Southern Bookman

Farewell, Kris Kristofferson and Pete Rose

Kris Kristofferson and Pete Rose gained fame as American outlaws.

In a fitting juxtaposition of fate, Kristofferson and Rose both died over the weekend.

Kristofferson, 88, one of the ground-breaking Nashville songwriters who transformed country music in the 1970s, died Saturday at his home in Maui, Hawaii, surrounded by his family.

Rose, 83, who broke Ty Cobb's all-time hits record and was the driving force for Cincinnati's Big Red Machine, was found dead at his home Monday, according to the medical examiner of Clark County, Nevada. He had appeared at an autograph show over the weekend. 

A former Army officer and Rhodes scholar, Kristofferson refused a post teaching English at West Point to move to Nashville, where he worked as a janitor before achieving major success as a songwriter, with the help of Johnny Cash. Kristofferson wrote some of the most memorable lines in American music, and with his rugged masculinity found stardom as a Hollywood sex symbol.

Rose, known to detractors and fans as Charlie Hustle, shook up baseball with his reckless, devil-may-care play. He seriously injured Cleveland catcher Ray Fosse, barrelling into him in an all-star game, which once meant something to participants.

After propelling the Reds to two World Series titles in the 1970s, Rose brought his harem-scarem style to the Philadelphia Phillies. He finished his career with 4,256 hits, a record that Major League baseball doesn't honor because of Rose's banishment from the sport in a gambling scandal.

The 17-time all-star was banned in 1989 by Baseball Commissioner Bart Giamatti for betting on games while managing the Reds. As one social media wag noted, Rose's lifetime ban has now ended, possibly making him eligible for election to his rightful place in the Hall of Fame.

Kristofferson and Rose both exemplified a roguish, hyper-charged masculinity. Each of them were transformational stars who excelled in fields of entertainment that fascinate millions.

The rules-breaking songwriter and ballplayer sparked outpourings of acclaim and vilification, two outlaws who changed American culture.

 

 

Keats' "To Autumn" followed Peterloo Massacre

John Keats wrote "To Autumn," his last great poem, inspired by a walk along the River Itchen near Winchester on Sept. 19, 1819.

"How beautiful the season is now – How fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it [...] I never lik'd stubble fields so much as now [...] Somehow a stubble plain looks warm – in the same way that some pictures look warm – this struck me so much in my sunday's walk that I composed upon it," Keats said about the poem's origins, writing to his friend John Hamilton Reynolds.

"To Autumn" was the last of Keats' breakthrough of great odes, begun in the spring of 1819. Foreshadowing his death in Rome from tuberculosis a little over a year later, the poem on one level is a farewell.

Keats composed "To Autumn" a little over a month after the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester, in which 18 people where killed and 400 to 700 injured when the British Army's 15th Hussars led a cavalry charge into a crowd of 60,000 gathered at St. Peter's Field to protest economic devastation.

Britain's agricultural economy slumped after the Napoleonic Wars, and conditions worsened because of failed harvests and soaring bread prices caused by the Corn Laws, which imposed tariffs on grain imports. The protesters demanded an expansion of the right to vote, then held by just 11 percent of adult males.

The cavalry attack followed the arrest of radical orator Henry Hunt before his scheduled address to the protesters. Manchester Observer editor James Wroe invented the Peterloo Massacre label in a headline, comparing the carnage to the Battle of Waterloo four years before.

Keats read newspaper accounts about the massacre and witnessed the arrested Hunt's triumphant entry into London on Sept. 13, 1819. Yet, outside of a reference in a letter to his fiance Fanny Brawne, he never overtly mentioned the event, in contrast to fellow Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who responded to Peterloo in "The Mask of Anarchy" and "England in 1819."

Critic Tom Paulin believes Keats made coded references to Peterloo in "To Autumn," a view disputed by most readers.

The poem expresses joy and sorrow at the arrival of autumn, with its natural bounty shadowed by the awareness of death. It describes the stubble fields at the end of the harvest, not the pastures full of grain.

Keats mourns the loss of Britain's agricultural past, the wrenching change that caused the Peterloo tragedy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remembering Battle of Antietam on 162nd anniversary

The Antietam Battlefield stretches toward the horizon, peaceful and bucolic.

It's hard to imagine that the bloodiest battle in American history took place 162 years ago on those rolling green hills near Sharpsburg, Md.

The Civil War battle on Sept. 17, 1862, at last fell silent with 22,727 Americans killed, wounded or missing. Two days after the battle, the bearded Scotsman Alexander Gardner took photographs of the dead's bloated bodies, the first photos taken of soldiers killed in battle.

Famed photographer Matthew Brady a month later displayed the Antietam photos at his Broadway gallery in New York City, drawing huge crowds shocked yet mesmerized by the horror of war.

Robert E. Lee's invading Army of Northern Virginia clashed with Gen. George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac on that late summer day, changing the course of the war.

Famous sites that Gardner visited remain unchanged, familiar from his photographs. The Dunker Church and the nearby cornfield, where the armies fired their first shots. The quiet Sunken Road, filled with Confederate dead in Gardner's images. The Burnside Bridge crossing idyllic Antietam Creek.

In fierce afternoon fighting, soldiers of both armies battled  for control of  the majestic bridge, at last captured by Gen. Ambrose Burnside's federal troops.

While not achieving a decisive victory, McClelland's army forced Lee to retreat to Virginia, ending his incursion into Maryland. The Union success led President Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, shifting the war's purpose to ending slavery as well as preserving the union.

Many of those who sacrificed their lives at Antietam rest in a national cemetery there. Like those soldiers buried at nearby Gettysburg, they "gave the last full measure of devotion... that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom," as Lincoln said in his Gettysburg Address a little over a year later.

Arrival of autumn weather revives love for Walker Percy

The arrival of fall weather in late summer brings memories of reading Walker Percy.

Percy said that storms like the recent Hurricane Francine, which brought sweeping winds and cooler temperatures to Georgia after causing flooding and power outages in Louisiana, actually make us feel better, thrilling us with drama and danger.

When I was young, Percy's early novels "The Moviegoer," "The Last Gentleman" and "Love in the Ruins" served as scriptural texts for me and others. Percy's characters Binx Bolling, Will Barrett and Dr. Thomas More gave us philosophies about how to live.

I doubt that Percy's books are much read anymore. Younger generations, especially males, no longer value novels as moral guides.

Percy's novels remain on my bookshelves, but I have not looked at them in years. The autumn weather recalls the melancholy and search for deeper meaning in Percy's philosophy, stirring a desire to return to his books. Now that I am old, I hope that he still speaks to me.

 

 

Remembering The Atlanta Journal's Sept. 11, 2001 coverage

On the anniversary of Sept. 11, I remember my Atlanta Journal-Constitution colleagues who've died since that momentous day.

I also honor the firefighters, police officers and workers lost when the World Trade Center towers collapsed in massive clouds of dust.

In one its last hurrahs, the afternoon Atlanta Journal put out a special edition reporting on the terrorist attack. The late Frank Hyland's on deadline account remains one of the most gripping in its urgency, factual details and dramatic writing. An old sportswriter, Frank was among the great rewrite men.

I recall seeing the late Bill Husted on the elevator that day, and how he gave me an encouraging smile. Bill wrote the pioneering "Tech Buddy" column, guiding many into their first forays into the new world of the Internet.

On the Journal copy desk, the late Frank White, the consummate jazz scholar, performed his duties. The Journal's desks heroically responded to the devastating event.

The newsroom was electric, with meetings and plans for wide-ranging coverage. The next morning's Constitution delivered a thorough package of stories and columns, but to me Hyland's piece for the dying Journal set the standard.

Many other newspaper colleagues have passed away in the 23 years since the terrorist attack shocked the nation. The rest of us have aged, fighting various ailments.

The Atlanta Journal soon ceased publication after more than 100 years of "covering Dixie like the dew."  The newspaper rose to a last moment of glory on Sept. 11, 2001.

 

Erik Larson's "The Demon of Unrest" examines nation's drive toward Civil War

South Carolina and six other deep South states had already seceded from the Union before Abraham Lincoln's first inauguration as president on March 4, 1861.

Following South Carolina's lead, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas formed the Confederate States of America after the little-known Illinois Republican's election in November 1860. The Southern states feared that Lincoln would seek to abolish slavery, although he had often promised to let it continue.

Best-selling popular historian Erik Larson's "The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War" examines in crucial day-by-day detail the country's plunge toward the war that killed 750,000 Americans.

South Carolina, its slave-owning planters known as "the chivalry," seethed with outrage following Lincoln's election. Unfurling a long list of grievances against the North's anti-slavery actions, the state declared its independence in December 1860.

The dithering of President James Buchanan and his administration's allegiance to the South led to Buchanan's failure to strengthen the defenses of the federal Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

As Buchanan delayed taking action to stop the Palmetto State's revolt, Charleston's slave-owning elite grew increasingly arrogant about attacking the fort.

South Carolina's belligerence spread, leading to the founding of the Confederacy in February 1861. In a decisive act, the new nation escalated its campaign against Fort Sumter, cutting off the small federal garrison's food supply, bolstering Charleston artillery batteries under the recently appointed Confederate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard and raising a force of volunteer troops eager for battle.

After taking office, Lincoln persuaded his cabinet to resupply Fort Sumter, but the effort failed because of an astounding blunder by the overwhelmed president. Tensions rose in the South Carolina city known for its brutal slave markets.

The arrival of Union ships at the entrance of Charleston's harbor provoked Southern forces to shell the fort on April 12, 1861. The increasingly destitute federal forces returned the fire, but lacking food and running out of ammunition, Maj. Robert Anderson surrendered the next day, receiving safe passage to the North.The northern supply ships had sailed away, without ever entering the harbor.

During the crisis, Lincoln hoped that the prominent slave state of Virginia would stay in the union. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson' native state remained loyal until Lincoln issued a call for states to raise troops to put down the Southern rebellion.

Reacting to Lincoln's action, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina seceded, while Maryland, Missouri, Delaware and Kentucky remained in the union.

Virginia's Robert E. Lee, offered command of the Union army, resigned and joined the rebellion, eventually accelerating the war's intensity as the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. With Virginia in the fold, the Confederacy quickly moved its capital to Richmond.

While the Fort Sumter attack has received extensive attention as the event that began the Civil War, Larson brings to light little known incidents such as as a company of Citadel cadets firing shots at the federal ship Star of the West in Charleston Harbor several months before.

Larson presents a colorful gallery of well-known and obscure characters. Lincoln at first appears unsteady and overmatched, but slowly gains mastery.

The heroic Anderson, the rabid Southern secessionist Edmund Ruffin, who fired the first shot at the fort, the acclaimed Civil War diarist Mary Chesnut, Union Gen. Winfield Scott, the manipulative and influential Lincoln Cabinet member William H. Seward, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and several now obscure Southern slave-owners play significant roles in Larson's story.

Before Lincoln took office, rumors swirled about an invasion of Washington by Southern forces, plots to assassinate the new president, and the U.S. Senate not certifying his electoral college victory in a scenario similar to that of Jan. 6, 2020.

Scott's calling out of troops to protect the capital and the somewhat comic ruses carried out by detective agency founder Allan Pinkerton allowed Lincoln to take charge.

Larson's unveiling of the nation's plummet into civil war raises alarms for our politically volatile era.

 

 

 

New biography acclaims longtime New Yorker editor Katharine S. White

Katharine S. White played a major part in shaping Harold Ross' vision for The New Yorker.

One of the first employees of the magazine after its founding in 1925, White added urban sophistication and literary ambition to Ross' idea of a racy Jazz Age trumpet blast.

White executed the details of Ross' editorial genius, yet her contribution has been slighted with more credit given James Thurber, William Shawn and her husband, E.B. White.

The longtime New Yorker fiction editor receives long overdue recognition with the publication of author Amy Reading's new biography, "The World She Edited: Kartharine White at the New Yorker."

White's purview at the magazine extended beyond her duties as fiction editor, expanding into poetry, humor pieces and the Talk of the Town essays at the front of the publication.

Under her guidance, serious short stories defined the magazine as much as its famous cartoons. Along with her protege William Maxwell, she developed the careers of John Updike, Vladimir Nabokov, John O'Hara, John Cheever, Peter Taylor, Jean Stafford, Nadine Gordimer, Mary McCarthy, Mavis Gallant and others

The mother of longtime New Yorker writer and editor Roger Angell, White retired in 1961 to a home in rural Maine with her husband, whose career flourished as the author of the children's novels "Charlotte's Web" and "Stuart Little" and as a revered essayist for the New Yorker and other magazines.

Katharine White now receives her due as a great American editor.

 

 

 

 

Harris rises to historic challenge in memorable acceptance speech

Kamala Harris' impressive acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention Thursday night accented her remarkable political transformation.

Since President Joe Biden's withdrawal as the Democratic Party's candidate, Vice President Harris has risen to the historical moment, displaying unexpected skill and imagination in leading her campaign.

Now, with the rousing convention over, she turns to the slog of her battle to defeat the odious Donald Trump.

Aided by former CIA director and Secretary of  Defense Leon Panetta's endorsement, Harris demonstrated that she's the candidate best equipped to take charge as commander in chief and leader of the Free World.

Chicago, much maligned by the right wing attack mob, came through with a memorable convention. I was rooting for the city of Nelson Algren, Studs Terkel, Carl Sandburg, Ben Hecht, Gwendolyn Brooks, Saul Bellow, Jimmy Piersall and Harry Caray, with its great restaurants, splendid art museums, expansive bookstores and innovative theater companies.

The city known for the blues, rabid sports fans and Lake Michigan welcomed home mesmerizing convention speakers Michelle and Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey.

A Harris presidency offers hope of healing the urban wounds of Chicago and other great American cities. Shame on the GOP for disparaging them.

The GOP will dial up its attacks on Harris and Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz. The convention left me confident that Harris and Walz can withstand the barrage of negative ads and GOP misinformation.

Harris in her speech reached out to all Americans, from across the political spectrum, promising a new era of unity and freedom. 

 

 

 

Joe Biden goes gently into that good night

Joe Biden seemed reluctant to leave the stage.

In a 50-minute speech at the Democratic National Convention, Biden catalogued the greatest hits of his curtailed presidency, a spirited defense that came much too late.

After a long procession of speakers, Biden finally came out near midnight, beyond prime time on the East Coast. He wiped away tears after his daughter Ashley's lovely introduction, beaming at the outpouring of love from the audience. His impassioned address felt like a farewell.

Biden displayed no signs of bitterness at his ouster as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate, remembering to praise Vice President Kamala Harris for her contributions to his administration's impressive gains.

The old Democratic warrior promised to keep working for new accomplishments during his final five months in office. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in the Mideast, seeking to hammer down a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

Harris, who secured the nomination before the convention, surprisingly appeared onstage before Biden's belated arrival. Taking a seat beside her husband, Doug Emhoff, and her vice presidential choice Tim Walz and his wife, Gwen, Harris glowed as speaker after speaker showered praise on her for reviving the party's hopes of victory over Donald Trump.

Before Biden's address, Democratic stars Hillary Clinton, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamie Raskin and Raphael Warnock attacked Donald Trump with fresh energy, fueled by the delegates' soaring excitement over Harris' campaign. 

With Biden gone to the West Coast, Harris takes charge with a surge of enthusiasm. 

 

With Paris Olympics over, history moves toward fateful moment

Like a strange exquisite dream, the Paris Olympics have ended.

No more beautiful women sprinters. No more soocer, swimming, gymnastics and pole vaulting. No more views of the Eiffel Tower and  the River Seine. No more tears at the playing of "La Marseillaise."

To add to our sadness, the Braves are collapsing. College football has lost its romance. The NFL slogs toward another grueling season.

The energy of the Kamala Harris campaign stirs hope, but I'm afraid to grow too optimistic.

It's August. Autumn will be here soon, with its day of reckoning for the future.