Dignity & Other Matters
I guess it had been too quiet in the Middle East.
Here’s an excerpt from an article at foxbusiness.com by Brooke Singman on the weekend hacking of the pipeline that brings gasoline from Texas to the Northeast: “Darkside announced its existence in August 2020, and claims it does not attack medical, educational or government targets — only large corporations — and that it donates a portion of what it takes to charity.” Real humanitarians, they are. Don’t the three entities cited — and their employees- use gasoline in their cars or ride in vehicles that use it?
Born on Long Island, Louis Auchincloss had a terrific literary run that spanned 1947–2010. He wrote more than 60 books, mostly novels and short story collections but also 18 works of non-fiction. He earned a law degree from the University of Virginia and practiced for many years. He served in the Navy during WWII. He was chairman of the Museum of the City of New York. Obviously, he was a renaissance man. I am fortunate to have come across Narcissa and Other Fables, published in 1983. The title is misleading, as it implies mythology. It is actually a collection of 12 slices of life focusing on the privileged, “old money” New Yorkers, of which the author was one. All take place in the 20th century. The title piece concerns a 1920’s rich middle age woman who poses nude for a renowned egomaniacal old artist. I particularly enjoyed two others. In Still Life a young man is doing a thesis on an artist who has gone out of fashion, trying to understand why there are no live humans in any of the paintings. The Cup of Coffee begins: “There are two kinds of people: those who want things badly enough to sacrifice dignity to obtain them, and those who do not.” To my chagrin, I know I often did the former. A bit later in the tale, the protagonist, a successful business executive, ruminates: “… I was haunted by the fear that I would show my fear…” The book is filled with insight into the human condition, written in as elegant a prose as I’ve ever read, almost completely devoid of pretension. The 213 pages of the hardcover edition read like considerably less. There are classical references, most of which I recognized, and foreign phrases, many of which I did not. There is a second section of pieces, most less than a page, titled Sketches of the Nineteen Seventies. I didn’t get much out of them. I will be the first to review the book at Amazon, rating it four on a scale of five. Only one Auchincloss work was adapted to the screen, the 1956 novel The Great World and Timothy Colt, for an episode of the Climax! TV series, Season 4, Episode 22, broadcast in March 1958. He passed away at 92 in 2010.
Good thing I layered up today. I wouldn’t say it was cold, but it wasn’t pleasant when clouds rolled in. My thanks to Bus Driver, who donated a David Baldacci thriller, and to the gentlemen who bought three books in Russian between them. Two were translations of French philosopher Montaigne.
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