A Certain Idea of America, page 6
Twain confessed a regret. In helping supervise and edit Grant’s memoirs he had never pressed Grant on his struggle with alcohol. His enemies had called him a drunk; his friends had acknowledged wartime binges. Sherman himself had said of their friendship, “He stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk.” But Twain hadn’t thought to probe, and knew now he should have, for the people would have appreciated it, and understood.
Why do we remember greatness? What purpose is there in remembering?
To remind us who we’ve been. To remind us what’s still lurking there in the national DNA.
So we know what greatness looks like. So we can recognize it when it’s within our environs. Because human greatness will never completely go away, even though you may look north, east, south, and west and be unable to see it. You’re not sure it’s anywhere around. But it will be there.
Maybe it’s there. Look closer. Maybe that’s a seed. Help it grow.
BOB DYLAN, A GENIUS AMONG US
June 18, 2020
Summer begins and it may be a hard one. Lots of pain in this big place.
The cultural upheaval continues, the plague marches on, a bitter election looms. This is a good time to think about something noble and inspiring, the life and work of Bob Dylan. He has an album out this week, his first with original material since 2012, called Rough and Rowdy Ways.
Mr. Dylan wrote his most famous anthem, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” in 1962. He has been operating at the top of American culture and embedded in the national consciousness for almost sixty years. You have to go back to Robert Frost and Mark Twain to find such a span of sustained literary productivity and importance.
Like Twain and Frost his great subject is America. Like them he is a genius: He did work of high artistic merit that had never been done before and won’t be replicated. For me, having known his work since I was young, his songs are grave, wistful, rollicking, full of meaning, and true. Also, obviously, prophetic, as if he were picking up big clear waves of themes in the electrical static all around us. “There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’ / It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls / For the times they are a-changin’.”
That was true when he wrote it and is true today. Great art is always about right now. It time-travels. Mr. Dylan’s music never settles down into an era, it’s dynamic, it’s like hearing the past in active conversation with the future.
There are two things you have to do if you have big ambitions and want to create something important that lasts. The first is the daily work and trying to keep it at a height that satisfies you. That’s hard. If you succeed, the second is dealing with the effects of the work, managing a career. That’s tricky. It involves making big, real-time decisions about paths and ways of being. You have to figure out if an opportunity is a true opening or an easy way out; if a desire for security has the potential to become a betrayal of yourself and the thing God gave you, your gift.
Mr. Dylan seems to have handled all this by following to an almost radical degree the dictates of his essential nature and talent, and doing the work as he envisions it day to day. You can wind up being a hero one decade and a joke the next when you choose that route, and that’s what happened to him. But, in the end, this: In October 2016, he became the first writer of songs to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
What a great figure.
In his autobiography, Chronicles, Mr. Dylan writes of how one night, when he was starting out playing the clubs in New York in the 1960s, he stumbled on a man who’d been stabbed to death. The blood made interesting patterns in the snow. This reminded Mr. Dylan of old photos of the Civil War. He began to study the war, deeply. Its meaning would shape him: “Back there, America was put on the cross, died and was resurrected. There was nothing synthetic about it. The godawful truth of that would be the all-encompassing template behind everything that I would write.”
He loves the mythic, fabulous figures of U.S. history. On the first page of his autobiography he writes of meeting Jack Dempsey. “Don’t be afraid of hitting somebody too hard,” the old boxer, taking him for a bantamweight, advised him. On Rough and Rowdy Ways, Mr. Dylan sings of William Tecumseh Sherman and George Patton, “who cleared the path for Presley to sing / who carved out the path for Martin Luther King.” It’s as if it’s all a continuum in which America’s outsize and spectacular beings clear the way and pave the path for the renegades and revolutionaries who will follow.
Mr. Dylan has the soul of a worker, a craftsman who has learned his craft. He spoke of this in February 2015, when he received the Person of the Year award from MusiCares Foundation. Rolling Stone later printed a transcript taken, the magazine said, from Mr. Dylan’s notes.
“These songs didn’t come out of thin air,” he said. He learned how to write lyrics by listening to folk songs over and over. He studied them, absorbed them, sang “The Ballad of John Henry,” the steel-driving man with the hammer in his hand. “If you had sung that song as many times as I did, you’d have written ‘How many roads must a man walk down?’ too.” He said his intention was “extending the line,” continuing the music he loved by internalizing it and turning it into his own words, thoughts, and stories.
In a New York Times interview last weekend, the historian Douglas Brinkley asked Mr. Dylan about the musical tributes he’d done to John Lennon. Is there anyone else he wants to write a ballad for?
Some public figures “are just in your subconscious for one reason or another,” he said. “None of those songs with designated names are intentionally written. They just fall down from space. I’m just as bewildered as anybody else as to why I write them.”
Writers are often asked how they get their ideas, and the language with which they express them. The truth is they don’t know. Why did your mind yield up that thought in those words? Walker Percy thought when he got something right the Holy Spirit had snuck into him.
Mr. Dylan doesn’t know where it comes from. Sometimes you write “on instinct,” he told Mr. Brinkley. “Kind of in a trance state.” His recent songs are like that: “The lyrics are the real thing, tangible, they’re not metaphors. The songs seem to know themselves and they know that I can sing them, vocally and rhythmically. They kind of write themselves and count on me to sing them.”
Mr. Dylan more and more speaks of fellow artists—fellow workers—with great tenderness. He reminds me of what Pope John Paul II said, that artists know a special pain because they imagine a work and see it in their heads but can never execute it perfectly, can never achieve what they’d imagined, and forever carry the anguish of an unmet dream.
Mr. Dylan looked up to Nina Simone, “an overwhelming artist.” When she recorded his songs, it “validated” him. “Johnny Cash was a giant of a man, the Man in Black.” When Mr. Dylan was criticized, Cash defended him in letters to magazines. In Cash’s world nobody told a man what to do, especially an artist. Little Richard was a man of “high character”: “He was there before me. Lit a match under me.” Why didn’t people appreciate his gospel music? “Probably because gospel music is the music of good news and in these days there just isn’t any. Good news in today’s world is like a fugitive, treated like a hoodlum and put on the run. Castigated. All we see is good-for-nothing news…. On the other hand, gospel news is exemplary. It can give you courage.”
We can forget: There are geniuses among us. They’re doing their work and bringing their light. Remembering this is encouraging.
Also Bob Dylan needed freedom to be Bob Dylan. Lose that and you lose everything. But isn’t it good that he’s here? Rock on, Bob Dylan. Your work adorns us.
CHAPTER 2
I DON’T MIND BEING STERN
One of life’s pleasures is taking a stick to people and things that deserve it.
THE SENATOR’S SHORTS AND AMERICA’S DECLINE
September 21, 2023
For years I’ve had a thought whose expression I could never get right, but it applies to our subject this week, so here goes:
Since the triumphant end of World War II, America has come to greatly enjoy the idea of its preeminence. We’re “the leader of the free world,” we dominate science, medicine, philanthropy. We teach emerging nations the ways of democratic governance; we have the biggest economy and arsenal; we win all the medals, from the Nobel Prizes to the Olympics. This has been the way of things for nearly eighty years, and for much of that time we brought to the task of greatness a certain earnestness of style. We had a lot of brio and loved our wins, but we also applauded for the other teams from the Olympic stands, and our diplomats and political figures—JFK, Reagan—walked through the world with a natural but also careful dignity.
Which was good, because preeminence entails obligations. You have to act the part. You have to present yourself with dignity. You have to comport yourself with class.
For some time—let’s say since the turn of this century—we’ve been at a point in our power where we still love to insist on the preeminence—USA! USA!—while increasingly ignoring the responsibilities.
That is the thought I want to express: We want to be respected but no longer think we need to be respectable.
We are in a crisis of political comportment. We are witnessing the rise of the classless. Our politicians are becoming degenerate. This has been happening for a while but gets worse as the country coarsens. We are defining deviancy ever downward.
Two examples from the past two weeks. One is the congresswoman who was witnessed sexually groping and being groped by a friend in a theater, seated among what looked like a thousand people of all ages. The other is the candidate for Virginia’s House of Delegates who performed a series of live sex acts with her husband on a pornographic website, and the videos were then archived on another site that wasn’t password-protected. She requested cash for each sexual act, saying she was “raising money for a good cause.” Someone called it a breakthrough in small-donor outreach.
It was within this recent context that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer did something that isn’t in the same league in terms of shock but nonetheless has a deep institutional resonance. He quietly swept away a centuries-old tradition that senators dress as adults on the floor of the Senate. Business attire is no longer formally required. Mr. Schumer apparently doesn’t know—lucky him, life apparently hasn’t taught him—that when you ask less of people they don’t give you less; they give you much less. So we must brace ourselves.
His decision is apparently connected to the desires of Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who enjoys parading around in gym shorts and a hoodie. Why would his desires receive such precedence?
Because he has political needs. He must double down on his brand. He imagines that dressing like a slob deepens his perceived identification with the working class. But this kind of thing doesn’t make you “authentic,” it just makes you a different kind of phony. Mr. Fetterman, born into affluence and privilege, reacted to criticism of Mr. Schumer’s decision with an air of snotty entitlement. He mocked critics, making woo-woo monster sounds to reporters and telling a House critic to “get your s— together.” He said Republicans were “losing their minds” and ought to have better things to do.
Here are reasons John Fetterman, and all senators, should dress like an adult.
It shows respect for colleagues. It implies you see them as embarked on the serious business of the nation, in which you wish to join them.
It shows respect for the institution. “Daniel Webster walked there.” And Henry Clay, “Fighting Bob” La Follette, Arthur Vandenberg, and Robert Taft. The U.S. Senate is the self-declared world’s greatest deliberative body.
It shows a mature acceptance of your role, suggesting you’ve internalized the idea of service. You are a public servant; servants by definition make sacrifices.
It reflects an inner discipline. It’s not always easy or convenient to dress like a grown-up. You’ve got to get the suit from the cleaners, the shoes from the cobbler. The effort means you bothered, took the time, went to the trouble.
It reflects an inner modesty. You’d like to be in sneaks and shorts but you admit that what you’d like isn’t the most important thing. It shows that thoughts of your own comfort aren’t number 1 in your hierarchy of concerns. Also, you know you’re only 1 of 100, and as 1 percent of the whole you wouldn’t insist on officially lowering standards for the other 99.
It bows to the idea of “standards” itself, which implies you bow to other standards too, such as how you speak and what you say.
It shows you understand that America now has a problem with showing respect. We can’t take a seat on a plane without causing an incident, can’t be in a stadium without a fight. You would never, given that context, move for standards to become more lax.
It shows you admit to yourself that you’re at an age and stage when part of your job is to model for the young how to behave, how to be. It shows you’re not a selfish slob who doesn’t know what time it is.
It shows you don’t think you’re better than others or deserving of greater rights. News reporters outside the hearing room operate under a general dress code; citizens who testify before Congress do so in business dress. The old dress code still applies to Senate staffers. They don’t show up in torn undershirts and sandals. Why are you better than they are? Conversely, why would their dressing like you make anything in America better?
It shows, finally, that you understand that as a high elected official of the United States you owe the country, and the world, the outward signs of maturity, judgment, and earnestness. That isn’t asking too much. It is a baseline minimum.
Also, the least people could do in public life now is make everything look a little better, not a little worse.
I hope Mr. Fetterman’s colleagues don’t join him in taking another brick out of the Capitol facade but quietly rebuke him, and Mr. Schumer, by very clearly not joining in, by showing up for work in your sober, serious best.
I leave you with a picture of some dark day in the future. China moves on Taiwan, and perhaps the White House, whoever’s in it, bobbles, or is unsure, or makes immediate mistakes. Everything is uncertain, anxiety high. All of us, and much of the world, will look for voices in Congress who can steady things—voices of deliberation and calm. And we’ll turn our lonely eyes and see…the congresswoman from the theater, the senator in his play clothes.
That will be a bad moment.
How people bear themselves has implications greater than we know. It’s not about “sartorial choice.” It’s about who we need you to be—and who you asked to be when you first ran.
LIFE ISN’T MERDE
April 25, 2024
I wish to protest the current ugliness. I see it as a continuing trend, “the uglification of everything.” It is coming out of our culture with picked-up speed, and from many media silos, and I don’t like it.
You remember the 1999 movie The Talented Mr. Ripley, from the Patricia Highsmith novel. It was fabulous—murders, mayhem, a sociopath scheming his way among high-class expats on the Italian Riviera. The laid-back glamour of Jude Law, the Grace Kelly-ness of Gwyneth Paltrow, who looks like a Vogue magazine cover decided to take a stroll through the streets of 1950s Venice, the truly brilliant acting of Matt Damon, who is so well-liked by audiences I’m not sure we notice anymore what a great actor he is. The director, Anthony Minghella, deliberately showed you pretty shiny things while taking you on a journey to a heart of darkness.
There’s a new version, a streaming series from Netflix, called Ripley. I turned to it eagerly and watched with puzzlement. It is unrelievedly ugly. Grimy, gloomy, grim. Tom Ripley is now charmless, a pale and watchful slug slithering through ancient rooms. He isn’t bright, eager, endearing, only predatory. No one would want to know him! Which makes the story make no sense. Again, Ripley is a sociopath, but few could tell because he seemed so sweet and easy. In the original movie, Philip Seymour Hoffman has an unforgettable turn as a jazz-loving, prep-schooled, in-crowd snob. In this version that character is mirthless, genderless, hidden. No one would want to know him either. Marge, the Paltrow role in the movie, is ponderous and plain, like a lost 1970s hippie, which undercuts a small part of the tragedy: Why is the lovely woman so in love with a careless idler who loves no one?
The ugliness seemed a deliberate artistic decision, as did the air of constant menace, as if we all know life is never nice.
I go to the number 1 program on Netflix this week, Baby Reindeer. People speak highly of it. It’s about a stalker and is based on a true story, but she’s stalking a comic so this might be fun. Oh, dear, no. It is again unrelievedly bleak. Life is low, plain, and homely. No one is ever nice or kind; all human conversation is opaque and halting; work colleagues are cruel and loud. Everyone is emotionally incapable and dumb. No one laughs except for the morbidly obese stalker, who cackles madly. The only attractive person is the transgender girlfriend, who has a pretty smile and smiles a lot, but cries a lot too and is vengeful.
Good drama always makes you think. I thought, Do I want to continue living?
I go to the Daily Mail website, once my guilty pleasure. High jinks of the rich and famous, randy royals, fast cars and movie stars, models, and rock stars caught in the drug bust. It was great! But it seems to have taken a turn and is more about crime, grime, human sadness, and degradation—child abuse, mothers drowning their babies, “Man Murders Family, Self.” It is less a portal into life’s mindless, undeserved beauty than a testimony to its horrors.
