Roz Chast on 'Being, Nothingness,' etc.

 

From the show "Being, Nothingness and Much, Much More: Roz Chast, Beyond The New Yorker,'' at the Bruce Museum, in Greenwich, Conn., through Oct. 19.

Ms. Chast is  best known a cartoonist for The New  Yorker but she is also a distinguished writer. Her latest book, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (Bloomsbury, 2014), deals with her aged parents -- a topic of great interest and often exasperation for Baby Boomers who are dealing with such people even as they slide and stagger into old age themselves.

College pranks, anxiety and tricks of time

  By ROBERT WHITCOMB

(Reposting this, with minor changes, to mark commencement season.)

A few months ago, I was chatting with a Dartmouth College classmate about stuff that happened when we were students in 1966-70. I mentioned someone we knew in common and recalled that he was in a certain fraternity. The guy I was talking with, Denis O'Neil, a screenwriter who recently published a part-memoir, part-novel of that period titled Whiplash: How the Vietnam War Rolled a Hand Grenade into the Animal House, politely corrected me; in fact, this person was in another fraternity.

Time has fragmented and mingled stories in my memory and those of others from that era, now almost half a century ago. One could argue that it was a tumultuous era, and thus it's easy to get things scrambled, but most times are tumultuous and transitional. Mr. O'Neil makes much of the stress caused by the fear of being drafted and sent to Southeast Asia, but as bad as that was, it was much worse for young men in World War II. Whatever. We're all the centers of our own universes, and we create narratives to explain ourselves to ourselves and others and to place ourselves in history.

Certainly, the huge size of the Baby Boomer generation, and technological and social changes of its young times, were dramatic, though I would argue that except for improvements in the rights of racial minorities and women, the transformations caused by the Internet (which increasingly looks as if it has made things worse for most people) have been much bigger than "Sixties'' changes.

Still, it's true that in that period one had the distinct sense of living in a discrete and vivid era, which actually began about 1966 and ended about '73. People who lived in the "Roaring Twenties'' -- 1924 to the Great Crash of October 1929 -- told me in "The Sixties'' that they had had a similar sense back in the Coolidge administration.

Youth is intense, and so the memories the now-autumnal people of "The Sixties'' are intense, if sometimes erroneous. From Mr. O'Neil's book, which centers on pranks, fun,  romance (not always fun) and anxiety, you might think that 80 percent of a male undergraduate's time was spent drunk, seeking young women to have sex with and trying to get out of the draft. In fact, even for non-nerds who disliked what we then called "booking'' (has the World Wide Web come up with its own equivalent phrase?)  most of the time was spent going to class, studying and sleeping, not "raging'' (the word for partying).

After all, a lot of students wanted to get into good graduate schools and then fancy jobs. A lot did, and went on to become perhaps the greediest generation in U.S. history. Mr. O'Neil was wise to have constructed his book at least in part as a novel, letting his imagination and telescoping of events provide a better story for the movies, a business he knows very well. If they do make a film of his story, I'd be interested to see how much of it gives a sense of the more humdrum aspects of college life for middle-to-upper-class late adolescents back then.

L.P. Hartley's line "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there'' is much quoted but people don't do things as differently as they might like to think 50 years later.

James P. Freeman: A just appraisal of the '80s

By JAMES P. FREEMAN

“We’ve got no future, we’ve got no past

Here today, built to last…”

            The Pet Shop Boys--“West End Girls”

A wit once said we live in an era of “re’s.” Today we regift, repurpose and reboot. But it is the wise who revisit. As did over 100  on a sweltering afternoon last summer on the campus green of Providence College for the 25^th reunion of the Class of 1988.

While it was a celebration of silver tokens and conversation among graying scalps, it also afforded the opportunity to rediscover the Excellent Eighties and reflect upon contemporary culture.

 The '80s still command little respect, as evident from the recent Radio Shack commercial mocking the era—its icons and gear—as obsolescent old-school relics. Indeed, Gen Xers (from 1965-1979, 80 million) are still overshadowed by Baby Boomers (1946-1964, 76 million) and their incessant self-indulgent generational ownership or a kind of “cultural hegemony.”  The recent 50-year commemorations of the Beatles conquering America and the JFK assassination were given weighty television documentaries. By contrast, the seeming superficiality of the '80s are relegated to kitschy nostalgia programming on music channels.

 But Daniel J. Boorstein, writing for Life Books in 1989, believed that the 80s saw “accelerating contrary movements home and abroad.” It was a decade of dichotomy that could live with cultural contradictions and synthesize the schizophrenia of silly and serious. The Brat Pack and Warsaw Pact. Tom Cruise and cruise missiles. Cher and Chernobyl.

 Totally tubular!

 As children, its members were born into the Space Age and Information Age of the '60s, the warp-speed mobility of man and data. By 1988, ET could phone home in analog and digital.

 The formative years, however, were the 1970s, where disco and discontentment settled in amidst the thick stagnation. No wonder, then, that from this period emerged a pope, prime minister and president who would set the tone for the upcoming decade and prove to be towering 20^th Century figures.  

 For students, Ronald Reagan was the central figure of the decade. The class of ’88 cast its first votes for president in 1984; it would mark the last time young Americans voted Republican in large numbers (with Reagan getting slightly under 60 percent of the vote.). The president’s stark good-vs.-evil persona paralleled the hot whites, midnight blacks and sharp edges of the Eighties. Gone were the browns, burnt oranges and soft shapes of the prior decade. It was a projection of power. Super powers and power suits.

 It was Reagan who anticipated and advanced the shift of power from Washington to Wall Street. Gordon Gekko would become the most quotable financial icon only months after the then-largest point drop in the Dow Jones in 1987. By graduation, Yuppie finance figured conspicuously in literature with The Art of The Deal and Bonfire of the Vanities on non-fiction and fiction bestseller lists.

But as Wall Street was being erected in lower Manhattan a wall was about to be dismantled in the streets of Berlin. Reagan, often ridiculed as a warmonger, famously urged Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” in June 1987 and lived to see the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, without so much a shot being fired. It would mark the end of a decade exquisitely, if not ironically, begun with shots on goal between the USA and USSR during the 1980 Winter Olympics.

 The largest conflict proved to be between Iran and Iraq, a war that presaged future regional conflicts. In April of 1987, Iraqi Ambassador to the U.S. Nizar Hamdoon visited a political-science class at the college and warned of the greater effects of the war. One of the 20^th Century’s longest conventional wars ended in August of 1988—the year the stealth bomber was unveiled -- with over 1.5 million dead.

 For one class member, war would be at the center of a career. Michael P. Sullivan, former director of rule of law for the U.S. State Department, was awarded a personal achievement award by the national alumni association. He had  visited many of the world’s hot spots: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iraq and Afghanistan.

 Awesome dude!

 The '80s, however, were more than money and magniloquence. As the century waned, it weighed the contrasting philosophical musings of Jean Paul Sartre’s amoralism with John Paul II’s absolute morality. As the century’s longest serving pope, no other world figure would better articulate with a severe clarity the dignity and sanctity of life. Coupled with Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and Reagan’s leadership, the advancement of freedom globally was also moving fast.

As the only American college administered by the Dominican Friars, theology played a pivotal role in everyday life as did sports, particularly basketball in the spring of 1987--the Final Four. As juniors, they would seek pardon for the men they admired most: Rick Pitino, Billy Donovan and Ernie DiGregorio as the father, son and holy ghost.   

 Much is made of 80’s pop culture and Madonna’s Material World. Much had to do with the new technology allowing greater access in the distribution of content, particularly with music and movies--where forwarding the experience, in order to rewind it, became a newfound joy. This would be the first generation to embrace the individualism of Sony Walkman’s and rental VHS tapes, along with the communalism of Live Aid and Midnight Madness theatre showings, with equal enthusiasm.

MTV, the CD and synthesizer rescued a dying music industry. In 1982 there were no commercially released compact discs; by 1989 over 150 million were sold. By the end of the decade with VCRs blinking “12:00,” over “sixty percent of America fast-forward[ed],” according to Life Magazine. Dialogue and lyrics, as a consequence, would become more memorable.

 In film, youthful indiscretion and accidental discovery played by effervescent capers and exultant crusaders defined the era. Unlike the '70s, characters wanted to live in the decade, not escape from it. Enter Ferris, Joel, Duckie and Rambo.

  It was a time of Michaels… as in Jackson and Jordan.

 But Michael J. Fox’s characters best personified the decade. A trilogy of films The Secret of My Success, Bright Lights, Big City, Casualties of War,  saw dreamy optimism perish to jaded reality. Sequenced in 1987, 1988 and 1989, together they encapsulate the era from ambition (as a corporate buccaneer) to anxiety (as a writer) to asymmetry (as a warrior).

 Then, in  1992, came the election  of the first Baby Boomer president. And the '90s gave the world Clinton and Casual Fridays. Aspiration melted into angst. The world seemed safer, if not simpler, in a bi-polar globe, East and West.

 The Class of ’88, in spite of it all, is remarkably composed. There were no existential crises, the kind embalmed by The Big Chill—there those Boomers go again... If anything, members reimagined a world before wardrobe malfunctions, Facebook creeping, derivatives and mobile apps. And 9/11.  

A just appraisal of this period reveals that with the fun and frivolity there was substance and solicitude. Rubik’s Cubes and rubric conservatism. As Boorstein concludes, the “remembered record” for the' 80s will “also reassure us of the random vitality of Americans and of the human race.”

 Wicked cool!

James P. Freeman is a former columnist with The Cape Cod Time.

Blighted and bright college days

BY ROBERT WHITCOMB

(comment via rwhitcomb51@gmail.com)

A few weeks ago, I was chatting with a Dartmouth College classmate about stuff that happened when we were students in 1966-70. I mentioned someone we knew in common and recalled that he was in a certain fraternity.

 The guy I was talking with, Denis O’Neil, a screenwriter who recently published a part-memoir, part-novel of that period titled “Whiplash: How the Vietnam War Rolled a Hand Grenade into the Animal House,” politely corrected me; in fact, this person was in another fraternity.

Time has fragmented and mingled stories in my memory and those of others from that era, now almost half a century ago. One could argue that it was a tumultuous era, and thus it’s easy to get things scrambled, but most times are tumultuous and transitional. Mr. O’Neil makes much of the stress caused by the fear of being drafted and sent to Southeast Asia, but as bad as that was, it was much worse for young men in World War II. Whatever. We’re all the centers of our own universes, and we create narratives to explain ourselves to ourselves and others and to place ourselves in history.

Certainly, the huge size of the Baby Boomer generation, and technological and social changes of its young times, were dramatic, though I would argue that except for improvements in the rights of racial minorities and women, the transformations caused by the Internet (which increasingly looks as if it has made things worse for most people) have been much bigger than “Sixties” changes.

Still, it’s true that in that period one had the distinct sense of living in a discrete and vivid era, which actually began about 1966 and ended about ’73. People who lived in the “Roaring Twenties” — 1924 to the Great Crash of October 1929 — told me in “The Sixties” that they had had a similar sense back in the Coolidge administration. Youth is intense, and so the memories the now-autumnal people of “The Sixties” are intense, if sometimes erroneous.

From Mr. O’Neil’s book, which centers on fun, romance (not always fun) and anxiety, you might think that 80 percent of a male undergraduate’s time was spent drunk, seeking young women to have sex with and trying to get out of the draft. In fact, even for non-nerds who disliked what we then called “booking” — has the World Wide Web come up with its own equivalent phrase? — most of the time was spent going to class, studying and sleeping, not “raging” (the word for partying). After all, a lot of students wanted to get into good graduate schools and then fancy jobs. A lot did, and went on to become perhaps the greediest generation in U.S. history.

Mr. O’Neil was wise to have constructed his book at least in part as a novel, letting his imagination and telescoping of events provide a better story for the movies, a business he knows very well. If they do make a film of his story, I’d be interested to see how much of it gives a sense of the more humdrum aspects of college life for middle-to-upper-class late adolescents back then.

Probably not much.  The famous and often hilarious (and even witty) Dartmouth pranks memorialized in "Animal House'' (and Mr. O'Neil describes some corkers, including  a great train robbery of sorts) and the stuff described above offer rich material for a film.

Still, while L.P. Hartley’s line “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there” is much quoted  people don’t do things as differently as they now might like to think  they did 45 years ago.

***

I was working last week in Harrisburg, Pa., the capital of the Keystone State. While that recently bankrupt city has seen better days — for many decades, it was a thriving center of trade and manufacturing and is bounded by rich farmland — many of its old residential and commercial buildings are beautiful, and you get a sense that people in the region very much want the little city to come back.

Greater Harrisburg has more brick and stone houses than you see in New England, where most houses are of wood, but there’s the same sense of an almost European-style settlement pattern, with a tight city center and the countryside close by. More and more people there complain about commuting and some of the gentrification in parts of Harrisburg suggests that a lot of its aging population is getting tired of driving. Indeed, demographics may gradually undo, over the next decade, much of the social and economic damage done by developer-driven sprawl zoning.

And there’s still a lot of boosterism in Harrisburg: The small local airport is proudly called Harrisburg International Airport, with flights to Toronto providing the “international” angle. Perhaps poor little Rhode Island could use a little of what some might slur as Babbitry to help talk itself out of its inferiority complex.

Robert Whitcomb (rwhitcomb51@gmail.com) is a Providence-based editor and writer.