Society, the direst study

This past Monday, the photographer
Robert Frank died at the age of 94.
Seeing as an untiring, and sometimes
unsparing examiner of America, he's
urgently to be remembered for an al-
most paradigm-shifting attitude and
style in his portrayals of this so-
ciety, published in 1955, under the
title, The Americans. Among other
things, this compilation made it
possible, and quite necessary, to
stop conceiving of the United States
as a nation, and to study it exactly
as it is, as a society. Not a figment
for anthems, an organism for defining.

This photograph of an urban trolley
could have been taken virtually any-
where in the United States in 1955.
It happens to come from New Orleans,
and because it does, it enables what
the late San Francisco columnist Herb
Caen used to call, elsewhereans, to
recall in smug horror, and everyone
today to consign to antiquity, for
its candidly visible moral turpitude. 

Everyone, but the Supreme Court of the 
current American government, composed
unscrupulously and dishonorably to re-
flect the ruling presumptions of this
society in 1955. Robert Frank's Amer-
ica is enshrined in the Court's latest
tribute to Donald Trump's racist core
of political support, in Barr v. East
Bay Sanctuary Covenant, a ruling re-
jecting a U.S. District Court injunc-
tion against the new American govern-
ment's wholesale reversal of asylum
law as it relates, exquisitely, only
to the Southern border.

I do not pretend to understand pho-
tography. I do not pretend to under-
stand the law. But Robert Frank made
no claim to understand them, either.
His study was society, and how it
lived with itself. He contributed
unforgettably to the protection of
that urgent distinction, lifting the
fog of nationhood to show how we act.

Robert Frank
Trolley
1955

Moving again, sorting

.. as contradictory as isolation-

ism and internationalism could

sometimes prove themselves to be,

there was a common factor between

them, though only of a negative

character: isolationism existed

in a sphere of timelessness; in-

ternationalism existed in the fu-

ture. Neither existed in the world

of the present. Thus the attitudes

which the young republic had adopt-

ed had not yet satisfactorily sol-

ved the problem .. of how to chart

a course in the world as it was.

There is so much exercise given to

the term, "sorting," in the social

sciences these days, that its vir-

ility in the reclamation of socks

from the laundry room has fallen

almost into desuetude. Be that as

it may, we soldier on, who jetti-

son whole shelves of our library

as we move house, tripping lightly

as we're dripping priceless cash-

meres from a maze of vegan fibers.

I nearly threw out Felix Gilbert

this morning, the fellow whose ob-

servation opens this entry. In the

ostensibly better world to which

all our mobilizations - our sort-

ings - are directed, if in vain, a

disposal of Professor Gilbert is

an opening of the sea cocks in the

hull of human progress. Now, my an-

cient, trusty Harper Torchbook of

the text transcribed above, priced

at 1.25 pre-supply side American

dollars, finds itself back aboard,

illuminating the dawn from one of

its unexcavated layers of wisdom.

Writing in 1961 of General Wash-

ington's time - even then, past -

Gilbert allowed drop an unexamined

paradox which comes in handy in an

age like ours, as binomially ossi-

fied as any since the Third Reich,

which he fled: You're both wrong,

sums it up, pretty nicely for a

Monday. One doesn't read Felix Gil-

bert without gathering the under-

standing of the fatality of fixed

ideas, and of the absurdity of

choosing between hostile illusions.

One could read this insouciant,

not to say nonchalant, paragraph

of his with a nicely poured taste

of morning coffee, and appreciate

the possibilities for serenity.

Felix Gilbert

The Beginnings of American

  Foreign Policy

  To the Farewell Address

Princeton University Press

1961©

Purging Toryism of its excuses

One always thinks of Hakluyt when

the party of hereditary privilege,

anywhere in the English-speaking

world, throws its literate elements

to the maw of nativist cannibalism.

There's a nasty stink of inorganic

impostorship in these impertinences,

phony Conservatism purging virtues

of the soil from which it arose. The

Times publishes a fine report today,

on the compulsory schism which Brit-

win's Prime Minister is imposing on

his Party, culminating in expelling

one of his country's ornaments of a

distinctly British tradition, the

investigative discovery of the world.

He might as well have told Francis

Drake not to go sailing, or Patrick

Leigh Fermor not to go out walking;

so he jettisoned Rory Stewart, than

whom no one holds a more permanent

claim on travel literature's shelf.

Britain has only begun to be sorry,

for a gruesome imitation of America.