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Daedalus Books & Music: Facebook Blog Samples • J. P. Mullaney 1
FRIENDSHIP, HONESTY, AND ART
The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery
The fact that this beautifully translated and
extremely moving book is available to us at all is a
miracle in itself, given the dearth of literature that
makes its way to this side of the Atlantic. In contrast
to our often anti-intellectual cultural priorities,
France actually has book discussion shows that
receive top ratings. Fancy that!
Not that this novel is particularly kind to modern-
day French society. In fact, both of its heroines—a
dour middle-aged concierge and a preteen girl who
lives in her ritzy building—are misanthropes, hiding
their considerable intellectual gifts and refined
aesthetic tastes to fit into a mundane world where
they perceive few kindred spirits. The adolescent,
Paloma, is a fountain of aperçus like "people aim for
the stars, and they end up like goldfish in a bowl" and
"if life is absurd, being a brilliant success has no
greater value than being a failure. It's just more
comfortable."
Paloma keeps a diary of "profound thoughts," and
while expounding on them she skewers the
pretensions of everyone from relatives to family
friends to her mother's psychiatrist. She is also
contemplating suicide: "Grace, beauty, harmony,
intensity. If I find something, then I may rethink my
options: If I find a body with beautiful movement or,
failing that, a beautiful idea for the mind, well then
maybe I'll think that life is worth living after all."
Renée, the Tolstoy-reading, Mahler-listening, Ozu-
watching concierge, calls herself a "proletarian
autodidact" and "a slave to vocabulary." As the novel
begins, her only friend is a cleaning woman from
Portugal. "When Manuela arrives, my loge is
transformed into a palace, and a picnic between two
pariahs becomes the feast of two monarchs. Like a
storyteller transforming life into a shimmering river
where trouble and boredom vanish far below the
water, Manuela metamorphoses our existence into a
warm and joyful epic."
With poignancy and eloquence, the novel's
alternating narratives illuminate the age-old
philosophical question of what gives meaning to life.
In Howards End, E.M. Forster said it in two words:
"only connect." The tragicomic manner in which the
lives of Paloma and Renée converge and evolve is a
source of enormous satisfaction for the reader.
In the end, the book we hold in our hands reflects
its characters' search for enduring value and
provides for us what ultimately sustains them: the
bliss of an exquisitely fashioned work of art that
comes directly from the heart.
"I wonder if the true movement of the world might
not be a voice raised in song." (Paloma)
"The tea ritual … has the extraordinary virtue of
introducing into the absurdity of our lives an aperture
of serene harmony. Yes, the world may aspire to
vacuousness, lost souls mourn beauty, insignificance
surrounds us. Then let us drink a cup of tea. Silence
descends, one hears the wind outside, autumn leaves
rustle and take flight, the cat sleeps in a warm pool of
light. And, with each swallow, time is sublimed."
(Renée)

ALL THINGS DICKINSON
Our fascination with the many-sided Belle of
Amherst shows no signs of abating. Her persona is
like a many-hued butterfly that flits into view and is
gone. Harold Bloom has said of this frail but volatile
figure that, except for Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson
"manifests more cognitive originality than any other
Western poet since Dante."
In addition to her literary genius, she was a
brilliant horticulturist in a time when that distinction
was not easy to attain. The New York Botanical
Garden has an extensive exhibit through June 13
called Emily Dickinson’s Garden: The Poetry of
Flowers, with extensive replicas of both her home
and gardens. “When she was alive, people knew her
as a gardener first and a poet second, if they knew
her as a poet at all,” according to Dickinson scholar
Judith Farr.
This exhibit dovetails with a rather sensational
new book by Lyndall Gordon called Lives Like Loaded
Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family Feuds. Gordon
has turned up information in medical records, that,
coupled with coded, oblique references in
Dickinson’s poems, strongly suggests the poet was
epileptic, which because of the condition's social
stigma at the time illuminates her "choice" of a
reclusive life. She was also greatly inconvenienced, if
not mortified, by her brother carrying on an
adulterous affair with Mabel Todd several times a
week behind the closed door of the library, which cut
off access to Dickinson’s writing table as well as the
entrance to her conservatory. Furthermore, it was
Todd who suppressed Dickinson’s love letters to Otis
Lord (an older man who was a friend of Dickinson’s
father), thus perpetuating the perception of
Dickinson as a spinster uninterested in romance.
The poet's love longings preoccupy Jerome
Charyn in his new novel The Secret Life of Emily
Dickinson. Joyce Carol Oates skewered it a bit in The

2 Daedalus Books & Music: Blog Samples • J. P. Mullaney
New York Review of Books, writing that "the voice
Charyn has created for Emily Dickinson doesn’t truly
suggest [her] range of personalities. This Dickinson
is forever defined by—if not trapped in—the
breathless yearnings of a (female) adolescent as
imagined by a (male) novelist: we are led to wonder
of the Emily Dickinson who read widely, and
purposefully, in all of the great poets she could get
her hands on."
Some authors have hypothesized that Dickinson
had a pash for charismatic orator Henry Ward
Beecher. In Quieter than Sleep, mystery writer and
English professor Joanne Dobson placed the
discovery of a purported poetic missive from
Dickinson to Beecher as the linchpin of a murder
mystery. Hence this (invented) poem:
Mr. Beecher, Sir—
Angels are few. And those—Beyond the Mound.
Satan flew once. And you Master—beat on silken
Wing. Who should Know but I—
Lucifer had a Secret. He was scarred too, Master—
only, on the Eyes. They opened, he spoke—and he
Flew. Daisy's roots clutch Stone.
Angels—too—Thunder from on High.
Dear heart—unless you Speak—this is the last.
Your—
Daisy
As it happens, Daedalus is currently carrying a
book featuring Dickinson called A Summer of
Hummingbirds: Love, Art and Scandal in the
Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain,
Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade. So
if your yen is to unravel a little intrigue among the
19-century literary set —as opposed to the daily
doings of the Twitterati—here's your chance!
You can also back to one of Dickinson's 1,775
poems—only 10 of which was published in her
lifetime—and rejoice in a gift so prodigious that
"Lines came like lightning and left like lightning, and
I had to write each one down with my pencil stub or
lose it forever."
LENA HORNE, 1917–2010
I love this portrait of a fresh-faced Lena Horne
taken by Carl van Vechten in 1941. During her
Hollywood years and ever after she was the epitome
of glamour (even appearing in a “what becomes a
legend most” Blackglama fur ad in 1969), but here
she could be any ingénue in America, setting out to
conquer the world. Yet despite her obvious charisma,
beauty, and talent, Horne found that journey
infinitely more challenging because of the hideous
race prejudice prevalent at the time and for decades
thereafter.
Her path took her from the Cotton Club to MGM,
where she was relegated to specialty turns outside of
the plot so her numbers could be excised in the
South. How sweet it must have been to return to
Broadway in a one-woman show—and receive a
special Tony award to boot.
"I was always battling the system to try to get to
be with my people. Finally, I wouldn't work for
places that kept us out ... it was a damn fight
everywhere I was, every place I worked, in New
York, in Hollywood, all over the world," Horne said in
Brian Lanker's book I Dream a World: Portraits of
Black Women Who Changed America. She fought for
desegregation alongside civil rights pioneers Paul
Robeson and Medgar Evers, and worked with
Eleanor Roosevelt to pass anti-lynching laws.
Oprah is spearheading a biopic on Horne’s life
starring Alicia Keyes, which should be something to
behold. Pending that, you can read all about this

fascinating woman in Stormy Weather: The Life of
Lena Horne, available for a song from Daedalus.
Horne died May 9 at the age of 92, but she lives on
for those whose savor her many fine recordings,
thrilled to her concert appearances, and will never
forget the twinkle in her eye that bespoke an
indomitable, adversity-conquering spirit.
VIRTUAL MUSEUM HOPPING
I love to explore art museums, but the Scylla and
Charybdis of work and cashflow can be daunting in
terms of getting to one. I often compensate, though,
by investigating their collections online.
I mined the Brooklyn Museum's site recently
because the New Yorker said they had an exhibit on
Egypt, one of my passions. There I happened upon a
stupendous interactive exhibit of 100 Views of Edo
by Hiroshige.
Later I was noodling around on the Daedalus site,
and bingo!! They have An American View:
Masterpieces from the Brooklyn Museum for the
jaw-dropping price of $7.98. I am so going to snap
that up!
"Rothko escaped from the hell of personal chaos
into the paradise of color. 'To paint a small picture is
to place yourself outside your experience, he said.
'However, you paint the large picture, you are in it.'"
These lines from John Lahr's review of a new play
about Mark Rothko, also in the New Yorker, reminded
me of how much I love meditating in the room
devoted to that artist at the Phillips Gallery in
Washington. The feeling is at once aesthetic,
spiritual, and visceral.
The National Portrait Gallery (part of the
Smithsonian) is also convenient for Daedalus friends
who live in the DC area, but for those of you more
far-flung, you should take a look at the very inclusive
Portrait of a Nation: Men and Women Who Have
Shaped America, another super bargain.
Unlike some institutions, the Jewish Museum in
New York has few online offerings, but I did enjoy
their smattering of images from a current exhibit on
the work of Curious George creators Margret and H.A.
Rey.
Folk art is another passion, and although the
Museum of Folk Art in New York has plenty of stuff
online to take a gander at (like the red-bedecked
damsel below), the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art
Museum in Williamsburg, VA, has slim pickings. So I
bestirred myself to make the 2-hour pilgrimage, and
wow, was it worth it!

There were whirligigs, cigar store Indians, duck
decoys, majestic quilts, ship figureheads, gorgeous
carousel animals, quirky sculptures, charming
landscapes, and portraits galore (the long-ago-and-
far-away subjects of which seemed to be just on the
verge of utterance). Being with these creations was a
kind of communion, a truly numinous experience. By
the time I left, I was satisfied, gratified, and replete.
No current museum catalog though: I had to search
online for some out-of-print ones. Here's one of their
best infant portraits.
What are your favorite museums, both online and
in person? Let me know your special finds!
AURAL DELIGHTS
Ridiculing the arcane aspects of classical music
may seem to some like shooting fish in a barrel, but
no one does it better than Peter Schickele, a.k.a.
P.D.Q. Bach. The plays on his name he no doubt
endured in grade school may have led to the use of
humor as a self-defense mechanism; in any event, his
musical and verbal wit never cease to amuse. Who
else but Schickele could posit Bing Crosby ("der
Bingle") as a descendant of Hildegard von Bingen,
put forth a lied called "Gretchen am Spincyle," or set
the funeral oration from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar
to a jumpin' jive tune? The live performances in
P.D.Q. Bach: The Jekyll & Hyde Tour are some of
his best.
Fresh Air's Terry Gross is masterful at eliciting
frank responses from the people she interviews.
Never is this gift more apparent than in her smart,
well-informed, and never squeamish conversations
with actors, that much-besieged class of humanity
who entertain the masses. In the CD collection Fresh
Air with Terry Gross: Stars she commiserates with
Lisa Kudrow and Robin Williams about fans who
treat them like one-dimensional performing seals;
discusses Transylvanian transvestite couture with
Rocky Horror's Tim Curry; catches Stephen Colbert in
the transition between The Daily Show and his own
program (he calls his op-ed newscaster character "a
well-intentioned, poorly informed person, a high-
status idiot who thinks he's going to bust things wide
open"); talks to Billy Bob Thornton about his phobia
regarding antique furniture ("I can't be around it. I
could never live in a castle with velvet draperies")
and growing up in the woods eating squirrels,
possums, and raccoons caught by his grandfather;
discovers that George Clooney was afflicted during
childhood with facial paralysis arising from Bell's
palsy and used humor to cope (a self-deprecating
tactic that has helped him keep his perspective vis à
vis his subsequent fortune and fame); and in general
creates a feeling of being noninvasively palsy with
the A-list. Is Gross the Dick Cavett of radio?

SINGLE, LONELY, AND UNBOWED
The British have refined snarkiness and self-
deprecating humor into art forms. Both sides of the
coin are reflected in They Call Me Naughty Lola:
Personal Ads from the London Review of Books.
Eminently collectible, these "in search of"s are heaps

more enjoyable than those found in the LRB's more
earnest American cousin, the New York Review of
Books. Readers are warned in the preface that "the
ads in this volume are no longer active and as such
responses cannot be forwarded on to advertisers"—
quel dommage!
The following are snippets from a few of the more
quirky characters:
This woman pens a distinctly endearing come-on:
"I'm just a girl who can't say 'no' (or
"anaesthetist'). Lisping Rodgers and Hammerstein fan,
female lecturer in politics (37) WLTM man to 40 for
thome enthanted eveingth."
The crucial element of surprise is the "gotcha" in
this ad from a
"Mature gentleman (62), aged well, noble grey
locks, fit and active, sound mind and unfazed by the
fickle demands of modern society seeks … damn it, I
have to pee again."
This one devolves into a stand-up (sit-down?)
comedy routine:
"Take the last train to Clarksville and I'll meet
you at the station. Unless the 10.15 to Watney has
been delayed. In which case I'll get the bus—meet me
at Morrisons, by the front entrance. If you can't find
your way there, get a taxi and I'll give you the fare
when I arrive, but make sure you take some change
with you. If you don't have any change, take a trumpet
so that you can busk for some….. " Etc.
I would love to know how many replies this guy
got:
"Bastard. Complete and utter. Whatever you do,
don't reply—you'll only regret it. (Man, 38)."
A little reverse psychology anyone? Or is he a
Heathcliff looking to ensnare an Isabella?
This woman uses the personals to strike a blow
for spousal propers:
"If my Christmas present this year is a gift
subscription to History Today I'm going to be pissed
off. Then I'm going to get pissed. Then I'm going to
divorce you. You know who you are. Perfume, lingerie,
nice womanly things, please, to your wife at box no.
6824."
Like Aretha, she want R-E-S-P-E-C-T when he gets
home.
This gent is a true original whose squib has the
glimmerings of a postmodern autobiographical
novel:
"67-year-old disaffiliated flaneur picking my
toothless way through the urban sprawl, self-
destructive, sliding towards pathos, jacked up on
Viagra and on the lookout for a contortionist who
plays the trumpet."
This fella's enticements are not hackneyed in the
least:
"Dress up like a Viking and join me (M, 51) in my
York farm-dwelling. Not only will we experience crazy
Jorvik mud-love, but we'll get Local Heritage Initiative
grant funding. Have cake – eat it. All at box 2187."
Shades of Cold Comfort Farm!
A choosy supplicant called Mimi really tells it like
it is:
"Mimi, 64, WLTM man whose first name is
composed entirely of Roman numeral letters. You
must also have a degree in advanced mathematics and
be very well endowed."
And here lurks a poet manqué:
"The uncomfortable mantle of guilt, the heavy
cloak of ignominy, the coarse socks of denial, the
iridescent trousers of doubt, the belligerent
underpants of self-loathing. All worn by the
haberdasher of shame (M, 34, Pembs.). Seeks woman
in possession of the Easy-Up iron-on hem of
redemption and some knowledge of workaday
delicates. No loons."
Very little can top the Haberdasher of Shame, so
on that note I'll close. (I should say that I am not
alone in my appreciation of this book. It's quite a
favorite at Daedalus. You should really get a copy for
yourself—and select friends and family—before they
run out!)

GATEWAYS TO MUSIC APPRECIATION
When I was a kid, my parents had a friend who
worked for a radio station. One lucky day he gave us
a scratched-up copy of the soundtrack to South
Pacific [89371], & from then on my three sisters and
I were in paradise, playing it while we colored and
singing along lustily. My mom recalls in particular
the sounds of our favorite lyric—“Bloody Mary is the
one I love … now ain’t that too damn bad!”— wafting
from the basement with infinite zest.
Later, my parents augmented their collection with
a boxed set of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma,
Carousel, and The King and I, as well as Funny Girl
and Fiorello. I listened to those LPs over and over,
perusing the liner notes as if they were the Rosetta
Stone. Thus began a love affair with Broadway
[79459 West Side Story 89526 Gypsy], jazz [89558
Miles Davis’ Porgy and Bess], and the American
Popular Song [89412 Sinatra 79252 Anita O’Day]
that continues to the present day.
In college I was lucky enough to room next to a
fantastic singer who could do Julie Andrews to a “T.”

She was studying voice, and soon she turned me on
to opera, a natural crossover. (After all, Kristen
Chenoweth got a Masters in opera, and Bernstein’s
“Glitter and Be Gay”—a staple of soprano recitals—
was debuted by Broadway’s Barbara Cook.) The first
LP I got —and what a one to start with!—was
highlights of Maria Callas in Tosca by Puccini [89600
Puccini: The Definitive Collection]. I was hooked.
And, surprisingly, so were some of my guy friends.
I’ll never forget the time one of the biggest partiers
on campus requested that sweet, slight Mary Beth
sing the “Toreador Song” from Carmen along w/ the
record (which she did!).

DVD MADNESS
When winter doldrums strike, can DVD madness
be far behind? Here a few recommendations from a
few of my recent movie-watching marathons.
I fondly remembered 1980's Melvin & Howard as
a delightful gem and was afraid that its luster would
be tarnished by time. But no! It was even better than
I recalled. This is a film I'm glad to own instead of
rent so I can savor it again and again and turn other
people on to it as well.
It's based on the true-life story of Melvin
Dummar, who claimed he rescued a geezer (played
to perfection by Jason Robards) from a ditch in the
Nevada Desert in the middle of the night in 1967 and
drove him to the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. Dummar
said that his curmudgeonly passenger claimed to be
Howard Hughes and that years later a will leaving
him $156 million was dropped off at Melvin's gas
station.
Paul Le Mat as Melvin makes an endearing naïf,
and Mary Steenburgen won my heart forevermore
(and an Oscar) with her portrayal of his sweetly
pixilated wife. The scenes of her tap dancing
atrociously to "Satisfaction" on a game show and
shimmying with bacchanalian yet curiously
wholesome abandon at a strip club are priceless
moments of cinematic greatness.
Each and every scene has a payoff of poignancy,
humor, pathos, or absurdity. Here's what the New
York Times' Vincent Canby said when it first came
out:
"Jonathan Demme's sharp, engaging, very
funny, anxious comedy … [is] a satiric expression
of the American Dream in the closing years of the
20th century, as old debts are being called in and
life has become a series of reposessions….. He is
clearly a social satirist in the tradition of Preston
Sturges. He's a filmmaker with a fondness for the
absurdities of our existence and for people who
have no idea that they're ''little'' or teetering on
the edge of disaster. Or, as Melvin Dummar says
with impatience when his wife points out they are
poor, 'We're not poor! Broke, maybe, but not
poor!''
Whereas Melvin and Howard is great, Smile is
"merely" good, which means it's well worth a look
and provides many a chuckle (or grimace) at the
mores of a bygone time. Starring Get Smart's Barbara
Feldon, a very young Melanie Griffith, and Bruce
Dern (currently playing a reprehensible patriarchal
polygamist on HBO's Big Love), this 1975 feature
casts a satirical eye on regional beauty pageants—
goofball talent segments and all. A subplot involving
Dern explores the more bizarre side of heterosexual
male bonding. Canby in the NYTimes called the film
"an especially American kind of social comedy in the
way that great good humor sometimes is used to
reveal unpleasant facts instead of burying them."
The time is 1970s Sweden. The place is a
communal group house where a motley group of
hippies live, love, nurture, and squabble. Seeing
Together, a wry and generous take on the
counterculture that once flourished so widely, one
wonders why so few American movies have mined
this rich soil. The interpersonal dynamics are
rendered subtly, sympathetically, and often
hilariously. I give this one an A+.
I found The Incredibly True Adventure of 2 Girls in
Love to be light, fun, engaging, and remarkably
authentic, especially if your benchmark is
Showtime's overwrought The L Word. Maria
Maggenti's 1995 first feature won kudos at Sundance
and was the breakout film for Laurel Holloman (who
plays mainstay Tina Kinnard in The L Word) and
Nicole Ari Parker (Terri Joseph in Soul Food). It may
be the first and still the best lesbian romantic
comedy around.

OPERA: FROM THE RIDICULOUS TO THE SUBLIME
Recently, I wrote about how fortunate we are to
experience live opera affordably through the Met's
HD broadcasts. Reading about a book by North
Korean dictator Kim Jong called On the Art of Opera
makes me realize how lucky we are not to have
"culture" forced on us! He claims that the state-
sponsored opera The Sea of Blood—North Korea's
longest-running production—"has opened up a new
phase in dramaturgy." One blog wag calls it "the Cats

of Pyongyang"; however, the official Korea News
Service has dubbed it an "immortal classical
masterpiece." Kim Jong claims to have revamped
opera by replacing arias with the pangchang, an off-
stage chorus spouting politically correct lingo.
Sounds delightful, eh?
Speaking of things operatic (and of genuine
artistic value), I have a new heroine, and her name is
Renata Scotto. I'm sure that opera buffs more deep-
dyed than I have always appreciated her worth, but
for me it took a 1991 concert in Budapest to truly
open my eyes—and ears. She was gorgeous, she was
charming, she was deeply emotive. She looked great
while singing too, so that there was no artifice or
apparent strain to distract from her embodiment of
the character and the sentiments she was portraying
through song. Her vocal and interpretive artistry
encompassed works ranging from Berlioz's
challenging five-song cycle Les nuits d'été to a
coloratura aria from Handel's Giulio Cesare
("Piangerò la sorte mia"), to a showstopper from
Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito ("Non più di fiori").
The understandably enthralled audience
clamored at length for five encores—including the
Seguidilla from Carmen, "Ebben? Ne andrò lontana"
from La Wally, and "O mio babbino caro" from Gianni
Schicci—and I was with them in spirit.
All this for the price of a cappucchino and a
cannelloni!!

FUN & FROTH
There's nothing better than a little nostalgia after
a hard week's work. Combining anarchic comedy,
socko Hollywood musical numbers, and the verbal
stylings of a master, these three DVDs are some of
my recent finds.
Casino Royale
Groovy baby! Long before Austin Powers came
this 1967, celebrity-laden Bond parody that sported
five directors, improvisation galore, and a farcical
take on the swinging '60s that made it more popular
at the box office than the genuine Bond article You
Only Live Twice, released the same year.
"Peter Sellers, free at last from every vestige of
discipline, goes absolutely gaga" said Roger Ebert,
who called CR "possibly the most indulgent film ever
made" and "a definitive example of what can happen
when everybody working on a film goes
simultaneously berserk." But how can you not love a
flick that frappés Sellers, Ursula Andress, David
Niven, Orson Welles, Woody Allen, Deborah Kerr,
William Holden, Charles Boyer, John Huston, George
Raft, Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Jackie Bisset into one
big, frothy pina colada?
Actually, the movie seems to be quite a favorite of
the eggheaded International Dictionary of Films and
Filmmakers, which calls it "a wry and provocative
sociopolitical satire. The often-criticized
inconsistencies of the film's multiple James Bonds …
intentionally work to confuse the issue of Bond, to
overwork the paradigm until it has no value. Like
Andy Warhol's canvas of multiple Marilyns, the
original is mythic and its copies are but a poor stand-
in fantasy. The subversion of the modern
Übermensch is already apparent before the credits,
when Bond films customarily feature a spine tingling
mini-adventure on skis or in the sky. Sellers' Bond,
however, is simply picked up by a French official in a
pissoir. " Wowee. I think they just made a silk purse
out of a sow's ear!
Till The Clouds Roll By
Except for the musical numbers, composer biopics
are mostly dreadful, and this one, of Jerome Kern, is
bursting with them. The great, pioneering musical
Show Boat of 1927 bookends the film, with the adept
help of beauteous Lena Horne ("Can't Help Lovin' Dat
Man") and debonair Frank Sinatra ("Old Man River").
Horne, who was considered and rejected for the
1951 color remake of Show Boat, is a much better
choice for the "tragic mulatto" Julie than was Ava
Gardner. (Horne also sings the poignant "Why Was I
Born?")
Judy Garland proffers a plaintive version of "Look
for the Silver Lining" and is all glammed up for her
big production number "Who?"; other highlights are
"The Last Time I Saw Paris" with Dinah Shore and a
fantastic "I Won't Dance" with a twinkle-toed Van
Johnson (who knew? … I was so taken with the
segment's charms I immediately rewound & watched
it twice).
The film lapsed out of copyright for a while, so
some horrible copies floated around; thankfully, the
film has now been restored to its full MGM splendor.
This version comes with many cool extras, such as a
color cartoon, musical outtakes, and a vintage
travelogue of movieland California.
Groucho Marx You Bet Your Life (The Best
Episodes)
A testament to Groucho's unfailing wit and
lightning-fast rejoinders, this long-running radio and
tv quiz program was the thing he was most proud of.
Besides the hoi polloi contestants, these half-hour
shows (some with vintage commercials) feature
celebrities like Harpo, Edgar and Candace Bergen,

and Phyllis Diller in her first TV appearance. Here's a
snippet of Diller's episode (she also provides an
audio commentary):
MARX: Now, Phyllis, what do you do to break up
the monotony of housekeeping and taking care of
five small gorillas?
DILLER: Well, I'm really not a housewife anymore.
I'm an entertainer.
MARX: Could you do a little of your act now?
DILLER: I've love to.
Mr. MARX: Say, 30 or 40 minutes?
DILLER: I decided I'd surely better be well
adjusted before I went into such a shaky business,
and so I decided I should be analyzed, and I went to
this analyst. He's helped me a great deal. In fact, I am
so much better now that I get to sit up.

LETTERS OF MARTHA GELLHORN
Although I read fiction constantly, I've always
been leery of collections of letters. Perhaps I've
been put off by their fragmentary nature and lack of
narrative structure (except chronological!). Their
appeal seemed relatively insular and personal—like
when people tell me their dreams, which I loathe.
And unless you have a good annotator, the
content and context can be baffling.
When the letter writer is a published author,
however, one's expectations are somewhat elevated.
I recently came across a few epistolary fragments
by Flannery O'Connor, which were marvelous, so I
decided to venture further in the genre by perusing
The Letters of Martha Gellhorn.
I've always been intrigued by her career and
persona. Gellhorn was a masterful travel writer and
a lifelong war correspondent who chronicled its
effects on civilians ("All politicians are bores and
liars and fakes. I talk to people," she said, and she
wrote to a colleague “where I want to be, boy, is
where it is all blowing up"). In fact, the hefty
Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism is awarded
annually to a writer "whose work has penetrated the
established version of events and told an
unpalatable truth, validated by powerful facts, that
exposes establishment propaganda, or ‘official
drivel’, as Gellhorn called it."
In Europe alone she covered the fall of
Czechoslovakia, the Soviet invasion of Finland, the
liberation of Dachau, the Nuremberg trials, the
Spanish Civil War, and the Allied landings on
Normandy Beach (because the US Army did not
allow women reporters at the front, she infiltrated a
hospital ship on the night of D-Day).
Gellhorn was a nomad whose 19 homes included
one in Key West, one in Marbella, Spain, and one
on a Kenyan mountaintop. She was also the third
wife of Hemingway (the marriage lasted five years;
it was she who she left him, referring to his name
thereafter as the "H-word" and writing at the time
to a former lover “I wish only to be unmarried . . . I
am so free that the atom cannot be freer.”) That gift
for metaphor was characteristic: "I rise and sink
like a hippo in a lake" is a wry comment she made
on her career.
Among her correspondents were Eleanor
Roosevelt, H. G. Wells, Bernard Berenson, Jackie
Kennedy, Adlai Stevenson, and Leonard Bernstein.
To her WPA boss she wrote "Clothes nil. Really a
terrible problem here; not only of protection against
the elements (a lot of pneumonia among children;
undernourishment plus exposure) but also the fact
that having no clothes, these people are cut out of
any social life." To Stevenson she fiercely
denounced McCarthyism, and in 1994 she told
Howard Gotlieb, "My idea of the future U.S. is a
Nazi state called Christian America."
After a life lived to the hilt, her body began to
fail, and at age 89 she took a pill and made her
quietus. But not before writing the following:
“If the Devil had shown up at my house, instead
of calling on dreary Faust, and offered me a
perfectly functioning body until death in exchange
for my soul, I’d have said it’s a deal bud, with joy.”

INTELLIGENCE MADE VISIBLE
"If it doesn't give you pleasure, it is bad design….
Good design is really intelligence made visible." So
writes co-author Terence Conran in the preface to a
profusely illustrated tome called Design:
Intelligence Made Visible, which covers the history
of his profession and its myriad products in a most
engrossing manner. It merged nicely with a recent
PBS Independent Lens show I watched on the same
topic, the purview of which ranged from potato
peelers to toothbrushes to public seating (why is it
so uncomfortable?) to iphones to cars, which one
designer likened to moveable sculptures that portray
the personalities and preoccupations of their
owners.

Conran's book pleased me greatly with this quote
from a job application from Leonardo da Vinci to
Lodovico Sforza:
Though human genius in its various inventions
with various instruments may answer the same end, it
will never find an invention more beautiful or more
simple or direct than nature, because in her inventions
nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.
….as well as this one from George Nelson:
How many things can you do to enhance and how
do you avoid those things which do not? If there is a
moral commitment—or an opportunity—for a
designer, that is it.
I am addicted to Masterpiece Theatre and not too
proud to own up. If you're of like mind, you will want
to pick up Juliet Nicholson's The Perfect Summer:
England 1911, Just Before the Storm during the
lulls between delectable period costume dramas and
adaptations of Austen et al.
Nicholson is the granddaughter of Vita Sackville-
West and Harold Nicolson (the famous writer /
diplomat couple who were the subject of the book
Portrait of a Marriage), and she provides a vividly
panoramic, "you are there," slice-of-life–type
overview of British society, from top to bottom.
First, the excesses.
Churchill's mother Jennie Cornwallis-West is
pictured arriving at a fancy dress ball as Empress
Teodora wearing a profusely embroidered Byzantine
cope. The Duchess of Rutland parries with a velvet
medieval gown, and the Duchess of Marlborough is
resplendent as Madame de Pompadour, but Princess
Kawananako of Honolulu carries the day with her
cape of yellow feathers that "occurred singly on the
head of a native bird, a species already so
endangered that this one coat ensured its extinction."
The top event of the summer for the "quality" was
the coronation at Westminster Abbey of George V.
Six thousand stools of fine mahogany bearing the
royal coronet were made especially for the
ceremony, each one inscribed with the name of the
exalted guest whose posterior would rest upon it.
The foresight and attention to comfort even
extended to emergency sandwiches in grease-proof
packets meant to be secured in the lining of the
coronets worn by the famished lords and ladies.
Among the swag found (and turned in!) by the
cleaning crew after the royal do were three ropes of
pearls, 20 brooches, 6 bracelets, 20 golden balls from
the coronets, and part of a diamond necklace.
As far as summer amusements went, there were
nude tennis matches and that unfailing diversion,
nocturnal room-hopping at weekend house parties in
the country. Nicolson reports that "Lord Charles
Beresford became particularly vigilant after leaping
with an exultant 'cock a doodle do!' into a darkened
bed, believing it to contain his lover, only to be
vigorously batted away by the much startled Bishop
of Chester."' To combat her insomnia, Lady Ruthven
had her husband's valet read racy French novels to
her until the wee hours (purportedly because she
enjoyed his French accent).
The owner of four huge estates, Walter Rothschild
"would send round a carriage drawn by two zebras
to collect his guests to view his extensive menagerie,
which included a collection of kangaroos,
cassowaries, giant tortoises, a wolf, and several bad-
tempered glisglis, a variety of succulent edible
dormice."
Eccentrics abound, such as The Duke of Portland,
who had such a phobia about being seen that he had
a maze of underground tunnels built so that he could
slip undetected from room to room. (He also traveled
in a black-draped carriage that was loaded in its
entirety into a railway truck.)
Often these quirks were reported in memoirs by
longsuffering "downstairs" staff, such as the poor sod
who had to pick up after a "dithering gentleman who,
on Sundays, liked to try on every one of his 60 suits
before deciding on the perfect one for church."
Nicholson does not stint on covering the social
unrest that pervaded the country, reporting that 700
families owned one-quarter of it and that a
dockworker's take-home pay for a week might
amount to one pound, five shillings—"often only
enough to rent one room for an entire family."
Furthermore, "the living standards of 30 percent of
the population fell below those at which the barest
needs were met."
She also bring in the doings and relationships of
writers and notables such as Virginia Stephen,
Leonard Woolf, Rupert Brooke, Ottoline Morrell,
Anna Pavlova, Sergei Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Nellie
Melba, Edith Sitwell, and Emmeline Pankhurst.
In her coverage of social and cultural history she
recounts such tidbits as a contemporary account of
the President of the Rational Dress League,
Viscountess Haberton, "arriving in the salon the of
Hautboy Hotel in Ockham, Surrey, wearing
'bifurcated garments'"; the post office providing
headphones with a live link from private homes to
shows and operas on the West End stage; and antsy
projectionists speeding up films so that they were
comically out of sync with the live orchestras
accompanying them.

1
The book is unique, well-written, and extremely
well-researched, so I say bully for her!

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