Archives for April 12, 2006

I took a look yesterday at a list of the twelve top-grossing movies in North America. I’d heard of four of them: I read the novel on which Thank You for Smoking is based when it came out a few years ago, and I’ve seen posters for Phat Girlz, Failure to Launch, and She’s the Man while walking to and from the gym. The other eight weren’t even names to me, nor do I plan to seek them out. As I mentioned in this space a few weeks ago, I haven’t been to a movie theater since last October, and it’s been at least a year since I last saw a first-run episode of any TV series (not counting cooking shows, which I regard as a species of soft porn). As for pop music, the only new songs I hear are the ones that happen to be playing on the radios of the cabs that take me to and from the theater district.

I can’t remember when I’ve been so completely out of touch. Reviewing films for Crisis and writing my “Second City” column for the Washington Post used to keep me more or less aware of the buzz, but I gave those gigs up last fall, after which I hurled myself into a spasm of workaholism that came to an abrupt end when I checked into the hospital. Once I got out I pulled into my shell, and I’ve been there ever since. I now spend most of my time going to new plays, writing my Wall Street Journal and Commentary columns, and working on Hotter Than That: A Life of Louis Armstrong. From time to time I watch an old movie on TV that I haven’t seen: I tuned in Delbert Mann’s Mister Buddwing
the other night, but only because James Garner was in it. Otherwise I look at the art on my walls, listen to familiar pieces of music, and reread old standbys (I just pulled James Gould Cozzens’ Guard of Honor off the shelf for the umpteenth time). In recent weeks I haven’t even been keeping up with the blogosphere, at least not very closely.

I suspect I’ve entered a fallow period, a necessary time of recovery after the frenzied events of the second half of 2005. I nearly died, then I turned fifty: that’s enough to knock anybody off his pins, and I’d say I was well and truly knocked. The other day I had occasion to quote to a friend the Spanish proverb that figures frequently in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels, May no new thing arise. That’s for me. More than a few new things arose in my life in the past couple of years, and for the moment I’ve had enough.

This, too, shall pass, sooner or later. At some point I’m sure I’ll start to feel the tug of the new, bob to the surface, and start sniffing the air. I always have. But not just yet. I’m not quite ready to engage with the moment. I think I’ll stick to the tried and true for a little while longer. The world will have to take care of itself, for now.

“Colonel Ross must admit that modesty of this kind was pleasing in a man who had risen to high place; yet it was not (perhaps unfortunately for the world) the basic stuff of greatness. It spoke a simplicity of nature little related to the complexities, often unpleasant, of those natures that are resolved to lead, and also, by a suggestion of mystery in power in those very complexities, apt to impose leadership–the able, queer, vain men who in large-scale emergencies are turned to, and so make history.

“Beyond question General Beal had been tried by emergency and not found wanting; but as far as Colonel Ross knew or could guess, the emergencies were the soldier’s, the man of action’s, immediate and personal, well within a simple nature’s resources of physical courage and quick sight. Because he found himself meeting such emergencies adequately or more than adequately, General Beal might be right in holding himself, humbly, no more than a lucky fellow. Colonel Ross, too, thought (that being how it was) that General Beal was lucky. Anyone was lucky who could go a successful way without the call to exercise greatness, without developing greatness’s enabling provisions–the great man’s inner contradictions; his mean, inspired inconsistencies; his giddy acting on hunches; and his helpless, not mere modest acceptance of, but passionate, necessary trust in, luck.”

James Gould Cozzens, Guard of Honor

Cements reputation as a long-winded bore! Just now on Veronica Mars:

Guidance counselor: You were sleeping in class. Mrs. Taft said she’s reprimanded three times for wearing headphones while she’s teaching.

Veronica: She’s reading The Golden Bowl. [beat] Aloud. [beat] With a fake English accent.

Well, if that isn’t provocation, I don’t know what is.

My favorite kind of weather may just be overnight rain. Of course, this is immeasurably nicer when one is listening to the patter from under some covers in bed than when one is burning the midnight oil against an unmovable deadline and propping the eyelids with toothpicks. It’s raining outside now, tapping gently at the windows, and I’m up late cranking out a book review and sadly thinking about wasted rainfall and what might have been. I can’t say much more about the book until the review appears, but I can say that I loved it. This book is no sleeper–plenty of critics agree with me–but I’m still delighted to have a chance of my own to shout from the rooftops about it. Sometimes I’m reluctant to write about a book I’ve adored, because sometimes such a book will fall apart to some degree when I try to articulate its merits precisely. But on this one scrutiny is having the opposite effect, revealing fine structural details and different hues and shades that I missed previously. Which is all perfectly true, but also a way of luring myself back to the work at hand…. Blog at you soon.

Excuse our silence this morning. The “About Last Night” server was down for unexplained reasons, and we were unable to post anything. We seem to be back in business now.

As always, more anon.