Judge Aaron Persky probably regrets his decision to go unconscionably easy on young gifted and white Brock Turner in the Stanford University rape case, but it’s too late now. He has sealed his and Turner’s legacy.

On the up side, this historic case has riveted national attention to rape, much as Rutgers sports hero Ray Rice’s elevator ride brought us all together on the subject of domestic abuse. Although Rice provided graphic evidence of his ability to physically destroy an opponent, he has of this writing been unable to secure another NFL placement.

Another up side: Unlike the open air gang rape during Spring Break at Panama City Beach —

The video shows several men assaulting an incapacitated woman on Panama City Beach while a crowd of spring-break revelers watches…

— which the crowd filmed but didn’t give a shit about (police only discovered it later, when they got hold of the video), the Stanford open air rape drew the attention of two students, who held down the rapist and called the police.

1.) My fraternity brothers were preparing for finals at the University of Florida…

University of Florida! Are you kidding me? That university was just ranked number one in America for most athletes arrested!… Oh whoops. Let me concentrate on the matter at hand. Fraternities. Ok. Frat boys studying for finals…? Uh… ok….

2.)

when word echoed throughout Zeta Beta Tau that we were being blamed for unthinkable behavior: harassing combat-wounded veterans.

Linda Cope, the founder of the Warrior Beach Retreat, a local charity in Panama City Beach, appeared on Fox News and other media outlets alleging that we spit on veterans and urinated on the American flag.

Panama City Beach? Are you kidding me? The rankest town in America, where three men raped an unconscious woman on the beach midday and no one did a thing… It was only discovered when the police chief reviewed video in connection with a slew of other crimes. … But ahem. Let me once again concentrate on the matter at hand. Spring break, unspeakable acts…

3.)

We went from being anonymous college students to being the most hated fraternity in America over allegations that, to us, came completely out of left field.

Completely? Says here (see response from the national chapter at the bottom of the page) that “What was not pointed out was that at the time these events occurred, the chapter was already on probation imposed by the University of Florida.”

4.)

Many of us have family members who have proudly served in the military. My grandfather fought during D-Day. I have a photograph of my grandfather sitting on the wing of a captured German fighter plane.

The focal point of our chapter house’s living room was an American flag that we proudly displayed.

That’s all great. Great. But, you know, the male bonding that you love so much … too much… “Witnessing the tears and anguish of my brothers at the moment school officials clarified that our chapter had been officially closed was indescribably painful… [Nothing can adequately convey] the heartbreak and devastation that I and my fraternity brothers feel over losing an organization that we loved so dearly. Many of my brothers feel they have lost their collegiate identity.” … plus alcohol, can make you forget how much you love Old Glory…

5.)

Due process was conveniently cast aside to mollify an angry public that deemed the allegations indisputably factual in light of the stereotypical fraternity culture portrayed in the media.

Yes, it looks as though your fraternity didn’t behave as outrageously as initial reports suggested. Maybe you’re right to be upset that the resounding response from America to this clarification of your Panama City Beach behavior is So fucking what. But you go to the University of Florida, you’re a member of a fraternity already on probation, and your guys were part of ongoing, high-profile Panama City Beach foulness. Sorry.

6.)

With no means to defend ourselves, we had no choice but to watch our execution in the court of public opinion.

Soyez tranquille! Guns are on their way. Once you’re fully weaponized, no one will be able to shut you down.

According to Mark Kruea, Myrtle Beach’s public information officer, no shooting deaths occurred this year [there were three shooting deaths last year] and only one person was injured in a shooting …

Kruea said three motorcyclists and one moped rider died in traffic accidents. Other riders filled local emergency rooms to capacity with non-fatal injuries. Several crimes occurred, including robberies and kidnappings.

*******************

Bikers are pissed with all the security measures.

Alonzo Pritchard, a Memphis tire shop manager who attended Bikefest for the 18th consecutive year, said the city had sapped the life out of the gathering… Sean Robinson said he would not be returning [to] Myrtle Beach until officials got rid of the traffic loop, did away with the barricades and let motorcyclists travel without major impediments. As far as he was concerned, he would rather spend his money somewhere more hospitable to riders.

Little by little, even America’s most dissolute locations are refusing to host spring breaks and bikefests. So where’s the American city enterprising and sketchy enough to become the go-to hospitable place for all of this country’s frats and bike clubs?

UD’s putting her money on Reno.

**********************

Note to moped riders: Do what everyone else who lives anywhere near Myrtle Beach does during Memorial Day weekend: FLEE.

Tom O’Dare and Michael Smith, myhorrynews.com:

Myrtle Beach police said in a statement that Reginald Rivers, 23, of Charleston struck a North Carolina man riding a moped on North Kings Highway at 6:42 a.m. Sunday.

According to police, Rivers was driving at a high rate of speed when he struck Brandon Brinson, 21, of Magnolia, N.C. Brinson died from injuries sustained in the crash.

Rivers was charged with felony DUI resulting in death and hit and run resulting in death, along with driving under suspension, possession of a firearm by a felon and five counts of threatening the life of a public official.

At a 6 p.m. Sunday bond hearing, Myrtle Beach chief municipal judge Jennifer Wilson said she couldn’t set bond on the felony DUI and hit and run charges because Rivers was already out on bond on an armed robbery charge in Charleston.

A circuit court judge will have to hold a bond hearing on those charges.

Wilson did set a $50,000 bond on the five threatening the life of a public official charge, $20,000 on the possession of a firearm by a felon and $544 on the DUS charge.
Rivers told the judge that he couldn’t be charged with the DUS “because I don’t even have a license.”

When Rivers was brought into the city courtroom, he was very unsteady on his feet and continuously talking to which Wilson admonished him a number of times to remain quiet.

After several rambling conversations, Wilson tacked on a 30-day contempt of court charge because Rivers would not be quiet and follow the judge’s instructions.

For the city charges, Rivers faces a court date of June 10.

No date was set for a bond hearing for the charges of felony DUI and hit and run.

Wilson appointed a public defender for Rivers though he told the judge that he already had a public defender in Charleston on his other charges pending there.

He asked Wilson how long it would take to get a bond hearing in General Sessions court because he was afraid it may take a long time.

“I have no idea,” Wilson said. “Mr. Rivers looking at your record, you should know how the court system works.”

… underage drinking …”

They do, however, miss the occasional gang rape.

[Two Troy University] students were arrested and charged with sexual battery by multiple perpetrators … [T]he alleged rape took place sometime from March 10, 2015, to March 12, 2015, behind Spinnaker Beach Club, a popular bar and dance club for spring breakers.

Club Spinnaker’s owner has been among the most eloquent critics of Panama City Beach’s efforts to change its way-welcoming spring break rules.

A town debates spring break.

… critical condition. They were driving to the airport, on their way to spring break, and were hit head-on by a person going the wrong way on the interstate.

… Dublin, Ireland on Saturday. UD, who likes her quiet life, now launches a noisy spring break. She will of course blog throughout her travels. Ne quittez pas.

A few years ago, Scathing Online Schoolmarm featured here a satire of a Christmas letter to friends (she seems to have lost it — she’s still looking for it). She thinks Gregg Easterbrook wrote it, but she’s not sure (she sent an email to him asking about it). The author found just the right combination of insufferably boasting tone and vulgar materialist content, and SOS went into some detail, in that post, praising and analyzing this little masterpiece…

Ah! Just heard back from Easterbrook! (His latest book is Sonic Boom.) Good man. It’s no longer at the New Republic (showed up in ’04), but Easterbrook found it for me in a pretty obscure place, and I’m very grateful to him. Here it is:

UD is so glad she and Mr UD passed up a trip to Sundance when we were in Utah this summer…

Anyway, why is UD revisiting this great piece of satire? Because a non-satirical, entirely sincere version of the form is now being passed around online, and a comparison of the real thing, written by the novelist Janette Turner Hospital, who’s on a visiting appointment at Columbia’s MFA program at the moment, with Easterbrook’s fake, is instructive.

Before she came to Columbia, Hospital taught at the University of South Carolina. In a letter to her former students there, Hospital admits she prefers Columbia.

Forwarded below are a couple of emails sent to all of our Columbia MFA students. It’s the kind of invitation students here receive-and take up-at least once or twice a week in a cornucopia of literary riches. It seems to me that USC writing students should also know about these opportunities, since you could car-pool up to NYC very cheaply and stay at youth hostels on Manhattan (within walking distance of Columbia U and Central Park) for just $30/night (shared room) with linen, towels, and breakfast provided. MFA students from other states take advantage of this and visit in groups. Why not USC?

As for news from this very different MFA planet, I’m in seventh heaven teaching here, and not only because I have Orhan Pamuk (whom I hope to bring to USC for Caught in the Creative Act), Oliver Sacks, Simon Schama, Richard Howard, Margo Jefferson, etc., etc., as colleagues, though that is obviously part of it.

My students also live and move and write in seventh heaven and in a fever of creative excitement. Columbia’s MFA is rigorous and competitive but students don’t just have publication as a goal – they take that for granted, since about half the graduating class has a book published or a publishing contract in hand by graduation – so they have their sights set on Pulitzers.

This program is huge, the largest in the country. It’s a 3-year degree, with 300 students enrolled at a given time. Each year, 100 are admitted (in fiction, poetry, nonfiction) with fiction by far the largest segment. But 600+ apply, so the 100 who get in are the cream of the cream.

Students take workshops and literature courses in equal measure. They are avid readers and intense participants in seminar discussion. And here is one of their toughest hurdles: they do not pick their own committee for the thesis. They do not even pick their own supervisor. These roles are assigned. They are not even informed who their committee members are until one week before the defense, when they receive the detailed written reports signed by their committee members. This is certainly a bit nerve-wracking for the student, but replicates exactly what happens in the publishing world where the coldly neutral eyes of agents and editors are assessing your manuscript. Columbia’s MFA feels this rigor has a lot to do with the high publication rate of students.

In my first week here, I was presented with two theses of students unknown to me and required to write detailed reports. I was given the names of other committee members, and it was up to us to make contact and arrange to meet to discuss the theses we’d been assigned. There are 30+ members on the MFA faculty, but the program also uses a number of well-known writers resident in NYC who are not faculty. I have found these meetings and discussions with NYC writers rather wonderful.

Sixty theses have been submitted for fall graduation (approx. 35 fiction; 15 poetry; 10 nonfiction). On average, each year from 5 – 10% of these will be failed, and the student will be advised to try again for spring graduation. If the thesis is failed, the student will not meet with the committee but will receive the detailed reports. In the two weeks from Oct 4 – Oct 15, all those who pass will meet with their committee for the “thesis conference.” Since pass or fail has already been decided, this is not a “defense” but a conference in which the committee discusses positive and problematic issues with the student and makes recommendations of what should be done before submission to a publisher.

This kind of rigor about the thesis (absolutely no easy rides here) has a lot to do with the high publication rate. But there are certainly other factors which contribute: students do internships at the New Yorker, Publishers’ Weekly, Paris Review, and at major publishing houses. They attend multiple readings by famous writers every week (not by any means all at Columbia, but at the NY Public Library, the 92nd St Y, at NYU, etc.

Also, the program hosts a reception for all graduating students with about 30 major editors and agents invited. At his reception, each agent or editor is presented with an anthology of the work of the graduating students, along with contact emails. No wonder the students are off to a flying start. Agents and editors hover like major-league recruiters at college championships.

But I think what thrills me most of all is the sheer intellectual intensity of the students. Although I have taught at a number of the most highly regarded MFA programs in this country and in England, there’s only one other place I’ve ever taught where there was a comparable atmosphere, and that was MIT, where I taught for 3 years. At both places the crackle of intellectual energy in the air is almost visible, like blue fire.

And then there are all the peripheral pleasures of living on Manhattan: we’ve seen the Matisse exhibition at MOMA, have tickets for the opening of Don Pasquale at the Met Opera, have tickets to see Al Pacino on stage as Shylock in the Merchant of Venice, etc etc. Plus I’m just 15 minutes walking distance from Columbia and from all the sidewalk bistros on Broadway, and 3 minutes from Central Park where we join the joggers every morning. This is Cloud Nine living on the Upper West Side (which is known to my agent and my Norton editor, who live in Greenwich Village, as “Upstate Manhattan.” ) We love it.

All best wishes,
and think about the invitations below which my Columbia students will be attending.
JTH

… totally collapsed on Duval, the island’s main commercial street. What with spring breakers avoiding Mexico, it’s madness out there.

Duval North (UD lives a few blocks from Duval South, the quiet end of the street) is always pretty raucous, with cruise shippers jostling frat packs on the narrow sidewalks — made narrower by whiskey kiosks and hawkers done up as pirates. But now it’s insane, and UD finds herself apologizing in advance to Mr UD (he arrives soon) for what he’ll soon endure beneath the noonday sun.

Fond collegiate days.

Just got back from the object of my pilgrimage: The Cy Twombly collection at the Menil in Houston. As I entered the Analysis of the Rose as Sentimental Despair room, I found myself weeping – not knowing why, not caring why, but weeping. As if that moment – all alone in the beautiful building dedicated to his work, no one else anywhere, the sound of complete silence – were the reason, the real reason, the full reason, UD hauled herself onto a plane from DC and came down here. And – listen up!

After a long stretch of years, I found myself drawn to re-visit the Cy Twombly Gallery in Houston this past spring. It felt like a homecoming. I stood in the room containing the polyptych in five parts, “Analysis of the Rose as Sentimental Despair” (1985), for hours, observing the subtle shifts of light and shadow with tears streaming down my cheeks. Twombly’s inimitable handwriting was so familiar, although the colors—burgeoning wine-drunk purples and devastating orange-reds—had been so hard to hold in the mind and the realization that they would slip away from me again was heartbreaking. This has been the one group of works about which I’ve been unable to write. These tender pink blushes and bruised blooms always struck me as too achingly beautiful, almost embarrassingly so, to put into words. They contain all that they need in phrases drawn from Leopardi, Rilke, and Rumi (“In drawing and drawing you, his pains are delectable. His flames are like water.”). More text, it would seem, could only serve [to] diminish them.

That’s a whole other human being, tears streaming in front of the exact same work that brought on my waterworks! Listen to what else Claire Daigle has to say about UD’s way-favorite artist.

It has become something of a cliché to call Twombly a painters’ painter, but with his charmed bookishness, he is foremost, in my mind, a writers’ painter. His gestures move between those of writing and drawing, between drawing and painting. Signs perch on the verge of manifest expression, often evading, occasionally gratifying legibility. His [art] partakes of Hermes’s signs, gathering in force as they range from mark to word to quotation through redaction and negation to clamor and quietude. The chromatic incidents—from tiny gem gleams to full blown detonations—and the extraordinary range of types of mark are felt only by the body, Dionysian. They remind us of all in art that escapes the verbal clutch that would hope to seize that which exists only in moments when the attentive gaze is fully present.

It was Roland Barthes’ essay on Twombly that got me going on the man, and I’ve never stopped loving him

… and now, at one in the morning, it was just beach, stars, and dark sky. The waves pounded rather scarily. On the blue tarp path to the sand, a solitary person startled us. “I was lying down on the path for the meteor shower, but I got up when I heard you.” A slender young man, maybe seventeen, wearing a hockey uniform, appeared in our flashlight. “My mom told me there might be a meteor shower.”

“Might even be a meteor storm,” said UD. “But might be nothing.”

“I’ve seen twelve meteors already,” he said, excited. Also genial, polite.

“That’s promising! Any of them have tails with fireballs?”

“No, but most of them were very bright.”

UD liked his excitement, recognized it as the same species as hers — the anticipation of an insane cosmic shakeup. As in – why should that not be? Why should the infinitely firm (yeah I know it’s not really; but that’s how it looks to us) firmament not do a big ol’ break dance and splatter itself with sweat? Why shouldn’t that occasionally be? Not Stars Fall From Heaven stuff, but the universe for, say, twenty minutes, losing its glacial poise – its gassy poise. Letting its freak flag fly…

And here were Les UDs, ideally situated – prone under a huge clear sky on an empty stretch of soft sand. Light breeze, seventy degrees.

******************

And certes, as soon as we lay down, bright meteors (and jets, and satellites; and, over there, bejeweled container ships) blasted out of the black, their silver stilettos thrilling the three of us… But there weren’t many of them — not a shower, not a storm, not even a swarm; merely jabs here and there concerning the death of comets.

And fine. Our humble humanoid charge was to thank the divine withholder for at least this much glint, even this weakly dropped hint of the amazement up there.

Mr UD babbled throughout about big bang controversies and changes in the laws of physics and UD tried to follow as her eyes swept the sky.

After, UD told the hockey kid about Cherry Springs State Park. He whipped out his phone and read, entranced. We left him there (Mr UD made sure also to mention Big Meadows) in the bowl of the universe, in his little circle of cellphone light.

… a set of thoughts on the British poet laureate’s poem about Prince Philip. As in: It is the responsibility of laureate-induced poems to be forgotten. Compelled into existence by one’s acceptance of a public position, compelled to praise the high-born to a large audience, these are so unlikely to be non-piffle. Yet – as with Philip’s surprisingly moving brief funeral – this particular poem is surprisingly good. I’m not going to argue it’s all that good, but as an example of its type, it’s way better than it should have been.

The tone throughout is non-heroic, casually musing; the poet avoids grandiosity for a man who, while physically imposing and genetically way royal (his DNA was used to verify that remains found in a Russian forest belonged to the slaughtered Romanovs), seems in fact to have had a spartan and self-effacing disposition. The poem will feature little direct reference to Philip; rather, in a series of natural metaphors, it will evoke his wartime generation.

The weather in the window this morning
is snow, unseasonal singular flakes,
a slow winter’s final shiver.

He has died in April, and his singularity as the sovereign’s husband will, as the poem begins, be evoked through the singularity of the unseasonal snow. His long life and long physical decline is nicely captured in a slow winter’s final shiver.

On such an occasion
to presume to eulogise one man is to pipe up
for a whole generation – that crew whose survival
was always the stuff of minor miracle,
who came ashore in orange-crate coracles,
fought ingenious wars, finagled triumphs at sea
with flaming decoy boats, and side-stepped torpedoes.

Unusually self-referential, this official eulogy will ask questions about eulogies for the sort of person Philip was. So marked for life was he by his wartime experience, it makes more sense to remember him in his collective military identity than in his singularity. His funeral ritual (designed by Philip himself) was overwhelmingly a military affair.

Indeed looked at in its entirety, Philip’s survival, much less his longevity, does seem a minor miracle – smuggled out of Greece (in an orange crate!) during the Greco-Turkish War when he was eighteen months old, he went on to “finagle” (to use the poet’s wonderfully non-heroic word) modes of survival under punishing battle conditions.

Husbands to duty, they unrolled their plans
across billiard tables and vehicle bonnets,
regrouped at breakfast. What their secrets were
was everyone’s guess and nobody’s business.
Great-grandfathers from birth, in time they became
both inner core and outer case
in a family heirloom of nesting dolls.
Like evidence of early man their boot-prints stand
in the hardened earth of rose-beds and borders.

There’s a nice subtle evocation here of the soft touchy feely world we’ve become, in which only faint ancient traces of “hardened” boot-prints indicate the bygone, born old (great-grandfathers from birth), men among whom Philip belonged; the patriarchs (this is the poem’s title) who kept their thoughts and feelings to themselves and (in the phrase everyone attaches to Philip) just got on with it.

They were sons of a zodiac out of sync
with the solar year, but turned their minds
to the day’s big science and heavy questions.
To study their hands at rest was to picture maps
showing hachured valleys and indigo streams, schemes
of old campaigns and reconnaissance missions.
Last of the great avuncular magicians
they kept their best tricks for the grand finale:
Disproving Immortality and Disappearing Entirely.

Relentlessly and ingeniously pragmatic, men like Philip spent their post-crate lives fashioning further escapes, further solutions to a world always perilously out of sync, until the very veins in their hands became strategic maps of (to use Graham Greene’s title) ways of escape. Their final Houdini maneuver, of course, was the whole slipping the surly bonds of earth thing.

The major oaks in the wood start tuning up
and skies to come will deliver their tributes.
But for now, a cold April’s closing moments
parachute slowly home, so by mid-afternoon
snow is recast as seed heads and thistledown.

The poem concludes with a return to the present, to a continued observation of a singular April day in which enormous sturdy old trees (this one in particular) whistle their elegy, to be joined in time by tears of rain. Enormous sturdy old Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (thus the poet’s thistle-homage – thistle being the Scottish national emblem) has done his final magic trick, leaving a world “recast” for the better by his having been here — winter turns to spring, the world regenerates itself, and the prickly thistle (Philip was notoriously prickly) is now thistledown, the feathery white top of the thistle, which will disperse in the wind and scatter its seeds.

Really, take whatever position you want on patriarchs, royalty, Philip, blahblah – this is on its own terms a more than respectable poem, a clever finagled triumph.

******************

Found it! The rule for the dead is that they should be forgotten. Ravelstein.

Although UD grew up right down the Amtrak corridor from New York City, she seldom traveled there; even as an adult, she’s visited shockingly few times. UD has spent more time in Ubud, Bali, than in NYC. Yet she notices that she has, over the years, developed a curious sort of home wisdom about one of the most prominent subcultures there.

These rough and ready truths of hers are not, of course, based on nothing; like many literate people, UD has been reading about that city and its inhabitants all her life; and from what she has gleaned, she has derived some modestly explanatory takes on some of its more notorious denizens.

Most broadly, she finds that firmly situating Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Cohen, Charles Kushner, Marc Kasowitz, and many other Trumpish madmen — but especially Donald Trump himself — in New York City helps us understand them. It’s helpful to see them as emerging out of a particular ecosystem in which their behavior is perfectly normal.

On a lower yet still fascinating level, firmly situating two recent high-profile identity-fakers (Jessica Krug and Hilaria Baldwin) in NYC also helps us understand them.

Let me start with the lunatic White House.

New York City, let us say, rears, attracts, and encourages hyperdriven hypercompetitive crazies who just go all the way. Their nature is to charge into everything – money deals, marriages, parenthood, politics – with supermanic frenzy and without a thought – without one thought, I tell you – for the morrow. Bankruptcy? Divorce? Jail? Fuck it. Trump ran headlong into a ridiculous quest for the presidency and look what happened! NYC people simply keep breaking through – that’s the thing. They don’t think of life as a series of steps which will if you’re not careful eventuate in bad outcomes which will pain you and those you love and condemn you to hell or whatever — they don’t think like normal people. The Big Mo on steroids – that’s their thing. Competitive capitalism unbound. Competitive everything unbound. No shame, no fear, no brakes.

Did you see either of the films based on Madoff? In both films, if I recall correctly, someone at some point looks at him and says something like Why did you do it and why didn’t you stop? The why did you do it part has no NYC resonance; the not stopping part – not stopping until THE ENTIRE WORLD ECONOMY TANKED AND HE COULD NO LONGER PAY OUT REDEMPTIONS – is echt Trumpy NYC. If you’re a Trumpy New Yorker, only some form of global collapse will stop you. Recall that up to the moment of his arrest Madoff was a singularly respected, highly placed, and well-connected New Yorker. A pious New Yorker – Yeshiva University’s treasurer!

Hell, Trump’s the president. And in case you haven’t noticed, he’s not planning to stop being president. Susan Glasser writes:

… Trump has remained … obnoxiously unrepentant. … He does not want to let go, to cede the spotlight, to renounce his outsized claim on our collective consciousness….

And you know that at no point in the real Madoff story did anyone ask him why he didn’t stop – that line was edited in for hayseeds outside NYC like UD, cuz otherwise the film would make no sense in any moral world she and her like can imagine. No one around Madoff ever stopped doing anything lucrative or personally advantageous, no matter how sordid, and Madoff would never have stopped either.

Once Trumps and Madoffs are truly a spent force, once they decide it’s safe to slow down and decamp with their winnings (even spitfires get old and lose their fire), they make a purely lateral cultural move – to their house in Florida.

*******************

People look at Donald Trump as a singular, ab nihilo dude; they can’t fathom his past behavior and they certainly can’t fathom his present. But he and Giuliani are behaving exactly the way people pickled in their brine always behave: Advance, Advance, Advance and the world can fuck itself.

Central to NYC-style heedless advancement is lying. You misrepresent yourself; you misrepresent your financial worth; you misrepresent the value of anything you have to offer. And of course you lie about other people; you make up obviously jackshit stories about Obama being born in Kenya and George Soros controlling Congress and Joe Biden stealing a presidential election. Advance, advance, advance, lie, lie, lie. In your NYC world everyone’s obscenely on the make and everyone lies. Lie it forward. No lie is too edgy, absurd, out there, shameless. Bigger the better. Keep going. Seems to work fine in DC too.

************

Look at Harold Brodkey’s take on this slice of NYC culture. His perspective is that of an artist, not a crazed capitalist, but he evokes the same Trumpian world, one part mania, one part lying:

I was always crazy about New York, dependent on it, scared of it – well, it is dangerous – but beyond that there was the pressure of being young and of not yet having done work you really liked, trademark work, breakthrough work. The trouble with the city’s invitation was that you were aware you might not be able to manage: you might drown, you might fall off the train, whatever metaphor you preferred, before you did anything interesting. You would have wasted your life. One worked hard or not at all, and tried to withstand the constant demolishing judgement. One watched people scavenge for phrases in other people’s talk – that hunt for ideas which is, sometimes, like picking up dead birds. One witnessed the reverse of glamour – that everyone is jealous.

It is not a joke, the great clang of New York. It is the sound of brassy people at the party, at all the parties, pimping and doing favors and threatening and making gassy public statements and being modest and blackmailing and having dinner and going on later. (Renata Adler used to say you could get anyone to be disliked in New York merely by praising that person to someone nervous and competitive.) Literary talk in New York often announced itself as the best talk in America. People would say, “Harold, you are hearing the best in America tonight.” It would be a cut-throat monologue, disposable wit in passing, practiced with a certain carelessness in regard to honesty. But then truth was not the issue, as it almost never is in New York.

New York City is also where we find the highest-profile imposters – people who, like fictive Manhattanite Jay Gatsby, lie all the way down to their corpuscles. Jessica Krug: White, Jewish, affluent; Gatsbyized black, hispanic, poor. Hilaria Baldwin: Offspring of people whose ancestors arrived on the Mayflower; Gatsbyized a Spaniard with a strong accent and a shaky grasp of the English language.

Plenty of distinctions to be made amid all of this, I know. Hilaria (real name Hillary) ain’t much of a story. One… theatricalizes, mythologizes, oneself to be more interesting in the big city crowd. To stand out in hypercompetitive NYC. Baldwin is a strange woman, given to exhibitionism and self-praise, but who cares? Kim Kardashian for the west coast, and, for the sophisticated east, NYU-educated Hilaria Baldwin (though Kim comes by her exotic Armenianness honestly).

Krug’s far more insidious NYC tale carries ugly social implications having to do with the ideological corruption of universities and other institutions.

But both women share with the mad Trumpian lads that NYC thing: fake it til you fake it. Fake it more. Nothing exceeds like excess.

But UD likes this one best, by Jon Lang.

Before we go there: My own winter night sky tonight – viewed from my back deck in Garrett Park, Maryland – is blackly clear, with a large, full, bright moon.  This cosmic clarity comes equipped, this evening, with very cold, very awakening, air.  Like all those winter night poets, I’m stirred, and I’m lifted, out here, off the earth, to something acutely articulate; something post-human, and post-humous…   Yet as it happens, I don’t know what the universe is saying — I only know I’m exposed, in my coatless, ghosty condition, to its voice.   Wallace Stevens hears something of this with similar recognition and confusion at the seashore: 

****************************

Winter Night

How often we draw back, detached from the world

Like a star, and thinking the mind a pure space

Imagine our fate somehow suspended – almost

As if, like a far eye, or a small fist

Of light, we might take the whole of it, coldly, in.

But ah, what a show … for nothing really stops –

And the further we fade, the more the smallest pain

Heightens, iced to a moon’s edge. O, could we just

See! How even without us the vanishing earth

Goes on, child without mother, bearing itself

Blindly toward spring! Would we still, like gods,

Think ourselves beyond it all? Now, shrinking

Within, we only at best mimick the dead,

Who have earned with a life that richer, darker distance.