The Lucky Frown

Garin and I both contributed to Liberty Magazine’s summer books feature. My entry’s below.

Most of my summer reading is reserved for the classics I was too stupid to enjoy in high school. But here I’d like to alert you to the most underrated great American writer alive, in hopes that one day you will thank me with a burnt offering. His name is Andrew Ferguson and he writes for The Weekly Standard—where his byline is always worth seeking for the wiggle-quality pleasures sure to be found below it. Barack Obama, Fred Thompson, Alan Greenspan, and Bill Moyers are just a few of the notable subjects to have received his nonpareil literary treatment.

And now Ferguson, who looks like the love-child of Mark Twain and Samuel Clemens, has given us the 21st century Life on the Mississippi in his first full-length book: Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe’s America. Only substitute for the river a parade of myriad Lincoln nuts, of whom Ferguson counts himself one.

As its title suggests, this book is more about America than it is about Lincoln (who can best be described by the phrase, “scholars differ.”) Ferguson ventures insightfully and hilariously into the many-splendored manifestations of Lincoln’s influence: lovers, haters, collectors, curators, “realists,” impersonators, worshippers, and more. Finally he makes his own poignant case in favor of Lincoln the icon.

Ferguson’s a first-rate wit and phrase-maker, but his most remarkable skill lies in narrative construction. His satirical work is done cleanly and quietly, leaving no traces, and he can sever a pound of flesh without drawing a drop of blood. (If he were around in the fictional Venice of 1500, Shylock might’ve died a Jew.) It’s a kind of humanizing satire which, rather than merely cutting its targets down to size, renders them more complex and interesting than they began. And the subtlety of it all lends the punch-lines more of that wiggle effect.

A review ought to quote examples from the book. But this isn’t a review. It’s an order. Follow it, and you’ll have no trouble keeping in mind that I like mine medium-rare on the rare side.

You’ll forgive me, I think, for leaving the blog to the better blogger. I’ve been spending my days in the cellar of my Los Angeles home, sifting through articles and love letters and yearbook inscriptions — spending time with passions and possibilities that have long expired. I don’t know what I’m looking for in my family’s past. Maybe proof that we are all ultimately different; maybe that we are the same. I don’t know which I prefer. The spiders — the frightening, gray spiders — are everywhere, and they are all crunchy and dead. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

After a few hours in the cellar, I’m covered in sweat. The dust has clogged up my mouth and nose, has become a part of me. And I get the feeling that history is in me, killing me, defiling me, condemning me to a past version of myself that isn’t me.

This entry concludes the Summer 2005 diary series, presented on the Lucky Frown more for the sake of public service than pleasure. In that same spirit, it should also be mentioned that Italian beef tastes like it was raised on Italian trustworthiness.

From time to time it possesses my sister to badger me for my supposed lack of friends. While we’re discussing calling-card allocations, she notes that I wouldn’t use up any minutes since I have nobody to call. “That’s not true,” I said. “There is 1-800-Friend.”

Okay! I admit it! I’ve never called 1-800-Friend. I lied so I wouldn’t be embarrassed. I mention this not only because it happened on my trip but also because Rome has the weird phenomenon of professionally phony friends. As I walked back to my hotel around midnight, a man stopped me to ask for directions to a strip club. He held up a little business card map on which the club’s location was signaled by a star, explained that he just arrived from Barcelona, then complained that the atmosphere here was dead compared to Spain. My social life at the moment affording me no basis for rebuttal, I agreed and chatted amicably for about a block up the path while he intermittently insisted I join him in his strip-search. After I refused that and two more offers to join him for a drink, he emitted a loud “Eah!” waved his hands and took off in a huff. He might have fooled me had I not already been solicited for a strip-joint a few hours earlier by a creepy old woman.

I would’ve accepted his offer anyway just for the sake of amusement except my butt itched like mad and I didn’t feel like inventing new ways of scratching it discreetly. Of course, the possibility did occur that this was a legitimately horny tourist trying to befriend a fellow stranger for decent company and a fun time—in the practice of some foreign culture that I did not understand. If so, the Tuscan mosquitoes may have prevented me from going to a low-tier strip-club. But on the bright side, I did piss off a Spaniard.

Walking just about anywhere in Italy at 1pm will put one in a philosophical mood, prompting such questions as…What would happen if everyone was out to lunch at the same time? Who would there be to serve it? This is a conundrum that mysteriously works itself out. Four hour lunches are an Italian custom, as are the apparent visits from ghosts who died between courses.

We visited a tiny island off Venice called Lazarus. The island, once home to lepers, is now inhabited by Armenians. Owned by the Armenian Catholic Church for several hundred years, it consists solely of a monastery that contains a museum of interesting artifacts, as well as an Egyptian mummy and the house where Lord Byron lived for two years studying the Armenian language. The mummy actually resided in Lord Byron’s study room and did not look unaffected by the experience.

We found a priest as he was ushering out a group and asked him for a tour.

“Can we eat?” he asked desperately.

Pay attention while strolling through Rome and you are bound to see a Virgin Mary on any given wall. Over 600 Virgin Marys are painted very randomly throughout the city. A tour guide informed us of the fascinating, spooky, quintessentially Roman story behind this phenomenon. I promptly forgot it, and continued on my way. We were then informed of the “SPQR” symbol, omnipresent on Roman busses, cabs, buildings. SPQR is a Latin abbreviation meaning, essentially, “Rome.” Seems a redundant thing to have everywhere, but I guess it’s a sort of city seal. I asked the guide about RSTLNE.

“Which one is that?” he asked.

“You know,” I said, “RSTLNE. The bonus letters in the final puzzle of Wheel of Fortune.”

I’m surprised it hasn’t caught on there, considering how superstitious Romans are. Many proceedings in their history attest to this. Quirkiest of all is that every house in the city used to be built with a “death door”—an oversized doggie-style door specifically for the deceased, as it would be bad luck for any living person to cross a doorway once crossed by a corpse. Those death doors that haven’t been renovated into windows are still very visible toward the bottom of building structures.

I learned of all these grisly matters from a Dark Side of Rome walking tour. It was actually entertaining for 14 euros. I recommend it. If your guide is Simone, tell him Alec sent you and you might get an awkward, confused look followed by an attempt to pretend that he remembers who you’re talking about.

I chatted with Simone for a while after the tour. He told me he’d been to college in Ireland and gotten his degree in economics. I asked him who his favorite economist was. He got uncomfortable.

“John Maynard Keynes,” he stammered, in a hesitant, whimpering, clearly embarrassed tone. I shot him a severe look.

“But—but—I—I—economics is really not my field, my interest is in the business and corporate management side of finance.”

“Oh, well in that case…” I lowered the chair I had hoisted over my head.

Simone, a native Roman, turned out to be a nice guy. He was twenty-seven years old, business-minded, and fed-up with the stale Italian economy. He said Italian girls are definitively the hardest in the Western world because they’re consciously stubborn and do not get drunk, to which the trademark aggressiveness of Italian males is a reaction. He was fed-up with this too, and thus itching to leave Rome for a more opportunistic Anglo city like Sydney or London. In this sense he was similar to me. In the itching sense, that is, not in the desire to exodus.

The effect of the Tuscan mosquitoes had by now reached the point of ostentation, and I was being made fun of. I realized there is only one thing to do in a situation like this—namely, turn the tables on your companions by creating the best possible nickname for yourself and forbidding anyone else from using it. Ergo, Flamus Anus.

Rome is a great city. So much history, as they say. For example, the colorful Maestro Titte. His name may not be pronounced as one would hope, but he is the most famous executioner in Roman history, a man who took great delight in his work, turning each execution into a spectacular event. He detailed his obsessive, sadistic preparations in his published diary. Of course, since only ten executions happened in a good year, he had a lot of free time. Needless to say, he spent it making umbrellas.

Then there is one of the most notorious women in modern Roman history. She made her name, which I can’t remember, by serving women who, no doubt with the best of intentions, poisoned their husbands. Inventing a singularly undetectable poison involving arsenic, she became very wealthy throughout her career helping over 650 wives become very wealthy overnight. Only after she had retired and left the business to her daughter did the authorities get wind. Over fifty women—including the daughter but not the mother—were convicted and sentenced to execution, a one-shot record.

I saw the homes of these two infamous infidels. On the same walk, I passed by the church of the Fellowship of Death. The Fellowship’s history goes back to the Renaissance period, when peasants couldn’t afford proper burials. Fellowship monks would go out to collect the littered bodies from the countryside and bring them back to headquarters in Rome—storing them, making shrines of them, decorating with them, making crosses and emblems from skulls, doing who cares what. Theologically, they are just another Christian denomination. Carved above the church entrance was a slogan roughly akin to “truth lies with the dead,” or something similarly banal. In the 19th century the government put an end to the body-collecting, but the Fellowship continues to be privately active, consisting of twenty-six monks: normal professionals by day who lead secret double-lives at night.

Like most death-dwellers, these people are probably attracted to its non-threatening stillness. They find comfort and security in the shades of darkness, whose fear-numbing monotony invites an unconditional sympathy that can be so soothing to offer. Above all, they find meaning in the permanence. What they don’t realize is that this is all too easy; in itself hardly enough; that superficiality is no less vacuous in permanence than it is in breezy motion.

That, and they’re necrophiles.

If there’s one place I don’t like, it’s the Eastern hemisphere. But summer means one thing for young people: the conversion of an already dreary noun into an even drearier verb, and the pairing of that verb with Europe. This has always been a dangerous ritual. Eurotravel often leads to Europhilia, which in turn encourages Eurothoughts. The latest victim I’m aware of returned to our shores a Turkey-loving vegetarian.

I know of no vaccines. The only thing I can do is offer entries from a journal I kept during my trip to Italy three summers ago. Here is the first.

My first location was Begegno, one of many quiet villages that lie sloped down the foot of the mountains surrounding Lake Como. Most famous of these is Bellagio, an entire village dedicated to the grandeur and magnificence of the historic hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, which goes by the same name. These charming little towns on various points of the lake are mostly in full picturesque view of each other. One imagines seeing them from a distant satellite perspective, as in a computer game, and thinks of how cool it would be if they were to have an all-out war. Villagers would hide behind the walls of their already fortress-like territories. Missiles would glide in gallant arcs from one end of the lake to the other, leaving trails of gleaming sparks to decorate the dusk, supplemented below by the white sails of modest battleships. But I digress.

A romantic simplicity characterizes these places. Days are spent licking gelato and playing by the water. Couples bike in from the city to lazily goof off. At night people sit and chat outside a limited number of cafes. That’s the simple part.

What with all the tainted windows and craze for privacy going around, these are generally bad times for voyeurs, but European village-life provides an agreeable respite. Thanks to a lethargic economy most Italians live at home until marriage, which means all the sex in their entire lives takes place outside of a roof and, if one is lucky, under a lamppost. Herein lies the romance.

It behooves me to report that young Italian couples “work” in the sense that they inconspicuously match—neither striking flair nor weirdness being common among them. Nothing offends my aesthetic quite as deeply as the sight of a lop-sided couple: one in which either participant is significantly better-looking than the other. The moon revealed no such ghastly pairings, and for this I am grateful.

(Summer 2005)

My lament of Washington’s pitiful new baseball stadium is up at American Spectator.

On the heels of learning that Robert Downer Jr. is alive comes the much sadder news — gleaned from a trip to Borders and watching the Daily Show last night — that Bill Moyers is also still alive. And he still knows how to pronounce democracy.

As a nation mourns this non-passing, don’t you think our newspapers ought to have a pre-obituary section to prepare us for such surprise re-emergences? One that would, you know, apprise us of the activities of the unexpectedly undead? I do.

David Mamet’s latest cinematic haiku, Redbelt, is a very good movie. Here are some recent articles he wrote for Playboy and NY Times describing his interest in its subject (ass-kicking).

I also saw Iron Man, which delivers the happy news that Robert Downey Jr. is alive. A brilliant-yet-flawed genius who lives like a prince and screws every cooch in the kennel without a second thought, he must finally learn to be responsible and get serious about life, by buckling down to screw Gwyneth Paltrow. We never actually see it happen. Ready, set, sequel.

If you’re interested in the plot, it literally turns on the following lines:

1. “How ironic,” says a young female reporter who studied journalism at a Devil Wears Prada screening. “In trying to rid the world of weapons, you gave it its best one ever.”

2. “A system that is comfortable with zero accountability.”

3. “Balance of power.”

The realization that something created to help Americans can also end up hurting Americans isn’t exactly cathartic news to someone who once dropped a copy of Atlas Shrugged on his foot, so my opinion doesn’t count.

What follows are the concluding sentences of an article in the upcoming issue of a major magazine.

“It’s the most awesome place ever,” she says.

For once, Hesse sounds like she’s 26.

The New York Review of Magazines, a magazine produced by graduate students at Columbia’s journalism school and published by Victor Navasky, legendary editor of The Nation, is now live. It includes my feature piece about the Baghdad blogger who incited a war between The Weekly Standard and The New Republic, as well as my comparative review of Liberty and Reason magazines. Also, don’t miss the profile of the literary Christopher Hitchens, a report on the style of early Esquire, and many other dispatches from the magazine world.

At long last, and in time for its third issue of the post-HoMo era, The Bruin Standard is back online at www.thebruinstandard.com. Ever since September, the paper’s been in the hands of editor in chief Mark Stefanos–witty, weedy, and Egyptian–with arm support from layout and copyeditor Corey Garriott, who shall be remembered by posterity as the man who once randomly said: “You know, Alex, I really hate it when people spell my last name with only one T.”

The new issue also includes my priceless observations on Obama and Change.

Stay tuned, anxious TBS alumni, for when the archives are added to the site, so you can show your spouse’s grandchildren how “Prettier Mommy” used to prove she was smart in the halcyon days of 2006.

Mohammed Ali had a moment of ethnic honesty in 1976. Having just returned to the United States from Zaire, where he knocked out George Foreman in the now-canonized “Rumble in the Jungle,” Ali was asked for his impressions on Africa. After all, Ali’s forebears had lived in Africa until they were dragged out of their homes and homeland, and stuffed into slave ships headed for American plantations.

And yet the boxing champion of the world offered neither lament nor fury. His ancestral homeland hadn’t inspired him at all. “Thank God my granddaddy got on that boat,” Ali said.

On the 93rd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, should Armenians thank God?

I answer this question, and others, in an op-ed for the L.A. Times.