Hope Amid Despair

Under the headline "On Optimism and Despair," the December 22nd issue of The New York Review of Books includes a talk given in Berlin on November 10th by novelist Zadie Smith upon receiving the 2016 Welt Literature Prize (and, if I recall my college German classes, the English translation of "Welt" is "World"). In the brief but poignant talk, Ms. Smith waxes both philosophical (largely about the recent American election) and autobiographical.  Though the piece is short, I could quote several passages from it, including a beautiful passage on incremental change, but I choose to quote from the final paragraph and its sobering but hopeful beckoning:

If novelists know anything it's that individual citizens are internally plural: they have within them the full range of behavioral possibilities. They are like complex musical scores from which certain melodies can be teased out and others ignored or suppressed, depending, at least in part, on who is doing the conducting. At this moment, all over the world--and most recently in America--the conductors standing in front of this human orchestra have only the meanest and most banal melodies in mind. Here in Germany you will remember these martial songs; they are not a very distant memory. But there is no place on earth where they have not been played at one time or another. Those of us who remember, too, a finer music must try now to play it, and encourage others, if we can, to sing along.

A Seaward Metaphor

I have yet to read Proust (someday, perhaps), but tonight I read a fine essay about reading Proust by writer Sarah Boxer in The Atlantic.  She writes glowingly about reading In Search of Lost Time (a/k/a Remembrance of Things Past) on her cellphone at night.  Here is how she resolves the seeming incongruity of reading such a massive literary masterpiece on such a minuscule device:

Soon you will see that the smallness of your cellphone (my screen was about two by three inches) and the length of Proust's sentences are not the shocking mismatch you might think.  Your cellphone screen is like a tiny glass-bottomed boat moving slowly over a vast and glowing ocean of words in the night.  There is no shore.  There is nothing beyond the words in front of you.  It's a voyage for one in the nighttime.  Pure romance.

Terrific imagery and use of metaphor, although it can be appreciated best by those of us who have had the pleasure of riding in glass bottom boats.  That I have done, even if I haven't read Proust.

From "Zero K," by Don DeLillo

This is a beautifully written book exploring existential questions in an almost mystical, oblique and futuristic way.  The narrator, Jeffrey, witnesses his father's human cryogenics operation (if that's what it's called), while also reminiscing about his late mother and how the mundane things she did defined her.  He also has a tendency to want to attach names to people he doesn't know, and to define words. He concludes his memories of his mother in this lyrical passage:

Ordinary moments make the life.  This is what she knew to be trustworthy and this is what I learned, eventually, from those years we spent together.  No leaps or falls.  I inhale the little drizzly details of the past and know who I am.  What I failed to know before is clearer now, filtered up through time, an experience belonging to no one else, not remotely, no one, anyone, ever.  I watch her use the roller to remove lint from her cloth coat.  Define coat, I tell myself.  Define time, define space.

From "Trump's Credo: The Only Thing is Fear Itself" by Steve Almond

I saw this today on Boston public radio station WBUR's website for Cognoscenti:

As the nominee's speech made clear, the Republicans have become a party of terror, not of ideas.  Trump's ascent merely ratifies the notion that has long animated the conservative movement: that a population sufficiently engorged on imaginary fears will forfeit rational thought for the cleansing powers of wrath.

"Being Honest About Trump"

Elegant, piercing prose addressing an issue that should be of the utmost importance to all Americans, by Adam Gopnik in a July 14th New Yorker post:

What all forms of fascism have in common is the glorification of the nation, and the exaggeration of its humiliations, with violence promised to its enemies, at home and abroad; the worship of power wherever it appears and whoever holds it; contempt for the rule of law and for reason; unashamed employment of repeated lies as a rhetorical strategy; and a promise of vengeance for those who feel themselves disempowered by history.  It promises to turn back time and take no prisoners.  That it can appeal to those who do not understand its consequences is doubtless true.  But the first job of those who do understand is to state what those consequences invariably are.  Those who think that the underlying institutions of American government are immunized against it fail to understand history.  In every historical situation where a leader of Trump's kind comes to power, normal safeguards collapse.  Ours are older and therefore stronger?  Watching the rapid collapse of the Republican Party is not an encouraging rehearsal.  Donald Trump has a chance to seize power.

"The Annihilation of Space"

A few years ago I was presented with a delightful gift from a group of judges who had invited me to speak to them.  It was the latest book by David McCullough entitled "The Greater Journey," detailing the adventures of now-famous Americans in Paris in the first half of the 19th Century.  One of the Americans was a young painter named Samuel Morse, who was in the process of inventing a new innovation, the telegraph.  In July 1844, after Morse returned to the United States, where he believed the country's laws and enterprising spirit would better support the development of his new device, word reached Paris that Morse, with federal funding, had opened a telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore.  McCullough reports:

A few days later, interest in Morse's device became greater by far at both ends when the Democratic National Convention being held at Baltimore became deadlocked and hundreds gathered about the telegraph in Washington for instantaneous news from the floor of the convention itself.  Martin Van Buren was tied for the nomination with the former minister to France, Lewis Cass.  Ultimately, on the eighth ballot, the convention chose a compromise candidate, a little-known senator from Tennessee, James K. Polk.

 In Paris, Galignani's Messenger reported that newspapers in Baltimore were now able to provide their readers with the latest information from Washington up to the very hour of going to press.  "This is indeed the annihilation of space."

Such an apt description for the connectivity that Morse initiated and that we now enjoy through so many different channels - radio, television, the Internet.  I wonder if the Paris publication or Samuel Morse had any inkling of where his invention would take us.

From "Between the World and Me," by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Here is an early passage from a book that should be required reading for every American.  Winner of the National Book Award and replete with powerful prose, it takes the form of a letter from the author to his teenage son about the perils of being a young black man in America.  Although some passages, like the one below, can easily be misconstrued as an indictment of police, the author goes on to explain that the real culprit is not any individual or institution, but a deep-rooted racism which traces back to our birth as a nation and has never left us.  The book vividly conveys, as nothing else I have read, the cloud of fear under which the author says many black Americans constantly exist.  It seemed particularly fitting today.

I write you in your fifteenth year.  I am writing you because this was the year you saw Eric Garner choked to death for selling cigarettes; because you know now that Renisha McBride was shot for seeking help, that John Crawford was shot down for browsing in a department store.  And you have seen men in uniform drive by and murder Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old child whom they were oath-bound to protect.  And you have seen men in the same uniforms pummel Marlene Pinnock, someone's grandmother, on the side of a road.  And you know now, if you did not before, that the police departments of your country have been endowed with the authority to destroy your body.  It does not matter if the destruction is the result of an unfortunate overreaction.  It does not matter if it originates in a misunderstanding.  It does not matter if the destruction springs from a foolish policy.  Sell cigarettes without the proper authority and your body can be destroyed.  Resent the people trying to entrap your body and it can be destroyed.  Turn into a dark stairwell and your body can be destroyed.  The destroyers will rarely be held accountable.  Mostly they will receive pensions.  And destruction is merely the superlative form of a dominion whose prerogatives include friskings, detainings, beatings, and humiliations.  All of this is common to black people.  And all of this is old for black people.  No one is held responsible.

Postscript:  After writing, I learned of the sniper attacks against police officers in Dallas, and thought about whether I should take down this post.  I mourn the fallen officers, just as I mourn the murdered black victims of police shootings.  Still, I concluded that, notwithstanding those despicable and criminal acts against good, brave officers who were there to protect peaceful protestors, Coates' voice needs to be heard.  He does not condemn the police, nor does he call for violent acts against them.  As I mention above, his concern is much deeper than that, and his book can give those of us who are not black a glimpse into the insidious effects of racism on innocent people.  It is my hope that, if enough of us listen to and take seriously voices like Coates', we will do a better job of protecting minorities from acts of aggression, punishing those who commit them, and preventing and punishing hateful backlashes such as we saw last night.

From The New Yorker

We can always count on Anthony Lane, film critic for The New Yorker, to dazzle us.  In this week's issue, he reviews the new Woody Allen film, "Cafe Society," set in Hollywood in the 1930s, the decade of Allen's birth and an era of great film making.  He writes of two characters who "stand outside the homes of stars and gaze.  They might as well be staring at the night sky."  And he ends with this:

. . . there are scenes here . . . that burn almost painfully with Woody Allen's yearning for the past.  It lies there glowing, as recognizable as a movie star and as homely as a hearth, forever out of reach.

The review does what all reviews of film should do - it makes one want to see the movie.  That the film is tinged with nostalgia for the glitz of the 1930s film industry makes this Gatsby-esq ending all the more fitting.

A beautiful sentence within a beautiful sentence

I plan ordinarily to focus on the written word, but today I also want to celebrate the spoken word of Boston's Mayor, Martin Walsh, as reported in a story by Boston Globe reporter Lisa Wangsness.  Ms. Wangsness' writing exhibits a remarkable economy of language, telling us everything we need to know about the scene and the Mayor's comments in a single sentence.  She writes:   

Mayor Martin J. Walsh offered reassurance to thousands of Muslims gathered Wednesday morning in Roxbury to celebrate Eid, the end of the holy month of Ramadan, telling them:  "I'm here today to pray with you, to support you."

 A great sentence, a terrific quote, and a wonderful example of humanity from a local politician.

From Elie Wiesel's Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1986

The world has lost an important voice with the passing of Elie Wiesel.  His Nobel Lecture is powerful, and I highly recommend reading it in its entirety.  Excerpting it meaningfully is difficult because it is meant to be read (or listened to) as a whole, cohesive and vibrant message.  The following lines, written thirty years ago, resonated with me, not only for their original meaning, but as a reminder that the world has not made nearly enough progress in combatting terror.

And the outrage of terrorism:  of the hostages in Iran, the coldblooded massacre in the synagogue in Istanbul, the senseless deaths in the streets of Paris.  Terrorism must be outlawed by all civilized nations - not explained or rationalized, but fought and eradicated.  Nothing can, nothing will justify the murder of innocent people and helpless children.

From "The Theology of Donald Trump," by Peter Wehner

The quotes in this blog won't always be political, but I couldn't resist this poignant passage from an op-ed in today's New York Times:

The calling of Christians is to be "salt and light" to the world, to model a philosophy that defends human dignity, and to welcome the stranger in our midst.  It is to stand for justice, dispense grace and be agents of reconciliation in a broken world.  And it is to take seriously the words of the prophet Micah, "And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, and to love kindness and mercy, and to humble yourself and walk humbly with your God?"

Evangelical Christians who are enthusiastically supporting Donald Trump are signaling, even if unintentionally, that this calling has no place in politics and that Christians bring nothing distinctive to it -- that their past moral proclamations were all for show and that power is the name of the game. 

From the Declaration of Independence

"A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people."