New news of Harvey Weinstein

I saw a film last night about Southies growing up and venturing beyond their fence, Good Will Hunting. A story full of interest in the American vein of making it, at the expense of stripping away of ties. Alas, the film has in common with a sparkling fantasy on Shakespeare in Love, a moral stain, to earn it a place on our proscribed roster of illegitimacy. Harvey Weinstein was involved.

I am told I have a problem with how good we are, to allow myself these viewings, these listenings to James Levine's Onegin, my periodic visits to Monticello and the Mission Santa Barbara. It's not so much that I'm sentimental about old ties, as that I'm impertinent toward my new fences. Not so long ago, it was possible for thoughtful people to go to the opera, Peter Grimes, in which the artist's own falls from grace did not bind them, voluntarily blinded to every layer of its tragedy. Benjamin Britten preyed on boys, and we had to decide, does this deprive us of the finest opera in our language?

I'm not looking for Harvey Weinstein movies, but if there's a good one, I'm willing to see it. At the same time, I've lost any sense of ties with Britten, well enough to respect his music more, not less. Manichaeans clamor loudest where human frailty lends the thrill of punishment, the harshest of which is always self-imposed. But we still decide where we are. I won't live in Southie in my soul.

Origins of Wednesday lxxiv: Not a rebellion, an invasion

I'm re-reading David Halberstam's
enthralling history of the contest
between the New York Yankees and
the Boston Red Sox, for the Amer-
ican League pennant in 1949; and
I'm understanding, the game has
changed, the League has changed,
the year is extinct, and pennants
are quaint. This weekend, I feel
I owe it to myself to re-read
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness,
a book by a Pole about an English-
man in Africa, because a fine col-
umn I woke up to find in a rain-
storm last night appeared in the
Post, to remind me of its several
points of contact with our con-
text of today. All of this time
of wasted time, while I could be
out forging signatures on a peti-
tion to outlaw the appearance in
public of unescorted women. Our
time is not about playing the
game well, it's about acting to
destroy the game at any price.

As this appreciation sank into
our opinion writers, after the
President of the United States
tipped his hand from his séance
in Helsinki, drooling fealty
to a hostile power, subscribers
were given an appreciation that
the violent resentments he em-
bodies are no mere revival of
post-Confederate humiliations,
but a second foray into America,
across the Mason-Dixon line, not
a protest march. A crusade, to
bring this nation down forever.

Pennants are quaint, but elec-
tions are deadly. We're in a
campaign for each of them, as
of this writing. I think the 
invaders will be repulsed, but 
I'm not betting on it. I'm say-
ing, the game is calling, and
it's on.

Patric Shaw, photography

2012

Robert Motherwell

1915 - 1991

Above, I embrace the availability

of "Heart of Darkness" in a free

edition, on line. But there is an

edition of such excellent advan-

tages other than price, which I

can't refuse to recommend:  the

Everyman/Knopf edition of 1993,

with the superb introduction by

Verlyn Klinkenborg and printed

and bound to live with one.

Rain for Richard Cohen

On mornings in a summer when it
rains for hours on end, the
distant sound of tires on the
highway comes as waves when
at the beach, and one delays 
a sip of coffee to reserve 
the night.

The effrontery

   I credit the New American Government,

   don't you, with sensitizing us to a

   general crisis of our time, only tan-

   gentially typified in the President's

   indefatigable resolve to Notify us of

   his disturbances in real time. Still,

   if there could be a more banal remind-

   er of the asynchronous persistence of 

   the Notifications storm which seizes

   our devices in self-indulgent demand,

   than the President's hiccoughing har-

   angues from his valise of grime and

   halberds and bile, it would have to

   be that other most ironically named

   nuisance, Flash - a translation sys-

   tem which ingratiated itself early

   with visualization manufacturers, to

   require more attention than will ever

   be justified by its usefulness. And 

   we are to be exercised by torrents of

   corruption in the information we get,

   through conduits of such instability?

   Has it been established, that any at-

   tention span can endure Notification?

   I'm with the President in his skeptic-

   ism. What is continuity worth today?

   But you are, Mr Woltz, a bandleader;

   and you do make yourself, ridiculous.

Mario Puzo and
  Francis Ford Coppola
screenplay
The Godfather
Paramount, 1972©