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 clxxxi: This very day, no less

In James Brooks’ hit film comedy, “As 

good as it gets” (1997), Helen Hunt, 

playing a single mother of an asthmat-

ic boy being neglected by the American 

medical establishment, receives an en-

dowment covering all of the medical ex-

penses necessary to transform her son 

into a soccer star within a week. But, 

suspecting that this gift comes with 

carnal expectations attached, she turns 

to Shirley Knight, her mother, to fret 

that maybe she should reject it. “No,” 

she flatly declares. “This isn’t a pair 

of stockings, this isn’t a string of 

pearls. This you do not give back.”

I find myself unable to imagine that 

Joseph Biden could have foreseen that a 

prospective running mate, often seen but 

"somehow" blocked in her quest for the 

Presidential nomination that he won by 

attrition, would be revealed as a soccer 

star within hours of being presented with 

his favor. How oblivious the presumptions 

so often are, at the foundation of our ex-

pertise, we need hardly note in this moment 

of Donald Trump. Yet suddenly the campaign 

that might already be seen as straight, but 

which no one pretended might see very far, 

finds itself carried aloft on a wave of ju-

bilation not seen since the conquest of 

Vicksburg.

Look here. People are affected. That very 

night one could feel the country, stand up. 

Stephen Colbert found Jon Batiste, composing 

a song, "for Kamala." Those who were able to 

squeeze into the donation sites of the Democ-

ratic National Committee, managed to deposit

$48 million there in those hours. Personal

ties, political commitments, alumni networks, 

lately moribund in the moment of Donald Trump, 

sprang to giddiest life — and all without the 

least forewarning. There was pandemonium at

the corner of Castro and Market, without a

word from Dionysus. This selection is not 

a pair of stockings; it’s not even a pair of 

Bernie’s fishnets. Alas, it isn’t pearls of 

Elizabeth Warren. It's the ore of our ground,

not of our statues. This is our birth.

No tentative “connection with the future,” the 

cliché of the day — or light at the end of a

tunnel, Kamala Harris declares the truth of

this very day, that only an unyielding maze 

of sordid, illegitimate structures could con-

ceal. Nor could it be lost in the confetti,

this revelation was ultimately forced upon

powerfully reluctant beneficiaries. But it's
done, and what one feels is the pace at which
such power can shift.

ii  Joshua Lott

    Getty Images©

My glimpse

    Fifty years later, the detail enlarge-

    ment is still the best penetration I

    have found, of the character of this

    snapshot from Cam Ranh Bay. I under-

    stand the expression at this moment,

    because I had seen it for 20 years.

    I was born with a youngster officer, 

    looking after me. Whenever in life I

    have turned, in pain or fear or des-

    pair, even before 1969, I have felt

    he has known what I mean. I know it.

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©

Hanging antecedents

This is a photograph by Jon Gasca

which he calls, Paul P at home.

I do not know if this is a refer-

ence to a portrait of Paul P, in

his house or not; or to a portion

of the house of Paul P, which we

are to infer to satisfy him.

I do feel that the photograph is

a comment on style, or an evoca-

tion of style, or both. In either

case it is provocative, in a prom-

inence it gives to the hanging of

a picture, an accumulation as much

as an acquisition, as Alan Bennett

would say, because we don't know

if its punctuation of the space

is antecedent, contemporaneous, or

subsequent to its creation by Paul.

We have no sense of its contribu-

tion except as ornament in place.

For a couple of decades I've been

living without the hanging of an-

tecedents or of new accumulations

in the space where I live. In fash-

ioning a new environment, I have

therefore been giving thought to

laying receptive preparations for

certain pictorial elements. Yet I

do congenially resist, slightly,

the inevitable burden of a past

which some impart, or of recent

but expired acquisitive choice,

in others. 

I do not know, what confers 

such tenacious immunity from or-

lamentation upon my space as I

have come to see it. I truly do

like pictures, even some of mine.

I do think a picture has a right,

so to speak, to be seen, alone.

I think no picture has a right

to be seen every day, without

extracting distinct concessions

from the space, and its tenant.

I do not agree that images rep-

resent the baggage of stored

pleasure, because they do have

an autonomy, against how I see

them. I do know, I do not care

to regard a picture as a debt I

must pay, by exhibiting it. This

means, it must compete with its

absence, in improving my opinion

of my space. This is why I like

Jon Gasca's photograph. I sense,

Paul P has preserved the values

to him, of space and ornament,

exploiting a recessive image

with almost objective success.

Saturday commute clxxiii: Image to epigram

The passage, with which we are
all familiar, of an image to 
an epigram is so ethically ex-
pensive that this must play a
large part in fatigue with the
President's endless proof of it.
Never seeing straight, one el-
ement of evidence, he frames a
whole world from fancies of the
timid wretch extracting his re-
venge by the propagation of myth.

              Europa of Athens can be had for a drachma

                    with nothing to fear, no resistance,

                         clean sheets,

              a fire in winter. So, my friend Zeus,

                    you had no business turning yourself

                         into a bull.

Antipater of Thessaloniki
11 BC - 15 AD
  Edmund Keeley
  translation
Peter Constantine, Rachel Hadas,
  Edmund Keeley and Karen van Dyck
  editors
The Greek Poets
  Homer to the Present
op. cit.

Origins of Wednesday xcvi: Unblinking at mastery

This Fall, Knopf are issuing a new
edition of the late John Richard-
son's memoir, The Sorcerer's Appren-
tice: Picasso, Provence, and Douglas
Cooper. The introduction to the new
edition has been written by Jed Perl,
whose Antoine's Alphabet, often cited
here, and whose New Art City, which
captures post-War New York with the
spirit of discovery which impelled it,
are but two highlights in a career of
criticism spanning nearly 50 years, 
with infectious illuminations which
ravish the mind with the sweet exper-
ience of discernment. We will lack
the final volume of Richardson's own
biography of the artist, but we'll
possess his ardor to face him front-
ally, with boldness unleashed by
guidance we imbibe with relish. We
are so fortunate, to know we are.

                     Nil parvum aut humili modo,

                     nil mortale loquar.

                     I shall speak nothing mean

                       or ordinary,

                     Nor what is only mortal.

Sir John Richardson
  x Francis Goodman
  1947
National Portrait Gallery

Horace
The Odes of Horace
  iii, 25
  [fragment]
David Ferry
  translation
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
1997©

Frisée

        Of all the barbarities made famous
  by the American President, the re-
  mark, I, alone, can fix it affords
  the most pristine image of proven-
  ance one could want. It feels odd,
  therefore, to find pretenders busy
  scrambling to articulate some cure
  of our unease, by application of a
  vanity only more decorous than his.
  The project of leading is a craft,
  disciplined with humble confession.
  All his kind confess only a genius. 

i  Simone Nobili

Saturday commute clxxi: Remembered sentences ii

I seldom mean anything, by
the poetic interlineations
here, but to celebrate the
virility with which phenom-
enally basic passages from
a scholastic past find il-
lumination, eventually ex-
perienced. And I'm content
especially, as forgiveness
arises by this provenance.

     The bewildering, intricate maze - 
     Never got through until Daedalus, out of pity
     For infatuated Ariadne, 
     Guided a prince's blind footsteps
     With a payout of thread, past every wrong turn
     And every dead end he himself had devised
     And constructed.

                      In which grand design
     You too would figure significantly,
     Icarus, had sorrow allowed it. Twice
     Daedalus tried to model your fall in gold, twice
     His hands, the hands of a father, failed him.












Virgil
Aeneid
  Book VI
  40 - 52
Seamus Heaney
  translation
Faber & Faber, 2016©