Monthly Archives: May 2006

Remnick: “There’s a reason things taste better when they simmer”

In New York Metro, Amy Benfer asks Remnick some questions. It’s nice when he gets a lot of space and time to express his opinions. Here are several:

You have a degree of intimacy with your subjects — you follow them to their homes, you meet their family. How do you decide what is fair game?

These are experienced people. They know very well how to say this is on or off the record. I make those agreements all the time and keep to them. Obviously, there are things people probably wish they didn’t say. Lillian Ross, who also wrote a book called “Reporting,” has said she believes in writing profiles only about people she admires. There are plenty of people in here that I admire, but I don’t think you can write about politics and public life and only write about people you admire.

Would you profile Bush?

I’d be thrilled to do a profile of Bush, but I don’t think Bush allows that kind of thing. I don’t find that heads of state give the most interesting interviews, especially while they’re still heads of state. I’ve interviewed, for example, Gorbechev many times. The least interesting interviews he gave were while he was in office. The much more revealing things were said afterwards. Look at rock ’n’ roll. Who’s more interesting to read about? The next young thing who’s got one album or Bob Dylan or James Brown? People are a little bit like cooking. There’s a reason things taste better when they simmer.

Besides politicians, you seem to have an obsession with boxers.

I’m not proud of my interest in boxing. It’s not a guilty pleasure, it’s a very guilty pleasure, because almost every boxer you can imagine who stays in it for awhile — male or female — they end up a mess. So if it disappeared tomorrow, or even today, I wouldn’t shed a tear. The interesting thing about boxing is we live in this age in which athletes make so much money that they really don’t need reporters. They don’t deal with reporters in an easy way and they armor themselves with cliche and deflection. As a writer, that’s uninteresting. Derek Jeter doesn’t need you. Remember that scene in “Bull Durham”? Kevin Costner tells Tim Robbins how to talk to the press. He teaches him to talk in cliches. Boxers are different. If you know them, after a while, they will tell you their innermost secrets. In talking to Tyson, it’s like some sort of combination of reading Freud and Dostoyevsky.

I’m looking forward to the book Remnick’s out promoting. I’m still thinking about that piece he wrote about the Russian translators back in November; there’s quite an extensive discussion of it here. Read it for the riveting linguistic spats: “Compared to French the Russian verb is a paragon of logic and efficiency.”

And speaking of Russian, if you haven’t seen Funny Ha Ha, a tiny American movie, do; then watch the special features for the most unusual DVD extra I’ve ever seen, a “commentary from an outside Russian scholar,” presumably a grad-student friend of filmmaker Andrew Bujalski. From the anonymous scholar’s stinging rejection of American first names as inadequate to tragedy, to her remarks that despite her love for the film its characters’ mute unrequited agonies wouldn’t even be considered relationships in Russia—where love is all and worth dying for!—to her dissection of a scene in which there are no books and extrapolation to the bookshelves in Eugene Onegin, to her confessed inability to read the semiotics of t-shirts, it’s a tour de force. More or less in time to the plot, she constructs dreamily complex sentences into which Existentialists and Tartofsky stroll without fanfare. It’s pure passion for books and movies and the impossibility of relating to other humans, which the movie is all about, if not in so many words. Rent it, then listen. Thanks to N.W. for the life-brightening tip.

This Week on Emdashes


A wrapup of last week’s issue! (As you know, I get the new New Yorker on Tuesdays at best, Thursdays at worst, so it’s still this week’s issue as far as I’m concerned.)

A review of the brand-new book The New Yorker Book of Cartoon Puzzles and Games! (Update: Review coming soon. Jury duty called, and I’m spending quite a bit of my time down at the Kings County Supreme Court building these days. The good news: They have snap peas at the farmers’ market outside the courthouse! Tuesdays and Thursdays.)

And an announcement!

Meanwhile, at The Lady Killigrew Cafe in Montague, Mass., there are only two programs on the TV at the counter where you order: a live feed of two eagles in their nest, or the Sox game. Below the cafe is a rushing stream and a used bookstore with a spectacular collection of stuff found in books (letters, tickets, maps, photos), now pasted on the bathroom walls. Can you think of a better setup? Apparently, John “I’m a PC” Hodgman composed some of The Areas of My Expertise there, but it’s not known whether he had the long-brewed iced coffee and the grilled Nutella sandwich. For his sake, I hope he did.

It’s Very Nice of the London Times

to cite at such generous length one of my favorite books of last year, The Clumsiest People in Europe, but I still think they should have mentioned its eagle-eyed architect, Todd Pruzan. The book’s out in paperback in June (perfect for taking along on the road), and the co-author—the living one, that is—is now my swell colleague. From the piece:

THIS SUMMER, as an antidote to all those books rhapsodising about the Tuscan sun, you could dip into The Clumsiest People in Europe: Or, Mrs Mortimer’s Bad-Tempered Guide to the Victorian World, which may qualify as the most intolerant travel guide ever published. Driving over lemons? Mrs Mortimer would rather drive over foreigners.

Mrs Favell Lee Mortimer, an Englishwoman who started out as a children’s author, published three volumes of travel writing between 1849 and 1854, covering the globe from Asia to Africa to the Americas. She was even-handed, in a back-handed way: she despised just about everyone and everything.

The Portuguese, as well as being “the clumsiest people in Europe”, are “indolent, just like the Spaniards”. The Welsh are “not very clean”; the Zulus: “A miserable race of people”; the Greeks: “Do not bear their troubles well; when they are unhappy, they scream like babies”; Armenians “live in holes in the ground . . . because they hope the Kurds may not find out where they are.” Buddhists, Hindus, Mohammedans: all received a thrashing from the aggressively Protestant Mrs Mortimer.

Lao-Tzu, the father of Taoism, is dismissed as “an awful liar”. Roman Catholicism comes off little better: “A kind of Christian religion, but a very bad one.” Oddly, however, she professes a soft spot for Nubians: “A fine race . . . of a bright copper colour”.

Mrs Mortimer’s guide (which comes out in paperback next month) provides a strange glimpse into the blinkered mind of a middle-class, middle-aged bigot in Middle England in the middle of the 19th century. Her sweepingly negative generalisations and racial stereotyping seem even more remarkable for the fact that this doughty world traveller didn’t go to the places she described and disparaged. The sum total of her foreign travel was one childhood trip to Paris and Brussels. Her knowledge of Taoism was exactly zero. She had never set eyes on a Nubian. She amassed her pungent prejudices sitting in her English drawing room.

Continued. This will be I Embarrass Todd Incident #244, I think (rough estimate).

Remnick: “I Read Blogs”

So he told the Boston Herald. But we already knew that. More reassuring news:

HERALD [Jesse Noyes]: A lot of veteran journalists will tell young people looking to get into the business don’t do it, find a different career, it’s not worth it. Are you one of those people?

REMNICK: No, I would never do that. I think it’s very hard, and we’re in the midst of a lot of systemic and technological change that’s causing a lot of people to get – let’s not be polite about it – fired or retired before their time. And I think that’s what they’re saying, that it’s a tough business. But I think if you are, if you have a hunger to do this work and maybe have a little talent, and you have drive, which is even more important, I couldn’t think of anything better. I’ve had a – you know, I’ve been very lucky. I totally admit that, but I’ve just had enormous fun. It’s been a great life. So how could I ever just talk anybody out of it?

Question mark at the end added by me, because why wouldn’t there be a question mark there? It’s a question! People with no hope left, sunk by cynicism, or possibly some Russians, ask questions ending in periods. Not Remnick, especially since he’s being so optimistic here.

Profile of Kunitz in The New Yorker, 2003

The New Yorker website just now (I believe) posted this 2003 profile (by Dana Goodyear) of Kunitz, who died on Sunday.

I’ve been thinking about those rainforest appeals that warn, “Every five minutes, another animal becomes extinct.” Everyone beloved is the last of his or her species gone from the earth. Stanley was a notably rare, exalted, humble animal unto himself, and with him extinct, the air seems thinner, the whole project sadder and less certain.

Stanley Kunitz, 1905-2006

In the haze of afternoon,
while the air flowed saffron,
I played my game for keeps—
for love, for poetry,
and for eternal life—
after the trials of summer.
—From “The Testing-Tree”

From the Post obituary:

In later years, [Kunitz] voiced contempt for the Vietnam War, U.S. support for right-leaning juntas in Central America and the U.S.-led war against Iraq. “The poet can’t change anything,’ he said, “but the poet can demonstrate the power of the solitary conscience.”
…
Mr. Kunitz was regarded as a mentor to many poets, including two future poet laureates, Louise Gluck and Robert Hass, as well as Sylvia Plath.
“Essentially,” he once said, “what I try to do is to help each person rediscover the poet within himself. I say ‘rediscover,’ because I am convinced that it is a universal human attribute to want to play with words, to beat out rhythms, to fashion images, to tell a story, to construct forms.”
He added: “The key is always in his possession: what prevents him from using it is mainly inertia, the stultification of the senses as a result of our one-sided educational conditioning and the fear of being made ridiculous or ashamed by the exposure of his feelings.”

R.I.P.

…And That’s the Way I Like It

It would be ludicrous (Ludacris?) for me to take sides—I mean, I’m against racism, what a controversial opinion—but I do support Sasha Frere-Jones in most things, although we might disagree about a few things, musically. (That’s probably because I generally have the musical taste of someone’s grandfather, not even your grandfather; maybe your great-grandfather. The you I’m addressing here would be hard to pigeonhole.) I like Sasha a whole lot. I love the Magnetic Fields, too; they’re part of my soundtrack. The songs are sad and some are indelibly so, and “Strange Powers” is big in my life again thanks to the Shins. I know some people in the band and I like them a whole lot, too, although Stephin Merritt’s dog once bit me pretty hard, but it was just tired of being fondled by strangers, I think. I just mean: Sasha is good-hearted and big-hearted, and he’s not just concerned with justice but urgently preoccupied with it. I don’t second everything he says, but I believe he’s for good, for truth, for illumination. One thing he’s definitely not is a sycophant who shuns controversy. Neither is Merritt. They celebrate the undercelebrated, and want good music to be appreciated more. They disagree about what that music is, in part. (The list of music they both consider great would be substantial, I suspect.) As Sasha points out, there’s obviously an opportunity for reflection and thoughtful debate here, and the internet isn’t always the best place to have it—it’s a panel of animals speaking (or screeching) in many tongues, all at once, and the panelists’ table is infinitely long.

Being a critic-blogger, and being a dark-bar-dwelling grouchy-wary sort, have their advantages. You get to write and talk in dim lighting, and it helps with shyness. Someone smart would immediately plan a conversation between Sasha and Stephin, and publish it. Whatever this conversation ends up being about, these quips and links and footnotes aren’t doing it justice. Remind me to put up a transcript of Zadie Smith’s remarks at the recent PEN World Voices Festival about what she finds inspiring in hip-hop, when they’re available. She should be at the roundtable, too.


In other New Yorkerish news, there’s a brand-new blog called Candy Is Dandy, But Liquor Is Quicker. All hail Parker! If you haven’t bought The Portable Dorothy Parker (laudably well edited by Marion Meade) yet, you’re not in your right mind. It’s gorgeous, and the stories will knock your socks off. They really will. I’d never read “Big Blonde,” and I’m still recovering from it.

I didn’t intend to get all promotional, but I didn’t realize that there were so many original cover images for sale at the Cartoon Bank, mostly from the ’80s, ’90s, and today, as the radio DJs say. (I may have the musical taste of your great-grandfather, but I do know about radio DJs. Also, podjockeys! PJs? Maybe Pajamas Media could popularize it.) Some from other decades, too (an October 17, 1931 image by Adolph K. Kronengold, for instance), like this September 1, 1956, cover by Charles E. Martin.


Another Martin cover I like, published on May 27, 1967:


Big news to come on the blog, as soon as next week.

Taking Our Galbraith Away

Terrible pun; sorry about that, and no disrespect to the memory of the late John Kenneth Galbraith. Anyway, don’t miss my boundlessly intelligent friend Scott McLemee’s essay about, among other things, Galbraith’s pseudonymous 1963 collection The McLandress Dimension and, to add to the satirical capers, the star economist’s co-alter ego’s review of the Leonard Lewin/Victor Navasky concoction Report From Iron Mountain. Scott begins (links are his):

The wedding announcements in The New York Times are, as all amateur sociologists know, a valuable source of raw data concerning prestige-display behavior among the American elite. But they do not provide the best index of any individual’s social status. Much more reliable in that respect are the obituaries, which provide an estimate of the deceased party’s total accumulated social capital. They may also venture a guess, between the lines, about posterity’s likely verdict on the person.

In the case of John Kenneth Galbraith, who died last week, the Times obituary could scarcely fail to register the man’s prominence. He was an economist, diplomat, Harvard professor, and advisor to JFK. Royalties on his book The Affluent Society (1958) guaranteed that — as a joke of the day had it — he was a full member. But the notice also made a point of emphasizing that his reputation was in decline. Venturing with uncertain steps into a characterization of his economic thought, the obituary treated Galbraith as kind of fossil from some distant era, back when Keynsian liberals still roamed the earth.

He was patrician in manner, but an acid-tongued critic of what he once called “the sophisticated and derivative world of the Eastern seaboard.” He was convinced that for a society to be not merely affluent but livable (an important distinction now all but lost) it had to put more political and economic power in the hands of people who exercised very little of it.

Read the rest. Speaking of the Times wedding announcements, I enjoyed Troy Patterson’s piece in Slate about the “appalling” new Times online wedding videos (which, Patterson notes, are all of straight couples so far):

I just love wedding announcements, and nothing satisfies my passion like the New York Times. This gloriously ridiculous section of the paper of record is a vestige of an earlier, more nakedly hierarchical, time. As Slate‘s Timothy Noah put it four years ago, “The wedding pages remain because a very small aristocracy demands that they remain.” He wrote that in derision; I cite it in celebration.

Week after week, these dispatches (a species of open letter: public honeymoon post cards that just happen to announce the partners’ pedigree, schooling, and profession) offer an unmatchable voyeuristic delight. Is there a more entertaining way for young members of the Northeastern professional class to size themselves up against their peers? How better to indulge in status-gawking and idle matrimonial fantasies? What fun!

Back to Galbraith for a moment—my grandfather, who knew him, wrote some nice lines about Galbraith’s legacy in an email a few days ago, and I’m going to see if he’ll let me reprint them.

Unrelated: Art School Confidential, which I saw tonight, is full of laughs, but not very deep or lasting ones. John Malkovich is hilarious in it, though, and Steve Buscemi got a bit hurrah from the audience just by walking on. That’s absolutely right.