Summer Liebling ii

And ought to be.

The genius of A.J.

Liebling is gener-

ously multi-facet-

ed, so that as I

hazard to admire

it, and recommend

him firmly to my

friends, there is

very much more in

Liebling than a

quenching of one

reader's thirst.

But as one who be-

lieves himself en-

gaged in a public

act of writing, I

have great respect

for Liebling's ap-

petite. He did not

just endure exper-

ience, cataloguing

his sensations. He

cultivated his ap-
petite with excel-
lence, seldom jus-
tifying it as a pol-
icy or a prophylac-
tic, as it palpably
was, but as delight,
which it innocently
is.

I respect his youth
as a footloose free-
lancer of the long
lunch in Paris as a
footing for recog-
nising his enduring
specialty, the ex-
uberant, the gaudy,
and yes, the treach-
erous fraud. If you
can imagine Samuel
Clemens lamenting a
suspicious entrail
in the American cas-
soulet, this is A.J.
Liebling, eviscerat-
ing a tout of race-
track tripe, but not 
without mirth for his 
gall. 

But I haven't forged
the obvious connection
yet, between a discern-
ing appetite and its
homage to hunger, per
se. Liebling loved the
phonies of life for re-
inforcing his capacity
for better. They were
almost enviably glad,
and he cannot be read
without participating
partly in that, asking
only that they be orig-
inal and authentic in
their scams. What is so
tiresome, nowadays, is
how our frauds all are
nourished by ostensible
"think tanks," spewing
position papers of stag-
nant puerility, financed
by Reaganism's used car
dealers and social climb-
ing petroslobs. We're en-
titled to something bet-
ter than Cato tarts and
Koch crumbs. Yet more to
the point, for all their
frenzied calumnies, we
deserve to see them glad.

A.J. Liebling

Between Meals
  An Appetite for Paris
1959
North Point Press, 1986©

The Jollity Building
1938
The Library of America
op. cit.

Suppose it were Friday lxxiii: keeping faith with the city

    The first of two sidings of

    the Southern Pacific railway

    in Palo Alto stops at the en-

    try to its founder's ranch.

    The Leland Stanford Junior

    University keeps a spur where

    Friday comes with repatriat-

    ing clockwork and delivering

    expectancy.  

    Of course the persistence

    of a race of happy people

    is no accident merely of

    nature. It replenishes it-

    self with endlessly pro-

    liferating discovery.

  

Tales from the intuitive leap

   The intuitive leap does

   not fit well into the

   pattern of deductive,

   syllogistic thinking.

   Reformatting and close

   comparison decant a fam-

   iliar practice or tool

   from an established con-

   tainer; the stress in ..

   an intuitive leap is on

   if, not what if, instead

   of then.. The final, con-

   scious reckoning carries

   a burden .. rather than

   the clarifying finality

   of syllogistic conclusion.

Richard Sennett

The Craftsman

  Arousing Tools

Yale University Press, 2008©

Takeaways

There's a pretty

cool architect in

the faculty down

the road, who has

a way of asking a

class studying an

elevation by Pal-

ladio, what would

you leave, what

would you take

away?

Every observer

has his list of

impediments of

experience, and

of being observed. 

Here, a cigarette

in one hand, and a 

"mobile device" in 

another, cast the

figure in the de-

rivative as well as

the impaired column.

And what is this
mug of coffee in
the avatar's way?

When evaluating

a work, what does

one tidy up first,

the senses or the

object? What is 

more disabling, 

ordinary prejudice

or a blizzard of

distractions? Will

Pauli's particle

(noted in the head-

ing since 2010) be

found, either way? 

Summer Liebling

And some are not.

Who expected the

great scribe of

pugilism for The

New Yorker, and

its archangel of

the tables of Par-

is, to surface al-

so as the singular

witness with a com-

mand of English to

exotic politics of

the great bayou in-

cluded, at no extra

charge, in Jeffer-

son's purchase of

empire in his exer-

cise of small rule?

Summer is a time for

Liebling, the humid-

er the better, as a

rémoulade of simmer-

ing Right-wing unc-

tuousness immerses

us in festivals of

ballot suppression,

gender punishment,

and corporate de-

bauch unleashed by

our judicial branch's

latest wave of praise

for concentrated pow-

er, like some school-

boy alleging his or-

gasm had nothing to

do with tumescence.

Sometimes, it's all

one can do, not to

pat their shameless

little noggin for

their cheek.

Oh, my, yes; the asy-

lum of the great Earl

has sprung itself in 

purgations from Peter

Brook, upon the polis 

from Texas to North 

Carolina.

Anyone who inclines to

argue that sexism and

racism have nothing at

all to do with over-

weening financial con-

centrations, is wel-

come to explain to us

a Civil War, Jim Crow,

and the Koch brothers.

And Summer, too, co-

operates in its condi-

tioned little way, as

if the hot, slick sea-

son lent itself, espec-

ially, to escapades of

juvenile transparency.

A.J. Liebling

The Sweet Science

The Earl of Louisiana

Between Meals

  and other Writings

The Library of America, 2009©

Leon F. Litwack

Trouble in Mind:

  Black Southerners in

  the Age of Jim Crow

Knopf, 1998©

Ira Katznelson

Fear Itself:  The New Deal

  and the Origins of our Time

Norton, 2013©

under development

What presents itself

as a footing, for the 

strides we incline to

make, or are exhorted

to, or even sometimes

celebrate our making?

Franz Josef Haydn

Trio in F

  Andante

1767

Beaux Arts Trio

Philips, 1967©

Les enfants du paradis

On this closing day of the 12th quarter of the page's publication, I find myself by coincidence revisiting Marcel Carné's Les enfants du paradis (1945), and the moment strikes me as not premature to draw attention to that phrase's presence in the Matter list in the side-bar, all this time. Probably nothing typifies an allegorical under-current in things around here, with any more pointed signal than the reference to the schoolings we go through, not always institutional, under the heading irresistibly swiped from this film. I accept the misconceptions about this interest in the schooling experience, which any reader might have noticed about this page, off-site; and I have no interest in defending rmbl against the incurable suspicions of others. No page can afford to wear a sign, stipulating to its safety, and at the same time purport to enact the experience of learning. That way lies orthodoxy, against which I have argued, not least, as an illusory security. I could hardly embrace one lie to deflect another.

I do adopt an imagery of vitality to celebrate that experience, therefore, for more than merely nostalgic reasons: it continues and requires renewal. But for today, I acknowledge the almost immeasurably radiant and stimulating, sustaining movie Carné and Prévert fashioned in the final months of extreme creative hazard, in wartime France. Les enfants du paradis writes its own review before our eyes, in international restoration for dvd, and renews its claims to be known, intimately, adapting the theater of the streets and of the stage, as Renoir and Kurosawa would later do, to craft the ark of humanity.

Surprise, surprise: a prodigious Dionysian energy ~ sensual, spontaneous ~ marks this movie as a film, as surely as if revolving sprockets drew its text and textures across a beacon out of Anton Mesmer, rallying clusters of the curious from the dark. It's how it is, for ces enfants du paradis, whether they know their Nietzsche or not; and if there is any premise more arresting in this movie than the primogen-iture of Eros, I do not know what it is. The sprocket bridging the gap, the spark leaping the arc in Les enfants du paradis, between being and knowing, is nothing more complex than a stroll down its richly populated Boulevard de Crime - learning. Have we time for hun-ger that declines its own feast?

For classmates.

Marcel Carné, director

Jacques Prévert, screenplay

Roger Hubert, cinematography

Alexandre Trauner, design

Les enfants du paradis

Pathé, 1945

Criterion Collection 

  restoration and editing, 2012©