I hope you can get past the New Yorker pay wall to see this article, with writing by the artist Chris Ware, and many wonderful New Yorker covers by Mary Petty.
Excerpt:
Her eye was extraordinary, conjuring an Edwardian era through its tiniest features: the brocaded wallpaper, the finely tiled kitchen floors, the thin brass faucets, the plush upholstery.
James Thurber, in an introduction to “This Petty Pace” (1945), the sole published collection of the artist’s work, describes the young Petty as a “slip of a girl.” Like her husband, she initially preferred to mail in her submissions, but by the nineteen-forties she had become a “common sight” at the magazine’s office, “sitting, cool and almost undismayed, on the edge of a chair.” Thurber reports that she would spend three weeks on a drawing; when she was done, she would say that she hated it and herself. “Everybody else, of course, loves it and her,” Thurber adds, observing that what Petty offered in her work was “not a trick, but a magic. . . . She catches time in a foreshortened crouch that intensifies her satirical effects.”
Time in a foreshortened crouch — is anyone catching that anymore?
Example:
ADDED: Ware notes that Petty seems to have influenced Edward Gorey. And I'll just note that the book title — "This Petty Pace" — is a reference to a Shakespeare soliloquy, from "MacBeth," which also has something to say about time.
"Saheem Ali’s production hasn’t cut it, but merely decided that Orsino can wait. By flipping the first two scenes, and giving Viola the play’s final line, Ali has recentered a character who has been known to get lost in the overstuffedness of this comedy. And by having her speak initially in Swahili — 'Je, hii ni nchi gani, bwana?,' or 'What country is this, sir?,' she asks the captain — Ali establishes her firmly as a person arriving, in unaccustomedly desperate straits, on the shore of a foreign land, Illyria. Sounds political, doesn’t it...."
"We’re left depending only on the whisper network of our own clique, exchanging the same tuna casserole back and forth.
I realize this wobbly jeremiad reeks of self-interest: After 30 years of summarizing the plots of literary novels, I can do literally nothing else. But if journalism is still, at least partially, a public service, then book reviews are one of its most eloquent contributions — one we should defend until the very last page."
Let's talk about the tuna salad and the unweeded garden. The unweeded garden is in quotes, but there is no attribution. We're talking about literature, and if you're one of the last remaining Americans who care about actual literature, you're presumably supposed to know "an unweeded garden that grows to seed." But we can all google and find the attribution. I know I did.
I've sat through "Hamlet" a few times in my life — and read it too — and the first soliloquy is familiar to me: "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!" I know some other lines: "How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world!" But I didn't recognize "Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed...."
And what of the tuna casserole? How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the tuna casseroles of this world! The tuna casseroles are those books your friends and internet contacts talk about. The comfort food, the genre novels. Bleeh. Makes Hamlet the Book Reviewer want to kill himself. "O... that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!"
That it should come to this! No book reviewers! If there are no book reviewers, there will be no literary fiction. Ron Charles spent 30 years "summarizing the plots of literary novels." Well, AI can summarize the plot of any novel. That can't be the function of a book review, at least not anymore. It must be that the reviewer is supplying some special discernment, choosing what to elevate to the high plane of literature and convincing us that we should aspire to be the kind of people who read things like that.
By the way, I find it hard to trust a writer who dresses up the word "nothing" with the dreadful intensifier "literally" and plunks the phrase a few words away from "literary": "After 30 years of summarizing the plots of literary novels, I can do literally nothing else." He's defending his own livelihood. That counts against his opinion. What am I to think of Ron Charles anyway? Here he is, 14 years ago, displaying himself as "totally hip," opining on an author who is, if nothing else, truly striving to produce literary fiction:
"... and meaningless, and, crucially, it entirely misses one key thing: feminine men can be just as 'toxic' as bodybuilders. It is Gen Z’s shallow sexual politics, which privilege 'looking' progressive over deeply felt values, that have landed us here. If the feminisation of culture has succeeded, it is because posing as effete gains men access to the women they want to sleep with. Cultural capital has deserted roided-up meatheads and landed in the lap of the moustachioed, mulletted lothario who professes to be a harmless feminist and who wields just enough knowledge about Judith Butler to talk a blushing sociology major into bed.... When visibly masculine men are maligned as potential abusers, women choose the wolf in vintage clothing. But this is all based on false assumptions: performative matcha is one more way that ill-intentioned loverboys can game our sexual politics’ daft stereotypes, joining tried-and-tested tactics like professing to be left-wing, painting one’s nails and listening to Phoebe Bridgers. You are just as likely to be shagged and bagged by a matcha drinker as a craft beer enthusiast, or indeed, a plain old lager fan...."
By the end, when he was bubble-wrapped in 2024, he trusted only his family and his closest aides. And they protected him with a damaging chimera. Sugarcoated interpretations of polls that were not reflected elsewhere. Extreme efforts to redesign the presidency to adapt to his ever more fragile state. Trashing Robert Hur for telling the truth. Refusing to do the cognitive testing that might have established a diagnosis....Tapper and Thompson show how Biden and his inner circle created an alternate universe that they tried to sell to the media and the public — the sort of corrosive mirage of unreality that Trump excels at building....
Trump! How did Trump get into that metaphorical mishmash?
I do like this part, which names names:
It was not just Joe and Jill who wanted to hang on to power, with all the perks and trips and, for Jill, glamorous Vogue covers. It was also their advisers, Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, Anita Dunn, Anthony Bernal, Ron Klain and Annie Tomasini. The “palace guard,” as Chuck Schumer derisively dubbed top Biden advisers, slid from sycophancy to solipsism. The more Biden was out of it, the more his hours and responsibilities were curtailed, the more of a vacuum there was at the top, the more power the advisers had...
They bubble-wrapped the President, put him in a mirage in an alternate universe, and set up a chimera to do whatever it is chimeras do. So they fooled him and they also fooled us, they being Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, Anita Dunn, Anthony Bernal, Ron Klain and Annie Tomasini... and who else? Where was Maureen Dowd and the rest of the press — among the foolers or the fooled? And she's saying Joe Biden is a tragedy? Too many fools. Too many villains. It's a comedy.
Instead of "The Tragedy of Biden," write a column titled "The Comedy of Biden." Use Shakespeare as your model of tragedy and comedy and tell me why we, the audience — we the People — experience Trump as Falstaff and — for all his faults — love him.
"Phone-eats-first type of food, whatever viral sweater is going around on TikTok, the new work bag," said Devin Walsh, 25, who lives in New York... listing the tempting purchases that flit across her Instagram, even, stubbornly, this past week.... [T]he draw toward prudence feels especially tricky for her generation because of the shared sense that they’re living under a cloud of incessant crisis.... "We’re more inclined to spend frivolously because of this looming main character energy of 'The world is going to end anyway,'" Ms. Walsh said....
In February, she splurged on hosting a Valentine’s Day party in her Hell’s Kitchen apartment, spending hundreds of dollars on heart-shaped sunglasses that she mounted to the wall to feel like a Sunglass Hut, a sink filled with alcohol and a new $150 heart-printed dress. “Was it a rational use of funds?” she said. “Maybe not.”...
Talk about the human phenomenon of plunging into irrational, extravagant pleasures in anticipation of swiftly arriving doom.
Bonus language topic: The word "doom" originally meant statute.
🚨NEW: Geraldo Rivera heaps praise on Trump over "BRILLIANT" tariff moves🚨
"I believe that he ambushed China ... I just think he wants the best possible deal he can get the United States of America. God bless him for that. That's why people really dig the guy. That's why he's… pic.twitter.com/IU2zwTvD2g
When things go well, let loose with your Trump-is-a-genius tirade.
Prompt I gave Grok this morning: "Write an essay 'On Gloating.'"
I don't like to quote A.I., because I don't think people want to consume material that didn't originate in a human mind, but some human-generated material is insipid — I can live without the emanations of the mind of Rivera — and my non-human companion brought up Shakespeare (and Napoleon), so I'm making an exception to quote 3 sentences:
"In literature and history, gloating often serves as a cautionary trope. Shakespeare’s Iago gloats over his manipulations in Othello, only to meet a grim fate. Victorious generals who boasted excessively, like Napoleon at the height of his power, often found their hubris prelude to downfall."
Remember, all gloating is pre-gloating. You could end up in a montage over which your enemies gloat:
I think Trump is concerned. Just not the way Rattner and business people and investors are hoping he'll be concerned.
Why is this article illustrated with an image of Trump atop a weather vane, with his hands outstretched to feel the wind blow, and moving from side to side? It doesn't reflect what Trump is doing. Is it a picture of the business people's hope?
I think Trump has chosen his solution to a problem — or set of problems — and he's locked in. If he could be shaken out of his resolve by cries of "havoc," virtually everything he's started he would have stopped.
Side trip: What does it mean to "cry havoc"? It doesn't mean to cry out "This is havoc!" It means: "Let's wreak havoc!"
For the annals of Things I Asked Grok: When did Shakespeare use the plot device of a character who thinks he's secretly eavesdropping who is being deliberately fed false information to get him to do something? (The answer involves "Othello," "Much Ado About Nothing," and "Twelfth Night.")
I'll just say...
Whispers cloak the stage Hidden ears catch crafted tales Truth bends in the dark
"... a reference to the way in which the play’s treacherous villain, Iago, cooks up a variety of shallow rationalizations for a hatred that’s too deep and insidious to stem from any neatly explicable circumstance. But what of the motive-hunting of a motiveless production?... It may be that [Denzel] Washington’s lackluster performance stems from a misfiring if understandable desire to avoid stereotypes of outsize passion—of big, blustery emotional fireworks in a thorny role of color—yet the result is that we go on no journey with his Othello. We listen to him say words; we don’t, even as he enters the bedroom of his innocent wife, Desdemona (Molly Osborne), to strangle her, experience his awful interior transformation. Instead, as he approaches her in these fateful moments, a truly unsettling percentage of the audience is still laughing.... 'I’ll not shed her blood, / Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow, / And smooth as monumental alabaster,' he says.... Then he pauses before continuing, almost nonchalantly: 'Yet she must die.' The audience giggles. Is that what the production—what any production of Othello—really wants?"
What does the production really want? Enough Coleridge-style wondering about Iago's motivation. What did this particular production want? And what if the laughter is what it wants?! Put on a whole production of "Othello" with the ambitious goal that the audience will be transported to dizzying heights of inappropriate laughter. Desdemona is the new Chuckles the Clown and the audience is transfigured into Mary Tyler Moore.
Major League Baseball didn’t have the courage or decency to put the late, great, Pete Rose, also known as “Charlie Hustle,” into the Baseball Hall of fame. Now he is dead, will never experience the thrill of being selected, even though he was a FAR BETTER PLAYER than most of those who made it, and can only be named posthumously. WHAT A SHAME! Anyway, over the next few weeks I will be signing a complete PARDON of Pete Rose, who shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on HIS TEAM WINNING. He never betted against himself, or the other team. He had the most hits, by far, in baseball history, and won more games than anyone in sports history. Baseball, which is dying all over the place, should get off its fat, lazy ass, and elect Pete Rose, even though far too late, into the Baseball Hall of Fame!
I'm disconcerted that the President of the United States wrote "betted," but I'm amused at the metaphorical flourish of "dying all over the place" and "fat, lazy ass."
To me, "betted" is embarrassingly wrong, but I see Shakespeare used it. From the OED:
1600 Iohn a Gaunt loued him well, and betted much money on his head. W. Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2 iii. ii. 44
If you use "fat, lazy ass" metaphorically — baseball doesn't even have an ass — you do flout the niceties of the body acceptance movement, but Trump is well aware that his own ass is fat and thus presents a big target for his antagonists. He doesn't care. It's a fat ass, but emphatically not a lazy ass.
"... and many more will soon be lost. There is death all over the place. This is one of the worst catastrophes in the history of our Country. They just can’t put out the fires. What’s wrong with them?"
Published at 4:37 a.m. Ah, but I clicked on the reporter's name — Mike Ives — and I see he's "based in Seoul." It was 6:37 p.m. — Korea Standard Time. A normal work day. The NYT didn't roust some reporter in the middle of the night to make an article out of the most recent Trump truthing.
"Mr. Trump’s comments indicated that the fires, and officials’ response to them, will likely occupy a prominent place on his domestic political agenda when he takes office on Jan. 20. He has renewed a longstanding feud with California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, who in turn has accused Mr. Trump of politicizing the fires."
Is it wrong to "politicize" the fires? Isn't fire fighting one of the top services we demand from government? I can see saying, don't distract us with recriminations while we're right in the middle of an epic struggle against fire, but that only means, don't politicize yet. But are they fighting the fire right now or are they helpless? And if they are helpless, are we supposed to refrain from asking why are they helpless?
ADDED: I wondered if there are earlier examples of anyone ever saying "There is death all over the place." I only found one thing, at Internet Public Library, from what looks like a sample answer to a predicable high-school essay test question: "Similarities Between Death Of A Salesman And Hamlet": "In Hamlet there is death all over the place...."
So many of us were profoundly affected by this movie. I don't know how old you were, but realize that you are seeing a 15-year-old girl:
ADDED: In 2019, I blogged about this movie as part of a project of rewatching movies that I had watched when they came out and had not rewatched since:
"... and put a name to it: 'heteropessimism.' ... Mr. Seresin argued that heteropessimism was defined by 'performative disaffiliations with heterosexuality, usually expressed in the form of regret, embarrassment, or hopelessness about straight experience.' By 'performative,' Mr. Seresin meant that though many women freely admitted that being attracted to men was at best a bummer and at worst a form of masochism, few acted on their beliefs. While expressing a sincere hopelessness, women’s disavowals seemed to be mostly gestural, like a sardonic Etsy mug."
That's a long article, but I chose that excerpt because I have a tag "performative (the word)." Here's the post — from June 11, 2022 — where I created the tag. Interestingly, it was about a David Axelrod piece asking "Should Biden Run in 2024?" Axelrod wrote, "Biden doesn’t get the credit he deserves... And part of the reason he doesn’t is performative." I said:
That's the headline at NPR for a piece by political reporter Stephen Fowler.
What does "primed" even mean? It seems to admit that Trump never said he has "no chance of losing," but he said something that has caused a belief. And then what's the evidence that Trump supporters believe that? No chance of losing — who believes that? And then to ding these people for "falsely" believing this thing Trump never said... well, the "falsely" ought to be appended to this NPR article: NPR political reporter falsely believes Trump somehow caused his supporters to believe he has no chance of losing.
Am I being unfair to Fowler? As Shakespeare put it: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air."
"Anything. And everything. There’s so many things on YouTube. You’ve got Ibsen, you got Chekhov, you got Strindberg. All on the internet. I even like TikTok when I see it from time to time.... TikTok. Yeah. I saw, like, a 14-year-old girl who was deaf, her whole life, and they do something with her, and she actually starts to hear for the first time! How 'bout that? And sometimes the dogs, they rescue them. You watch the guy go in there and bring this beautiful, sad dog back to, uh, being somewhat — aware of things.... Well, I love that stuff!"
I'm quoting from the recording. The transcript is edited down a bit and it misses some of the feeling. I thought the interviewer, David Marchese, rushed by some of the best material Pacino seemed to want to hand him. For example, when Pacino spoke of the beautiful, sad dog becoming aware, Marchese intruded with "You're such a softy," categorizing Pacino's feeling as shallow sentimentality as opposed to some more subtle existentialism.
And one of the topics was Pacino's nearly dying of of Covid.
"You know, um, so I'm a Libra my husband is a Libra, um, and it's so funny, he'll talk, Doug, he'll talk about the fact that that it's the Libra
in us where we will sit on the couch in front of the TV with the switcher for like 45 minutes debating which Netflix show should we start streaming, and we weigh the pros and the cons of each, and then by the time we're done, we're ready to go to bed. Right. You missed your window. The window just shut,
because we are just sitting there debating like, okay, well, on the one hand,
do we want to see comedy or drama. We both love, you know, sci-fi, right, anyway,
um, yeah astrology."
I think believing in astrology is the height of idiocy, but there's also inane, cutesy pretending to believe in astrology in pointless small talk. That's less stupid, but hardly reflective of leadership at the presidential level.
Do you think Kamala Harris would, like Nancy Reagan, actually use astrology in conducting official business?
"But APT doesn’t underline the similarities, choosing a more traditional approach. Perhaps this is a wise decision; perhaps it’s a missed opportunity. It’s hard to say."
We saw the play yesterday. Here's my pre-show photograph to record our attendance:
The play in my pre-show photograph yesterday — here — was "Constellations." Yes, I took the 1-hour drive west to Spring Green 2 days in a row. On Friday, I went with Meade, on Saturday, with my son Chris. Where was Meade when Chris and I were seeing "King Lear," which may or may not have stirred up thoughts of Donald Trump (or the old man who did, like Lear, step down, Joe Biden)?
Meade was taking a 2-hour drive north, to Mosinee, for a Trump rally. I don't think Trump displayed any need for propping up, contrary to Falkenstein's assertion (see post title).
And here is some of Meade's documentation of his presence at what he made sound like a love fest:
ADDED: While I did not watch the play looking for parallels to Trump/Biden, the deep engagement in Shakespeare's tragedy that I sought was impaired by the frequent laughter from the audience. I found Falkenstein's review this morning because I had developed a suspicion that word had gone out that the play was deliberately staged to heighten the comedy and that audience members other than me were committed to providing the actors with support for this interpretation. I found no evidence for my hypothesis. But Falkenstein's review provides a basis for a new hypothesis: The laughers in the audience were thinking of Donald Trump, and, in that light, when they saw tragedy, they thought it was hilarious.
Let me just give one memorable example of the laughter. In Act IV, Scene 6, Gloucester and King Lear are reunited, and we have been witnessing both men going through immense suffering. The lines are:
GLOUCESTER O, let me kiss that hand! LEAR Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.
The audience busted out laughing at "Let me wipe it first." The hell! What explains that?!
"... and Larry David come to mind. But in the case of Mr. Trump, it is difficult to find the hermeneutic methods with which to parse the linguistic flights that take him from electrocuted sharks to Hannibal Lecter’s cannibalism, windmills and Rosie O’Donnell...."
McCreesh quotes Trump: "You know, I do the weave. You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about like nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it’s like, friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say, 'It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.'"
Not only does the article refuse to acknowledge that Trump's rally speeches are genius, it casts doubt on whether Trump has any English professor friends.
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