Reprint Heaven: Floating, or, May We All Be Rescued

Birthday of Big Marine Mammal Avatar Creators

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville / Moby-Dick, or, The Whale

Over at the Soul Of America, we are reminded that it's Herman Melville's 198th 189th birthday.

... There is no Whale before He who populates a goodly portion of that book ... That Big Marine Mammal is archetypal, now.

And His (or, Her) echoes in the culture are manifest:  We get Futurama's We're Whalers On The Moon / We Carry A Harpoon; or Robert Graves' "Good-Bye To All That" (where -- and I paraphrase -- the President of his College at post-Great War Oxford tells the assembled, 'Gentlemen, the menu indicates that tonight we are dining on "Whale and Pigeon Pie." You will find the ratio of the ingredients to be precisely one whale to one pigeon');  or, Robertson Davies' What's Bred In The Bone, where the main character has a dinner of Moby meat with his flagrantly unfaithful wife, in a dingy London restaurant during WWII (" '...Catch Me!' She said through a mouthful of whale' ").

Of course, when something appears in Family Guy, it's now hard-wired into our DNA.

 Herman Left Out The Part Where Whales Like 'Total'

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UND NOCH IMMER MEHR:  Once I saw this, I could not un-see it. It is an actual book.

 

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Reprint Heaven: When In These Coarse Current Events

Nothing To See Here

(Original Foto, Courtesy Danny Dutch, That Guy, via The Soul Of America)

Sad Vlad, The Putin (called 'Pooti-Poot' by George "Lil' Boots" Bush, in that bizarre, Mitfordian slang his Familia di Criminale use to describe other people), is like that guy who claims not to have a dinosaur.

Vlad does, in fact, have a dinosaur. He has Ted the T-Rex in his barn -- I mean, we can hear Ted bellowing all the way down to County Road 47; hell, we can hear him down to the Interstate. Some nights, Ted spots cars full of joyriding teenagers, out cruising the Rural Routes between the farms, and chases them all over the place. He doesn't ever catch them -- probably, he just likes running after them -- and there are big three-toed footprints, afterwards, everywhere. Plenty of kids have had big dents put in the roofs of their cars, by something, out on those dark roads -- but the two auto-body places we've got don't mind the business.

Cattle are missing in eight counties, and plenty of people haven't seen their pets for a while -- and piles of shit, seven feet tall, appear here and there almost every day. What Vlad doesn't plow under, he sells as fertilizer -- and he's been selling that shit to just about the whole damn state for a long time, now. Some people from Monsanto were sniffing around Vlad's farm, trying to figure out where that manure was coming from, but they just kind of -- disappeared.

Vlad and his family are constantly getting people stopping by the house, asking about that damn dinosaur. He explains, patiently, with that flat-fish expression of his that no, they do not have a dinosaur. Vlad claims to be so tired of this, all the folks from Des Moines and Ystaad and Tunbridge Wells and Saskatoon with their kids, piling out of overloaded station wagons and asking to use the restroom -- that finally, he made himself a sign, right there, on the hood of an old 1949 Vonyets tractor: We Do Not Have A Dinosaur.

If you continue to insist he does, Vlad will take a step back and look at you. Dinosaur? You been out in the sun a while? Ridiculous. Those things've been extinct for a good, long time ("Just like my old buddy, Alex," Vlad says with a sly grin). If you can hold it, there's a Tastee-Freeze a couple miles up the road with a bathroom, Vlad says. We got a farm to run, here; you all have a nice day.

Except, this is where he gets his cake and sells you dinosaur shit, too: There Is A Fucking T-Rex In Vlad's Barn. You know it. He knows it. You can't really prove it -- I mean, no one has actually seen Ted -- but when you put together that noise coming out of Vlad's barn, all those footprints, lebenty-billion pounds of crap all over the place and a whole bunch of missing cattle ... remember Ossie's Tazer, or whatever they call that: When all's said and done, the simplest explanation is pretty much gonna be right.

And the folks at the County Seat claim to know nothing about it. Vlad's been a good friend to the County folks -- lot of that fertilizer money went to see them get elected last fall. And there were those big piles of shit that appeared every morning on the front lawns of their opponents' homes.  Vlad had some problems with that previous administration -- some back taxes; not addressing his land rights issues, questions about how he runs his fertilizer trade. But now the election's done, word is that all may disappear. And, the County Commissioner has a new John Deere Combine -- he claims it's a lease. Others aren't so sure.

There are plenty of people out there who will tell you that Vlad's a good guy. He means well, runs a tight farm and, up front, always treats you with respect. But there's no denying that his neighbors -- the ones who bring their cattle into the barns every night, the ones they've spent a biggly amount of cash reinforcing with steel -- are a little nervous about Vlad.

Some of them say he has funny ideas about expanding his farm -- that he has some kind of Plan, and Ted The T-Rex is a big part of it. Others say he likes doing crazy-ass things just out of pure, human fuckery.

All I know is, Vlad has that sign, We Do Not Have A Dinosaur, and almost every night I hear that big lizard, bellowing to beat the band as he chases some car full of teenagers, having a helluva good time. You can complain, but the County Commissioner will just tell you -- probably on Twitter -- what a silly goose you are and you best shut up now. Sad!

Reprint Heaven: Sarajevo

Unraveling

(From 2016)

Cousin Ignatz, Asleep At Princip's Post: Sarajevo, 2014 (Matthew Fisher / Postmedia News)

Roughly twelve hours and [103] years ago, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, the Grand Duchess Sophie, were shot by Gavrillo Princip, a member of an assassination team sent to the Bosnian city by the government of Serbia.

Collectively, the team was the gang which couldn't shoot straight: armed with crude grenades, a few pistols, and carrying some form of suicide pill, they waited along the route Franz Ferdinand's car would take as it drove beside the Miljacka river, which cuts through Sarajevo (local Austro-Hungarian authorities had helpfully published the Archduke's route beforehand).

Most of the team either was poorly positioned, or chickened out at the last moment.  One conspirator did throw a bomb at the Archduke's car, which bounced off its folded-back fabric top and exploded near a second car traveling just behind. Several people in the car had minor injuries and it continued on to a local hospital.

The Archduke's driver, Leopold Lojka, continued to Sarajevo city hall. When Franz Ferdinand arrived, he effectively unloaded on the hapless administrators about the state of their local security ("I come to your city and am greeted with bombs!"). Meanwhile, back at the river, the would-be bomber had jumped into the Miljacka and swallowed his suicide pill -- which he promptly threw up. The police arrested him, barely managing to keep him from being lynched a mob of pro-Austro-Hungarian citizens, and so save him for later trial and execution.

At approximately 12:30 PM, having finally accepted the thanks of the Sarajevo city fathers, Franz Ferdinand and his wife got back into their car, planning to go to the local hospital to see those wounded in the bomb attack that morning. They used the same route, in reverse, that they had taken into the city, driving along the river. But when the Chauffeur, Lojka, came to a particular intersection -- to his left, a street; to the right, a bridge over the Miljacka river -- he was confused.

 The Royal Couple (Seated, At Rear) Leaving City Hall: Fifteen Minutes Left

Believing it to be the route he needed to take to drive to the hospital, Lojka slowed and turned left into the street.  Almost immediately, he realized he'd made a mistake and stepped on the brakes. The car came to a stop a few yards into the street, and Lojka moved to put it in reverse gear.

 The Intersection, 2014: The Archduke's Car Turned Left, Into This Street;
The Restaurant Where Princip Bought Lunch, Now A Museum (Photo: CNN)

At that same intersection was a small restaurant. Gavrillo Princip, last member of the Serbian assassination squad, had gone inside to buy a sandwich, angry and dejected after the team's failure that morning. Standing on the sidewalk outside the cafe, he saw a large, dark-green automobile turn out of the boulevard and come to a stop directly in front of him. In the very rear seat were the Archduke and his wife.

The heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne had been delivered, less than ten feet away, from an armed assassin who had come to the city specifically to kill him. If you were writing a novel or screenplay, anything that coincidental would be branded as implausible. No one's gonna believe that.

Princip didn't hesitate. He dropped his sandwich, pulled a pistol out of his jacket and stepped towards the car, firing several shots, managing to mortally wound both the Archduke and his wife. Lojka, the driver, was ordered to rushed the royal couple to the local military governor's residence. Sophie died on the way. A military officer in the car, checking on the Archduke's condition, asked the wounded man how he was; Ferdinand said, "Nichts (It's nothing)", and died.

Just over a month later, Europe was at war. Over the next four-plus years, the entire social fabric of the continent and much of the world changed irrevocably. Monarchies ended; millions died; the map of the world changed as the victors annexed territory from Germany and Austria Hungary, and new countries were created. New technology was developed -- and, in the Versailles Treaty, the groundwork was laid for a second, even more horrible war to begin by 1939.

(And, in 1918-19, the Spanish Influenza infected 500 million people and killed 40 million, worldwide; it was the largest number of deaths due to pandemic disease since the 'Black Death' Bubonic Plague outbreak in the 14th century [~200 million].  In the U.S., millions were made sick, and 675,000 died [0.6-plus per cent of America's population at the time, 103 million]. It's often referred to as the "forgotten epidemic" -- just one more terrible event in an ocean of violence and atrocity.)

 Cousin Ignatz, Worn Out By All The History

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Why the history lesson? We're living through history. When we read about events in Europe during the Interwar Years (1918 - 1933 or so), there's a feeling of being slowly pulled down into a drain of inevitability -- revolving-door failures of parliamentary governments in France; Britian's declining empire; the manic Totentanz of global capital leading to 1929; the rise and fall of Weimar; Italian, German and Japanese fascism. Regional war and civil war. 

Like the story of the Titanic or the Hindenburg, you know where the story is going. You know it will end in Nanking, Kristalnacht, Dunkirk; Auschwitz; Stalingrad; the Warsaw Ghetto; D-Day; the Führerbunker; Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But you read about the years leading up to all that with a mounting sense of horror, because we all know how it ends.

While the Brexit may be not have been a "shot heard 'round the world", the Tories are hanging on by their fingernails in the UK; the Scots still wonder about independence; the Greek, French and Italian economies are still at risk. Putinland, the Great Bear, still pushes the envelope here and there -- Ukraine and Syria. As IS loses on battlefields in the continuing slow-motion atrocity that is the Middle East, suddenly they appear in a Philippine city, on a London street. Disproportionate numbers of Black people are shot in major American cities on a routine basis. Climate change is not fake news.

America, ruled by Babbitry, greed and illusion, retreats from the world stage; its leader is Bloated, Sick, and Raving, surrounded by car-wash dilettantes. Other nation-state players, great and small, are happy to rush into the vacuum we leave behind, and any of them could easily start a larger conflict -- India, Pakistan; Kim Jong Fat Boy's Fun People's Republic Of Chuckles, and South Korea; Iran and Saudi Arabia.  

And no matter how you want to characterize it, there's a confrontation -- between those who want a globalist, centralized world (unfortunately, organized around the goals of international finance and business principals, together with the most powerful nation-state actors), and those who don't. The balances in the old alliances created after WWII have all but unraveled.  Kleiner Mann; Was Nun?

Hope you're not looking for an answer. I am, after all, only a Dog, and no one listens to me.

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Reprint Heaven (Or, So We'd Hope)

Yeah; Thirty-Six Years

Something About Him Was Always A Kick-Out-The-Jambs Liverpudlian Rebel

Speak, Memory: One of the two arrests we made that day hadn't gone well. After putting the car in the basement garage at the Federal Building, I'd walked up the underground ramp to the street, intending to buy my second pack of Marlboros of the day from the liquor store up the next block. Stepping inside, I looked down at a stack of the evening edition of a paper which isn't even around any longer, lying on the counter below the cash register with a banner headline in 48-point type: JOHN LENNON SLAIN.  Fuck; I thought, and then said it out loud. 

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Reprint Heaven: Good Night, Uncle Walter

And That's The Way It Is
(The Googlegerät reminds: Today is Uncle Walter's birthday. This, from 2009)

Walter Cronkite 1916 - 2009 (CBS News)

I know that the memories and worldview of Boomers are things of derision for more 'relevant' generations; who the hell cares what we remember. However, for most of my childhood and early adulthood, there wasn't a single major event that didn't have the voice of Walter Cronkite narrating it.

The Cuban Missile Crisis; The arrival of The Beatles; John F. Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963; the war in Vietnam (1962-1975); Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy's assassinations in 1968; Chicago during that years' Democratic Convention; the first landing of human beings on Earth's Moon on July 20, 1969; the Watergate hearings in 1973; the collapse of Richard Nixon's presidency and resignation in 1974...

...and it wasn't only the signal events between 1962 and 1981 which Cronkite narrated which made him an icon. It wasn't even the thousands of mundane items that he introduced or reported on for over twenty years. It was the sound of Cronkite's voice. Even if you only had the CBS evening news on in the background, that voice added to what made up the continuity of our times.

Cronkite represented a connection to news reporting that reflects the Reality of what was occurring (he wouldn't have made it as a Fox Entertainment 'journalist'). He was also willing to court physical risk to discover what that Reality was, and translate the essence, the Truth of it, as best he could. Beyond all that, being a reporter was his job; he wanted to do it as best he could.

As a 25-year-old AP reporter, Cronkite covered America's war in the Mediterranean and Europe at its beginning. From Operation Torch in North Africa in November of 1942, he went to England -- where he gained a reputation for going on more 8th Air Force daylight bombing raids over Germany than any other reporter. On D-Day in 1944, Cronkite was one of the first correspondents ashore; later that year, he was landing by glider behind German lines with the 101st Airborne in Operation Market Garden. He was in Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. And he covered the Nuremberg trials of the twenty-one major nazi war criminals.

In 1962, CBS created the 30-minute news-program format. News on the radio had been commonplace for forty years, but it had never been presented on television. The program would go out live in New York, but taped for delayed broadcast in Central and Pacific time, to be received in millions of American homes at 6:00 PM, Monday through Friday. It was an innovation -- and some thought, risky: Would people accept the idea of a news program broadcast when most people were eating dinner? More important -- would they watch the commercials? And CBS' choice to be the lead commentator, the "anchor" for a lineup of filmed segments filed by other reporters, was Walter Cronkite.

CBS' decision was based on the fact that he appeared so completely mainstream, so inoffensive. His baritone voice sounded authoritative, like the radio news broadcasters most people were familiar with -- H.V. Kaltenborn, or Edward R. Murrow, who had moved on to television. Cronkite was a solid, thorough reporter who had paid his dues; he had a reputation for "Iron Pants" -- sitting still through the most boring assignments, never sounding or appearing anything but interested, never losing his temper or melting down on the air.

And unlike Murrow, Walter had no apparent interest in using the television soapbox he was about to be handed to express any... uncomfortable opinions. He didn't like to throw controversial questions in an interview, and was known to toss "Softballs" to subjects like Eisenhower, Nixon or Kennedy. When Murrow had taken on Joseph McCarthy and the endless 'Red Scare' hearings of his Senate committee, CBS lost advertising revenue. That fact was not lost on CBS' Chairman, the redoubtable William S. Paley, who had to approve the choice of Cronkite for this new venture.

The format was a hit. Apparently, people did watch television news while they ate their evening meals, and liked it. The Neilsen ratings agency said so, and the advertising revenue began to roll in. The other major networks copied CBS, a sure sign of a winning trend. CBS affiliate stations (like the main network, dependant on advertising dollars) loved Walter because he was making them money.

People at home, watching their RCA or GE or Magnavox Teevees from the dinner table, instead of each other, thought Cronkite was so... trustworthy. People had liked Edward R. Murrow -- but when he broadcast, Ed sounded like some critical relative, lecturing you about a choice of meat for dinner, or scolding your children for running with scissors. You knew he was smart, but America doesn't like smart that much; it's not neighborly. Nobody really likes someone better than you.

But -- if you had "accidentally" borrowed money from the 4-H petty cash and couldn't pay it back; or couldn't decide whether Polaroid at $3.50/share was a good deal; or your girlfriend had missed her period... for 1962 America, Cronkite looked like the Dad or Uncle you could confide in. He'd never lecture you like that prissy Murrow, or sound like that undertaker, Chet Huntley; or that Mr. Peepers-type with the glasses, John Chancellor, on NBC.

You could see just by looking at him that Uncle Walter had been around; he knew what was what, but somehow, it hadn't changed him. He didn't believe he was better than you. He'd give you straight advice. And even if you'd utterly and irredeemably fucked up, and his advice was to face the music and dance... you'd know he was right and still go away feeling good about yourself.

Cronkite had come up as a reporter when radio was king, and the best-known broadcast commentators all had signature 'hooks' -- Murrow's opening was the famous, "This -- is London", during the Blitz in 1940; Walter Winchell's was, "Good Evening, America, and all the ships at sea". Lowell Thomas' closing line was, "So long, until tomorrow!" So, early in the CBS Nightly News, Cronkite adopted his own famous signature close, which he would repeat for the next nineteen years: "And that's the way it is: Friday, July Seventeenth, Nineteen Sixty-Four; this is Walter Cronkite. For CBS News -- goodnight." It stayed in our heads as well.

And when JFK (initially concerned that Cronkite was a Republican, and so might skew his reportage -- he wasn't; he was a registered Independent) was murdered, it was Uncle Walter who broke the bad news, first, to the nation -- and who sat up with the country for hour after hour over the next days, through the pomp and circumstance and unbelief. More than Chet Huntley or David Brinkley's voices on NBC, or Eric Sevaried's on ABC, it was Walter Cronkite's voice that bridged that period between the end of Camelot, and whatever was to come next.

All this gave him the necessary credentials when, five years later, Cronkite publicly questioned the wisdom of America's involvement in Vietnam. The Pentagon Papers would reveal that the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident (pretext for the next eight years of escalating war in South Vietnam) had been a sham. Cronkite, who had excellent sources, might have suspected the war had been engineered, but never questioned it on those grounds. Like many of his viewers, he had supported America's mission in Vietnam -- but only until it was plain that we were mired in a conflict that could not be won under post-WW2 rules of engagement: It wasn't the kind of classic, "Good War" between Light and Darkness which he had seen first-hand.

After a series of journeys to Vietnam and long interviews with everyone from Diplomats and Generals to Grunts, Cronkite came to the firm conclusion that we couldn't win. He wasn't interested in the details, so much as the broader questions -- In a world with nuclear weapons, can we win this war? And, is it worth it? He believed another solution was possible, and necessary; and it would include pulling our troops back from Southeast Asia.

It was 1968, with Martin and Bobby already both assassinated. It was an election year defined by the war; by three years of race riots, National Guard soldiers in the streets. It was a year defined by the Counterculture, and by an antidraft, antiwar movement. Cronkite decided to do what CBS' executives never though he would -- to tell America that uncomfortable truth from behind the Anchor's desk on the CBS Nightly News. In a closing commentary reminiscent of Edward R. Murrow, Uncle Walter said "In this reporter's opinion", that the Vietnam war simply wasn't winnable; "that perhaps we should say, 'We did the best we could'," and bring our boys home.

President Lyndon Johnson, watching the broadcast, knew it was a watershed moment: If Walter Cronkite had said America should pull out of Vietnam, Johnson told an aide when the broadcast was over, "then I've lost the war". Little more than a week later, LBJ went on national television to say he "would not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President."

Cronkite and his CBS team in Vietnam, 1967 (Public Domain)

Cronkite broke the code of silence that made up so much of life in post-World War Two America; he was calling things by their right names, reality with a Capital R. I remember watching Cronkite deliver that message in 1968. It was the sort of moment I hoped some other American broadcast journalist would come to during the "Lil' Boots" Bush years. Finally, Keith Olbermann did, a little late in the day, and not entirely because he had come to a heartfelt conclusion about the disaster of Lil' Boots' presidency... but also because it meant good ratings for MSNBC, something Cronkite would have barely considered.

Our leaving Vietnam would take another four years, and cost additional thousands of American lives. Richard Nixon was elected claiming he had a "secret plan" to end the war. That turned out to be more escalation, CIA assassination squads; J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO; the 1970 invasion of Cambodia and a heavy crackdown on antiwar demonstrations; The Plumbers and black-bag jobs and 'Enemies Lists', and cozy relations between the GOP and the Mob-run Teamsters' Union. After the killing of four students at Kent State in Ohio, Cronkite lashed out at Nixon's policies, and his stand gave other reporters and networks the courage to voice their own opinions in closing segments.

In response, Nixon put heavy pressure on William Paley to muzzle Cronkite's criticism; then, Vice-President Spiro Agnew went after America's media in a series of speeches, essentially accusing national news outlets, and figures like Cronkite, of treason.

Nixon's pressure and threats had a chilling affect. In 1970, after a broadcast criticizing the government's attempt to threaten journalists into silence, ABC News anchor Frank Reynolds was forced to resign. The war went on; bombings of North Vietnam escalated; the whole period was a reminder of the blacklisting and censorship of the McCarthy period -- which Cronkite's CBS colleague, Edward R. Murrow, had famously stood up to.

For network television news anchors, Murrow's courage in criticizing the bullying atmosphere of fear which Tail Gunner Joe created set the bar for future television journalists to defend their ability to inform Americans what is happening in, and to, their country. Cronkite maintained that tradition, not backing down despite the obvious threats made by The President -- and Cronkite knew Nixon was famous for using the power of his office to take revenge. It helped that CBS' executives stood behind him (Something they didn't do for Dan Rather, thirty years later -- but, in these days, truth is highly overrated in the news entertainment industry).

Even backstopped by CBS, Walter had professionally put his ass on the line. He knew it didn't matter what his reputation was, whether he was considered a presence on television. Cronkite knew the other side of Murrow's defiance of McCarthy; Murrow had been a legend, too -- and came within a hairsbreadth of being fired (rent Good Night and Good Luck, again) by the same Bill Paley whom Nixon was calling to express his wattle-jowled displeasure.

At the same time, Cronkite had been as close to actual combat situations as a noncombatant can; something like Nixon or Agnew coming at him only made him angry. He must've had a moment of satisfaction, watching Agnew forced to resign under indictment for talking over $300,000 in bribes when Governor of Maryland; and later, watching a paranoid, self-destructive and self-pitying Nixon, pinned down by Watergate, resign himself. And, as with JFK's assassination almost eleven years before, the voice of Uncle Walter took us from the "long national nightmare" to whatever would come next.

People who didn't grow up with him as a fixture won't understand the context within which he was important, or how he's missed. It isn't nostalgia for a simpler time -- it's that in 2009, television news is simply another form of corporate entertainment. It's always been an Establishment mouthpiece in one way or another -- except for people like Cronkite, who believed that facts didn't need to be presented like movie trailers, or with political spin. Cronkite intensely disliked the media style of Limbaugh, Wiener and O'Reilly because for him, it distorted the Truth, the Facts: Fox and other networks' use of this kind of format wasn't about news, but personalities, and a political agenda.

Few people have the opportunity to reach so many other human beings, a fixture in our cultural memory, without being corrupted somehow in the process. After nineteen years as CBS' anchor, Cronkite retired -- like any working person, putting in their twenty and then calling it quits -- and didn't look back.

Cronkite never used status for personal gain or to create another career. He always reminded me of another man from Missouri, Mark Twain -- though without the bite of wit, or his obvious humor; but still an honest and quintessentially American observer. He never ran for office; never appeared in films (in 1984, approached to appear as himself in the film version of The Right Stuff, even with his interest in America's space program, Cronkite said no; they had to use Eric Sevareid instead).

He declined, gracefully, to capitalize on his image in a way that would be accepted as normal today (and I shudder to think what that says about contemporary culture). David Halberstam, another legend as a reporter and writer, once observed about Cronkite that "He liked, indeed loved, being 'Walter Cronkite', being around all those celebrities -- but it was as if he could never quite believe that he was a celebrity himself."

Cronkite participated in developing the Illusion Factory television has become, but I think the reason he never took his status seriously was that he never confused Walter Cronkite, the image and voice on millions of television screens, with Walter Cronkite, a guy doing a job. It may seem incredible, especially with the cynical take many of us have on the age we live in, but I swear it's probably just that simple.

He was as ambitious as the next person; when some lucky breaks arrived in his job, he took them. But when he saw something he believed was wrong, he judged his chances and then stood up and spoke out -- even at the risk of losing that job. He worked for a living, tried to meet his bosses' expectations, and (because he was very much aware of his own status) live up to the standards of his profession as he saw them; doing a 'good job' mattered. At night, he went home to his wife and children.

Regarding himself, he never said, Hey, what's all the fuss about?; he knew. He was, after all, like the Uncle Walter we believed he was, the guy who had been around -- but for all that had been unchanged. Unlike media personalities in 2009, Cronkite was a reporter who never believed in his own press.

And that's the way it is.

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Reprint Heaven: Welcome To Target

Because Freedom

(Because we think there's a problem.  From June 11, 2015.)

(Photo By Mongo + Android / Photoshop)

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Reprint Heaven: In The Beginning Was The Word

Gott Und Die Politik

(This, from August of 2010.)

-- The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

Glenn Beck, At Lower Right Surrounded By Private Security Guards,

Waits To Begin The Rally behind A Poster Of A Native American

(Photo: Brendan Smialowski, New York Times Online, 8/28/10)

It isn't really important that someone staged a religious rally in Washington, D.C.; that's been done before. The Moral Majority and Christian Coalition have staged them, and the 'Million-Man March' comes to mind.

But this is the first religious rally that is overtly political, a demand to link or merge church and state, organized by evangelical christians with the general theme of turning America back to god -- through the general emergence of a new political force, the vaguely-defined 'Tea Party'.

And it is happening at a time when the mainstream media continually portrays the state of National politics as confused at best and governing against the will of the People at worst. And, this rally is happening at a time when many people are out of work, angry and vulnerable, and ready to listen to a "new message".

The Times stated that NBC news estimated 300,000 people lined the Mall between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument; the event's spokespersons said it was half a million. "But," said the Times, "by any measure it was a large turnout," which to me is disturbing.

The Rally (Photo: New York Times / Jacquelyn Martin - AP)

It was organized by Glenn Beck -- an eager entertainer who has the backing of Little Rupert's News Corp., the most powerful media conglomerate on the planet. Ten years ago, Glenny was just another drive-time talk jock. Now, he's standing with the Lincoln Memorial at his back, believing he speaks for god and preaching a mixture of biblical interpretation and Rightist garbage.

The Most Something Name In News: Reflecting Beck's Penchant

For Truthyness And Factitiousness (Screencapture: CNN)

It's a Meaglomaniac's dream come true. However, the phrase, "Jesus wept," is invoked for a reason. There are a large number of people who see Beck attempting to equate his little monologue with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech in the same place, on the same date -- an address of hope and a demand for equality and justice, that has nothing to do with the ego of a tubby con man enabled by a media oligarch. And they're not happy.

"For too long, this country has wandered in darkness,” Beck said to a nearly all-Caucasian crowd in a long, rambling speech that repeated themes from his Fox television program, his Clearchannel radio show, and his Web 'University', all of which push a bizarre amalgam of half-truths and boldfaced lies about American history.

"This country has spent far too long worrying about ... and concentrating on scars," Glenny went on. "Today, we are going to concentrate on the good things in America, the things that we have accomplished, and the things that we can do tomorrow.”

"Under God": Tea Party Attendees Recited The Pledge Of Allegiance;

Find A Black Person In This Photo And I'll Pay You 1,000 Quatloos

(Photo: Brendan Smialowski, New York Times Online, 8/28/10)

Speaking of something many of the other tubby white men in the crowd would do, Sarah Palin spoke immediately after Beck; "We must not fundamentally transform America as some would want," Palin said. "We must restore America and restore her honor."

The themes were consistent: America is on the wrong road; we need to regain our honor; we need to look to our glorious past; we need to turn back to religion as the basis for governing the country; and as Beck has been spouting for several years, the Federal government should be reduced in its power, and get out of the lives of its citizens... and all citizens should accept god, and live by godly principles.

Obligatory Cute Dead Animal Photo In Middle Of Blog Rant

...the important thing is that all signs are that the next few years will be a combination of economic stagnation and political witch-hunt... This is going to be almost inconceivably ugly.
-- Paul Krugman, "Failure To Rise"; NY Times, August 28, 2010

I believe a large number of people will snort out a laugh about Beck's rally, and his performance, today (even David Niewart, who has kept as close an eye on the totalitarian leanings of America's Right as anyone). After all, they'll say, we've heard all his themes before; nothing new there -- and they'll make fun of him.

But I also think people are uneasy at what they're seeing; all sniggers aside, the rally had a moderately respectable turnout (Definitely not half a million, and not 300,000; but respectable).

And, because Beck wants nothing short of a revolution -- he's as much as said so. His enablers and investors (monkey-gland-fueled oligarchs like Little Rupert, and the Billionaire Boyz Club) think the Tea party will disappear, sooner or later -- but intend to make Progressives spend capital and resources fending it off ...and get something out of it for themselves.

And if it does become something; if the country ends up being ruled by nut jobs like Palin and Bachmann and Paul... well; it's nice to be on the right side of people who believe god speaks to them, isn't it? Because those people usually take a Dairy Queen full of people hostage and then demand money, a fueled jet, and "complete release".

Unless revolutions are seriously non-violent (as Dr. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, or Mahatma Gandhi's long effort to win independence for India, were) and truly have justice and history on their side, they end in two ways -- a coup d'etat, because in order to survive, a government has to share power with the revolutionaries (Germany in 1933); or a seizure of power by force, (the French and Russian Revolutions), usually with some involvement by part of a country's professional military officers.

Who Wants To Swear Allegiance To Anything We Say, Or End Up In

The Gulag? Soviet 'Citizens' During The Purges Of The 1930's

In either case, the revolutionaries need scapegoats. In moving from the Old Order to the New, there will have to be punishments, a comeuppance. And, since it's a Revolution, the old notions of civility, fairness and justice won't apply. The revolutionaries suddenly in power will do whatever is necessary to keep it -- and to survive, people will have to swear allegiance to whatever those in power want them to.

Because in the end, it is all about power; "Where the broom does not sweep," Mao Zedong said, "The dust will not vanish of itself." In order to bring about revolutionary change, the new leaders won't ask a society to do what they want -- they have to demand it, and behind that demand is always the barrel of a gun.

In a political revolution, that's bad enough; ask the Czechs, the Romanians, the Bulgarians and the Russians; the Spanish and the Germans. But in a revolution created by religious True Believers, they will not only want you to agree that two and two make five; you will have to prove to them that you believe it with all your heart. Or else. The only way religious revolutionaries can build consensus is by attacking 'heretics' and 'unbelievers' as defined by their leaders, who claim to speak for god.

Francisco Goya, Inquisition; Prado Museum, Madrid

For example: Non-christians, agnostics or atheists may be identified by others in their neighborhoods to the authorities. They may be ostracized, their businesses boycotted. Eventually, they will be marginalized legally -- at first, laws may be passed requiring only recognized christians to hold public office or civil service jobs; then, to hold any job. Then, to own certain kinds of property.

And while all this is going on, the media is broadcasting the message that since the new leaders are informed by god, directives of the new government are directed by god as well -- in fact, will be equated with god's will. Those against the government, and certain non-christians, are evil; "in rebellion against god"; agents of Satan.

Nazi Auto-Da-Fe In The Operaplatz, Berlin A.R. Moritz, 1938

And, the things these evil people have made -- art; literature; scientific studies; architecture and design and theater ... all of it will become objects of official ridicule and discarded (even, burned in public) as evidence of moral degeneracy.

Exhibition Of 'Entartete Kunst' (Degenerate Art); Münich, 1937 --

An Exhibition Of Art Declared Against The Principles Of German

Culture And Society As Defined By The Government (Wikipedia)

It's inevitable; at some point, witches will have to be be tried. There will be forced confessions (as with the Inquisition, or Soviet Purge trials, or Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge). If the accused don't recant, and accept whatever interpretation of religion the leaders direct as orthodox -- then, it ends in executions and anonymous graves.

Cambodian Teacher, Photographed Before Execution By The Khmer Rouge

If you think this is science fiction, substitute the word "Jew", or "Homosexual" "Communist" "Monarchist", or "Liberal" for 'non-christian', 'atheist' or 'agnostic', and remember history (only, recanting an unpopular opinion, or changing religious affiliation did nothing to help the Jews).

If you spend even an hour listening to 'christian' radio, its broadcasts are long, ranting monologues about fire and sin that build slowly to a frenzy -- and always delivered by men, shouting, about seeking out and recognizing the devil and the ungodly, about punishment to come.

-- Those who punish others out of a claim to know wickedness are blind to it in themselves.

I'm a long way from saying we're on the cusp of a Rightist takeover of the government. More likely, the Teabaggers can try and ram god down the country's throat, and at some point the society will begin to choke. Until then, it will look and feel like the McCarthy era, as incompetent evangelicals run the United States onto the rocks and brand everyone who blames them as agents of Teh Satan.

However, make no mistake: any change of government in this country from its current, secular democratic Republic would have to end in the repression, imprisonment, and murder of anyone whom the new leaders saw as a threat. That is the nature of revolution; there are no exceptions. There never have been.

If Little Glenn Beck has another rally, and more people show up than there were today -- if this is pushed as a "populist" uprising by Right-wing media like Fox and bankrolled by billionaires with revenge on their minds -- then I would take note, and be afraid, because the days of living in a pluralist, secular and diverse society may be numbered.

-- All that is needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

[-- All Boldface and Italicized Quotations: Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797); Taste The Irony ]

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Reprint Heaven: More Unspeakableness

An Entire Chicken In A Can

(In the "It Can Always Be Worse" category, we have this offering, from 2011.)

Even H.P. Lovecraft Could Not Have Envisioned The Badness

This isn't going to become a regular item -- but another thing in a can was made known to me recently. As a Dog, I'll eat a wide variety of food (and the occasional non-food) items -- but even this is too much for me to contemplate: Sweet Sue's Canned Whole Chicken.

It Emerges: Ia! Ia! Sweeta Sue Chiken ARRROOOOOO!!

First, the unsuspecting housewife releases the Thing from the chamber where it slumbered. Then, without warning, it grew -- and grew, and began to threaten mankind with the unbelievable fury of unleashed cosmic forces!!!

And, as we all know, you don't want to mess around with Cosmic Forces.

Unleashed, The Beast Began An Orgy Of Feeding --

But, Only In North Beach And Fisherman's Wharf

ANNOUNCER: We're here on CBS Sportstalk Radio; I'm Bob Hampton, and we're talking about the giant tentacled monster that's making life a little hectic for the drive-time commute in the Bay Area this morning... And how about those Giants, huh? Will the Raiders make their move to Santa Clara? Let's take your calls.... Hello, you're on CBS Sportstalk 96.

CHTULU: Hi, Bob; this is Chtulu from Ryleh. Love your show.

ANNOUNCER: Thanks. Where is Ryleh? Is that Contra Costa County, near Pinole?

CHTULU: Actually, it's an ancient city, sunken deep in the ocean for many, many Millennia, and initially a base for many of the Old Ones. You see, the history you've been taught about your world, and the Universe, is about as wrong as Y. A. Tittle staying in football past Forty. Many things existed on Earth, long before human history began. And, one of them was Me -- I've been out the loop for a while, but I'm back now and just wanted to AAARRRRRRRROOOOOO!!!!

Sorry about that, Bob. It's just so good to be out.

ANNOUNCER: Uh-huh. You just get out of the Big Q, huh?

CHTULU: Not a prison as you would understand it, Bob. But I was just listening to your program this morning and did want to comment on the appearance of the 'tentacled monster' you mentioned a moment ago.

ANNOUNCER: What's your comment?

CHTULU: Well, you see -- the stars are right, Bob, and the Great Wheel has come around; and it's time for the ancient forces that once ruled this planet to assert themselves. So I don't think anyone should be surprised when they open a can of something like a whole chicken, only to have it transform into something as big as the Bank Of America building in a matter of hours and threaten all of human civilization.

ANNOUNCER: Okay. Did you catch the Giants' game last night by chance, Chtulu?

CHTULU: What?

ANNOUNCER: Did you see last nights' game?

CHTULU: Bob -- with all due respect; I'm a long-time listener, and I've always liked this program -- but we're talking about a radical shift in human consciousness, here. We're talking about the most beautiful mysteries, and the most terrifying nightmares, of humanity made manifest in this world simply through the energy of thought. This is an event that's... well, it's Galactic in its implications, and frankly, Bob, in light of that I'm a little less interested in what Buster Posey will or won't do this season.

ANNOUNCER: [Pauses] So you're saying Posey won't do well heading into the season?

CHTULU: ... Bob -- try focusing a little. There's an Octopus the size of Cleveland out in the Bay. I see on CNN that they're considering carpet-bombing the Golden Gate with nerve agents -- nerve agents, Bob.

ANNOUNCER: All right; well, that's interesting, but I'd say Posey's gonna have a great season with the San Francisco Giants, and we look forward to that.

CHTULU: Not going to mean a thing if he gets eaten, Bob.

ANNOUNCER: Okay; and we thank you for your call. Hey, the time is 11:30, and whenever you just don't have time to spend on meal preparation, Sweet Sue's Whole Chicken In A Can can help!

The Peasants Begin To Understand: They're Doomed --

In The Horrifying Tales Of The Plush Chtulu!

After all, while Sparkle Christmas Tree Sweater Bear, for example, was a friend to all boys and girls, and Ellie the Happy Elephant was beloved by all who knew her, neither they nor any of the other animals commanded a worldwide fanatical cult of believers ready to do their bidding, not to mention being an ageless, indestructible creature from Beyond the Stars.

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Reprint Heaven: Two Men From Utah Beach

(A reprint; for November 11th.)


Infantry Under Fire, Huddled At The Utah Beach Seawall,
June 6, 1944 (Smithsonian Collection; Public Domain)

Today, the New York Times, one of the last newspapers where publishing Obituaries is an art form (one of the last newspapers, come to that), reported two men who had once been at Utah Beach at the same time on D-Day -- J.D. Salinger -- author of Franny And Zooey; Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters; and, aber natürlich, Catcher In The Rye -- and Louis Auchincloss ("Wall Street lawyer from a prominent old New York family who became a durable and prolific chronicler of Manhattan’s old-money elite"), died at ages 91 and 92 respectively.

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Portrait Of Auchincloss By Everett Raymond Kinstler, 2008

Auchincloss was a member of America's hereditary, monied elite. He was raised in a world of town houses, summer homes on Long Island and Bar Harbor, Maine; private clubs and servants, debutante parties and travel abroad. However, as a child Auchincloss thought of himself as "neither rich nor aristocratic": In a 1974 autobiography, A Writer's Capital, he noted, “Like most children of affluence, I grew up with a distinct sense that my parents were only tolerably well off. This is because children always compare their families with wealthier ones, never with poorer."


Facades Of Brownstone Mansions, New York City 2008
(Photo: New York Times Online Real Estate Section)

His path through life was predictable enough for one of his class -- a comfortable childhood, preparatory schools; guaranteed entry to Yale in 1935; he seemed predestined for the life of a Gentleman of his class; a man with means who did little beyond tending and adding to the Family fortune. But it was in his Junior year at Yale that the wheels came off his little Bourgeois wagon.


Not For You And Me: Summer Home In Bar Harbor, ME

Auchincloss yearned to break from the well-travelled path of the monied and privileged and wrote a novel. When it was subsequently rejected by a major New York publisher, Auchincloss decided “that a man born to the responsibilities of a brownstone bourgeois world could only be an artist or writer if he were a genius.” He dropped out of Yale, which he found suffocating, and decided upon taking up a profession, one that his milieu wouldn't reject, and entered the University of Virginia Law School on the eve of WW2.

He was surprisingly good at the law -- and, Trusts and Estates law, at that -- a specialty almost solely devoted to the hereditary wealthy. In WW2, he volunteered for the U.S. Navy, was commissioned an officer and served in Naval Intelligence (typical for a Knickerbocker), but left that to command an LST at Utah beach on D-Day at Normandy, then in the Pacific after V-E Day. Even with his normal duties, he had completed a second novel, but "threw it in the trash".

It wasn't until 1947 that he completed The Indifferent Children, published after he returned to his law practice. It appeared under the pseudonym Andrew Lee, in deference to his mother, who thought the book “trivial and vulgar”, and feared it would damage his career (the horror of publicity, too, a trait of the rich).


Auchincloss At His New York City Home, 2005

I remember reading a New Yorker portrait of him several years ago while waiting in my Dog Trainer's office, and was struck with how much a man of his class he was -- and yet, he wasn't. He felt no sense of guilt at who and what he was (there isn't a trace of it in his writing). And, although I haven't read much of his work (which, like a wine, had hints of Edith Wharton and John Updike-ian highlights, though Auchincloss was far below Updike), his characters were drawn from his own world, and in chronicling their human failings, Auchincloss pointed up the value of at least an ethical rectitude if not a moral one.

The very wealthy are rarely seen by the likes of you and I. Where they live, where they eat, travel and shop is inside a Magic Circle of privilege and exclusivity. If he hadn't been an author, and his books hadn't possessed some merit, Auchincloss would have moved through life inside that Circle, acting as lawyer to his own tribe; his mark would have been made in helping them to preserve and maintain wealth accumulated over generations. His friends and clients would have been "his crowd... the right sort", who knew people he knew, summered where he did, voted Republican, and may have had their suits, shirts and shoes custom-made by the same Gentleman's tailors and reclusive cobblers.

But that wasn't his life -- or, not all of it. When he was writing, he was temporarily freed of the bourgeois world he swam in so easily. Auchincloss couldn't escape what he was as a man, but as an author he tried to see further, explore the human condition and bring back an artifact from his travels for a wider audience.

Commenting to an interviewer for some Tony Manhattan publication in 2007, however, Auchincloss reminded us that the world of the wealthy never really goes away in what are, for the rest of us, good times or bad:

Even near the end of his life, Mr. Auchincloss said the influence of his class had not waned. “I grew up in the 1920s and 1930s in a nouveau riche world, where money was spent wildly, and I’m still living in one!,” he told The Financial Times in 2007. “The private schools are all jammed with long waiting lists; the clubs — all the old clubs — are jammed with long waiting lists today; the harbors are clogged with yachts; there has never been a more material society than the one we live in today. Where is this ‘vanished world’ they talk about?” he asked. “I don’t think the critics have looked out the window!”

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J.D. Salinger, Surprised By A Fan's Camera In Cornish, NH,
On His 89th Birthday In 2008: "woe betide any of those fans
who track him down just to explain that they, like, totally
love him and can so relate to his retreat from a world of
phony bastards. “No you don’t,” he told one such visitor.
“Or you wouldn’t be here."

Jerome David Salinger was once groomed by his father for a career in the ham business, which, fortunately for American letters, never quite congealed. He was born in New York City, attended Progressive and Prep schools; he had just begun to publish short fiction -- in The New Yorker, no less -- when he was drafted in 1942. Initially a rifleman in the 4th Infantry Division, he was transferred to serve as a Counterintelligence specialist, trained to interrogate prisoners and review captured documents and maps -- meaning Salinger had to possess an above-average ability with spoken and written German.


Camp Ritchie, Maryland, During WW2 (Contemporary Postcard)

(Training for all CIC specialists was conducted at one location -- Camp Ritchie, Maryland, and is detailed in the book, Germans, by George Bailey [1970]. I wonder if Salinger and Bailey knew each other; they were at the Camp at the same time, 1943, and had to know the same instructors, characters, and fellow voulnteers, many of whom were German-Jewish refugees from the nazis who had taken U.S. citizenship.)

Salinger went ashore on D-Day at Utah beach with elements of the firat wave of the 4th Infantry. I've wondered from time to time whether Louis Auchincloss, commanding an LST in carrying that first wave in to Utah on June 6th, ferried the future author of one of America's enduring, classic postwar novels that day; it's not impossible.

In December of 1944 and into 1945, Salinger fought in the Battle Of The Bulge -- when everyone on the line, for weeks, no matter what their MOS*, were riflemen. After The Bulge, he was was hospitalized with "battle fatigue", the forerunning terminology for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

[*MOS = Military Occupational Specialty, a term more familiar to Vietnam-era draftees]


Salinger, In The U.S. Army, Circa 1944 (Unknown)

After release from hospital, he remained in Germany for at least a year, helping Allied authorities track down nazi functionaries wanted by the Occupation powers. He married a German woman, briefly; very little is known of her, or this period in Salinger's life.

(We might be able to infer what some of his duties may have been, again from George Bailey's book: Many of the CIC specialists in 1945-46 also helped to resettle refugees from the Soviets in various small German communities -- who were under Allied military jurisdiction and had no choice but to, uh, follow orders.)

(This involved a degree of subterfuge, quick wits, and a sense of both the scale of physical and moral destruction the nazis had brought on Europe and their own country; and a heightened sense of the kind of absurdity peculiar to the U.S. Army, which appears in novels like Catch-22 or Slaughterhouse Five.)

Returning from the war, Salinger also returned to New York City and in 1948 published a short story, "A Perfect Day For Bananafish", in the New Yorker -- a kind of shot-across-the-bow to announce a different kind of writer was in town. After several other short stories were published by the magazine, in 1951 Salinger's seminal novel, Catcher In The Rye, was published.

Salinger had A Major And Serious Jones for attention as a literary genius; and, he'd proven he had the chops for it. While in college, he had bragged about his literary talent and ambitions -- and his short fiction had marked him as a real talent. But, when Catcher became a runaway bestseller and critical success, being in the 'eye of the comic book hurricane' was more than he bargained for.


Salinger On The Cover Of TIME, 1953: From The Bulge
To National Notoriety In Less Than Ten Years

It wasn't just being lionized by the Establishment press and New York literary mafia; the book was a landmark of postwar American alienation. Salinger seemed to give a voice through his narrator, Holden Caulfield, to the conflicted, shamed, vainglorious, and noble patter which runs through all our heads on a daily basis; Caulfield was nearly an archetypal figure -- and the novel resonated.

What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while...What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.
Holden Caulfield, Catcher In The Rye

And it did resonate with the feelings of being lost, an undefined longing, in so many people who read the novel that Salinger was subjected to what eventually would be termed 'stalking' from readers -- some enthusiastic, many others troubled; but all of whom believed Salinger had a finer perception of the world we live in, and could be that "terrific friend" and help them. They wanted answers to The Big Questions.

(Sometimes, it's the author of the moment you look for. In the 70's, after The World According To Garp had appeared, four friends from my time in New York and I borrowed someone's car and drove up into New England; there was talk of trying to get a glimpse of Salinger -- rejected by the eternal Mick Koznick [A guy as big as Lucca Brazi, drunk, in black leather jacket and Ray-Bans, punches you in the chest with a forefinger and says, "M'eye right? I'm right. M'eye right? I'm right"] as "too bourgeois" -- turned into a search for Putney, Vermont, and author John Irving; which might have succeeded, but for the fact that we were most of the time drunk.)


First Paperback Edition Of Catcher In The Rye

The response of college students to the work of J. D. Salinger indicates that he, more than anyone else, has not turned his back on the times but, instead, has managed to put his finger on whatever struggle of significance is going on between self and culture.
Phillip Roth, 1974

Eventually, Salinger told his editors that he was “good and sick” of seeing his photograph on the dust jacket of Catcher in the Rye and demanded that it be removed from subsequent editions. He ordered his agent to burn any fan mail. In 1953, Salinger moved to a 90-acre parcel of land in Cornish, New Hampshire, which had a long history as an artist's colony.

And, for the most part, Salinger was never publicly seen again. He was rumored to have achieved a mystical state of satori and left the physical plane; or to be writing novel after novel to be published after his death (and so removed from attendant publicity); or to have decayed into an abberated, Howard-Hughes-like paranoid, long-haired recluse. College students tried staking out his property, or -- once it became known he had a PO Box in Cornish -- his local Post Office. sightings of Salinger were few, and brief; the man was smart and quick.


James Earl Jones As 'Terence Mann', The Salinger Character
From W.P. Kinsella's Tale Which Became Field Of Dreams

In the early 80's, when W.P. Kinsella wrote his novel, "Shoeless Joe" (turned into the film Field Of Dreams in 1989), he put J. D. Salinger into the novel, going to New Hampshire to bring him back to Iowa and the magical baseball field Ray Kinsella has built in his cornfield. Salinger would have nothing to do with the production and didn't want his name used; the reclusive author figure played by James Earl Jones became 'Terence Mann' ("I don't have any answers for you -- and I don't know the secret of life. So piss off").

In 1997, Ron Rosenblum wrote a piece for Esquire magazine, "The Haunted Life Of J. D. Salinger": The silence of a writer is not quite the same as the silence of God, but there's something analogous: an awe-inspiring creator, someone who we belive has some answers of some kind, refusing to respond to us, hiding his face, withholding his creation.

Still, Salinger could be seen in and around Cornish, if you were diligent. He would be outdone in the reclusiveness department by Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr., author of his own engrossing postmodern novels ( V.; Gravity's Rainbow; Crying Of Lot 49; Mason & Dixon; Vineland; Against The Day), who has only been publicly seen twice between the early 1960's and the late 1990's -- and not at all since.


Thomas Riggles Pynchon, Jr., In 1953: One Of Seven

Only seven published photographs of him known are to exist -- six yearbook photos, and one as a seaman in the U.S. Navy in the mid-to-late 1950's.

Okay, Pynchon's done a few 'Simpsons' voiceovers, where his cartoon character has a paper bag over his head; and Robert K. Massie thanked Pynchon in the afterword to Massie's amazingly good 1991 book, Dreadnought; but he still makes Salinger look like a publicity hog.

Unlike Salinger, Pynchon (who is 73 this year) isn't demanding, Garbo-like, to be left alone; he simply prefers anonymity. Doing the occasional 'Simpsons' guest spot is Pynchon's way of mocking his own sense of privacy -- something Salinger would never have done, and proof that hanging out with Tom for an afternoon or over a beer wouldn't be a waste of time and might even be fun.

Wikipedia notes: In the early 1990s, Pynchon married his literary agent, Melanie Jackson — a great-granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt — and fathered a son, Jackson, in 1991. The disclosure ... led some journalists and photographers to try to track him down.

[I]n 1997, a CNN camera crew filmed him in Manhattan. Angered by this invasion of his privacy, he rang CNN asking that he not be identified ... "Let me be unambiguous. I prefer not to be photographed." In 1998, a reporter for the [South African] Sunday Times managed to snap a photo of him as he was walking with his son.

I don't know enough about Salinger's inner life, or Pynchon's, to know why they removed themselves from the barest hint of the public spotlight. But, I don't have to. Their lives -- like mine, or yours -- are no one else's business.

I don't agree with John Fowles' autobiographical-fictional narrator in his novel, Daniel Martin, when he notes that creative persons put themselves up on a public soapbox and suffer all that doing so entails. I'm a fairly private person, and Pynchon (or Salinger)'s ire at being stalked like a Snow Leopard by a National Geographic film team is wholly appropriate.


“Here’s your quote. Thomas Pynchon loved this book. Almost
as much as he loves cameras,” a reference indicating that
Marge Simpson’s novel sucks Brontosauruses. Fellow Recluse
Salaman Rushdie describes Pynchon as "Still Crazy After All
These Years".

Salinger was married several times, and divorced; in the 1990's, his daughter would publish a book about being the child of an obviously brilliant and obsessive-compulsive man, the only look into his world anyone had been granted in almost forty years. One tantalizing glimpse from the book: Salinger had a bookcase in his Cornish home, packed with what very well may have been manuscripts written over the years.


Salinger And His Wife, Circa 2009 (Paul Adao, NY Post)

About the same time, in his early eighties, Salinger married a nurse "considerably younger" than himself, but did not change his reclusiveness or irascibility. His new wife adopted Salinger's desire for privacy. He only had his name brought back into the public spotlight when forced -- as he did last year, when a Swedish author wanted to publish what amounted to a sequel to Catcher, titled "Sixty Years After". The Swede claimed it was a parody, like Jane Austen With Zombies. Salinger was plenty steamed, and a court agreed with him.

After breaking his hip this past winter, his health declined rapidly, and he passed away -- peacefully, it was reported -- last night. Like Auchincloss, he lived his life on his own terms; not comfortably provided to him, but -- for better or worse, like all of us -- one made by his own hand. But I believe Salinger will be missed, and his works read by new generations (Catcher In The Rye still sells over 250,000 copies a year) long after Louis' writings fade into a genteel obscurity.

I hope to hell that when I do die somebody has the sense to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.
Holden Caulfield, Catcher In The Rye

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