Take It Off

Although it’s half a year away, Halloween has been on my mind recently. Certainly more on my mind than it generally is along about the end of October. And that is because in my neck of the woods Halloween has been a non-event. No little ghosts or witches have rung my doorbell for at least a decade. Back in the days when, though, I developed the perfect (for me at least) idea of how to prepare for the costumed crowd. I would not purchase Mars bars or M&Ms to distribute—because they would never make it to the door; I would, quite naturally, eat them all before the 31st. Instead, I loaded up on packs of Fruit Stripe gum. There was no way that that product, which never passed my yuck test, would ever pass my lips. So I could unbegrudgingly distribute it at my door.
Which brings me back to why I have been thinking about Halloween so out of season. The reasoning behind my former Halloween purchases of that icky gum has led me to develop the perfect diet—the Halloween Diet. Simply put: if you bring into your house only foods that you would never (short of an absolute famine in the land) let enter your mouth (in my case, mussels, sushi, macaroni-and-cheese, and rice pudding), you would be bound to lose weight.

*

Alas, I can’t help visualizing how good a container of chocolate chip ice cream, a Hebrew National salami, an Entenmann’s cheese strudel, and a couple of bagels look in my shopping cart.

Remote Controlled

A question I liked to pose to incoming freshmen when I was a member of the committee concocting topics for a writing sample was:

“Soon our television will be offering us 500 channels of broadcasting. Will that result in an Eden of cultural quality or a great cultural wasteland?” 

I was reminded of that question when my cable company obligingly sent me their latest channel lineup,. It seems I underestimated the number of channels we were going to be allowed to choose from. What with music channels and high definition duplications, I can access over 900 channels with a flick of my remote. I have to admit, though, that I am not the right person to definitively answer the question I posed above, for I watch barely a handful of the available channels and, thus, have no idea if what lies beyond my little patch of viewing is a lush land or a desert.

One channel that I do watch a lot is Fox Soccer Channel, which I like for two reasons: it broadcasts matches of the English Premier League (the top level of that nation’s game) and FSC’s California-based hosts have to get up pre-dawn to introduce the shows. Now, it must be admitted that FSC is not one of this nation’s prime sports broadcasters. And that is borne out by the fact that the major advertisers on other sports networks—the greasemeister hamburger and chicken mega-corporations and what Harry Pearson (in The Guardian) called “the gassy I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Piss excuse for beer” purveyors—are mostly absent. Instead, the commercials on FSC seem to be aimed at three distinct groups: the credit-challenged, who are enticed to pay for reports that they entitled to get for free; immigrants, who are invited to phone overseas by a small-print-loving telephone company (which at one point had—and perhaps still has—as an executive a former New Jersey Republican politician one wouldn’t touch with a barge pole); and the dermatologically-flawed, represented in the commercials by young women (all seemingly named Pam or Dawn) who slather on white gook that we can have shipped to us free thanks to an apparently never-ending limited-time offer. Recently, the Pams and Dawns were joined in the gook commercials by another young woman, one who looked as if she was created by Pixar. This unreal personage is apparently a non-celebrity celebrity (you know, one who has to be identified, so we know it’s a “celebrity” hawking the product), identified as “singer/songwriter Katy Perry.” Now, I must admit here was a true non-celebrity for me. I had never heard her name before, much less heard her sing. But the other day that all changed. I was trapped in a medical waiting room that had a “light rock” radio station piped in (the kind of offensively inoffensive noise that makes your gums bleed), when the announcer proclaimed that the next number would be by the above-cited K. Perry. Who sounded like nothing other than a skinned cat.

There are a few things in life I understand, but one of them isn’t the thinking of advertisers. Oh, I get it that the credit-challenged probably have no jobs and are glued to the TV all day watching whatever and that immigrants (more than us native-borns) love what the rest of the world calls “football”—but what I can’t figure out is how many acned young women would spend a Wednesday afternoon watching the replay of a game between Wigan Athletic and Stoke City.

In Character

What life and society require of each of us is a constantly alert attention that discerns the outlines of the present situation, together with a certain elasticity of mind and body to enable us to adapt ourselves in consequence.

*

We have shown that the comic character always errs through obstinacy of mind or of disposition, through absentmindedness, in short, through automatism. At the root of the comic there is a sort of rigidity which compels its victims to keep strictly to one path, to follow it straight along, to shut their ears and refuse to listen. In Moliere's plays how many comic scenes can be reduced to this simple type: A CHARACTER FOLLOWING UP HIS ONE IDEA, and continually recurring to it in spite of incessant interruptions! The transition seems to take place imperceptibly from the man who will listen to nothing to the one who will see nothing, and from this latter to the one who sees only what he wants to see. A stubborn spirit ends by adjusting things to its own way of thinking, instead of accommodating its thoughts to the things.

Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of Comic

**

We come into the world as individuals, achieve character, and become persons.

Robert Ezra Park, Race and Culture

**

Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday

Who could hang a name on you?

When you change with every new day . . . .

The Rolling Stones

***

Thumbing my way recently through the pages of DVDs that Amazon.com has generously offered as recommendations for my taste (I Wake Up Screaming, The Wackiest Ship in the Army, et al), I instantly glommed onto a cover that I didn’t have to read to know the contents of the DVD: in profile, a figure with a sharp, down-pointing nose, prominent chin, smoking a curved pipe, and wearing a deerstalker’s cap. Sherlock Holmes. But what if the profile on the cover had been that of Holmes’ associate, Dr. Watson? I think I can speak for everyone in saying that none of us would have the least notion of what awaited us in the DVD box.

Holmes, not just because of his appearance, but because of his nature, is one of the most recognizable characters in literature: rational, arrogant, dismissive of others, unemotional. But Dr Watson? Is his the bumbling persona of Nigel Bruce’s portrayals or the level-headed persona of Edward Hardwicke’s?

In life as in art, one achieves character by being consistent. In fact, the more consistent one becomes, the more one becomes a “character,” someone whose described actions evoke one’s name and whose name calls up one’s actions and reactions. That is because we turn loose, in the words of Bergson, the “ready-made element in our personality, that mechanical element which resembles a piece of clockwork wound up once for all and capable of working automatically.” Think of Alceste (of The Misanthrope). Think of his friend Philinte standing by, raising his eyebrows, silently acknowledging, “There he goes again!”

The consistency of character is also a good thing. “He showed great character”—what a phrase of praise! When the mechanical element refuses to depart from its path under the influence of dubious, dangerous or evil pressures, one can become heroic. Even poor muddled Alceste, whom we have been giving a hard time to over several blogs, had his noble side. The estimable Eliante asserted:

“The honesty in which he takes such pride

Has—to my mind—its noble, heroic side.”

That “honesty,” which he mechanically (and foolishly) applied against the molehills of court manners, was noble in his refusal to capitulate to the mountainous corruption of the legal system.

The essence of character is not split between the noble and the foolish, the heroic and the comic. It is of one piece. To have a name—to be able to be named by others—one must be consistent up to the borderlands of the comic. And must not be surprised when one steps over the edge and becomes laughable.

What do you do, Dad (Mom)?

Most parents at one time or another have probably been faced by a question similar to the title query by their offspring. If we follow the logic of James R. Hagerty (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703688704575620544230889942.
html), since “Coca-Cola Co. and General Motors Co. don't have to explain to the outside world what they make,” all a parent would have to do was to say, “Drink up the fizzy water I made, son,” or, “See that car over there, dear . . . ?”

But what do you say to your child if you work for a company that describes itself as:

"world leader in creating and sustaining safe, comfortable and efficient environments";

Or, "the global leader in motion and control technologies.";

Or, “the global leader in active and passive safety";

Or, "a leading products and service distributor focused on adding value and total cost savings solutions to MRO and OEM customers in virtually every industry since 1908";

Or, "a global leader in providing customer contact management solutions and services in the business process outsourcing (BPO) arena";

Or, “leverage[s] an innovative outcome-based, managed services engagement model with committed productivity benefits over the long term."

[Examples supplied by Hagerty.]

If you work for one of the above companies and your child asks the question, just order another round of fries to go with the Coke. That might shut them up.

***

As to what I do? Why, I am a global leader in supplying software-generated content packages for the literate world distributed to consumers by means of state-of-the-art information technology.

And if any of my grandchildren says another word, they’re out of my will.

Ozymandias

For my sins (I must have had a lot of them) I had to attend a good number of English Department meetings (when I was chairman, I made sure to keep them short). At one of those meetings, as we were discussing some screw-up or other (probably the same one that we had discussed at my first meeting many years before), one of the department harridans exclaimed, “Parkinson’s Law!” I was more than happy to (a) deflate said harridan and (b) demonstrate anew to the others my superior knowledge by proclaiming, “You mean Murphy’s Law—“If something can go wrong, it will go wrong’; Parkinson’s Law states that ‘Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.’”

Considering that when it appeared in book form (it had first been a magazine article) the short essay “Parkinson’s Law or the Rising Pyramid” was accompanied by whimsical line drawings by Robert C. Osborn, one might think that the author, one C. Northcote Parkinson, Raffles Professor of History at the University of Malaya, was a spoof nom de plume and the essay a mere comic bagatelle. But the author was real enough, as were the statistics he used to reach his serious conclusions. Two examples:

1—Between the years 1914 and 1928 the number of British warships declined by over 67 percent, while the number of officials at the Admiralty increased by more than 78 percent;

2—In the two decades between 1935 and 1954 the number of officials at the Colonial Office in Great Britain increased from 372 to 1661, even though in the later years the responsibility of the Office (in terms of territory and population) decreased as more and more colonies achieved independent nationhood.

“Officials,” Parkinson states, “ make work for each other,” and since work, “especially paperwork,” is “elastic in its demands on time,” there is no (or little) relationship between the number of staff and amount of work to be done. Thus, work can expand to fill the time available for its completion.

While Parkinson is serious in his analysis of bureaucratic expansion, he satirically claims that his work has “no political value,” being “a purely scientific discovery.” He concludes:

It is not the business of the botanist to eradicate the weeds. Enough for him if he can tell us just how fast they grow.

***

But it is actually another of Parkinson’s essays in the book Parkinson’s Law and other Studies in Administration that I wish to focus on: “Plans and Plants or The Administration Block.”

Consider this story from the New York Times: “Dispute Over Succession Clouds Megachurch” (available at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/us/24cathedral.html?scp=1&sq=crystal&st=cse).
It tells how Robert H. Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral, “which many church historians,” says the Times, “call the nation’s first modern megachurch,” has incurred a $43 million debt and has filed for bankruptcy protection. “The 10,664 windows did not get washed this year . . . . And its renowned Christmas pageant — with live camels and horses, and angels flying overhead on cables — has been canceled for now.”

Parkinson’s essay deals with other cathedrals, palaces, and monumental edifices. What he shows is that famous structures which seem in their pomp to perfectly symbolize the height of the prestige and power of their institutions were actually constructed during times of decay and waning influence. He contrasts the decline of Papal power with the buildings of the Vatican:

The great days of the Papacy were over before the perfect setting was even planned. They were almost forgotten by the date of its completion.

Likewise, he cites the Palace of Nations (of the League of Nations) and the Palace of Versailles, both of which were completed after the power and prestige that generated them were gone.

In contrast to stillborn monumentality Parkinson points out that “During a period of exciting discovery or progress there is no time to plan the perfect headquarters.” If his book had been written some decades after 1957, Parkinson would surely have cited those pioneers of the silicon age who cobbled together their innovative technologies in their backyard garages and other such structures. As it is, Parkinson writes about “lively and productive” institutions, such as

A research establishment . . . housed, as a rule, on the ground floor of what was once a private house, a crazy wooden corridor leading to a corrugated iron hut in what was once the garden.

***

When institutions stop to think about their image, their grandeur, their importance, then it is time to worry about them. I was recently watching (on television) a hockey game being played at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. Wait a minute, I thought to myself, since when is it the “Wells Fargo” Center? I recalled the arena being otherly-named. So I looked it up on Wikipedia:

The arena was formerly known as Spectrum II (prior to construction), CoreStates Center, First Union Center and Wachovia Center.

One eaten-up bank after another. (As an aside, consider that the Mets' new ballpark in Flushing got tagged with the Citibank label during the height of the recent financial crisis.)

But perhaps the event that best illustrates the link between institutional grandeur-seeking and collapse took place in Houston, Texas in 2001, when they hauled down from the Houston Artros’ ballpark the name that celebrated one of the city’s leading corporations—Enron.

The Season

Four decades ago, as I was about to leave the English Department office late on the last day before the winter break, I noticed out of the corner of my eye one of the few remaining persons on the premises, our sweet, diminutive work-study student, a native of Sierra Leone. “Merry Christmas, Mohammed,” I called over to him.

As I walked in the gathering darkness towards the parking lot to retrieve my car, I thought: How weird was that! A Jew wishing a Muslim a Merry Christmas.

Fancy That!

"The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

***

A despiser of “this weak piping time of peace . . . these fair well-spoken days,” our first speaker, A, is a distinguished warrior, a nobleman of royal blood, unlike every noble and courtier in the room he has just entered:

Because I cannot flatter and speak fair,
Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive and cog,
Duck with French nods and apish courtesy,
I must be held a rancorous enemy.
Cannot a plain man live and think no harm,
But thus his simple truth must be abused
By silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?

*

Speaker B is another man renowned for his military prowess. Though not of royal blood, he is the heir to a substantial earldom. Here he relates his version of an interruption on the field of battle by a courtly messenger from the king:

I remember, when the fight was done,
When I was dry with rage and extreme toil,
Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,
Came there a certain lord, neat, and trimly dress'd,
Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin new reap'd
Show'd like a stubble-land at harvest-home;
He was perfumed like a milliner;
And 'twixt his finger and his thumb he held
A pouncet-box, which ever and anon
He gave his nose and took't away again;
Who therewith angry, when it next came there,
Took it in snuff; and still he smiled and talk'd,
And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,
He call'd them untaught knaves, unmannerly,
To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse
Betwixt the wind and his nobility.
With many holiday and lady terms
He question'd me; amongst the rest, demanded
My prisoners in your majesty's behalf.
I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold,
To be so pester'd with a popinjay,
Out of my grief and my impatience,
Answer'd neglectingly I know not what,
He should or he should not; for he made me mad
To see him shine so brisk and smell so sweet
And talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman
Of guns and drums and wounds,--God save the mark!

*

Speaker C is very high up the hierarchal ladder. The previous speaker was “pester'd with a popinjay”; when speaker C is approached by a young courtier, he asks his companion, “Dost know this waterfly?” and then deliberately mimics the “holiday and lady terms” of his interrupter:

Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in you; though,
I know, to divide him inventorially would dozy th'
arithmetic of memory, and yet but yaw neither in
respect of his quick sail. But, in the verity of
extolment, I take him to be a soul of great article,
and his infusion of such dearth and rareness as, to
make true diction of him, his semblable is his mirror,
and who else would trace him, his umbrage, nothing more.

*

Another military man is speaker D, but he is the equivalent of a modern non-commissioned officer, while the person whose manners offend him is the equivalent of a graduate from Officers Training School:

He takes her by the palm .
. . . Ay, smile upon
her, do; I will gyve thee in thine own courtship.
. . . it had
been better you had not kissed your three fingers so
oft, which now again you are most apt to play the
sir in. Very good; well kissed! an excellent
courtesy! 'tis so, indeed. Yet again your fingers
to your lips? would they were clyster-pipes for your sake!

*

Speaker E, a relation of the ruling family of the area, despises a certain member of a noted town family:

The pox of such antic, lisping, affecting
fantasticoes; these new tuners of accents! 'By Jesu,
a very good blade! a very tall man! a very good
whore!' Why, is not this a lamentable thing,
grandsire, that we should be thus afflicted with
these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these
perdona-mi's, who stand so much on the new form,
that they cannot at ease on the old bench? O, their
bones, their bones!

*

Speaker F loyally serves his master, the King; he hates the arrogance and airs of those (noble and otherwise) who abuse the trust of his lord:

Sir, 'tis my occupation to be plain:
I have seen better faces in my time
Than stands on any shoulder that I see
Before me at this instant.

And like speaker C is quick to mock a fanciful mouther of words:

Sir, in good sooth, in sincere verity,
Under the allowance of your great aspect,
Whose influence, like the wreath of radiant fire
On flickering Phoebus' front . . . .

***

The identity of the speakers:
A—Richard, Duke of Gloucester (later, King Richard III);
B—Henry Percy (Hotspur) in I Henry IV;
C—Hamlet (speaking about, then addressing Osric);
D—Iago (speaking about Michael Cassio) in Othello;
E—Mercutio (speaking about Tybalt) in Romeo and Juliet:
F—Kent in King Lear, speaking to the Duke of Cornwall.

***

The plain speakers versus the fancy. The blunt, straightforwardness of the former set against the rhetorical flights (indeed excessiveness) of the later. And shown also in the plainness of dress and manners opposed to the peacockery and mannerisms of the fashionable courtiers.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this opposition is the fact that it does not break down into an easy dichotomy of good guys versus bad guys. Look at the plain speakers: Richard III, a usurping, murderous villain; Hotspur, a gallant warrior, but a rebel against the crown; Hamlet, a good guy; “honest” Iago, a treacherous deceiver; Mercutio, a lively, fun-loving good guy; and Kent, an honorable servant of Lear, even when banished by the foolish king.

In a competition between “plain, honest speaking” and affected rhetorical flourishes, we would probably all back the former. But, as we see from Shakespeare’s examples, plainness does not guarantee honesty or honor.

In fact, we need not go back over 400 years for examples of this. Compare two “plain speakers” of about a half-century ago: the honorable “Give ‘em hell” Harry Truman and Richard (“I am not a crook”) Nixon, who resorted to plainness in the “Checkers” speech, which saved his political career (“Well, that's about it. That's what we have and that's what we owe. It isn't very much but Pat and I have the satisfaction that every dime that we've got is honestly ours. I should say this—that Pat doesn't have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat”).

Patriotism, as Dr. Johnson so famously proclaimed, “is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Perhaps the first refuge of a scoundrel (or of many of them) is plainspokenness. It is, of course, the perfect camouflage. And we don’t even have to duck back into the last century for a perfect example of this. The pretense of being “natural,” “real,” “honest” is easy to adopt: drag yourself out of the northern tundra, wink a lot at “people like us” and lie through your teeth (“Death Panels, anyone?).

***

It may very well be that the most over-the-top, campy, and affected person in the room could just be the most trustworthy.