Quote of the Day (Toni Morrison, on ‘A Disrupting Darkness’)

“All of us are bereft when criticism remains too polite or too fearful to notice a disrupting darkness before its eyes.” —American novelist, essayist, editor, and Nobel Literature laureate Toni Morrison (1931-2019), Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992)

(Photo of Toni Morrison taken at a lecture at West Point Military Academy in March, 2013. Author of photo: West Point - The U.S. Military Academy.)

Photo of the Day: Stations of the Cross, St. Cecilia Parish, Englewood NJ

I took the attached photo late this morning, when I joined hundreds of other parishioners gathered on Demarest Avenue outside St. Cecilia Church in Englewood NJ for the Stations of the Cross. 

This procession of pageantry and devotion through the streets surrounding our venerable church represented the solemn Good Friday reenactment of the last, agonized journey of Christ in atonement for our sins.

Photo of the Day: Purple Daze, Allison Park, Englewood Cliffs, NJ

For nearly four decades, I have taken advantage of the relative proximity of 2,500-acre Allison Park to my Bergen County home, to enjoy its scenic overviews of the Hudson River and New York City.

But yesterday, my eyes lit on this scene amid the rocks and winding walkways in this cliffside perch along the Palisades—just more evidence that, despite the up-and-down temperature swings so common this April, that Earth is welcoming spring, exuberantly.

Quote of the Day (Molly Jong-Fast, on Her Mom in ‘The Era of Peak Book Tour’)

“Some of my earliest memories were sitting in small, stuffy greenrooms in cities that were barely cities. I grew up in the 1980s and ’90s, the era of peak book tour, when successful American writers went from bookshop to bookshop, from local television station to local television station, hawking their tomes. From Chicago to Miami, my mother would travel with a hardcover under her arm and a pen in her pocket. My mother, Erica Jong, was addicted to wine and airplanes. She did write Fear of Flying, so she had some very mixed feelings about airplanes, but Mom loved to travel. She was one of those people who get restless every two weeks and decided she needed to go somewhere to fix her problems. Luckily for her, the years she was famous were the years American publishers loved to send their authors on planes to cities to appear on local television.”— American writer, journalist, author, political commentator, and podcaster Molly Jong-Fast, “Greenroom With a View,” Vanity Fair, June 2023

Finally reading this article a couple of years after its appearance, I found myself intrigued by it for two reasons: its reminiscences of an era of book promotions that we are not likely to see again, and its cheeky view of Molly Jong-Fast’s mom, the novelist Erica Jong.

TV stations were not the only places where Ms. Jong would fly to. Some years ago, I heard through the grapevine that she had appeared at a trade association convention, during the "era of peak book tour" described by her daughter. Many attendees, shocked by her risque talk, complained to the event organizers.

I just couldn’t help shaking my head at the whole thing. Maybe the event’s organizers had hoped, not unreasonably, that Jong would lure people to this show. But they also shouldn’t have been surprised that the author of Fear of Flying might turn the air blue.

The busy schedule described above might have appealed to Ms. Jong, but perhaps not so much to her daughter, I suspect.

After all, Ms. Jong-Fast’s first book, the ironically named novel Normal Girl, is about the MAM (Madison Avenue Mafia), which she says "operates under one of the basic principles of Zen Buddhism: mindfulness. They may not be mindful of you or me but they make up for it with a self-obsession so blinding that the sun looks tame."

With considerable tongue in cheek, the narrator-heroine of this roman a clef notes that she is “further proof that children of famous people are like communism: better in concept than in practice."

I love that phrase, “the era of peak book tour,” even with its implication that such strenuous promotional swings are waning. I can’t imagine that even for bestselling authors like Ms. Jong at her commercial peak, publishers are willing to foot the bill for first-class hotels and air travel.

Additionally, COVID-19 heightened fears of contracting disease in closed environments like airplanes while providing digital alternatives: Zoom calls, podcasts, and the like. With fewer print outlets nowadays, markets are more micro than macro, increasing the necessity for more narrowly based promotions—even for authors with prior perches on the bestseller list, like Ms. Jong, never mind the rest of us.

(The image that accompanies this post, showing Erica Jong at a Barnes and Noble event in New York, was taken on Sept. 16, 2013, by Wes Washington.)

Quote of the Day (Anthony Powell, on a Midcentury Cultural Philistine)

“[Kenneth] Widmerpool remained totally unimpressed by the arts. He was even accustomed to show an open contempt for them in tête-à-tête conversation. In public, for social reasons, he had acquired the merest working knowledge to carry him through a dinner party, content with St. John Clarke as a writer, Isbister as a painter.

“ ‘I don’t know about these things,’ he had once said to me. ‘If I don't know about things, they do not interest me. Even if artistic matters attracted me—which they do not—I should not allow myself to dissipate my energies on them.’”— English novelist Anthony Powell (1905-2000), Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (Volume 5 of A Dance to the Music of Time) (1960)

An opportunistic businessman early in his career, Widmerpool changes ideologies along the course of the several decades covered in Anthony Powell’s sprawling 12-volume series A Dance to the Music of Time.

This cultural philistine has little to no use even for reading. But he carries an extraordinary vindictiveness against those he perceives as slighting him or standing in his way that can manifest itself unexpectedly and dangerously.

Oh, yes, he's also used by an authoritarian power based in Russia to subvert the West from within.

As this recent American news story demonstrates, Widmerpool is a type present in contemporary America as well as Powell’s midcentury Britain.

(The image accompanying this post shows Simon Russell Beale as Kenneth Widmerpool in the 1997 British mini-series adaptation of A Dance to the Music of Time.)

TV Quote of the Day (‘The Hollywood Squares,’ on IRS Audits)

Peter Marshall: "According to the IRS, out of every 10 Americans audited, how many end up paying more taxes?"

Paul Lynde: "11."—Attributed to The Hollywood Squares (daytime series running 1965 to 1980)

I have been unable to find the exact episode in which this appeared, but no matter: Paul Lynde appeared so often (more than anyone except host Marshall and announcer Kenny Williams) on the game show during its run (usually as the “center square”), that I see little if any reason to doubt that he said this. 

Quote of the Day (Celeste Wallander, on ‘The Biggest Threat to NATO Today’)

“NATO can structure disincentives and punishments for backsliders, but only citizens can hold elected leaders accountable. Most important, the United States must rise to meet the challenge…. Americans must face the fact that the biggest threat to NATO today may be the United States itself. Regardless of political party and policy preferences, all Americans have a patriotic interest in protecting the laws, practices and institutions of U.S. liberal democracy. This is not merely a matter of domestic politics; it is also a matter of national security. Threats to democracy at home have already undermined Washington's ability to work with allies in a dangerous, uncertain, and threatening world. As the most powerful member of NATO, the United States must take the lead through a bipartisan defense of liberal institutions and values.”— Celeste Wallander, American international relations advisor and former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs at the U. S. Defense Department, “NATO’s Enemies Within: How Democratic Decline Could Destroy the Alliance,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2018

Since Ms. Wallander wrote this, NATO has been battered even more than what concerned her originally. The cause was the same, as indeed it has been with the tariff imbroglio: the President in charge at the time who inflicted on this country a diplomatic self-inflicted wound.

(The image of Celeste Wallander that accompanies this post was taken Feb. 22, 2022.)