Browsings

by Michael Dirda

  We returned then, ravenous, at 2:20 to start our trip back to our parked rental car. Surely the travel situation couldn’t be any worse. What naivete! Is this America or what? This time our bus journey took a purgatorial three hours. We waited again in the sun for the first bus; after an hour it dawdled in and conveyed a tired crowd to the ranger station, where we expected to see the second bus. A child would have been less credulous. Because of the growing crowd, the rangers had divided people up into groups and ours—those who had parked in town, rather than at one of the other car-sites—was shunted to a separate line where we waited and waited and waited. Eventually, in a controlled fury that Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine might have learned from, I told the local ranger that such abuse of the park’s visitors was cruel, insulting and intolerable. She agreed with me and shrugged. When the second bus finally arrived, we wearily climbed on and journeyed 10 minutes down the rutted road, at which point the vehicle, overloaded with tired, desperate people, broke down. We waited for a third rescue bus, forbidden from leaving the one in which we were slowly cooking. People began to grow hysterical.

  Somehow, we eventually reached the parking lot of the Visitors Center, but only after many passengers had been dropped off at two intervening parking areas. By now it was 5:30 in the afternoon. Our original plans were ruined. For a couple of hours of hiking we had spent most of the day on a bus or waiting for one.

  Calming myself—no mean feat—I approached the main desk inside the Visitors’ Center, gently pointed out that the actual road conditions and traffic delays were of an order of magnitude quite unlike that suggested by their sparky staff, then strongly underscored the real suffering of elderly seniors and quite young children, and finally suggested they tell people the truth and send them to other entrances to the park. Naturally, the Center’s personnel regarded me as a pitiable crank and dismissed my outrage as obvious insanity. But here is the strangest part of all: no one else came forth to utter a peep about our cattle-car experiences. I was shocked at how docile my fellow sufferers had become. Were they too beaten down to say anything? Had they come to accept such abusive behavior as the modus operandi for life in these United States?

  Perhaps some readers will regard all this as trivial. I can see that. I mean, we have real crises with unemployment, health care, terrorism, crumbling economies around the world. Nonetheless, my experiences strike me as still another sign that those in power, whether it be corporate or governmental, have grown increasingly disconnected, increasingly callous in their treatment and exploitation of ordinary Americans. I once thought the part of me that, years ago, joined the Students for a Democratic Society was dead. Not entirely. I still feel outrage. Somehow, big banks lose billions and wreck people’s savings and retirement accounts, yet their plutocrat executives still take home obscene bonuses. You don’t have to be an economics major to recognize that something here does not compute.

  Oh, well, that Dirda! He’s just a literary guy, head in the clouds and all, no real understanding that everything is for the best in this best of all possible countries. Better he should stick to writing about books. Maybe so. But I won’t be visiting the Rockies at Estes Park again. Nor should you. My one vacation day in beautiful Colorado wasn’t entirely wrecked—those mountains are glorious—but I was left angry and depressed that in the midst of nature I couldn’t escape governmental indifference and bureaucratic ineptitude, or the overwhelming sense that I wasn’t being viewed as a human being but only as a statistic, a number, a vote, a cash cow. Leonard Woolf, I should point out, titled another volume of his autobiography Downhill All the Way.

  The Fugitive

  Fans of the old television show The Fugitive may remember the striking sequence that opened each episode. First we glimpse a man, handcuffed, sitting on a train, just staring out the window, and then we hear the portentous voiceover: “Richard Kimble looks out on the world for the last time and sees only darkness.” Pause. “But in that darkness Fate moves its huge hand.” At which point the train loudly crashes, and in the next scene Kimble is running through the underbrush, then stumbling and falling into some muddy water, still manacled, as the words “The Fugitive” flash across the family’s black-and-white Sylvania TV screen.

  Anyway, that’s how I remember it, though I may be wrong on a few details.

  This opening, repeated week after week, came to mind as I recently dipped into The Fortunes of Permanence, an exceptional new volume of essays by the editor/publisher of The New Criterion. Change but a word or two, et voilà: “Roger Kimball looks out on the world and sees only darkness. But in that darkness Fate moves its huge hand.” Certainly, this eminent conservative intellectual perceives our country as assailed from without by fanatics, but more seriously corrupted from within by political and cultural relativism. And he clearly hopes for a miraculous return to sanity, repeatedly stressing in his work the established principles of western morality, the necessity of standards, and the bulwark and safeguard of tradition.

  What interests me about Kimball isn’t whether he is right or not about most political issues. Drawing on a capacious intelligence and a flair for the well-chosen quotation, he is an expert and often convincing polemicist. Nonetheless, he regularly exhibits the slash-and-burn zeal of a high-school debate champion, always going for the kill, seldom allowing for nuance or reservation or uncertainty. Just say the word “Obama,” for instance, and he grows apoplectic.

  But Roger Kimball is, whatever else he might be, a man of principle. I say this, even while acknowledging that my own political beliefs are utterly simple and may be reduced to a few shocking words: Listen to the young. Those under 30 see the inequities of the world and are willing to challenge the status quo. Fathers and mothers of families seldom rock the boat; they can’t afford to risk losing what they have. Kimball would interject, Thank heaven for that saving grace.

  Still, when it comes to education, literature, and art, Kimball strikes me as a model of good sense. This is troubling: if our tastes are so often congruent in cultural matters, perhaps I need to reexamine my supposed political convictions more closely? In The Fortunes of Permanence, for instance, Kimball reprints essays in defense of John Buchan, Rudyard Kipling, and G. K. Chesterton—three of my favorite writers, all of them now frequently derided as jingoist, imperialist and racist. Any good reader must instinctively loathe the kind of reductionist presentism and ethnocentrism that condescends to such great storytellers and artists, or that disses a magnificent book like Kim as a collection of western prejudices. Such knee-jerk attitudes, as Kimball writes, aim “to short-circuit, not refine, our powers of discrimination.”

  Because I admire the cultural coverage of The New Criterion, I’ve twice written for the magazine, once on the poetry of Stephen Crane and this spring on the work of Philip Larkin. The kind invitations to do so came from the executive editor and poet David Yezzi, who is now researching a biography of Anthony Hecht, one of the finest American poets of our time (as well as a man I counted as a friend). Indeed, nearly all the magazine’s reviewing—of books, art, and music—is first-rate. The poetry featured is comparably exceptional, with a strong preference for formal verse (which is just fine by me). Nonetheless, I still frequently bristle and groan at the political and editorial snarkiness at the front of the book and in some of its columns.

  In his famous elegy for W. B. Yeats, Auden said that, despite Yeats’s various forms of foolishness, Time would pardon him for writing well. I tend to feel that way about many of the literary controversialists of our time, whether Christopher Hitchens, William F. Buckley, Mark Steyn, Gore Vidal, Nat Hentoff, or Roger Kimball. Of course, Auden also sternly warned against those who read the Bible not for its message but only for the beauty of its prose.

  All these disparate journalists, it is clear, possess a formidable self-confidence, sometimes verging on smugness. There’s nothing pallid or wishy-washy about them or their views. And perhaps just because of this they all produce (or produced) exhilarating essays a
nd articles—even when they really do Go Too Far. But, as the French say, they also give you furiously to think.

  Sigh. I myself sometimes wish that I could be as sure of anything as many writers seem to be about everything. But then I am burdened by having taken to heart, long ago, Cromwell’s immortal reply to the Church of Scotland: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.” Not really the ideal motto for a critic, but there you are.

  Hot Enough for You?

  So I’m sitting here, in the dark, at 10 P.M. on July 2, 2012, of the Common Era, sweating and thinking evil thoughts about the upper management of Pepco. For those of you who don’t live in the so-called greater Washington, D.C., area, Pepco is the Potomac Electric Power Company. Three days ago a violent storm stomped D.C., Maryland, and Virginia and wreaked havoc, knocking over trees and telephone poles, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without electricity.

  I, needless to say, am one of those hundreds of thousands.

  From the moment the winds died down Pepco immediately began to “assess” the devastation and announced that it would be a week, or possibly more, before power was restored to everyone. Now, I dislike being without electricity as much as the next man or woman, but it’s not as though this outage was something unprecedented or totally unique, once in a lifetime, never to be repeated. Every year, in summer or winter, the same thing happens—storms hit, followed by days without electricity—and I’m really tired of it.

  Over the past weekend, with temperatures reaching the 100 degree mark, you couldn’t sell your soul for a hunk of dry ice. I know because I tried. As a result, the Dirdas—and many, many other people—have had to throw out a huge quantity of good and costly food. Since last Friday night it’s been impossible to work at my desk—i.e., to earn money to pay my bills, including the one from Pepco, which naturally instituted a rate increase on July 1—because my home has become the kind of hothouse that the orchid-growing Nero Wolfe could only dream about. Not least, my beloved books, stored in the basement because there is no other place for them, are growing spongy and mildewy and could well be irrevocably ruined unless the dehumidifier starts running again soon. I know this because 30 years ago I wrote a little monograph called Caring For Your Books. Though I wouldn’t go so far as to say that my library—a mere agglomeration of pulp, glue, and ink—means more to me than living, breathing human beings, it’s a near thing. I’d certainly rescue the baby, not the Mona Lisa, from a burning house. But that baby had better grow up to find the cure for cancer. . . .

  It’s now two powerless days later, Wednesday, the Fourth of July, and my evil thoughts about Pepco haven’t grown any more benign or forgiving. Are its overpaid corporate officers suffering in this record-setting Washington heat and humidity? Have they thrown out good food? Are their possessions growing mildew? Somehow I don’t think so. Talk to almost anyone “served”—laughable word—by this apparently inept company and you’ll discover the same disdain. Even the Maryland regulators admit that Pepco has failed to keep to proper standards (see the front page of The Washington Post, July 4). I remember an earlier Post article that pointed out that this company had one of the worst, or possibly the worst, service record, and the highest rates, for any comparable public utility in the country.

  Okay. You’ll say that’s just the heat talking or that Dirda—once known as Mr. Sweetness and Light—has inherited the curmudgeonly persona formerly owned by his friend and Book World colleague Jon Yardley, who has, in his turn, now become a Grand Old Man of Letters (albeit one in terrific shape). Perhaps. But Cossack blood runs in my half-clogged veins, and I don’t take well to excessive heat. Fortunately, this is only an early July heat and not “August heat”—those who remember W.F. Harvey’s classic short story of that title will know what relentlessly high temperatures can lead to.

  Fact is most stories about high temperatures lead to violence. There’s the blazing Algerian sun of Albert Camus’s The Stranger, and the long hot summers in Faulkner stories that culminate in rape and lynching, and all those “hot Santa Anas” you get in Raymond Chandler murder mysteries, and the kind of psychologically debilitating oppressiveness that Mr. Kurtz contended with, rather unsuccessfully, in Heart of Darkness. Then, too, one mustn’t overlook my favorite science fiction short story, Alfred Bester’s “Fondly Fahrenheit”—a dazzling tale of a robot and his master, of schizophrenia and murder: “It’s no feat to beat the heat, all reet, all reet!”

  But let’s not veer too far away from Pepco, which I just realized is the kind of name you might find in a 1950s science fiction novel. In a just world, in an honorable world, the men and women who run this company would voluntarily go without electricity until they had restored power to everyone they “served.” But given the slowness of the restoration, I suspect that Pepco has adopted Milton’s motto: “They also serve who only stand and wait.” Not that I blame the linemen and the workers out on the streets, who are doing their best: they’re only human. I’m not so sure about their bosses. At all events, I picture the company’s officers lounging in their air-conditioned great rooms, watching DVDs of Lawrence of Arabia, answering email, listening to hot jazz on their stereo systems, and sipping cold beers, in cool and beautiful comfort, probably even putting on a sweater vest against the AC chill.

  Years ago, my steelworker father—a lifelong Democrat—announced that he would be voting for our hometown’s Republican candidate for mayor, a fellow by the name of Woody Mathna. Being taken aback at this shocking news, I naturally asked why. Dad answered, “Mathna lives in our precinct.” I wasn’t smart enough to know what that meant. My father, shaking his head yet again over his idiot-child, said, “That means that when it snows the streets around Mathna’s house will be plowed first. And ours will be one of them.” All politics is local, sometimes very local, and Realpolitik is the most local of all.

  Oh, well. As my father also solemnly used to say: this too shall pass. A fount of wisdom, my Dad. During my college years he would regularly intone, “Kid, I want you to get rich, have a house on a hill, drive a Cadillac, forget about stupid workingmen like me, and become a Republican.” Sigh. I loved my father but, like sons everywhere, I never listened to him.

  Wonder Books

  Last week I ranted about what it was like to live without electricity on five successive days of temperatures in the high 90s, in a house where most of the windows don’t open. What I didn’t mention was how I managed to get through one of those days, specifically Sunday, July 1, when almost everything in the immediate Washington area was closed because of downed power lines. The places shuttered included the Silver Spring and Wheaton libraries, the Glenwood swimming pool, and most of the local stores. After a 100 degree Saturday, I was desperate to find somewhere cool, somewhere I might take my mind off this latest outage—I almost typed outrage—as well as the prospect of days without refrigeration, lights, and air-conditioning.

  So naturally, I turned my attention to the north, to Frederick, Maryland, to be more precise, about an hour away up I-270. Driving my beloved 1997 Maxima, which is much in need of a new muffler and which I really should get rid of, I gradually made my way to Wonder Book and Video.

  Wonder Book’s Frederick store is but one outlet of Chuck Roberts’s used-book empire, rivaled in the greater Washington area only by Allan Stypeck’s Second Story Books. But Second Story’s Rockville warehouse is relatively nearby, so I generally drop by there every month or so. Frederick, by contrast, is a bit of a trip. Yet given that I had no power and, just as important, given that my Beloved Spouse was out of the country, I really had no choice but to spend the day in Frederick. I’m sure you can see that.

  Also, because Chuck is a friend of mine, he offers me a discount, and because one has a discount, it seems only reasonable to buy more books than one might otherwise. At all events, I spent three hours going through the stock, stepped out for a quick bite at a fast-food joint, then spent another happy three hours before I called it a day. What di
d I acquire? I thought you’d never ask. In no particular order, I bought:

  Tales of Mystery and Imagination, by Edgar Allan Poe, illustrated by Harry Clarke. This is a famous and highly desirable edition, but it was quite cheap because the volume, otherwise in very good condition, was missing three plates, including the frontispiece, as well as a page of text. Normally, I wouldn’t look twice at such a damaged book, but it was still attractive just as a classic of bookmaking, and a fine, intact copy could cost several hundred dollars. Oddly enough, I’m not terribly bothered by its faults, given how beautiful it is overall.

  The Long Ships, by Frans G. Bengtsson. Ever since I wrote an essay—for the online Barnes and Noble Review—pegged to the New York Review Classics paperback of this adventure novel, I’ve wanted to own a proper hardback. This copy’s dust jacket has some losses to the spine and it’s a second printing, but that’s okay. I may even toss the dj. One of these days I’ll spend a happy weekend rereading this exciting, and surprisingly witty saga of Viking exploits.

  Startling Stories, November, 1950. This is a large-sized pulp magazine, printing in its entirety an early Jack Vance novel called The Five Gold Bands. Its cover features a Salome-like dancer being ogled by shady-looking aliens. Who could resist? Certainly no Vance fan, which I am, and have long been. Happily, my youngest son shares my passion for this greatest of all living science fiction and fantasy writers, so he may end up with the magazine as a Christmas present.

  The Fools in Town Are on Our Side, by Ross Thomas. Years ago, I traded my mint first of this crime thriller to my friend David Streitfeld—and regretted it almost immediately. In my years as a book editor, I used to call up Ross Thomas to review mysteries and spy novels, and, a consummate professional, he was always at his desk. Like his contemporary Charles McCarry, happily still with us, Thomas never quite received the acclaim he deserved, though his fans are legion. In a Times Literary Supplement survey, of 25 years ago or more, Eric Ambler chose this novel as a neglected classic of its genre. The title, by the way, comes from Huckleberry Finn. Along with Chinaman’s Chance and The Seersucker Whipsaw, both of which I’ve already read, The Fools in Town Are on Our Side is probably Thomas’s most admired novel.