"West Side" Sorry

In late September, 1957, I was staying with my grandmother, having been deputized to keep her company while my uncle who lived with her went on vacation. Besides the pleasure of the company of my formidable ancestor, I had the opportunity of reading each day both the New York Times and the Herald Tribune, which my uncle had delivered every morning. Thus, I was able to read the glowing reviews that the theater critics of those papers lavished on a new Broadway musical called West Side Story. 

How wonderful, I thought. A musical not about elephant-high corn, but about the serious business of living in New York City. 

I was unable to catch up with the play during the initial year-and-three-quarters run, which ended on June 27, 1959. I did get to see it after it returned from touring and played Broadway again from April to December, 1960.

I was crushed.

*

Now, the one thing everyone knows about WSS is that it takes its story line from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. A professor whom I dearly loved (I should; he hired me) edited a paperback which included the texts of both those plays. For all his good points, Prof. W. was a classic middlebrow, and his book was geared for those people who thought that by seeing/reading WSS they were getting R&J-lite—Shakespeare without all the funny old language, thees and thous and such. For better or worse, though, what they were getting was a work that existed in its own right, without the borrowed stardust of an old classic.

*

For me the first indication that WSS was not going to live up to my expectation was the third song, “Something’s Coming,” sung by Romeo, er Tony. 

Could be . . .

Who knows? . . .

There's something due any day—

I will know right away,

Soon as it shows.

It may come cannonballing down through the sky,

Gleam in its eye,

Bright as a rose.

Who knows?

It's only just out of reach,

Down the block, on a beach,

Under a tree.

I got a feeling there's a miracle due,

Gonna come true,

Coming to me!

Could it be? Yes, it could.

Something's coming, something good,

If I can wait.

Something's coming, I don't know what it is,

But it is

Gonna be great!

My thought when I heard this was, “What great thing could happen to a boy in his situation? A college scholarship, maybe?” No, it was nothing more than that old banality—meeting a girl. A miracle, indeed!

And look at the nouns of the lyric: “day,” “sky,” “eye,” “rose,” “block,” “beach,” “tree,” “miracle.” Can anything be more banal than that?

Later, after our prosaic Tony has met Juliet, er Maria, he rhapsodizes thus:

Maria...

The most beautiful sound I ever heard:

Maria, Maria, Maria, Maria . . .

All the beautiful sounds of the world in a single word . .

Maria, Maria, Maria, Maria . . .

Maria!

I've just met a girl named Maria,

And suddenly that name

Will never be the same

To me.

Maria!

I've just kissed a girl named Maria,

And suddenly I've found

How wonderful a sound

Can be!

Maria!

Say it loud and there's music playing,

Say it soft and it's almost like praying.

Maria,

I'll never stop saying Maria!

The most beautiful sound I ever heard.

Maria.

I think you can take it as read that anytime something is compared to a prayer or praying, you’re up against a writer/lyricist who is completely lost.

*

Let me turn my attention for a moment to the real Romeo. At the beginning of R&J, Romeo is in love—no, not with Juliet—he hasn’t seen her yet—but with someone named Rosaline, who wants nothing to do with him. Romeo acts like a classic spurned lover;* when challenged by his friend Benvolio, Romeo’s description of Rosaline is purely conventional.

Then, Romeo sees Juliet; Rosaline is forgotten, and I say to myself, “Why should I, an alleged adult, pay any attention to someone who can switch his affections in a blink of an eye?”

My justification lies in the words that Romeo speaks upon seeing Juliet for the first time:

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!

It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night

Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear.

The words come gushing out spontaneously; they are new, of the moment; not studied, not conventional. A metaphoric masterpiece. Picture it. He is a poet of love.

That is why Romeo matters.

*

What can we say about Maria? She has as much (or as little substance) as her lover boy. What has she to say about herself?

I feel pretty,

Oh, so pretty,

I feel pretty and witty and bright,

And I pity

Any girl who isn't me tonight.

I feel charming,

Oh, so charming,

It's alarming how charming I feel,

And so pretty

That I hardly can believe I'm real.

 

Stephen Sondheim, I’m sorry to say, was the culprit (AKA lyricist) who composed the words for Tony’s and Maria’s outpourings. But I think I might just be able to get him off the hook. In May, 1962 he (as lyricist) with his colleagues gifted Broadway with—what I think is its best ever musical—A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. A play with no pretenses to social significance, it brought Roman comedy to 20th century America, packaged as a laugh-filled joyous farce.

The ingenue of the play is Philia, whose song about herself deserves contrasting with Maria and her song.

I'm lovely,

All I am is lovely.

Lovely is the one thing I can do.

Winsome,

What I am is winsome,

Radiant as in some

Dream come true.

Oh, Isn't it a shame?

I can neither sew

Nor cook nor read or write my name.

But I'm happy

Merely being lovely,

For it's one thing I can give to you.

She’s empty-headed--but self-aware—as I hope Sondheim was when he composed Philia’s song and that he was deliberately satirizing the emptiness of Maria’s own fixation on herself. 

*

For me the one highlight of WSS, is the song “America.” What drive, what sassiness, what thrusting music! I could listen to it all day.

*

  

What led me to revisit WSS and to write this blog entry was a review of the Broadway cast album by Douglas Watt of The New Yorker (Mar 8, 1958) that I read yesterday. Here is a major excerpt:

At last! Vindication of my view of the work. 

*

Please, don’t get me started on Death of a Salesman!

 

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* https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2010/05/lovers-and-losers-part-one.html

American Stasi

The Mexicans won the battle of the Alamo. So how come we’re stuck with Texas?

*

The latest news out of Texas is that it not only has the toughest anti-abortion law in the country, but that that undoubtedly-unconstitutional law has put in place (for at least what one hopes is only a brief moment) an unprecedented mechanism for the spying on and ratting on one’s neighbors. The state has turned enforcement of the law over to the general public. The law will allow any ordinary citizen to

bring a civil action against any person who: (1) performs or induces an abortion in violation of this subchapter; (2) knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion . . . .*

The state has taken its famous state song to heart: “The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You.” What Texas has done here is to introduce the Culture of Snitch. And a capitalist one at that—for a successful snitcher will receive $10,000 and legal costs. 

Jeannie Suk Gersen, recently wrote in an on-line article on The New Yorker website:

In “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” Hannah Arendt observed the early tendency of a totalitarian regime to draft private citizens to conduct “voluntary espionage,” so that “a neighbor gradually becomes a more dangerous enemy than officially appointed police agents.”**

Perhaps the most efficient state control of the populace by use of the citizens themselves was by the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (two-thirds of which name were lies)—East Germany, what was. That government established the Ministerium für Staatsicherheit (Ministry for State Security), colloquially known as the Stasi. 

After the collapse of the regime, members of the Stasi tried to destroy the files it had on individuals. But they did not succeed in getting rid of all records. As a result over the last thirty years or so,

researchers have been offering former citizens of East Germany the opportunity to view their personal Stasi file, a complicated rite of passage that often reveals that family members, friends or neighbors had reported their activities to the Stasi.***

“Family members, friends . . . neighbors” had all been co-opted into the Stasi snitch network. 

How soon will it be that citizens of the Lone Star State will fear the eyes of other Texans upon them—even their family, friends, and neighbors?  

***

*   https://www.nytimes.com/article/abortion-law-texas.html

**   https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-manifold-threats-of-the-texas-abortion-law

***   https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/10/arts/design/stasi-archive-puzzle.html?searchResultPosition=1

Calling the Tune Without Paying the Piper

Long-Term Capital Management [LTCM], a hedge fund, was founded in 1994, and had on its board two men who a few years later would be awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. Despite its rather self-trumpeting name, the fund went belly-up in the year 2000. It lasted that long only because of a massive bail-out four years after its founding, which was arranged to keep the broader financial system from imploding.

Some three decades before the LCTM debacle, the United States military was bogged down in South-East Asia trying to accomplish what the French had previously failed to do—defeat the Vietnamese revolutionary force known as the Viet Cong. American policy was formulated by a group of Washington officials who had been leaders in industry and academia before joining the administration. They were sometimes called “whiz kids.” David Halberstam in his book on the period labelled them “The Best and The Brightest.”

*

I bring up this ancient history to make a really simple point—which I will get to in a bit.

This is a post about voting. The Republican party and conservatives in general have for more than a generation attempted to restrict the right to cast a ballot. Here is William Buckley, Jr. in 1957 opining on how the “advanced race’’—White Southerners (minority)—should prevail over the desires of their Black neighbors (majority):

If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.*

Of course, this is a question-begging proclamation. What is meant by “socially atavistic”? How do you define “civilized standards”? Not to mention the smug assertion about the “advanced race.”

*

Let’s jump to the present. 

Steven Strauss, in an opinion piece in USA TODAY,** gives us just a sampling of Republican voices advocating ballot restrictions:

Andrew McCarthy stated in National Review: “It would be far better if the franchise were not exercised by ignorant, civics-illiterate people." Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson, a Republican, warned of the dangers of voting by the “uninformed.” Kevin Williamson, also at National Review, asked whether America “would be better served by having fewer — but better — voters.” Arizona GOP state Rep. John Kavanaugh commented: “Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes as well.” 

Doesn’t that all sound marvelous: To be led by a citizenry that is not “uninformed” or “civics-illiterate”? 

Er . . ., my ignorant response is, “Who decides?” And how? Shall we give every citizen a test before he/she can cast a ballot? Would that determine if that would-be voter was “civics-literate” (whatever that means)?

In an earlier blog post,*** I discussed the self-centeredness of test-making. The person who sets the test has automatically made claim to be no worse than tied for the smartest person in the room—after all, he knows all the answers (otherwise how could he know whether the test-takers were correct or not?). I pointed out that this 

“no one can know more than me” business is really the opposite of the statement of Socrates . . . that the Oracle of Delphi . . . claimed that “no man is wiser than Socrates.” For, said Socrates, he knows that he knows nothing, while other men brag of their knowledge of justice, piety, etc.

So, I ask the GOP brains, who died and left you God to determine what the test for citizen-voters should be? Of course, we trust you implicitly that the questions would be totally non-partisan. But do we have to take our masks off and show proof that we weren’t vaccinated?

*

To go back to the beginning of this essay. Republicans wouldn't doubt that the Nobel laureates of Long-Term Capital Management and the whiz kids of the Viet Nam debacle had the right credentials to determine at the ballot box the future of this country. And they could ace any test. 

They could also lead us down the drain.

***

  * https://theintercept.com/2020/07/05/national-review-william-buckley-racism/

  ** https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/04/14/republicans-weed-out-ignorant-voters-start-with-their-own-column/7186187002/

 *** https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2015/01/dont-bother-me.html