Suppose it were Friday cliii: And clear

The choice of an imagined future is always a matter of taste . .  I see human freedom as the goal and the creativity of small human societies as the means to achieve it. 

Freedom is the divine spark that causes human children to rebel against grand unified theories imposed by their parents.

At the age of 94, the theoretical physicist and mathematician, Freeman Dyson, has undertaken to present an unreasonably elegant review of a major new work of speculation in the social sciences. The extract, above, stands on its own, obviously, and suggests to me the spirit of the third figure in Dominique Isserman's image of the esplanade, more than Twombly's.

The choice of a vision of the present is always a matter of taste. With non-stop belligerent entertainment as the unified theory of the day, one turns with gratitude to the prospect of a weekend with the correspondences of a shimmering mentality. 

           A frequent contributor to The New York Review,

           Dyson laid out the stakes for the foregoing im-

           plication - that the mind most necessary to cri-

           tique is one's own - in a deeply well-informed

           review of the biography of Robert Oppenheimer,

           by Wittgenstein's leading biographer. (Kai Bird,

           author of the review cited here of Dyson's let-

           ters, wrote another one). Against the prodigious

           negative pressure of the day, to critique the un-

           ruly mentality of misrule in the nation, then and

           now, Dyson presented a devastating depiction of

           the cost the embattled path imposed on a stronger

           mind than most - and the rôle of companionship -

           [His wife} came to me with a cry for help. She

           implored me to collaborate with Robert in a piece

           of technical scientific work. She said Robert was

           desperate because he was no longer doing science,

           and he needed a collaborator to get him started ..

           His days as a scientist were over. It was too 

           late to cure his anguish with equations.

          

iv  Joe Collier

v   Oliver Houlby

Lower Broadway then and now

Every time one may be tempted to decry
a collapse in standards in an American
context, it is useful to remember that
there really never has been any such a
thing as a single context in this soci-
ety. There have been prevailing modes,
volatile but enduring visions, but the
only context of America is multilater-
al and fluid. This makes the biography
of the late Mrs. George Herbert Walker
Bush something of a study in tenacity.
This is Lower Broadway in her infancy.
It reeks of a single language, and we
are always reminded, language changes.

People are reflecting today on the il-
lusion that greed, the sine qua non of
Lower Broadway, even its raison d'être
as well, was so held in check by decor-
um and fastidiousness as to become civ-
ilized. All that was done was to limit
its reach by containing its popularity.
Those to whom greed was granted upheld
discretion and other concealment while
pursuing its ends, commissioning monu-
ments imparting aloofness more than os-
tentation. Mrs. Bush never failed this
style, even in the shadow of Reaganism.

She was as cognizant of the perils of
popularizing greed as her husband, who
denounced its euphoric propaganda for
the voodoo economics that it is, even
going on to betray it, having gulped
its toxins to serve his own ambitions.
The impression is awkward to struggle
against, that she conducted herself in
the constructs her context assigned to
her gender; but one is free to believe
that her trust in reticence would have
served the other well, holding power.

Charles Hellmuth

Lower Broadway

1920's

"I alone can do it"

      I suppose, trying to have one's

      way as President of the United

      States is a little like navigat-

      ing a vineyard on a skateboard.

It's just life's little accidents that people notice

   In yet another weekend where

   the debate rolled on, as to

   which of the American Presid-

   dent's incompetences poses a

   greater danger than any oth-

   er, it was unnerving to dis-

   cover that he couldn't keep

   his expulsions of Russian in-

   telligence agents to the min-

   imum he intended for the sake

   of flamboyant emptiness, al-

   lowing his staff to multiply

   everyone else's tiny purga-

   tions by the total number of

   expellers. What we all adore

   the most is how this allows

   his incompetence in command

   to claim the sovereign excuse

   of bureaucratic naughtiness.

   Pratfall, no. Scapegoats, yes.

   Meaning well is all his prop-

   agandists need; but betrayal,

   they can never have too much. 

   He'll never do what he means.