One of the problems I encountered—a problem I created for myself—was that I was seeking advice from a friend, and this friend’s advice, however well-meaning, was not applicable in dealing with someone like Andrew. It took me a couple of months, however, to figure this out.
This email message recaps what happened on Friday, February 10, 2006, the eighth day I knew Andrew.
One item of background information is necessary for this message to make sense: a major snowstorm was projected to hit the Washington metropolitan area that weekend.
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Silvio, I should not have talked to you right before I saw Andrew today. It emboldened me to ask some very blunt questions.
He was so glad to see me today, it was amazing--his eyes were so perky, and his face was absolutely glowing. I feared he might be tired after last night's discussion, or even tired of me, but he was not.
He had not even driven a block when I started to ask him the most personal questions. He did not have much of a reaction to my questions at first . . .
[I omit here the personal things we talked about. Andrew was quiet and attentive, but also very soft-spoken and terse but gravely serious in his words. A few minutes into our talk, Andrew pulled the car over and parked on the street and turned the motor off.]
Then Andrew asked "Is there anything else you want to talk about?" and I said "no".
Then he started the engine and started driving again.
He was quiet for a few minutes, and then he asked me whether I minded if we did things differently today--and because of the weather coming. He said "How about this? We put off "Brokeback Mountain" until next week. We go to Arlington and see the Edward R. Murrow movie. Then we go to a barbecue place I know nearby. Then we go to a food store nearby and lay in stuff in case there's a storm. I always buy the food in Arlington because the stores are better there. Does all this sound too boring?"
I told him that it sounded fine to me. So he took me to see "Good Night And Good Luck", which was not very long. We held hands during the entire movie, Silvio--on HIS initiative. Then, at the barbecue place, we sat next to each other at the table, not across from each other, and Andrew put his calf against my calf the entire time at the restaurant.
I had more fun at the food store than at the movie or at the restaurant, Silvio, because it was so much fun shopping with him. It was sheer and unadulterated joy. Andrew was so funny at the food store, telling me who in his household liked what, and what he had to do to keep everyone happy. Silvio, he bought MOUNTAINS of food, explaining that all four of them had "healthy appetites" and explaining that he had not been to the store since he had met me--"exactly a week now", he said.
Then he took me back to his place to put away all the food. His roommates were out, and while he was putting stuff away he turned to me and said "Joshua, if you get mad at me again while you are here, you are going to have to hide it. The other guys were very uncomfortable last night during dinner, and this is their home, their refuge, and they cannot be uncomfortable here. They knew something was wrong last night--they could tell that relations were icy--and we can't subject them to that. Not in their own home. If you get mad again when you are here, you just can't show it. It will create an impossible situation for everyone. Do you understand what I mean?"
I told him I did understand and, further, Silvio, I used your recommended line: that I liked him so very much, and that I wanted this to work out so very much, that it was driving me crazy. And, of course, all of this was entirely true.
"Well, we have to be unobtrusive when we're here, stay out of everyone's way, not make waves" said Andrew. "Last night, there were some definite ground swells."
I told him nothing similar would ever happen again.
"So, what's your schedule for tomorrow, then?" Andrew asked.
I said "Nothing, except for tomorrow night's birthday party."
"Well, then, let's do this: I will come get you tomorrow morning at 7:30--too early?--and bring you over here for breakfast. Then we will play basketball with the guys in the morning, and study in the library in the afternoon. We'll have dinner, and go to the birthday party. Then you'll stay here tomorrow night because of the snow. We'll each sleep on one of the sofas. Bring clothes for a couple of days in case the snow is really bad. What do you think of all this?"
I was feeling cheeky, Silvio, and said "I'd rather sleep with you, Andrew, in your bed. There's room enough."
His answer, Silvio, was "I'm not sure what Paul would think about all that, but I think it is better that we sleep on the sofas in the living room, at least for now." (Paul is the roommate who shares a bedroom with Andrew.)
I told him, Silvio, that I could not wait to sleep in the same room with him, and that I found the very thought exciting.
"It's just sofas in a living room. Don't get carried away" said Andrew.
And then he took me home, Silvio, and we made it an early night. Andrew said he had to call his father, because he had not really talked to him since he had met me.
"Are you going to talk to him about me?" I asked. "Yes, of course" was Andrew's reply. "What are you going to say?" I asked. Andrew said "I don't know, but I'm sure he wants to know what's going on. Don't you think your dad wants to know what's going on?" I told Andrew that my dad had called me nine times in the last week, but that I had not returned his calls and just sent him a couple of quick mail messages. "Then I think you had better call him, just to let him know you’re OK" said Andrew. I told Andrew I would call my dad tonight.
Then it was time for me to get out of the car, Silvio, and Andrew took my hand and gently kissed it and I got out of the car.
So, tomorrow night will be very interesting--my first night at Andrew's place, the first of many, many nights, I hope.
Now I going to call my dad. Good he is in the Central Time Zone.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Thursday, February 9, 2006: The Seventh Day I Knew Andrew
Andrew has always driven me nuts, and sometimes I am surprised that I have not driven him away.
We had an endless series of “tiffs” (the term Andrew always uses) the first ten weeks we knew each other, and then the tiffs miraculously stopped. Andrew and I have not had a “tiff” since April 2006.
I was responsible for all of these tiffs, because I was too immature to deal with what was happening at the time and because I knew that I would never again meet another guy like Andrew, even if I were to live to be 100 years old. This knowledge made me frantic, if not panicked, at the time these events were occurring.
My emotions only settled down when I became certifiably confident that Andrew indeed liked me as much as I liked him. It took me almost three months, however, to come to this conclusion.
When I read the old email messages I sent to a friend at the time of the events described in these messages, I cringe.
I was a different person at the time, even though these events happened less than two years ago.
The following is the complete text of an email message I sent to a friend of mine at 5:14 p.m. on Thursday, February 9, 2006, the seventh day I knew Andrew. I was over at Andrew’s apartment at the time, and I was using Andrew’s computer while he was preparing dinner
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Silvio, I am over at Andrew's right now.
I see from the website that the reading is Saturday night.
The play sounds interesting and I asked Andrew whether he wanted to go. He said he has to go to a birthday party Saturday night for one of his classmates. He said he was going to ask me tomorrow whether I wanted to go to the party. We are talking right now whether I should go to the birthday party with him.
Stay tuned.
_________________________________________________
My friend and I exchanged a few email messages over the next half hour, until I sent this message at 5:48 p.m.
_________________________________________________
God, I am acting like a jerk.
I asked Andrew, with reference to the party, how he was going to introduce me if I went.
"I was going to introduce you as the King Of Belgium--unless that would imperil your security", he said. "Don't forget your orb and scepter."
I went into a little outburst, Silvio. I am so ashamed. "That's not what I mean", I said. "I mean, what will these people think? Will they think we are friends, or FRIENDS? What are you going to say to them?"
"I'm not going to say anything to them", he said.
"Then what will they think?", I asked.
He answered "I have no idea. They can think anything they want."
I practically shouted at him, Silvio, "Well, are we dating, or not?"
I did not like his answer: "Well, I have not thought about assigning a verb to it yet, but I guess I would like to think so. What are your thoughts?"
Silvio, I hated that "assigning a verb" reference, and I repeated it back sarcastically, and just then two of Andrew's roommates walked in the front door, back from school.
Now we are both being silent.
Stay tuned.
_________________________________________________
Later that night, after I returned home, I received this email message from my friend and confidant.
_________________________________________________
I hate to say it, Joshua, but introducing each other as "friends" at this point makes total sense. Although I cannot condone Andrew's sarcasm (or yours), I have to say I agree with his point.
If I were you, I'd apologize for the outburst, explain that you really like him and you're a little on edge because you want this to work out. Tell him that he can refer to you however he wishes, and that what is important right now is that you continue spending time together and getting to know each other.
_________________________________________________
This is my email response, sent at 2:11 a.m. that morning.
_________________________________________________
I am such an asshole.
I don’t think I should be permitted to go out in public, Silvio.
I arrived at Andrew's house a little before 12:45 today, and I rang, and no one was in. Two minutes after I got there, Andrew arrived, back from class. Outside his house, on the street, he put his hand on the back of my neck, and held it there for a few seconds. He always appears happy to see me, but today he appeared particularly happy to see me.
We went in, had lunch, and stayed in the apartment all afternoon. We talked, we studied, we joked, we listened to "Jenufa" (at my request), Andrew prepared dinner, but he did not touch me again.
Then I had my little episode I already passed on to you, and dinner was a very quiet one. After dinner, I sat down at Andrew's computer while he cleaned up in the kitchen. I did not even offer to help him wash dishes--because I was still furious at him. I am such an asshole!
When he was done, he came into the living room and stood behind me and put his hand on my neck, in exactly the same way he put his hand on my neck in front of the house at midday, and said "Let's go to the library" in a very, very quiet voice. He was almost inaudible. I didn't move, and he said, again, "Let's go to the library" in a very, very quiet voice.
I rose and got my stuff together, and went out with him.
As soon as we got outside, he stood right next to me and put his right arm around my shoulder and kept it there, and said to me, "So, are we dating or not?"
I was still irritated at him about that "assigning a verb" remark and I said, "Oh, are you ready to assign a verb now?"
"I'll let you pick one. OK?" was his response.
All I could think of to say, Silvio, was "I can't think of a good one", to which Andrew responded, "Well, let's stick with 'dating' then until you come up with a better one. OK?"
I nodded, and we walked down the street. Until we got to the corner, he kept his right arm around my shoulder.
Andrew didn't take me to the library, however--he took me to Union Station, and we went and got coffee and talked.
After we sat down, the first thing he said to me was "Maybe you need a day off tomorrow."
"You mean a day off from you?" I asked. "Yes" he responded.
That really ticked me off, Silvio, and I snapped "I don't need a day off. Do you?"
"No" was Andrew's answer, but he added "I don't want you to get mad at me, Joshua, just because you think things should be moving along a little faster. I am only 25, you are only 22, and we have lots and lots of time ahead of us. Let's take things nice and slow. I need to take things nice and slow. Go with me on this."
I told Andrew I could "go with him on this" as long as I knew he really liked me. I told him, Silvio, that what I really needed to know was what he thought of me.
Silvio, do you know what Andrew told me? He said "Joshua, you already know what I think of you. You have known what I think of you since fifteen minutes after we met."
That's not what I wanted to hear, Silvio, so I said "That being . . .?"
"That I like you very much. That I want to get to know you. That I want to spend time with you. That I look forward all day to the time I get to be with you. That I wonder if you're the person who is meant to be my partner in life."
That absolutely made me melt, Silvio, but I was still in my asshole mode, so I said "Then why did it take so long for you to say all this?"
What I said must have pressed Andrew's buttons, because he burst out "Take so long? Take so long? Joshua, I haven't even known you a week! How can you say this is taking so long? And besides, you know all this already! I'm not telling you anything you don't already know! Admit it--I didn't say anything you didn't already know. Am I right?"
And, Silvio, I said "Yes. You are right. I knew all that already."
"So why are you making an issue of this? Why in the world are you making such an issue out of nothing?" is what Andrew said.
"Because I need to be told! That's why!" was my response.
So, do you know what Andrew said, Silvio? He said "Let me repeat: Joshua, I like you very much; I look forward to getting to know you; I like spending time with you; I look forward all day to the time we spend together. Is that good enough?"
My response was "You left out the part whether I'm the person meant to be your partner in life."
"We'll get to that in time. OK?" was Andrew's response. "OK" I said.
By this time we were laughing, and Andrew said "OK. You need occasional reinforcement. I can see that. That's fine. I can give reinforcement. It's no problem. And, from now on, whenever you get like this, I shall just assume that you need some reinforcement. Reinforcement is not going to be a problem."
"We'll see" I said skeptically.
"Yes, you'll see" he said.
"And I want you to touch me more!" I blurted out. "That will be no problem" said Andrew. "It will be a pleasure, I assure you."
Then, Silvio, we had a very important talk about friends.
[At this point, I went into a very tedious discussion about how I compartmentalized my friends into four groups. I do not include that tedious discussion here.]
I explained to Andrew that each group was compartmentalized, and for a reason, and that each set of friends gave me something important, but that no one set of friends gave me everything I needed in a friendship.
I explained to Andrew how each group provides for a discrete set of my needs, but that no single group was capable of providing for more than one set of my needs at a time. I explained to Andrew that this is why I had not introduced him to anyone I know yet.
My friends from groups one through three I would only want to introduce to Andrew once we (Andrew and I) are firmly together, and not until (otherwise, these people have no need to know I am seeing Andrew). My friends from group four I would definitely NOT want to introduce to Andrew because they would try to take him away from me--and I told him exactly that!
I asked Andrew "Do you understand this? Does this make sense to you?"
Do you know what he said to me, Silvio? He said "Yes. I already knew all that."
"How could you know all that?" I asked him.
"Because of things you said, indirectly, and because of things I gathered" he answered. "Plus, I remember how my friendships were segregated when I was a senior in college. You will find out that all that will change in law school."
I told him how surprised I was that he seemed so keen and so pleased to introduce me, so naturally, to his roommates and to his parents' friends and to all of his friends and acquaintances at school. I remarked, especially, upon how many persons he had introduced me to at the library last night, and how he had introduced me so naturally.
I pointed out to him, however, that when he introduced me by saying "This is my friend, Joshua", a connotation could be derived from that introduction, and that he could avoid that connotation by simply saying "This is Joshua".
Do you what he said to me, Silvio? He said "I don't think anyone interpreted my introduction that way. And, if so, I don't care. But tell me, how do you want me to introduce you? It's up to you. Just tell me. Do you want me to go with that King-Of-Belgium thing?"
I answered him, Silvio, by saying "I want you to introduce me however you want."
"Then I'm going to stick with 'This is my friend, Joshua' and leave it at that" said Andrew. "Anytime you want me to change it, just let me know."
Isn't he sweet?
So, we got a lot of issues hashed out--my issues, I mean--so now I should not have to worry about so many things: worry about introducing Andrew to my roommates, or worry about being a heel for not introducing him to my friends, or worry about how things are moving along between us (as long as he is genuine about offering me "reinforcement" frequently).
I never thought of myself as the "clingy" type before, Silvio, but I can see in myself "clingy" characteristics in my dealings with Andrew today. I hope they are short-term, and will pass, and I hope they are the result of my need for a bit of "reinforcement", as Andrew calls it.
One of the problems, if that is the right word, is that Andrew is so smart that he assumes that everyone else picks up what he picks up and, consequently, that there is no need to articulate the bloody obvious. Sometimes I think I need a little articulation of the bloody obvious.
Once everything seemed settled, Andrew said to me "Since you've been such a good boy, I think I'll have to get you some ice cream."
So we went to another place to get ice cream, and sat down.
What was the first thing Andrew said to me as soon as we sat down? "So, do you need a day off tomorrow?"
"No" I cried.
"Then let's go see 'Brokeback Mountain' tomorrow. Have you seen it?" he asked.
I have already seen the film, Silvio, but I lied and said no. Silvio, Andrew knew that I was not telling him the truth, and, without saying anything more, he said "Well, then let's see something you haven't already seen. What else would you like to see?"
"I would like to see 'Brokeback Mountain' WITH YOU" I said.
"OK. Then we will. But if you change your mind, and you want to see something else, just let me know" was his response.
"I WILL NOT CHANGE MY MIND" I said.
"OK. What about Saturday? The birthday party? Is that on, or not?"
Silvio, I fell back on my standard response: "What would you like me to do?"
"Well, I would like you to come" said Andrew.
"Then I will come" I said.
"As the King Of Belgium?"
"No, as Joshua."
"Then I guess you can skip the orb and scepter bit."
Silvio, I think that means that your play reading is off the schedule for Saturday night. Sorry.
So Andrew walked me back to his place and, before I got into my car, he hugged me. He had never hugged me before. He put his right arm around my upper back and neck, and he put his left arm around my lower back and waist, and he hugged me, tight and hard. Then he pulled back, put both of his hands on my waist, and asked "So, we are dating, right? I just want to make sure that I have my terminology down."
"Yes, we are dating" I answered.
"Good" he said. "So, you will call me tomorrow shortly after 2:00 and let me know what time you want to get together and what time I should come get you?"
"Yes, I will" I said.
"Unless you need a day off."
"No, I don't need a day off."
So, there were no lingering after-effects of my little outburst, Silvio, and when I got home I had already been sent an email message containing numerous definitions, from several different dictionaries, of the word "dating".
Now, reflecting upon all of this, I realize now that Andrew handled me very well, didn't he? He did not get mad at me, he tried to be funny, he listened to me, and he did his best to address my concerns--and he did it all in the most charming possible manner.
God, I am lucky. And, God, I am such an asshole!
_________________________________________________
Thirty-five minutes later, at 2:46 a.m., I sent my final email message of the day.
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Silvio, you hit it on the nose: I really like him and I am on edge because I want this to work out. I could not have said that better myself.
I did not apologize to Andrew, but things worked out OK, as I wrote in my other message, sent just a few minutes ago.
The only reason things worked out OK is because Andrew is more mature than I am. In hindsight, I think he handled the situation beautifully.
You were already in bed, I am sure, when I got home, or I would have called you.
Thank you for your advice, which is greatly appreciated. I truly am a jerk.
Do gay guys give Valentine gifts?
We had an endless series of “tiffs” (the term Andrew always uses) the first ten weeks we knew each other, and then the tiffs miraculously stopped. Andrew and I have not had a “tiff” since April 2006.
I was responsible for all of these tiffs, because I was too immature to deal with what was happening at the time and because I knew that I would never again meet another guy like Andrew, even if I were to live to be 100 years old. This knowledge made me frantic, if not panicked, at the time these events were occurring.
My emotions only settled down when I became certifiably confident that Andrew indeed liked me as much as I liked him. It took me almost three months, however, to come to this conclusion.
When I read the old email messages I sent to a friend at the time of the events described in these messages, I cringe.
I was a different person at the time, even though these events happened less than two years ago.
The following is the complete text of an email message I sent to a friend of mine at 5:14 p.m. on Thursday, February 9, 2006, the seventh day I knew Andrew. I was over at Andrew’s apartment at the time, and I was using Andrew’s computer while he was preparing dinner
_________________________________________________
Silvio, I am over at Andrew's right now.
I see from the website that the reading is Saturday night.
The play sounds interesting and I asked Andrew whether he wanted to go. He said he has to go to a birthday party Saturday night for one of his classmates. He said he was going to ask me tomorrow whether I wanted to go to the party. We are talking right now whether I should go to the birthday party with him.
Stay tuned.
_________________________________________________
My friend and I exchanged a few email messages over the next half hour, until I sent this message at 5:48 p.m.
_________________________________________________
God, I am acting like a jerk.
I asked Andrew, with reference to the party, how he was going to introduce me if I went.
"I was going to introduce you as the King Of Belgium--unless that would imperil your security", he said. "Don't forget your orb and scepter."
I went into a little outburst, Silvio. I am so ashamed. "That's not what I mean", I said. "I mean, what will these people think? Will they think we are friends, or FRIENDS? What are you going to say to them?"
"I'm not going to say anything to them", he said.
"Then what will they think?", I asked.
He answered "I have no idea. They can think anything they want."
I practically shouted at him, Silvio, "Well, are we dating, or not?"
I did not like his answer: "Well, I have not thought about assigning a verb to it yet, but I guess I would like to think so. What are your thoughts?"
Silvio, I hated that "assigning a verb" reference, and I repeated it back sarcastically, and just then two of Andrew's roommates walked in the front door, back from school.
Now we are both being silent.
Stay tuned.
_________________________________________________
Later that night, after I returned home, I received this email message from my friend and confidant.
_________________________________________________
I hate to say it, Joshua, but introducing each other as "friends" at this point makes total sense. Although I cannot condone Andrew's sarcasm (or yours), I have to say I agree with his point.
If I were you, I'd apologize for the outburst, explain that you really like him and you're a little on edge because you want this to work out. Tell him that he can refer to you however he wishes, and that what is important right now is that you continue spending time together and getting to know each other.
_________________________________________________
This is my email response, sent at 2:11 a.m. that morning.
_________________________________________________
I am such an asshole.
I don’t think I should be permitted to go out in public, Silvio.
I arrived at Andrew's house a little before 12:45 today, and I rang, and no one was in. Two minutes after I got there, Andrew arrived, back from class. Outside his house, on the street, he put his hand on the back of my neck, and held it there for a few seconds. He always appears happy to see me, but today he appeared particularly happy to see me.
We went in, had lunch, and stayed in the apartment all afternoon. We talked, we studied, we joked, we listened to "Jenufa" (at my request), Andrew prepared dinner, but he did not touch me again.
Then I had my little episode I already passed on to you, and dinner was a very quiet one. After dinner, I sat down at Andrew's computer while he cleaned up in the kitchen. I did not even offer to help him wash dishes--because I was still furious at him. I am such an asshole!
When he was done, he came into the living room and stood behind me and put his hand on my neck, in exactly the same way he put his hand on my neck in front of the house at midday, and said "Let's go to the library" in a very, very quiet voice. He was almost inaudible. I didn't move, and he said, again, "Let's go to the library" in a very, very quiet voice.
I rose and got my stuff together, and went out with him.
As soon as we got outside, he stood right next to me and put his right arm around my shoulder and kept it there, and said to me, "So, are we dating or not?"
I was still irritated at him about that "assigning a verb" remark and I said, "Oh, are you ready to assign a verb now?"
"I'll let you pick one. OK?" was his response.
All I could think of to say, Silvio, was "I can't think of a good one", to which Andrew responded, "Well, let's stick with 'dating' then until you come up with a better one. OK?"
I nodded, and we walked down the street. Until we got to the corner, he kept his right arm around my shoulder.
Andrew didn't take me to the library, however--he took me to Union Station, and we went and got coffee and talked.
After we sat down, the first thing he said to me was "Maybe you need a day off tomorrow."
"You mean a day off from you?" I asked. "Yes" he responded.
That really ticked me off, Silvio, and I snapped "I don't need a day off. Do you?"
"No" was Andrew's answer, but he added "I don't want you to get mad at me, Joshua, just because you think things should be moving along a little faster. I am only 25, you are only 22, and we have lots and lots of time ahead of us. Let's take things nice and slow. I need to take things nice and slow. Go with me on this."
I told Andrew I could "go with him on this" as long as I knew he really liked me. I told him, Silvio, that what I really needed to know was what he thought of me.
Silvio, do you know what Andrew told me? He said "Joshua, you already know what I think of you. You have known what I think of you since fifteen minutes after we met."
That's not what I wanted to hear, Silvio, so I said "That being . . .?"
"That I like you very much. That I want to get to know you. That I want to spend time with you. That I look forward all day to the time I get to be with you. That I wonder if you're the person who is meant to be my partner in life."
That absolutely made me melt, Silvio, but I was still in my asshole mode, so I said "Then why did it take so long for you to say all this?"
What I said must have pressed Andrew's buttons, because he burst out "Take so long? Take so long? Joshua, I haven't even known you a week! How can you say this is taking so long? And besides, you know all this already! I'm not telling you anything you don't already know! Admit it--I didn't say anything you didn't already know. Am I right?"
And, Silvio, I said "Yes. You are right. I knew all that already."
"So why are you making an issue of this? Why in the world are you making such an issue out of nothing?" is what Andrew said.
"Because I need to be told! That's why!" was my response.
So, do you know what Andrew said, Silvio? He said "Let me repeat: Joshua, I like you very much; I look forward to getting to know you; I like spending time with you; I look forward all day to the time we spend together. Is that good enough?"
My response was "You left out the part whether I'm the person meant to be your partner in life."
"We'll get to that in time. OK?" was Andrew's response. "OK" I said.
By this time we were laughing, and Andrew said "OK. You need occasional reinforcement. I can see that. That's fine. I can give reinforcement. It's no problem. And, from now on, whenever you get like this, I shall just assume that you need some reinforcement. Reinforcement is not going to be a problem."
"We'll see" I said skeptically.
"Yes, you'll see" he said.
"And I want you to touch me more!" I blurted out. "That will be no problem" said Andrew. "It will be a pleasure, I assure you."
Then, Silvio, we had a very important talk about friends.
[At this point, I went into a very tedious discussion about how I compartmentalized my friends into four groups. I do not include that tedious discussion here.]
I explained to Andrew that each group was compartmentalized, and for a reason, and that each set of friends gave me something important, but that no one set of friends gave me everything I needed in a friendship.
I explained to Andrew how each group provides for a discrete set of my needs, but that no single group was capable of providing for more than one set of my needs at a time. I explained to Andrew that this is why I had not introduced him to anyone I know yet.
My friends from groups one through three I would only want to introduce to Andrew once we (Andrew and I) are firmly together, and not until (otherwise, these people have no need to know I am seeing Andrew). My friends from group four I would definitely NOT want to introduce to Andrew because they would try to take him away from me--and I told him exactly that!
I asked Andrew "Do you understand this? Does this make sense to you?"
Do you know what he said to me, Silvio? He said "Yes. I already knew all that."
"How could you know all that?" I asked him.
"Because of things you said, indirectly, and because of things I gathered" he answered. "Plus, I remember how my friendships were segregated when I was a senior in college. You will find out that all that will change in law school."
I told him how surprised I was that he seemed so keen and so pleased to introduce me, so naturally, to his roommates and to his parents' friends and to all of his friends and acquaintances at school. I remarked, especially, upon how many persons he had introduced me to at the library last night, and how he had introduced me so naturally.
I pointed out to him, however, that when he introduced me by saying "This is my friend, Joshua", a connotation could be derived from that introduction, and that he could avoid that connotation by simply saying "This is Joshua".
Do you what he said to me, Silvio? He said "I don't think anyone interpreted my introduction that way. And, if so, I don't care. But tell me, how do you want me to introduce you? It's up to you. Just tell me. Do you want me to go with that King-Of-Belgium thing?"
I answered him, Silvio, by saying "I want you to introduce me however you want."
"Then I'm going to stick with 'This is my friend, Joshua' and leave it at that" said Andrew. "Anytime you want me to change it, just let me know."
Isn't he sweet?
So, we got a lot of issues hashed out--my issues, I mean--so now I should not have to worry about so many things: worry about introducing Andrew to my roommates, or worry about being a heel for not introducing him to my friends, or worry about how things are moving along between us (as long as he is genuine about offering me "reinforcement" frequently).
I never thought of myself as the "clingy" type before, Silvio, but I can see in myself "clingy" characteristics in my dealings with Andrew today. I hope they are short-term, and will pass, and I hope they are the result of my need for a bit of "reinforcement", as Andrew calls it.
One of the problems, if that is the right word, is that Andrew is so smart that he assumes that everyone else picks up what he picks up and, consequently, that there is no need to articulate the bloody obvious. Sometimes I think I need a little articulation of the bloody obvious.
Once everything seemed settled, Andrew said to me "Since you've been such a good boy, I think I'll have to get you some ice cream."
So we went to another place to get ice cream, and sat down.
What was the first thing Andrew said to me as soon as we sat down? "So, do you need a day off tomorrow?"
"No" I cried.
"Then let's go see 'Brokeback Mountain' tomorrow. Have you seen it?" he asked.
I have already seen the film, Silvio, but I lied and said no. Silvio, Andrew knew that I was not telling him the truth, and, without saying anything more, he said "Well, then let's see something you haven't already seen. What else would you like to see?"
"I would like to see 'Brokeback Mountain' WITH YOU" I said.
"OK. Then we will. But if you change your mind, and you want to see something else, just let me know" was his response.
"I WILL NOT CHANGE MY MIND" I said.
"OK. What about Saturday? The birthday party? Is that on, or not?"
Silvio, I fell back on my standard response: "What would you like me to do?"
"Well, I would like you to come" said Andrew.
"Then I will come" I said.
"As the King Of Belgium?"
"No, as Joshua."
"Then I guess you can skip the orb and scepter bit."
Silvio, I think that means that your play reading is off the schedule for Saturday night. Sorry.
So Andrew walked me back to his place and, before I got into my car, he hugged me. He had never hugged me before. He put his right arm around my upper back and neck, and he put his left arm around my lower back and waist, and he hugged me, tight and hard. Then he pulled back, put both of his hands on my waist, and asked "So, we are dating, right? I just want to make sure that I have my terminology down."
"Yes, we are dating" I answered.
"Good" he said. "So, you will call me tomorrow shortly after 2:00 and let me know what time you want to get together and what time I should come get you?"
"Yes, I will" I said.
"Unless you need a day off."
"No, I don't need a day off."
So, there were no lingering after-effects of my little outburst, Silvio, and when I got home I had already been sent an email message containing numerous definitions, from several different dictionaries, of the word "dating".
Now, reflecting upon all of this, I realize now that Andrew handled me very well, didn't he? He did not get mad at me, he tried to be funny, he listened to me, and he did his best to address my concerns--and he did it all in the most charming possible manner.
God, I am lucky. And, God, I am such an asshole!
_________________________________________________
Thirty-five minutes later, at 2:46 a.m., I sent my final email message of the day.
_________________________________________________
Silvio, you hit it on the nose: I really like him and I am on edge because I want this to work out. I could not have said that better myself.
I did not apologize to Andrew, but things worked out OK, as I wrote in my other message, sent just a few minutes ago.
The only reason things worked out OK is because Andrew is more mature than I am. In hindsight, I think he handled the situation beautifully.
You were already in bed, I am sure, when I got home, or I would have called you.
Thank you for your advice, which is greatly appreciated. I truly am a jerk.
Do gay guys give Valentine gifts?
Christmas, Come And Gone
Our Christmas in Oklahoma was a good one.
It was good to see everybody again. It had been a while since I had seen my aunts and uncles, and they were all glad to see me. They have always taken an interest in me, and we have always kept in touch.
We did not really do much. We watched bowl games on Saturday and Sunday nights, and again on Wednesday night.
On Christmas Day, the house was full. There were fourteen people in all, and we had to use both tables for Christmas dinner, one in the dining room and one in the kitchen. It worked out well.
My aunt and uncle from Dallas spent Christmas week with my folks, and they are good company. My aunt is very vivacious and very funny, and she kept us in stitches much of the time.
Andrew and I returned late yesterday afternoon, and we are both back at work today. We have to work on Monday, too, but we will probably leave our offices early on New Year’s Eve.
The holidays are almost over.
This weekend, Andrew and I will get to spend time with his brothers, but we will all be busy. On Saturday, we will all help Andrew’s parents get things ready for a family function on Sunday, when many of Andrew’s mother’s relatives will be guests for the day. That event, and preparing for it, will pretty much take up the weekend.
This means that New Year’s Day will be our only real holiday day together this year.
After that, it will be back to the grind.
It was good to see everybody again. It had been a while since I had seen my aunts and uncles, and they were all glad to see me. They have always taken an interest in me, and we have always kept in touch.
We did not really do much. We watched bowl games on Saturday and Sunday nights, and again on Wednesday night.
On Christmas Day, the house was full. There were fourteen people in all, and we had to use both tables for Christmas dinner, one in the dining room and one in the kitchen. It worked out well.
My aunt and uncle from Dallas spent Christmas week with my folks, and they are good company. My aunt is very vivacious and very funny, and she kept us in stitches much of the time.
Andrew and I returned late yesterday afternoon, and we are both back at work today. We have to work on Monday, too, but we will probably leave our offices early on New Year’s Eve.
The holidays are almost over.
This weekend, Andrew and I will get to spend time with his brothers, but we will all be busy. On Saturday, we will all help Andrew’s parents get things ready for a family function on Sunday, when many of Andrew’s mother’s relatives will be guests for the day. That event, and preparing for it, will pretty much take up the weekend.
This means that New Year’s Day will be our only real holiday day together this year.
After that, it will be back to the grind.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Have A Holly Jolly Christmas
Christmas is almost here, and I am getting both excited and apprehensive.
On Saturday, Andrew and I fly to Oklahoma, where we will visit with my family for five days. This will be the longest visit Andrew and I have made to Oklahoma, and we will be, primarily, housebound—unless the temperature outside miraculously shoots up to 70 degrees.
My aunt and uncle from Dallas will be staying with my parents, too, during most of our stay, and I wonder whether there will be too many people cooped up in a standard-size split-level house.
Furthermore, in honor of Andrew’s and my presence, my mother will be hosting Christmas dinner this year, which means that three additional sets of aunts and uncles will be present on Christmas Day.
None of my aunts and uncles has met Andrew, although they are all familiar with Andrew’s mother’s family and although they have all heard about Andrew in great detail. They are all dying to meet him, including my uncle who is a Baptist minister.
The question is: will Andrew and I be able to cope?
More particularly, will Andrew be able to cope?
I remember my first weekend in Minnesota, Easter weekend 2006. That weekend was not a success, for me or anyone else, and I am surprised I was ever allowed back into Andrew’s family home. Without Andrew at my side, I would never have been able to make it through that weekend.
I think things will work out all right, but I also worry that everyone will be bored out of his or her mind. What will we do to pass the time?
My brother will watch ESPN all day, so I do not worry about him. Even at mealtimes, he will take his plate of food and go downstairs to the family room and eat in front of the television, watching SportsCenter. He will even do that on Christmas Day, during Christmas dinner, if my mother allows it.
I do not worry about my sister, either, because she—like all high school girls—has her own agenda to keep her busy. Further, she loves Christmas and she loves to help cook Christmas dinner and she loves Christmas Day and all the traditions it entails. This is the one time each year she enjoys spending time in the kitchen.
What I worry about is what my parents and Andrew and I will do to occupy our time. I have been thinking about this conundrum. Maybe we should play canasta all day, every day, so that Andrew and my parents may learn to become comfortable in each other’s presence. And maybe we should not.
Tomorrow night, Andrew’s brothers will arrive home for Christmas, and tomorrow night we will all have a preliminary Christmas celebration. I think Andrew’s mother is planning to prepare prime rib.
Saturday morning, Andrew’s brothers will take us to the airport. I can already see Andrew's father hugging Andrew tightly, not wanting to let go, and Andrew’s mother trying to hold back tears, not wanting to leave Andrew's embrace, as we prepare to leave the house.
On Saturday, Andrew and I fly to Oklahoma, where we will visit with my family for five days. This will be the longest visit Andrew and I have made to Oklahoma, and we will be, primarily, housebound—unless the temperature outside miraculously shoots up to 70 degrees.
My aunt and uncle from Dallas will be staying with my parents, too, during most of our stay, and I wonder whether there will be too many people cooped up in a standard-size split-level house.
Furthermore, in honor of Andrew’s and my presence, my mother will be hosting Christmas dinner this year, which means that three additional sets of aunts and uncles will be present on Christmas Day.
None of my aunts and uncles has met Andrew, although they are all familiar with Andrew’s mother’s family and although they have all heard about Andrew in great detail. They are all dying to meet him, including my uncle who is a Baptist minister.
The question is: will Andrew and I be able to cope?
More particularly, will Andrew be able to cope?
I remember my first weekend in Minnesota, Easter weekend 2006. That weekend was not a success, for me or anyone else, and I am surprised I was ever allowed back into Andrew’s family home. Without Andrew at my side, I would never have been able to make it through that weekend.
I think things will work out all right, but I also worry that everyone will be bored out of his or her mind. What will we do to pass the time?
My brother will watch ESPN all day, so I do not worry about him. Even at mealtimes, he will take his plate of food and go downstairs to the family room and eat in front of the television, watching SportsCenter. He will even do that on Christmas Day, during Christmas dinner, if my mother allows it.
I do not worry about my sister, either, because she—like all high school girls—has her own agenda to keep her busy. Further, she loves Christmas and she loves to help cook Christmas dinner and she loves Christmas Day and all the traditions it entails. This is the one time each year she enjoys spending time in the kitchen.
What I worry about is what my parents and Andrew and I will do to occupy our time. I have been thinking about this conundrum. Maybe we should play canasta all day, every day, so that Andrew and my parents may learn to become comfortable in each other’s presence. And maybe we should not.
Tomorrow night, Andrew’s brothers will arrive home for Christmas, and tomorrow night we will all have a preliminary Christmas celebration. I think Andrew’s mother is planning to prepare prime rib.
Saturday morning, Andrew’s brothers will take us to the airport. I can already see Andrew's father hugging Andrew tightly, not wanting to let go, and Andrew’s mother trying to hold back tears, not wanting to leave Andrew's embrace, as we prepare to leave the house.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Arthur Schlesinger
When academic reputations collapse, they implode quickly, instantly, irrevocably. It is not a pretty sight.
For some reason, Andrew and I have been reading about Arthur Schlesinger the last couple of nights, probably because Schlesinger’s journals have recently been published posthumously, and we have come across several reviews of them in newspapers, magazines and history journals.
Schlesinger was not an historian, precisely, although he certainly thought of himself as one. He also was not a scholar, nor a thinker, nor a philosopher, nor a writer.
What exactly, then, was Schlesinger?
Andrew calls him “a careerist in search of a career”, a phrase I rather like.
Myself, I think I will identify Schlesinger merely as “a second-rate mind in search of first-rate social contacts”, which is how his reputation, post-1980, may be most accurately described.
What Schlesinger himself wanted to be, most of all, was a celebrity, and he achieved this, even if only in a very small way, although he was ridiculed at least in as many quarters as he was lauded in others.
My first acquaintance with Schlesinger’s work was in a college history course. One of the assigned texts was Schlesinger’s only lasting book, “The Age Of Jackson”, an examination of Jacksonian Democracy in America.
In truth, “The Age Of Jackson” has very little to do with the Jacksonian Era. It is, instead, a rather transparent justification of FDR’s New Deal. As such, it is not particularly original or insightful, and not distinguished in the least, but it is also not particularly offensive.
After my college class was done with the Jacksonian Era, and done with the Schlesinger book, and done with the other texts, and after we had turned in our papers, and moved on to the next subject, I asked my professor why he had assigned us the Schlesinger book.
“Because it is a classic, and everyone must know it” was his very reasonable answer. “But it’s not any good” was my rejoinder, to which he replied “No, it is not any good in the least. But, nevertheless, it must be your job to know it, because everyone else knows it.”
For Schlesinger’s writing, it was all down hill from there, at least in terms of the quality of his work. Admittedly, his writing style remained consistent—flowery, like something borrowed from a 19th-Century women’s magazine—but the thoughts expressed therein were simply variations, in one form or another, of his first book, and these thoughts became weaker and increasingly tiresome—and increasingly incredulous—with age and overuse.
If Tennessee Williams wrote nothing but rewrites of “A Streetcar Named Desired” after that play’s 1947 success, Arthur Schlesinger wrote nothing but rewrites of “The Age Of Jackson” after that book’s 1946 success. In the cases of both writers, success came too early, was never to be repeated, at least on the same dizzying level, and surely prevented them from striking out in new directions.
If Schlesinger had not enjoyed such success with his first book—he won every possible book award before the age of 30—he might have turned into an acceptable academic and historian. However, success must have come too soon for him to handle it well, and he spent the rest of his life seeking limelight and notoriety, always trying to affix himself to one power source or another. With the passing of the years, his grasping nature became increasingly farcical and painful to witness, the subject of harsh scorn.
Schlesinger was not a researcher—he never even attained a Ph.D.—and he was not a satisfactory or even a reliable chronicler. What he was was an opinion-issuer, offering the same bromides and clichés, all derived from the 1940’s, no matter the topic, no matter the issue, no matter the year, beginning in the immediate post-War period and ending only with his death earlier this year. Reading Schlesinger’s books, churned out over a sixty-year period, is akin to having breakfast every morning, for sixty years, sitting across the breakfast table from Eleanor Roosevelt: never-ending polemics, frozen in a time warp, served up by a most unpleasant face.
Thank heaven the old fool is gone at last—and yet remnants of Schlesinger’s career continue to haunt us. Even in death, he has become the idiot who refuses to go away.
It was recently announced that the New York Public Library had purchased Schlesinger’s personal papers—at a cost in the “high six figures, low seven figures”—with, in part, proceeds from the sale to a WalMart heiress of Asher B. Durand’s painting, “Kindred Spirits”. What a deplorable disposition of public assets all the way around!
According to academic librarians, the New York Public Library paid many times the fair market value of Schlesinger’s remaining papers, the most valuable of which have already been promised to Harvard University. In truth, the papers purchased by the New York Public Library may very well have no value at all. Numerous academic libraries took well-publicized passes on the papers while the papers were pedaled around the university universe by the Schlesinger Estate.
Of more importance than Schlesinger’s personal papers, however, is the critical reaction to Schlesinger’s “Journals: 1952-2000”, recently issued to coincide with what would have been Schlesinger’s 90th birthday. What is astonishing is that even the positive reviews have been, perhaps unintentionally, entirely back-handed.
An historian I do not admire, Douglas Brinckley, writing in the Los Angeles Times, offers what is clearly intended to be a favorable review of Schlesinger’s journals—but nonetheless Brinckley leaves anything but a favorable impression of Schlesinger and his work.
“I eat the best meals I can get, drink Jack Daniel’s, smoke Havana cigars and prepare to enjoy life while it is still possible” is supposed to be a charming anecdote, at least until the reader comes across this later revelation: “As late as 1987, in fact, when Schlesinger was a household name, he writes of struggling to survive in the fast-buck Manhattan social whirl where he was often the toast of the town, lamenting that he was ‘perennially broke’ and unable to possess a savings account”.
British reviewer, Professor William Rubinstein, in an obscure British quarterly, in a review that is clearly intended to be highly laudatory, offers the following: “He came of age under Franklin D. Roosevelt, for whom, in effect, he was still voting until he died, seventy years after Roosevelt's New Deal.” Few persons would consider that statement to be a complimentary description of a purportedly serious man.
Rubinstein continues: “After [RFK’s] assassination, Schlesinger's life consisted of Waiting For Godot, of seeking to find yet another new White Knight of American liberalism. Rather pathetically, in his journals he reports hopefully on every successive leading Democratic Presidential candidate down to Al Gore, always expecting great things but always finding only their deficiencies.”
Finally, Rubinstein sums up his subject with this less-than-ringing endorsement—“Schlesinger was certainly a clever man, but perhaps not a wise one”—before concluding his review with the revelation that he always feared asking Schlesinger uncomfortable questions because he needed (and received) a dust jacket endorsement from Schlesinger for his own book, “The Myth Of Rescue”. The principle of “I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine” is evidently alive and well in academia, flourishing even across vast oceans.
In discussing Schlesinger’s journals, an unexpected source, The New Yorker, is most dismissive of all. Its header, “While Schlesinger Partied, Liberalism Burned” says everything that need be said. It is a damning indictment.
“The political creed that he embodied—modern, post-New Deal liberalism—declined and fell during the period covered by the last six hundred pages of the “Journals,” and Schlesinger never seems to understand why, or even that it is happening at all.
As a consequence, his political judgment—as opposed to his policy views—fails him again and again. In 1972, he couldn’t believe that McGovern would lose to the hated Nixon in a landslide.”
The New Yorker writer continues: “Throughout the years of liberal eclipse, Schlesinger expresses a kind of irritable surprise that events keep taking the wrong turn, that the public refuses to do the obvious, right thing, and that Presidents fail to live up to the Kennedy standard. He worships the Kennedy memory ever more ardently as years go by. He wonders why new generations of politicians don’t turn to him for advice. And he keeps up an incredible social schedule.”
The New Yorker writer was only too willing to address Schlesinger’s deficiencies as a human being—“It’s possible, even if you agree with almost every position Schlesinger held, to find the smugness and complacency not just annoying but fatal”—before ending with a zinger: “Reviewers have suggested that the Schlesinger “Journals” are a sort of cross between the memoirs of George Kennan and the diaries of Andy Warhol. I would add that this combination is part of the sad story they tell, of a political creed in its decadence.” Ouch! It is difficult to find more stinging words than these.
Andrew and I have no intention to buy and read Schlesinger’s “Journals”. If we thought they might somehow be amusing, we very well might do so. However, Schlesinger is a deadly writer, taking himself with deadly seriousness as he utters the most commonplace sentiments in breathless tones meant to suggest eternal significance.
A few years ago, Andrew read Volume I of Schlesinger’s projected two-volume autobiography, “A Life In The 20th Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917-1950”. (Schlesinger did not live to complete Volume II of his autobiography; his “Journals”, therefore, are intended to supplement Volume I of his autobiography.)
Andrew read Volume I of the Schlesinger autobiography one summer while he was home from college. He said that the book had been more or less what he had expected it to be: a memoir whose primary purpose had been the settling of old scores.
Andrew further said that one trait stood out in the autobiography, above all Schlesinger’s other traits: Schlesinger had been indescribably middlebrow. According to Andrew, Schlesinger’s life was surely the most middlebrow life ever lived. Schlesinger was a man with middlebrow intellect, with middlebrow outlooks, with middlebrow attitudes, with fatally middlebrow, if not philistine, tastes.
And yet the man fancied himself to be an intellectual, of all absurd things! Such a person is, by definition, nothing so much as a damn fool.
Arthur Schlesinger . . .careerist . . .polemic . . .middlebrow.
What a ridiculous combination! And what a ridiculous man!
For some reason, Andrew and I have been reading about Arthur Schlesinger the last couple of nights, probably because Schlesinger’s journals have recently been published posthumously, and we have come across several reviews of them in newspapers, magazines and history journals.
Schlesinger was not an historian, precisely, although he certainly thought of himself as one. He also was not a scholar, nor a thinker, nor a philosopher, nor a writer.
What exactly, then, was Schlesinger?
Andrew calls him “a careerist in search of a career”, a phrase I rather like.
Myself, I think I will identify Schlesinger merely as “a second-rate mind in search of first-rate social contacts”, which is how his reputation, post-1980, may be most accurately described.
What Schlesinger himself wanted to be, most of all, was a celebrity, and he achieved this, even if only in a very small way, although he was ridiculed at least in as many quarters as he was lauded in others.
My first acquaintance with Schlesinger’s work was in a college history course. One of the assigned texts was Schlesinger’s only lasting book, “The Age Of Jackson”, an examination of Jacksonian Democracy in America.
In truth, “The Age Of Jackson” has very little to do with the Jacksonian Era. It is, instead, a rather transparent justification of FDR’s New Deal. As such, it is not particularly original or insightful, and not distinguished in the least, but it is also not particularly offensive.
After my college class was done with the Jacksonian Era, and done with the Schlesinger book, and done with the other texts, and after we had turned in our papers, and moved on to the next subject, I asked my professor why he had assigned us the Schlesinger book.
“Because it is a classic, and everyone must know it” was his very reasonable answer. “But it’s not any good” was my rejoinder, to which he replied “No, it is not any good in the least. But, nevertheless, it must be your job to know it, because everyone else knows it.”
For Schlesinger’s writing, it was all down hill from there, at least in terms of the quality of his work. Admittedly, his writing style remained consistent—flowery, like something borrowed from a 19th-Century women’s magazine—but the thoughts expressed therein were simply variations, in one form or another, of his first book, and these thoughts became weaker and increasingly tiresome—and increasingly incredulous—with age and overuse.
If Tennessee Williams wrote nothing but rewrites of “A Streetcar Named Desired” after that play’s 1947 success, Arthur Schlesinger wrote nothing but rewrites of “The Age Of Jackson” after that book’s 1946 success. In the cases of both writers, success came too early, was never to be repeated, at least on the same dizzying level, and surely prevented them from striking out in new directions.
If Schlesinger had not enjoyed such success with his first book—he won every possible book award before the age of 30—he might have turned into an acceptable academic and historian. However, success must have come too soon for him to handle it well, and he spent the rest of his life seeking limelight and notoriety, always trying to affix himself to one power source or another. With the passing of the years, his grasping nature became increasingly farcical and painful to witness, the subject of harsh scorn.
Schlesinger was not a researcher—he never even attained a Ph.D.—and he was not a satisfactory or even a reliable chronicler. What he was was an opinion-issuer, offering the same bromides and clichés, all derived from the 1940’s, no matter the topic, no matter the issue, no matter the year, beginning in the immediate post-War period and ending only with his death earlier this year. Reading Schlesinger’s books, churned out over a sixty-year period, is akin to having breakfast every morning, for sixty years, sitting across the breakfast table from Eleanor Roosevelt: never-ending polemics, frozen in a time warp, served up by a most unpleasant face.
Thank heaven the old fool is gone at last—and yet remnants of Schlesinger’s career continue to haunt us. Even in death, he has become the idiot who refuses to go away.
It was recently announced that the New York Public Library had purchased Schlesinger’s personal papers—at a cost in the “high six figures, low seven figures”—with, in part, proceeds from the sale to a WalMart heiress of Asher B. Durand’s painting, “Kindred Spirits”. What a deplorable disposition of public assets all the way around!
According to academic librarians, the New York Public Library paid many times the fair market value of Schlesinger’s remaining papers, the most valuable of which have already been promised to Harvard University. In truth, the papers purchased by the New York Public Library may very well have no value at all. Numerous academic libraries took well-publicized passes on the papers while the papers were pedaled around the university universe by the Schlesinger Estate.
Of more importance than Schlesinger’s personal papers, however, is the critical reaction to Schlesinger’s “Journals: 1952-2000”, recently issued to coincide with what would have been Schlesinger’s 90th birthday. What is astonishing is that even the positive reviews have been, perhaps unintentionally, entirely back-handed.
An historian I do not admire, Douglas Brinckley, writing in the Los Angeles Times, offers what is clearly intended to be a favorable review of Schlesinger’s journals—but nonetheless Brinckley leaves anything but a favorable impression of Schlesinger and his work.
“I eat the best meals I can get, drink Jack Daniel’s, smoke Havana cigars and prepare to enjoy life while it is still possible” is supposed to be a charming anecdote, at least until the reader comes across this later revelation: “As late as 1987, in fact, when Schlesinger was a household name, he writes of struggling to survive in the fast-buck Manhattan social whirl where he was often the toast of the town, lamenting that he was ‘perennially broke’ and unable to possess a savings account”.
British reviewer, Professor William Rubinstein, in an obscure British quarterly, in a review that is clearly intended to be highly laudatory, offers the following: “He came of age under Franklin D. Roosevelt, for whom, in effect, he was still voting until he died, seventy years after Roosevelt's New Deal.” Few persons would consider that statement to be a complimentary description of a purportedly serious man.
Rubinstein continues: “After [RFK’s] assassination, Schlesinger's life consisted of Waiting For Godot, of seeking to find yet another new White Knight of American liberalism. Rather pathetically, in his journals he reports hopefully on every successive leading Democratic Presidential candidate down to Al Gore, always expecting great things but always finding only their deficiencies.”
Finally, Rubinstein sums up his subject with this less-than-ringing endorsement—“Schlesinger was certainly a clever man, but perhaps not a wise one”—before concluding his review with the revelation that he always feared asking Schlesinger uncomfortable questions because he needed (and received) a dust jacket endorsement from Schlesinger for his own book, “The Myth Of Rescue”. The principle of “I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine” is evidently alive and well in academia, flourishing even across vast oceans.
In discussing Schlesinger’s journals, an unexpected source, The New Yorker, is most dismissive of all. Its header, “While Schlesinger Partied, Liberalism Burned” says everything that need be said. It is a damning indictment.
“The political creed that he embodied—modern, post-New Deal liberalism—declined and fell during the period covered by the last six hundred pages of the “Journals,” and Schlesinger never seems to understand why, or even that it is happening at all.
As a consequence, his political judgment—as opposed to his policy views—fails him again and again. In 1972, he couldn’t believe that McGovern would lose to the hated Nixon in a landslide.”
The New Yorker writer continues: “Throughout the years of liberal eclipse, Schlesinger expresses a kind of irritable surprise that events keep taking the wrong turn, that the public refuses to do the obvious, right thing, and that Presidents fail to live up to the Kennedy standard. He worships the Kennedy memory ever more ardently as years go by. He wonders why new generations of politicians don’t turn to him for advice. And he keeps up an incredible social schedule.”
The New Yorker writer was only too willing to address Schlesinger’s deficiencies as a human being—“It’s possible, even if you agree with almost every position Schlesinger held, to find the smugness and complacency not just annoying but fatal”—before ending with a zinger: “Reviewers have suggested that the Schlesinger “Journals” are a sort of cross between the memoirs of George Kennan and the diaries of Andy Warhol. I would add that this combination is part of the sad story they tell, of a political creed in its decadence.” Ouch! It is difficult to find more stinging words than these.
Andrew and I have no intention to buy and read Schlesinger’s “Journals”. If we thought they might somehow be amusing, we very well might do so. However, Schlesinger is a deadly writer, taking himself with deadly seriousness as he utters the most commonplace sentiments in breathless tones meant to suggest eternal significance.
A few years ago, Andrew read Volume I of Schlesinger’s projected two-volume autobiography, “A Life In The 20th Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917-1950”. (Schlesinger did not live to complete Volume II of his autobiography; his “Journals”, therefore, are intended to supplement Volume I of his autobiography.)
Andrew read Volume I of the Schlesinger autobiography one summer while he was home from college. He said that the book had been more or less what he had expected it to be: a memoir whose primary purpose had been the settling of old scores.
Andrew further said that one trait stood out in the autobiography, above all Schlesinger’s other traits: Schlesinger had been indescribably middlebrow. According to Andrew, Schlesinger’s life was surely the most middlebrow life ever lived. Schlesinger was a man with middlebrow intellect, with middlebrow outlooks, with middlebrow attitudes, with fatally middlebrow, if not philistine, tastes.
And yet the man fancied himself to be an intellectual, of all absurd things! Such a person is, by definition, nothing so much as a damn fool.
Arthur Schlesinger . . .careerist . . .polemic . . .middlebrow.
What a ridiculous combination! And what a ridiculous man!
"False History Gets Made All Day, Any Day"
Has there ever been a more odious “historian” than Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.? Or a more unctuous one?
Thank God his reputation died long before he did, so that he lived to witness the death of his own life’s work. Has anyone ever been more deserving of such a cruel fate?
Tonight Andrew and I read a skewering of Arthur Schlesinger that had both of us on the floor, laughing uncontrollably.
Its wit is so sly that a reader merely skimming the text could easily be forgiven for mistaking it as a tribute to its subject.
It is so polite, so civil, so restrained, so elegiac in tone that one hardly recognizes until the very end that, with every word, the victim has been eviscerated beyond any potential rehabilitation.
__________________________________________________________
I always regretted that we didn’t become friends, because the thousands who succeeded in doing so found friendship with Arthur Schlesinger very rewarding. For one thing, to behold him — listen to him, observe him, read him — was to co-exist with a miracle of sorts. It is an awful pity, as one reflects on it, that nature is given to endowing the wrong men with extraordinary productivity. If you laid out the published works of John Kenneth Galbraith and of Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr., the line of books would reach from Galbraith’s house in Cambridge to Schlesinger’s old house in Cambridge.
A week or two back, Schlesinger acknowledged to someone that he wasn’t quite on a par with his old self, his old self having been just fine until about age 86, three years ago, after which the decline began. He walked more slowly and, he said, his speech was not as fluent as usual.
Any reduction in his productivity must have been shattering to him, as to his many clients, beginning with Clio, the muse of history, which he served so diligently beginning with his first all-star history, The Age of Jackson, and going up to his last book, published a couple of years ago, deploring President Bush for one thing and another.
Schlesinger wrote serious studies, of the age not only of Jackson but also of Roosevelt and of Kennedy, for whom his enthusiasm was uncontainable. Arthur proceeded to write not one but three books on John F. Kennedy, whom he venerated. He lived with the risk entailed in following so uncritically the careers of his favorites. Professor Sidney Hook dismissed one of his Kennedy books as the work of a "court historian." Schlesinger minded the derogation not at all, so much did he cherish public controversy which cast him as maintaining the walls of the fortresses that protected his idols.
He was, I record regretfully, not very deft at close-up political infighting. I say this as the survivor of a half-dozen encounters designed, by Arthur, to kill, which failed. In one of them he hurled a sarcasm, saying of me, “He has a facility for rhetoric which I envy, as well as a wit which I seek clumsily and vainly to emulate.” I thought that so amusing, I copied the words exactly on the jacket of my next book as though they were a great, generous compliment. If you see what I mean about Arthur’s awkwardness in combat of this kind, he actually sued me and my publisher, drawing much attention to his careless use of sarcastic praise, and, of course, to my wit.
But we kept on bumping into each other with less than mortal exchanges, and I had to endure my wife’s huge affection for him, which unhappily did not quite effect a personal rapprochement. He died in New York on February 27, after being struck by a heart attack at dinner in a restaurant, and I think back on the lunch we shared after the funeral of Murray Kempton, and of the sheer jolliness of the great and productive historian when he didn’t feel that his gods were being profaned.
There is no honor payable to an American historian that he did not earn. One of his books got the National Book Award and a Pulitzer. Meanwhile he entertained himself by writing movie criticism, and hordes of others by writing essays on every subject that interested him, including what it is in society that creates history. He was a liberal partisan, but he did not turn a blind eye to transgressions by accommodationist liberals who permitted themselves to follow the Communist Party line. He was devastating in his expulsion of them from his movement, which he served more diligently than perhaps any other human being in modern history
__________________________________________________________
Oh, what I would have given to have written that last line!
It contains far more brevity and wit—and far more accuracy—than anything Schlesinger, in a lifetime far too long and far too prolific, managed to fabricate.
Thank God his reputation died long before he did, so that he lived to witness the death of his own life’s work. Has anyone ever been more deserving of such a cruel fate?
Tonight Andrew and I read a skewering of Arthur Schlesinger that had both of us on the floor, laughing uncontrollably.
Its wit is so sly that a reader merely skimming the text could easily be forgiven for mistaking it as a tribute to its subject.
It is so polite, so civil, so restrained, so elegiac in tone that one hardly recognizes until the very end that, with every word, the victim has been eviscerated beyond any potential rehabilitation.
__________________________________________________________
I always regretted that we didn’t become friends, because the thousands who succeeded in doing so found friendship with Arthur Schlesinger very rewarding. For one thing, to behold him — listen to him, observe him, read him — was to co-exist with a miracle of sorts. It is an awful pity, as one reflects on it, that nature is given to endowing the wrong men with extraordinary productivity. If you laid out the published works of John Kenneth Galbraith and of Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr., the line of books would reach from Galbraith’s house in Cambridge to Schlesinger’s old house in Cambridge.
A week or two back, Schlesinger acknowledged to someone that he wasn’t quite on a par with his old self, his old self having been just fine until about age 86, three years ago, after which the decline began. He walked more slowly and, he said, his speech was not as fluent as usual.
Any reduction in his productivity must have been shattering to him, as to his many clients, beginning with Clio, the muse of history, which he served so diligently beginning with his first all-star history, The Age of Jackson, and going up to his last book, published a couple of years ago, deploring President Bush for one thing and another.
Schlesinger wrote serious studies, of the age not only of Jackson but also of Roosevelt and of Kennedy, for whom his enthusiasm was uncontainable. Arthur proceeded to write not one but three books on John F. Kennedy, whom he venerated. He lived with the risk entailed in following so uncritically the careers of his favorites. Professor Sidney Hook dismissed one of his Kennedy books as the work of a "court historian." Schlesinger minded the derogation not at all, so much did he cherish public controversy which cast him as maintaining the walls of the fortresses that protected his idols.
He was, I record regretfully, not very deft at close-up political infighting. I say this as the survivor of a half-dozen encounters designed, by Arthur, to kill, which failed. In one of them he hurled a sarcasm, saying of me, “He has a facility for rhetoric which I envy, as well as a wit which I seek clumsily and vainly to emulate.” I thought that so amusing, I copied the words exactly on the jacket of my next book as though they were a great, generous compliment. If you see what I mean about Arthur’s awkwardness in combat of this kind, he actually sued me and my publisher, drawing much attention to his careless use of sarcastic praise, and, of course, to my wit.
But we kept on bumping into each other with less than mortal exchanges, and I had to endure my wife’s huge affection for him, which unhappily did not quite effect a personal rapprochement. He died in New York on February 27, after being struck by a heart attack at dinner in a restaurant, and I think back on the lunch we shared after the funeral of Murray Kempton, and of the sheer jolliness of the great and productive historian when he didn’t feel that his gods were being profaned.
There is no honor payable to an American historian that he did not earn. One of his books got the National Book Award and a Pulitzer. Meanwhile he entertained himself by writing movie criticism, and hordes of others by writing essays on every subject that interested him, including what it is in society that creates history. He was a liberal partisan, but he did not turn a blind eye to transgressions by accommodationist liberals who permitted themselves to follow the Communist Party line. He was devastating in his expulsion of them from his movement, which he served more diligently than perhaps any other human being in modern history
__________________________________________________________
Oh, what I would have given to have written that last line!
It contains far more brevity and wit—and far more accuracy—than anything Schlesinger, in a lifetime far too long and far too prolific, managed to fabricate.
Monday, December 10, 2007
"This Scepter'd Isle"
Andrew and I are done with our Christmas shopping.
Most of our gifts we ordered online on Friday and Saturday nights, and tonight we hit a few stores to pick up the small number of gifts we did not buy online. One of the stores we visited tonight was a toy store, where we bought Andrew’s nephew’s gifts.
The gifts we ordered online will be delivered to Andrew’s parents’ house. The gifts should arrive this week, and we will wrap them this coming weekend. We are having them delivered to Andrew’s parents’ house because we are not home during the week, whereas Andrew’s mother generally is. She will not mind signing for and accepting the packages.
This weekend Andrew and I will also package and ship my family’s gifts to Oklahoma. Even though Andrew and I will arrive in Oklahoma on the afternoon of December 22, we think we will be better off shipping the gifts in advance rather than attempting to take them with us on the plane.
Andrew’s middle brother has been preparing preliminary plans for a trip next year to occur during the last two weeks of August, and of course he wants us to accompany him. Tonight he sent us a proposed itinerary for a trip to Southern England for that time period.
Andrew and I will not be able to go anywhere until the last two weeks of August, but he and I have earmarked that two-week period as the ideal time for us to go somewhere. That time is ideal for us because I plan to leave my current job two weeks before law school begins. Andrew’s brother is aware of our tentative schedule.
Tonight the outline he sent to us was a prospective itinerary for sixteen days in Southern England.
Andrew’s brother likes the idea of traveling in the English countryside next August. London may be hot in late summer, and English air-conditioning is not up to American standards, in hotels or theaters or museums. Further, there is not much going on in London in August except for the Proms, and we all got more than our fill of The Royal Albert Hall last summer.
His idea is for us to rent a car upon landing at Heathrow and to tour Southern England for sixteen days and nights, beginning in the Southeast and proceeding all the way over to Southwestern-most England before making our way back to London.
His proposed itinerary is:
DAY ONE—From Heathrow, drive straight to Canterbury and spend the day exploring the town of Canterbury and Canterbury Cathedral. Spend the night in Canterbury.
DAY TWO—Drive to Rye, and spend the day exploring the town of Rye. Spend the night in Rye.
DAY THREE—Drive to Arundel, and spend the day exploring the town of Arundel and Arundel Castle. Spend the night in Arundel.
DAY FOUR—Drive to Chichester, and spend the day exploring the town of Chichester and Chichester Cathedral. Spend the night in Chichester.
DAY FIVE—Drive to Salisbury, and spend the day exploring the town of Salisbury and Salisbury Cathedral. Spend the night in Salisbury.
DAY SIX—Drive to Plymouth, routing ourselves through Wessex and Dartmoor, stopping en route to explore Stonehenge and the village of Widecombe In The Moor. Spend the night in Plymouth.
DAY SEVEN—Spend the day exploring Plymouth. Spend a second night in Plymouth.
DAY EIGHT—Drive to Saint Ives, stopping en route to explore the village of Looe, Mount Saint Michaels and Land’s End, the westernmost point in England. Spend the night in Saint Ives.
DAY NINE—Spend the day exploring Saint Ives. Spend a second night in Saint Ives.
DAY TEN—Drive to Lynmouth, routing ourselves through The West Country, stopping en route to explore the villages of Launceton, Holsworthy and Bideford, and stopping en route to explore the town of Barnstaple. Spend the night in Lynmouth.
DAY ELEVEN—Drive to Bath, routing ourselves through The North Devon Coast, Exmoor National Park and Cheddar Gorge, stopping en route to explore the village of Glastonbury and Glastonbury Abbey. Spend the night in Bath.
DAY TWELVE—Spend the day exploring Bath. Spend a second night in Bath.
DAY THIRTEEN—Spend the day exploring nearby Bristol. Spend a third night in Bath.
DAY FOURTEEN—Drive to Stratford-Upon-Avon, routing ourselves through The Cotswolds, stopping en route to explore The Cotswold villages of Broadway and Stow-On-The-Wold. Spend the night in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
DAY FIFTEEN—Spend the day exploring Stratford-Upon-Avon. Spend a second night in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
DAY SIXTEEN—Drive to Oxford, stopping en route to see Churchill’s grave at Bladon. Spend the day exploring Oxford. Spend the night in Oxford, and drive straight to Heathrow the following morning.
This itinerary sounds pretty good to me, since I have never visited any of these places.
However, Andrew and his brother have already seen almost everything on the list at one time or another, and I hate for them to have to go back to these places solely on my account. Indeed, six of the destinations on the list Andrew and his brother have already visited more than once: Canterbury, Rye, Salisbury, Stonehenge, Bath and Stratford-Upon-Avon.
Andrew says that all of these destinations are worth another look, and that he would love to go back and visit each and every single place on this list again. In fact, Andrew says that he and his brother did not devote enough time to see everything in Chichester, Plymouth, Saint Ives, Bristol and Oxford when they visited those places before.
Andrew’s brother told us tonight that he can prepare an alternative sightseeing schedule for Scotland instead, or a sightseeing plan including attractions in both Southern England and Northern England. Andrew told him to wait, so that we could talk about it at Christmas, and make tentative plans then. As for me, it really does not make much difference where we go, because any place in Britain outside of London will be completely new to me.
One thing seems clear, however: Andrew’s brother has a case of England fever! Excepting 2006, he and Andrew have been to Great Britain at least once a year since 2000, and he is eager to return yet again. This is because he loves England more than he loves France or Germany or Italy. He loves the English countryside, and he loves English churches, and he loves the historic English country houses, and he loves English historical attractions of all kinds.
One thing Andrew asked me tonight was whether I wanted to go back to Britain or whether I preferred to go somewhere else. I asked Andrew what HE wanted to do, and he said that it made absolutely no difference to him where we went, except that we should keep in mind that we would be wise to avoid Europe’s largest cities during the month of August, given that the weather may be hot and given that air-conditioning is not as widespread or as effective in Europe as it is here.
I would love to go to all of those places on Andrew’s brother’s list, if Andrew and his brother can stand visiting them again.
It gives us something to think about.
Most of our gifts we ordered online on Friday and Saturday nights, and tonight we hit a few stores to pick up the small number of gifts we did not buy online. One of the stores we visited tonight was a toy store, where we bought Andrew’s nephew’s gifts.
The gifts we ordered online will be delivered to Andrew’s parents’ house. The gifts should arrive this week, and we will wrap them this coming weekend. We are having them delivered to Andrew’s parents’ house because we are not home during the week, whereas Andrew’s mother generally is. She will not mind signing for and accepting the packages.
This weekend Andrew and I will also package and ship my family’s gifts to Oklahoma. Even though Andrew and I will arrive in Oklahoma on the afternoon of December 22, we think we will be better off shipping the gifts in advance rather than attempting to take them with us on the plane.
Andrew’s middle brother has been preparing preliminary plans for a trip next year to occur during the last two weeks of August, and of course he wants us to accompany him. Tonight he sent us a proposed itinerary for a trip to Southern England for that time period.
Andrew and I will not be able to go anywhere until the last two weeks of August, but he and I have earmarked that two-week period as the ideal time for us to go somewhere. That time is ideal for us because I plan to leave my current job two weeks before law school begins. Andrew’s brother is aware of our tentative schedule.
Tonight the outline he sent to us was a prospective itinerary for sixteen days in Southern England.
Andrew’s brother likes the idea of traveling in the English countryside next August. London may be hot in late summer, and English air-conditioning is not up to American standards, in hotels or theaters or museums. Further, there is not much going on in London in August except for the Proms, and we all got more than our fill of The Royal Albert Hall last summer.
His idea is for us to rent a car upon landing at Heathrow and to tour Southern England for sixteen days and nights, beginning in the Southeast and proceeding all the way over to Southwestern-most England before making our way back to London.
His proposed itinerary is:
DAY ONE—From Heathrow, drive straight to Canterbury and spend the day exploring the town of Canterbury and Canterbury Cathedral. Spend the night in Canterbury.
DAY TWO—Drive to Rye, and spend the day exploring the town of Rye. Spend the night in Rye.
DAY THREE—Drive to Arundel, and spend the day exploring the town of Arundel and Arundel Castle. Spend the night in Arundel.
DAY FOUR—Drive to Chichester, and spend the day exploring the town of Chichester and Chichester Cathedral. Spend the night in Chichester.
DAY FIVE—Drive to Salisbury, and spend the day exploring the town of Salisbury and Salisbury Cathedral. Spend the night in Salisbury.
DAY SIX—Drive to Plymouth, routing ourselves through Wessex and Dartmoor, stopping en route to explore Stonehenge and the village of Widecombe In The Moor. Spend the night in Plymouth.
DAY SEVEN—Spend the day exploring Plymouth. Spend a second night in Plymouth.
DAY EIGHT—Drive to Saint Ives, stopping en route to explore the village of Looe, Mount Saint Michaels and Land’s End, the westernmost point in England. Spend the night in Saint Ives.
DAY NINE—Spend the day exploring Saint Ives. Spend a second night in Saint Ives.
DAY TEN—Drive to Lynmouth, routing ourselves through The West Country, stopping en route to explore the villages of Launceton, Holsworthy and Bideford, and stopping en route to explore the town of Barnstaple. Spend the night in Lynmouth.
DAY ELEVEN—Drive to Bath, routing ourselves through The North Devon Coast, Exmoor National Park and Cheddar Gorge, stopping en route to explore the village of Glastonbury and Glastonbury Abbey. Spend the night in Bath.
DAY TWELVE—Spend the day exploring Bath. Spend a second night in Bath.
DAY THIRTEEN—Spend the day exploring nearby Bristol. Spend a third night in Bath.
DAY FOURTEEN—Drive to Stratford-Upon-Avon, routing ourselves through The Cotswolds, stopping en route to explore The Cotswold villages of Broadway and Stow-On-The-Wold. Spend the night in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
DAY FIFTEEN—Spend the day exploring Stratford-Upon-Avon. Spend a second night in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
DAY SIXTEEN—Drive to Oxford, stopping en route to see Churchill’s grave at Bladon. Spend the day exploring Oxford. Spend the night in Oxford, and drive straight to Heathrow the following morning.
This itinerary sounds pretty good to me, since I have never visited any of these places.
However, Andrew and his brother have already seen almost everything on the list at one time or another, and I hate for them to have to go back to these places solely on my account. Indeed, six of the destinations on the list Andrew and his brother have already visited more than once: Canterbury, Rye, Salisbury, Stonehenge, Bath and Stratford-Upon-Avon.
Andrew says that all of these destinations are worth another look, and that he would love to go back and visit each and every single place on this list again. In fact, Andrew says that he and his brother did not devote enough time to see everything in Chichester, Plymouth, Saint Ives, Bristol and Oxford when they visited those places before.
Andrew’s brother told us tonight that he can prepare an alternative sightseeing schedule for Scotland instead, or a sightseeing plan including attractions in both Southern England and Northern England. Andrew told him to wait, so that we could talk about it at Christmas, and make tentative plans then. As for me, it really does not make much difference where we go, because any place in Britain outside of London will be completely new to me.
One thing seems clear, however: Andrew’s brother has a case of England fever! Excepting 2006, he and Andrew have been to Great Britain at least once a year since 2000, and he is eager to return yet again. This is because he loves England more than he loves France or Germany or Italy. He loves the English countryside, and he loves English churches, and he loves the historic English country houses, and he loves English historical attractions of all kinds.
One thing Andrew asked me tonight was whether I wanted to go back to Britain or whether I preferred to go somewhere else. I asked Andrew what HE wanted to do, and he said that it made absolutely no difference to him where we went, except that we should keep in mind that we would be wise to avoid Europe’s largest cities during the month of August, given that the weather may be hot and given that air-conditioning is not as widespread or as effective in Europe as it is here.
I would love to go to all of those places on Andrew’s brother’s list, if Andrew and his brother can stand visiting them again.
It gives us something to think about.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
The Goldberg Variations
The onset of cold weather truly does have me down, because I know that the present spell of cold weather is just a harbinger of what we will have to face for the next four months.
For the first time in my life, I can understand why people hunger for a warm place like Florida in the winter.
Andrew knew what to do, however, to get me out of my doldrums: a toasty apartment, lots of warm food and some Bach. And Andrew’s prescription was perfect. We cooked food tonight that made our apartment practically tropical, and we listened to Bach while we cooked.
We started things off with chicken noodle soup from a package—Sicilian chicken noodle soup from an Alessi mix, which actually is quite good—and then we truly got to work.
We cooked macaroni on the stove, and we boiled chicken in herbs on the stove, and Andrew made homemade stewed tomatoes on the stove (with green peppers, onions and dill). When the macaroni was done, we prepared a very sharp version of macaroni-and-cheese and put that into the oven to bake. Then we cooked butternut squash on the stove, in butter and spices, and we steamed lima beans. Before we knew it, the apartment was so warm that I finally warmed up for the first time since this morning’s commute. By the time the food was ready, I was fine, and we had a lovely dinner. I told Andrew that I wanted to have the same foods for dinner Friday night, when we will have his parents over for dinner in order to do gift-planning for Christmas. He said that was fine with him.
A couple of hours after dinner, we heated up the oven again and made some gingerbread, which we are going to eat before we go to bed. It has been a lovely evening.
The Bach we have listened to all night has been Gustav Leonhardt’s 1953 recording of the Goldberg Variations on the Vanguard Classics label. We listened to it four times.
This is the earliest of three recordings of the Goldberg Variations that Leonhardt has made, and it has a freshness and directness that are very appealing. It is the Goldberg of a young man, and I think this performance holds up very well. The sound is amazing for a mono recording from 1953. No allowances in the least need be made for the quality of the recorded sound.
The harpsichord in use does not have a pleasant sound—it sounds tinny and scratchy. The quality of the harpsichord sound soon becomes irrelevant, however, because harpsichords have no dynamic range and because the particular harpsichord in use on this recording has virtually no coloristic possibilities. Perversely, this limitation makes it easier to focus purely on the music and the quality of Bach’s invention.
For me, Bach is unassailable. No other composer’s music is so perfect, so logical, so expressive, so profound, with so wide a range of emotion. I could listen to Bach, and nothing but Bach, and be perfectly content.
The 1953 Vanguard recording is famous because it was one of the first recordings that signaled the arrival of the original-performance-practice movement that arose shortly after World War II. Many scholars consider Leonhardt’s 1953 Goldberg Variations to be the first “authentic” recording of this great work.
I would not want to give up hearing the Goldberg Variations played on the piano, and I would not want to give up hearing the Goldberg Variations played in a more “personalized”, even Romantic, way. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the Leonhardt performance very much, and I can understand why this recording is still in print over half a century after its initial release.
I think we will have to keep this disc in the player for the rest of the week.
For the first time in my life, I can understand why people hunger for a warm place like Florida in the winter.
Andrew knew what to do, however, to get me out of my doldrums: a toasty apartment, lots of warm food and some Bach. And Andrew’s prescription was perfect. We cooked food tonight that made our apartment practically tropical, and we listened to Bach while we cooked.
We started things off with chicken noodle soup from a package—Sicilian chicken noodle soup from an Alessi mix, which actually is quite good—and then we truly got to work.
We cooked macaroni on the stove, and we boiled chicken in herbs on the stove, and Andrew made homemade stewed tomatoes on the stove (with green peppers, onions and dill). When the macaroni was done, we prepared a very sharp version of macaroni-and-cheese and put that into the oven to bake. Then we cooked butternut squash on the stove, in butter and spices, and we steamed lima beans. Before we knew it, the apartment was so warm that I finally warmed up for the first time since this morning’s commute. By the time the food was ready, I was fine, and we had a lovely dinner. I told Andrew that I wanted to have the same foods for dinner Friday night, when we will have his parents over for dinner in order to do gift-planning for Christmas. He said that was fine with him.
A couple of hours after dinner, we heated up the oven again and made some gingerbread, which we are going to eat before we go to bed. It has been a lovely evening.
The Bach we have listened to all night has been Gustav Leonhardt’s 1953 recording of the Goldberg Variations on the Vanguard Classics label. We listened to it four times.
This is the earliest of three recordings of the Goldberg Variations that Leonhardt has made, and it has a freshness and directness that are very appealing. It is the Goldberg of a young man, and I think this performance holds up very well. The sound is amazing for a mono recording from 1953. No allowances in the least need be made for the quality of the recorded sound.
The harpsichord in use does not have a pleasant sound—it sounds tinny and scratchy. The quality of the harpsichord sound soon becomes irrelevant, however, because harpsichords have no dynamic range and because the particular harpsichord in use on this recording has virtually no coloristic possibilities. Perversely, this limitation makes it easier to focus purely on the music and the quality of Bach’s invention.
For me, Bach is unassailable. No other composer’s music is so perfect, so logical, so expressive, so profound, with so wide a range of emotion. I could listen to Bach, and nothing but Bach, and be perfectly content.
The 1953 Vanguard recording is famous because it was one of the first recordings that signaled the arrival of the original-performance-practice movement that arose shortly after World War II. Many scholars consider Leonhardt’s 1953 Goldberg Variations to be the first “authentic” recording of this great work.
I would not want to give up hearing the Goldberg Variations played on the piano, and I would not want to give up hearing the Goldberg Variations played in a more “personalized”, even Romantic, way. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the Leonhardt performance very much, and I can understand why this recording is still in print over half a century after its initial release.
I think we will have to keep this disc in the player for the rest of the week.
A Move To Taormina?
We just reached our high temperature for the day—a balmy 12 degrees Fahrenheit, with a wind chill of 1 degree Fahrenheit—and snow is in the forecast for tonight and, especially, tomorrow afternoon.
As for me, I still have not warmed up from this morning’s commute.
Is there any way Andrew and I can move to Taormina?
As for me, I still have not warmed up from this morning’s commute.
Is there any way Andrew and I can move to Taormina?
Monday, December 3, 2007
Washington
Andrew and I had a fun weekend in Washington.
We stayed with Andrew’s friend, Paul, one of Andrew’s law school roommates. Paul was an excellent host.
Paul lives in Bethesda. He met us at the airport, which was totally unnecessary, and we all took the subway to Bethesda. We had dinner out Friday night and returned to Paul’s apartment, where we sat up talking until 1:00 a.m.
Saturday was a museum day. We started at The National Gallery Of Art and we viewed the Edward Hopper exhibition first thing. Although practically every major Hopper canvas was part of the exhibition, we all found the exhibition to be very disappointing. Hopper had a very narrow range. After viewing about eight Hopper paintings, I found the paintings to be positively irritating. He was a “niche” painter, and worked very well within his chosen niche, but he was not a universal artist capable of painting anything.
Most of the best-known paintings were at the end of the exhibition, and it was a mistake to place the more interesting paintings at the end. Exhibition-goers were tired by then, and devoted less time to examining the late paintings than examining the early, lesser works. This is always a problem when exhibitions are organized around a chronological theme.
Andrew pointed out that comprehensive exhibitions work best when organized around a non-chronological theme, especially for artists who get better and better with age. The comprehensive Caspar David Friedrich exhibition we attended in Hamburg last year was a good example of an exhibition that rigorously avoided chronology. With 140 Friedrich paintings in the exhibition, the displays were organized around various themes, resulting in great masterpieces being present in each room from first to last. Viewer attention never waned.
The Hopper paintings I liked best were the Cape Cod painting with the collie, the filling station painting, and the painting of a sailing party. All three paintings were from 1939 and 1940. “Night Hawks”, from 1942, was nowhere near as fascinating in person as I had expected. In person, that painting was overshadowed by several other paintings in the same room, which surprised me. Although “Night Hawks” may be the quintessential Hopper painting, it is not the best.
Midway through the exhibition, we sat through an inane 15-minute film about Hopper, narrated by Steve Martin, who sounded as if he had marbles in his mouth. We could not keep ourselves from giggling, and we laughed uncontrollably throughout the film.
All in all, the Hopper exhibition was very disappointing.
From The National Gallery we walked across the Mall to the Air And Space Museum. The Air and Space Museum is a great museum, and we had a great time ambling through the displays. It is easy to understand why this museum is so popular. The displays are wonderful, the use of space is wonderful, the organization of the museum is wonderful, and the items on display are wonderful. The museum was full of families, and they clearly were having a ball, parents and kids alike. It lent the museum a joyous, festive atmosphere. We had a ball, too.
We ate lunch in the Air And Space Museum, and we stayed until 3:00 p.m., when we returned to The National Gallery Of Art to view the J.M.W. Turner exhibition.
I was diffident about seeing more Turner paintings, since I had had my fill of Turner in London. However, four rooms into the exhibition, we began seeing some of the giant and historic marine paintings, and from that point forward I began to get hooked, at least on the marine paintings. We had not seen any Turner naval paintings from The Napoleonic Wars while we were in London, and several of these paintings were stupendous (a couple of them were actually loaned from Tate Britain, but they had not been on display at Tate Britain during our visit there).
One of the naval paintings from The Napoleonic Wars was the largest work Turner ever painted. It was a magnificent and beautiful painting, but even better were two other paintings that were slightly smaller: a painting of Copenhagen Harbor, representing the aftermath of the British Navy’s capture of the Danish Fleet so that it would not fall into the hands of the French Navy; and a painting of The Battle Of Trafalgar, representing the moment immediately after Admiral Lord Nelson had been mortally wounded. These were stirring canvases, and I am very glad that we went to see this exhibition.
We all liked the marine paintings so much that, when we had completed our tour of the exhibition, we went back to the entrance and went through the exhibition a second time.
I am still diffident about most Turner paintings. His landscapes do not do much for me, and I think his history paintings are unsuccessful, and the Venice paintings do not appeal to me at all. However, I liked a few of his watercolors on display in Washington, especially a watercolor of The Tower Of London painted from The Thames.
I was surprised that one Turner painting I had seen in September looked completely different ten weeks later. “Norwich Castle, Sunrise” had fascinated me in London. It did not fascinate me at all in Washington. Andrew said the difference was in how the painting was lighted. In London, the painting had been lighted indirectly, and the colors emerged vividly from across the room and from a direct, close-up view of the painting. In Washington, the painting was lighted with a spotlight, and the spotlight somehow drained the painting of its color and richness.
When we were finished with the Turner paintings, we went back to Paul’s apartment. On the way, we stopped at a food store, because Andrew planned to do some cooking Saturday night for Paul. Andrew had been the house cook during the three years he and Paul and two other roommates had shared an apartment on Capitol Hill, and Paul had grown accustomed to Andrew’s cooking and he has missed it since law school ended.
While Andrew cooked, we all watched the Big Twelve Championship Game. All three of us wanted to watch the game, but Andrew and Paul would have insisted upon watching the game anyway, even if they truly had not wanted to, because they knew how much the game meant to me.
The Sooners whipped Missouri, 38-17, in what truly was not much of a challenge. The Sooners jumped out to an early lead, but Missouri tied things up late in the first half, 14-14. The second half was all Oklahoma. Missouri, entering the game ranked number one in the nation, did not even look like it belonged on the same field as the Sooners.
Andrew cooked up a storm while we watched the game. Paul only has one oven in his kitchen, and Andrew used the oven to roast two stuffed chickens. On the stove, Andrew cooked a pot roast on one back burner, boiled chicken on another back burner, and he used the two front burners to make Wiener Schnitzel and hot Viennese potato salad, which we ate for dinner. Paul loves all of these foods, and for the rest of the week he will be able to choose pot roast, roasted chicken or boiled chicken for his dinner.
On Sunday, we went to the Holocaust Museum. None of us had ever visited the Holocaust Museum, despite years of living in Washington.
The Holocaust Museum is not so much a museum as a history center. It takes viewers on a photographic and video journey from the late 1920’s to the end of World War II, telling the story of the destruction of Europe’s Jewish population. The displays involved photographs and short film clips, but very little else.
All three of us have read so many histories about the events portrayed in the museum that we did not come across anything we had not already encountered countless times before. We were disappointed that we did not discover something new.
It took us almost three hours to go through the four levels of permanent displays. We examined every single exhibit and we stopped and watched every single film.
When we were done, all three of us decided that the museum should be torn down and rebuilt from scratch. It is a lousy, lousy museum. It may be the worst museum I have ever visited.
The building is a very bad building, poorly designed and constructed of cheap materials inside and out. The exhibition spaces are poorly designed, the exhibitions do not flow coherently and logically from one to another, and the passageways for visitors are far too narrow. The cramped presentation areas are positively irritating because there is so much wasted space in the building, space that should have been devoted to the exhibition areas.
Further, traffic flow into the building is fatally deficient. Visitors approaching the building are corralled into a waiting line along the side of the building. Once inside the building, visitors must submit themselves to an airport-style security screening and are then corralled to a bank of elevators, where they must take a slow elevator to the top of the building and proceed downward through the building from there.
This means that, before visitors even gain entrance to a meaningful part of the building, they have already surmounted three exhausting visitor lines: outside the front door, inside the front door, and at the elevator bank inside the entrance. I have never seen such a ridiculous scheme to enter a public building in my life. As Andrew said to Paul and me while we were waiting in line, “It’s easier to break into a Federal Court House than to get into this building”.
None of this would be important if the exhibits had been better. However, the exhibits were amateur, which made the whole experience very unpleasant. Before visiting the museum, I had anticipated that visitors would be extremely moved throughout the whole museum experience. Instead, people appeared to be bored out of their minds and were simply strolling through the exhibits as if they could not get out of the building quickly enough. I understood exactly how they felt.
This was the second totally inept American history museum Andrew and I had visited in not much more than a month (we, along with Andrew’s brothers, had visited the Ellis Island immigration museum over Columbus Day). The Ellis Island immigration museum is an embarrassment for all Americans, and so is the Holocaust Museum. As a nation, we should be ashamed, collectively, that we cannot present history better than this.
Why cannot Americans do history museums at an acceptable standard? Is it some national character flaw? Is something missing in the American psyche? Or are we simply not producing competent curators?
When Andrew and I were in London in September, we had visited The Imperial War Museum. We only spent one afternoon at the IWM, but it was clear, entering the main rotunda, that this was a museum that totally had its act together.
We spent that afternoon viewing a handful of paintings in the art galleries and visiting a special exhibition, “The Children’s War”, which examined the events of World War II from the perspectives of children. We did not visit any other portion of the IWM during our visit, including the IWM Holocaust exhibit.
However, “The Children’s War” was a case study in how a history exhibition should be organized and presented. It was informative, scholarly, entertaining and attractive. It was organized coherently and designed beautifully. The “presentation” was at the highest possible level of artistry and taste. It was everything the Holocaust Museum in Washington was not.
Apparently it IS possible to organize an excellent Holocaust exhibition. In 2005, Andrew and his middle brother had spent ten full days exploring the entire Imperial War Museum, from soup to nuts, and during this time they had visited the Holocaust exhibition at the IWM. The Holocaust exhibition at the IWM occupies two floors of the giant IWM building, and it took Andrew and his brother four hours alone simply to get through the first floor of the Holocaust exhibition. They were so moved (and disturbed) by what they had seen on the first floor that they had to leave the museum and return on another day in order to view the second floor of the Holocaust exhibition (which took them another four hours to get through).
According to Andrew, the Holocaust exhibition at the IWM is the best Holocaust exhibition he has ever seen, even better than similar exhibitions at the Invalides in Paris or at Vienna’s Imperial War Museum. In addition to photographs and films, which it has aplenty, London’s IWM has countless artifacts and mementoes that survived the destruction of the war. These items enrich and supplement the photographs and films on display at the IWM, all of which were vastly superior to those on display in Washington.
Perhaps at some point in time the Holocaust Museum in Washington will get its act together, and completely redesign its interior spaces and install exhibits worthy of its subject. As it is now, the museum is irredeemably cheap and inartful. Andrew says it is a bargain-basement version of the IWM Holocaust exhibit, and a dumbed-down bargain-basement version to boot, clearly devised for an audience of morons.
After we finished the Holocaust Museum, we walked around the Mall for a couple of hours, even though it was quite cold by Washington standards. We walked around The Washington Monument and we walked over to The World War II Memorial, which looks uncomfortably close to an Albert Speer creation. The whole thing gave us the creeps. Even the ridiculously-oversized eagles looked as if they had been borrowed from Hitler’s reviewing stand at Nuremberg! All three of us were appalled.
After wandering around the World War II abomination for a while, we walked over to The Lincoln Memorial, which is genuinely a beautiful, dignified and noble place. The Lincoln Memorial is my favorite Washington monument, and it was good to see it again. It cleansed us of our discomfort over the World War II monstrosity.
From The Lincoln Memorial, we walked to the Smithsonian Museum Of American Art. It was a very, very long walk and we were freezing by the time we arrived.
At the museum, we viewed only one exhibition, the exhibition about Spain and its ties to the U.S. during the Revolutionary Period. The exhibition was mostly paintings, all of which were portraits. There were a few historic documents on display, too, but it was primarily an exhibition of portraits. Before visiting the exhibition, we somehow had the notion that the exhibition would include historic and military artifacts, too, but it was almost solely a portrait exhibition. We were not disappointed, however, to see such a fine assortment of historic portraits.
The most famous paintings on display were Duplessis’s legendary portrait of Benjamin Franklin and Goya’s full-length portrait of Ferdinand VII, who was unmistakably portrayed as the madman he unmistakably was. It is an eerie and chilling portrait.
The exhibition was not particularly large, and it took us little more than an hour to view the portraits to our satisfaction. It was a nice exhibition, all in all, and I am glad we had an opportunity to view it.
From the Smithsonian Museum Of American Art, we went to get a bite to eat, after which it was time for us to head to the airport.
It was good seeing Paul again, and it was fun spending 48 hours in Washington. However, returning to Washington for the first time in 18 months simply reminded me why I never liked Washington in the first place. It is an odd, almost artificial city. It is the most transient city in the U.S., and there is something oddly impersonal and even uncomfortable about the place. Shorn of its museums and monuments, there would be nothing worth seeing there except the two giant cathedrals and the Dulles Airport terminal.
Given the weather in Minneapolis, Andrew and I had anticipated a delayed flight for our trip home. We need not have worried, because our flight departed Washington six minutes earlier than scheduled and landed in Minneapolis eight minutes earlier than scheduled.
Andrew had kept an eye on the Minneapolis weather while we were in Washington. Andrew had been concerned about the snow, knowing that he would not be in town to remove his parents’ snowfall. It snowed about six inches in all over the weekend, but Andrew’s father had no trouble removing the snow because Andrew’s brothers had affixed the snow shovel to his tractor over Thanksgiving week. Andrew’s father was able to clear the driveway with no trouble, but he did have to shovel the front walkway and sidewalk.
Tonight Andrew’s mother is having us over for dinner. She wants to hear about the art exhibitions we visited in Washington. Moreover, she and Andrew’s father want to see Andrew and me, because they have not seen us since the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
It sounds like we will be having pot roast. I can go for that.
We stayed with Andrew’s friend, Paul, one of Andrew’s law school roommates. Paul was an excellent host.
Paul lives in Bethesda. He met us at the airport, which was totally unnecessary, and we all took the subway to Bethesda. We had dinner out Friday night and returned to Paul’s apartment, where we sat up talking until 1:00 a.m.
Saturday was a museum day. We started at The National Gallery Of Art and we viewed the Edward Hopper exhibition first thing. Although practically every major Hopper canvas was part of the exhibition, we all found the exhibition to be very disappointing. Hopper had a very narrow range. After viewing about eight Hopper paintings, I found the paintings to be positively irritating. He was a “niche” painter, and worked very well within his chosen niche, but he was not a universal artist capable of painting anything.
Most of the best-known paintings were at the end of the exhibition, and it was a mistake to place the more interesting paintings at the end. Exhibition-goers were tired by then, and devoted less time to examining the late paintings than examining the early, lesser works. This is always a problem when exhibitions are organized around a chronological theme.
Andrew pointed out that comprehensive exhibitions work best when organized around a non-chronological theme, especially for artists who get better and better with age. The comprehensive Caspar David Friedrich exhibition we attended in Hamburg last year was a good example of an exhibition that rigorously avoided chronology. With 140 Friedrich paintings in the exhibition, the displays were organized around various themes, resulting in great masterpieces being present in each room from first to last. Viewer attention never waned.
The Hopper paintings I liked best were the Cape Cod painting with the collie, the filling station painting, and the painting of a sailing party. All three paintings were from 1939 and 1940. “Night Hawks”, from 1942, was nowhere near as fascinating in person as I had expected. In person, that painting was overshadowed by several other paintings in the same room, which surprised me. Although “Night Hawks” may be the quintessential Hopper painting, it is not the best.
Midway through the exhibition, we sat through an inane 15-minute film about Hopper, narrated by Steve Martin, who sounded as if he had marbles in his mouth. We could not keep ourselves from giggling, and we laughed uncontrollably throughout the film.
All in all, the Hopper exhibition was very disappointing.
From The National Gallery we walked across the Mall to the Air And Space Museum. The Air and Space Museum is a great museum, and we had a great time ambling through the displays. It is easy to understand why this museum is so popular. The displays are wonderful, the use of space is wonderful, the organization of the museum is wonderful, and the items on display are wonderful. The museum was full of families, and they clearly were having a ball, parents and kids alike. It lent the museum a joyous, festive atmosphere. We had a ball, too.
We ate lunch in the Air And Space Museum, and we stayed until 3:00 p.m., when we returned to The National Gallery Of Art to view the J.M.W. Turner exhibition.
I was diffident about seeing more Turner paintings, since I had had my fill of Turner in London. However, four rooms into the exhibition, we began seeing some of the giant and historic marine paintings, and from that point forward I began to get hooked, at least on the marine paintings. We had not seen any Turner naval paintings from The Napoleonic Wars while we were in London, and several of these paintings were stupendous (a couple of them were actually loaned from Tate Britain, but they had not been on display at Tate Britain during our visit there).
One of the naval paintings from The Napoleonic Wars was the largest work Turner ever painted. It was a magnificent and beautiful painting, but even better were two other paintings that were slightly smaller: a painting of Copenhagen Harbor, representing the aftermath of the British Navy’s capture of the Danish Fleet so that it would not fall into the hands of the French Navy; and a painting of The Battle Of Trafalgar, representing the moment immediately after Admiral Lord Nelson had been mortally wounded. These were stirring canvases, and I am very glad that we went to see this exhibition.
We all liked the marine paintings so much that, when we had completed our tour of the exhibition, we went back to the entrance and went through the exhibition a second time.
I am still diffident about most Turner paintings. His landscapes do not do much for me, and I think his history paintings are unsuccessful, and the Venice paintings do not appeal to me at all. However, I liked a few of his watercolors on display in Washington, especially a watercolor of The Tower Of London painted from The Thames.
I was surprised that one Turner painting I had seen in September looked completely different ten weeks later. “Norwich Castle, Sunrise” had fascinated me in London. It did not fascinate me at all in Washington. Andrew said the difference was in how the painting was lighted. In London, the painting had been lighted indirectly, and the colors emerged vividly from across the room and from a direct, close-up view of the painting. In Washington, the painting was lighted with a spotlight, and the spotlight somehow drained the painting of its color and richness.
When we were finished with the Turner paintings, we went back to Paul’s apartment. On the way, we stopped at a food store, because Andrew planned to do some cooking Saturday night for Paul. Andrew had been the house cook during the three years he and Paul and two other roommates had shared an apartment on Capitol Hill, and Paul had grown accustomed to Andrew’s cooking and he has missed it since law school ended.
While Andrew cooked, we all watched the Big Twelve Championship Game. All three of us wanted to watch the game, but Andrew and Paul would have insisted upon watching the game anyway, even if they truly had not wanted to, because they knew how much the game meant to me.
The Sooners whipped Missouri, 38-17, in what truly was not much of a challenge. The Sooners jumped out to an early lead, but Missouri tied things up late in the first half, 14-14. The second half was all Oklahoma. Missouri, entering the game ranked number one in the nation, did not even look like it belonged on the same field as the Sooners.
Andrew cooked up a storm while we watched the game. Paul only has one oven in his kitchen, and Andrew used the oven to roast two stuffed chickens. On the stove, Andrew cooked a pot roast on one back burner, boiled chicken on another back burner, and he used the two front burners to make Wiener Schnitzel and hot Viennese potato salad, which we ate for dinner. Paul loves all of these foods, and for the rest of the week he will be able to choose pot roast, roasted chicken or boiled chicken for his dinner.
On Sunday, we went to the Holocaust Museum. None of us had ever visited the Holocaust Museum, despite years of living in Washington.
The Holocaust Museum is not so much a museum as a history center. It takes viewers on a photographic and video journey from the late 1920’s to the end of World War II, telling the story of the destruction of Europe’s Jewish population. The displays involved photographs and short film clips, but very little else.
All three of us have read so many histories about the events portrayed in the museum that we did not come across anything we had not already encountered countless times before. We were disappointed that we did not discover something new.
It took us almost three hours to go through the four levels of permanent displays. We examined every single exhibit and we stopped and watched every single film.
When we were done, all three of us decided that the museum should be torn down and rebuilt from scratch. It is a lousy, lousy museum. It may be the worst museum I have ever visited.
The building is a very bad building, poorly designed and constructed of cheap materials inside and out. The exhibition spaces are poorly designed, the exhibitions do not flow coherently and logically from one to another, and the passageways for visitors are far too narrow. The cramped presentation areas are positively irritating because there is so much wasted space in the building, space that should have been devoted to the exhibition areas.
Further, traffic flow into the building is fatally deficient. Visitors approaching the building are corralled into a waiting line along the side of the building. Once inside the building, visitors must submit themselves to an airport-style security screening and are then corralled to a bank of elevators, where they must take a slow elevator to the top of the building and proceed downward through the building from there.
This means that, before visitors even gain entrance to a meaningful part of the building, they have already surmounted three exhausting visitor lines: outside the front door, inside the front door, and at the elevator bank inside the entrance. I have never seen such a ridiculous scheme to enter a public building in my life. As Andrew said to Paul and me while we were waiting in line, “It’s easier to break into a Federal Court House than to get into this building”.
None of this would be important if the exhibits had been better. However, the exhibits were amateur, which made the whole experience very unpleasant. Before visiting the museum, I had anticipated that visitors would be extremely moved throughout the whole museum experience. Instead, people appeared to be bored out of their minds and were simply strolling through the exhibits as if they could not get out of the building quickly enough. I understood exactly how they felt.
This was the second totally inept American history museum Andrew and I had visited in not much more than a month (we, along with Andrew’s brothers, had visited the Ellis Island immigration museum over Columbus Day). The Ellis Island immigration museum is an embarrassment for all Americans, and so is the Holocaust Museum. As a nation, we should be ashamed, collectively, that we cannot present history better than this.
Why cannot Americans do history museums at an acceptable standard? Is it some national character flaw? Is something missing in the American psyche? Or are we simply not producing competent curators?
When Andrew and I were in London in September, we had visited The Imperial War Museum. We only spent one afternoon at the IWM, but it was clear, entering the main rotunda, that this was a museum that totally had its act together.
We spent that afternoon viewing a handful of paintings in the art galleries and visiting a special exhibition, “The Children’s War”, which examined the events of World War II from the perspectives of children. We did not visit any other portion of the IWM during our visit, including the IWM Holocaust exhibit.
However, “The Children’s War” was a case study in how a history exhibition should be organized and presented. It was informative, scholarly, entertaining and attractive. It was organized coherently and designed beautifully. The “presentation” was at the highest possible level of artistry and taste. It was everything the Holocaust Museum in Washington was not.
Apparently it IS possible to organize an excellent Holocaust exhibition. In 2005, Andrew and his middle brother had spent ten full days exploring the entire Imperial War Museum, from soup to nuts, and during this time they had visited the Holocaust exhibition at the IWM. The Holocaust exhibition at the IWM occupies two floors of the giant IWM building, and it took Andrew and his brother four hours alone simply to get through the first floor of the Holocaust exhibition. They were so moved (and disturbed) by what they had seen on the first floor that they had to leave the museum and return on another day in order to view the second floor of the Holocaust exhibition (which took them another four hours to get through).
According to Andrew, the Holocaust exhibition at the IWM is the best Holocaust exhibition he has ever seen, even better than similar exhibitions at the Invalides in Paris or at Vienna’s Imperial War Museum. In addition to photographs and films, which it has aplenty, London’s IWM has countless artifacts and mementoes that survived the destruction of the war. These items enrich and supplement the photographs and films on display at the IWM, all of which were vastly superior to those on display in Washington.
Perhaps at some point in time the Holocaust Museum in Washington will get its act together, and completely redesign its interior spaces and install exhibits worthy of its subject. As it is now, the museum is irredeemably cheap and inartful. Andrew says it is a bargain-basement version of the IWM Holocaust exhibit, and a dumbed-down bargain-basement version to boot, clearly devised for an audience of morons.
After we finished the Holocaust Museum, we walked around the Mall for a couple of hours, even though it was quite cold by Washington standards. We walked around The Washington Monument and we walked over to The World War II Memorial, which looks uncomfortably close to an Albert Speer creation. The whole thing gave us the creeps. Even the ridiculously-oversized eagles looked as if they had been borrowed from Hitler’s reviewing stand at Nuremberg! All three of us were appalled.
After wandering around the World War II abomination for a while, we walked over to The Lincoln Memorial, which is genuinely a beautiful, dignified and noble place. The Lincoln Memorial is my favorite Washington monument, and it was good to see it again. It cleansed us of our discomfort over the World War II monstrosity.
From The Lincoln Memorial, we walked to the Smithsonian Museum Of American Art. It was a very, very long walk and we were freezing by the time we arrived.
At the museum, we viewed only one exhibition, the exhibition about Spain and its ties to the U.S. during the Revolutionary Period. The exhibition was mostly paintings, all of which were portraits. There were a few historic documents on display, too, but it was primarily an exhibition of portraits. Before visiting the exhibition, we somehow had the notion that the exhibition would include historic and military artifacts, too, but it was almost solely a portrait exhibition. We were not disappointed, however, to see such a fine assortment of historic portraits.
The most famous paintings on display were Duplessis’s legendary portrait of Benjamin Franklin and Goya’s full-length portrait of Ferdinand VII, who was unmistakably portrayed as the madman he unmistakably was. It is an eerie and chilling portrait.
The exhibition was not particularly large, and it took us little more than an hour to view the portraits to our satisfaction. It was a nice exhibition, all in all, and I am glad we had an opportunity to view it.
From the Smithsonian Museum Of American Art, we went to get a bite to eat, after which it was time for us to head to the airport.
It was good seeing Paul again, and it was fun spending 48 hours in Washington. However, returning to Washington for the first time in 18 months simply reminded me why I never liked Washington in the first place. It is an odd, almost artificial city. It is the most transient city in the U.S., and there is something oddly impersonal and even uncomfortable about the place. Shorn of its museums and monuments, there would be nothing worth seeing there except the two giant cathedrals and the Dulles Airport terminal.
Given the weather in Minneapolis, Andrew and I had anticipated a delayed flight for our trip home. We need not have worried, because our flight departed Washington six minutes earlier than scheduled and landed in Minneapolis eight minutes earlier than scheduled.
Andrew had kept an eye on the Minneapolis weather while we were in Washington. Andrew had been concerned about the snow, knowing that he would not be in town to remove his parents’ snowfall. It snowed about six inches in all over the weekend, but Andrew’s father had no trouble removing the snow because Andrew’s brothers had affixed the snow shovel to his tractor over Thanksgiving week. Andrew’s father was able to clear the driveway with no trouble, but he did have to shovel the front walkway and sidewalk.
Tonight Andrew’s mother is having us over for dinner. She wants to hear about the art exhibitions we visited in Washington. Moreover, she and Andrew’s father want to see Andrew and me, because they have not seen us since the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
It sounds like we will be having pot roast. I can go for that.