Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Fair and balanced
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
Quite a pair
Beggars Banquet -Bill Clinton and Keith Richards leave the restaurant Craft in New York City after having dinner, June 7. 2011.
Found this picture in Rolling Stone. Left me speechless (and Bubba has a doggie bag).
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Van Wyck? Van Week?
For most New Yorkers and out-of-town visitors, the Van Wyck Expressway is a notorious traffic hazard that induces high blood pressure among travelers trying to get to and from John F. Kennedy International Airport. For traffic reporters, linguists and some Dutch purists, however, the gridlocked highway also poses a serious phonetic hazard nearly as perilous as its bottlenecks. After decades of pronouncing Van Wyck like “candlestick,” an enlightened few now call it the “Van Wike,” which some Dutch say is the more proper pronunciation.
But even that is in dispute.
Agnes Treuren, an officer in the Dutch Consulate in New York, insisted that both pronunciations were emphatically wrong. “It is ‘Fon Weig,’ with the last syllable pronounced like leg or beg,” she said, before adding: “I have never been on the Fon Weig Expressway. I live on the Upper East Side.” But even that is in dispute.
Really? And how did she get from the airport to the upper east side of Manhattan? Helicopter?
The 9.3-mile highway, which was designed by Robert Moses, built from 1947 to 1963 and connects the Whitestone Expressway with Kennedy Airport, was named after Robert Anderson Van Wyck, who in 1898 became the first mayor of New York as a five-borough city.
Tom Kaminski, managing editor of traffic and transit information at WCBS-AM, said that in the pantheon of mispronounced New York landmarks, Van Wyck was neck-and-neck with the Kosciuszko Bridge, which connects Queens and Brooklyn and was named in the 1940s for Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a Polish-Lithuanian hero of the Revolutionary War. Mr. Kaminski, whose grandparents came to New York from Gdansk in 1908, said “ ‘Kosciuszko’ was routinely botched by traffic reporters who tended to say “Kos-kee-OOS-ko” rather than the more correct Polish pronunciation “Ka-SHOOS-ko.”
I only changed my way of pronouncing that one in recent memory.
Other proponents of the “Van Wike” school of pronunciation like Jack Eichenbaum, the Queens Borough historian, attributed the “wick” aberration to the fact that Dutch names in New York had been Anglicized after the Netherlands ceded Nieuw-Nederland, its 17th-century colonial province, to the British in 1664. He noted that Flushing — undisputedly pronounced today like a “flushing toilet” — had once been called Vlissingen after a town on the Dutch-Belgian border, while Flatbush had been Vlacke bos.
Some in Queens complained that the chronic gaffing was part of a long history in which well-known monuments in the oft-overlooked borough were mispronounced or, worse, called something else altogether. Dan Andrews, a spokesman for the Queens borough president, Helen M. Marshall, said the disagreement over Van Wyck was reminiscent of the Queensboro Bridge, the steel muse of Simon and Garfunkel, which was recently named after former Mayor Edward I. Koch.
It is Queensboro; says so on the Bridge. It connects 59th Street to Queens, so provincial Manhattanites can come out and see the sights, taste the foods, and get a life.
“No one ever said Queensboro Bridge on the radio; they always called it the 59th Street Bridge,” he said, with a hint of annoyance. “Now it’s the Eddie Koch Bridge. Yet the Brooklyn Bridge is called the Brooklyn Bridge. Van Wyck is part of the same story.”
Robert Moses himself may have had the last word on the pronunciation. Legend has it that after someone once questioned him after he had called the expressway Van Wick, he thundered: “I’m Robert Moses. I can call it whatever I damn please!”
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Always welcome, and now missed
At 6:30 a.m. on Tuesday, crew members of a fishing charter boat sat in
the passenger cabin, waiting for customers who did not come. On other,
warmer Tuesdays, they could at least count on the arrival of a group of
old-timers, but most of that crowd was away for the winter months. At nearby piers, other fishing boats bobbed idly. As sunlight broke
through the windows of the charter boat, the Brooklyn VI, its disappointed crew settled into the
passenger booths and talked about loss: of the customers who once filled
the fishing boats all year round, of the neighborhood’s vanishing
landmarks, of a freedom to drift at sea without tightening government
restrictions. But mostly they talked about their friend Julius Geller, a former bomber
pilot and an incurable lifetime angler who had died two days earlier, a
week before he was to turn 94.
No one called him Julius. He was Chuck or Chuckie or Chuckles, a nickname picked up during a tough, impoverished childhood in East New York. During World War II, Mr. Geller, a second lieutenant, piloted a B-17 bomber on 34 missions. (In his later years, he would talk about his service, but not much. Many of his friends learned about his record on the Internet.)
No one called him Julius. He was Chuck or Chuckie or Chuckles, a nickname picked up during a tough, impoverished childhood in East New York. During World War II, Mr. Geller, a second lieutenant, piloted a B-17 bomber on 34 missions. (In his later years, he would talk about his service, but not much. Many of his friends learned about his record on the Internet.)
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Fitzhugh chooses railroad over NFL
In the most recent email from SmartBrief on Your Career (I read about Job Angels in the Wall Street Journal a year and a half ago, and subscribe to periodic updates), this story was included, and it impressed me: job security over the possibility of glamor.
Keith Fitzhugh pulled a misdirection play rarely seen in the NFL. On Tuesday, the New York Jets, after losing two safeties to injury in four days, called the former Lovejoy High School and Mississippi State standout and told him they needed him. Contemplating the offer, Fitzhugh, 24, thought about the steady job he had landed three months ago, as a Norfolk Southern railroad conductor, a position he loves. He thought about his family, about leaving behind his disabled father and hard-working mother. He thought about the three times that NFL teams previously released him. And Fitzhugh said no.
Fitzhugh was given the option of taking a leave of absence from his railroad job and pursuing pro football again. For whatever reason, he still declined. "It's an inspirational story, and we're very fortunate to have such a high-quality individual working for us," said Rudy Husband, Norfolk Southern spokesman.
Each of his NFL paychecks would have been for $18,000, dwarfing his railroad salary, but Fitzhugh still wasn't willing to leave, or push aside, his new position. "I have buddies with two degrees who can't find a job," he said.
While Fitzhugh thanked the Jets for providing another opportunity, he said his current job fulfilled another childhood dream. "Just hearing the horns getting blown, how fast they were rolling, it always looked cool," Fitzhugh said of trains that rumbled along Tara Boulevard. "I was like, ‘Man, I want to get up there. I want to ride.'"
I agree. I love trains, as I did when I was a kid. And airplanes.
Keith Fitzhugh pulled a misdirection play rarely seen in the NFL. On Tuesday, the New York Jets, after losing two safeties to injury in four days, called the former Lovejoy High School and Mississippi State standout and told him they needed him. Contemplating the offer, Fitzhugh, 24, thought about the steady job he had landed three months ago, as a Norfolk Southern railroad conductor, a position he loves. He thought about his family, about leaving behind his disabled father and hard-working mother. He thought about the three times that NFL teams previously released him. And Fitzhugh said no.
Fitzhugh was given the option of taking a leave of absence from his railroad job and pursuing pro football again. For whatever reason, he still declined. "It's an inspirational story, and we're very fortunate to have such a high-quality individual working for us," said Rudy Husband, Norfolk Southern spokesman.
Each of his NFL paychecks would have been for $18,000, dwarfing his railroad salary, but Fitzhugh still wasn't willing to leave, or push aside, his new position. "I have buddies with two degrees who can't find a job," he said.
While Fitzhugh thanked the Jets for providing another opportunity, he said his current job fulfilled another childhood dream. "Just hearing the horns getting blown, how fast they were rolling, it always looked cool," Fitzhugh said of trains that rumbled along Tara Boulevard. "I was like, ‘Man, I want to get up there. I want to ride.'"
I agree. I love trains, as I did when I was a kid. And airplanes.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Joltin' Joe
The Onion - This photo illustration is NOT the vice president washing his car in the White House driveway, but rather a doctored image from the fevered imagination of the satirical journal, The Onion.
How can you not love this guy?
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has never smashed a Whac-A-Mole game in a drunken fit. He has never invoked Freedom of Information laws to find out a female federal employee’s work schedule. And to the best of anyone’s knowledge, he has never washed his car in the White House driveway. But to readers of The Onion, the satirical newspaper and Web site, the vice president has done all of those things, plus bounce a check for $39.50 to a liquor store and star in advertisements for Hennessy cognac that emphasize his international playboy swagger.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Transportation man
When Darius McCollum was arrested on Tuesday, the circumstances were all too familiar. Once again, he stood accused of taking a bus or a subway car for a ride.
On Wednesday, Mr. McCollum was in another familiar place: a courtroom, to answer to charges related to his 27th arrest — this one for stealing a Trailways bus from a maintenance facility in Hoboken, N.J. Mr. McCollum was first arrested at age 15 after he drove an E train to the World Trade Center in 1981. He was most recently arrested in 2008 for impersonating a subway worker and has served previous stints in prison.
Prison? The companies should hire him as a consultant.
Prison? The companies should hire him as a consultant.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Louis Auchincloss
Came across citation to a work of his, Scarlet Letters, in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. Decided to find the cited book, Scarlet Letters. Started to read it; am enjoying it quite much. Googled Auchicloss, and read his Wikipedia biography.
On of the citation therein is a quote from Gore Vidal: "Of all our novelists, Auchincloss is the only one who tells us how our rulers behave in their banks and their boardrooms, their law offices and their clubs.... Not since Dreiser has an American writer had so much to tell us about the role of money in our lives."[2].
That led me to look at Vidal's OPAC entry: fairly extensive holdings in Peninsula include 2 autobiographies, two history entries, one about the Bush-Cheney junta, and several in literature.
But, back to Auchincloss. His obit in the Times of New York includes:
His detractors complained that Mr. Auchincloss’s writing was glib and superficial, or else that his subject matter was too dated to be of much interest. Writing in The New York Times in 1984, Michiko Kakutani said that while Mr. Auchincloss “is adept enough at portraying the effects of a rarefied milieu on character, his narrative lacks a necessary density and texture.”
“Like the shiny parquet floors of their apartment houses,” she added, “Mr. Auchincloss’s people are just a little too finely polished, a little too tidily assembled.”
His writing does seem elegant to me, and that is not necessarily a compliment in this context. Another commentator has this:
The author Bruce Bawer, writing in The New York Times Book Review, said that Mr. Auchincloss had the bad luck to live “in a time when the protagonists of literary fiction tend to be middle- or lower-class.”
“These days,” he added, “the general public, though fascinated by the superficial trappings of privilege, seems to have little interest in the deeper truths with which Mr. Auchincloss is passionately concerned — with, that is, the beliefs, principles, hypocrisies, prejudices and assorted strengths and defects of character that typify the American WASP civilization that produced what was for a long time the country’s undisputed ruling class.”
His answer? “Class prejudice” was Mr. Auchincloss’s response to his critics. “That business of objecting to the subject material or the people that an author writes about is purely class prejudice,” he said in an interview in 1997, “and you will note that it always disappears with an author’s death. Nobody holds it against Henry James or Edith Wharton or Thackeray or Marcel Proust.”
Perhaps. Very valid point.
The obit continues: Louis was the third of four children of Priscilla Stanton and Joseph Howland Auchincloss, who, like his father, was a Wall Street lawyer; he was also a third cousin of Franklin D. Roosevelt. (Louis was a cousin by marriage to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who worked with him when she was a book editor later in life.)
Interesting connections.
But the novel received favorable reviews and encouraged him to keep writing while also practicing law. “I think my secret is to use bits and fractions of time,” he said in his 1997 interview. “I trained myself to do that. Anybody can do it. I could write sitting in surrogate’s court answering calendar call.”
In the novel, Ambrose Vollard, father of Vinnie, one of the main characters, referes to himself as Hadrian, and to his son-in-law and heir-apparent as Antinoüs. Hadrian was a Roman emperor. Antoniüs was a member of the entourage of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, to whom he was beloved. Antinous was deified after his death.
On of the citation therein is a quote from Gore Vidal: "Of all our novelists, Auchincloss is the only one who tells us how our rulers behave in their banks and their boardrooms, their law offices and their clubs.... Not since Dreiser has an American writer had so much to tell us about the role of money in our lives."[2].
That led me to look at Vidal's OPAC entry: fairly extensive holdings in Peninsula include 2 autobiographies, two history entries, one about the Bush-Cheney junta, and several in literature.
But, back to Auchincloss. His obit in the Times of New York includes:
His detractors complained that Mr. Auchincloss’s writing was glib and superficial, or else that his subject matter was too dated to be of much interest. Writing in The New York Times in 1984, Michiko Kakutani said that while Mr. Auchincloss “is adept enough at portraying the effects of a rarefied milieu on character, his narrative lacks a necessary density and texture.”
“Like the shiny parquet floors of their apartment houses,” she added, “Mr. Auchincloss’s people are just a little too finely polished, a little too tidily assembled.”
His writing does seem elegant to me, and that is not necessarily a compliment in this context. Another commentator has this:
The author Bruce Bawer, writing in The New York Times Book Review, said that Mr. Auchincloss had the bad luck to live “in a time when the protagonists of literary fiction tend to be middle- or lower-class.”
“These days,” he added, “the general public, though fascinated by the superficial trappings of privilege, seems to have little interest in the deeper truths with which Mr. Auchincloss is passionately concerned — with, that is, the beliefs, principles, hypocrisies, prejudices and assorted strengths and defects of character that typify the American WASP civilization that produced what was for a long time the country’s undisputed ruling class.”
His answer? “Class prejudice” was Mr. Auchincloss’s response to his critics. “That business of objecting to the subject material or the people that an author writes about is purely class prejudice,” he said in an interview in 1997, “and you will note that it always disappears with an author’s death. Nobody holds it against Henry James or Edith Wharton or Thackeray or Marcel Proust.”
Perhaps. Very valid point.
The obit continues: Louis was the third of four children of Priscilla Stanton and Joseph Howland Auchincloss, who, like his father, was a Wall Street lawyer; he was also a third cousin of Franklin D. Roosevelt. (Louis was a cousin by marriage to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who worked with him when she was a book editor later in life.)
Interesting connections.
But the novel received favorable reviews and encouraged him to keep writing while also practicing law. “I think my secret is to use bits and fractions of time,” he said in his 1997 interview. “I trained myself to do that. Anybody can do it. I could write sitting in surrogate’s court answering calendar call.”
In the novel, Ambrose Vollard, father of Vinnie, one of the main characters, referes to himself as Hadrian, and to his son-in-law and heir-apparent as Antinoüs. Hadrian was a Roman emperor. Antoniüs was a member of the entourage of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, to whom he was beloved. Antinous was deified after his death.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Salomon Kalou
Salomon Kalou (born August 5, 1985 in Oumé, Côte d'Ivoire) is an Ivorian
professional football player, who plays his club
football as a forward for Chelsea
in the English Premier League, and formerly for the Dutch club Feyenoord.
Alain LeRoy Locke
Saw biography of him in New York Review of Books; never heard of him, so I've learned something today. The paperback is newly released.Alain L. Locke : biography of a philosopher. (2008). Leonard Harris & Charles Molesworth. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Alain LeRoy Locke (September 13, 1885 – June 9, 1954) was an American writer, philosopher, educator, and patron of the arts. He is best known for his writings on and about the Harlem Renaissance. He is unofficially called the "Father of the Harlem Renaissance". His philosophy served as a strong motivating force in keeping the energy and passion of the Movement at the forefront .
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
глупый
How do you say stupid in Russian?
RUSSIA: Soldiers Are Charged With Theft in Polish Wreck
Four Russian soldiers were charged with stealing bank cards from the wreckage of the plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others, prosecutors said. The soldiers used at least one of the cards to withdraw 60,345 rubles ($1,896), the federal investigative committee said. The thefts had angered Poles, who were outraged that someone would try to profit from a crash that wiped out much of their nation's leadership. Polish government spokesman Pawel Gras apologized for initially blaming the theft on an elite Russian police force. —Associated Press
RUSSIA: Soldiers Are Charged With Theft in Polish Wreck
Four Russian soldiers were charged with stealing bank cards from the wreckage of the plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others, prosecutors said. The soldiers used at least one of the cards to withdraw 60,345 rubles ($1,896), the federal investigative committee said. The thefts had angered Poles, who were outraged that someone would try to profit from a crash that wiped out much of their nation's leadership. Polish government spokesman Pawel Gras apologized for initially blaming the theft on an elite Russian police force. —Associated Press
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Salomón Kalmanovitz
Salomón Kalmanovitz Kraute.
In article about candidacy of Antanas Mokus for presidency of Colombia: Mockus adviser Salomon Kalmanovitz, a former central bank director who is viewed as a potential finance minister, said a Mockus administration would put an end to the tax breaks and loopholes that allow corporations to pay much less than the headline 33% corporate tax rate.
In article about candidacy of Antanas Mokus for presidency of Colombia: Mockus adviser Salomon Kalmanovitz, a former central bank director who is viewed as a potential finance minister, said a Mockus administration would put an end to the tax breaks and loopholes that allow corporations to pay much less than the headline 33% corporate tax rate.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Marcelo Salomon
In a story in today's Wall Street Journal about Brazil, an economist is quoted; I like his last name.
Some economists, however, say inflation concerns shouldn't be overblown. Brazil's economy was growing very quickly before the global crisis hit and, according to Barclays Capital Economist Marcelo Salomon, inflationary pressures still aren't as pronounced as they were in the precrisis days.
Brazil, the world's biggest exporter of iron ore, beef, chicken, sugar and coffee, rebounded quickly from the global turmoil, with economic growth of 4.3% in the fourth quarter of 2009. Government agencies and state-controlled banks quickly injected billions of dollars of credit. On top of that, the government slashed taxes on sales of cars and household appliances, leading to a surge in consumption.
Some economists, however, say inflation concerns shouldn't be overblown. Brazil's economy was growing very quickly before the global crisis hit and, according to Barclays Capital Economist Marcelo Salomon, inflationary pressures still aren't as pronounced as they were in the precrisis days.
Brazil, the world's biggest exporter of iron ore, beef, chicken, sugar and coffee, rebounded quickly from the global turmoil, with economic growth of 4.3% in the fourth quarter of 2009. Government agencies and state-controlled banks quickly injected billions of dollars of credit. On top of that, the government slashed taxes on sales of cars and household appliances, leading to a surge in consumption.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Brand NFL
Looking through sports books (796.3), came across an interesting author. Michael Oriard,who played in the NFL, for the Kansas City Chiefs, over 4 seasons, now teaches and is an associate Dean at Oregon State University.
Antanas Mockus
Read newspaper story about him, a former mayor of Bogotá, who is running for Colombia's presidency.
Aurelijus Rutenis Antanas Mockus Šivickas (born 25 March 1952 in Bogotá), is a Colombianmathematician, philosopher, and politician. The son of Lithuanian immigrants, he left his post as rector of the National University of Colombia in Bogotá in 1993, and later that year ran a successful campaign for mayor. He proceeded to preside over Bogotá as mayor for two terms, during which he became known for springing surprising and humorous initiatives upon the city's inhabitants. These tended to involve grand gestures, including local artists or personal appearances by the mayor himself — taking a shower in a commercial about conserving water, or walking the streets dressed in spandex and a cape as Supercitizen.
Aurelijus Rutenis Antanas Mockus Šivickas (born 25 March 1952 in Bogotá), is a Colombianmathematician, philosopher, and politician. The son of Lithuanian immigrants, he left his post as rector of the National University of Colombia in Bogotá in 1993, and later that year ran a successful campaign for mayor. He proceeded to preside over Bogotá as mayor for two terms, during which he became known for springing surprising and humorous initiatives upon the city's inhabitants. These tended to involve grand gestures, including local artists or personal appearances by the mayor himself — taking a shower in a commercial about conserving water, or walking the streets dressed in spandex and a cape as Supercitizen.
David Blaine
Saw part of a program on the Travel Channel on David Blaine; fascinated. David Blaine: What is Magic? Not the least of my fascination was his racial and ethnic identity: he seemed black skinned, sort of, but I wasn't sure. Turns out: Blaine was born David Blaine White in Brooklyn, New York and is of Puerto
Rican descent on his father's side, and Russian
Jewish on his mother's.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Denying Shakespeare
Who wrote the music of Johann Sebastian Bach? Not the Man from Leipzig. It's self-evidently absurd to suppose that an overworked church organist with 20 children could possibly have had enough brainpower (or spare time) to will into existence such supreme utterances of Western art as the B Minor Mass, the St. Matthew Passion and the Brandenburg Concertos. Besides, if Bach wrote his own music, where are the letters in which he describes the creative agonies that he suffered while writing it? All he ever talked about was money. . .
OK, you get the idea. I am, as should be apparent, poking fun at those benighted souls who believe that someone other than William Shakespeare—the most prominent candidates being Francis Bacon and the Earl of Oxford—wrote "Hamlet," "Macbeth" and "Romeo and Juliet." In a saner world, nobody would need to poke fun at them, for nobody would give them the time of day, there being no credible evidence whatsoever to support their claims. Alas, such is not even close to the case, for the ranks of Shakespeare deniers have included, incredibly enough, such noted figures as Mark Twain, Henry James and Sigmund Freud, not to mention a fair number of theater folk.
James Shapiro has thus done yeoman service by writing "Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?" In this no-nonsense study of the zanies whose theory-mongering has blighted the world of legitimate Shakespeare studies, Mr. Shapiro not only probes the peculiar mentalities of the most prominent deniers, but provides a brilliantly pithy, devastatingly final summing-up of the mountains of incontrovertible evidence proving that the not-so-mysterious "man from Stratford" did in fact write the greatest plays ever written. Read the last chapter of "Contested Will" and you'll never need to read anything else about what is known in polite circles as "the authorship question."
It doesn't surprise me that such lunacy has grown so popular in recent years. To deny that Shakespeare's plays could have been written by a man of relatively humble background is, after all, to deny the very possibility of genius itself—a sentiment increasingly attractive in a democratic culture where few harsh realities are so unpalatable as that of human inequality. The mere existence of a Shakespeare is a mortal blow to the pride of those who prefer to suppose that everybody is just as good as everybody else. But just as some people are prettier than others, so are some people smarter than others, and no matter who you are or how hard you try, I can absolutely guarantee that you're not as smart as Shakespeare.
If anything, Shakespeare's story reminds us of the existence of a different kind of democracy, the democracy of genius. Time and again, the world of art has been staggered by yet another "Mr. Nobody from Nowhere" (to borrow a phrase from "The Great Gatsby") who, like Michelangelo or Turner or Verdi, strides onto the stage of history, devoid of pedigree and seemingly lacking in culture, and proceeds to start churning out masterpieces. For mere mortals, especially those hard-working artistic craftsmen who long in vain to be touched by fire, few things are so depressing as to be reminded by such creatures of the limits of mere diligence.
On the other hand, my little prefatory fantasia has a somewhat different point. For not only is Shakespeare the only major writer since ancient times whose authorial status has been seriously questioned by large numbers of people, but he's the only major artist of any kind who has attracted such attention. This fact, of which Mr. Shapiro somewhat surprisingly makes no mention in "Contested Will," is for me the most puzzling aspect of the authorship question. Any scholar who dared to suggest that Bach's work wasn't by Bach or Rembrandt's by Rembrandt would, I trust, be handled thereafter with the academic equivalent of padded tongs. Yet outside of the ambiguous evidence of their work, we know scarcely more about the inner lives of either man than we do about that of Shakespeare. Why, then, is he the only creative giant around whom an ever-growing edifice of pseudoscholarly fantasy has been erected?
The answer may be as simple as this: Most of us are far more at home with words than with sounds or images. Not being able to do much more than sketch a crude stick figure, I can't even begin to imagine what it would have felt like to paint "The Night Watch." But I, like you, express myself with words each day of my life, and though I know I'll never write a play like "Cymbeline" or "The Winter's Tale," I also know how it feels to sit down at the keyboard and set down my thoughts about the world.
This is undoubtedly the reason why the world is full of innocents who sincerely believe in their secret hearts that they could write a best-selling novel if only they tried hard enough. I further suspect that it also explains why so many laymen are interested enough in Shakespeare to have an opinion, however uninformed it may be, about the authorship question. The phrase "I'm entitled to my opinion," after all, is so ingrained in the American vocabulary that it even has its own Wikipedia page. And it's true: You are entitled to believe that the Earl of Oxford wrote "King Lear." So, too, am I equally entitled to assume that you're ... well, let's just say wrong, and let it go at that.
— Mr. Teachout, the Journal's drama critic, writes "Sightings" every other Saturday. He is the author of "Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong."
OK, you get the idea. I am, as should be apparent, poking fun at those benighted souls who believe that someone other than William Shakespeare—the most prominent candidates being Francis Bacon and the Earl of Oxford—wrote "Hamlet," "Macbeth" and "Romeo and Juliet." In a saner world, nobody would need to poke fun at them, for nobody would give them the time of day, there being no credible evidence whatsoever to support their claims. Alas, such is not even close to the case, for the ranks of Shakespeare deniers have included, incredibly enough, such noted figures as Mark Twain, Henry James and Sigmund Freud, not to mention a fair number of theater folk.
James Shapiro has thus done yeoman service by writing "Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?" In this no-nonsense study of the zanies whose theory-mongering has blighted the world of legitimate Shakespeare studies, Mr. Shapiro not only probes the peculiar mentalities of the most prominent deniers, but provides a brilliantly pithy, devastatingly final summing-up of the mountains of incontrovertible evidence proving that the not-so-mysterious "man from Stratford" did in fact write the greatest plays ever written. Read the last chapter of "Contested Will" and you'll never need to read anything else about what is known in polite circles as "the authorship question."
It doesn't surprise me that such lunacy has grown so popular in recent years. To deny that Shakespeare's plays could have been written by a man of relatively humble background is, after all, to deny the very possibility of genius itself—a sentiment increasingly attractive in a democratic culture where few harsh realities are so unpalatable as that of human inequality. The mere existence of a Shakespeare is a mortal blow to the pride of those who prefer to suppose that everybody is just as good as everybody else. But just as some people are prettier than others, so are some people smarter than others, and no matter who you are or how hard you try, I can absolutely guarantee that you're not as smart as Shakespeare.
If anything, Shakespeare's story reminds us of the existence of a different kind of democracy, the democracy of genius. Time and again, the world of art has been staggered by yet another "Mr. Nobody from Nowhere" (to borrow a phrase from "The Great Gatsby") who, like Michelangelo or Turner or Verdi, strides onto the stage of history, devoid of pedigree and seemingly lacking in culture, and proceeds to start churning out masterpieces. For mere mortals, especially those hard-working artistic craftsmen who long in vain to be touched by fire, few things are so depressing as to be reminded by such creatures of the limits of mere diligence.
On the other hand, my little prefatory fantasia has a somewhat different point. For not only is Shakespeare the only major writer since ancient times whose authorial status has been seriously questioned by large numbers of people, but he's the only major artist of any kind who has attracted such attention. This fact, of which Mr. Shapiro somewhat surprisingly makes no mention in "Contested Will," is for me the most puzzling aspect of the authorship question. Any scholar who dared to suggest that Bach's work wasn't by Bach or Rembrandt's by Rembrandt would, I trust, be handled thereafter with the academic equivalent of padded tongs. Yet outside of the ambiguous evidence of their work, we know scarcely more about the inner lives of either man than we do about that of Shakespeare. Why, then, is he the only creative giant around whom an ever-growing edifice of pseudoscholarly fantasy has been erected?
The answer may be as simple as this: Most of us are far more at home with words than with sounds or images. Not being able to do much more than sketch a crude stick figure, I can't even begin to imagine what it would have felt like to paint "The Night Watch." But I, like you, express myself with words each day of my life, and though I know I'll never write a play like "Cymbeline" or "The Winter's Tale," I also know how it feels to sit down at the keyboard and set down my thoughts about the world.
This is undoubtedly the reason why the world is full of innocents who sincerely believe in their secret hearts that they could write a best-selling novel if only they tried hard enough. I further suspect that it also explains why so many laymen are interested enough in Shakespeare to have an opinion, however uninformed it may be, about the authorship question. The phrase "I'm entitled to my opinion," after all, is so ingrained in the American vocabulary that it even has its own Wikipedia page. And it's true: You are entitled to believe that the Earl of Oxford wrote "King Lear." So, too, am I equally entitled to assume that you're ... well, let's just say wrong, and let it go at that.
— Mr. Teachout, the Journal's drama critic, writes "Sightings" every other Saturday. He is the author of "Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong."
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Gaspard Monge
Reading of Bonaparte's Egyptian expedition in his biography by Alan Schom, p.96: "polymath Monge and chemist Claude Louis Berthollet"
Friday, February 19, 2010
El Jefe
An article about improved relations between the Dominican Republic and Haiti in the aftermath of the devastating January earthquake sparked my interest in Trujillo.
Some interesting details in the life of this man:
His mother was Altagracia Julia Molina Chevalier, later known as Mamá Julia, whose mother was half-Haitian.
In 1937, claiming that Haiti was harboring his former Dominican opponents, Trujillo ordered an attack on the border, slaughtering tens of thousands of Haitians as they tried to escape.
Trujillo was known for his open-door policy, accepting Jewish refugees from Europe, Japanese migration during the 1930s, and exiles from Spain following its civil war. He developed a uniquely Dominican policy of racial discrimination, Antihaitianismo ("anti-Haitianism"), targeting the mostly-black inhabitants of his neighboring country and those within the Platano Curtain, including many darker Dominican citizens.
His mother was Altagracia Julia Molina Chevalier, later known as Mamá Julia, whose mother was half-Haitian.
In 1937, claiming that Haiti was harboring his former Dominican opponents, Trujillo ordered an attack on the border, slaughtering tens of thousands of Haitians as they tried to escape.
Trujillo was known for his open-door policy, accepting Jewish refugees from Europe, Japanese migration during the 1930s, and exiles from Spain following its civil war. He developed a uniquely Dominican policy of racial discrimination, Antihaitianismo ("anti-Haitianism"), targeting the mostly-black inhabitants of his neighboring country and those within the Platano Curtain, including many darker Dominican citizens.
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