from Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford:
In a state that was no stranger to white supremacists, few cities were as open about their racism as Dallas in the 1920s, years in which the Ku Klux Klan controlled almost every significant position in local government. Looking back decades later, D magazine termed ’20-era Dallas “the most racist city in America,” and it’s hard to argue.
It’s ironic that the newspaper that eventually brought the Dallas Klan to its knees, The Dallas Morning News, would give birth to a creation that probably did as much as any to popularize the Anglocentric myths of the Alamo. It was a comic strip, a hugely popular component of metropolitan newspapers at a time when editors triggered bidding wars to see who got to print the latest episodes of Barney Google and Snuffy Smith.
The owner of the Morning News was a proponent of public education, and in 1926 an editor suggested the paper develop its own comic strip devoted to Texas history. A columnist named John Rosenfield Jr. wrote it, and the paper’s cartoonist Jack I. Patton drew it. They called it Texas History Movies—at the time, comic strips were sometimes called “movies in print.” Between October 1926 and June 1928, the paper cranked out 428 episodes, a sizable number of which were stunningly racist. Texas History Movies referred to Mexican-Americans as “greasers” and “tamale eaters,” mocked African-Americans as stupid, and called Native Americans “redskins.” One panel declared that Lipan, the name of an Apache tribe, meant “vagabone or bum.” It portrayed Texas slaves as “unwittingly happy,” as one modern reviewer puts it, and stated that all enslaved Black people were fully educated and free to change masters at will. Seriously. This was in a major Texas city in 1928.
Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Tuesday, August 30, 2022
the last book I ever read (Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth, excerpt nine)
from Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford:
Fifty years after the fall of the Alamo, Texas pride was already very much a thing. Writers such as Yoakum, Potter, and Pennybacker had created a rich folk history of the revolution and inculcated a collective memory of how the state came into being, what modern scholars sometimes refer to as the Texas Creation Myth. Anglos embraced the folklore with gusto, proud of their unique history. And as far as most were concerned, every word was gospel truth.
Which became a bit of a problem after the first academic historians arrived in Texas with the opening of the University of Texas in 1883. The professional study of American history in the late 1800s was very much in its infancy, at least in Texas, and after 1893 was heavily influenced by the so-called frontier thesis advanced by a University of Wisconsin professor named Frederick Jackson Turner. In a paper delivered before the American Historical Association that year, Turner argued that the Anglo conquest of the American West generated a spirit of freedom, democracy, and egalitarianism and created a uniquely American culture. This was history by, for, and about the white man; Native Americans, Black people, and Latinos were marginal characters at best, two-legged buffalo at worst. To Turner, America’s exquisite society more than justified the barbarous means used to achieve God’s will. Practically overnight it became law in history department nationally. It would remain so for decades.
Fifty years after the fall of the Alamo, Texas pride was already very much a thing. Writers such as Yoakum, Potter, and Pennybacker had created a rich folk history of the revolution and inculcated a collective memory of how the state came into being, what modern scholars sometimes refer to as the Texas Creation Myth. Anglos embraced the folklore with gusto, proud of their unique history. And as far as most were concerned, every word was gospel truth.
Which became a bit of a problem after the first academic historians arrived in Texas with the opening of the University of Texas in 1883. The professional study of American history in the late 1800s was very much in its infancy, at least in Texas, and after 1893 was heavily influenced by the so-called frontier thesis advanced by a University of Wisconsin professor named Frederick Jackson Turner. In a paper delivered before the American Historical Association that year, Turner argued that the Anglo conquest of the American West generated a spirit of freedom, democracy, and egalitarianism and created a uniquely American culture. This was history by, for, and about the white man; Native Americans, Black people, and Latinos were marginal characters at best, two-legged buffalo at worst. To Turner, America’s exquisite society more than justified the barbarous means used to achieve God’s will. Practically overnight it became law in history department nationally. It would remain so for decades.
Monday, August 29, 2022
the last book I ever read (Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth, excerpt eight)
from Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford:
We could cite another dozen examples along these lines, but this stuff gets pretty tiresome. Not all such early books were so doctrinaire, though. One or two were actually critical, most notably The History of Texas, written by a caustic Gonzales seminarian named David Barnett Edward. A rare Texas Tory, Edward was no fan of Texans or their revolt. He praised Santa Anna’s immigration policies as “enlightened,” going on to proclaim the Americans had “by their perverse conduct, forfeited every claim to protection from civil law.” Published in 1836, Edward’s book prompted Texas’s first literary uproar, and not only because it plagiarized sections of Mary Holley’s work. Stephen F. Austin termed it “a slander on the people of Texas.”
The Alamo did not figure prominently in any of this work. Where it was mentioned, authors had little to offer beyond what had been in the newspapers. With historians stymied, at least for the moment, writers of fiction filled the void, which by and large was not a good thing; Mary Holley was practically Chaucer compared with this crew. Much of this “literature” consists of trashy potboilers written by outsiders using the Texas Revolt as a fresh backdrop, typically with Santa Anna or a stand-in portrayed as a Mexican version of Snidely Whiplash. The late University of Texas professor Don Graham points out the startling number of early Texas novels used as vehicles for anti-Catholicism, the Texians fighting the “dark designs of priests and the hierarchical and undemocratic structure of the Catholic church.” Forget Santa Anna; the real enemy was Father Tim. The evil priest in 1888’s Remember the Alamo, to cite but one example, is consumed with hatred for Texas Protestants. “If these American heretics were only in my power!” he seethes. “I would cut a throat—just one throat—every day of my life.”
It's a short hop from anticlericalism to overt racism, which would infuse Alamo-based fiction after the mid-1800s. In these books, the Mexican characters are inevitably cruel, dirty, and treacherous. In many they are referred to as “greasers.” An 1856 “historical romance” set during the the revolution helpfully imagines how visitors to Matamoros coined the term: “The people look greasy, their clothes are greasy, their dogs are greasy, their houses are greasy—everywhere grease and filth.” (You know racists are pretty serious when they start in on pets.) It just goes one and on. In a 1909 Texas novel, The Trapper’s Bride, the author calls the Mexican army “savage legions . . . given to every kind of horrible excesses, and whose arms were deeply stained with the blood of helpless old men, feeble women and innocent children.”
We could cite another dozen examples along these lines, but this stuff gets pretty tiresome. Not all such early books were so doctrinaire, though. One or two were actually critical, most notably The History of Texas, written by a caustic Gonzales seminarian named David Barnett Edward. A rare Texas Tory, Edward was no fan of Texans or their revolt. He praised Santa Anna’s immigration policies as “enlightened,” going on to proclaim the Americans had “by their perverse conduct, forfeited every claim to protection from civil law.” Published in 1836, Edward’s book prompted Texas’s first literary uproar, and not only because it plagiarized sections of Mary Holley’s work. Stephen F. Austin termed it “a slander on the people of Texas.”
The Alamo did not figure prominently in any of this work. Where it was mentioned, authors had little to offer beyond what had been in the newspapers. With historians stymied, at least for the moment, writers of fiction filled the void, which by and large was not a good thing; Mary Holley was practically Chaucer compared with this crew. Much of this “literature” consists of trashy potboilers written by outsiders using the Texas Revolt as a fresh backdrop, typically with Santa Anna or a stand-in portrayed as a Mexican version of Snidely Whiplash. The late University of Texas professor Don Graham points out the startling number of early Texas novels used as vehicles for anti-Catholicism, the Texians fighting the “dark designs of priests and the hierarchical and undemocratic structure of the Catholic church.” Forget Santa Anna; the real enemy was Father Tim. The evil priest in 1888’s Remember the Alamo, to cite but one example, is consumed with hatred for Texas Protestants. “If these American heretics were only in my power!” he seethes. “I would cut a throat—just one throat—every day of my life.”
It's a short hop from anticlericalism to overt racism, which would infuse Alamo-based fiction after the mid-1800s. In these books, the Mexican characters are inevitably cruel, dirty, and treacherous. In many they are referred to as “greasers.” An 1856 “historical romance” set during the the revolution helpfully imagines how visitors to Matamoros coined the term: “The people look greasy, their clothes are greasy, their dogs are greasy, their houses are greasy—everywhere grease and filth.” (You know racists are pretty serious when they start in on pets.) It just goes one and on. In a 1909 Texas novel, The Trapper’s Bride, the author calls the Mexican army “savage legions . . . given to every kind of horrible excesses, and whose arms were deeply stained with the blood of helpless old men, feeble women and innocent children.”
Sunday, August 28, 2022
the last book I ever read (Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth, excerpt seven)
from Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford:
De Zavala was encouraged to find a pair of Tejanos, San Antonio’s Ángel Navarro and Francisco Ruiz, who were in attendance. He bunked with them in a rented carpentry shop. But on the very first day, the trio realized they had been badly outflanked. A delegate named George Childress presented the convention with a declaration of independence; to the surprise of almost everyone, and the evident dismay of de Zavala, it was adopted unanimously the next day. De Zavala signed it too. He had little choice. It was clearly going to pass anyway. Afterward, there was a constitution to write. De Zavala took the lead crafting its section on executive powers, and sat on the defense and flag-design committees. The Texas constitution remains the only one in world history to guarantee slavery and actually outlaw any and all emancipation. No free Black people were to be allowed. In a direct reflection of cotton’s wholesale dependence on slave labor, Texas was to be the most militant slavocracy anywhere.
De Zavala was encouraged to find a pair of Tejanos, San Antonio’s Ángel Navarro and Francisco Ruiz, who were in attendance. He bunked with them in a rented carpentry shop. But on the very first day, the trio realized they had been badly outflanked. A delegate named George Childress presented the convention with a declaration of independence; to the surprise of almost everyone, and the evident dismay of de Zavala, it was adopted unanimously the next day. De Zavala signed it too. He had little choice. It was clearly going to pass anyway. Afterward, there was a constitution to write. De Zavala took the lead crafting its section on executive powers, and sat on the defense and flag-design committees. The Texas constitution remains the only one in world history to guarantee slavery and actually outlaw any and all emancipation. No free Black people were to be allowed. In a direct reflection of cotton’s wholesale dependence on slave labor, Texas was to be the most militant slavocracy anywhere.
Saturday, August 27, 2022
the last book I ever read (Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth, excerpt six)
from Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford:
Born into a frontier family in what’s now eastern Tennessee in 1786, Crockett spent his early years driving cattle and serving as a scout during the Creek War and Jackson’s Florida invasion. Afterward, settling as a farmer near the Alabama border, he gained election to the state legislature in 1821. When a flood wiped out the farm, Crockett and his family—now deeply in debt—were forced to move into a cabin in northwest Tennessee. This was serious frontier living, and it was there that Crockett displayed a keen talent for, of all things, killing bears. By one count he shot 105 during a single season.
History would have forgotten Crockett had he not developed his second talent: telling people about killing all those bears. It began, we are told, when a dandyish legislator teased Crockett as “the gentleman from the “cane”—“cane” apparently being an obscure Tennesseeism for a heavy forest. Crockett capitalized on the incident by turning his teasing image as a backwood backwoodsman into a strength, pouring it on thick with tales of killing “bahrs” and “Injuns” and river pirates, at the same time making fun of the rich and pompous. Once this act caught on, he adopted a syrupy drawl and syntax; the word “known,” for instance, became “know’d.”
Crockett’s was a gentle kind of frontier populism, and it worked. He leveraged his popularity into a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington. But what would transform Crockett from a curiosity into a celebrity was Americans’ newfound appetite for tales of life along the growing country’s frontiers. The 1820s brought a flowering of such literature, notably James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, featuring the woodsman Natty Bumppo and including The Last of the Mohicans, one of the century’s most popular books. These books renewed interest in Daniel Boone, who became America’s first popular hero.
Born into a frontier family in what’s now eastern Tennessee in 1786, Crockett spent his early years driving cattle and serving as a scout during the Creek War and Jackson’s Florida invasion. Afterward, settling as a farmer near the Alabama border, he gained election to the state legislature in 1821. When a flood wiped out the farm, Crockett and his family—now deeply in debt—were forced to move into a cabin in northwest Tennessee. This was serious frontier living, and it was there that Crockett displayed a keen talent for, of all things, killing bears. By one count he shot 105 during a single season.
History would have forgotten Crockett had he not developed his second talent: telling people about killing all those bears. It began, we are told, when a dandyish legislator teased Crockett as “the gentleman from the “cane”—“cane” apparently being an obscure Tennesseeism for a heavy forest. Crockett capitalized on the incident by turning his teasing image as a backwood backwoodsman into a strength, pouring it on thick with tales of killing “bahrs” and “Injuns” and river pirates, at the same time making fun of the rich and pompous. Once this act caught on, he adopted a syrupy drawl and syntax; the word “known,” for instance, became “know’d.”
Crockett’s was a gentle kind of frontier populism, and it worked. He leveraged his popularity into a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington. But what would transform Crockett from a curiosity into a celebrity was Americans’ newfound appetite for tales of life along the growing country’s frontiers. The 1820s brought a flowering of such literature, notably James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, featuring the woodsman Natty Bumppo and including The Last of the Mohicans, one of the century’s most popular books. These books renewed interest in Daniel Boone, who became America’s first popular hero.
Friday, August 26, 2022
the last book I ever read (Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth, excerpt five)
from Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford:
Tall, sandy-haired, and charismatic, Bowie was an early prototype, perhaps the first, of the roaming western gunfighter who sought to parlay his fame—and he was famous in his day—into the big score he never quite pulled off. Raised in a large frontier Louisiana family, he grew to become a strapping backwoodsman adept with guns and knives. After surviving the 1819 Long Expedition, he went into business with two of his brothers, and here his story darkens considerably. The Bowies’ big moneymaking scheme, the venture that defined Jim’s early adulthood, revolved around two unsavory projects, smuggling illegal African slaves into the United States and flat-out real estate fraud.
The importation of enslaved people into the United States had been illegal since 1808, but as we’ve seen, that created an opportunity for Jean and Pierre Lafitte, who smuggled African slaves from Cuba and sold them for a pittance at their base on Galveston Island. The Bowies signed on as middlemen, driving groups of emaciated, enslaved Black people into Louisiana. At the border they cloaked themselves as customs officers, earning a reward of half their purchase price. Their costs halved, they then swooped in and bought their own slaves at auction, giving them legal title to resell them. The profits were huge.
Jim Bowie used his share of the profits to launch a land fraud “on an almost industrial scale,” as one biographer, William C. Davis, put it. In 1821 he forged dozens, perhaps hundreds, of deeds and used them to snatch up thousands of acres in unclaimed land all across northern Louisiana. A lengthy investigation ensued, but at some point all of Bowie’s paperwork mysteriously disappeared from the investigators’ offices, ending the probe.
Tall, sandy-haired, and charismatic, Bowie was an early prototype, perhaps the first, of the roaming western gunfighter who sought to parlay his fame—and he was famous in his day—into the big score he never quite pulled off. Raised in a large frontier Louisiana family, he grew to become a strapping backwoodsman adept with guns and knives. After surviving the 1819 Long Expedition, he went into business with two of his brothers, and here his story darkens considerably. The Bowies’ big moneymaking scheme, the venture that defined Jim’s early adulthood, revolved around two unsavory projects, smuggling illegal African slaves into the United States and flat-out real estate fraud.
The importation of enslaved people into the United States had been illegal since 1808, but as we’ve seen, that created an opportunity for Jean and Pierre Lafitte, who smuggled African slaves from Cuba and sold them for a pittance at their base on Galveston Island. The Bowies signed on as middlemen, driving groups of emaciated, enslaved Black people into Louisiana. At the border they cloaked themselves as customs officers, earning a reward of half their purchase price. Their costs halved, they then swooped in and bought their own slaves at auction, giving them legal title to resell them. The profits were huge.
Jim Bowie used his share of the profits to launch a land fraud “on an almost industrial scale,” as one biographer, William C. Davis, put it. In 1821 he forged dozens, perhaps hundreds, of deeds and used them to snatch up thousands of acres in unclaimed land all across northern Louisiana. A lengthy investigation ensued, but at some point all of Bowie’s paperwork mysteriously disappeared from the investigators’ offices, ending the probe.
Thursday, August 25, 2022
the last book I ever read (Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth, excerpt four)
from Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford:
The loudest such voice, the abolitionist Benjamin Lundy, had traveled widely in Texas between 1832 and 1835, and knew many of those involved, from Juan Almonte to Sam Houston. When the war was over, he would write a pamphlet alleging that it was initiated by a conspiracy of Northern land speculators and Texas slaveholders whose intention was to bring Texas into the United States—but only after chopping it into as many as fifteen states, thereby upsetting the country’s fragile balance of free and slave states.
Lundy would find an adherent in the former president John Quincy Adams, by then a Massachusetts congressman and a leading abolitionist. “The war now raging in Texas,” Adams charged, “is a Mexican civil war, and a war for the re-establishment of Slavery where it was abolished. It is not a servile war, but a war between Slavery and Emancipation, and every possible effort has been made to drive us into this war, on the side of slavery.”
The loudest such voice, the abolitionist Benjamin Lundy, had traveled widely in Texas between 1832 and 1835, and knew many of those involved, from Juan Almonte to Sam Houston. When the war was over, he would write a pamphlet alleging that it was initiated by a conspiracy of Northern land speculators and Texas slaveholders whose intention was to bring Texas into the United States—but only after chopping it into as many as fifteen states, thereby upsetting the country’s fragile balance of free and slave states.
Lundy would find an adherent in the former president John Quincy Adams, by then a Massachusetts congressman and a leading abolitionist. “The war now raging in Texas,” Adams charged, “is a Mexican civil war, and a war for the re-establishment of Slavery where it was abolished. It is not a servile war, but a war between Slavery and Emancipation, and every possible effort has been made to drive us into this war, on the side of slavery.”
Wednesday, August 24, 2022
the last book I ever read (Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth, excerpt three)
from Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford:
There was a new face around the campfire that evening: Sam Houston, who had wobbled into camp on a tiny yellow stallion. Everyone knew Houston’s tale of woe, if not the man himself. He was hands down the most famous person in Texas, a politician once considered so gifted that, had he not blown up so spectacularly, he might have reached the White House. Instead, he ended up a blackout drunk living with the Cherokee in what is now Oklahoma.
Born in Virginia in 1793, the same year as Austin, Houston grew up in frontier Tennessee. No fan of working the family farm, he ran away to live with a Cherokee family at sixteen. He later joined the army and was severely wounded during the Creek War while serving under Andrew Jackson, who became his mentor. After the army, he became a lawyer, got himself named Tennessee’s solicitor general, and was then elected to Congress in 1823. With Jackson’s backing, he was elected governor in 1827.
He was a rising star on the national stage. People whispered he might succeed Jackson as president. But then, in 1829, he married a plantation owner’s daughter named Eliza Allen. Weeks later she left him—apparently for another man—and Houston fell apart. He resigned as governor and decamped to live with Cherokee friends in Oklahoma. He never talked again about what had happened.
There was a new face around the campfire that evening: Sam Houston, who had wobbled into camp on a tiny yellow stallion. Everyone knew Houston’s tale of woe, if not the man himself. He was hands down the most famous person in Texas, a politician once considered so gifted that, had he not blown up so spectacularly, he might have reached the White House. Instead, he ended up a blackout drunk living with the Cherokee in what is now Oklahoma.
Born in Virginia in 1793, the same year as Austin, Houston grew up in frontier Tennessee. No fan of working the family farm, he ran away to live with a Cherokee family at sixteen. He later joined the army and was severely wounded during the Creek War while serving under Andrew Jackson, who became his mentor. After the army, he became a lawyer, got himself named Tennessee’s solicitor general, and was then elected to Congress in 1823. With Jackson’s backing, he was elected governor in 1827.
He was a rising star on the national stage. People whispered he might succeed Jackson as president. But then, in 1829, he married a plantation owner’s daughter named Eliza Allen. Weeks later she left him—apparently for another man—and Houston fell apart. He resigned as governor and decamped to live with Cherokee friends in Oklahoma. He never talked again about what had happened.
Tuesday, August 23, 2022
the last book I ever read (Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth, excerpt two)
from Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford:
Reaching the capital, Austin had one solid reason for hope: Santa Anna. This is one of Texas history’s great ironies. This, after all, is the man generations of Texas politicians have compared to every loathsome dictator from Adolf Hitler to Saddam Hussein, the Voldemort of Texas schoolchildren’s nightmares, the great Mexican boygeyman, a bloodthirsty killer, a fiendish, mustache-twirling despot guilty of every conceivable crime from mass murder to body odor. Okay, that’s overdoing it. But not by much. If Texans could elect a National Villain, and we’re a little surprised they haven’t tried, it would be Santa Anna hands down. Lee Harvey Oswald couldnt’ve even force a runoff.
Yet few remember today that before Santa Anna was Texas’s enemy, he was its friend. He is a singular figure in Mexican history, a man who held the presidency eleven times in twenty-two years. In person he was nothing special, wavy black hair, sallow complexion, a man of breeding and bearing and unswerving confidence. Despite all the bad movies you’ve seen, he was not flamboyant or a shouter; he was usually the quietest man in the room.
Reaching the capital, Austin had one solid reason for hope: Santa Anna. This is one of Texas history’s great ironies. This, after all, is the man generations of Texas politicians have compared to every loathsome dictator from Adolf Hitler to Saddam Hussein, the Voldemort of Texas schoolchildren’s nightmares, the great Mexican boygeyman, a bloodthirsty killer, a fiendish, mustache-twirling despot guilty of every conceivable crime from mass murder to body odor. Okay, that’s overdoing it. But not by much. If Texans could elect a National Villain, and we’re a little surprised they haven’t tried, it would be Santa Anna hands down. Lee Harvey Oswald couldnt’ve even force a runoff.
Yet few remember today that before Santa Anna was Texas’s enemy, he was its friend. He is a singular figure in Mexican history, a man who held the presidency eleven times in twenty-two years. In person he was nothing special, wavy black hair, sallow complexion, a man of breeding and bearing and unswerving confidence. Despite all the bad movies you’ve seen, he was not flamboyant or a shouter; he was usually the quietest man in the room.
Monday, August 22, 2022
the last book I ever read (Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth, excerpt one)
from Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford:
From the beginning, the prospect of American settlements in Texas was entirely dependent on slavery. It was no secret. Everyone knew it. Austin would say it over and over and over: The only reason Americans would come to Texas was to farm cotton, and they would not do that without slaves. They really didn’t know any other way.
Slavery hadn’t been an issue under Spanish law, which allowed it. Wealthy Tejanos like the Seguíns owned slaves themselves. But slavery would be a problem in the new country of Mexico. As backward as many Americans liked to portray it, the new Mexican government was dedicated to liberal ideals. Equal rights for all races had been the revolution’s rallying cry; in a land where 60 percent of the population was of mixed race, this was a powerful message. A new wave of liberal legislators, many committed to liberty and equality for all, thought slavery an abomination. There were only eight thousand slaves left in Mexico anyway? Who really cared if they were set free?
Stephen F. Austin, that’s who. Not that you’d know it from most history books. The best biography of Austin devotes fifteen pages to the year he spent lobbying in Mexico City, but of his efforts attempting to make sure his people could keep their slaves, there is but a single sentence. Austin was not some pro-slavery zealot. He belonged to a long line of Southern intellectuals going back to Thomas Jefferson who understood slavery was morally repugnant but who nevertheless owned slaves because it was the best way to make money. In other words, Stephen F. Austin was a sellout, a not-uncommon kind in his day.
From the beginning, the prospect of American settlements in Texas was entirely dependent on slavery. It was no secret. Everyone knew it. Austin would say it over and over and over: The only reason Americans would come to Texas was to farm cotton, and they would not do that without slaves. They really didn’t know any other way.
Slavery hadn’t been an issue under Spanish law, which allowed it. Wealthy Tejanos like the Seguíns owned slaves themselves. But slavery would be a problem in the new country of Mexico. As backward as many Americans liked to portray it, the new Mexican government was dedicated to liberal ideals. Equal rights for all races had been the revolution’s rallying cry; in a land where 60 percent of the population was of mixed race, this was a powerful message. A new wave of liberal legislators, many committed to liberty and equality for all, thought slavery an abomination. There were only eight thousand slaves left in Mexico anyway? Who really cared if they were set free?
Stephen F. Austin, that’s who. Not that you’d know it from most history books. The best biography of Austin devotes fifteen pages to the year he spent lobbying in Mexico City, but of his efforts attempting to make sure his people could keep their slaves, there is but a single sentence. Austin was not some pro-slavery zealot. He belonged to a long line of Southern intellectuals going back to Thomas Jefferson who understood slavery was morally repugnant but who nevertheless owned slaves because it was the best way to make money. In other words, Stephen F. Austin was a sellout, a not-uncommon kind in his day.
Sunday, August 21, 2022
the last book I ever read (David Plante's Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three, excerpt fourteen)
from Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three (New York Review Books Classics) by David Plante:
At our Thursday luncheon in the Greek restaurant Germaine said to me, “You like difficult women, don’t you?”
I said in a Tulsan accent, “I guess I do.”
“Well then,” she said, “I’ll introduce you to my mother.”
At our Thursday luncheon in the Greek restaurant Germaine said to me, “You like difficult women, don’t you?”
I said in a Tulsan accent, “I guess I do.”
“Well then,” she said, “I’ll introduce you to my mother.”
Saturday, August 20, 2022
the last book I ever read (David Plante's Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three, excerpt thirteen)
from Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three (New York Review Books Classics) by David Plante:
That evening in my room we watched television, one stupid programme after another. In her nightgown, Germaine sat in an armchair and knitted; I lay on my bed, my feet at the top, my head at the bottom, pillows under my elbows. Germaine kept getting up to change the channels, saying, “What shit American television is.” She came to the musical The Sound of Music, and we watched a bit of it, both saying, “This is awful, awful, awful,” and Germaine changed to other channels, but more awful programmes appeared, and we always came round to The Sound of Music, which, after all, we watched. The governess to a family of unhappy Austrian children wants to make them happy, and she does this by contriving clothes for all of them out of the flowered curtains of her bedroom; happy in their new clothes, they go out into the whole of Switzerland, singing. I saw Germaine lower her knitting to her lap as she watched the governess lead the children up into the green mountains, all of them singing to the sky. Then she turned to me, her lower lip stuck out; tears were dripping down her face, and she wiped them away with the back of her hand. She said, “This is shit,” and got up and changed the channel.
We slept with the door open between our rooms.
That evening in my room we watched television, one stupid programme after another. In her nightgown, Germaine sat in an armchair and knitted; I lay on my bed, my feet at the top, my head at the bottom, pillows under my elbows. Germaine kept getting up to change the channels, saying, “What shit American television is.” She came to the musical The Sound of Music, and we watched a bit of it, both saying, “This is awful, awful, awful,” and Germaine changed to other channels, but more awful programmes appeared, and we always came round to The Sound of Music, which, after all, we watched. The governess to a family of unhappy Austrian children wants to make them happy, and she does this by contriving clothes for all of them out of the flowered curtains of her bedroom; happy in their new clothes, they go out into the whole of Switzerland, singing. I saw Germaine lower her knitting to her lap as she watched the governess lead the children up into the green mountains, all of them singing to the sky. Then she turned to me, her lower lip stuck out; tears were dripping down her face, and she wiped them away with the back of her hand. She said, “This is shit,” and got up and changed the channel.
We slept with the door open between our rooms.
Friday, August 19, 2022
the last book I ever read (David Plante's Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three, excerpt twelve)
from Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three (New York Review Books Classics) by David Plante:
I was always vividly aware of Germaine as a woman, a large, imposing woman. Her intelligence was to me the intelligence of a woman, because she had, as a woman, thought out her role in the world; the complexity of the role required intelligence to see it, and she had seen it, I thought, thoroughly. Even when, once, she said to me, “I don’t understand women at all,” I took this as an observation of what it was to be a woman. So, if I with some degree of logic believed Germaine understood me, it followed that I believed she understood me with a woman’s intelligence. I wanted to know what she understood.
I was drunk on champagne.
I wanted her to tell me what she thought about me. I believed I needed her to tell me. She stared at me. I stared back.
I was always vividly aware of Germaine as a woman, a large, imposing woman. Her intelligence was to me the intelligence of a woman, because she had, as a woman, thought out her role in the world; the complexity of the role required intelligence to see it, and she had seen it, I thought, thoroughly. Even when, once, she said to me, “I don’t understand women at all,” I took this as an observation of what it was to be a woman. So, if I with some degree of logic believed Germaine understood me, it followed that I believed she understood me with a woman’s intelligence. I wanted to know what she understood.
I was drunk on champagne.
I wanted her to tell me what she thought about me. I believed I needed her to tell me. She stared at me. I stared back.
Thursday, August 18, 2022
the last book I ever read (David Plante's Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three, excerpt eleven)
from Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three (New York Review Books Classics) by David Plante:
We were silent again.
She said, “Another sign for Ausfahrt. All roads in Germany lead to Ausfahrt.”
We were silent again.
She said, “Another sign for Ausfahrt. All roads in Germany lead to Ausfahrt.”
Wednesday, August 17, 2022
the last book I ever read (David Plante's Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three, excerpt ten)
from Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three (New York Review Books Classics) by David Plante:
Then she sat on the edge of the bed and said, with a deep sigh, “I don’t know what to do with that girl and her baby. I’ve done everything I can. I invited them out here, paid for everything while they’re here, bought special food for the baby, even clothes. You’d think that the least the mother might do is get off her fat ass and watch the child while I’m not here. I’m tired, I’m tired and I’m fed up with taking care of them. I’m always taking care of helpless and hopeless people.”
I wanted to do something immediately to show her I was not helpless and hopeless.
Then she sat on the edge of the bed and said, with a deep sigh, “I don’t know what to do with that girl and her baby. I’ve done everything I can. I invited them out here, paid for everything while they’re here, bought special food for the baby, even clothes. You’d think that the least the mother might do is get off her fat ass and watch the child while I’m not here. I’m tired, I’m tired and I’m fed up with taking care of them. I’m always taking care of helpless and hopeless people.”
I wanted to do something immediately to show her I was not helpless and hopeless.
Tuesday, August 16, 2022
the last book I ever read (David Plante's Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three, excerpt nine)
from Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three (New York Review Books Classics) by David Plante:
In the car, before starting off, she said, “I want to be a good person, but I’m not.”
In the car, before starting off, she said, “I want to be a good person, but I’m not.”
Monday, August 15, 2022
the last book I ever read (David Plante's Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three, excerpt eight)
from Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three (New York Review Books Classics) by David Plante:
The tenor sang, his face raised and his eyes closed, medieval Irish songs, and after he finished the silence was terrible.
In a burst, Sonia gave a history of Ireland from 1169 or some such early date, which went on and on, all jumbled. She involved Israel in Irish history, and her pro-Irish sentiments gave way to pro-Israeli sentiments. She had flipped her lid. Nothing, I thought, could put it back on.
The tenor sang, his face raised and his eyes closed, medieval Irish songs, and after he finished the silence was terrible.
In a burst, Sonia gave a history of Ireland from 1169 or some such early date, which went on and on, all jumbled. She involved Israel in Irish history, and her pro-Irish sentiments gave way to pro-Israeli sentiments. She had flipped her lid. Nothing, I thought, could put it back on.
Sunday, August 14, 2022
the last book I ever read (David Plante's Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three, excerpt seven)
from Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three (New York Review Books Classics) by David Plante:
Then Sonia said to me, “I’m a snob. I’m not helping Jean because she’s just anyone. I’m helping her because she’s Jean Rhys.”
Then Sonia said to me, “I’m a snob. I’m not helping Jean because she’s just anyone. I’m helping her because she’s Jean Rhys.”
Saturday, August 13, 2022
the last book I ever read (David Plante's Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three, excerpt six)
from Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three (New York Review Books Classics) by David Plante:
That afternoon I left her to return to London. I had an hour in Exeter before my train and I went to the cathedral. I sat in a chapel. I felt very low. I knew that in my outer bright believing heart I had been false to Jean, because in my inner dark unbelieving heart I had loved her as a writer. I thought, But she might forgive me my cheap literary curiosity, she might even condone it; she might, perhaps, tell me that my literary interest, not only in her but in the world, was the deepest possible interest. And then it came to me that Jean was dead, because she was dead as a writer.
That afternoon I left her to return to London. I had an hour in Exeter before my train and I went to the cathedral. I sat in a chapel. I felt very low. I knew that in my outer bright believing heart I had been false to Jean, because in my inner dark unbelieving heart I had loved her as a writer. I thought, But she might forgive me my cheap literary curiosity, she might even condone it; she might, perhaps, tell me that my literary interest, not only in her but in the world, was the deepest possible interest. And then it came to me that Jean was dead, because she was dead as a writer.
Friday, August 12, 2022
the last book I ever read (David Plante's Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three, excerpt five)
from Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three (New York Review Books Classics) by David Plante:
Sometimes we talked about writers, and she admitted, with no sign of great regret, that she hadn’t read Balzac, Proust, Fielding, Trollope, George Eliot, James, Conrad, Joyce. She couldn’t read Austen, she had tried. She had read a lot of Dickens. She had read, and remembered in great patches, the English Romantic poets, and Shakespeare. Her favourite writer, she said, was Robert Hichens, who wrote turn-of-the-century melodramas; she said his books took her away, especially The Garden of Allah. But when friends brought her his novels from second-hand book shops she left them in a pile. She read, instead, thrillers, and in her late life she read almost nothing else but. In Chelsea, she read, over and over, a novel called The Other Side of Midnight, and she said, “It’s trash, perfect trash, but it takes you away,” and made a sign as of going away, far off, with her hand. She said it was very important for a writer to have read a great deal at some time in his life. I presumed this was when she was a girl in Dominica, when she read books from her father’s library and from the public library, where she sat on a veranda to read, with a view of the sea. While she was on tour in music hall the girls read The Forest Lovers, and Jean read it too. It was about a couple in the Middle Ages who ran away into the forest because everyone disapproved of their love, but they always slept with a sword between them. The sword, Jean said, was an endless topic of conversation. (“ What a soppy idea. What’d they do that for? I wouldn’t care about an old sword, would you?”) The Forest Lovers was the only book Jean read for years. She must have read when she started to write, though I am not sure what. She spoke very highly of Hemingway, and she knew many modern writers at least well enough to comment on them. About Beckett, she said, “I read a book by him. It seemed to me too set up, too studied.”
Sometimes we talked about writers, and she admitted, with no sign of great regret, that she hadn’t read Balzac, Proust, Fielding, Trollope, George Eliot, James, Conrad, Joyce. She couldn’t read Austen, she had tried. She had read a lot of Dickens. She had read, and remembered in great patches, the English Romantic poets, and Shakespeare. Her favourite writer, she said, was Robert Hichens, who wrote turn-of-the-century melodramas; she said his books took her away, especially The Garden of Allah. But when friends brought her his novels from second-hand book shops she left them in a pile. She read, instead, thrillers, and in her late life she read almost nothing else but. In Chelsea, she read, over and over, a novel called The Other Side of Midnight, and she said, “It’s trash, perfect trash, but it takes you away,” and made a sign as of going away, far off, with her hand. She said it was very important for a writer to have read a great deal at some time in his life. I presumed this was when she was a girl in Dominica, when she read books from her father’s library and from the public library, where she sat on a veranda to read, with a view of the sea. While she was on tour in music hall the girls read The Forest Lovers, and Jean read it too. It was about a couple in the Middle Ages who ran away into the forest because everyone disapproved of their love, but they always slept with a sword between them. The sword, Jean said, was an endless topic of conversation. (“ What a soppy idea. What’d they do that for? I wouldn’t care about an old sword, would you?”) The Forest Lovers was the only book Jean read for years. She must have read when she started to write, though I am not sure what. She spoke very highly of Hemingway, and she knew many modern writers at least well enough to comment on them. About Beckett, she said, “I read a book by him. It seemed to me too set up, too studied.”
Thursday, August 11, 2022
the last book I ever read (David Plante's Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three, excerpt four)
from Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three (New York Review Books Classics) by David Plante:
“You know,” she said, “being attractive is alien to women, so when they try the strain shows.”
I didn’t know what she meant, and I didn’t ask her.
“You know,” she said, “being attractive is alien to women, so when they try the strain shows.”
I didn’t know what she meant, and I didn’t ask her.
Wednesday, August 10, 2022
the last book I ever read (David Plante's Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three, excerpt three)
from Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three (New York Review Books Classics) by David Plante:
She said, “Let’s have more drinks, honey. I know I’m not supposed to, but—the sins of the flesh and drink are very minor sins, aren’t they?”
There was very little drink left. I had to run out to buy another bottle of gin and of sweet vermouth.
She said, “Let’s have more drinks, honey. I know I’m not supposed to, but—the sins of the flesh and drink are very minor sins, aren’t they?”
There was very little drink left. I had to run out to buy another bottle of gin and of sweet vermouth.
Tuesday, August 9, 2022
the last book I ever read (David Plante's Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three, excerpt two)
from Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three (New York Review Books Classics) by David Plante:
“People don’t like me,” she said. “I know they always try to put me down. They think I’m not nice.”
“People don’t like me,” she said. “I know they always try to put me down. They think I’m not nice.”
Monday, August 8, 2022
the last book I ever read (David Plante's Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three, excerpt one)
from Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three (New York Review Books Classics) by David Plante:
“How can you like listening to me talk on and on?”
I said, “I used to listen to my mother—”
The corner of her upper lip rose and her face took on the hardness of an old whore who, her eyes red with having wept for so long, suddenly decides to be hard. “Your mother?” she snapped. “I don’t want to hear about your mother!”
“How can you like listening to me talk on and on?”
I said, “I used to listen to my mother—”
The corner of her upper lip rose and her face took on the hardness of an old whore who, her eyes red with having wept for so long, suddenly decides to be hard. “Your mother?” she snapped. “I don’t want to hear about your mother!”
Sunday, August 7, 2022
the last book I ever read (Andrew Holleran's Grief, excerpt seven)
from Grief by Andrew Holleran:
“Old age is awful,” said my landlord. “I wonder how many people would sit down to the meal if they knew what the dessert was! Thank God we don’t have to deal with that quite yet. In fact I’m invited to a party tomorrow night, some friends of mine, you’re more than welcome to come. It’ll be mostly lawyers and their very attractive boyfriends—in a really spectacular apartment. Another meaningless social encounter—that Washington specialty. No? Then may I ask you a favor—I won’t be home till late tomorrow evening, and if it’s not inconvenient, could I ask you to walk Biscuit? If you can’t I can get someone else, so don’t worry about it.”
“I’d love to walk Biscuit,” I said.
“Old age is awful,” said my landlord. “I wonder how many people would sit down to the meal if they knew what the dessert was! Thank God we don’t have to deal with that quite yet. In fact I’m invited to a party tomorrow night, some friends of mine, you’re more than welcome to come. It’ll be mostly lawyers and their very attractive boyfriends—in a really spectacular apartment. Another meaningless social encounter—that Washington specialty. No? Then may I ask you a favor—I won’t be home till late tomorrow evening, and if it’s not inconvenient, could I ask you to walk Biscuit? If you can’t I can get someone else, so don’t worry about it.”
“I’d love to walk Biscuit,” I said.
Saturday, August 6, 2022
the last book I ever read (Andrew Holleran's Grief, excerpt six)
from Grief by Andrew Holleran:
The people who had come here to listen to the concert, especially those who had found spots on the benches along the wall, looked more like pilgrims at Lourdes, or pale plants seeking the light in a rain forest where, in the depths of winter, lilies were blooming—though here the palms raised their feathery arms into a birdless atmosphere that could never threaten them with a storm or wind, but only the limitations of the space in which they grew, since some of them were about to touch the skylight now: a metaphor for Washington, I thought, where life was so comfortable because it was so artificial, as if we were all living under a glass roof, or in some parlor where a body was laid out amidst the lilies.
The people who had come here to listen to the concert, especially those who had found spots on the benches along the wall, looked more like pilgrims at Lourdes, or pale plants seeking the light in a rain forest where, in the depths of winter, lilies were blooming—though here the palms raised their feathery arms into a birdless atmosphere that could never threaten them with a storm or wind, but only the limitations of the space in which they grew, since some of them were about to touch the skylight now: a metaphor for Washington, I thought, where life was so comfortable because it was so artificial, as if we were all living under a glass roof, or in some parlor where a body was laid out amidst the lilies.
Friday, August 5, 2022
the last book I ever read (Andrew Holleran's Grief, excerpt five)
from Grief by Andrew Holleran:
In the way that books can take over your life, the letters of Mrs. Lincoln were starting to be the reference for everything I noticed. She was now in a hotel in Frankfurt. (“All the nobility stop here, counts, dukes & dutchesses abound in the house, and on my table, their cards are frequently laid. Yet in consideration of poor health & deep mourning, I have of course accepted no dinner invitations & have kept very quiet. Popp, the most charming of all dress makers, who received many orders from America, and makes for the royal family of Prussia & all the nobility, has just made me up some heavy mourning silks, richly trimmed with crape. The heaviest blk English Crape here, is only in our money $1.50 cts per yard, think of it! when in war times—I once gave, ten dollars per yard, for the heaviest!”) She seemed excited at first to be there. (“I like Frankfurt exceedingly, the true secret is, I suppose I am enjoying peace, which in my deepest, heart rending sorrow, I was not allowed, in my native land!”) But the note of anguish soon entered in. (“I find it quite as expensive here as in America & as I am urged by my physicians to proceed to Italy very soon—at least I expect to start about the 22d of January & remain until 1st April. That fearful, sorrowful month, will be spent very quietly here on my return.”) Finally the relief at having escaped the American newspapers’ criticism of her attempt to sell her clothes, her excitement at being in Europe, among aristocrats and superior couturiers, were spoiled by the demons she had brought with her: her fear that she could not afford the hotel or avoid people’s stares, her inconsolable grief, in which, dressed as she was (for the rest of her life) in mourning, it seemed she was trapped. The longer she remained in Frankfurt, the higher up, the further back, the smaller, the cheaper, the room was, till by the time her friend Mrs. Orne—a wealthy woman from Philadelphia who tried hard to get Mrs. Lincoln a pension from Congress—found her, she was living in what seemed to be a garret.
In the way that books can take over your life, the letters of Mrs. Lincoln were starting to be the reference for everything I noticed. She was now in a hotel in Frankfurt. (“All the nobility stop here, counts, dukes & dutchesses abound in the house, and on my table, their cards are frequently laid. Yet in consideration of poor health & deep mourning, I have of course accepted no dinner invitations & have kept very quiet. Popp, the most charming of all dress makers, who received many orders from America, and makes for the royal family of Prussia & all the nobility, has just made me up some heavy mourning silks, richly trimmed with crape. The heaviest blk English Crape here, is only in our money $1.50 cts per yard, think of it! when in war times—I once gave, ten dollars per yard, for the heaviest!”) She seemed excited at first to be there. (“I like Frankfurt exceedingly, the true secret is, I suppose I am enjoying peace, which in my deepest, heart rending sorrow, I was not allowed, in my native land!”) But the note of anguish soon entered in. (“I find it quite as expensive here as in America & as I am urged by my physicians to proceed to Italy very soon—at least I expect to start about the 22d of January & remain until 1st April. That fearful, sorrowful month, will be spent very quietly here on my return.”) Finally the relief at having escaped the American newspapers’ criticism of her attempt to sell her clothes, her excitement at being in Europe, among aristocrats and superior couturiers, were spoiled by the demons she had brought with her: her fear that she could not afford the hotel or avoid people’s stares, her inconsolable grief, in which, dressed as she was (for the rest of her life) in mourning, it seemed she was trapped. The longer she remained in Frankfurt, the higher up, the further back, the smaller, the cheaper, the room was, till by the time her friend Mrs. Orne—a wealthy woman from Philadelphia who tried hard to get Mrs. Lincoln a pension from Congress—found her, she was living in what seemed to be a garret.
Thursday, August 4, 2022
the last book I ever read (Andrew Holleran's Grief, excerpt four)
from Grief by Andrew Holleran:
This place turned out to be a Georgian house on Florida Avenue; upon entering an usher took us to a small waiting room in which other people sat staring down at their shoes like people on a subway, until the usher came and led us to a dark wooden door that opened into a large, high-ceilinged room with Palladian windows looking out onto a garden bordered with rhododendron bushes. There was no cross, no pulpit—no singing, incense, or ceremony. The people sat quietly, waiting, like satellite dishes, for the Holy Ghost to inspire them as they listened to the rain drip on the rhododendrons. They were gathered in a room—like people at a sickbed—to wait for God to inspire them to speak; like Mary Lincoln holding seances in the White House after the loss of her son Willie, and later after she’d left the White House and lost her husband. Finally a man stood up, and then a woman, and then another man. What they said was like Washington itself: polite, idealistic, and cerebral. “That one’s so hot,” my landlord whispered as he nodded at a man two pews away from us. “His lover did two years ago and left him a lot of money, which he spent on travel and drugs. Then he got sick, and looked really awful, but the cocktail brought him back, and now he’s gorgeous again!
This place turned out to be a Georgian house on Florida Avenue; upon entering an usher took us to a small waiting room in which other people sat staring down at their shoes like people on a subway, until the usher came and led us to a dark wooden door that opened into a large, high-ceilinged room with Palladian windows looking out onto a garden bordered with rhododendron bushes. There was no cross, no pulpit—no singing, incense, or ceremony. The people sat quietly, waiting, like satellite dishes, for the Holy Ghost to inspire them as they listened to the rain drip on the rhododendrons. They were gathered in a room—like people at a sickbed—to wait for God to inspire them to speak; like Mary Lincoln holding seances in the White House after the loss of her son Willie, and later after she’d left the White House and lost her husband. Finally a man stood up, and then a woman, and then another man. What they said was like Washington itself: polite, idealistic, and cerebral. “That one’s so hot,” my landlord whispered as he nodded at a man two pews away from us. “His lover did two years ago and left him a lot of money, which he spent on travel and drugs. Then he got sick, and looked really awful, but the cocktail brought him back, and now he’s gorgeous again!
Wednesday, August 3, 2022
the last book I ever read (Andrew Holleran's Grief, excerpt three)
from Grief by Andrew Holleran:
Most walks led to the White House: down Connecticut Avenue or Sixteenth Street, past the Jefferson Hotel—where Dick Morris had sucked the prostitute’s toes—the old Russian embassy and the Hilton Hotel, the clusters of homeless men in the entryway of the Episcopal church, into Lafayette Square, where the only person was usually the woman who lived in a pup tent on its south side protesting nuclear weapons. Often at night a group of Japanese tourists was getting out of a bus taking them on a nocturnal tour of Washington, but they quickly got their pictures and vanished. That evening not even a skateboarder intervened on the dead, blocked-off stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue, however; the enormous lantern under the portico of the White House beamed brightly, and beyond the windows of the East Room, the twinkling chandeliers gave off an amber glow that was the color of a glass of expensive scorch. Five minutes after I arrived the floodlights flicked off, and the mansion was plunged into shadow, and looked suddenly sad, as if, at Lights Out, everyone inside had been sent to bed with milk and cookies. Then a policeman approached and said, “Good evening,” to me, at which point I realized I’d acquired the profile of a presidential assassin, and I moved on.
Most walks led to the White House: down Connecticut Avenue or Sixteenth Street, past the Jefferson Hotel—where Dick Morris had sucked the prostitute’s toes—the old Russian embassy and the Hilton Hotel, the clusters of homeless men in the entryway of the Episcopal church, into Lafayette Square, where the only person was usually the woman who lived in a pup tent on its south side protesting nuclear weapons. Often at night a group of Japanese tourists was getting out of a bus taking them on a nocturnal tour of Washington, but they quickly got their pictures and vanished. That evening not even a skateboarder intervened on the dead, blocked-off stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue, however; the enormous lantern under the portico of the White House beamed brightly, and beyond the windows of the East Room, the twinkling chandeliers gave off an amber glow that was the color of a glass of expensive scorch. Five minutes after I arrived the floodlights flicked off, and the mansion was plunged into shadow, and looked suddenly sad, as if, at Lights Out, everyone inside had been sent to bed with milk and cookies. Then a policeman approached and said, “Good evening,” to me, at which point I realized I’d acquired the profile of a presidential assassin, and I moved on.
Tuesday, August 2, 2022
the last book I ever read (Andrew Holleran's Grief, excerpt two)
from Grief by Andrew Holleran:
When I finally climbed the stairs to my bedroom on the third floor, I lay down on the big low bed and stared at the single strand of ivy that had climbed to the top of a brick wall behind the house, and, beyond it, more rooftops and a building under construction. I was glad to be alone and at the same time apprehensive. When I turned on the lamp beside the bed the room looked like a hotel room in a strange city.
On the table by the bed were three books standing upright between two glass clowns that served as bookends—a murder mystery by Ruth Rendell, a book about Elizabeth Nietzsche’s Aryan colony in Paraguay, and Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters, by Justin and Linda Levitt Turner.
When I finally climbed the stairs to my bedroom on the third floor, I lay down on the big low bed and stared at the single strand of ivy that had climbed to the top of a brick wall behind the house, and, beyond it, more rooftops and a building under construction. I was glad to be alone and at the same time apprehensive. When I turned on the lamp beside the bed the room looked like a hotel room in a strange city.
On the table by the bed were three books standing upright between two glass clowns that served as bookends—a murder mystery by Ruth Rendell, a book about Elizabeth Nietzsche’s Aryan colony in Paraguay, and Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters, by Justin and Linda Levitt Turner.
Monday, August 1, 2022
the last book I ever read (Andrew Holleran's Grief, excerpt one)
from Grief by Andrew Holleran:
The weekend I arrived, however, my landlord wasn’t home; he was at another house he owned, in the mountains, three hours west of the city, where he had a small shop that sold a mix of antiques, theatrical props, and novelties. It was the holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. The airports were so empty it felt like I was passig through Limbo—from one life to the next. In fact I was leaving behind a life: the non-life, rather, that people who take care of someone face after the invalid dies; in this case, after a long period of helplessness spent mostly in a nursing home—a place that my mother had always asked me to keep her out of, no matter what happened; till what happened made it necessary. The idea of moving to a city seemed like a good idea, so when an old friend asked me if I’d teach a course—someone was going on sabbatical—I accepted.
But sitting in the airport on a Saturday I had only felt lost. Like someone cleaning a room who opens a drawer and finds something he did not want to find, I realized I had chosen to travel on the one day when I felt worst; since Saturday was the day when I had for the past twelve years driven to the nursing home to remove my mother for the weekend—a day of such happiness for both of us (eliminating the nursing home), that the only thing that spoiled it was the gauntlet of people who were being left behind when I wheeled her chair down the hallway, a prisoner being freed while the others watched. Or perhaps, I thought now, that was an element of the pleasure; so confused was I still about what all that had meant. What was clear was that I’d become used to going there on Saturdays; something I was not doing among the strangers sitting around me in the vacant sunny lounge of the airport in Atlanta—that womb, that amniotic fluid, in which the traveler floats, detached from all his elements of identity. To get to Heaven, the joke goes, you change planes in Atlanta. The day my mother had fallen I’d flown north as if going to the afterlife, traveling toward what I thought was her death as in a dream, too much in shock to even feel anything but strange; the silence of the cabin, the clouds outside, the quiet passengers, all ignorant of my awful news. Now, after her death, years later, I was flying north again with the same bizarre feeling. You never know, I thought, watching the other passengers settle into the plastic chairs around me, who is flying on a bereavement discount. There’s no way to tell—though most of the families I could see, peering over the newspaper I was reading at their exchanges, seemed to still have one another.
The weekend I arrived, however, my landlord wasn’t home; he was at another house he owned, in the mountains, three hours west of the city, where he had a small shop that sold a mix of antiques, theatrical props, and novelties. It was the holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. The airports were so empty it felt like I was passig through Limbo—from one life to the next. In fact I was leaving behind a life: the non-life, rather, that people who take care of someone face after the invalid dies; in this case, after a long period of helplessness spent mostly in a nursing home—a place that my mother had always asked me to keep her out of, no matter what happened; till what happened made it necessary. The idea of moving to a city seemed like a good idea, so when an old friend asked me if I’d teach a course—someone was going on sabbatical—I accepted.
But sitting in the airport on a Saturday I had only felt lost. Like someone cleaning a room who opens a drawer and finds something he did not want to find, I realized I had chosen to travel on the one day when I felt worst; since Saturday was the day when I had for the past twelve years driven to the nursing home to remove my mother for the weekend—a day of such happiness for both of us (eliminating the nursing home), that the only thing that spoiled it was the gauntlet of people who were being left behind when I wheeled her chair down the hallway, a prisoner being freed while the others watched. Or perhaps, I thought now, that was an element of the pleasure; so confused was I still about what all that had meant. What was clear was that I’d become used to going there on Saturdays; something I was not doing among the strangers sitting around me in the vacant sunny lounge of the airport in Atlanta—that womb, that amniotic fluid, in which the traveler floats, detached from all his elements of identity. To get to Heaven, the joke goes, you change planes in Atlanta. The day my mother had fallen I’d flown north as if going to the afterlife, traveling toward what I thought was her death as in a dream, too much in shock to even feel anything but strange; the silence of the cabin, the clouds outside, the quiet passengers, all ignorant of my awful news. Now, after her death, years later, I was flying north again with the same bizarre feeling. You never know, I thought, watching the other passengers settle into the plastic chairs around me, who is flying on a bereavement discount. There’s no way to tell—though most of the families I could see, peering over the newspaper I was reading at their exchanges, seemed to still have one another.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)