Article 688 of alt.etext: Path: news.cic.net!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!sundog.tiac.net!news.sprintlink.net!redstone.interpath.net!mercury.interpath.net!not-for-mail From: ctporter@mercury.interpath.net (Chris Porter) Newsgroups: alt.etext,alt.zines,rec.arts.books Subject: (news)letter 1:18 Date: 23 Jun 1994 11:29:17 -0400 Organization: Interpath -- Public Access UNIX for North Carolina Lines: 338 Message-ID: <2uc9od$4o4@mercury.interpath.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: mercury.interpath.net Xref: news.cic.net alt.etext:688 alt.zines:4208 rec.arts.books:98940 (news)letter "Say the thing with which you labor." Thoreau from the porter micro.press Volume 1, Number 18 June 16, 1994 _________________________________________________________________ Happy Father's Day to all the Daddys out there! (Not to be partial but I hope the two happiest fathers in the world are Fully and Bob) And one big ol' Happy Hug for the Beeper on her sixth birthday (Monday)! Please send suggestions and submissions. To get on the mailing list, send your name and address to: CTPorter 117-A S. Mendenhall St. Greensboro, NC 27403 or e-mail ctporter@mercury.interpath.net Your input is appreciated. I read in the current issue of The Threepenny Review an essay by Jefferson Hunter entitled "Homage to John Goodricke" (21-22). Goodricke was an eighteenth-century English gentleman who happened to be deaf. Without a chance of a career in law or whatever a gentleman of that time could do, he devoted his life to the stars in the sky, becoming an amateur astronomer. What Goodricke did was to gauge the cycle of certain "variable" stars, those "whose brightness regularly decreases to a minimum, then increases to a maximum, over an ascertainable period of time" (21). Night in and night out the young gentleman would look at the field of stars, find the variable star he happened to be monitoring at the time, and estimate, based on the stars around it, its brightness in the strong/weak cycle. That's how John Goodricke spent his short life (he died at twenty-two), and he became very adept at his observations, as well as writing up his findings. His findings were important enough to warrant his election as a Fellow of the prestigious Royal Society. He fine tuned his ability to calculate the periodicity, finding a cycle of "2 days, 20 hours, 49 minutes 3 seconds, plus or minus 15 seconds" (22) for a variable star named Algol, earning a medal for his work. It's hard to fathom such dedication. I imagine Goodricke as a resigned astronomer, someone who knows his niche in life and doggedly fulfills it: every night to go out and look at the stars, hoping the clouds wouldn't obscure them, wondering if his subjective grade of this night would be accurate, wondering if the world would notice if he slept in just this once. Always imagining a greater existence yet persevering with his efforts night in and night out. "Duty" is the word I think of in this case: you have to admire someone who sticks to whatever duty he might have found with the tenacity of a Goodricke. Animal Farm I re-read the two volumes of Art Spiegelman's Maus this past week and thoroughly enjoyed it again. This is the tale of survivors: the cartoonist Spiegelman and his father Vladek. Vladek has survived the Holocaust; the author survived Vladek; they both survive the suicide of the wife and mother Anja. This story is as much a son's search to know his father as it is the story of a Jew who survives the Nazis. The family legacy is framed within a contemporary setting: the cartoonist son spends time with his father (a difficult proposition in itself) learning the details of Vladek and Anja's trials during World War II. Vladek personifies the Jewish stage type: he has all of the unpleasant attributes of the stereotypical "bad" Jew -- miserly, abrasive, so dominated by money, so overwhelmingly self-centered, horrible to his second wife (the first wife committed suicide, and she's the one who survived the camps with him) -- Vladek is not a pleasant person. The story seems more effective because Vladek is so human: with all of his imperfections it shows us the humanity of the victims, that these people weren't martyrs dying because of their convictions as much as a race of people punished because that race was marked as a scapegoat. The contemporary frame, with its family squabbles, rarely brings relief from the oppressive horror that is World War II Nazi-controlled Europe. Spiegelman prevents this story from getting too heavy through his use of the medium: different nationalities are drawn as different animals (Nazis are cats, Jews are mice, Poles are pigs and Americans are dogs), and little details jump out to affect the reader -- like when Vladek and Anja set out at night with no place to go, the roads that lay in front form the Nazi swastika or the image of the first Jewish casualties that Vladek sees and the image of the gallows that reverberates through the next panels. There is little anger in this story except for the unresolved tension between the father and the son; rather than place blame the author attempts to come to terms with history and family. Happy Father's Day, Jerk Talk about fathers with problems, how about Jim Pierce, the father of the young tennis player Mary Pierce who did so well in the French Open a couple of weekends ago. If you don't know the situation, the sire has been banned from attending women's tournaments, Mary's mother is divorcing him, and Mary has sought a restraining order to prevent his contacting her. Recently he gave an interview and came off sounding like more an investor than a parent: I made my Mary what she is today. I helped her claw and fight her way to the top. My daughter owes everything to me and I want her back. I will never rest easy until daddy's little girl comes home to daddy. ... I am the reason she will win Wimbledon. Mary is like a finely tuned sports car. She is sleek and powerful and she is the best. Well I built the Ferrari and now I want the keys back. Can you imagine the difficulty of being a mature young adult when you have to deal with a father like that? What's his problem anyway? Tennis Anyone? And it is the immaturity of the young tennis professionals that is fodder for the complaints of Sally Jenkins in her May 9 Sports Illustrated essay, "The Sorry State of Tennis." The kids turn pro at such an early age and are coddled by the powers that be that they turn into very unappealing adults. Instead of growing up along with their peers in high school, these kids "grow up" in a world filled with money and perks, and worst of all they are in control because the players are the ones the fans pay to see. Along with the article is a series of pictures, including a spectator yawning in a sparse crowd, Monica Seles gabbing on a phone in a limousine, and Jim Courier reading Armistead Maupin's Maybe the Moon during a changeover in a match. The author spends a lot of ink detailing just how spoiled the tennis stars are today, the perks the players get from over-eager tournament officials (one tournament even provided all of the male players with the use of their own personal concierge during their stay), and why that hurts the game. Among the suggestions to improve the game was one that would limit the number of tournaments a young pro (under the age of seventeen) could enter; limiting the number of perks available to a player; naming a commissioner who could centralize power and provide some control in the tennis world; and investing more in spreading the wealth of tennis -- i.e., more programs for inner-city youth. What tennis needs is a new hero, a Connors or a McEnroe from the wrong side of the tracks, someone who can electrify the fans. Courier, Sampras, Chang, those Rumanian pheenoms with sixteen foot wingspans and 120 mph serves -- where is the fun in watching these players? I bet tennis officials are petrified at the prospect of the World Cup Soccer action affecting the tennis ratings with Wimbledon coming up. Those longhairs in shorts running around a field kicking a ball are much more entertaining than watching a Courier-Sampras final. "I Come to Bury Caesar, Not to Praise Him" The June 16 issue of Rolling Stone had a series of essays on Richard Nixon written by their political writers, William Greider and Hunter S. Thompson, as well as one by George McGovern. All three of these are brutal, with McGovern's being the only one with forgiveness in its tone. McGovern wound up on the wrong side of Nixon's political machine in the 1972 election, an election reported on by Thompson for the Rolling Stone and covered in his book, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972. McGovern's essay, "The Last Nixon," not only reminds us of the illegalities of the Nixon administration and the political perversities of the former president, but goes beyond to judge him as a man. "I made my own peace with Nixon long ago," McGovern writes. Hunter Thompson, in his essay, "He was a Crook," takes pride in the vehemence of his hatred for Nixon: "the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum" (42-44). This essay brings back memories of the vintage Dr. Gonzo, who perfected his unique style of journalism (?) on the aforementioned Campaign Trail. Some might think such an essay in poor taste, and I include myself among them, but Hunter Thompson will always be Hunter Thompson, and this is what we must expect from him -- if you're easily offended, don't read the man. In "Nixon's Record," Greider concentrates on what Nixon did wrong, the crimes he committed while in office, and why we should never forget it. He reminds the reader of the extent of the dirty tricks and lies that Nixon and his cronies indulged in, including continuing the Vietnamese War for four unnecessary years and manipulating the economy in order to win re-election. Greider acknowledges the importance of establishing diplomatic ties with China but sees in the maneuver a "Nixonian twist": "taking a surprise action that contradicts your own beliefs ... for years the redbaiting Nixon had denounced others for entertaining the very same thought" (42). Greider comes to the conclusion that "we ought not accede to facile lies about him. The funeral commentary that most sickened me was the claim that Richard Nixon's dark, devious self accurately reflected the rest of us" (119). But I think Nixon did reflect that part of us: look at the problems tennis players have with the power they command, the problem Jim Pierce has with losing control of his "power," and the problems so many of our cultural heroes have with the attention they receive. The rules one bends and the foibles of one's personality is magnified in a person of power. We shouldn't whitewash the memory of Nixon and his Presidency, but he was after all, just human. Rebel With a Cause I'm reminded of a poem I found in TriQuarterly 89 (Winter 1993- 94) by Kevin Bowen, "Peasant Fare: At the Museum of Fine Arts." This poem opens with the question, "Why in these paintings of the Middle Ages / the peasants are so plump and healthy," and goes into the reality, all of the hardships that these people faced, the "women raped and sold / on a regular basis," punishment for heretics, historical facts like that. There is but a hint of a reality different than that pictured: Only far off in a corner a look of treason beneath a cap, in green eyes, a hint of truth, the pure and honest terror. No matter how much we try we won't forget our history, what we've done. There will always be that person over there in the corner, with those green eyes that won't quit, and that person will remind us of what we wish to forget. Make Love, Not War Talk about horrible memories! I picked up a book that was first published in 1978, titled Aikido in Everyday Life: Giving in to Get Your Way, by Terry Dobson and Victor Miller. It has been recently reissued but not improved, so this self-help book constantly reminds me of the worst of the late Seventies: the various carrots that were held up to the reader of that time. The author implores us, in the preface to the second edition, to ignore the archaic flavor of this book: The reader is asked to excuse the outdated tone of the book -- the attempt to be timely -- and penetrate to the intent of the words. (x) I found myself unable to do so and moreover angry with the author: if he knew that the tone needed work, why not improve it? What else is a second edition for but to improve the book? Otherwise, it's just a reprint. This book uses role plays to illustrate various concepts in conflict resolution -- how to turn conflict into harmony. Without fail these role plays are smarmy and I find their like nowhere in my everyday life. Here's one example: Mom, Dad and Junior are arguing about Junior's college decisions, and this is the finale that should establish harmony: JUNIOR: Mom and Dad, I've listened to both of you very carefully. Now tell me if I've heard it right. It seems that you both love me very much. MOM: Of course. DAD: Of course. JUNIOR: But it also seems that the argument that you've been having has to do with who is going to have the power to choose my future for me, not whether I'll be an engineer or a poet. Maybe we ought to deal with that first. DAD: Well, of course, the choice is finally up to you, son. I never meant that it wasn't. MOM: Why, yes, of course it's up to you, dear. JUNIOR: I love you both very much. (189-190) Posh on that! I'd rather have a food fight. Speed Kills, Bub I went to see the movie Speed hoping that the thrills alone were worth it. I have read several reviews of the movie, all of which mentioned some technical problems but gave the film high marks for the excitement it generated. There's also been a lot written about Keanu Reeves as a new star, the current hunk of the month, and I must say this is a good role for something like that -- he spent a lot of time with his hands on his gun shouting "FREEZE!" forearms bulging, sweat providing a sheen to his muscles. But I couldn't enjoy the movie. Not because I didn't like the thrills, but because I kept worrying about the innocent bystanders. A bus going fifty miles per hour through a traffic jam should be fun, but when that bus is sideswiping all of the cars, that turns ugly. I seem to have resigned myself to the lack of danger of a celluloid shoot-out -- when the good guys and the bad guys can't hit each other then we take for granted that they're not hitting anyone else. When gunfire erupts in a nightclub we assume that there aren't a slew of innocent victims. In Speed much of the emphasis of the movie is on the innocence of the victims. The madman, played by Dennis Hopper, wants money and one way to get it is to endanger the lives of as many people as he can. But when the bus loaded with people and bombs sideswipes a whole row of cars in traffic, I wonder about those "innocent" bystanders. The emptied bus finally crashes into a cargo plane: I couldn't help wondering if anyone was on the plane, loading it. And when the subway train crashes through the busy construction site, it seemed so many people would die that saving the money wasn't worth it. How many people does one kill in order to preserve peace? There wasn't that feeling of safe thrills: besides the hostages, there were a whole lot of bit characters whose "safety" I worried about, and as a movie viewer, I'm not used to that. Quote of the Week Toni Morrison, in her speech given upon receiving the Nobel Prize in 1993 (World Literature Today (Winter 1994), 5-8), spoke about the power of words, both good and bad words: Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity-driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek -- it must be rejected, altered, and exposed. (6) Words used in such ways weaken the language, and by implication the spirit of the people who use that language.