Not the easiest thing

 

I find myself reading Jack Schaefer's
Shane (1949) this weekend, occasioned

by nothing more than a browse in Wil-

liam Allard's beautiful Leica photog-

raphy. I don't think there'd be much

chance of my reading a Western these

days, which only goes to show how ill

one can understand one's time. That's

not the easiest thing.

It was a shrewd choice on Schaefer's

part, to present this intensely sen-

timental story through the sustained

first-person voice of a young boy. It

allowed him to support a tone of leg-

itimate awe for the upper Plains of

the American West, to carry the some-

times fevered responses of his narra-

tion. (Noting this, director George

Stevens adopted the same perspective

in a film which so immortalized his

child star, as to illuminate every-

thing this actor did in adulthood,

opposite Paul Newman in Hud). Today,

readers who've been present for the

same years as Brandon de Wilde will

cut this story a wry slack. For all

its naïveté - not to say, cynicism - 

it touches faithfully upon what is

not the easiest thing.

                    He was there. He was there in

                    our place and in us. Whenever

                    I needed him, he was there. I

                    could close my eyes and he would

                    be with me and I would see him

                    plain and hear again that gentle

                    voice.

William Albert Allard

Vanishing Breed

Photographs of the Cowboy

  and the West

Little, Brown & Co, 1982©

Jack Schaefer

Shane

1949

The Library of America

Ron Hansen, editor

The Western

  Four Classic Novels ...

LOA, 2020©

Saturday commute clxxix: No rush

The idea that Pasternak knew these 

lines, and had perhaps carried 

them around in his head for twenty-

five years, really thrilled me,

more than any review I've ever read.

I think the parrotlike way in which

people say there is no 'communica-

tion' nowadays is rubbish really;

communication is having the faith

that if you do your utmost someone

somewhere does and will understand

this and sometime somewhere you 

will know it.

Stephen Spender

1959

Matthew Spender

A House in St John's Wood

  In search of my parents

Farrar, Straus & Giroux

2015©

Saturday commute clxxvii: Going once

                                           

I don't know what I may seem to
the world. But as to myself I
seem to have been only like a 
boy playing on the seashore and
diverting myself in now and then 
finding a smoother pebble or pret-
tier shell than ordinary, whilst 
the great ocean of truth lay all 
undiscovered before me.

                         Newton
















David Brewster
Memoirs of the Life,
  Writings and Discoveries
  of Sir Isaac Newton
Cambridge University, 1855©

A box of captain's biscuits, nearly full

"Rat," he moaned, "how about your supper, you poor, cold, hungry, weary animal? I've nothing to give you - nothing - not a crumb!"

"What a fellow you are for giving in!" said the Rat reproachfully. "Why, only just now I saw a sardine-opener on the kitchen dresser, quite distinctly; and everybody knows that means there are sardines about somewhere in the neighbourhood. Rouse yourself! Pull yourself together, and come with me and forage."

They went and foraged accordingly, hunting through every cupboard and turning out every drawer. The result was not so very depressing after all, though of course it might have been better; a tin of sardines - a box of captain's biscuits, nearly full - and a German sausage encased in silver paper.

"There's a banquet for you!" observed the rat, as he arranged the table. "I know some animals who would give their ears to be sitting down to supper with us tonight!"                             

  Look, what thy memory cannot contain

  Commit to these waste blanks, and

    thou shalt find

  Those children nursed, deliver'd

    from thy brain,

  To take a new acquaintance

    of thy mind.

  

John Julius Norwich

An English Christmas

  Kenneth Grahame

  The Wind in the Willows

  1908

John Murray, 2017©

Christmas Crackers

  Commonplace Selections

    William Shakespeare

    Sonnet 77

    1609

Allen Lane/Penguin, 1980©

Sunday nibbled sleeve xii: Connecticut young

 Newtown High beat Darien yesterday,
 in the final seconds of a game that
 was tied, 7-7. Seven years ago, the
 same players survived a conflict we
 couldn't save them from, without an
 abuse of some Constitutional right.
 Whose rites were written in heaven?

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©

Nine over 10

What is the religion
of the Italians?

They are Roman Cath-
olics.

What do the Roman
Catholics worship?

Idols and a piece
of bread.

Would not God be
very angry if He
knew that the It-
alians worshipped
idols and a piece
of bread?

God is very angry.

Recalling that on this date, in

2010, I started writing red mug

blue linen on the pretext of be-

ing under development, I'm heart-

ened to notice that although the

blog has appeared over 10 years,

it is still only nine years old.

I don't know why, but I feel this

is a sign that there's still time

for it. Meanwhile, the dialogue

borrowed above, from a Christmas

Cracker anthology by John Julius

Norwich, can stand for two impres-

sions I've never tried to subdue:

that I'm lucky in what I admire -

worship being a condition which

has discredited itself too much

for emulation, in this land in

which I write - and that what I

do is no more than superfluously

disadvantageous in God's eyes.

But this is to address only one

of the senses. As in the famil-

iar Summer towel, drying on the

rack at such length, one or an-

other of the unblinking senses

may question the freshness of

the thing. This consideration

is akin to fretting the opinion

of God, when He is an audience

I haven't pretended to address.

Flippant as this defense may be,

it deflects a hovering smell in

the air of public comment today,

of an antagonistic struggle for

the soul of the nation. We hear

a gruesome trumpet on all sides,

from Falwell's Liberty Univer-

sity, to Joseph Biden's latest

postures for the Presidency, to 

Pulitzer columnists flogging

us to do the right thing. It's

a hideous abuse of any concept

of liberty, by the foulest

simplifications and reductions

of political importuning, this

grab at the autonomous soul, to

the telling neglect of bread.

Something strikes me as malfunc-

tional in addressing each other,

to remonstrate as if grievances

endow anyone with divine judgment.

Now we are challenged to make mer-

cy popular, and who will grow it?

A student rejects this cant with

grateful resort to invigorating

refreshment in the assets of the

senses. Here I take delight in a

picture I acquired with the trade

of a bottle of Champagne, from an

artist of clarity and strength. I

think of the senses in development,

and admire the company of being.

iv   Valéry Lorenzo

John Julius Norwich

More Christmas Crackers

  being ten commonplace

  selections, 1980 - 1989

Viking, 1990©

Surely not another society scandal?

The matter consists of a teenager

from Florida's most famous second-

ary school, a notoriously powerful

university outside Boston, and the

factor noted by its admissions of-

fice in a notice of demand address-

ed to the teen -- "the media."

The media.

We need to bear in mind that moral

dynamo, in the decision of the u-

niversity, through its undergrad-

uate college, to exemplify its ad-

missions standards by renouncing

a candidate already welcomed to en-

ter, in a thunderously gaudy sniff.

Admittedly, to coin a phrase, the

university is under intense pres-

sure of litigation to justify its

incongruous weighting of Asian ap-

plicants, and chronic embarrassments

in accommodating more than one gen-

der. Now has not seemed the time,

to expose itself to reaffirming ad-

mission to a teenager guilty of an

ancient outbreak (in Puberty Stan-

dard Time) of scabrous bigotry.

What could reek more of prejudicial

exclusion, than this stark confes-

sion of uselessness in education?

But I stray. My university admitted

little Sammy Alito, despite a per-

colating zealotry to affiliate him-

self with a conspiracy of alumni

against gender and other natural

attributes inconsistent with male-

ness in all its shimmering white-

ness. Princeton did him no favors.

Now, is that a gun in his pocket,

or is he just glad to be a Judge? 

I read my news

The figure being overlapped by a blue
shoulder in sharper focus, of greater
interest to the photojournalist Scott
Olson for Getty Images, is attending
an event illuminated by the wearer of
the smart silk suit, a New York Senat-
or running for President. The news is
his concentration on the proceedings.

I read my news, for the reason that I
would be uninformed, otherwise. I'm
heartened to know, that whatever hay
may be being made, by fame's shining
on this political event, that out-of-
focus figure attends for my interests.

He's not giving an endorsement. He's
not a passive funnel of the promises
he hears. But he's plainly committed,
with the gold standard of the secret
ballot written on his face - defying
deception, thinking already beyond
himself. He seems to have no fear of
our Electoral College, which is all 
too willing to favor blurring him.