Thursday, March 5, 2009
Quote of the Day (Henry David Thoreau, on the Influence of Friends)
“After years of vain familiarity, some distant gesture or unconscious behavior, which we remember, speaks to us with more emphasis than the wisest or kindest words. We are sometimes made aware of a kindness long passed, and realize that there have been times when our Friends’ thoughts of us were of so pure and lofty a character that they passed over us like the winds of heaven unnoticed; when they treated us not as what we were, but as what we aspired to be.” —Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Quote of the Day (Robert A. Caro, on the Art of Biography)
"I am trying to make clear through my writing something which I believe: that biography—history in general—can be literature in the deepest and highest sense of that term. Whether I am succeeding at that I don't know—and I suppose nobody will know for many years, because the test of whether something is literature is whether it endures for a long time."—Robert A. Caro, biographer of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson, quoted in Jonathan Darman, “The Marathon Man,” Newsweek, Feb. 16, 2009
I can still recall when I saw Robert A. Caro speak, in the winter of 1982, at a dinner of aspiring young journalists like myself at Columbia University. He had just issued the first volume of his epic biography of Lyndon Johnson. Twenty-seven years later, he is in the midst of his fourth and last volume of that work.
You wonder sometimes if he worries about expending virtually his entire adulthood slaving away on a biography not just about someone who frequently is anything but admirable, but whether that work is even going to endure. If he does fret about this, though, I think that’s misplaced.
In one crucial way, Caro resembles a great general as much as a great biographer: He stakes out the ground where the subsequent battle takes place. No subsequent biographer will be able to take the measure of either Moses or Johnson without coming to grips with Caro’s revelations and conclusions (often harsh) about each man. For writers, he is a model for finding the story that’s never been told before through indefatigable research.
Another reason why I admire his biographies is the focus he sheds on subsidiary characters in the lives of his main subjects. In The Power Broker, that person is New York Gov. Alfred E. Smith. In the three volumes of The Years of Lyndon Johnson to appear to date, those men are Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House; Coke Stevenson, the man LBJ defeated for the Senate in a stolen election; and Richard Russell, the lonely bachelor taken under their wing by Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson and who, in turn, taught the new Senator from Texas everything he knew about the levers of power.
Caro’s work is a magnificent achievement. Like many readers, no matter how thick his final LBJ volume, I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
I can still recall when I saw Robert A. Caro speak, in the winter of 1982, at a dinner of aspiring young journalists like myself at Columbia University. He had just issued the first volume of his epic biography of Lyndon Johnson. Twenty-seven years later, he is in the midst of his fourth and last volume of that work.
You wonder sometimes if he worries about expending virtually his entire adulthood slaving away on a biography not just about someone who frequently is anything but admirable, but whether that work is even going to endure. If he does fret about this, though, I think that’s misplaced.
In one crucial way, Caro resembles a great general as much as a great biographer: He stakes out the ground where the subsequent battle takes place. No subsequent biographer will be able to take the measure of either Moses or Johnson without coming to grips with Caro’s revelations and conclusions (often harsh) about each man. For writers, he is a model for finding the story that’s never been told before through indefatigable research.
Another reason why I admire his biographies is the focus he sheds on subsidiary characters in the lives of his main subjects. In The Power Broker, that person is New York Gov. Alfred E. Smith. In the three volumes of The Years of Lyndon Johnson to appear to date, those men are Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House; Coke Stevenson, the man LBJ defeated for the Senate in a stolen election; and Richard Russell, the lonely bachelor taken under their wing by Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson and who, in turn, taught the new Senator from Texas everything he knew about the levers of power.
Caro’s work is a magnificent achievement. Like many readers, no matter how thick his final LBJ volume, I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
This Day in Southern History (Largest U.S. Slave Auction Held)
March 3, 1859—In a year that would see sectional tensions rise to the boiling point over slavery because of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, another incident involving the issue—the largest recorded slave auction in American history—occurred on, of all places, a rainy racetrack in Savannah, Georgia.
In all the books and articles I’ve read about slavery over the years, I don’t remember a single one—until the other day—mentioning this episode. But when a transaction happens involving 436 men, women and children—all born on the same two plantations, many now scattered from loved ones—it’s understandable that the trauma would be named, as this one came to be called, “The Weeping Time.”
To me, that nickname recalled another abuse of human rights in the state—the expulsion of Cherokee Indians in the state more than twenty years before during the Jackson administration.
In a thousand different ways, slavery debased everyone who came in contact with it, but the slave auction was particularly ugly. You can’t understand it without coming to terms with the fact that the slave was considered, above all, property, and slaveholding was conceived of as a business—and a profitable one at that.
When you or I look at a piece of property, particularly a used one, we want to inspect it as closely as possible—turn it over, looking for possible flaws, probing and poking, if necessary. So it was with slave auctions.
Because slaves dealt above all else with physical labor, their body parts were examined particularly closely.
All of this incensed Northerners who came in contact with the “peculiar institution.” One of the legends about Abraham Lincoln that began to circulate shortly after his death, by cousin John Hanks, was that, as a 22-year-old, he had witnessed a slave auction in New Orleans. The sight of a mulatto girl being pinched by potential buyers had so revolted Lincoln, the story goes, that he told his companions, “If I ever get a chance to hit that thing (slavery), I’ll hit it hard.”
Lincoln’s political hero, Henry Clay, also found the spectacle of slave auctions unseemly, though his response was not to disallow the traffic in human beings but to make it less conspicuous. In the debate surrounding the Compromise of 1850, he disavowed the spectacle of slave auctions held in Washington, but, he was careful to note, allowing private sales of slaves by owners was fine.
Two other Northerners, a brother and sister, took more dramatic action against slavery and slave auctions than Clay—though, in the end, not quite so much as Lincoln himself. After witnessing a slave auction in Washington, Kentucky, Harriet Beecher Stowe became a committed abolitionist, and nearly 20 years later her Uncle Tom’s Cabin fired up northern anger against slavery as never before. Her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, held mock slave auctions at Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn.
The one in the South that we’re talking about here concerned a prominent—even notorious—Georgian. Pierce M. Butler, grandson of a Revolutionary War hero, had, it is true, charm—certainly enough to woo and wed English actress Fanny Kemble. That marriage came apart specifically over slavery, as the bride, unaware of the source of her spouse’s fortune (their courtship was mostly conducted in Philadelphia, where the family also had an estate), began to ask one too many questions about it all.
Twenty-five years after Butler’s misalliance and a decade after it was finally ended in divorce, the plantation owner came to a ruinous financial end. Or, at least, he seemed to. More about that in a minute.
Butler was forced to put his slaves on the block in the first place because of two traits he shared in common with other planters: his constant, terrifying vulnerability to financial reverses and the staggering debts he accumulated as a result of his bon vivant gambling debts. The ethos of the plantation owner was that one constantly needed to expand one’s holdings.
Since this often involved taking on more and more credit to buy additional land and slaves, planters constantly worried about a bad year that could ruin a life’s work. Such a year came in the Panic of 1857, which brought Butler low.
But that wasn’t the end of his problems. Well-founded rumor had it that much of Butler’s $700,000 in indebtedness stemmed from one disastrous gambling bet after another. Perhaps it was appropriate, then, that the “Weeping Time” would be held at Ten Broeck Race Course.
Slaves being auctioned off were put in stalls normally reserved for horses, with some there held for as long as weeks. There, the requisite ritualistic degradation of the slaves began—mouths yanked open to examine teeth, arms and legs pinched for muscle tone.
Ostensibly, families were kept together, but that depends ultimately on how the word “family” was defined. True, husbands and wives stayed together, as did parents and children. But slave communities also involved relationships between siblings, grandparents, and cousins. These extended relationships were ended at a stroke.
I mentioned a short while ago that slavery degraded everyone who came in contact with it. Here’s an instance that showed how this worked: The manager of the auction, a broker named Joseph Bryan, was himself an African-American.
The event was recorded by a 27-year-old New York-based humorist and journalist named Mortimer Neal Thomson, who adopted the pseudonym Q.K.Philander Doesticks. To make himself as inconspicuous as possible, Thomson had posed as a bidder, though he made sure to place bids as low as possible so he wouldn’t inadvertently end up with a slave himself.
In the published piece, Thomson railed bitterly against slavery in general and Butler in particular. But the article assumed particular power when he simply recorded how the slaves looked: “"On the faces of all [the slaves] was an expression of heavy grief; some appeared to be resigned ... some sat brooding moodily over their sorrows, ... their bodies rocking to and fro with a restless motion that was never stilled."
When all was said and done, the auction netted $300,000. His debts satisfied, at least for now, Butler was wealthy again—enough so that he took off on a trip to Europe. But he was two years removed from an even worse catastrophe for himself and the South—the Civil War, which resulted in the destruction of his property. After Appomattox, he tried to recoup his fortune by hiring freedmen, but it didn’t work. He died in 1867.
In all the books and articles I’ve read about slavery over the years, I don’t remember a single one—until the other day—mentioning this episode. But when a transaction happens involving 436 men, women and children—all born on the same two plantations, many now scattered from loved ones—it’s understandable that the trauma would be named, as this one came to be called, “The Weeping Time.”
To me, that nickname recalled another abuse of human rights in the state—the expulsion of Cherokee Indians in the state more than twenty years before during the Jackson administration.
In a thousand different ways, slavery debased everyone who came in contact with it, but the slave auction was particularly ugly. You can’t understand it without coming to terms with the fact that the slave was considered, above all, property, and slaveholding was conceived of as a business—and a profitable one at that.
When you or I look at a piece of property, particularly a used one, we want to inspect it as closely as possible—turn it over, looking for possible flaws, probing and poking, if necessary. So it was with slave auctions.
Because slaves dealt above all else with physical labor, their body parts were examined particularly closely.
All of this incensed Northerners who came in contact with the “peculiar institution.” One of the legends about Abraham Lincoln that began to circulate shortly after his death, by cousin John Hanks, was that, as a 22-year-old, he had witnessed a slave auction in New Orleans. The sight of a mulatto girl being pinched by potential buyers had so revolted Lincoln, the story goes, that he told his companions, “If I ever get a chance to hit that thing (slavery), I’ll hit it hard.”
Lincoln’s political hero, Henry Clay, also found the spectacle of slave auctions unseemly, though his response was not to disallow the traffic in human beings but to make it less conspicuous. In the debate surrounding the Compromise of 1850, he disavowed the spectacle of slave auctions held in Washington, but, he was careful to note, allowing private sales of slaves by owners was fine.
Two other Northerners, a brother and sister, took more dramatic action against slavery and slave auctions than Clay—though, in the end, not quite so much as Lincoln himself. After witnessing a slave auction in Washington, Kentucky, Harriet Beecher Stowe became a committed abolitionist, and nearly 20 years later her Uncle Tom’s Cabin fired up northern anger against slavery as never before. Her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, held mock slave auctions at Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn.
The one in the South that we’re talking about here concerned a prominent—even notorious—Georgian. Pierce M. Butler, grandson of a Revolutionary War hero, had, it is true, charm—certainly enough to woo and wed English actress Fanny Kemble. That marriage came apart specifically over slavery, as the bride, unaware of the source of her spouse’s fortune (their courtship was mostly conducted in Philadelphia, where the family also had an estate), began to ask one too many questions about it all.
Twenty-five years after Butler’s misalliance and a decade after it was finally ended in divorce, the plantation owner came to a ruinous financial end. Or, at least, he seemed to. More about that in a minute.
Butler was forced to put his slaves on the block in the first place because of two traits he shared in common with other planters: his constant, terrifying vulnerability to financial reverses and the staggering debts he accumulated as a result of his bon vivant gambling debts. The ethos of the plantation owner was that one constantly needed to expand one’s holdings.
Since this often involved taking on more and more credit to buy additional land and slaves, planters constantly worried about a bad year that could ruin a life’s work. Such a year came in the Panic of 1857, which brought Butler low.
But that wasn’t the end of his problems. Well-founded rumor had it that much of Butler’s $700,000 in indebtedness stemmed from one disastrous gambling bet after another. Perhaps it was appropriate, then, that the “Weeping Time” would be held at Ten Broeck Race Course.
Slaves being auctioned off were put in stalls normally reserved for horses, with some there held for as long as weeks. There, the requisite ritualistic degradation of the slaves began—mouths yanked open to examine teeth, arms and legs pinched for muscle tone.
Ostensibly, families were kept together, but that depends ultimately on how the word “family” was defined. True, husbands and wives stayed together, as did parents and children. But slave communities also involved relationships between siblings, grandparents, and cousins. These extended relationships were ended at a stroke.
I mentioned a short while ago that slavery degraded everyone who came in contact with it. Here’s an instance that showed how this worked: The manager of the auction, a broker named Joseph Bryan, was himself an African-American.
The event was recorded by a 27-year-old New York-based humorist and journalist named Mortimer Neal Thomson, who adopted the pseudonym Q.K.Philander Doesticks. To make himself as inconspicuous as possible, Thomson had posed as a bidder, though he made sure to place bids as low as possible so he wouldn’t inadvertently end up with a slave himself.
In the published piece, Thomson railed bitterly against slavery in general and Butler in particular. But the article assumed particular power when he simply recorded how the slaves looked: “"On the faces of all [the slaves] was an expression of heavy grief; some appeared to be resigned ... some sat brooding moodily over their sorrows, ... their bodies rocking to and fro with a restless motion that was never stilled."
When all was said and done, the auction netted $300,000. His debts satisfied, at least for now, Butler was wealthy again—enough so that he took off on a trip to Europe. But he was two years removed from an even worse catastrophe for himself and the South—the Civil War, which resulted in the destruction of his property. After Appomattox, he tried to recoup his fortune by hiring freedmen, but it didn’t work. He died in 1867.
Quote of the Day (Paul Harvey, on Presidents)
“White House occupants come and go. They are just like diapers. They should be changed often, and for the same reasons.”—Radio legend Paul Harvey (1918-2009), quoted in Robert D. McFadden, “Paul Harvey, Homespun Radio Voice of Middle America, Is Dead at 90,” The New York Times, March 2, 2009
Over the years I only heard Harvey, who died Saturday, a few times on the air. I can’t say that I agreed with many of his political positions. But he had a knack for picking offbeat stories, and his comments—like the one above—could be as finely cut as a jeweler’s.
A commentator 10 years ago, Marc Fisher, writing in the Washington Journalism Review, labeled him “a bridge to the new era of radio talkers, people such as Rush Limbaugh, Don Imus, Howard Stern and countless others,” but these comparisons are meaningless—he had no interest in leading any political movement and even less in raunch.
If Harvey was a bridge to a new era, it was to the age of blogging—one that, likewise, placed a premium on creators’ personalized views of the world. But then, on the blog, we would, inevitably, miss that voice—that rat-a-tat-tat delivery, punctuated by those Pinteresque pauses that really pushed the limits of dead air on the radio as far as they would go.
It was the voice coming from Middle America to you and me.
Over the years I only heard Harvey, who died Saturday, a few times on the air. I can’t say that I agreed with many of his political positions. But he had a knack for picking offbeat stories, and his comments—like the one above—could be as finely cut as a jeweler’s.
A commentator 10 years ago, Marc Fisher, writing in the Washington Journalism Review, labeled him “a bridge to the new era of radio talkers, people such as Rush Limbaugh, Don Imus, Howard Stern and countless others,” but these comparisons are meaningless—he had no interest in leading any political movement and even less in raunch.
If Harvey was a bridge to a new era, it was to the age of blogging—one that, likewise, placed a premium on creators’ personalized views of the world. But then, on the blog, we would, inevitably, miss that voice—that rat-a-tat-tat delivery, punctuated by those Pinteresque pauses that really pushed the limits of dead air on the radio as far as they would go.
It was the voice coming from Middle America to you and me.
Monday, March 2, 2009
This Day in Film History (John Ford’s “Stagecoach” Opens)
March 2, 1939—The archetypal American western, Stagecoach, opened in general release in the U.S., making a star of 31-year-old John Wayne as the "Ringo Kid" and cementing the status of its director, John Ford, as a hugely influential force in worldwide cinema.
Virtually from the moment that American cinema came into being, with the first narrative film, The Great Train Robbery (1903), from former Edison camera man Edwin S. Porter, the Western has formed the cornerstone of movies. Even Ford had ventured into the genre before Stagecoach, with his silent epic about the transcontinental railroad, The Iron Horse (1924).
But Stagecoach, without forsaking the action that audiences craved, introduced elements more complicated, poetic and character-driven into the genre. For the next quarter-century, Ford would delve deeper and deeper into the form, culminating with a series of films that examined racism, sexism and mythmaking in this essential form of Americana--all set against the awesome but lonesome vistas of Monument Valley.
Critics and other filmmakers began to take notice, just as they did in opening their eyes to Wayne, a frequent but marginal actor up to this point. A decade before, Ford, observing the lean, powerful 6 ft.-4-in. UCLA football player on the set, made him a “fourth-assistant prop boy,” then made him a part of his production company when the young man agreed to step in when a stuntman refused to go into the seas for an underwater sequence because of turbulence in the water.
Raoul Walsh had cast Wayne as the star of The Big Trail (1930) and had even changed his name from Marion Michael Morrison, but the film went nowhere. The actor was stuck for nearly the next decade making more than 40 Westerns, none of which made much of an impression, until Ford cast him as his outlaw hero, The Ringo Kid, in 1939.
Many of Ford’s subsequent films deal with the issues of order and loyalty.
You can see the need for order in the stock company of actors who gave him a comfort level on all of his films--not just Ford and his other longtime star, Henry Fonda, but supporting players like Ward Bond and Ben Johnson.
You can see loyalty in the decades-long relationship between the director and the actor who would become his principal star. The March 2009 issue of Vanity Fair has an article by Buzz Bissinger on how, beginning with Stagecoach, Monument Valley in Arizona came to form the principal backdrop of Ford’s films. But the piece might be even more instructive on the director and Wayne.
The word “crusty” could have been invented for Ford. If you dared to suggest to him how a scene could be improved, you’d better come prepared with earplugs, because he’d let go with a round of profanity-laced verbal buckshot.
For all the major films Wayne ended up making over the next 25 years with Ford—not just all those Westerns, but also the St. Patrick’s Day evergreen, The Quiet Man—the director felt the constant urge to insult him as a “big oaf” and “dumb bastard.”
The Bissinger article doesn’t mention it, but a real sore point between the two became Wayne’s WWII service—or lack of same. Ford had jumped into the conflict early (so early that, on these seemingly aimless drunken fishing trips he’d taken with Wayne, Fonda and Ward Bond in the 1930s down to Mexico and into the Pacific, he’d been secretly photographing shorelines for the War Department, which was already anticipating that conflict would erupt with the Axis Powers).
Despite Ford's constant entreaties to “get into it” (the war), Wayne kept begging off that he needed to make “one more film.” According to Garry Wills’ John Wayne’s America, Ford’s hazing of Wayne got so bad that the actor, in an uncharacteristic move, even briefly walked off the set of one of his films.
Yet Wayne kept coming back for more. He knew that “Pappy” Ford had saved him from the celluloid ashheap—and Ford, with a sense of humor that, when it wasn’t outright abusive, tended more toward Irish-American expressions of endearments through insults, cherished his friendship with “Duke” (enough so that the director, a liberal Democrat, increasingly dispensed discussing politics altogether with his conservative Republican leading man lest they fall into quarrels).
A final word about Stagecoach: its unusual provenance. The basic story grew from several sources. In later decades, when Hollywood creative types took to hawking their ideas to producers with snappy one-liners (e.g., Beverly Hills Cop was “a fish-out-of-water story about a black Detroit detective in Beverly Hills”), Stagecoach could have been marketed as “Grand Hotel way out West.”
But the all-star Best Picture Oscar winner of 1932 wasn’t the only European inspiration for Ford’s landmark Western. If you insist on literary sources, I’m not going to argue with the idea that Stagecoach dates back to The Canterbury Tales and The Decameron—other sagas about groups of travelers varying widely by profession, class, and moral outlook, all thrown together on a very long trip and forced to reveal unlikely things about themselves.
Dudley Nichols’ screenplay was adapted from a Collier’s Magazine short story by Ernest Haycox, “The Stage to Lordsborg.” But there’s another, more unusual source hinted at. The clue is in Claire Trevor’s “scarlet woman” Dallas, driven out of her last town by the respectable women there. Her plight sounds a lot like that in French short-story master Guy de Maupassant’s Boule de Suif, about a prostitute riding in a carriage with other refugees at the height of the Franco-Russian War.
Just think—we owe two major pieces of Americana to the French: the Statue of Liberty and Stagecoach. Sacre Dieu!
Virtually from the moment that American cinema came into being, with the first narrative film, The Great Train Robbery (1903), from former Edison camera man Edwin S. Porter, the Western has formed the cornerstone of movies. Even Ford had ventured into the genre before Stagecoach, with his silent epic about the transcontinental railroad, The Iron Horse (1924).
But Stagecoach, without forsaking the action that audiences craved, introduced elements more complicated, poetic and character-driven into the genre. For the next quarter-century, Ford would delve deeper and deeper into the form, culminating with a series of films that examined racism, sexism and mythmaking in this essential form of Americana--all set against the awesome but lonesome vistas of Monument Valley.
Critics and other filmmakers began to take notice, just as they did in opening their eyes to Wayne, a frequent but marginal actor up to this point. A decade before, Ford, observing the lean, powerful 6 ft.-4-in. UCLA football player on the set, made him a “fourth-assistant prop boy,” then made him a part of his production company when the young man agreed to step in when a stuntman refused to go into the seas for an underwater sequence because of turbulence in the water.
Raoul Walsh had cast Wayne as the star of The Big Trail (1930) and had even changed his name from Marion Michael Morrison, but the film went nowhere. The actor was stuck for nearly the next decade making more than 40 Westerns, none of which made much of an impression, until Ford cast him as his outlaw hero, The Ringo Kid, in 1939.
Many of Ford’s subsequent films deal with the issues of order and loyalty.
You can see the need for order in the stock company of actors who gave him a comfort level on all of his films--not just Ford and his other longtime star, Henry Fonda, but supporting players like Ward Bond and Ben Johnson.
You can see loyalty in the decades-long relationship between the director and the actor who would become his principal star. The March 2009 issue of Vanity Fair has an article by Buzz Bissinger on how, beginning with Stagecoach, Monument Valley in Arizona came to form the principal backdrop of Ford’s films. But the piece might be even more instructive on the director and Wayne.
The word “crusty” could have been invented for Ford. If you dared to suggest to him how a scene could be improved, you’d better come prepared with earplugs, because he’d let go with a round of profanity-laced verbal buckshot.
For all the major films Wayne ended up making over the next 25 years with Ford—not just all those Westerns, but also the St. Patrick’s Day evergreen, The Quiet Man—the director felt the constant urge to insult him as a “big oaf” and “dumb bastard.”
The Bissinger article doesn’t mention it, but a real sore point between the two became Wayne’s WWII service—or lack of same. Ford had jumped into the conflict early (so early that, on these seemingly aimless drunken fishing trips he’d taken with Wayne, Fonda and Ward Bond in the 1930s down to Mexico and into the Pacific, he’d been secretly photographing shorelines for the War Department, which was already anticipating that conflict would erupt with the Axis Powers).
Despite Ford's constant entreaties to “get into it” (the war), Wayne kept begging off that he needed to make “one more film.” According to Garry Wills’ John Wayne’s America, Ford’s hazing of Wayne got so bad that the actor, in an uncharacteristic move, even briefly walked off the set of one of his films.
Yet Wayne kept coming back for more. He knew that “Pappy” Ford had saved him from the celluloid ashheap—and Ford, with a sense of humor that, when it wasn’t outright abusive, tended more toward Irish-American expressions of endearments through insults, cherished his friendship with “Duke” (enough so that the director, a liberal Democrat, increasingly dispensed discussing politics altogether with his conservative Republican leading man lest they fall into quarrels).
A final word about Stagecoach: its unusual provenance. The basic story grew from several sources. In later decades, when Hollywood creative types took to hawking their ideas to producers with snappy one-liners (e.g., Beverly Hills Cop was “a fish-out-of-water story about a black Detroit detective in Beverly Hills”), Stagecoach could have been marketed as “Grand Hotel way out West.”
But the all-star Best Picture Oscar winner of 1932 wasn’t the only European inspiration for Ford’s landmark Western. If you insist on literary sources, I’m not going to argue with the idea that Stagecoach dates back to The Canterbury Tales and The Decameron—other sagas about groups of travelers varying widely by profession, class, and moral outlook, all thrown together on a very long trip and forced to reveal unlikely things about themselves.
Dudley Nichols’ screenplay was adapted from a Collier’s Magazine short story by Ernest Haycox, “The Stage to Lordsborg.” But there’s another, more unusual source hinted at. The clue is in Claire Trevor’s “scarlet woman” Dallas, driven out of her last town by the respectable women there. Her plight sounds a lot like that in French short-story master Guy de Maupassant’s Boule de Suif, about a prostitute riding in a carriage with other refugees at the height of the Franco-Russian War.
Just think—we owe two major pieces of Americana to the French: the Statue of Liberty and Stagecoach. Sacre Dieu!
Quote of the Day (Thomas Jefferson, on Relinquishing the Burdens of the Presidency)
“Within a few days I retire to my family, my books and farms; and having gained the harbor myself, I shall look on my friends still buffeting the storm, with anxiety indeed, but not with envy. Never did a prisoner, released from his chains, feel such relief as I shall on shaking off the shackles of power.”—Thomas Jefferson, letter to P. S. Dupont de Nemours, March 2, 1809, two days before turning over the Presidency to his most trusted aide, Secretary of State James Madison
Barack Obama, in the supremely confident manner he’s displayed this far, fits pretty well with the way that most Presidents have approached their job in their opening days. If you want a good idea of how someone like that looks, rent The Queen from a video-rental store. Yes, it’s about British politics, but, in his puppy-dog eagerness when summoned by his monarch to assume the post of Prime Minister after the general election, Tony Blair (played by Michael Sheen) is a pretty fair stand-in for many American Presidents as well.
A good thing Obama’s relatively young, because if he’s lucky enough to be elected to a second term, the likelihood will grow that the burdens of his office will feel more and more like the prison that Thomas Jefferson described.
(The normal pattern in the early republic was for politicians to disclaim any yearning for power even as they pursued it, and before his second term Jefferson was no different. But his advocacy of the Embargo Act—meant to express American outrage with impressment of our sailors in the Napoleonic Wars, particularly by the British Navy—only succeeded in wrecking American shipping without doing much damage to any foreign power. By the end his term, the howls of execration being sent his way—particularly from New England, where the pain was felt most fiercely—made the Virginian genuinely delighted to be out of the Oval Office.)
In particular, the 20th and 21st century Presidents have aged visibly in office. Much of it stems from their awesome responsibility for sending young men into war zones.
Even the constant sniping a President takes, however, eventually wears on them. So get used to all of the carping about “socialism” from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and the conservative crowd, Mr. President; there’s going to be more—a lot more—of it. It was ever thus.
In Jefferson’s time, the Federalists said the President wanted to make the nation atheistic; now, not a few of the Republicans think you want to make us Muslims. The more things change…
Barack Obama, in the supremely confident manner he’s displayed this far, fits pretty well with the way that most Presidents have approached their job in their opening days. If you want a good idea of how someone like that looks, rent The Queen from a video-rental store. Yes, it’s about British politics, but, in his puppy-dog eagerness when summoned by his monarch to assume the post of Prime Minister after the general election, Tony Blair (played by Michael Sheen) is a pretty fair stand-in for many American Presidents as well.
A good thing Obama’s relatively young, because if he’s lucky enough to be elected to a second term, the likelihood will grow that the burdens of his office will feel more and more like the prison that Thomas Jefferson described.
(The normal pattern in the early republic was for politicians to disclaim any yearning for power even as they pursued it, and before his second term Jefferson was no different. But his advocacy of the Embargo Act—meant to express American outrage with impressment of our sailors in the Napoleonic Wars, particularly by the British Navy—only succeeded in wrecking American shipping without doing much damage to any foreign power. By the end his term, the howls of execration being sent his way—particularly from New England, where the pain was felt most fiercely—made the Virginian genuinely delighted to be out of the Oval Office.)
In particular, the 20th and 21st century Presidents have aged visibly in office. Much of it stems from their awesome responsibility for sending young men into war zones.
Even the constant sniping a President takes, however, eventually wears on them. So get used to all of the carping about “socialism” from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and the conservative crowd, Mr. President; there’s going to be more—a lot more—of it. It was ever thus.
In Jefferson’s time, the Federalists said the President wanted to make the nation atheistic; now, not a few of the Republicans think you want to make us Muslims. The more things change…
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Quote of the Day (Joseph T. Nolan, on the Need for the Sacraments)
“Because sacraments are actions, because they are related to the real world, we should be impelled to complete that reality; to love, to forgive, to serve, to trust, to make human life possible, to reverse and join with all creation until, in Augustine’s words, ‘There is one Christ giving praise and glory.’”—Joseph T. Nolan, “Do We Still Need the Sacraments?” in The Sacraments: Readings in Contemporary Sacramental Theology, edited by Michael J. Taylor, S.J. (1981)
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