Papa Humanity

 

When God made man, he said:

“Let there be papas,”

which is why man was made

in the image of a potato.

That's when God got really inspired,

when he conceived the idea of eyes

as he contemplated the potato he had made.

And he then pictured the human brain

with all its mushy white nerves

that we use to proclaim

our Promethean excellence.

 

Recently, in research for better wi-fi,

scientists have copied a page from God's blueprint

by arranging potatoes in the shape of men and women,

bagging, bundling, and belting them

into jumbo jet seats on “sold out” flights

to study the effects of radiation.

Potatoes absorb radiation at the exact rate

as scientists and other humans.

 

Whether humankind evolved from the potato

or God made human beings in the image of the potato

is, of course, a silly question.

If we are not living potatoes,

then why do we behave like potatoes?

 

Christians say that they eat God's only son

who was made in man's image,

yet this is clearly an anthropomorphic ritual

that imitates our eating of papas,

in whose image we are made.

Even in Rome, they call their religious leader Papa.

 

Just as papas come from the earth,

we will return to the earth

and partake of the immortality of papas.

 

No matter what you think about any of this,

we should all eat our papas with love.

 

Kevin T. McEneaney

At home with Francine Gray

Interview by Kevin T. McEneaney

Instead of dancing white snowflakes to announce the Christmas season, a nearly invisible pinprick drizzle of rain coated my windshield Monday afternoon as I pulled into the driveway of America’s grande dame of letters, Francine du Plessix Gray, who lives in nearby Warren, CT. Historian, essayist, novelist, raconteur, and memoirist, Gray cordially received me in her country home for a conversation about her latest novel, The Queen’s Lover (2012), which recounts the story of Marie Antoinette’s secret Swedish lover, Count Axel von Fersen. Based upon Fersen’s letters to his sister, the docu-drama novel portrays Fersen fighting with French troops for American independence and later orchestrating a failed attempt to extract Marie, who was often unfairly maligned, from Paris. The failure of her escape sealed her doom, leading her to the scaffold during the Terror. Ms. Gray assured me it was not difficult to write from a man’s point of view, that, for her, it was completely natural; and that in her youth she was often labeled a tomboy.

   Her memoir Them (2005), which won the National Book Critics Circle award in 2006, is considered to be a classic of that genre. The memoir contains all the drama of an ambitious family-chronicle novel as well as the brutal but compassionate honesty of noted masterpieces, such as the Autobiography of John Cowper Powys or the Memoirs of Elias Canetti. When I asked about the importance of honesty in writing, Gray cautioned me by saying that “Compassion makes criticism tolerable.” Them, which concludes with moving lyrical elegy, contains the eccentricity exhibited by Dostoevsky’s characters, the family drama of Turgenev, and the endearing pathos of Ivan Bunin’s short stories about émigré Russians in an alien world.

   Gray’s very readable biography of Madame de Staël (2008) creates a dramatic contest of wills between Madame de Staël and Napoleon Bonaparte, contrasting Napoleon’s whim and arrogance with de Staël’s balanced and tolerant humanism. I asked Ms. Gray if she thought that women might have more adaptive political gifts than men. She replied with a hesitant “perhaps,” yet then cited the marvelous work Golda Meier accomplished in founding Israel, the crucial role of Margaret Thatcher in stabilizing the finances of a teetering England, and the current success of Angela Merkel in providing the most significant governmental role in Europe. Among American politicians, she admires the retiring Olympia Snowe as a centrist Republican who listens to her constituency. Gray hopes that Hillary Clinton will decide to run for the presidency.

   Ms. Gray confessed that, at the moment, she was writing an article on Marie-Antoine Carême, Talleyrand’s great chef, who cooked for the King of England as well as the Tsar of Russia. Talleyrand, the subject of Roberto Calasso’s recent novel The Ruin of Kasch, was a gifted conversationalist, gourmet, and wine savant who believed that diplomacy began at the dinner table.

   Ms. Gray’s biography of Louise Colet, a poet and once-mistress of Flaubert, is another favorite book of mine. Ms. Gray was not aware that that biography as well as her early travel book on Hawaii had influenced the writings of Hunter S. Thompson, on whom I’ve done some recent research.

   Gray’s favorite writers? Saul Bellow, William Gass, Don DeLillo, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, Alice Munro, Camille Paglia, William Styron, and Philip Roth, a former friend whom she no longer sees because of her close friendship with Claire Bloom. She admires the versatile and accessible writing of David Eggers, yet wonders if his writing measures up to that of her favorite icons. Gray has just read Katie Roiphe’s current collection of essays In Praise of Messy Lives and highly recommends this provocative book. The World as I Found It (1987), a novel about the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein by Bruce Duffy, remains one her favorite novels in recent decades. At the moment she is about to read Pramoedya Toer’s great Indonesian novel (a favorite of mine) This Earth of Mankind (1980).  

   When I asked Ms Gray about her comment in an old interview that “art is form of revenge against mortality,” she said that she would now change that quip to: “art is form of revenge against reality”—that life is transient, and she now accepts completely the fact of mortality. She mused that all of life, even death, is transformation.

   Ms. Gray loves living in the country and has long lived in Warren, but many of her lifelong friends and neighbors, like the Millers and Styrons, have passed away. Gray finds solace in her sons and grandchildren. Thaddeus lives nearby, and Luke lives in Brooklyn. Luke, a serious painter, has upcoming show next year at the Gary Snyder Gallery in Manhattan.

   Ms. Gray remains a devoted fan of opera, and we concluded our discussion of art by mutually admitting our admiration for the superb Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, yet as I drove home through the rolling  hills of our climate-warmed mist, I glanced at the soft, brown earth and could only imagine the snowflakes from Dmitri’s various recorded lieder. I then recollected the wisdom of Francine’s philosophical observation: art is revenge against reality.

A Philosophical Cat

 

During my life I’ve had about twenty cats,

some cherished, some endured as a martyrdom,

but one cat above all I recall with surpassing love—

Pascal, named after the discoverer of the vacuum.

 

Named because of his quizzical, diffident curiosity

that appreciated music, dialectic, and nuance.

Yet it was his calm accepting joy in life

in which I found delight and comfort.

 

I could stroke him electric without his biting me,

yet he was never demanding of attention.

His only flaw was that he played with victims

before cracking their skulls with toothsome yawn.

 

Enticing a mouse (okay) or chipmunk (not okay),

he would fondly play catch and let go for ten minutes or so,

then the poor chipmunk would discover too late

that the game ended with splattered brains.

 

Pascal lived a long life, seventeen years.

He was good at avoiding road vehicles,

liked to prance on the roof of the house,

though sometimes cried for help to get down.

 

Later, at the end, he disappeared for several days.

He returned bloated with white writhing maggots.

Sandy bathed him and attempted to give him medicine,

but he refused it, laying immobile on the kitchen floor,

 

drinking only water, reclining in his toweled box,

sleeping, but making the occasional farewell mewl

when a member of the family passed by.

Pascal opened his eyes at the sound of my tread.

 

Not a whimper escaped his throat at all

until I stopped to give a long, pitying look.

He opened his eyes, hooked me hard in the eye,

me-owed why, why, and expired like a god.

 

—Kevin T. McEneaney

The Automobile Snob

The Automobile Snob

Everybody knows an auto snob. There’s always some guy down the block or two blocks away who has a Sunday Corvette stashed in his garage, or the weekend lady who drives her antique Duesenberg Roadster, the “ultimate car,” with the top down in spring as flowering hyacinth whips by her reddening ears. There’s the slim, dapper retiree who babies his polished Porsche with advanced stereo system to show off to five weekend guests a year. There’s the nostalgic rockabilly who drives to the dry-cleaners in his white Ford Fairlane convertible with red leather interior and slipping transmission. Despite the phenomenal repair bills, there are those who regularly drive a Jaguar with a rusty chassis or a sporty car suffering a terminal engine illness like the white Mitsubishi convertible with its paper-thin plastic Lego-like fenders. A couple of lucky nags at Belmont once bought my father a gleaming Model-T Ford that he drove around the neighborhood with me honking the big rubber-ball horn before he had to sell it to avoid foreclosure on the house after having a couple of bad weekends at the race track.

   Some opt for sound upscale brand names like Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, or Cadillac. Advertisers remain well-aware that people purchase cars on the basis of status fantasies, the moving-on-up thing, or that for a man his car is his legitimate, legal, and safe-sex mistress. Teenagers and those in their seventies jump for the acceleration stats for different reasons—the former for the rush or casual stop-light drag-racing, the latter because they fear their reaction time has slowed down to a Bingo-night rhythm. Women are usually hooked by the safety angle, as well as the easy drivability that will cause some drivers to nod off at the wheel and smash into an historic oak tree. Occasionally, a car model becomes famous for its longevity and people are willing to purchase such a model at an inflated price just before the pistons blow. I know from experience because I once kept a 1997 Honda Accord much too long when I could have sold it for a profit.

   But I’m the kind of man who doesn’t care what he drives as long as the car travels from point A to B, even if the suspension is shot, yet preferably with not unreasonable gas mileage or outrageous upkeep. So you see, I’m not at all a car snob. Yes, there are some of us still out there running around with jumper cables who just want to get to work and have a pocket litany of car woes at hand in order to avoid driving to one’s father-in-law’s house or the friend who’s addicted to a vile brand of Scotch I’d only offer to an enemy. So I pride myself in not being a snob and look down upon everyone who passes me on the left, reserving special epithets for those who pass me on the right.

   In my humble opinion the only antique car you can own without being a snob is a blue Hotchkiss. That’s because F. Scott Fitzgerald bought one. Scotty was a good fellow and not a snob. When the car pistons blew up after twenty-thousand miles, Scotty was in shock. How could such a well-made car die so quickly? Scotty was amazed when a wealthy neighbor explained to him that a car burned oil and you had to put more oil in every so-many thousand miles. Poor Scotty—he had to spend another ten months churning out marvelous short stories, red-eyed and sleepless, crumpling page after page into the waste basket until the break of dawn, so that he could buy another car. But Scotty learned his lesson. When his wife Zelda crashed and went into a lunatic asylum, he didn’t go out and buy a new wife or new car. He never even drove again. In sober moments he fiddled with film scripts which drove him to drink and in the evenings he wrote maudlin letters to his only daughter on whom he doted.

   But Scotty had written The Great Gatsby, that melancholy jazz serenade to ruthless love in such gorgeously sculpted prose. Why hasn’t Millbrook produced its own Gatsby masterpiece? I completely understand why the rest of the country has not been up to it, yet I know Millbrook has all the qualities and qualifications for that project. I keep asking myself why? Why not? Why? As my Hotchkiss sans seatbelt speeds by Stissing Lake….

—Gonzo Lorenzo, a pen name for Kevin T. McEnenaey

Gonzo Lorenzo’s columns are inspired by William Thackeray’s humor columns on the gentle art of snobbery that appeared in mid-nineteenth century Punch.    

The Sandwich Snob

The sandwich snob is all around us, invading the most delightful conversations with the braggadocio of trivial snobbery. This fault is particularly acute with truck drivers and construction workers, but you find it among lawyers and news reporters as well as anybody in any occupation. The sandwich snob will stake the claim that there are only two or three deli emporiums in the state that know how to make an edible sandwich, but these two delis are located, say, in Brooklyn or Buffalo, somewhere that is nowhere near at hand. The claim can not be easily checked. It might be that these remote delis, which may as well be in Mexico, are owned by the claimant’s brother-in-law or ex-girlfriend. Or that they offer a special sandwich that you would find disgusting to eat. Or there is the common claim that a simple ham sandwich can be made to taste better than the best beluga caviar if only so-and-so would slap the special home-made mustard on the bread. I can’t say that I’ve met all the sandwich snobs of the county, but I assure you they are legion. It’s difficult to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles or the Town Hall without bumping into one. 

As a result of this epidemic, I have arrived at a new policy. I never bring up the subject of sandwiches or even mention where I would prefer to have them made, lest some sandwich snob launch into a tirade about every sandwich they have consumed in towns and cities that I have never heard of. There is too much information out there and I must shelter my brain from some of it, or else I won’t be able to recall the colleges that baseball, basketball, and football players attended before they made their mark in pro leagues. I keep forgetting some important information that I need at home, such as what plant my wife has sunk into the clay and I often find myself trampling down a nascent lily or destroying a dahlia on my way to the mucked-up driveway, then being unable to shunt off my feeling of guilt until the evening diner reveals her astonished outrage, to which I can only shrug my shoulders and recall some of the favorite sandwiches I have consumed in Manhattan, Millbrook, and Millerton.

While I love sandwiches and remain grateful to the great Earl of Sandwich who sponsored the colonial depravities of Captain Cook while bestowing his lordly name and fame upon the unseemly custom of eating that had been adopted by midnight card sharks in eighteenth century England before it became the rage as a late-night snack among the noble aristocracy of the nineteenth century. The very fact that the great earl allowed his name to be tagged onto such an unseemly way of consuming food was in no way an act of snobbery, but a gesture of populist posturing. A quick perusal of the most common high school textbook reveals that earls were never snobs and that their only fault lay in their misdirected desire to exterminate native populations around the globe, all those who had never heard of a proper English sandwich laden Coleman’s mustard.

—Gonzo Lorenzo

Gonzo Lorenzo’s columns are inspired by William Thackeray’s humor columns on the gentle art of snobbery that appeared in mid-nineteenth century Punch. 

you can read some of my recent articles here: http://themillbrookindependent.com/search/node/McEneaney

Learning to Compute

Just turned two and attempting to walk,

I loved crawling fast up my grandfather’s stairs,

the red rug tightly bound to the steps,

the landing above a joyous goal.

He would shout, “Take it easy,”

repeating it thrice in haste.

But I paid no attention

for I so enjoyed the speed,

the excitement of an ambling gait.

Forbidden to enter his room

where the shades were always drawn,

even in the summer heat,

there glowed a strange object,

a thing of wonder in the dark:

a radioactive clock,

its illuminated numbers

a wondrous mystery

closeted in the dark.

The glowing clock hand

imparted an aura of death.

All my life I have been

afraid of numbers:

their immensity,

their finality,

their eloquence

that makes me feel insignificant,

a two-eyed digit

facing a Medusa,

my heart turning to stone.

Yet when I look up

at a dark night sky

away from city glow,

I’m comfortable

with an overwhelming

number of stars and galaxies,

and feel fearless—

like I’m floating

and suckling mother’s milk

in the Milky Way,

exhaling filaments of joy

with nothing to say.