Last Thoughts On John Updike

I was touched by Julian Barnes’ essay about John Updike. So much of what Updike wrote resonates with me: I’m another of those who in Updike’s words, "....recognizes that I have never really left Pennsylvania, that it is where the self I value is stored, however infrequently I check on its condition." I was western Pa., he was eastern.

John Updike has been labeled many things, but prescient is not one I know of. I would like to add it as one of his gifts. I refer to "White on White" in his 1982 book "Bech is Back". In his fashion, Bech was observing the female contingent at another party he had reluctantly agreed to attend. As so often with Bech he managed to go further than stare, and gained the ear of one with whom he quickly arranged a tryst. Bech would have to wait until she finished her work there. The host had his female mud wrestlers attending with instructions to mingle. She was one of them. A second Amazon soon sauntered by, smiled in welcome and said to Bech,

“’Hey, man.’
‘Hey, he answered.’
‘What juice you groovin’ on?’
‘Noble dispassion,’ he answered.”

Bech realized through the white paint of her face makeup that she was black. Then Updike wrote, "America at heart is black, he (Bech) saw. Snuggling into the jazz that sings to our bones, we feel that the negro lives deprived and naked among us as the embodiment of truth, and that when the castle of credit cards collapses a black god will redeem us."

The "credit cards" and "black god" seem germane at the moment. Whether redemption will come is uncertain. Gods are in the mind's eye. Still, his sentence stands as a harbinger.

Backwards and Forwards

May 5, 2009

Reading over my verbal ramblings, I have come to believe that I am sometimes near the mark of things to come. Of course, a consistently black view of life is bound to hit home now and then. So much for prescience. Still, I find it amusing to repeat here what I wrote late in 2003.

"December 17, 2003

I opened my eyes. It was 2:30 in the morning. Some evil premonition had disturbed my sleep, itself fitful at the best of times. It had come to me that now, beginning my eighth decade on this earth, there was a very good chance I would be dead before the Republicans, in the manifestation of their worst instincts as neo-cons, were turned out of office, or at least the presidency.

This is a depressing thought. Day after day I am bombarded by images of this spoiled, pampered, inept, inarticulate, and altogether mediocre piece of Texas tumbleweed the system has seen fit to place into high office. It is enough to make one almost wish for the sweet hereafter. Bush, who is given succor by brighter and more evil men, has had the country handed over to him (For who knows how long?) by virtue of a New York tragedy and a fearful nation’s reaction to it.

That this crowd was given a free hand so meekly by the citizenry speaks, I fear, more about a shallowness and the willingness of the majority, out of fear, to forsake the Bill of Rights than about the hollow men who now hold the reins of power, and are likely to do so for the foreseeable future.

The last thought, of course, segues into another realm of discourse, that of the seeming futility of hoping for something better from humanity than the everlasting redux of wars, terror, bloodshed, greed, vice, and corruption that the populace and body politic find so stimulating. I remember a brief time in my life (It was the late sixties) that I thought that man might yet rise above the ineluctable control of the forebrain over his behavior. For a short time, I actually thought man showed signs of improvement. I was even able to believe that Jacob Brownowski had something when he talked about the “Ascent of Man” in his book and on public television. The successful uprising against the stupid Vietnamese war, and the purging from the White House of another Texan stirred some hope that “Making love not war” might actually be in the cards. How naïve! But optimism was short lived. My naivete soon became clear, and Huxley still rang true: “Ends are ape chosen, only the means are man’s.”

December 23, 2003

Does it never occur to our pundits, who manage to collar the airways on a regular basis, that at some time there has to be an end to more? More people, more growth, more things, more waste, more war. The only things there won’t be a surfeit of are pestilence, poverty, and pollution. Now admittedly this is not likely to happen during the reign of GWB and the men (and women) who steer him (You can’t really think he is guiding this ship of state!).

Mankind is not notable for taking the long view. After all there are mouths to feed, pleasures to pursue, land to grab, and other people to dominate, endlessly pleasing pastimes. But even a cursory glance at this planet, teeming with six billion and more members of our species, makes it difficult to dismiss the problems apparent with our environment and the current ways man goes about his business. But we cannot agree about this, even when the vast body of evidence supports serious concern about poverty, food supply, pollution, energy, population, and decreasing species diversity. Opportunists arise as devil’s advocates, marshal distorted statistics, and make a case against the collective opinion of those closest to and most informed about the disciplines involved. Whether the case is distorted or not, there are plenty ready acolytes willing to follow the lead of a pretender expert when what he says suits their uninformed bias. To hell with solar energy, there’s plenty of oil for a long, long time. Species are not disappearing at an alarming rate. Population is slowing down and will level off before disaster strikes. Food production is capable of meeting demand now and for the future. Go ahead indulge yourselves: make more things, consume, the problems are overrated and overstated.

That real problems may (I say may) be years ahead does not obviate the need to address them now and with vastly more resources than we are now willing to commit. It takes, after all, years to effect solutions once action begins, not to mention the time needed to plan before we act.

The global problems facing mankind, and our reticence to act on them, are analogous to the terrorism threat that now saps so much of our (this country’s) resources. There were plenty of flags raised in advance of 911 to indicate that trouble was coming. The Middle East has been a festering sore for as long as I can remember, and many years before I was even around. That the Bush crowd failed to act on the signals it received in advance certainly damns them, but it is not the whole story. Administration after administration has avoided dealing with it. And now we take arms against these seas of trouble. Wrong approach again. Still we refuse to address the real problems: the inequities between the haves and the have-nots of this world. We are too busy adding more toys to our collections of unnecessary goods; too busy looking after the elite; too busy promoting the freedom to be the same, and think the same thoughts, and dance the same dance as the ones currently in power."

All this was somewhat strident, but, if nothing else, writing is a form of catharsis.

MY LIST OF FAVORITE BOOKS
Amis, Kingsley Lucky Jim
Barth, John Chimera
Bolano, Roberto The Savage Detectives
Borges, Jorge Luis Labyrinth
Borges, Jorge Luis Collected Fiction
Burgess, Anthony A Clockwork Orange--
Burgess, Anthony Any Old Iron
Burgess, Anthony A Dead Man In Deptford
Capote, Truman In Cold Blood(NF)
Carroll, Lewis Alice In Wonderland
Carroll, Lewis Through The Looking Glass
Cathcart, Brian The Fly In The Cathedral
Conrad, Joseph Victory
Cozzens, James Gould Guard Of Honor
Darwin, Charles The Origin Of Species(NF)
Dawkins, Richard The God Delusion
Dawkins, Richard The Selfish Gene
Diaz, Junot The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Crime and Punishment--
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor The Brothers Karamazov
Eco, Umberto Foucault's Pendulum
Eco, Umberto The Name Of The Rose
Edmonds, David Rousseau's Dog
Felsman, Burton 112 Mercer Street(NF)
Fitzgerald, F. Scott The Great Gatsby
Fowles, John The Magus
Frayn, Michael Headlong--
Frayn, Michael Copenhagen(P)
Gardner, John Grendel----
Gardner, John Sunlight Dialogues
Gardner, John Wreckage of Agathon
Gardner, John Mickelsson's Ghosts
Gardner, John The Art Of Living
Gleick, James Genius
Golding, William Lord of the Flies
Goldstein, Rebecca Incompleteness:Proof and Paradox of Godel(NF)
Goldstein, Rebecca Properties Of Light
Gould, Stephen Jay The Mismeasure of Man(NF)
Gould, Stephen Jay The Panda's Thumb(NF)
Grass, Gunter The Tin Drum
Greene, Graham The Power And The Glory
Greene, Graham Brighton Rock
Greene, Graham Travels With My Aunt
Heller,. Joseph Catch 22
Hemingway, Earnest The Old Man And The Sea
Hemingway, Earnest The Sun Also Rises
Hemingway, Earnest A Farewell To Arms
Hofstadter, Douglas Godel, Escher, Bach(NF)
Huxley, Aldous Brave New World--
Huxley, Aldous Apes and Essence
Irving, John The World According To Garp--
Irving, John A Prayer For Owen Meany
Japrisot, Sebastien A Very Long Engagement--
Japrisot, Sebastien Lady In Car With Glasses and Gun
Kafka, Franz Metamorphosis--
Kafka, Franz The Trial
LeCarre, John Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy--
LeCarre, John Smiley's People
Lee, Harper To Kill A Mockingbird
Llosa, JorgeM.Vargas In Praise Of The Stepmother
Mailer, Norman The Naked And The Dead
McEwan, Ian Saturday
McEwan, Ian Atonement
McEwan, Ian Enduring Love
Melville, Herman Moby Dick
Mortimer, John Summer's Lease--
Mortimer, John The Rumpole stories
Nabokov, Vladimir Lolita
O'Neill, Eugene Long Days Journey Into Night
O'Neill, Eugene Mourning Becomes Electra
Orwell, George 1984--
Orwell, George Animal Farm
Powers, Richard The Goldbug Variations--
Powers, Richard Galatea 2.2
Powers, Richard Three Farmers On Their Way To A Dance
Powers, Richard Prisoner's Dilemma
Powers, Thomas Heisenberg's War(NF)
Pynchon, Thomas Gravity's Rainbow
Roth, Philip Portnoy's Complaint
Rushdie, Salman Satanic Verses--
Rushdie, Salman Shalimar The Clown
Salinger, J.D. Catcher In The Rye
Segre, Gino Faust In Copenhagen(NF)
Shakespeare, William Complete Works
Skinner, B.F. Walden II
Sophocles Antigone(P)
Sophocles Oedipus Rex(P)
Styron, William Sophie's Choice
Tolstoy, War and Peace
Trollope, Anthony Barchester Towers
Tuchman, Barbara The March Of Folly
Twain, Mark Huckleberry Finn
Updike, John Rabbit At Rest----
Updike, John Witches of Eastwick
Updike, John Bech books
Vidal, Gore Palimpsest
Vonnegut, Kurt Slaughterhouse Five
Watson, James The Double Helix
Wodehouse, P.G. The World Of Jeeves
Yourcenar, Marguerite The Abyss

As a caddy in Scotland once remarked (in an Updike short story) "'E kin tel a'boot a mon by th' wai 'e gowfs. Which is to say the list says more about me than perhaps I should say.

The Road To Bailout

In December I read Joseph Stiglitz’s account of the financial path that led us to our current situation. Here’s my short version of what he wrote.

At one of the problem’s roots is Alan Greenspan, appointed in 1987 by Reagan because Volker was not enough of a free market advocate. Well, he found his man in Greenspan, devotee of Ayn Rand and her elitist ideas. “The market will self-correct, no need to regulate.” That was the litany. He has since changed his mind.

Clinton, Republican in Democrats robes, helped seal the fall with the revocation of Glass-Steagall in 1999. Ushered through Congress by Phil Graham, another asshole from Texas---the list is quite long---the repeal helped bring about a cultural change by tearing down the wall between commercial banks and investment banks, the former lenders of money, the latter sellers of bonds and equities. When one organization became both animals, the stage for conflict of interest was magnified many fold. If the investment bankers screwed up, they could look within their own organization for relief. Guess who would get the additional needed capital?

Number faking exemplified by Enron and World Com then made it clear we had serious problems with our accounting system. The managers of Enron fudged the numbers unconscionably while their accounting firms, loathe to lose lucrative customers, failed in their auditing responsibilities. Sarbanes-Oxley, passed in 2002, was an attempt to deal with the accounting mess. But in putting Sarbanes-Oxley together the wise leaders decided not to deal with stock options, a form of supposed incentive pay, but not really. Nothing mattered to the managers but the immediate stock price and the favorable stock options that awaited them as price per share went up. The situation also encouraged fudging the numbers to make performance look better than it was vis a vie Enron and World Com. That’s only half the story. For the managers, even failure equaled success for, when ousted, they walked away with huge sums based on employment contracts which rewarded bad management even when the stock price plummeted. Not so the workers. They lost their jobs and sometimes their promised retirements and savings when the thing collapsed. If they did not succeed, so what?

Then, quietly in 2004 the SEC changed the debt-to-equity ratio allowances for investment bankers from 12:1 to 30:1 and more. The door was open to unfettered speculation. A flood of capital was available along with means to leverage it without ceiling.

Bush tax cuts added to the speculation frenzy. Capital gains tax cuts and lower interest rates, rates that were deductible from tax calculations spurred liquidity. The rich got richer, always true, but never before to such a degree.

Regulation disappeared. Hedge funds went their merry way without so much as a glance from the government. Derivatives, mindless, but complicated instruments, were packaged as bundles of mortgage loans and sold to institutions and the public as sound investments with huge returns.

And now we have these desperate bailouts.

Behind all these stages lies one inescapable tragic fault: the moral breakdown of Americans. Not, in my view, was it ever all that good. But these things are relative. Reagan and his followers let greed sweep through this country as if by invitation. “Greed is good,” said one movie character. And so most of us joined the parade to the extent we were connected and bright enough to do so. Too often that extent exceeded by many miles the modest means at hand to the average consumer.

The doors opened to unsupportable loans for houses, steadily, but not interminably, increasing in market value. The loans, complicated in structure, contained the sleeping devil of adjustable rates in their guts. Credit card debt soared. “If the boss can do it, why can’t I?” Indeed! He couldn’t either. Not after he collected multiple homes, multiple cars, unlimited traveling, the best restaurants, servants, a wife wearing Prada, kids at private schools, country clubs and, now and then, or maybe even more frequently, a high class whore for the evening.

There is nothing new about any of this, of course, not in the larger sense. Even a casual reading of history sketches out what always follows in human affairs. Barbara Tuchman’s “March of Folly” continues undiminished. Past and prologue start with the same letter and they follow each other as night the day. Or should I say the day, the night. For we are in a night now, and how the long the dark will last no one can say.

One thing I can say, I see no bright spot of attitude change in the people with the power and money. Admittedly it is too soon to judge Obama. But he is just one. The power and money elite are the same. And they are shameless. Need I mention Madoff. Or the bankers sitting before Congress saying that the $10 billion they have just received as a bailout is different from the $10 billion they have just set aside for bonus payments to themselves. Can you think of one rich person who has said he is sorry for the excesses he has committed? No, like Madoff, they will squirrel away what they can and hope they are not caught. They will take their undeserved bonuses and golden parachute payments without so much as a blush. This is not the moral fiber we need to deal successfully with what is before us.

Hidden Treasures Along the Apennines

In a country where art lives as in no other, Italy easily traps unwary travelers in the confines of Florence or Rome where the best known of the great art resides. In these cities the art is concentrated, and it is only the truest and most dedicated art lovers who escape exhaustion from such total immersion---too much of a good thing over too short a time.
Anyone who has had the experience knows well the stamina it takes. They would also surely agree with Nicholas Tapscott’s comment to Molly Pargeter on the subject in John Mortimer’s novel, Summer’s Lease. “‘Always stoke up well,’ he advised Molly, ‘when you’re out. Once knew a chap who tried to do the Uffizi on a ham sandwich. Fainted dead away in front of the Botticellis.’”
Another way of enjoying Italy and art, as a supplement to the intensity of the city, is to travel the Piero della Francesca trail. It is a tour that combines the satisfactions of the Italian countryside with a more measured and digestible intake of great art, art which receives much less attention than it should. Along this trail from Urbino to Sansepolcro to Arezzo lies the best art of Piero della Francesca, the early renaissance genius helped to lasting fame in books by men such as Kenneth Clark and Aldous Huxley . Here particularly are two of his works that must be seen, one called by Huxley, “the best picture”, and the other known by many as the world’s greatest small painting.
Making the journey from east to west, the traveler begins at Urbino in the Marche region. Only a half hour drive from the Adriatic, Urbino stands on two plateaus overlooking the Metauro and Foglia valleys. The town is dominated by the magnificent Ducal Palace of Federico di Montefeltro who transformed Urbino into an artistic center in the fifteenth century.
Shortly after World War II, Aldous Huxley in his book of travel and reminiscences called the Ducal Palace, “most exquisite palace in Italy.” He went even further by saying that, “Even on the most wearily reluctant tourist Urbino imposes itself; there is no escaping it; it must be seen.” Its most striking external feature is the twin-towered facade, which projects out from the main body of the palace and connects and contains the structure of the building. The towers give a fairy-tale touch to the palace.
Inside is the National Gallery of the Marche, which is a match for the splendor of the Pitti Palace in Florence. It not only houses works of Raphael, who was born in Urbino, but of other renaissance painters, including The Ideal City by Luciano Laurano, one of the architects of the Ducal palace itself, the man responsible for the twin towers.
It is here in this gallery that we come face to face with della Francesca’s Flagellation arguably the world’s greatest small painting. When viewing the picture, even the untrained eye can tell it is in the presence of something special. It commands attention, but there is nothing maudlin nor melodramatic about it. Its subjects are cool and detached. Huxley writes in Along The Road that, “In the extraordinary ‘Flagellation’ at Urbino, the nominal subject of the picture recedes into the background on the left-hand side of the panel, where it serves to balance the three mysterious figures standing aloof in the right foreground. We seem to have nothing here but an experiment in composition, but an experiment so strange and so startlingly successful that we do not regret the absence of dramatic significance and are entirely satisfied.”
The painting’s symbolism has received much scholarly attention. What are the three mysterious figures in the foreground up to? They totally ignore the flagellation in the background as they confer in their own tight little group, tending their business without noticing the violence taking place nearby. The beating itself evokes no revulsion or harsh reaction. The players are almost impassive; Pontius Pilate in hat with long peak sits quietly, unmoved in the background. The flogger’s motion is almost feminine. In the foreground one character is thought to be Cardinal Bression, who presumably commissioned the work. He supposedly is trying to convince the Duke to take part in a crusade to resolve the fate of the Church itself.
Traversing the della Francesca trail is less than a full day’s journey by car. One day is not enough to do justice to the art or to the countryside itself. Urbino deserves a full day and a stay overnight in the area. The next leg of the trail deserves an early morning drive.
Few views are as haunting as the one that greets the morning traveler at Bocca Trabaria, the Apennine pass between the Tiber valley and the upper valley of Metauro in Umbria. Approached on a typical morning up the north slope, heading away from Urbino toward Sansepolcro, the summit reveals cloud-sheathed valleys below and Umbrian mountains stretching southward. Behind, the sun, still shrouded in mist, casts a hazy glow over the scene. One can visualize a flotilla of boats sailing through that wavy sea of clouds flooding the valleys below. Stopping to take in the vista, the traveler can hear sporadic bursts of gunfire echoing through the hills, the unbounded Italian hunter on his morning foray. This view from the Mountain of the Moon alone is worth the motor trip from Urbino across the Apennines, but there are better reasons yet for travelers to make the journey. Across this pass lies the Resurrection.
Huxley described the trip across the Apennines into Tuscany and Sansepolcro in Along The Road. For him it was a far different journey than it is today. “..., if you happen to be at Urbino, there is a motor bus which takes you to Sansepolcro, up and down the Apennines, in something over seven hours.” That journey today by car takes a little under two hours unless you linger over the Apennine scenery.
When he arrived, what did Huxley see? “A little town surrounded by walls, set in a broad flat valley between hills; some fine renaissance palaces with pretty balconies of wrought iron; a not very interesting church, and finally, the best picture in the world.”
Today as fifty years ago (in the words of Huxley) “...the visitor who now enters the Palazzo dei Conservatori at Borgo Sansepolcro finds the stupendous “Resurrection” almost as Piero della Francesca left it. Its clear, yet subtly sober colours shine out from the wall with scarcely impaired freshness. Damp has blotted out nothing of the design, nor dirt obscured it. We need no imagination to help us figure forth its beauty; it stands there before us in entire and actual splendour, the greatest picture in the world.”
Whether you agree or not that one picture can be the greatest, there is no mistaking the grandeur of the Resurrection. Again in the words of Huxley, “He achieves grandeur naturally with every gesture he makes, never consciously strains after it.”--- (The same image an aging sports fan sees in his mind’s eye when he remembers Joe Dimaggio covering center field.)--- Like the architect Alberti, Huxleys says, “Piero seems to have been inspired by what may be called the religion of Plutarch’s Lives---which is not Christianity, but a worship of what is admirable in man.”
What hits you about this and della Francesca’s other paintings, made in a time when all content of art was religious, is that the art is not about religion. It is, as Huxley says, “...the resurrection of the classical ideal.” It has in it that measure of transcendence that goes beyond subject matter and stands alone, a work of art complete unto itself.
Four sleeping guards form the base of a triangular frame that rises to the center where the image of Christ stands erect, athletic, impassive, right foot on the tomb from which He rises. He holds a Christian flag as a soldier might at attention his left arm and robe resting on his thigh. In the background, the hills of Tuscany and sky. The effect is enigmatic and captivating.
Here in the town hall you will find another masterpiece, della Francesca’s altar piece of the Madonna della Misericordia, which hangs near the Resurrection. One of his earliest works, the virgin stands with her arms outstretched embracing with the folds of her heavy blue mantle two groups of supplicants on either side.
Sansepolcro is no longer Huxley’s “little town surrounded by walls.” It is today the most important and densely populated town of the Tiber Valley in the Arezzo province. Finding accommodations is not the problem it was for Huxley. Traffic teems. But you can still park close to the town hall where the artwork stands and enter without a line. Nor is Sansepolcro shy about boasting that it is the birthplace of Piero della Francesca. Literature, posters and street signs bear his name, and a few yards down the street from the Museo Civico itself is another memorial to him: his birthplace.
The della Francesca trail would not be complete if the traveler missed his Madonna del Parto, or Pregnant Madonna. It is in the small village of Monterchi about twelve kilometers south and west from Sansepolcro. It is along the road to Arezzo, trail’s end.
Once the “Madonna del Parto” adorned the inside of the chapel near the cemetery of the village. Deterioration of the prized fresco led to a major restoration project, which saw the fresco moved to a building, now a museum, on the village outskirts. The restored fresco is in the words of John Mortimer, “brown, pale pink, blue and green---the colours of the earth, the sky and the olive trees.” In the center is the blue-clad Madonna, hand on swollen womb, flanked by two angels who hold open curtains that surrounded her.
The new setting for the Madonna is impressive, because of how well she is displayed and because it presents a detailed audio visual explanation of the restoration of the fresco. Unfortunately, it is all in Italian, and without a command of the language most of the restoration story is lost. The Madonna, however, speaks for herself.
In a way Arezzo is anti-climactic, but only because of the way the art is presented to the viewer, not because of its quality. Della Francesca’s frescos adorn the chapel of San Francesco here. They represent the work of more than a dozen years for the artist. As with art in a number of Italian churches, the frescos are illuminated only when someone puts money into a metered switch. So the viewer is often plunged suddenly into darkness.
The frescos depict The Story of the True Cross, which begins with a branch of the tree from which Eve took the apple. The frescos illustrate events related to this tale: the branch planted in dead Adam’s mouth; the branch cut down to decorate the palace where Solomon received the Queen of Sheba. These are followed by other scenes of battles in which Christians triumph over infidels--for example, Heraclius restoring the True Cross to Jerusalem. The paintings were done at a time when Christianity was on the defensive: the infidels had recently won at Constantinople. Some say the frescos were created as propaganda for a new Crusade.
Here at Arezzo, as in the other work viewed along the trail, Piero creates idealized faces. In the words of Huxley, “They are all of one peculiar cast: the foreheads are high, rounded and smooth; the necks are like cylinders of polished ivory.” Throughout they reflect the artist’s passion for solidity.
The frescos mark the end of the della Francesa trail. Here in Arezzo, the eastern end of Tuscany, other jewels of art await those so inclined. The other parts of Tuscany itself also beckon--Siena to the south, Florence to the north, all the picturesque villages strewn between with the “in Chianti” suffix attached to their first name--Radda in Chianti, Gaiole in Chianti and the others.
But what you remember the most are those gems of the trail. Huxley observed for his time that “It is unfortunate for Piero’s reputation that his works should be comparatively few and in most cases rather difficult of access.” Then, Arezzo and Sansepolcro were out-of-the-way places. Only Urbino was a sure tourist attraction. Huxley goes on to say that, “If the principal works of Piero were to be seen in Florence, and those of Botticelli at Sansepolcro I do not doubt that the public estimation of these two masters would be reversed. Artistic English spinsters would stand in rapturous contemplation before the story of the True Cross, instead of before the Primavera. Raptures depend largely upon the stars in Baedeker, and the stars are more freely distributed to works of art in accessible towns than those in the inaccessible.”
Travel in Italy today makes that observation passe. The Piero della Francesca trail is there, it is accessible, it is worth the journey.

A Seer Or Just A Writer
John Gardner died an untimely death (although stricken earlier with cancer) riding his motorcycle through the Susquehanna hills south of Binghamton, New York where he taught at SUNY. This was 1981. His most popular novel, written in 1972, was The Sunlight Dialogues, set where he grew up in Batavia, New York.

I don’t try to track if his works are still read, except by me. I am an admirer. Now and then you find a writer who speaks to you with the sureness of a Tiger Woods putt. It’s a personal thing (What isn’t?).

He had an impressive body of work to his credit before his early demise at the age of forty-eight. The titles include Resurrection, The Wreckage of Agathon, Grendel, Mickelsson’s Ghosts, October Light, Nickel Mountain, as well as children’s books, a biography of Chaucer, and a retelling of the myth of Gilgamesh. He was highly regarded as a teacher of writers of fiction, including a book titled On Becoming A Novelist. He also wrote several volumes of short stories, all memorable, and one indelibly imprinted on my brain called The Art Of Living. He had a strong enough following to merit a place for his works and personal papers in the archives of the University of Rochester for scholars to pursue.
This piece was prompted by my fourth reading of The Sunlight Dialogues. A book has to have something going for it to bring back any reader time and again. It is a complex novel populated by an unending stream of characters, each one brought fully to life. The plot is set in the time of its writing.. Need I remind you what was going on the early Seventies? The book is a mirror on that age.
There was then, I think, ample warning of this country’s downward drift . Gardner articulated it in the pages of The Sunlight Dialogues. The scene below describes a recollection that dated back to the 1930’s. It’s between the aging family patriarch and his eldest son.

"'Listen' he said. 'It's come to me that I made a mistake. Somewhere in the course of---' He tightened his lips, concentrating. 'All of us, or the times mebby. No matter who made it we have troubles coming. Troubles coming.' .................................

"The old man half-turned his head toward him impatiently. 'Who knows what kind of troubles?' he said. 'Germany.' .............................................

"'Suppose we were to have a war with Hitler, and suppose Hitler were to win?' he said.
'Dad, you're stewing again,' Hodge said. 'Let me help you inside.' Uncomfortably he glanced again at Tag (his brother)........................................

"'No!' his father roared. 'Not stewing. Thinking. Hitler could win. If not this one, the next one, or the next. From this point forward there'll be Hitlers for a thousand years.' He thumped the porch with his cane............................

".......................'Listen', he said. 'You believe in reason. You believe in democracy. Reflection of natural law, you think. But suppose people stopped being reasonable. Suppose they got spread too far apart to know what the balance of the country was thinking, or the balance of the world. E pluribus unum. Hah. Can India grow reasonable? China?..................

"......................'I say suppose all sides are right as it seems to them and they all blur together and their beliefs grow confused and the pluribus becomes so complicated and, more important, so dense that no human mind or even group of human minds can fathom the unum.'............................"

1972, the year of publication by Gardner, was not too early to see the horizon of 2009. The run-amok world population was as predictable then as it is obvious now. The confusion, delusion and animosity between the tribes that this mass of humanity has produced is all too clear. Just look around. No mystery. No solution either.
Will someone please bailout the human race!

The Entertaining Misanthrope.
Felt in the mood for Highsmith, a misanthropic female who, nevertheless, manages to go beyond the surface. Long dead, she knew her art, her music, her wines, her gardening, her European cities. The key to her appeal is detail about these things and the charm, manners, good taste, and sensitivity she imparts to Ripley who is willing to kill on the spot if he sees no other way to control events. She endows him with her tastes and knowledge, her misanthropy too.

Ripley is totally self-possessed and self-centered. He has a wife, but seems distanced from her. Yet he never thinks or speaks ill of her. He also clearly desires her. It is certainly not an American kind of relationship. It is subtle, sophisticated and supremely European. She goes away on long vacations without him, and it fazes him not at all; it suits him. You get the feeling that if she got in his way, he would dispatch her with the same cold efficiency he uses on relative strangers, probably right after he made love to her. Waste not, want not!
Highsmith also knew how to keep a plot in motion. The story moves with inexorable logic. The only difference is, unlike most of us who often want to kill but don’t out of fear or some sort of humanity, Ripley does the deed dispassionately when the logic of events and ploys to turn the situation in his favor are at a dead end.

Highsmith is interesting partly because she poses moral questions, which are clear until she offers another point of view, usually that of Ripley. In Ripley Underground Tom kills a man to suppress the uncovering of an art fraud. An exposed truth that forgeries exist will harm the artistic forger (who has achieved a sort of excellence of his own in the act of forging), and Ripley himself. The wrongness of the killing is evident. The man has been defrauded by being sold a fake; Ripley and his friends are behind the fraud. But in Ripley’s eyes the man is being unreasonable. And Ripley tries every sort of verbal persuasion over a period of days to talk the man out of pursuing the issue. Ripley weighs the harm to be done to his friends, the artist, and himself against the harm done to the man (who they are willing to recompense for his purchase), and decides to kill him.

Highsmith makes it seem almost justifiable. After all the fake painting is only a small injury to the man, who can more than afford it and its loss (besides, the forgery has value in itself), and in Ripley’s eyes he is just being stubborn. Moreover, the disclosure will completely disrupt the lives and fortunes of the perpetrators. The injury they will sustain is by far greater (in Ripley’s eyes) than the sin done to the buyer. Finally, Ripley feels he has no other choice than to stop the man, and the only way he can stop him is to kill him. All is casuistry! We reason to suit our limbic system.