After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie

As part of my marathon reading, I read a short novel by French author Jean Rhys, "After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie". An English woman, Julia Martin, with a troubled domestic past, winds up in Paris, dumped by her "lover", Mr. Mackenzie. Mackenzie promises to keep her solvent and for a while does so, until his lawyer stops the payments. What happens to Julia as she sinks into depression and returns to London only to find her mother dying, and her relatives wanting nothing to do with her, is quite moving. Like "To Have and Have Not", there is a lot of alcohol in this book, but because of Julia's situation, her pernods seem more excusable than the booze they drank in Havana and Key West.

But who am I to judge?

Harry Morgan

"To Have and Have Not" contains three stories, all centered on one individual, Harry Morgan. Morgan, who dies in the third and longest story, is one of a number of individuals whose misspent lives revolve around boats, fishing, alcohol, more alcohol, Key West and Havana. The prose is sparse, and coarse, and to the point, like all of Hemingway. It was written in 1937. I still don't understand how he won a Nobel Prize.

Yea, for WETA

WGMS, Wasington's long time classical music station and, at last rating, one of the most listened to stations in DC, is no more. Having been shunted first from its original AM slot, and the from its original FM slot, and placed into a new FM-only location with less power than it needed, it has now been mercifully been euthanized.

To make up the loss, PBS station WETA is now an all-classical station. No silly ads. And much greater power.

Of course, a second classical station would be welcome. Perhaps it will show up one day.

The Sad Story of 4221-A Connecticut Avenue

This is a tough block only in the sense that it is on a busy street with virtually no parking, and with no anchor establishment to attract crowds. But the small Chinese restaurant seems to do all right, as does the combination KFC/Taco Bell. But the space next door is an address of problems.

For several years, there was an Indian restaurant there (I have already forgotten the name, but I think it was the Bombay something), which was managed by the former owner of the Peacock and Katmandu restaurants. It was a typical Indian restaurant, with typical Indian food, and typical Indian restaurant decor, and very few customers. We went there a few times, but as the years went on, we went less and less and then not at all. Perhaps, we were not alone in dining elsewhere.

After it closed and stayed vacant a while, a restaurant called Redel's opened. It seemed to be a barbecue restaurant, but you really could not tell what it served, or who it wanted to attract. It was, you would say, non-descript. We never went there; I am not sure if I know anyone who did.

Then one day in the Northwest Current, I saw an article saying that Mr. Redel was really pleased how well his restaurant was doing, but that the was completely revamping its menu, and it would now attract everyone from the neighborhood, because of its new broad choice of selections. Two weeks later, it closed.

And it stood vacant again. Then, a sign went up saying that The Coat of Arms was opening. Again, there was no clue as to what kind of food The Coat of Arms would serve, but the restaurant appeared to undergo some renovation, and in the plate glass window in front, there was a knight in shining armour. Or at leat the shining armour part. It didn't look like it came from a museum, but rather from a costume shop. But nevertheless it was a knight, and it certainly fit in with the name of the place.

I don't think that the Coat of Arms ever opened. If it did, it must have closed within a week, but it stayed there looking like it would open for some time.

Then, there was a big paper sign on the plate glass window (the knight having been removed), which said something like Indian Ocean, Indian cuisine, opening soon. Full circle, I thought. This would be another typical Indian restaurant in a building without parking. I must remember not to invest.

But then, having been out of the city for five days, I drive by and Indian restaurant sign is gone, the knight it still away, but the sign says: Opening Soon, The Coat of Arms, under new management.

Stay tuned.

The Collector (1 cent)

The third short book I read on our short Florida trip was John Fowles' 1963 book, "The Collector", the story of a young asocial butterfly collector, who stalks and kidnaps an attractive young girl, secreting her in the basement of a country house, where he fantasizes about her falling in love with him. The book starts as a first person account of the events leading to, and following the kidnapping; I thought this (and at this time the book) rather worthless. Then it switches to the victim's diary, where you see the same events from her point of view, along with aspects of her young (but intellectually precocious) life. This was the best part of the book, and makes reading it worthwhile. In this age of focus on kidnapping and prisoners, I thought that Fowles captured the emotions of a kidnapping victim very well. Of course I also thought that the victim was a much more interesting character than the perpetrator.

A movie with Terrance Stamp was released in 1965; it won a number of awards, and I would like to see it.

And, I would like to know if the heroine of the book (Miranda) is a somewhat older Lolita, and if the butterfly collector is a somewhat younger Nabokov. There are significant differences of course, but enough common grounds to make you wonder what was really on Fowles' mind.

Boris Pasternak

I never could get through Dr. Zhivago. This time I tried The Last Summer, a short novel by Pasternak which takes place in pre-revolutionary Russia, and tells the story of a young Russian man, who has been disconcerted by his mother's death, and comes to spend some time with his sister in a factory town, but he falls asleep and dreams of his earlier years as a family tutor, when he fell in love with the Danish housekeeper but spent his time with prostitutes.

I couldn't understand it at all. Was it Pasternak or the translator? I will never know.

Of Moon and Sixpence

"Of Moon and Sixpence", loosely modeled after the life of Paul Gaugin, is Somerset Maugham's novelette about an English stockbroker who abruptly leaves his wife and two children to move to Paris. Thinking that her very conventional husband has fallen for a young shopgirl and is living the life of luxury, she sends a friend to retrieve him. The friend finds there is no shopgirl, and no luxury, and that the stockbroker has been driven by an uncontrollable urge to become a painter. Unsucessful in Paris (and blessed with a horrible personality and value system), the painter winds up on Tahiti where he paints until he dies of leprosy. After his death, he is recognized as a genius and major artist of the century.

The book is well written; it moved me right along. I read it on the airplane between Washington and Ft. Myers.

Is it realistic? Not really. Is each scene credible? Not at all. But does it hold together? Yes, in large part because of Maugham's artful use of language.

Sunny (not) Florida (7 cents)

I am in Florida for the second time this week, this time in Naples, where we will be for the next four days.

But let me tell you about my one day trip on Monday to Ft. Lauderdale. The plan was to take a 7:30 a.m. flight from DC, arriving about 10, and leaving on a 6:45 flight to get home about 9:15.

Everything went like clockwork at the beginning. Getting up at 5, I scraped the ice off the car, and was at the airport by 6:45 and on the plane by 7. We got our instructions and were promised a wonderful flight. Although all this was hard to hear because there did not appear to be a microphone on our Spirit Air flight.

We were then told that there would be a brief delay because they needed to load the passangers manually. (Yes, you read that correctly; that is what they said, and all they said).

Then we were told that the gates were closed and we would push off in two to three minutes.

Then 20 minutes passed.

Then we were told that there were two passengers who had not yet been boarded because of a computer malfunction and that we were waiting for them to get cleared.

Ten more minutes passed.

Then two men got on the plane, presumably the passangers, but at least one must have been special because he went right into the cockpit. Five minutes later, he came out and took a first row seat.

Then we were told that there was one maintenance issue that had to be checked, but it should not be a real problem. More time passed.

Then a new maintenance guy comes on the plane and goes into the cockpit.

Then we are told that everything is OK, but that there is a required computer diagnostic check on the plane because it is Monday morning, and in order to run the check, the plane's electronic system will be shut down. We should not be alarmed. It will start up in two minutes. It is like rebooting a home computer. ("We have all had that happen, heh,heh", said the pilot). It would check out fine immediately and we will be off.

The electric system was never shut down. We do not know if a diagnostic check was made, or if it needed to be.

Then we were told that people connecting to San Juan were going to miss their connection; they should get off and their luggage was being unloaded. About 5 or 6 passangers left.

Then we were told we needed to take on "several thousand pounds" of additional fuel, if we were going to get to Ft. Lauderdale, and that people on the right would see the fuel truck loading the fuel. I was on the left; the people across the aisle reported no fuel truck.

Then the Punta Gorda passengers had to deplane.

Then we taxied out. Then we stopped. Then for about 20 minutes we were de-iced.

Then, at about 10:15, we took off, so my arrival for my 12:00 presentation before a client board of directors was delayed from 10:30 to 1:15. I had to speak quickly.

Coming back everything was on time. But not pleasant as the gods bounced us around the entire way. A lot.

So, what was the story of the Spirit a.m. flight? We'll never know.

(Last night, to Ft. Meyer, USAir worked perfectly.

Highlights of the Weekend

1. Not the 4-1 loss the Caps suffered to the Panthers on Saturday. It was an awful game.

2. Not "Ultima Thule", a Swiss movie about a man in a coma who dreams of Alaska, while the hospital tries to keep him alive. They should have dropped the plot and made it an IMEX movie. It would have been a hit.

3. Perhaps, the C-Span caller, who confidently said that sometimes the voters get ahead of the people.

4. Perhaps, the delicious (but highly priced) red snapper at Luigino's.

5. Not the fact that my barber shop raised the price of haircuts by $1.

6. Perhaps the snow, although we had to cancel our dinner with friends (who got stuck in Fairfax).

7. Maybe, but not quite, "The Two of Us", 1968 movie about 8 year old Jewish boy in France farmed out to Christians in a village for the duration of the war.

Quick Takes (2 cents)

1. Theater. "Sleeping Arrangements" at Theater J. A feel good fantasy memoir of growing up in the Bronx in a very odd family. Your father was killed in the war (OK, so there was no war going on, but you're just a kid), your mother dies when you are seven, you best friends get you into trouble, your summer camp experience is a disaster, you move in with your two odd (and too odd) uncles, and your wacky grandmother, Etka from Minsk, joins the household. It is not profound, but it is simple and it is cute and defintely worth seeing.

2. Movies. "Live and Become", about a non-Jewish Ethiopian boy who, at age 11, in pushed onto an Operation Moses plane by his mother to help him escape a refugee camp, and live and become. And never to tell anyone that he isn't Jewish. For the first half of the movie, the boy, adopted by a white French Jewish family, is extraordinary; in the second half, as he becomes a doctor, and joins Medicines sans Frontieres and returns to the camp in Sudan to work, it begins to unravel a bit only because it tries to do too much. Absolutely worth seeing; also provides very good visuals both of dusty African refugee camps and of parts of Israel not normally seen on the screen. Also saw two movies on television, "A Song for Bobby Long" with a graying John Travolta (he is in his mid-50s? I thought he was still 35) and Scarlet Johanson, and "Creche" a new French film. "Bobby Long" did not get terrific press, and it is clearly not a masterpiece, but it catches the rhythm of the city that was New Orleans as Johanson, returning to her estranged mother's house after her death, finds it inhabited by Bobby Long and a friend, and has to make do and accommodate. "Creche", having to do with strange messages and drawings being delivered to the home of a TV journalist, perhaps traced to a man from Algeria who the journalist's parents almost adopted as a young boy. We kept watching hoping something would happen that was both interesting and would pull the movie together. No such luck.

3. Book. Finished "A Matter of Opinion", the memoirs (part personal, part history) of Victor Navasky, long time editor and sometime publisher of 'The Nation' magazine. It bogs down in places, but it is by and large a fascinating story of American opinion magazines, and all of the extraordinary and well known people who wrote for them, and tried to keep them functioning. For anyone interested in the topic, the book is highly recommended.

4. Restaurants. "Frascati", an Italian restaurant in Bethesda which has been around a long time, was surprisingly good. We had a whole tilapia and osso bucco. I am not sure I would do the osso bucco again, but not because of the way it was prepared. Just not my favorite. Another good meal at Logan Tavern.

Book Two: The Greek Treasure

I had never read an Irving Stone book. He was of course the examplar of the historic biography, with books like "Lust for Life", the story of Van Gogh.

One of his later books was "The Greek Treasure", the story of Henry and Sophia Schliemann and the search for Troy and Mycenae. Henry, German by birth, American by citizenship, marries a Greek teenager and (sometimes with her, sometimes on his own) uses the fortune he made in Russia and California to fund his dream: the discovery of Troy. He succeeds, navigating a course between being a loyal family man and a self-centered fanatic, between Turkish (Ottoman) and Greek officials, between his pledge to display the treasures in Greece and competing pulls from Constantinople, Paris, London and Berlin.

The life is one of luxury and hardship, but on the whole, Schliemann succeeded in meeting his goals, and his young wife (30 years his junior) became quite an active partner and archeological exploer in her own right. It is quite a story.

The book? It reads quickly. It takes the basic history and fills it in with a lot of domestic dialogue. While the domestic subplots might not be necessary, they don't interfere with the story.

There are really three story lines, I guess. The personal story of the Schliemann's, the history of the discoveries, and significant amounts of retelling of the stories of the ancient Greeks that fueled the need to make these exciting, but exhausting, discoveries.

I cannot speak for the accuracy of the history, but assume it. As to the fictionalized story, it is credible. As to the descriptions of ancient history, I found it a little dry, particularly when compared to that other popular reteller of these tales, Richard Halliburton, who also popularizes ancient history, but in a much more unique and entertaining fashion.

The treasures of Troy wound up in Berlin, apparently to be lost during World War II.

The Right Word

The topic on this morning's talk show was the "surge", and the question was: is this the right word?

Quoted was Mark Twain, who apparently said something like: "The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between 'lightning' and 'lightning bug'.

Book One: Betraying Spinoza (5 Cents)

Our study group this evening is meeting to discuss Spinoza. The basic text is chapter 40 of James Carroll's "Constantine's Sword", but we have also read Rebecca Goldstein's "Betraying Spinoza", which has the benefit of being readable, short, informative and interesting.

Spinoza comes across as a very modern guy, living at just the wrong time. He was excommunicated from the Amsterdam Jewish community (the precise reasons are not quite clear, but he was obviously a pain in their side) when he was still a teenager, but he never converted to Christianity, so he had to live outside all of the religious communities of his time, when the ONLY communities were religious communities. So when someone says: "I wonder why Spinoza never married", it seems clear to me that (putting aside whether he could find a ready spouse in his situation), but how could he find anyone to conduct a marriage ceremony if the idea of civil marriage did not exist? You can see his problem.

At any rate, here was a modern philosopher who said that the entire universe if a manifestation of God: God is everywhere. Not in heaven sending down his son to die, nor in heaven promising a return to a promised land. Not a God of historical progression, but a God who permeates everything. Not a God who requires specific ritual or observance. There was simply no religion to encompass what today does not sound weird at all. And maybe it did not sound weird then, either. It was just highly, entirely politically incorrect, threatening every political and social structure that existed in this very precarious liberal country in a very precarious world.

Baruch Spinoza: the right man and just the wrong time?

As Easy as One, Two, Three....

The final touches are being put on the renovation of the Connecticut Avenue tunnel under DuPont Circle.

Admiring the speed and quality of the work, as I drove through this morning, I was impressed at the concrete blocks that have been put in place to separate the northbound and southbound lanes of travel.

I noted that the architect/engineers had carefully marked each piece, so that the workmen would have no problem in determing what goes where.

And there they are, with their identification numbers not yet cleaned off.

From South to North, you will find 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 8, 9, 11, 12

A real contest (10 cents)

Where is this? If you are clever (some of you), you will be able to let me know.

Andy Rooney at Politics and Prose

Andy Rooney has put out a new book, titled "Out of My Mind". He appeared at Politics and Prose last night with his publisher, Peter Osnos, in dialogue.

He is 87. I don't think he wants to be making appearances like this. He did not make a presentation, but answered questions, first those posed by Osnos and then by the audience. His answers were not expansive, only a few were clever, he told very few tales of his past.

It was not a painful evening, and we did learn a little about his early days as a reporter for the Stars and Stripes during World War II, and his take on journalism and the media today, but you just got the feeling he'd would rather have been somewhere else.

His journalism start came after he was drafted out of Colgate when he was 19, and wound up in England, first in artillery and then in journalism (he'd edited the Colgate paper), where he covered the war for the "Stars and Stripes". Then, he said, reporters had their own jeeps, could buddy up (he often traveled with Ernie Pyle, whom he liked a lot), and go wherever they wanted. You did not have to check in first and say where you were going. Today, he says, the military first needs to know where you are, then prepares people to talk to you, and the news is hardly news. He also says that, in Baghdad, for instance, the journalists are in worst shape because they either stay in the Green Zone, or they go out and get killed.

My guess is that his war time recollections (I think the book is called "My War") make for good reading. Apparently, you can see some of his original dispatches on the Stars and Stripes website.

Does anyone buy his books? I guess so. Does anyone read them? Probably fewer.

I was thinking about all the books that are published as I stood watching him last night and looking around the store. The many chairs were filled when we got there about 15 minutes early.

Who reads all of these books? Who buys them?

I was standing on the cookbook wall, where they have hundreds and hundreds of cookbooks, of every flavor imagineable. Why just where I was standing, right next to my left knee, they had four copies of a very attractive looking book called "The Man and His Meatballs".

No bestseller, this.

"I Drive the Speed Limit" (3 cents)

This was the bumper sticker on the car driving in front of me this morning down Brandywine Street.

Of all the irritating bumper stickers I have seen, for some reason this one irritated me the most.

"How sanctimonious", I thought. "Holier than thou."

I followed this car as it crept down Brandywine at about 20 miles and hour, my irritation growing, until it turned left, without signalling and after running a stop sign.

Violet Bonham Carter

Violet Bonham Carter was the grandmother of actress Helena Bonham Carter, the daughter of British prime minister Herbert Asquith, and close friend of Winston Churchill. In 1965, when she was almost 80 years old, she published her memoirs of Churchill, entitled "Winston Churchill, an Intimate Portrait". They are fascinating to read, if a bit dense at times.

Churchill was about 15 years her senior and they met when she was a teenager. She was taken by his charismatic personality from the beginning, as were most people. She tells of his early life, and the adventures he found as a soldier in India and a reporter in Africa, including his escape from a Boer prison. And his start in politics as a Conservative, before his defection to her father's Liberal party. Irish home rule, and World War I are important parts of this story, including Churchill's failure at leadership in connection with the fall of Antwerp, and the loss at Gallipoli where 40,000 British soldiers died.

Churchill was always sure of himself; he was also often inconsistent. Although he became a great war leader (as a soldier, as head of the Admiralty and eventually as prime minister), he early on said of war: "when mighty populations are impelled on each other, each individually severallyl embittered and inflamed--when resources of science and civilization sweep away everything that might mitigate their fury, a European war can only end in the ruin of the vanquished and the scarcely less fatal dislocation and exhaustion of the conquerors. Democracy is more vindictive than Cabinets. The wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of Kings".

Violet Bonham Carter was a very bright woman. In another era, she would have been a politician in her own right. In early 20th century England, she was an intimate advisor to her father, and an intimate (not physical, but in every other way) friend of Churchill's. Her story is an insider's story, and you can see how close many of the issues and emotions facing politicians and their relationships with each other are to those facing politicians today. But, England being England, their dialogue was sharper, "rapier-like" you would say.

Her writing is incredibly well crafted; this seems to have been an early English trait. On the death of Lord Kitchener: "To the nation, to whom Kitchener was a legend, it was as thought Nelson's Column had suddenly fallen at their feet." On C

Her quotations from Churchill (on painting "just to paint is great fun. The colors are lovely to look at and delicious to squeeze out"), from her father's diaries and speeches, from her father's rival within the party Lloyd George's speeches, and from Conservative Arthur Balfour's speeches are equally elegant. What has happened to this type of rhetoric and oratory?

The book ended abruptly, and I assume that she was anticipating additional volumes. It is 1917, and the Americans have not yet entered World War I. Bonham Carter says:

"In the years that followed, thought we never lost our way into each other's minds, and though at moments nothing counted but the unbroken bond between us, there were times when our passionate disagreement was vehemently expressed; others when our differences seemed too deep to be bridged by words and silence fell between us--times of incomprehension and bewilderment. Until at last a day came when the paths that for so long had parted us suddenly met. And as they brought us face to face we knew that we were once more side by side."

Jo Davidson

Jo Davidson is a sculptor. I always thought he was a she, but it turns out that she is a he. His long career was primarily as a portrait sculptor, and next to the Josephine Baker exhibit, you will find about 15 of his busts, including one of himself, as well as Gertrude Stein, FDR, Andrew Mellon, Clare Booth Luce, Sinclair Lewis and others. Very nice.

You've Come a Long Way From St. Louis (3 cents)

I am speaking of Josephine Baker, who ran away from St. Louis to sing and dance when she was only 13, and who was "discovered" at 16 and cast in some of the country's top African-American variety shows. Then came Paris, and (often dressed not at all), she became the biggest celebrity in France and the center of a large black American expatriate artistic/entertainment community.

And she lasted a long time, going from stripper, to chanteuse, to movie star, to woman of the world. Quite an impressive history. A long way from St. Louis.

The Portrait Gallery has a Josephine Baker exhibit, which contains by my count 101 different pieces: photos, paintings, posters, movies, programs, books, advertisements and endorsements, masks and sculptures. A very nice exhibit, not only because Baker was so ingratiating, but because of the quality of some of the pieces themselves, especially the art nouveau posters of Michael Gyarmarity, and the lithographs of Paul Colin, both of whom were very close personally to Baker.

Yes, a long way from St. Louis. But, in 1952, she came back for a homecoming performance at the old Kiel Auditorium. The program is in the exhibit (and is probably the least artistic of any piece).