Saturday commute clxi: Holidays against type

    The phrase throttles the throat

    which utters it, as humiliating

    tautology. Yet, we can imagine

    characters in Forster, wandering

    from pensione to pensione, in a

    cocoon, wrapped up in a gondola,

    on a single, cluttered canal, ex-

    periencing that extraction which

    the holiday must be, as a restor-

    ation of timidity. Slip Maggie

    Smith into the craft, and you'd

    almost row for free. Someone has

    to substitute for Helena Bonham

    Carter, who leapt out, oars ago.

    Watch the film again. I've been.

    It doesn't go so far as Venice,

    but it does suggest, one might. 

James Ivory

  director

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  screenwriter

E.M. Forster

  author

Ismail Merchant

  producer

A Room with a View

Goldcrest et al, 1986©

Tinkle, tinkle, media star

 You and I, involuntary stakeholders as

 we are, in the conduct of the American

 Presidency - whether hailing from Char-

 lottesville or Abbéville - could only

 gasp in wondering delight when the no-

 toriously female San Franciscan tidied

 up her Oval Office host, changing his

 nappies for no extra charge. To relive

 any one moment of her catechism on fact-

 speaking, so risks that dissolution in

 its absorbent lace as to foil the foil

 of the whole, enfolding fabric. And yet,

 how the world did weep for the hilarity

 of the sight, of the haplessly incontin-

 ent misogynist's being exhibited in his

 own crib, for the boasting, taunting bul-

 ly his Republican godfathers insulate

 from justice. There has always been an

 underlying odor of infancy in our vaude-

 villian taste for slapstick, but never

 let it be said, the genre lacks revenge.

 Still, the last word was best reported

 in Nairobi's attentive daily Kenya Star,

 capturing the synopsis offered by the

 Senate Minority Leader, a New Yorker -

 When the President brags that he won

 North Dakota .., he's in real trouble.