Southern Bookman

New MOMA expansion continues museum's real estate maneuvers, as Times critic Michael Kimmelman details

The Museum of Modern Art's relentless expansion since moving to its permanent home on West 53rd Street in 1939 has transformed its Midtown Manhattan neighborhood.

In an early review of the MOMA's latest renovation, opening Oct. 21, ace New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman shows how the museum turned over the years into one of New York City's insatiable real estate brokers.

The $450 million project adds 47,000 feet of exhibition space, allowing MOMA to display more of its permanent collection. It also adds a performance stage, a rooftop restaurant and a dramatic canopy. On the negative side, the MOMA's sculpture garden will be less accessible.

One of MOMA's most touted additions is a gallery for changing exhibits, visible from the street and free to visitors. Alas, MOMA had to tear down the American Museum of Folk Art to build the new space.

The MOMA expansion continues major museums' race to grow bigger and attract more visitors. The MOMA turns ever more corporate as its masterpieces speak against capitalism's ravages. Co-founded by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s wife, the museum has navigated between those poles since its beginning.

Kimmelman's review implies that the project by Diller Scofido +Refro, in collaboration with Gensler, undoes mistakes from Yoshio Taniguchi's widely criticized 2004 expansion. Taniguchi's work led to crowded hallways and escalators as the museum's visitors surpassed 3 million a year, as Kimmelman details. The new MOMA will ease traffic flow. Earlier expansions had been done by Philip Johnson and Cesar Pelli.

When the MOMA moved to West 53rd Street in 1939, the area consisted of low-rise rowhouses, Kimmelman says. The MOMA's six-story home of white marble, clad in a new kind of insulated glass called Thermolux, according to the MOMA's web site, transformed the street like the landing of a spaceship, as Kimmelman said.

Now, skyscrapers in that part of Midtown soar toward the sky, blotting out the sun. Owned by foreign oligarchs, many of the outlandish high-rises remain vacant, killing the area's small businesses.

Conceived as a palace of modern art, the MOMA with its real estate hunger has enervated the area's vitality. Monstrosities rising to an inhuman scale,  empty storefronts and a corporate uniformity have replaced interesting shops and middle-class homes.

Art lovers will flock to the MOMA, which expects an increase to 3.5 million annual visitors. The main interest for many will still be taking selfies before Van Gogh's "Starry Night," as Kimmelman notes.

 

 

 

 

Farewell A. Alvarez, Robert Hunter and Dr. Bob McClelland

The New York Times obituaries Wednesday served a feast for 1960s aficionados.

A. Alvarez, the British critic, poet and reporter who chronicled Sylvia Plath's final days, died Monday at age 90, according to his Times obituary. The newspaper also noted the death of Robert Hunter, born Robert Burns, who wrote the Grateful Dead's lyrics. Hunter died Monday at age 78.

Dr. Robert McClelland, one of the surgeons who operated on the mortally wounded John F. Kennedy, was also remembered. McClelland, who died Tueday at 89, also worked on Kennedy's alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, after he was fatally shot by Jack Ruby.

Alvarez's study of suicide, "The Savage God," introduced me to the saga of Plath. The Times obituary quoted Alvarez's recollections of Plath visiting him in the last days of her life, reading him the electric poems published in her posthumous "Ariel." The survivor of his own suicide attempt, Alvarez regretted not taking action to save the poet.

He also published a ground-breaking anthology of poets Thom Gunn, Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Plath and others. He went on to write a nonfiction work on competitive poker that, according to the Times, popularized the pastime.

Hunter also gained renown as a wordsmith, writing the lyrics to Dead classics like "Uncle John's Band," "Truckin'" and "Dark Star." Hunter's words, joined with the music of his childhood friend Jerry Garcia. gave the band its identity. While his work lay on the other side of the poetic spectrum from Plath and Alvarez, they all achieved widespread popularity from the English lyric.

McClelland joined the surgical team that sought to save the president's life in the emergency room of Dallas' Parkland Hospital on Nov. 22, 1963. Two days later, he performed surgery on the dying Oswald.

The surgeon disputed the findings of the Warren Commission that Oswald had acted alone. He believed from his examination of Kennedy in the emergency room that the fatal, large wound at the back of Kennedy's head had not come from Oswald, shooting from behind the president's car. McClelland believed the shot causing the wound had been fired from the front, coming from a gunman stationed on the famous grassy knoll.

Watching the Abraham Zapruder film strengthened his belief in a second gunman. Completing a trifecta of treating Kennedy assassination figures, McClelland years later performed a cancer operation on Zapruder.

The lives of A. Alvarez, Bob Hunter and Bob McClelland covered a large slice of 1960s history and culture. Kennedy, Plath, the Dead are faces in a gallery of the age that might have been painted by Andy Warhol.

As the Trump-congressional collision dominated the Times' front page, the obituaries gave a historical longview of political tumult and cultural changes.

 

Nashville's literary scene more vibrant than Atlanta's

Nashville boasts a better literary scene than Atlanta's.

The recent death of popular novelist Anne Rivers Siddons highlighted that writers often leave Atlanta after launching their careers here. A writer for Atlanta magazine early in her career, Siddons examined Atlanta in her best-selling "Peachtree Road." But she left Atlanta behind and called Charleston home.

The late Pat Conroy returned to Atlanta for a while, but soon left for South Carolina. A couple of years ago, Tayari Jones, author of the acclaimed "An American Marriage," came back to her hometown. But the novelist recently accepted a professor's post at Cornell, according to the university's web site.

Georgia State professor David Bottoms and Emory's Jericho Brown are nationally known poets. But Atlanta was hurt by the departures of poets Natasha Trethewey and Kevin Young.

Nashville receives mega national attention from the presence of acclaimed novelist Ann Patchett, co-owner of the overrated independent bookstore Parnassus. Publication of Patchett's newest novel, "The Dutch House," brought a new burst of features about Patchett and Parnassus, including the obligatory mention of the dog who roams the store.

Accomplished short story writer and novelist Lorrie Moore is the star of Vanderbilt's creative writing faculty. Poet and critic Mark Jarman is a longtime pillar of the school's program.

Though her "our old silver" and Southern mists pieces make me shudder, Nashville-based Margaret Renkl frequently writes for The New York Times op-ed page.

A few miles south of Nashville, Sewanee boasts one of the nation's top summer writers' conferences, directed from the start by nationally regarded poet and critic Wyatt Prunty.

Noted novelist and short story writer Jamie Quarto stands out among the University of the South's faculty. Biographer, presidential historian and TV pundit Jon Meacham, a University of the South alum, lives in Sewanee.

The university also publishes the venerable Sewanee Review, which recently received a long overdue facelift and jolt of new energy from Editor Adam Ross, author of the novel "Mr. Peanut." Bottoms a few years ago established the literary journal Five Points, which publishes nationally known writers. But it lacks the stature of the Sewanee Rivew.

On a recent visit to Nashville, reading the weekly news magazine Nashville Scene, I wondered why Atlanta can no longer support such a publication that strongly covers politics, arts, books, food and music. Nashville's many local music venues give Nashville Scene a strong advertising base. Atlanta's once vibrant Creative Loafing is now a fading monthly, while Atlanta magazine's features show more desperation than creativity.

I'm sure Atlanta has a flourishing literary scene of which I'm unaware. The annual Decatur Book Festival brings out a huge population of readers, and a couple of independent bookstores seek to maintain the legacy of Oxford Books.

But the smaller Nashville outshines Atlanta.
 

 

 

 

The 200th anniversary of Keats' "To Autumn"

Refreshed by a pleasant breeze as I walked in my neighborhood last evening, I thought about John Keats' "To Autumn."

After observing freshly cut cornfields during a walk, Keats wrote the poem on this date 200 years ago. Each year, I reread the poem on one of those mild autumnal days like the one that inspired Keats.

I never realized until reading Garrison Keillor's now emailed "Writers' Almanac" this morning that Sept. 19 was the day Keats wrote "To Autumn," his last major poem. It was a revelation that the ode to autumn was written in late summer.

Many of the poem's images are more like summer, adding to the sense of longing for a new season. The evocation of summer adds to the poem's foreshadowing of death. Keats died a little more than a year after writing the poem.

"To Autumn" was the last of the great odes he produced beginning in the spring of 1819. Despite that astonishing outpouring, Keats grew despondent  over financial worries, the belief that he'd failed as a poet and the realization that he was dying from tuberculosis.

I, like others, believe the poem the most perfect in the English language. What appears a simple celebration of the arrival of autumn has received many interpretations, the coming of death the most prevalent. Noted critic Helen Vendler sees it as a metaphor for artistic creation. Somehow, it's been linked to the Peterloo Massacre, which happened the same year. Difficult to see that connection.

What haunts me about the poem is its understanding of the impermanence of human experience. A young poet knew the reality of walking, the vision of the cornfield, the writing of the poem. He was there 200 years ago, giving us a gift that has spoken to generations.

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,–

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Farewell, Cokie Roberts and Sander Vanocur

Cokie Roberts and Sander Vanocur represented different eras of Washington TV journalism.

Roberts died Tuesday in Washington at age 75 and Vanocur Monday night in California at 91.

Vanocur, best known for reporting on the Kennedy administration for NBC News, personified the male-dominated news business of the 1960s. Roberts was among a generation of women journalists who demolished those gender barriers in the 1970s and 1980s.

Roberts, like Vanocur, was a Washington insider. Her father, Hale Boggs, for years represented New Orleans in the U.S. House and was House speaker when he died in a plane crash in Alaska. Her mother, Lindy Boggs, took her husband's place after his death and served as U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. Roberts grew up breathing politics, giving her an empathy for politicians unusual for a journalist.

A glamorous correspondent in the days when TV overcame newspapers as Americans' dominant news source, Vanocur was a prominent persona during John F. Kennedy's ground-breaking administration. He was the last of a four-member panel of reporters who questioned Kennedy and Richard Nixon in their 1960 debate, which changed the course of news and politics.

Reporting on Kennedy's witty and sophisticated news conferences and his trips and speeches. Vanocur with his haughty air and polished sentences was the TV counterpart of the "Best and Brightest" who served in Kennedy's cabinet. One of my most vivid childhood memories is watching a choked-up Vanocur report on Kennedy's assassination. He was one of the last journalists who interviewed Robert F. Kennedy.

A solid, insightful reporter, Roberts excelled as one of the first of a new era of TV pundits, giving insider commentary about Washington. During her career, opinion grew as prevalent as objective news reporting.

Sophisticated and knowledgeable, she presented a folksy yet informed personality. Her gossipy, gently humorous commentaries brought comfort as partisan politics grew more hostile.

Starting out at NPR before a superstar career at ABC, Roberts was also a noted author of books detailing women's contributions to American history. While at ABC, she continued to do commentaries for NPR, and wrote a newspaper column.

Vanocur thrived when the three TV networks dominated the airwaves. Roberts rose to prominence during the last years of that dominance. She witnessed the rise of cable news and the Internet and the decline of network news.

They spanned a time when Americans' trust in the news and government receded. Roberts flourished as a believable voice as Americans' political unity frayed. Now, the country is fractured into political tribes believing their own realities.

 

 

 

 

Paris Review uncovers William Styron's fictional account of his depression battle

William Styron attempted to write a novel about his debilitating depression.

"Spiral," an excerpt from the novel, runs in the Paris Review's current issue. The piece comes from a handwritten draft found among Styron's papers at Duke University, according to an introduction by Styron's biographer, James L.W. West III.

Publication of such pieces is a flourishing practice among literary magazines seeking a sales boost from a famous author long after his or her death. All too often, these are juvenilia or abandoned failures that should remain hidden. The Hudson Review recently published an early short story by Sylvia Plath that was unexceptional, work that any young writer might produce.

But Styron's fragment, while not among his best writing, is worthy of publication. The piece, describing the narrator's first night at a mental hospital, was based on Styron's admission into the neurological unit of Yale-New Haven Hospital in late 1985, after he had fallen into a deep depression.

The first person narrator, Paul Whitehurst, is a famed playwright who "is plagued by an unshakable malaise," West says. "Paul's narrative is based closely on Styron's recollections of his own breakdown and hospitalization."

After a steady beginning, Styron abandoned the novel. "The prose veers from fiction to exposition," West explains. After returning home, Styron read widely about clinical depression, and "in later parts of the manuscript he seems determined to tell all he knows, but cannot find a way to do so within a fictional framework," West says.

Styron later wrote a compelling account of his struggle with the disease in the bestselling nonfiction memoir, "Darkness Visible."

"While "Darkness Visible" has become Styron's iconic contribution to the literature of psychology, "Spiral" is the author's initial attempt to set down the story of his depression, to document the complexity of the disease and its malefic effect on personality and behavior," West writes.

Styron's account of a confused, frightened and depressed man encountering his first night in a hospital falls short of his best writing. But the fragment displays enough of Styron's humor and gift for creating vivid characters to make it an worthwhile addition to his published work.

September arrives, but summer remains

In years past, we would have enjoyed a touch of autumn by now.

September no longer marks the end of summer. Temperatures remain in the mid-90s. The continuing heat affects wildlife. Yesterday, I chased off a crazed squirrel that had run up our glass-paneled back door.

I still look forward to the season changing, the arrival of fall, the promise of new beginnings. As is my custom, I played "Try to Remember" on the piano. I'll play the wistful song from "The Fantasticks" all month, meditating upon the passage of youth and time's quickening pace. I'll also seek to learn "September Song" at last.

As climate change progresses, I wonder if future generations will enjoy the coming of autumn, cooler days, the eruption of color.

 

Georgia Health News and WebMD score scoop on toxic chemical's release

A massive public protest has erupted over two suburban Atlanta plants spewing the cancer-causing chemical ethylene oxide into the air.

Galvanized by a report by the online news sites Georgia Health News and WebMD, residents near the Sterigenics plant in Smyrna and the BD plant in Covington packed two public meetings this week and demanded action.

Business-friendly Gov. Brian Kemp moved to halt the companies' toxic releases, while Democratic legislators and local government officials called for the plants to be shut down until further tests can be done.

Founded by my former Atlanta Journal-Constitution colleague Andy Miller, Georgia Health News has been an invaluable source of medical and environmental information for a number of years. It's a pioneering model for nonprofit online news.

The Georgia Health News' success gives hope that nonprofit online news sites can fill the gap in coverage left by the decline in daily newspapers across the nation.

As the public concern ballooned over the ethylene oxide emissions, I wondered what other toxic chemicals stew in Atlanta's air, emitted by vehicles and businesses. Carbon emissions keep rising as climate change advances locally, nationally and globally.

The same level of public outrage over the ethylene oxide releases is required to reduce carbon emissions and stop the worst effects of climate change. So far, most residents in Atlanta and elsewhere have ignored climate change's threat.

 

 

Carl A. Weiss Jr. convinced many that his father was innocent of Huey Long's death

The brilliant young doctor Carl A. Weiss Sr. fired the shot at the Louisiana State Capitol on Sept. 8, 1935, that led to Huey P. Long's death, according to the long-established official story.

After the encounter between Weiss and Long in the tumultous hallway between the Louisiana House and Senate chambers, the dictatorial Kingfish's bodyguards opened fire, killing Weiss with a fusillade of bullets. The 29-year-old suffered 62 wounds, according to reports. Receiving a single gunshot wound, Long lingered for 32 hours, dying at age 42.

Carl A. Weiss Jr. was an infant on the night when Long was wounded and his father killed. The younger Weiss, who died Aug 1 at age 84 at his Florida home, devoted his life to seeking to prove that his father was not Long's assassin, as recounted in a New York Times obituary Thursday. Like his father, and grandfather, Carl Weiss Jr. was a physician. He based his successful medical practice on Long Island.

According to the Times, Carl Austin Weiss Jr. discovered the details of his father's death at age 10 when he saw John McGrady's illustration in Life magazine of that wild Sunday night. The senior Weiss, a brilliant young Baton Rouge surgeon, shot Long with his .32 pistol, according to official reports.

But the younger Weiss believed that his father had not even been carrying a gun when he encountered Long for the third time that evening. He believed that Long's fatal wound came from a bullet that ricocheted from a bodyguard's gun.

Speculation about the Long assassination has spawned a number of investigations and books. LSU historian T. Harry Williams in his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Long concluded that Weiss was the assassin, firing a single bullet.

Baton Rouge political consultant Ed Reed in "Requiem for a Kingfish: The Strange and Unexplained Death of Huey Long" sided with Weiss Jr.'s belief that his father was unarmed, and only sought to speak to Long. Weiss Sr. punched Long when the senator insulted him, according to Reed, and the bodyguards opened fire, inadvertently striking Long.

Reed and others believed that the bodyguards retrieved Weiss' .32 from his car, parked near the Capitol, and planted the gun near his body.

Baton Rouge journalist Lamar White in an in-depth article for the Pelican Brief web site supports Carl Weiss Jr.'s conclusion that his father was innocent.

Journalist David Zinman in the recently re-released 1962 book "The Day Huey Long Was Shot" gives a thorough account, without reaching a definite conclusion.

Long's assassination led to conspiracy theories from the beginning, including that President Franklin Roosevelt engineered the slaying. Reed and others say Carl Weiss Sr. was upset with Long because of legislation that would have removed his father-in-law from a judgeship in St. Landry Parish. But others discount that theory. Another belief is that the doctor was upset because Long claimed the family of Weiss' wife had Negro blood.

Carl Weiss Jr. met Long's son, Sen. Russell Long, at a cordial lunch, both men distinguished elderly gentlemen. Russell Long reportedly came to believe that Carl Weiss Sr. was innocent, although he backed the official account in public.

The truth will remain unknown, but Carl A. Weiss Jr. made a persuasive case for his father.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sun keeps setting on the British Empire

Kashmir. Hong Kong. Vestiges of the British empire always will be with us.

As former corners of the old empire implode, the British under Boris Johnson dream of reviving their economic glory, independent of Europe.

Trump adviser John Bolton assured the British this week that the United States supports a "hard" Brexit, and stands ready to enter a bilateral trade deal with our English friends.

No tariffs on Bentleys and Cadbury creme eggs. London will join the NFL. Britain and the United States will reunite into s single economic unit.

Once the United States was Britain's colony. Now, Britain will be our colony.

India and Pakistan glower over Kashmir. The world waits for China to crackdown in Hong Kong.

And Britain sinks further into irrelevance.