Michael Davidow's Blog: The Henry Bell Project - Posts Tagged "teddy-white"
The Lost Season
Bell walked from his cluttered desk to blow off steam after an hour of effort. He stuck out his tongue at Baby Robert, who was standing in the hallway in short blue cotton pajama pants, and Baby Robert reciprocated in kind, laughing his raucous laugh. “Say,” Bell told his youngest boy. “I bet you didn’t know this.” “Bubble.” “Ted Williams just hit his five hundredth home run.” Baby Robert mulled that over but not for very long, before he decided on more laughter as the most appropriate response. “Mind over matter,” Bell stated. “He wills himself to get those hits. Did you watch your howdy-doody today?” His youngest child toddled away in search of his mother and better conversation.
(An open letter to S.V., Holly, Michigan.)
My wife forgives me many things. Our lawn is not as nice as our neighbor’s. I have the bad habit of resorting to scissors when our toddler son needs a pair of short pants, and all I can find are long pants. And I can’t stand watching baseball games with her.
The last game we watched together was the Red Sox beating the Cards in the World Series last year. At the end, while Boston’s players were still celebrating on the field, she commented on how the Cardinals in the dugout were ruining everything by sticking around. The cameras kept showing them looking sad. And I sputtered out how wrong she was: how the Cards had every right to be there; how they did not want to leave the field yet; how they did not want their summer to be over yet; and most importantly of all, how losing was part of baseball, for the love of jesus christ.
As it is with writing. And politics. And life. Needless to say, she thought I was nuts.
Since then, anyway, the Sox have lost a slew of games, traded away their best pitcher, and permanently rented the cellar of the A.L. East. And I myself have hardly been able to watch a single game this year. Not because I am a fair weather fan (I was born in Boston, so sue me). But rather because I have been too busy with work, with that toddler child of ours, and with stealing as many hours as possible for writing the prequel to Split Thirty. So busy that I have not been able to keep up this blog for all this time, or my book’s facebook page; so busy that I have not been marketing Split Thirty at all; even so busy that I neglected to note the fortieth anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation this past weekend, in any witty or subtle fashion whatsoever.
Other writers are a hell of a lot more astute than that. Rick Perlstein, for instance, managed to get his latest book on Nixon published just in time to reap all that free publicity— and I wish I had one speck of his ink.
Thankfully, though, S.V. of Holly, Michigan, who somehow stumbled across Split Thirty all on her own, and who is kind enough to say she liked it, picked up the slack and posted a link on Henry Bell’s facebook page to a fine account of Nixon’s last days. And she added a thought: that she has been wondering lately what Bell himself would have made of that whole situation.
Now we last left Henry in the spring of ’73, testifying to Congress and otherwise keeping mum. As I mention above, the book I’m writing now is a prequel, taking him back to the Kennedy era. And if I had to guess, I would say it will be another three years or so before Henry will be answering S.V. more directly. But here are some belated thoughts on that subject, in the meantime: because who is Perlstein, that he should get this field to himself?
And no, for the record, I have not read Perlstein (just as I have never looked at Mad Men on tee vee). I bet that he and I have sources in common, though (just like me and my imaginary buddy, Matthew Weiner): those still-unequaled histories written by Teddy White; the unfairly forgotten masterpieces of his fellow journalist, John Gunther; the wise and caring works of sociology that came out of the 50’s, too, by men like Riesman and Whyte. And what I have to say is this: that Watergate was an aberration; that its ugliness was personal, rather than institutional; that it caused a temporary fluctuation in the great and wide field of American politics, as had the Great Depression before it in a much more salient and significant way; and that forty years has sufficed to wash away nearly all of its effects.
Now Teddy White was excoriated in his day for having missed the big story of ’72; for having treated the Watergate scandal so cavalierly in his last Making of the President book. The New York critics really thought he had lost his touch. But I am still arguing the opposite. That he saw the ’72 election for what it was, instead: the latest jog to the right of the American body politic. Which every election since has only solidified.
In fact, if White had a flaw, it was that he started nearly all of his analysis with Roosevelt and the ‘30’s. So he saw his day’s rightward march as a new and true post-war event. I believe that had he gone back further, he would have seen something even more startling. He would have seen how truly conservative-- even reactionary-- this country has always been. And I believe he would have despaired. Because the fundamental go-it-aloneness of the American population, sustained over countless waves of immigration from nearly every other country in the world, says something difficult about humanity itself.
When you write from New York City, it must be hard to view the rest of the country as anything more than a curiosity. That damned New Yorker cartoon has more than a grain of truth to it. And it must be hard from the skyscraper canyons of Fifth Avenue—and even moreso from those new, weird, self-involved brownstone canyons of Brooklyn-- to realize how others actually live, and how those lives translate to their politics: the loneliness of all those highway drives; the shallowness of all those shopping plaza parking lots; the death of initiative that lies behind every new convenience. And all of that, applied to the reality of life: to falling in love, to suffering loss; to caring, and struggling, and dying. The bravery in that fight, and the pride involved.
But that loneliness, most of all. What we hate to admit, ever.
New Yorkers make loneliness into a sort of poetry. They are lonely in crowds. They are lonely and they treasure it, or they are lonely and they curse it. But they are never actually alone. They are part of the city, and they know it.
New Hampshire, where I am writing from, has belonged to this country from the beginning. When it was time to ratify its constitution in the 1780’s, they held a vote. Not enough people voted. So the legislature made a new rule: if not enough people voted, then approval would be assumed. And not enough people voted, again. New Hampshirites couldn’t be bothered. Two centuries before Ronald Reagan, they wanted to be left alone.
And I fear that our country’s modern political culture may well have more in common with New Hampshire in the 1780’s than with New York City, ever. I say that without pride; in fact, I say it with sadness. And most of all, I say that this presents a challenge: because the fight to find meaning in this life remains an individual one, a matter between each citizen and his or her conscience; a fight that only the strong can win, and many choose to ignore.
So what would Henry say today? He would say thank you, S.V., for prompting this note.
(An open letter to S.V., Holly, Michigan.)
My wife forgives me many things. Our lawn is not as nice as our neighbor’s. I have the bad habit of resorting to scissors when our toddler son needs a pair of short pants, and all I can find are long pants. And I can’t stand watching baseball games with her.
The last game we watched together was the Red Sox beating the Cards in the World Series last year. At the end, while Boston’s players were still celebrating on the field, she commented on how the Cardinals in the dugout were ruining everything by sticking around. The cameras kept showing them looking sad. And I sputtered out how wrong she was: how the Cards had every right to be there; how they did not want to leave the field yet; how they did not want their summer to be over yet; and most importantly of all, how losing was part of baseball, for the love of jesus christ.
As it is with writing. And politics. And life. Needless to say, she thought I was nuts.
Since then, anyway, the Sox have lost a slew of games, traded away their best pitcher, and permanently rented the cellar of the A.L. East. And I myself have hardly been able to watch a single game this year. Not because I am a fair weather fan (I was born in Boston, so sue me). But rather because I have been too busy with work, with that toddler child of ours, and with stealing as many hours as possible for writing the prequel to Split Thirty. So busy that I have not been able to keep up this blog for all this time, or my book’s facebook page; so busy that I have not been marketing Split Thirty at all; even so busy that I neglected to note the fortieth anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation this past weekend, in any witty or subtle fashion whatsoever.
Other writers are a hell of a lot more astute than that. Rick Perlstein, for instance, managed to get his latest book on Nixon published just in time to reap all that free publicity— and I wish I had one speck of his ink.
Thankfully, though, S.V. of Holly, Michigan, who somehow stumbled across Split Thirty all on her own, and who is kind enough to say she liked it, picked up the slack and posted a link on Henry Bell’s facebook page to a fine account of Nixon’s last days. And she added a thought: that she has been wondering lately what Bell himself would have made of that whole situation.
Now we last left Henry in the spring of ’73, testifying to Congress and otherwise keeping mum. As I mention above, the book I’m writing now is a prequel, taking him back to the Kennedy era. And if I had to guess, I would say it will be another three years or so before Henry will be answering S.V. more directly. But here are some belated thoughts on that subject, in the meantime: because who is Perlstein, that he should get this field to himself?
And no, for the record, I have not read Perlstein (just as I have never looked at Mad Men on tee vee). I bet that he and I have sources in common, though (just like me and my imaginary buddy, Matthew Weiner): those still-unequaled histories written by Teddy White; the unfairly forgotten masterpieces of his fellow journalist, John Gunther; the wise and caring works of sociology that came out of the 50’s, too, by men like Riesman and Whyte. And what I have to say is this: that Watergate was an aberration; that its ugliness was personal, rather than institutional; that it caused a temporary fluctuation in the great and wide field of American politics, as had the Great Depression before it in a much more salient and significant way; and that forty years has sufficed to wash away nearly all of its effects.
Now Teddy White was excoriated in his day for having missed the big story of ’72; for having treated the Watergate scandal so cavalierly in his last Making of the President book. The New York critics really thought he had lost his touch. But I am still arguing the opposite. That he saw the ’72 election for what it was, instead: the latest jog to the right of the American body politic. Which every election since has only solidified.
In fact, if White had a flaw, it was that he started nearly all of his analysis with Roosevelt and the ‘30’s. So he saw his day’s rightward march as a new and true post-war event. I believe that had he gone back further, he would have seen something even more startling. He would have seen how truly conservative-- even reactionary-- this country has always been. And I believe he would have despaired. Because the fundamental go-it-aloneness of the American population, sustained over countless waves of immigration from nearly every other country in the world, says something difficult about humanity itself.
When you write from New York City, it must be hard to view the rest of the country as anything more than a curiosity. That damned New Yorker cartoon has more than a grain of truth to it. And it must be hard from the skyscraper canyons of Fifth Avenue—and even moreso from those new, weird, self-involved brownstone canyons of Brooklyn-- to realize how others actually live, and how those lives translate to their politics: the loneliness of all those highway drives; the shallowness of all those shopping plaza parking lots; the death of initiative that lies behind every new convenience. And all of that, applied to the reality of life: to falling in love, to suffering loss; to caring, and struggling, and dying. The bravery in that fight, and the pride involved.
But that loneliness, most of all. What we hate to admit, ever.
New Yorkers make loneliness into a sort of poetry. They are lonely in crowds. They are lonely and they treasure it, or they are lonely and they curse it. But they are never actually alone. They are part of the city, and they know it.
New Hampshire, where I am writing from, has belonged to this country from the beginning. When it was time to ratify its constitution in the 1780’s, they held a vote. Not enough people voted. So the legislature made a new rule: if not enough people voted, then approval would be assumed. And not enough people voted, again. New Hampshirites couldn’t be bothered. Two centuries before Ronald Reagan, they wanted to be left alone.
And I fear that our country’s modern political culture may well have more in common with New Hampshire in the 1780’s than with New York City, ever. I say that without pride; in fact, I say it with sadness. And most of all, I say that this presents a challenge: because the fight to find meaning in this life remains an individual one, a matter between each citizen and his or her conscience; a fight that only the strong can win, and many choose to ignore.
So what would Henry say today? He would say thank you, S.V., for prompting this note.
