Disquiet, Please!

by David Remnick

  “Mr. Smith, how good of you to come,” she tooted, offering me a tiny hand. I didn’t correct her on the name. For a few grand, I’m willing to be called a lot worse. “Sit down and tell me about your arts center,” she continued. “I’m all ears.”

  So were the two Dobermans who sat on either side of her chair. They looked as if they were trained to rip your throat if you used the wrong fork.

  Usually, my pitch begins with a description of the long lines of art-starved inner-city children bused in daily to the Arts Mall to be broadened. But the hounds made me nervous—they maintained the most intense eye contact I had ever seen from floor level—so I skipped ahead to the money part. I dropped the figure of fifty thousand dollars.

  She didn’t blink, so I started talking about the Mall’s long-range needs. I mentioned a hundred thou. She smiled as if I had asked for a drink of water.

  I crossed my legs and forged straight ahead. “Mrs. Groveland,” I radiated. “I hope you won’t mind if I bring up the subject of estate planning.”

  “Of course not,” she radiated right back. “The bulk of my estate, aside from the family bequests and a lump-sum gift to the Audubon Society, is going for the care of Luke and Mona here.” At the word “estate,” the Dobermans seemed to lick their chops.

  I had to think fast. I wasn’t about to bad-mouth our feathered friends of the forest, or Mrs. Groveland’s family, either, but I thought I just might shake loose some of the dog trust. I told her about our Founders Club for contributors of fifty thousand or more. Perhaps she could obtain two Founderships—one for each Doberman. “Perhaps it would take a load off your mind if you would let us provide for Luke and Mona,” I said. “We could act as their trustees. We just happen to have this lovely Founders Club Kennel, way out in the country, where—”

  At the mention of a kennel, the beasts lowered their heads and growled. Their eyes never left my face.

  “Hush, hush,” Mrs. Groveland scolded gently. “Don’t worry,” she assured me, “they don’t bite. Well, hardly ever.”

  They may not bite, I thought, but they can sue.

  Then Mona barked. Instantly, I was on my feet, but the dogs beat me to it. The sounds that came from their throats were noises that predated the Lascaux cave paintings. They were the cries of ancient Doberman souls trying to break through the thin crust of domestication, and they expressed a need that was far deeper than that of the Arts Mall, the arts in general, or any individual artist whom I would care to know. The next sound I heard was the slam of a paneled oak door closing. I was out in the hallway and I could hear Mrs. Groveland on the other side saying, “Bad Luke, naughty Mona!” The woman who had let me in let me out. “They’re quite protective,” she informed me, chuckling. If a jury had been there to see her face, I’d have altered it.

  When I got back to the office, I gathered up every piece of correspondence in our National Arts Endowment file and threw it out the window. From above, it looked like a motorcade was due any minute. I was about to follow up with some of the potted plants when the phone rang. It rang sixteen times before I picked it up. Before Bobby Jo could identify herself, I’d used up all the best words I know. “I’m out,” I added. “Through. Done. Kaput. Fini. The End. Cue the credits. I’ve had it.”

  “J.S.,” she began, but I was having none of it.

  “I’ve had a noseful of beating money out of bushes so a bunch of sniveling wimps can try the patience of tiny audiences of their pals and moms with subsidized garbage that nobody in his right mind would pay Monopoly money to see,” I snapped. “I’m sick of people calling themselves artists who make pots that cut your fingers when you pick them up and wobble when you set them on a table. I’m tired of poets who dribble out little teensy poems in lower-case letters and I’m sick of painters who can’t even draw an outline of their own hand and I’m finished with the mumblers and stumblers who tell you that if you don’t understand them it’s your fault.”

  I added a few more categories to my list, plus a couple dozen persons by name, several organizations, and a breed of dog.

  “You all done, J.S.?” she asked. “Because I’ve got great news. The Highways Department is taking the Arts Mall for an interchange. They’re ready to pay top dollar, plus—you won’t believe this—to sweeten the deal, they’re throwing in 6.2 miles of Interstate 594.”

  “Miles of what?” Then it clicked. “You mean that unfinished leg of 594?” I choked.

  “It’s been sitting there for years. There are so many community groups opposed to it that the Highways Department doesn’t dare cut the grass that’s growing on it. They want us to take them off the hook. And if we make it an arts space, they figure it’ll fulfill their beautification quota for the next three years.”

  “We’ll call it The ArtsTrip!” I exclaimed. “Or The ArtStrip! The median as medium! Eight-lane environmental art! Big, big sculptures! Action painting! Wayside Dance Areas! Living poetry plaques! Milestones in American Music! Arts parks and Arts lots! A drive-in film series! The customized car as American genre! The customized van as Artsmobile! People can have an arts experience without even pulling over onto the shoulder. They can get quality enrichment and still make good time!”

  “Speaking of making time—” Her voice broke. She shuddered like a turned-on furnace. Her breath came in quick little gasps.

  I don’t know what’s next for Jack Schmidt after the Arts Highway is finished, but, whatever it is, it’s going to have Jack Schmidt’s name on it. No more Mr. Anonymous for me. No more Gray Eminence trips for yours truly. A couple of days ago, I was sitting at my desk and I began fooling around with an inkpad. I started making thumbprints on a sheet of yellow paper and then I sort of smooshed them around a little, and one thing led to another, and when I got done with it I liked what I saw. It wasn’t necessarily something I’d hang on a burlap wall with a baby ceiling spot aimed at it, but it had a certain definite quality that art could use a lot more of. I wouldn’t be too surprised if in my next adventure I’m in a loft in SoHo solving something strictly visual while Bobby Jo throws me smoldering looks from her loom in the corner. In the meantime, good luck and stay out of dark alleys.

  1979

  IAN FRAZIER

  ENGLAND PICKS A POET

  IN England, when people discuss poetry they’re talking business—big business. Some countries leave their poets gathering dust on the academic shelf, but here in England people like their poetry the way they like their tea: hot, fresh, and three times a day. Poetry experts estimate that in one fiscal year the English poetic community generates over 950 million pounds (almost 1.2 billion dollars) in revenue, all of which goes right back into the local economy. That works out to about twenty-six dollars apiece for every English man, woman, and child. With numbers like these, it’s no wonder that poets here demand, and receive, the highest word rate of any Western country.

  At the top of this heap sits the poet laureate of England. Chosen from among the best in his field, the poet laureate is a throwback to the days of the royal bard, constantly singing odes at the jeweled elbow of some pagan king. Today, the poet laureate no longer spends all his time around the palace but is permitted to live in his own style of home and furnish it as he wishes. This, combined with a salary, income from lectures and endorsements, and the unlimited use of a government vehicle, makes the job one of the most attractive in all literature. So when Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister Thatcher announced earlier this year that they were looking for a new person for the post, they received so many applications that they have already been forced to pull a couple of all-nighters in an attempt to read through them. Fueled by innumerable cups of coffee, the Queen and the Prime Minister have checked and double-checked every poem and application, always with this dark thought at the back of their minds: What if we make a mistake?

  As students of history, they know how costly human error can be. Sometimes it has meant that the foremost living poet missed his chance to be laureate, as happened this century with W. H
. Auden. After getting the necessary recommendations and breezing through a personal interview with King George VI, Auden, who had the highest Q rating of any poet in the world, looked like a certainty. But he neglected to make the important post-interview followup call, and then the King misplaced Auden’s folder when he went on vacation and didn’t know how to get in touch with him. The loss to literature resulting from this act of carelessness can only be imagined.

  Other poets appear to be qualified during the selection process and then, once installed, they turn into complete goldbricks. That was what William Wordsworth did. From our vantage point of years, we can see that Wordsworth’s entire career was nothing but an elaborate bait-and-switch scam: write some poetry, get yourself chosen poet laureate, and then—quittin’ time! In Wordsworth’s years as laureate, he became so bone-lazy that he would write only the meters of poems; he would do a limerick:

  De duh de de duh de de dah,

  De duh de de duh de de dah.

  De duh de de duh,

  De duh de de duh,

  De duh de de duh de de dah.

  Then he would mail that in to the “Information, Please” column of the London Times Literary Supplement and ask if any subscriber knew what the words might be.

  Just as disappointing was Alfred, Lord Tennyson, a laureate who literally could not write his way out of a paper bag. He proved this at a benefit performance for the Christian Temperance League in 1879. The poet was placed inside a large sack of standard-weight brown paper on a stage at Covent Garden, given several pens, and left to himself. He thrashed and flopped helplessly inside for four and a half hours; finally, members of the Grenadier Guards had to come and cut him free.

  How Tennyson ever made laureate is anybody’s guess, yet even he was an improvement on John Dryden, England’s first poet laureate, although by no means her best. Whenever people told Dryden they didn’t like one of his poems, he threw such a fit—arguing, sulking, and snapping at them—that they would resolve never to be candid with him again. By means of such behavior, Dryden was able, in a short period of time, to manipulate an entire population into pretending that he was a genius without equal. Today, we know better.

  And what of John Masefield, poet laureate from 1930 to 1967? He was the one, you will remember, who penned the howler “Sea Fever,” with the opening

  I must down to the seas again,

  to the lonely sea and the sky

  Eeeeeeeouch! It is a sad fact that among past poets laureate of England tin ears like Masefield’s have been not the exception but the rule.

  IF anyone can turn this tradition around, Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister Thatcher can. Both have proved themselves to be smart, articulate women with an eye for spotting talent—and the world of contemporary poetry gives them quite a bit of talent to spot. So far, the top candidates are Philip Larkin, 62; Roy Fuller, 72; D. J. Enright, 64; Gavin Ewart, 68; Ted Hughes, 53; and Dr. Leo Buscaglia, 59. Larkin is a popular essayist, as well as a poet with a strong sense of the beauties of commonplace speech. Fuller served on the governing board of the BBC, England’s main TV network, and a reflected glow from that “cool medium” often shines through the luminous poetry on which his reputation rests. Both Enright and Ewart have been poets since they were very little, and they have had a great many interesting insights over the years. Hughes is a much-honored poet whose trademark is the originality shown in every page of his work, which combines a love for the rhythms of nature with some other values. Buscaglia, though not, strictly speaking, a poet or an Englishman, still might be as good a choice as anyone, if not better. First, he is a doctor; second, he is an author and expert on the subject of human emotion, notably love, which has always been the poet’s province; and third, his books, Love, Living, Loving, and Learning, and Personhood, which have sold in the millions, are profound enough to be poetry already. With a slight change in typography, they would be. Lots of people know who Dr. Buscaglia is. And, compared to more traditional poets, Dr. Buscaglia is a nicer person. He could infuse social functions with a warm feeling that would humanize all that glittering pomp, and everyone would benefit. Along with poetic talent, the ability to reach out to others might well be an important requirement for the poet laureate of the future.

  Soon, the Queen and the Prime Minister will announce their decision. One of the candidates will wear the wreath of laurel; the rest will send their congratulations, and console themselves with the thought that at this level of poetry, there really are no losers. With a new poet laureate at the helm, a new era in English poetry may dawn. And in libraries and country retreats and book-lined dens across the land thousands of poets will return to their work, providing the verse that feeds a nation.

  1984

  VERONICA GENG

  SETTLING AN OLD SCORE

  “There are some experiences which should not be demanded twice from any man,” [George Bernard Shaw] remarked, “and one of them is listening to Brahms’s Requiem.” And, in his most famous dismissal of the work, he referred to it as “patiently borne only by the corpse.” … There are no rights and wrongs in criticism, only opinions more or less in conformance with the consensus of enlightened observers over time. By that criterion Shaw was “wrong.” But … musical polemics fade far faster than music itself, thankfully. —John Rockwell in the Times

  TO anyone who has tried to sit down and just enjoy a composition by Johannes Brahms, the sensation is all too familiar. As the musical phrases begin to wash away the cares of the day, transporting one into a delightful never-never land of artistic transcendence, one’s brain is rudely skewered by George Bernard Shaw’s unforgettable dictum about Brahms: “Like listening to paint dry.” Once Shaw penned this zinger, it became impossible (even for an independent-minded music critic like myself) to relax and surrender to the simple pleasure of knowing that Brahms is no longer considered passé. And another thing: Each time a Brahms piece is ruined by an ineradicable nagging memory of that effortless Shavian one-liner, the annoyance is nothing compared to what Brahms must feel, squirming eternally in his grave, his reputation forever etched by the acid of Shaw’s scorn.

  Brahms was but one victim of Shaw’s many pinpricks in the hot-air balloons of his era’s cultural biases. Yet a host of the myriad names he lambasted have nonetheless survived. Yet so has a lingering respect for Shaw. In the mind of today’s critic, this poses a problem. Must we say that Shaw was “wrong”? We may be tempted to utter a definitive “Yes,” while on the other hand bearing in mind that critical truth is an ever-shifting flux of historically relative pros and cons. Shaw’s derision of all the things he had scorn for has stood the test of time—because what he said has remained a touchstone, memorized and quoted again and again by generations of critics willing to encounter such a mind at the height of its powers even though we may possibly disagree, living as we do in a differing cultural context.

  By way of qualification, however, I should point out that Shaw was not merely a negative hatchet man. For example, take his blistering assertion that “Brahms makes the lowest hack jingle-writer look like Mozart.” Even someone such as myself who unashamedly rather likes Brahms (when well performed) is forced to concede Shaw’s positive foresight in defending the populist craft of the jingle-writer. (Not that this means I must obsequiously agree with every single last nuance of Shaw’s statement.)

  In any case, Shaw’s poison-tipped barbs were aimed at such a multitude of targets that to say he missed once or twice would be to say very little at all. Whatever the topic, Shaw never left any doubt as to where he stood:

  On Hamlet: “A tour de fuss.”

  On Oscar Wilde: “A man out of touch with his funnybone.”

  On the Code of Hammurabi: “The sort of thing that would be considered profound by girls named Misty.”

  On the formation of a local committee in Brighton to study the feasibility of allowing tourists to transport their beach gear on special storage racks affixed to the sides of buses: “A worse idea hasn’t crossed this
battered old desk of mine in lo, these many moons.”

  From 1914 to 1919, Shaw’s razor-tongued gibes were overshadowed by a vogue for bright quips about World War I. By 1921, however, he was again riding high—thanks to a series of personal appearances billed as “Shaw and His Skunk of the Week.” Playing to packed houses that rocked with expectant hilarity when he led off with one of his typical catchphrases—“Am I hot under the collar tonight!” or “Here’s something that really steams my butt”—he administered verbal shellackings to contemporary follies and pretensions ranging from Peter Pan (“It has plot holes you could drive a truck through”) to the scientific community’s renewed interest in Isaac Newton’s idea of putting a cannonball into orbit (“One of those notions worth thinking about while you clean your teeth: a tour de floss”).

  For the next twenty years, nothing and no one seemed safe from Shaw’s merciless stabs—not even his fans. Abhorring the nuisance of uninvited visitors, he posted on his door the following notice:

  RULES FOR VISITORS

  1. If you don’t see what you want, don’t be too shy to ask. Probably we don’t have it anyway.

  2. If the service is not up to snuff, just holler. Nobody will pay you any mind, but your tonsils can use the exercise.

  3. We will gladly cash your check if you leave your watch, fur coat, or car as collateral. No wives or in-laws accepted.

  4. If you are displeased in any way by the attentions of the resident Doberman pinscher, just remember—things could be worse. You could be at a Brahms concert.