Southern Bookman

Alan Bennett in annual diary remembers Jonathan Miller

Noted British playwright Alan Bennett in his latest diary in the London Review of Books pays homage to fellow "Beyond the Fringe" member Jonathan Miller.

For years, Bennett has brightened the new year with his annual chronicle of the previous 12 months, published in the LRB. Bennett's record of his life in 2019 runs in the LRB's Jan. 2 issue.

The polymath Miller, who died Nov. 27, excelled in medicine, the theater and television. He was especially known for his opera productions, and hosting the TV documentary "The Body in Question."

Rising from their college days at Oxford and Cambridge, Miller and Bennett joined Dudley Moore and Peter Cook in the satirical revue "Beyond the Fringe," which eventually played on Broadway.

Along with serene depictions of the London literary world and unhurried life in suburban Yorkshire, Bennett can be cutting in his views. An entry in his 2019 diary gives a chilly assessment of Miller.

"Ours was a not unrivalrous relationship, with neither particularly generous about the other's work," Bennett says. He confesses to never seeing one of Miller's operas, and suspects Miller never watched one of his plays.

Bennett ends on a warmer, regretful note. "Now that he's gone I feel remorse as well as sorrow. But, jokes apart, it was a question of survival. I needed to write. Jonathan needed one to listen."

The diaries increasingly chronicle Bennett's aging. This year's entries often reference Bennett lying on his couch or in bed, suffering from severe arthritis. He also gives an alarming account of a fall on his bicycle, from which he suffered bruises but no broken bones or head injuries.

A disturbing sign of Bennett's looming mortality is that the diary is much shorter this year; he missed several months during the spring and summer because of open-heart surgery.

With all of his suffering, the diary is again a treat of refined thinking, with references to obscure films, actors and British writers. The diaries reflect his cultured life in suburban Yorkshire, where he enjoys gardening, old houses and reading. Bennett's at times fussy writing reveals a disgust with conservative politics, an enjoyment of small town life and an appreciation for small pleasures.

His diaries mirror my own aging, giving me encouragement and comfort. I hope to read Bennett's annual missives for years to come.

Farewell, Don Larsen

The New York Times on Friday ran a panoramic black and white photograph showing the Yankee Stadium scoreboard at the end of Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series.

There's an ad for Ballantine beer, and a notice that the New York football Giants would play the Steelers in a few days at the old stadium. The Brooklyn Dodgers lineup flashes in electric lights: Gilliam, Reese, Snider, Robinson, Hodges, Campanella, Erskine. All have zeros in the hits column.

Larsen, who died Monday at age 90 of cancer, achieved perfection on Oct. 8, 1956. A mediocre pitcher through the rest of his career, Larsen on that sun-splashed autumn afternoon pitched the only perfect game in World Series history. Larsen threw without a windup. After the game, he said he found himself with perfect control, as if touched by magic.

The Times in its appreciation of Larsen also reprinted ace sportswriter John Drebinger's account of the game, "27 Up and 27 Down," and the famous picture of Yogi Berra in his catching gear leaping into Larsen's arms when it was over. Berra called Larsen's pitches, and wasn't shaken off.

As with other great days of old-time baseball, Larsen's masterpiece comes to us like an epic. Brooklyn pitcher Sal "The Barber" Maglie gave up only two runs, one of them a home run to Mickey Mantle. Legendary names also filled the Yankees lineup: Billy Martin, Enos "Country" Slaughter, Gil McDougald. Walter Alston, who would also pilot the Dodgers when they moved to Los Angeles three years later, managed Brooklyn's team, and Casey Stengel was the Yankees skipper.

A nearly complete TV tape of the game, announced by the Yankees' Mel Allen and the Dodgers' young Vin Scully, shows the precision and fast pace of baseball back in the day, as detailed in an earlier Southern Bookman article.

Larsen pitched for the old St. Louis Browns, lost 24 games in a season when that woeful franchise moved to Baltimore, and finished with a career record of 81-91. None of that matters. For two hours and six minutes, he was touched with perfection, every inch a Yankee.

 

Season's greetings: More bad news on climate change

As the Christmas lights grow more opulent and ubiquitous commercials hawk gas-guzzling autos as gifts, alarming climate change reports mount.

Despite an impassioned plea by Greta Thunberg, Time magazine's Person of the Year and  Donald Trump irritant, the UN's COP 25 conference in Madrid collapsed, torpedoed by the United States, Brazil and Australia. The conference's purpose was to reaffirm carbon-reduction goals set by each country in the 2016 Paris agreement.

New York magazine writer and "Uninhabitable Earth" author David Wallace-Wells in a report on the failed UN conference outlines the folly of Australia denying climate change as wildfires burn, droughts grow worse and coral reefs die.

Trump has pulled the United States from the treaty, making the U.S. the only country refusing to make a commitment to cut carbon emissions. But no country has taken significant action to meet its carbon reduction goals.

Carbon output rose to an all-time high in 2019, breaking the record set in 2018, according to reports.

In a ray of good news, the global increase in fossil fuel emissions fell to 0.2 percent, after a 2 percent rise in 2018, Scientific American said. The reduction came from a 10 percent reduction in U.S. coal use, despite the Trump administration's campaign to revive the coal industry. Much of Europe also had a similar reduction in coal burning, the magazine reported.

But India and China boosted its coal dependency. A rise in natural gas usage also played a part in the emissions increase, although the fuel emits less carbon than coal.

Another message in this season of bad tidings: The ocean off the coast of California is turning acidic much faster than other ocean areas. That's a death knell for the spiny lobster, the market squid, the Dungeness crab, The New York Times reported. Hear the sea lions honking?

As the oceans absorb more carbon dioxide, they are turning more acidic, with the process going faster off the coast of California. And one more ominous report found that the oceans' oxygen levels are declining, raising the threat to sealife, not to mention our own.

Tidings of comfort and joy? Arctic melting accelerates. Greenland's ice disappears, raising sea levels. Soon the carol will be "'I'm dreaming of a white Greenland, just like the one I used to know."

We keep ignoring those urgent wake-up calls.

Still, we must hope, as the Christmas carols say.

 

Boris Johnson victory puts Britain on ominous path

The London Review of Books in midsummer published a crepuscular cover bearing the headline, "The sun sets on Britain."

I thought of LRB editor Mary Kay Wilmers' verdict  on Boris Johnson's ascendancy and the Brexit morass when I read about Johnson's astounding victory Friday in the British election.

From reading commentary in the LRB and other publications, I thought Johnson would win a small legislative majority, not enough to remove Britain from the European Union. Despite his vast unpopularity, Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn figured to show enough strength to keep Johnson hemmed in.

But Corbyn, who failed to answer charges of anti-Semitism against his party, even lost Labor strongholds thought impregnable. Voters rejected Corbyn's massive plan to raise taxes and spending for a banquet of social services.

In Britain, the right wing is blue and the left wing red on electoral maps. Johnson has turned Britain purple.

A Labor win would have brought another Brexit referendum. Despite recent demonstrations in favor of a new Brexit vote, the public overwhelmingly stated it wants no more elections.

Along with the LRB cover, the surprising results brought back the old Beatles songs "Penny Lane" and "When I'm 64."  The small middle class British characters depicted by Paul McCartney's songs are the type who support Brexit, and voted for Johnson. I can almost hear them singing, "we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear."

Now, Scotland might gain its independence. British will go it alone, if not purchased by Trump, or made an American state.

Brexit opponents like the LRB see economic apocalypse for Britain. If the ominous scenario comes true, the small nation likely will sink into further decline.

As James Wood wrote in the same LRB issue with the funereal cover, Johnson is one of the Eton old boys who mourn the lost empire and believe Britain can rise again to an international power. He and his Tory colleagues sold the electorate on those illusions.

"The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime," British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey said as Britain headed into World War I. A little over 100 years later, the lights flicker across England.

 

 

 

 

Charleston among leaders in innovation jobs growth, report finds

I was surprised to see Charleston listed tenth among American cities that had gained the most "innovation" jobs from 2005 to 2017.

The insular Southern city where the Civil War began with the firing on Fort Sumter joined such heavyweights as No. 1 San Francisco, No. 2 Seattle and No. 3 Silicon Valley on the high-tech jobs rankings compiled by the Brookings Institution, according to The New York Times.

Charleston fell far behind San Francisco, Seattle, Silicon Valley, No. 4 Boston and No. 5 San Diego. Those cities garnered nine out of 10 innovation jobs created in the country during those years, but Charleston's making the top 10 is impressive.

A charming city of old homes, fine restaurants and waterfront vistas is apparently drawing high-tech firms with its easy-going lifestyle. The home of the Daughters of the Confederacy and a towering monument to John C. Calhoun must also have a strong population of well-educated workers. I didn't realize that the College of Charleston and the Citadel were rivals to MIT.

I'm skeptical about such reports, although the Brookings Institution is highly regarded. San Francisco made the top spot, but the Wall Street Journal editorial page frequently chortles that the city by the bay is hemorrhaging jobs because of its high taxes and expensive housing. Other reports agree with the WSJ.

Charles Schwab Co., which might not qualify as an innovation company, recently announced that it will move its headquarters from San Francisco to Dallas.

Dallas was No. 3 for innovation jobs lost, according to the Brookings report. Who knew; I thought Dallas and the rest of Texas is booming.

Washington, which recently was awarded an Amazon headquarters, hit No. 6 on the negative list. Chicago led the lost jobs category, followed by Philadelphia. Los Angeles came in at No. 4. Poor Wichita, Kansas, was No. 5.

Charleston before the Civil War led the nation in the slave trade. Now it beats Los Angeles in gaining innovation jobs.

New York Times critics present their best books of year

Serving their annual feast of critic-ese, The New York Times' daily book reviewers on Friday presented their best books of the year.

The lists of Dwight Garner, Parul Sehgal and Jennifer Szalai came from the books each of them had reviewed during 2019. I mourned the absence of the astute Janet Maslin, and as a connoisseur of overwrought Times prose missed Michiko Kakutani's pronouncements.

Garner, who must have never heard the rule against overusing adjectives, admirably fills in for the divine Michiko. He called Sarah M. Bloom's "The Yellow House," a staple on best books selections this year, "forceful, rolling and many-chambered." Maybe Garner was thinking about Emily Dickinson's alabaster chambers.

The characters of Kevin Barry's "Night Boat to Tangier" are described as "existentialist and twinkling thugs." Stars may twinkle, but not former drug runners, and John-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus would agree that existentialist is this year's most overused adjective.

Garner does perform a public service by mentioning Albert Woodfox's "Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades of Solitary Confinement: My Story of Transformation and Hope." Woodfox, who spent years in solitary confinement at Louisiana's Angola Prison for a crime he didn't commit, tells how he decided to "take my pain and turn it into compassion, not hate."

Sehgal shows her wit in recommending "Ducks: Newburyport," by Lucy Ellman. The novel is told in one 436,000-word sentence that stretches over 1,000 pages. Sehgal says the stunt "seems designed to thwart the timid or lazy reader but shouldn't. Timid, lazy readers to the front!" Sorry, Parul, Proust and Faulkner's sentences were long enough for me.

The untimid scribe deserves praise for discovering books not found on many other end of the year lists.

Szalai's choices favor history, politics and memoirs, with no novels. Among her selections, I was intrigued by poet Carolyn Forche's "What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance," which tells about Forche's trip to El Salvador between 1978 and 1980, when the country was near Civil War. I read Forche's poems about meeting cold-blooded dictators and oppressed peasants, and would like to get her prose perspective after many years.

Another Szalai selection that sounds compelling is Patrick Redden Keefe's "Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland," which tells about a mother's kidnapping during the Time of Troubles.

One plus from the critics' summaries: With Michiko gone, they retired her favorite adjective, "indelible."

And the existential threat to books appears overblown.

 

 

Baton Rouge's Confederate soldier statue housed at Old State Capitol

With all of the controversy over the removal of Confederate monuments across the South, I wondered what had happened to the statue of the Rebel soldier that stood for years in downtown Baton Rouge.

A Thanksgiving-weekend visit to Louisiana's Old State Capitol solved the mystery. The generic "silent sentinel," installed in 1886 to honor soldiers from East and West Baton Rouge parishes killed during the Civil War, resides in the Old State Capitol's history museum. 

The museum display includes information cards giving historical context about how such Confederate monuments were placed across the South at the end of Reconstruction to mark the restoration of white rule and to honor the South's "lost cause."

Baton Rouge's Confederate soldier was removed with little or no opposition, according to a 2016 article by Walter Pierce in the Lafayette Independent. The Acadiana city for several years has debated taking down a statue of Confederate Gen. Alfred Mouton. But The Baton Rouge Advocate didn't even publish a story on the moving of the Baton Rouge statue.

That was before the taking down of the Robert E. Lee statue in New Orleans, the Charlottesville violence in which a young woman was killed, and the toppling of "Silent Sam" at the University of North Carolina.

Kudos to my hometown for unobtrusively placing the Confederate statue in its proper place in a museum. The change came in the wake of the Town Square development on North Boulevard. The square within sight of the Old State Capitol is a popular spot for festivals and concerts.

Other Confederate memorials have been removed in Baton Rouge without opposition. A few years ago, LSU changed Raphael Semmes Road, named for the Confederate admiral and blockade runner, to Veterans Drive. Kirby Smith Hall, a monstrous dorm named for the last Confederate general to surrender, will be torn down.

Robert E. Lee High, my alma mater, is now just Lee High, and its teams are known as the Patriots, not the Rebels.

But LSU's Beauregard Hall, named for P.G.T Beauregard, remains. Roadways in Baton Rouge's Southdowns section called Stuart, Hood, Pickett and Lee likely will stay the same.

And LSU will never consider changing the name of its athletic teams from Tigers, honoring the Louisiana soldiers who fought with Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee and came close to overwhelming the Union army on Cemetery Hill on Gettysburg's second day. LSU's teams will be the Tigers for evermore.

 

 

 

 

Elizabeth Hardiwck's anguished letters to Robert Lowell unveiled again

Robert Lowell's closest friends castigated him for using his estranged wife Elizabeth Hardwick's anguished letters to him in his Pulitzer-Prize winning collection "The Dolphin."

Elizabeth Bishop, Lowell's poetry soulmate, told him "art just isn't worth that much."

Now, the letters between the heart-broken Hardwick and Lowell after he left her for the British writer Lady Caroline Blackwood will be published Dec. 10 in "The Dolphin Letters 1970-1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell and Their Circle."

Saskia Hamilton, who earlier edited collections of Lowell's letters and his correspondence with Bishop, is the editor of the new book. New York Times critic Parul Sehgal in a review Wednesday said the new collection revives arguments about the use of private material in works of art.

Hardwick, who saw Lowell through many mental breakdowns and infatuations with young women during their marriage, has received renewed appreciation recently for her novels and critical essays. She considered Lowell a more important writer than herself, according to an abject letter quoted by Sehgal. After the republication of Hardwick's books, she's seen as just as major as Lowell, if not more so.

Lowell, whose reputation as a poet fell after his death in 1977, has been the subject of several recent books analyzing his bipolar illness and love affairs. His poetry has also received fresh acclaim following the publication of his collected poems, edited by the poet Frank Bidart, who knew Lowell and Bishop.

Along with the Dolphin letters, Hamilton has edited a new edition of "The Dolphin," which won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize despite the controversy over Lowell violating Hardwick's privacy.

After marrying Blackwood and having a child with her, Lowell decided to return to Hardwick. Lowell died in 1977 in a New York City cab on his way to Hardwick's apartment. When the heart attack felled him, he was clutching a portrait of Blackwood painted by her former husband, Lucian Freud.

The "Dolphin Letters" raises the question of whether Hardwick's private anguish is again being exploited.

Excerpts reprinted in Sehgal's review put Hardwick in a bad light, revealing her as devastated by Lowell's abandonment. The scandal has been aired in numerous biographies, Hamilton's previous collections and Lowell's poems. Will republishing Hardwick and Lowell's letters add anything new?

 

 

Feeling paranoid on Peachtree Street? It might be those cameras watching you

Welcome South, (Big) Brother.

Atlanta is a global city after all, at least when it comes to spying on its citizens and visitors. Henry Grady's "brave and beautiful city" ranks 10th in the world in public street surveillance, with nearly 11,000 security cameras watching the sidewalks, according to a recent AJC article.

With 15.6 cameras per 1,000 residents, Atlanta ia the only American city to make the top 10 list, according to the Comparitech report. Eight of the top surveillance cities are in China, which holds the top five spots. London, with 58 cameras per 1,000 residents, ranks sixth. Chongqing, in central China, is the world's top snoop, with 158 cameras per 1,000 people.

Years ago, Atlanta aspired to be an international city. Little did we know it would be for video surveillance.

Go to a strip club, the giant eye will see you. Tipsy after too many drinks at lunch? Surprise, you're on candid camera. Starting a new relationship? The camera knows. Those 11,000 unblinking eyes will see what books or magazines you've purchased.

Notoriously repressive Singapore and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates rank below Atlanta. Perhaps Atlanta can hold on to the camera-security lead as the UAB's Dubai's airport closes in on Hartsfield-Jackson as the world's busiest.

City police keeping watch on the city's streets from monitors in the Loudermilk Visual Intregration Center downtown say the prying on Peachtree reduces crime. But the ACLU says the watching handcuffs personal freedom.

If you're going to see the Falcons or Atlanta United at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, enjoy the game. The city will be watching you.

 

 

 

 

 

Deadspin crashes after staff revolts against corporate demands

The Internet has ravaged newspapers and magazines. The new age is also perilous for digital news sites.

Cheeky sports site Deadspin looks all but dead after a staff revolt against its corporate overlords.

Deadspin's staff resigned this week after a demand from its private equity owners that the site limit its coverage to sports. The site drew a hip audience with articles that branched out from sports to politics and popular culture. Writers were given wide latitude to give personal views and throw bricks at revered sports figures and institutions.

As with ESPN, Deadspin owner Great Hill Partners grew uneasy with its staff's left-leaning political coverage. Great Hill gained control of Deadspin and sibling Jezebel from Univision and formed G/O Media to run the sites. Deadspin and Jezebel were originally part of Gawker, which collapsed after wrestler Hulk Hogan won a $140 million judgment against it.

G/O Media Editorial Director Paul Maidiment's meddling with Deadspin's articles led to the resignation of Editor Megan Greenwall a few months ago. This week, interim Editor Barry Petchesky was tossed out after opposing Maidment's demands that the site limit itself to sports. The staff resigned in support of Petchesky. The writers also objected to pop-up video ads that disrupted readers. An outpouring of outrage from Deadspin fans followed the turmoil.

Deadspin's self-immolation follows massive staff cutbacks at Sports Illustrated, engineered by another private equity firm. SI soldiers on, scoring a First Amendment victory over the Houston Astros during the World Series when an Astros executive was fired for making misogynistic comments to a female SI reporter.

With Deadspin reeling, sports fans have fewer digital choices. The site's demise is another blow to free, reliable information on the Internet.

Along with ESPN, newspaper sites and the diminished SI, those hungry for comprehensive sports news on the Internet can turn to the self-congratulatory and subscription-based the Athletic, funded by venture capitalists. With a roster of mainstream sportswriters pirated from local newspapers, The Athletic labors to match Deadspin's snarkiness and unconventional views.

Private equity firms have plundered local newspapers as well as digital sites. The old press barons were greedy, but had some commitment to journalism.