I met a guy who shouldn't exist

The circulation of this page

in Germany is heartening, in

Poland and the Baltic nations

it is rare but very gratify-

ing. I met a guy lately whose

grandparents and great-grand-

parents were from Königsberg,

which doesn't happen to exist

anymore.

All of these cultures met in

that magically beautiful ag-

rarian strip of ground on the

Baltic Sea where the kingdom

of Prussia's medieval capital

stood welcoming watch for cen-

turies, to be obliterated as

brutally as Carthage in the

lifetime of our fathers, by

not one but several equiva-

lents of the Khmer Rouge at

Phnom Penh: the RAF, the Red

Army, the Wehrmacht, the SS,

the marauding delinquent rab-

ble of no culture but anguish.

A ghost, you would say, in 

his middle 20s: one of the

young and stateless techies

of the internet, to whom I

was introduced to advance an

interest of mine. A fellow

with a green card, an Amer-

ican girlfriend, and the full

international vocabulary of

marketing buzzwords.

We shared a plate of pasta

al fresco with a nice white

from the Rhône valley, and,

fiddling with his telephone

as they all do, he looked up

and said, You know, this is

my living, this technology;

but I feel sometimes, it will

be the death of us one day.

An opiate of the masses, I

suggested. He winced with 

recognition of the phrase;

and he said, yes, I think

it is just like that.

In this country we commun-

icate in a culture which

exulted in the fratboy

President's promise that

history was erased in 2001.

Few ever knew it, few ever

cared for it, and it was

such heaven to be relieved

of its nuisances. My in-

terlocutor's world was

erased before he was born,

and by forces more horrify-

ing than any ever mustered

on this planet against us;

but not his history, not

his culture, not his deep

awareness of the tides.

Is it preferable to appre-

ciate the limits of one's

mastery toward the end of

toil, or early enough to

let perspective burnish it?

In the republic of waiting

    Today my pleasure

    with my sparklers 

    is tempered by the

    crushing fact of

    official neglect

    of public obliga-

    tion, sadly enabled

    by almost stupefied

    permission, granted

    across the spectrum,

    for the highest of-

    fices to be wasted.

    Reaction holds sway

    by default, and it

    will prosper for it,

    in the inevitable

    revolt against ig-

    noring our people.

    Laboured excuses are

    more and more thread-

    bare, the mighty more

    petty, while the good

    plead stale embarrass-

    ment, the best of times,

    the worst of times, re-

    membered very badly.

    We have always had

    Koch brothers. But

    government by racket-

    eering is proving to 

    be unsustainable.

    We gaze squarely upon

    the dignity of all who

    duly convey their con-

    sent to be governed. We

    see the forbearance, the

    modesty and trust. 

    It takes the breath away

    to witness, does it not,

    and drives the youthful

    heart to sacrificing ends;

    unless, the patronising

    snicker, Suckers, seems

    the sounder sobriquet.

    

    There's just one thing

    about a republic of wait-

    ing. The generations do

    not keep. 

     

    

    

Elizabeth Drew

Subsequent comment

The New York Review

John Cassidy

Subsequent comment

The New Yorker

There will be golf

On my father's first birthday,

his father presented him with

a golf club; and today, still,

not far from this desk, his 
classic putter greets me at

my bookshelves. But this is

not the club I mean. I mean

a private golf course created

with friends, to circumvent

their wives' sometimes irri-

tating propensity to strike a

better shot. My grandmother

was a gifted athlete, but that

was not an era ruled by Title

IX, and couples took a dif-

ferent view of discretionary
time.

Indeed, my father grew up in 

a plenitude of settings for

pursuing what clicked as his

lifelong passion - to all

who knew him, his lease on 

this life - and a surprising
space for solitude was pre-
served in his relationships.

This, I get. He would be 99

today, and his swing would

still outclass mine off the

tee. But, I can't presume

to share, so much as merely

to confess to our joy in the

refuge of this game: its won-

derfully fair genius for re-

warding form. It is a prom-

ise he accepted as a boy in

Latin School, and trusted be-

yond every seduction of al-

ternative reward, including

everything offering an anal-

ogy or proof of what counts.

Now, I apprehend an edge of

aloofness in this vivacious

attachment, which is probably

a defect of my own semantics.

He would manifest the beau-

tiful project of being, in

the most insouciant touch I

have ever seen behind an arc

of a radius upon a sphere. Of

many years ago, I have memory

of gaping, with his own peers,

at the mastery of the unnatural

stroke of golf, as the most ob-

vious remedy of the circle. A
filial resignation mixes often
with remembrance of bright fact.

This, too. I regret now to

hear it said, that the most,

as well as the least benefi-

cent dispensations of life

are indifferent to form. Of

course this is the signature

boast of decadent wealth and

vulgar envy, masquerading

these days as Conservatism.

And it is true, Ben Hogan

could have impoverished him-

self without the help of a

Greyhound bus, by simply

living as a man of trust.

He had, therefore, to be

better than those who were

not of belief, even in the
craft of playing well.

For golf, for Horace, for

an English dog, we do not

have to apologise. Against
a gentlemanly way in other
settings, brute authorities 
obtrude. The idea is not to
escape them, but to isolate
them.

In most of his gifts to me, 
like his father's to him,

naïveté was seldom at play.

I think this is ordinary.

When my father, at the age

of 1, inherited a golf club

created in the image of one

aspiration, it was the one

he built into me, without

resistance. On his birthday,

I do not wish to give an im-

pression of summation, for

I renounce the thought. But

from his inner time it would be

unthinkably uncelebratory not

to salvage certain treasure,
which somehow can't help
sounding as if it had tumbled
from an Edwardian picnic ham-
per, like the ripened crenshaw
melon that was his cardinal
stipulation for our breakfast
on this day. But these are not
edicts, just inferences drawn
from observing his game - don't 
mistake an image for the matter;
hold to the form, rehearse it
even when it can't be seen or
heard. Study the lie, but play
the ball. 

And you may indulge yourself
a hug, in front of everyone.

Is that it?

You really can't say, I hadn't warned you, Martin

    It just had always seemed

    too obvious to me, Martin,

    that if we were to engage

    in other people's conduct,

    we'd only end up, resem-

    bling them.

We had been having, I do remember this, extremely strange weather

   It would not have

   been reasonable

   to have held any-

   one to account,

   even if one could

   have predicted it.

Suppose it were Friday lxxi: becoming the field ii

  And man, that noble insect, restless man

  Whose thoughts scale heaven in its mighty span,

  Pours forth his living soul in many a shade

  And taste runs riot in her every grade.

  While the low herd, mere savages subdued,

  With nought of feeling or of taste imbued

  Pass over sweetest scenes a careless eye

  As blank as midnight in its deepest dye;

  From these, and different far in rich degrees,

  Minds spring as various as the leaves of trees

  To follow taste and all her sweets explore

  And Edens make where deserts spread before.

John Clare

"I Am,"

  The Selected Poetry

  of John Clare

Jonathan Bate, editor

  The Midsummer Cushion

  Shadows of Taste [fragment]

circa 1830

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003©

They give you no points for a summer cold ii

The expedient of the semi-

permanent handkerchief, as-

sociated as much with hos-

pital protocols as it is

with Lord Tennyson and the

pickup games of goodguys &

badguys in the walled gar-

dens of youth, comes natur-

ally to mind when entertain-

ing a black-masked English

dog between his merciful

naps. But surely it must

have been for the symptoms

of the summer cold, if not

a passing plague, that this

hoary improvisation in the

breathable properties of lin-

en made its historic debut.

It is a curiosity to me, how

the mask's properties of con-

cealment and prophylaxis are

entirely lost, in their mig-

ration to the countenance of

a dog, and yet how well the

species carries a contrar-

ian message of candour and

conviviality with this device;

while, one's own experiments

in projecting these unmenacing

qualities tend to prove incon-

clusive at best. Yet the rid-

dle has the scale, one could

say, to match the reduced cap-

acities of a summer cold, as

having flickered through the

head of everyman at one time

or another, muggingly lying in

wait for the full-blown coach

and four of antibiotic relief.

They give you no points for a summer cold

They give a fellow no points

for writing about his summer

cold. Now, I know, having ut-

tered this complaint, one or

more of my colleagues, elo-

quent in discussing symptoms,

will run off a really peachy

report by eluding every dis-

agreable term and phrase, in

a nevertheless poignant way.

But is a summer cold that way,

or is it violent, unnerving,

desolating? I try to suppress

such questions about my own

summer cold, it seeming just

simply bad, cruel, ill-timed.

I could have opened a pleas-

ant Cuvée Louise last even-

ing, in the ordinary course

of celebrating the Supreme

Court's end of term. But the

fact of the matter is, they

left town two days too late.

I supped on a nicely crunchy

gazpacho instead, for which

the only evidence I was giv-

en of its passage across my

palate was the need to wash 

dishes. It took me most of

the evening, just to read a

final chapter of an anti-

fascist thriller of spot-

lessly generic predictabil-

ity; and if I couldn't zip

through a fantasy of pure

consolation, it can't have

been for dread of coming

to that end, but a symptom,

and one of the naughtier,

of an untoward summer cold.

Alan Furst

The Foreign Correspondent

Random House, 2006©