There's a middle phase in any renovation

Against expectations I gave myself

an i-Pad the other day, for reasons

implied in a recent entry. I have a

tutor in our new technologies who's

so infamously talented in them that

our local university is paying him

to give him a couple of doctorates.

I'm slow, he's quick; he may be off

before I'm on to what they're about.

But I like people who know what I

want to learn. If I were a younger

fellow, he'd be my montagnard. I'll

never feel I belong here, but I was

propelled by facts outside my hands.

In every renovation there's a mo-

ment where one can't tell the de-

molition from the rebuilding. Not

much seduced by the momentum of

these devices, much less their pi-

ous marketing, I'm amiably bemused

by their task-skipping efficiency.

Here, I'll allow the shambles to 

hang on for the page's 4th monsoon 

to haul them away. In the interim, 

I downloaded a text of history,

a book in the mode of the new ex-

pectations - no index, footnotes

remotely sequestered, sources ill-

attributed. But it's the latest

serious attempt to tell us where

we come from, in the wars after the

one we all admire. I take it to bed,

as they say one may, but it has no 

residual scent, no tactility or depth,

no margin for returning remark, only

the drayer's dream of weightlessness,

a clinicality still unusual there, as

if the Mekong were a swimming pool for

All-Americans in freestyle.

With ample forgetful fighting of pri-

or war in our pursuit of the present

one, its promoters are quick to re-

mind us of that unco-operative per-

spective they've medicalised as the

insanity of PTSD. I wish Michel Fou-

cault were here to wave a hankie at

that jest, malgré a brilliant late

teacher of mine; but I look at the 

joyrides of the American Right as 

replete with insults to cover any 

contingency of their exposure. Our 

own élites cannot allow the fact 

of worldwide exultation for Franklin 

Roosevelt's anti-imperialist plans 

for one post-war world, to mar the 

one we made. So well we turn to Pal-

merston's, dear darlings, and to 

Talleyrand's.

But I stray. This is not merely a

ruminative weekend. Unaccountably,

it is also a lovely one in Piedmont 

Virginia, with skies clear of det-

ritus of regional fossils, and tem-

peratures in the 70ºs. It could be

the New World; and one day, in an-

other time, perhaps it will be. It

has rehearsed, can't we say, enough. 

Even now, that daydream inclines

me to think seriously of opening a 

stylish second page, provisionally

titled, That was nicely done. I'd

enjoy the relief of show-and-tell,

of decorative delectation and of

debs of a more exclusive century.

Why, only the other day I read an

estimable celebration of a bespoke

newborn mansion, by a fellow who's

exceedingly good with such things.

It was his claque who put one off,

condescending to the aristocracy's

uninitiated - can you stand it?

I like being liked, and I like be-

ing able to like my reader. I note,

in mirth, the market has caught up

with an equinoctial merriment from

la plus belle dame sans merci, Edith

Sitwell. But I was thinking, the

credit was Dean Swift's. A bridge, 

you could say, too far. No matter.

The guy was a marvel, and yet we

are all bit-players in our tongue.

I was initiated in a mansion whose 

privileges are not what built it,

and I never thought to think, they

are what make us presentable. 

Fredrik Logevall

Embers of War

  The Fall of an Empire

  and the Making of

  America's Vietnam

Random House, 2012©