman was hunched forward such that, approaching from behind, I only saw the back of her chair. I would not have even known she was there had the sun setting to the west not pushed our silhouettes up against the wall. In the fading day I found someone who had found privacy. Tonight we will have only a worn-out welcome.

about dementia

I visit my parents and wake up in my childhood bedroom. I walk into the den. Dad, who has been awake for at least two hours, asks me, "Ok, what's next?" I get coffee. "Are you getting coffee?" This is soon followed with, "Are you about done drinking coffee? Are you reading the newspaper?" No more than 45 seconds pass before he asks for a status update. He wants to know what he should be doing ("What you're doing does not concern me, does it? You don't need me for that, do you?"). He follows me around.

He often wants me to stop doing what I am doing so that I will do something else. If he appears to be waiting for me to move, I will move; but when I move, he becomes suspicious of what I am doing and wants me to stop. "Don't worry with that. Get back to whatever you were doing. Ok, go!"

He is worse the next time I visit. He confuses his words and thoughts: "Did you make dinner sweet sixteen?" "Do you use your middle name today?" "In a few minutes, you'll have to take off your blouse. You're way behind."

He becomes disoriented and wants to undress in the middle of the day. Clothes are a fixation for him now. He fingers his shirt buttons and belt throughout the day. He sees you with a soda can; after each sip, he asks, "Are you done with that?" He wants to throw it away. He badgers me until I finish a bottle of water, and then, when mom opens a can of soda, he spits, "Goddammit! We don't have time for that!"

He checks the garage door. He pulls the window shades. He sits in every seat in the room, moving from here to there, sitting in three different seats within 15 minutes.

Dad seems to know his memory is gone. When mom tells him they will go to the store tomorrow, he responds, "My memory only lasts until the last syllable leaves your lips." He says, "Tell me this 2 minutes before we leave."

(posts) Jacques Brel singing "Dans le port d'Amsterdam"

Notes: Janet Morgan Rasmusen died Friday, November 12, 2010, in Dallas. She was 84.

 

something about "Editors on Editing"

The third edition of Editors on Editing is a collection of somewhat specialized and particular essays about the job of editing. The editor, Gerald Gross, solicited mostly new essays for this edition--this is what is meant by "Completely Revisited" in the subtitle. The only essay I found relevant was "Line Editing, The Art of the Reasonable Suggestion."

(posts) a drawing of Coolidge

about a softie, a nancy boy

At the airport. This 40-year-old dad-guy in khakis drank half a beer and now he's acting like he's a man. He pulled from his luggage a little Nerf football, dropped back, and threw it toward his kids. The ball fluttered and dropped about three feet in front of his kids' toes.

In those moments, I saw him lower his inhibitions some. Fun dad came out to play for a while.

He started smiling as the idea popped into his head. "I'm gonna seize this moment and really connect with my son in front of all these people." And then to not connect on the play. Broken up by his own fear of letting go of that little, fluorescent softie; letting go too soon, not following through. Or holding on too long, as with any dream he's ever had. Hit by reality after the play was called dead. The pass falls short. He falls short.

It was the beer's fault. His wife has already discussed this with him. You can tell that she's already drawing up a demeaning play to focus his attention once again. Sportsman. Dreamer. Alcoholic. Beautiful.

Stretching out, trying to break the plane. At the airport. Secretly hoping this plane is the one that finally crashes.


Note: Co-written by my best bud.