More Terminal Velocity

 

Tim Kreider’s, “Terminal Lucidity” taps into the relief many people first felt when Biden was elected but goes on to analyze the converging forces that could (probably?) result in the complete despoliation our democracy.  Trumpism acted as an accelerator, and since Kreider’s essay was written, let’s add increased tensions with China, Polio being added to the mix of Covid and Monkeypox, the FBI “Gestapo raid” on enchanted Mar-a-Lago, Liz Cheney being punished by WY, as well as the rise of “Foxy” deep-thinking media ladies Sarah Palin and Kari Lake.  Oh, let’s not forget recession or inflation (the Market cannot decide which), raging forest fires or floods or a water crisis here and in Europe, or to quote directly from Kreider: “It rained on the ice cap of Greenland for the first time in recorded history, and a chunk of Antarctica the size of Manhattan fell into the sea.  I’m probably forgetting something. Any one of these crises would take fortitude to contemplate; together, they amount to a demoralizing apocalyptic combo: impossible to ignore, impossible to face.”

 

Kreider notes that Democracy is the exception rather than the rule in human history, and its fragility must be guarded.  However, Trump’s influence on the American Zeitgeist did not end with his term as President. Conservative judges were appointed to the Supreme Court as well as at local levels, and state legislatures continue to Gerrymander and appoint obedient Electors to participate in the outmoded Electoral College. His toxicity will be felt long after he is gone.

 

We feel helpless in the face of the multiplicity of these crises.  As Kreider amusingly says: “writing your elected representative feels as effective as writing to Santa, and protest as potent a ritual as sacrificing a goat.”  And to think our threat comes from within, not from a foreign adversary, makes it more terrifying.

 

Liz Cheney’s defeat is highly symbolic as she stood for principle over Party.  Of course she was taken to the proverbial woodshed in a highly partisan State, but it shows the glaring weakness of our political system which the Trumpublicans (and let’s face it, there is no longer a Republican Party) are successfully exploiting.  To think that a State like WY which has a population not much more than Borough of Staten Island can have two senators and such disproportionate representation (along with many other States like ND, SD) is part of the weak link, not to mention the Electoral College and now the Supreme Court as well. (Perhaps States in which the buffalo roam should be demoted to territories?)

 

The Trumpublicans have already vowed swift retribution “when” they take control of both the House and Senate, punishing the opposition, having Hearings to look into the J6 Hearings, Hunter Biden’s laptop, Hillary’s Emails, the FBI (which the Republicans used to love), and who knows, human trafficking out of Washington pizza parlors, UFO’s, etc.

 

Anecdotally, someone I know has a young adult granddaughter who does not seem to be concerned about what is happening.  (She feels that she will be taken care of like she has all her life.)  And perhaps that is my greatest concern: those who will inherit the earth complacently think the “bad guys” will be negated by “goodness” as in some nice neat morality play (the macro version of a “good guy with a gun” protecting us from an active shooter in a school or mall). Kreider prophetically concludes his essay with “Once all the grownups are gone, it forces you to realize that you’re the grownups now.  You’re the ones in charge. And what happens next is up to you.”

Sidewalk of our Times

 

Sondheim in Memoriam

 

He was a cultural deity, the leading musical artist of our age, always on the cutting edge of American theater, the consummate artist, his lyrics totally integrated with his music.  If Bob Dylan is deserving of the Pulitzer, seems to me that Sondheim is as well.  Although a “musical theatre” figure, he is far more, a poet whose lyrics captured the urbanity of modern life and chronicled human relations in dramas within a musical structure.  His musicals have as much in common with opera as they do with Broadway theatre (although Sondheim himself did not generally enjoy opera). 

 

If you look at one’s life as a piece of music, there may be a few long measures preceded by a rest notation.  Covid not only led to sickness and death, but also took large blocks of our lives away, experiences we can never recover.  It’s like a musical piece where, suddenly, the rest notation is unnaturally prolonged, taking up space where there should be music.  The older one is, the more that horridly mismanaged illness is a percentage of one’s remaining life.

 

Thus the pandemic marked the loss of experiences, such as the one I wrote about involving the reimagined production of Sondheim’s Company and our 50^th Wedding Anniversary.

Although we missed that moment, we had hoped there would be another, and then the following year Sondheim passed away.  After his death I learned about the letters he wrote to others, even selflessly responding to strangers like me who revered him.

 

He had an extensive exchange of letters with Robert Osborne who for so many years was the face of Turner Classic Movies.  Watching the classic movies on TCM is just about the only TV I truly enjoy.

 

Sondheim also had an intense interest in such films, particularly those of the thirties, such as ones starring Joe E. Brown, and a host of other stars from that era.  Where in the world did he find the time to watch all of these?  I think of him, steeped in nostalgia and pastiche.  He once said something along the lines that if he was on a trip and a customs officer asked him where he’s from, he’d reply, “the past.”  He wrote to Osborne, a kindred soul, formed a mutual admiration society, and obviously Osborne kept him well supplied in tapes of films mostly from that era.

 

I’ve been able to collect ten of those letters.  Eighty-five were auctioned off in London in 2018 so my collection represents only a portion of their exchanges.  I framed the ones I collected and they now grace our hallway with other Sondheim memorabilia.  I’ve transcribed the contents of the ones I have below for future Sondheim scholars. 

 

They are fascinating, such as the September 5, 2006 letter in which he says “As for Angie's interview, do you by any chance have an unedited audiotape of it? I'd love to hear what she said.”   That must have been Osborne’s interview of Angela Lansbury who originated the role of the mad meat pie maker Mrs. Lovett in Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd and was in Sondheim’s early short-lived musical Anyone Can Whistle (1964).  Lansbury said Sweeney Todd was a huge success for her and that the show was a benchmark for Sondheim and “finally, down the road, that is the [Broadway] role” for which she’ll be remembered. (Watching that interview reminds me of the gift Osborne had, such a gentle, probing ability to get the best from an interview.)

 

The one dated Jan. 3, 2008 was on the eve of the financial (and ultimately political) crisis, and Sondheim concludes it with “Meanwhile, Happy New Year to all of us, please God” – something we were all feeling at the time.

 

Or the July 28, 2010 letter, the only one not signed “Steve,” which he signs “Affectionately Yours, Merle” obviously an in-joke, and not seeing what preceded it I’m guessing it was a reference to Merle Oberon.

 

The June 27, 2011 letter requests that Osborne send the tape of "London Can Take It;" as he wanted “Jeff to understand what went on during wartime there,” presumably Jeff being his husband-to-be at the time, Jeffrey Romley.  Or, the last Sondheim – Osborne letter I have dated June 12, 2012 requesting “Act One,” a 1963 film based on Moss Hart’s autobiography.  As he explains “James Lapine has been trying to track a copy down because he's writing a play based on the book.”  The play premiered on Broadway in 2014 to good reviews.

 

There are so many interesting references in these letters, so I’ll let these transcriptions do the talking themselves:

 

                                                                                August 31, 1998

 

Dear Bob –

 

Thanks so much.  What can I do for you?

 

                                                                                Steve  S.

 

*****

 

December 18, 2003

 

Dear Bob -

 

What I do with TCM is tape the movies and watch them days, weeks or even months later. I don't remember which Gordon Douglas, but it was in the midst of the Gordon Douglas festival a few months back.  I didn't mean to keep you awake nights when I brought this whole thing up -- my apologies.

 

You got me on "Whispering Streets.” If it's part of the TCM catalogue, make a copy for me. (I'm only up to the C's at the moment, but compiling as I go along.) And as far as Madelon Claudet and Rachel Cade go, what about Harold Diddlebock?

 

Meanwhile, have a Christmas worthy of Ann Harding and George Raft, or even Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly.

 

Best,

 

                                                                                Steve

 

*****

 

September 5, 2006

 

Dear Bob –

 

Thanks, as always, for your generosity. I can't believe the number of movies that Joan Blondell made. It seems she made one out of every two movies that were released before 1940. As for Angie's interview,

do you by any chance have an unedited audiotape of it? I'd love to hear what she said.

 

Does your visit to Telluride have anything to do with Bill Pence's resignation? When I was there so was Ted Turner.

 

Surely, these can't be coincidences..

 

That was a joke,

                                                                                Steve

 

P.S. Is "Down on Ami-Ami-Oni-Oni Isle" from "The Hurricane"? I suspect not.

                                                                                SS

 

*****

 

January 3, 2008

 

Dear Bob –

 

Thanks for the DVD. One of the things I love about the series films is that people like Audrey Totter and Dennis O'Keefe show up in them in tiny roles.

 

Meanwhile, Happy New Year to all of us, please God.

 

Gratefully,

as ever,

 

                                                                                Steve

 

*****

 

January 5, 2010

 

Dear Bob

For the thousandth time, thank you so much! When are you coming to our fair city next? Give me a little notice, and we'll have an in-depth conversation about Rondo Hatton.

 

Meanwhile, Happy New Year.

 

                                                                                Steve

 

*****

 

July 28, 2010

 

Dear Bob -

 

The new recorder didn't arrive in time, so please add the following to your list: "Eleven Men and a Girl"; "Top Speed"; "Broadminded"; "Going Wild"; Local Boy Makes Good"; "Sit Tight"; & Day Bike Rider"; "Bright Lights.”

 

I don't expect these till 2012 at the earliest.

 

                                                                                Affectionately Yours,

                                                                                                Merle

 

*****

 

June 27, 2011

 

Dear Bob -

 

Thanks so much, as always, for dredging up the movies. By all means, keep them coming if you can. I'm particularly grateful for "London Can Take It;" as I want Jeff to understand what went on during wartime there.

 

I'd like to add four more titles to the lengthy list:

“The Man with Two Faces," "Innocence," "Gates of Heaven" and "Trouble the Water."

 

What can I do for you in return? Since you're getting some evenings off, perhaps when you're in New York you'd like to come to dinner and we'll talk about Johnny Sheffield. Seriously, just let me know.

 

As always,

 

                                                                                Steve

 

*****

 

August 2, 2011

 

Dear Bob

 

The usual request: I screwed up trying to tape "On with the Show' and "Going wild," so please add them to your list.

 

You're looking more chipper than ever - maybe it was anticipating your vacation. If you spend any of it in New York, give me a call and we can have a drink at least.

 

                                                                                Steve

 

*****

 

September 8, 2011

 

Dear Bob -

 

Just to ruin your vacation, would you add the following four movies to the list of Things My VHS Machine Screwed Up: "Crooner," "Guele d'Amour," "Virtue," "No More Orchids"?

 

As always,

 

                                                                                Steve

 

*****

 

June 12, 2012

 

Dear Bob -

 

Is "Act One" in the Turner Classic Movies library? It's a Warner Bros. picture, so I thought I'd ask. James Lapine has been trying to track a copy down because he's writing a play based on the book. Can you help him out?

 

Hope you're thriving -- you certainly seem to be, in your public appearances.

 

Best,

 

                                                                                Steve

 

 

Alongside these letters is a framed Sondheim-signed sheet music of “Anyone Can Whistle”.  It reads “For Bob   Forte’” and as he dates it 10/5/91, well before TCM, perhaps this not dedicated to Osborne.  So when I play that piece I do so Forte’!

 

 

The opposite wall is devoted to Company Playbills surrounding a cast-signed New York Philharmonic poster of the 2013 production of Company which included such luminaries as Stephen Colbert, Jon Cryer, Neil Patrick Harris, and Patti LuPone, among others. (Yes, Colbert and Cryer who we don’t think of in the context of musical theater do credible work in this production which was aired by PBS that year.)

 

We’ve made that hallway in our home a memorial to him. Thus, “Not a day goes by / Not a single day / …you're somewhere a part of my life.”

 

‘Sunday’ from Sunday in the Park with George is one of his masterpieces.  I include a brief video of my playing it as I often do with him in mind.  There will never be another Sondheim.

 

 

‘A Calling for Charlie Barnes’ -- A Metafictional Masterpiece

 

I used to wonder whether I would ever meet another flawed but lovable fictional character such as Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom from John Updike’s monumental Rabbit Tetralogy, and one written by a novelist who can similarly capture the times in which we live.  I have, and that protagonist is Charlie Barnes, known throughout A Calling for Charlie Barnes by his ironic moniker, “Steady Boy” and the author of this dazzling novel is Joshua Ferris.

 

This is not an Updike knock-off but Updikean nonetheless. Ferris gives more than a hat tip to his predecessor describing Charlie as "a fairly standard midcentury model, Updikean in his defects and indulgences."  We feel for this Everyman, one who is caught up in the American dream of success, only to be kicked around by the times we live in, his addiction to get rich quick schemes, and the demands of his four children (one of whom is hardly mentioned and another is Ferris’ alter ego, a writer of course, but who came into the Barnes clan as a foster child).  And finally, there are his four ex-wives and now his fifth, all with interesting names, just a hint of the black comedy that permeates the novel.

 

Sue Starter was naturally his first wife (“Sure, he’d married young.  Nineteen years old – just ridiculous.  The only way they could…you know.  Although technically, little Jerry was along his way”).  That was 1959.  Divorced.  Then in 1970 along came “the first of two Barbaras, Barbara Lefurst…the woman of his dreams, his life partner, his soul mate.  Just kidding: his second marriage, forged over whiskeys…was a classic rebound and lasted all of six months.”  By now we are getting the idea of the shifting narrative voice and its comic tone.

 

Amusingly, his third wife is named Charley Profitt.  They become Charlie and Charley and it’s the only time in his life he is out of scheming and meaningless jobs, working in social services at “Old Poor Farm” and even moonlighting as the director of a community theatre.    They have a daughter, Marcy, and take in foster children, including our narrator, Jake. Charley admires Charlie until he goes back to his “Steady Boy” ways. “Move in the direction of love and life gets harder.”

 

Number four is Evangeline, who takes Jake in, watches soap operas with him, a cozy time for Jake, and then comes the second Barbara, appropriately named Barbara Ledeux (who never acknowledges his marriage to Lefurst – Ledeux would prefer to be known at the first Barbara and as far as she’s concerned he was married “only” four times).

 

Ledeux is an ER nurse, a profession which aligns with Ferris’ central event for moving the plot along; Charlie has, then does not have, then has the "big kahuna" of cancers, pancreatic.  I think this is the only novel I’ve read where I can actually laugh at anything remotely related to the disease that took my own father’s life and one of my best friends before he turned 60.

 

This peripatetic lover of women, and of failed entrepreneurial schemes (“Clown In Your Town” a franchise pursuit, and the “Doolander” a frisbee toupee are but two of those), normally plotting in his basement office for the next big idea, now holds what he thinks to be a trump card – the threat of pancreatic cancer – to harass his enemies (anyone he perceives as profiting from the 2008 financial debacle) and to bring his far flung family and tangential friends together and regain their respect.  He leaves this message for his daughter with the receptionist where she works, “Can you tell Marcy that her father has pancreatic cancer, please? You might know something about pancreatic cancer, Bethany. I never like to presume… Well I can tell you this: it’s not good. People with pancreatic cancer go to their graves as a shot out of a cannon, okay? Hospital personnel can hardly collect a gurney quickly enough to send that particular patient off to hospice care before he keels over right there in the lobby of the hospital. Do you want to know what that’s like?...It’s like priority mail.  It gets you where you were going faster than any other methods but you have to pay extra – in fear, I mean, and the surprise factor, and physical devastation. There is no time to make amends or settle your accounts. You just die.” 

 

He comes to this realization:“Being alive was, as far as he could tell, an unrelieved nightmare of strange twinges and mysterious growths.  The least a man might be allowed to do is share his fear with loved ones at a moment of uncertainty….”

 

As a work of metafiction, its structure can be a challenging to the reader.  In effect Charlie has asked his son, Jake, who is a novelist (anyone we know connected with his novel who is also a writer?), to write the “facts” of his life.  What are life stories other than those we tell ourselves and then others?  How do we, as narrators of a father’s life, present ourselves?  Ferris frequently takes the reader aside, like an actor would break the fourth wall, to explain more of the story or even its construction.

 

Remarkably, it all seems so natural, even the double ending of the novel.  And the writing can be simply elegant.  I think of Updike but one can say it’s Hemingwayesque (no coincidence that the narrator is named Jake Barnes). Consider this passage from early in the novel, and I choose this almost at random, having dog-eared so many pages: “He went outside to retrieve the morning paper. As he emerged from under the portico, the bright day bushwhacked him. The warmth percolated, pricking him. Steady Boy paused, lifted his face to the sun. He felt a little drunk. He was present in heat like that at the launch of Apollo 11. He felt the same heat 10 years later on a rare vacation under a Florida palm. He ran naked as a little boy. He shucked corn during an Illinois drought. He watched his pebbly foot prints evaporate behind him on the poolside concrete. He rode in a canoe under a canopy of trees as a trickle of sunlight danced over the water, as elsewhere a memory it did over old barnyards and forest floors. A thundering, brain-clearing sneeze, exquisite in every way, followed in the next instant and he opened his eyes and carried on in the shuttering aftermath to the curb and the Chicago Tribune.” A quotidian moment in an Everyman’s life, told, then, by the omniscient narrator, not the biographer, so finely and succinctly crafted.

 

Parallel to “Steady Boy’s” story is Ferris’ metafictional narrative:  “I do not have a lock on the truth, provided there is such a thing, and that, in fact, when we consider the necessarily curated nature of any narrated life, it’s omissions as well as it’s trending hashtags, if you will, we are forced to conclude that every history, including our own first person accounts, is a fiction of a sword. Or as Wallace Stevens put it much more succinctly, ’the false and true are one.’”

 

Central to the tale is love and family, the relationship of fathers and sons, and when Jake arrives at the airport after hearing of the cancer diagnosis, Ferris’ strikes a dagger in my heart in a very personal way: “The child of divorce and the parent without primary custody know these interstitial places well:  the curb, the corridor, the terminal parking lot.  It is where you embrace, you shed tears, you thank God for reuniting you – or curse God for tearing you asunder once more.”  Jake tries to bring the family together, usually culminating in ugly family pyrotechnics.

 

But then again, he teases the reader “Now, I know what you’re thinking. Jake Barnes has played his hand. He sides with Charlie and can’t be trusted. He’s unreliable. Yeah, right. Like reliability exists anywhere anymore, like that’s still a thing.”

 

Charlie has kept his shoulder to the wheel of the American Dream all his life and now, what does he have to show for it?  Ferris has created a 21^st century anti-hero to which “attention must be paid.”  It is a work of heart and ingenuity, and Ferris’ self-referential approach to “Steady Boy’s” story never gets in the way, it paves it.

July 4 Ignominy

 

When I started writing this entry, the Highland Park parade shooting was just being reported.  Highland Park, Parkland, Any Place, USA, a land of gun culture.  In the absence of real gun control, our feckless representatives are accessories to the next mass shooting already brewing in America Land.  We fought wars to live safely and freely and now the cancer from within society is our greatest enemy.  This is central to the pieces I read during the “holiday.”

 

Margaret Renkl, a contributing Opinion writer for the New York Times wrote an interesting article for the July 4 holiday, The American Flag Belongs to Me, Too, and This Year I’m Taking It Back

 

Essentially it recounts a dilemma I have felt – our flag seems to have been purloined by the MAGA crowd.  But she had an experience which led her to hang “the American flag again for the first time in years. It’s right next to the front door, and it does not symbolize MAGA lies or MAGA tyranny. We are flying it proudly in honor of our fellow Americans who are fighting for justice of every kind.”

 

To me it is merely an inspirational piece.  Our partisan SCOTUS is just beginning to show its clout.  And the J6 Hearings clearly show Trump’s role in that attempt to overthrow the peaceful transition of power. Where is justice ask the following pieces?

 

Jim Wright’s Stonekettle Station’s wonders where Merrick Garland is in When Good Men Do Nothing,  He used to write these hard-hitting progressive pieces on a regular basis before migrating to Twitter.  Still he writes a monthly wrap-up.  Essentially his piece can be summarized by “Why should I have any faith in the Department of Justice?”   

Another weekender was John Pavlovitz’s When the Law Fails You, Where Do You Go?  He approaches the same topic but from the viewpoint of a humanistic pastor (which he is).  These articles are there for anyone to read, so no further comment on them from me.

 

I’ll add a piece I wrote eight years ago Independence Day Reverie Hard to believe, eight years.  I was startled coming across this as it proves the old adage, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  I was writing about the same issues as today, and this is pre-Trump.  He is merely an accelerant on our national nightmare.