Alec Mouhibian

In the misfortunes of our best friends we always find something not altogether displeasing to us. — LaRochefoucauld

Smart cynicism usually requires patience. At its bottom you might find a pessimistic hope that’s far better than the “optimistic despair”—as Andrew Ferguson deliciously described the message of Barack Obama—available at so many bargain bins.

Take the maxim quoted above. Possibly the most devastatingly cynical line ever written, it’ll disturb the hell out of you until you realize that compassion depends on it being true. As Wordsworth observed: “We have no sympathy but what is propagated by pleasure…wherever we sympathize with pain it will be found that the sympathy is produced and carried on by subtle combinations with pleasure.”

Three “not altogether displeasing” things about a best friend’s misfortune immediately come to mind. The misfortune can confirm your view of a friend’s shortcomings. It can pale the grass on the other side of the fence, thus correcting an imagined inferiority. It can give you an opportunity to feel useful. In the case of an evangelical excited by the crisis of an unbelieving friend it can do all three at once.

Obviously the maxim doesn’t apply to every misfortune. Death never incites such disturbing pleasure. It also paralyzes the sympathetic faculties, even though it’s perhaps the only universal experience in the world. Barring a special kind of genius that could make a threesome out of death—a genius whose existence I wouldn’t rule out—we all die alone. On the other hand, we’re most commonly and explicitly assisted by our friends in recovering from a romance that they’re most likely delighted to see broken.

Not that the maxim applies to all friends, either. But consider what happens when it doesn’t. Someone too sensitive to find anything pleasing in a friend’s misfortune will probably be offended by his newfound superiority, and back off. Resignation will soon turn to resentment, which in the absence of strong character can easily become contempt. A friend’s misfortune in this case highlights one’s own fortune and undermines the illusion of deserved achievement.

The upshot is clear enough. Without some kind of pleasure to activate compassion friends are helpless in a time of need.

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.