Bailey Alexander

RMONEY. As Dawn Powell said; Satire is people as they are...

Romney photo via Andycheninprogress. I quote Dawn Powell's quote as oft as possible, in fact she hangs on my living room wall.

Even Gore Vidal marveled ather level of humour, so evolved, so tender but brutally honest. His remarkable essay forced her novel back into print through sheer literary will; "for decades Dawn Powell was always just on the verge of ceasing to be a cult and becoming a major religion."

Penn State, Banksters and Perspective

I'm sure many people might agree Penn State's child abuse scandal isn't an isolated case, we've thousands of institutions protecting their image for all the wrong reasons. 

We're simply overwhelmed by the rate they expose our scars in modern times.  We're so concerned with whatever it is we're concerned with on any given day; our reputation, our situational morality, our livelihood, our own precious lives, so much more precious than others, apparently.  

And then a point in time arrives when life sinks so low that perspective raises its philosophical head as if to insist we're each complicit in our own special way. Doing the best we can, certainly with the very best of intentions, always.     

Once upon a time Orson Welles, America's most lovable renaissance man provided Chaplin with an idea for a film. Welles, the son of a bon viveur and sedulous globetrotter, whose mother's salon introduced introduced him to Art, Stravinsky and Ravel, a kid who met Hitler at 9, a man who could declare with eyewitness authority that Beijing and Peking were the two artistic centres of the world, yes, that man, our boy Orson provided perspective for a Charlie Chaplin film.

Gore Vidal was softly shocked by Dawn Powell

GV's essays are brilliant mini intellectual breakdowns, particularly fine when focusing on a fellow writer and their collected work. Vidal efficiently digests it whole, like a snake, and regurgitates it back in finer form, far more elegant in its reincarnation. In this, he's very much alone.  

One of my favorite essays is the one devoted to Dawn Powell, arguably America's premier writer of satire; forever. No wonder she'll never cease being a cult and become a religion. We're not fond of the truth, we're not much for mirrors, it's a rather cruel culture, solidarity is not necessarily our strength.  

Dawn was all about strength. Of mind, of spirit, a genius. Hemingway knew it, Diane Trilling knew it, everyone who was anyone in the literary world knew it, but refused to give her fame because she refused to live by their rules. She could not write about women in a romantic way, nor the war. And the rare moment she did write of war, it was without romance. 

Language can be magical, it can also be a curse.

Edith Wharton and Dawn Powell owned their writerly worlds.

Re-visited House of Mirth. Wharton was my mother's favorite author and I'm reminded exactly why, her writing style referred to as dramatic irony. Wharton not only understood her world, she owned her world. Both she and Dawn Powell had perfect pitch respective of their geographically unique New York addresses.

Dawn Powell on Gore Vidal, "not to be fit in any fashion"

Sig.Vidal's sun is setting and he may be grieving for a circle and country long gone but while we overlook Lignano this October eve his views prove as probable and prescient as ever.

I love Vidal, read him often, but must rely on Dawn Powell's acute observation circa '54: "Something of a Disraeli, a high patrician like Solomon in judgment and philosophic power with wit, poetry and music.  Not to be fit in any fashion, but will outlive them all, like the great ones."

Dawn's Diaries circa '62

Speaking of....here's one of Dawn Powell's entries re Mad Magazine.

"Mad Magazine very funny this issue.   I decided that the sheer ugliness of this magazine is very wise.  A beautiful layout means art director is going to rule copy for beauty, not for wit.  Any choice between a comic line and a harmonious picture goes to picture.  The other preservation of comedy is in the low salaries of staff which keeps them bitter and irreverent."

Gore Vidal doesn't look so good...

Long before America decided to embrace their biographer, before 'thrilling critics' pretended to admire him, to admire Dawn Powell, which made him laugh in disdain...I was in love. 

Gore Vidal does encompass, for me, at least, the finest chapter of America's history.  It is the chapter my novel addresses, so obsessive I shall stay, in vain, for I'm a byproduct, n'est pas?

Obama is beautiful, in possession of keen intellect, discipline, Michelle blows me away, but I can't know what they could mean in such a society I no longer domicile within.  

I dread Gore's passing and fear every fall I now must read about, when checking in, online, just to make sure he's keeping us honest.  Never met him, but did stalk his estate more than twice down South in Ravello.  Never had the nerve to know whether the master was in residence...sometimes the idol should reside in the mind.

I walked by his address in Rome, often, decades after he'd lived in the eternal city, fantasizing about having a luncheon, know of one or two friends that did, but the joy was never meant for me.

Alas, after watching him on the beeb election nite, listening to the round table laugh at his inability to 'bond' with the presenter via video, I now must accept the grand lion has thinned, finally, verily, in mind, body and soul; he's no longer irritated with America, now he's just irritated and old and tired of both tedious facts.

But what a lion, like no other...and who better to capture the man on paper, having met Gore in person, circa 1954.  Reflecting adroitly in her diaries, "...he has more character, manliness, power, manner and general good breeding, intelligence...like other young men, capacity to work, in spite of perfect capacity for climbing as the others have..customary charm and ambition.  Latter has driven him to do too much and without direction..."

I've read some of his fiction, not a poetic writer, a gifted writer, like his friend Tennessee Williams, but then who was/is...Dawn goes on, validating why his essays are written like no other, as if you're sitting across from him, chivas in hand, relaxed, soothed even as he speaks with such strong language, warning....

 "Read Gore Vidal's Messiah. more impressed by the writer than the book, which was engaging enough, but the trouble with being a clear, sharply cut, extraordinary individual with a rich articulate gift is that no characters can equal the author himself, whose muscular skill directs most complicated interplay of plots, guides contrapuntal themes with suave, veiled power and a doom like rhythm that compels and lulls.

A genuine novelist-power at the wheel, a rich, regal, original mind with unlimited treasures and the serene generosity of one who knows he will come into more and more. 

Something of Disraeli-a high, patrician, Solomon-like judgment and philosophic power, with wit, poetry and music. 

Not to be fit in any fashion, but will outlive them all, like the great ones."

Oh, I hope he continues to do so...

George Monbiot, Susan Jacoby and the end of the affair with America.

"One theme is both familiar and clear: religion - in particular fundamentalist religion - makes you stupid. The US is the only rich country in which Christian fundamentalism is vast and growing"...So suggests M. Monbiot in today's Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/28/us-education-election-obama-bush-mccain

As I've had to personally sit through a performance of "The American Evangelical", front row and center, my reviews are less than stellar.  So when I see this, I can't resist.

In fact, I wonder if fanatical belief rests at the very core of N. America's denouement, almost as if one is inspired to put the book down, ponder another, knowing the best chapters have already been read.

I've limited my daily blog addiction to 4 or 5; one blog is written by Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic, a  self=professed ''gay, christian, conservative' blogger.  Sullivan's 'aura' is attractive, as Ianesco suggests, I agree, but I'm beginning to feel suspicious, as if he's inadvertently moving the goalposts from Christian/Quietly Christian VS Atheist to Christians VS Christianists.  He massages topical issues adroitly, referencing many, but I find his labels taxing, distracting.    

Christianists? WTF.  It's like George Carlin and the skit about words suppressing the subversive, negative connotation, masking the cold, brutal reality of modernity.

M. Monbiot references Susan Jacoby.  Her writing is fierce and her research brilliant, I've blogged about her book, "Freethinkers, A History of American Secularism".  

Such is the journey, the narrative, of a country; its intellectual and cultural zenith in the 60's, exhausted by the 70's, morphing into Gordon Greco's greedy 80's, suddenly stifling and pc laden 90's, then boom continues thru the naughts, then bust follows, naturally.

Bush, the wasp who turned evangelical, what a metaphor for modern times...