I'd Be More Interested If You Were Dead

I saw a T shirt in a catalog recently that said: "History Buff: I'd be more interested in you if you were dead."  I thought that was funny ...

I compliment myself to think that I could live quite comfortably, and even happily, in a 19th Century environment. Even though I work in television and enjoy the product, and though I obviously blog on the internet and enjoy that, books remain a boundless pleasure.  Electricity is nice; central heating is something that I would be reluctant to surrender, but I've lived in houses with wood fireplaces and stoves that not only did a good job, but sometimes too good a job of keeping it warm.  Air conditioning?  Well, yeah, I guess that's important.

Society, though, I think was more pleasant in its way.  I finally got to see the new Coen brothers version of "True Grit" the other night, and was reminded of the baroque language of the day, for which the film was justly celebrated.  It reminded me of T.R. Reid's excellent account of his time as the Washington Post's bureau chief in Tokyo, Confucius Lives Next Door.  In it, he speculates that the equally elaborate way of Japanese speech presents an insight into the structured  society and very low crime rate in that country.  I like that idea.

I think it would be nice to live in a somewhat more formal and polite society.  I grew up in the 1960s, when youth (and the media culture) rebelled against what they saw as the restricted, limited, rule bound world of the gray flannel man.  Though Victorian art (like Art Nouveau) was enjoyed and celebrated in the psychedelic culture, to label something "Victorian" then was to mark it as closed minded and unacceptably, even ridiculously, structured.  Everyone was to be free to do as they pleased, and "why can't we just tell the truth all the time, instead of being so ... polite."

Well, 40 years later, I'm not sure it has really worked out.  I saw a piece on the internet on this.  Discussing the current  culture of self-obsession and self-esteem, the author turns to a quote from Marilyn Monroe: "I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best."

"Out of all the profundities ever uttered," Matt Walsh then explains, "what does it say about our society that THIS is the quote we’ve decided to take to heart?"  Absolutely right, and explained better than I could later in his blog.

Or perhaps, on the opposite side of the thought, there's this from NPR's "This I Believe" series. Author Dierdre Sullivan explains why she thinks her father was wise to demand, even as a child, that she attend viewings and funerals of friends and acquaintances as well as family.  "'Always go to the funeral' means that I have to do the right thing when I really, really don't feel like it," she says.  "I have to remind myself of it when I could make some small gesture, but I don't really have to and I definitely don't want to."  Being polite, caring enough to not force people to deal with you at your worst, that comes in the small things.

Maybe we could all try a little harder ...

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

- Ian MacLaren

Now THAT's Writing ...

There's an anecdote that when the miraculous comedy writing team that worked on Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows" came up with a great joke, none of them would laugh.  They never actually laughed as they wrote some of the best sketch comedy ever.  When someone came up with a truly wonderful gag, the rest would simply nod and say, "Yeah, that's funny."

Though I lack that kind of self control, I sometimes feel I want to do something similar -- but with an added tone of awe in my voice -- when I run across truly great journalistic writing.  Usually, it's old writing, the kind of reporting that's not done anymore.  It's the kind of journalism that was necessary in an age when the reports had to be mailed back, and the news was often days if not weeks old.  It was the kind of description that had to be put on the page when there were no 24-hour cable networks, no television at all.  You'd be lucky if there was a newsreel, and that usually without synch sound.  The reporter had to put you there, and do it only with the written word.

I think that art is too often forgotten today.  Look at the complaints when, at the recent "Whitey" Bulger trial, cameras were not allowed in the courtroom.  Legions of journalists, used to having their television  -- with sound -- and still images, found themselves at a loss when composing reports of the most dramatic mafia trial in recent memory.  People were describing murders right out of the movies, old gangsters were staring each other down in the courtroom ... novels have been built on such things, and you can't crank out a decent minute-and-a-half with drawings?

I look at things like Kirke Simpson's 1922 account for AP of the return of the Unknown Soldier from France to Arlington.  It won the Pulitzer.  Sure, it's sort of antiquated in style, but look at that rich description of the ship slowly moving up the Potomac, the minute guns thumping as she comes.  You want to savor the words like a fine wine, rolling them around in your head.  Or the articles that triggered this post, in the New Yorker, chosen by editor David Remnick (of whom I am jealous beyond words in general).  He points to two separate reports on the Nuremberg trials, both written in 1946, but in a way neither describing the trials per se.  Rather, they are rich descriptive stories, telling about the places and people who are what make something like the trial an event worth reporting.  Because, when you think about it, an event is rarely a thing unto itself.  Rather, it is the actions of people in a place, even when that event seems apart from the people.

Tornado ratings, for example, are not really rating the tornado itself, but its effects on houses and people.  There can be (and I suppose are) tornadoes out to sea, away from ships and people, about which we never know ... and never shall.  They are not, for us, an event.  But what if someone should go out seeking those storms ...

Anyway, great writing, writing like these authors created, now that's something a person can aspire to, something one can wish to create for a magazine or a book or a blog ...