Archives for September 2005

(Pardon my Mary McCarthy kick, the latest in a series…)

“The arts have aged too, and it is impossible for them to ‘go back,’ just as it is impossible to recapture the youth or reinstitute a handicraft economy, like the one Ruskin dreamed of. These things are beyond our control and independent of our will. I, for instance, would like, more than anything else, to write like Tolstoy; I imagine that I still see something resembling the world Tolstoy saw. But my pen or my typewriter simply balks; it ‘sees’ differently from me and records what to me, as a person, are distortions and angularities. Anyone who has read my work will be at a loss to find any connection with Tolstoy; to Tolstoy himself both I and my work wold be anathema. I myself might reform, but my work never could; it could never ‘go straight,’ even if I were much more gifted than I am. Most novelists today, I suspect, would like to ‘go straight’; we are conscious of being twisted when we write. This is the self-consciousness, the squirming, of the form we work in; we are stuck in the phylogenesis of the novel.”

Mary McCarthy, “Characters in Fiction”

(Pardon my Mary McCarthy kick, the latest in a series…)

“The arts have aged too, and it is impossible for them to ‘go back,’ just as it is impossible to recapture the youth or reinstitute a handicraft economy, like the one Ruskin dreamed of. These things are beyond our control and independent of our will. I, for instance, would like, more than anything else, to write like Tolstoy; I imagine that I still see something resembling the world Tolstoy saw. But my pen or my typewriter simply balks; it ‘sees’ differently from me and records what to me, as a person, are distortions and angularities. Anyone who has read my work will be at a loss to find any connection with Tolstoy; to Tolstoy himself both I and my work wold be anathema. I myself might reform, but my work never could; it could never ‘go straight,’ even if I were much more gifted than I am. Most novelists today, I suspect, would like to ‘go straight’; we are conscious of being twisted when we write. This is the self-consciousness, the squirming, of the form we work in; we are stuck in the phylogenesis of the novel.”

Mary McCarthy, “Characters in Fiction”

“Intellectual responses are known as opinions and Mary had them and had them. Still she was so little of an ideologue as to be sometimes unsettling in her refusal of tribal reaction–left or right, male or female, that sort of thing. She was doggedly personal and often this meant being so aslant that there was, in this determined rationalist, an endearing crankiness, very American and homespun somehow. This was true especially in domestic matters, which held a high place in her life. There she is grinding the coffee beans of a morning in a wonderful wooden and iron contraption that seemed to me designed for muscle-building–a workout it was. In her acceptance speech upon receiving the MacDowell Colony Medal for Literature she said that she did not believe in laborsaving devices. And thus she kept on year after year, up to her last days, clacking away on her old green Hermes non-electric typewriter, with a feeling that this effort and the others were akin to the genuine in the arts–to the handmade.”

Elizabeth Hardwick, foreword to Mary McCarthy’s Intellectual Memoirs

“Intellectual responses are known as opinions and Mary had them and had them. Still she was so little of an ideologue as to be sometimes unsettling in her refusal of tribal reaction–left or right, male or female, that sort of thing. She was doggedly personal and often this meant being so aslant that there was, in this determined rationalist, an endearing crankiness, very American and homespun somehow. This was true especially in domestic matters, which held a high place in her life. There she is grinding the coffee beans of a morning in a wonderful wooden and iron contraption that seemed to me designed for muscle-building–a workout it was. In her acceptance speech upon receiving the MacDowell Colony Medal for Literature she said that she did not believe in laborsaving devices. And thus she kept on year after year, up to her last days, clacking away on her old green Hermes non-electric typewriter, with a feeling that this effort and the others were akin to the genuine in the arts–to the handmade.”

Elizabeth Hardwick, foreword to Mary McCarthy’s Intellectual Memoirs

This is where I am tonight, a Frank Lloyd Wright cottage perched on the edge of a heavily wooded bluff overlooking Wisconsin’s Mirror Lake. I’m two miles from the Wisconsin Dells as the crow flies, though that viper’s tangle of water parks, roller coasters, resort hotels, and candy stores seems at least half a continent away from the stone terrace I’m sharing with a couple of curious squirrels. I dug the iPod out of my suitcase a little while ago and pressed the shuffle-play button, and what came crashing out of the speakers, much to my bemusement, was Stephen Sondheim’s “Color and Light”: Order…design…composition…tone…form. Check and double check.

By the time most of you get around to reading these words, I’ll be somewhere in the middle of the protracted process of making my way from Mirror Lake to my Upper West Side apartment in Manhattan. A two-and-a-half-hour drive, two flights, a cab, and the thing is done (sigh). The Teachout Museum awaits me. Also a ton of snail mail. Also a Wall Street Journal deadline, which I have to hit before lunchtime on Tuesday. Also a major development in my professional life, which comes to pass first thing Saturday morning. (See immediately below for details.)

Conclusion: I need a break, not merely from blogging but also from the beck and call of my lunatic schedule.

Solution: I’m blowing town for a couple of days, purely for my own pleasure.

I’ll go up the spout tomorrow afternoon, mere minutes after I file Friday’s Journal drama column (that’s the deadline). I won’t post again, not even one measly little almanac entry, until Friday. Between now and then, my whereabouts will be known only to a tightly knit group of intimates, all sworn to absolute secrecy on pain of excommunication.

Commandments:

I shall attend no performances of any kind, nor shall I read any improving books.

I shall not check my e-mail.

I shall not turn on my cell phone (it doesn’t work where I’m going, anyway).

See you Friday.

This is where I am tonight, a Frank Lloyd Wright cottage perched on the edge of a heavily wooded bluff overlooking Wisconsin’s Mirror Lake. I’m two miles from the Wisconsin Dells as the crow flies, though that viper’s tangle of water parks, roller coasters, resort hotels, and candy stores seems at least half a continent away from the stone terrace I’m sharing with a couple of curious squirrels. I dug the iPod out of my suitcase a little while ago and pressed the shuffle-play button, and what came crashing out of the speakers, much to my bemusement, was Stephen Sondheim’s “Color and Light”: Order…design…composition…tone…form. Check and double check.

By the time most of you get around to reading these words, I’ll be somewhere in the middle of the protracted process of making my way from Mirror Lake to my Upper West Side apartment in Manhattan. A two-and-a-half-hour drive, two flights, a cab, and the thing is done (sigh). The Teachout Museum awaits me. Also a ton of snail mail. Also a Wall Street Journal deadline, which I have to hit before lunchtime on Tuesday. Also a major development in my professional life, which comes to pass first thing Saturday morning. (See immediately below for details.)

Conclusion: I need a break, not merely from blogging but also from the beck and call of my lunatic schedule.

Solution: I’m blowing town for a couple of days, purely for my own pleasure.

I’ll go up the spout tomorrow afternoon, mere minutes after I file Friday’s Journal drama column (that’s the deadline). I won’t post again, not even one measly little almanac entry, until Friday. Between now and then, my whereabouts will be known only to a tightly knit group of intimates, all sworn to absolute secrecy on pain of excommunication.

Commandments:

I shall attend no performances of any kind, nor shall I read any improving books.

I shall not check my e-mail.

I shall not turn on my cell phone (it doesn’t work where I’m going, anyway).

See you Friday.

Those of you who keep up with the newspaper business are doubtless aware that The Wall Street Journal is launching its long-awaited Saturday edition this week. What you don’t know–this is the first public announcement–is that I’ll be writing a new biweekly column called “Sightings” for the Leisure & Arts page in the new paper’s “Pursuits” section. I’ll be writing about the arts in America–all the arts, and not just in New York City but from coast to coast. (Yes, I’ll continue to write the Journal‘s Friday drama column as well. Broadway isn’t getting rid of me that easily.)

To find out more about what I’ll be up to in “Sightings,” pick up a copy of the first Saturday Wall Street Journal on September 17 and read my inaugural column. If you’re already a Journal subscriber, off or on line, you’ll automatically receive the Saturday edition as part of your subscription. Otherwise, buy a copy at your favorite newsstand and check me out.

Those of you who keep up with the newspaper business are doubtless aware that The Wall Street Journal is launching its long-awaited Saturday edition this week. What you don’t know–this is the first public announcement–is that I’ll be writing a new biweekly column called “Sightings” for the Leisure & Arts page in the new paper’s “Pursuits” section. I’ll be writing about the arts in America–all the arts, and not just in New York City but from coast to coast. (Yes, I’ll continue to write the Journal‘s Friday drama column as well. Broadway isn’t getting rid of me that easily.)

To find out more about what I’ll be up to in “Sightings,” pick up a copy of the first Saturday Wall Street Journal on September 17 and read my inaugural column. If you’re already a Journal subscriber, off or on line, you’ll automatically receive the Saturday edition as part of your subscription. Otherwise, buy a copy at your favorite newsstand and check me out.