Two New York Writers

For two straight days this week Charles McGrath, once of the New Yorker and now the resident litterateur at the Times, was summoned to provide obits for two significant literary figures--both of whom focused mostly on New York in their work. They, of course, were Louis Auchincloss and J.D. Salinger. Our literary horizon is lessened by their demise but both had reached quite advanced ages and in the notorious case of Salinger, no work had emerged from him for more than 40 years.

Yet to read the fascinating stories of these writers made their prime periods seem like yesterday. To whom is The Catcher in the Rye not the greatest modern coming-of-age novel? Holden Caulfield has become part of our continuing culture, most ironically for his rebellious self because his story is often assigned reading in school today. The novel seems to have survived the army of censors who cited its sometimes rough language as an excuse for barring it from school libraries or English reading lists. It's an even wilder sign of our polarized, dotty scene today that this morning's Washington Post told of a school district in Virginia yanking The Diary of Anne Frank from a school reading list because of too much sex, fantasies in this case. The story made me think that Holden Caulfield and Anne Frank probably stand out as the leading teenaged literary figures in the post-World War II world.

As much as I enjoyed Catcher and the short stories, I and many others realized that Salinger had gone off in a crazy direction as his mind became engrossed with the Glass family. Maybe I still know too little of Eastern religions to appreciate where he was going, but it all got a bit, oh, more than a bit, weird, ending with the whimper of his last published story, the maunderings of Seymour Glass at age seven.

There were moments of the old Salinger touch--the one that produced that fantastic simile in Catcher when Holden says one school roommate was "about as sensitive as a toilet seat." For example, the story of Seymour's on-again, off-again wedding in Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters contained, beside its main themes, a delightfully descriptive picture of Manhattan in the '40s. But as in the great story Bananafish, Salinger's "phonies" here--Seymour's in-laws-to-be, including his bride, and her Matron of Honor, for that matter--are relatively obvious targets for Salinger's disdain.

Quite a different New Yorker was the aristocratic attorney, Louis Auchincloss. Yes, he got inside many of the old reigning culture's grand institutions--the scenes with the lawyers set at the mid-20th century reminded me of the grand meeting rooms at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, where you always met for dinner with your committee and the man came round with the cigars.

He's often compared with Edith Wharton and that's where I find his limitations more obvious. Her characters surmount the settings; if you've read the novels, you have trouble getting Lily Bart or Undine Spragg (despite her ridiculous name) out of your mind, and the whole group in The Age of Innocence. Auchincloss, to me, had one such character--the title character in The Rector of Justin--oft supposed to be Rev. Endicott Peabody of Groton, but probably encompassing more than one of those fabled headmasters of that time.

But he did present a nice view into those bow windows of the brownstones. And there is something to his being described as a novelist of ethics rather than manners. Frankly, that aspect of his work amuses me now, because of how ethics have vanished from Wall Street and the legal profession. Even Auchincloss, whose work reflected a genuine yet subdued sorrow for the passing of some of the better values of his class and profession, probably could not have predicted how far things would decline in this regard.

Auchincloss usually was a good read and his status to me was as the last man alive who knew the ins and outs of the world in which Edith Wharton and earlier writers had been immersed. It's also more than amazing that he emerged from many years at the Wall Street echt-Establishment emporium of Sullivan & Cromwell with his writing style intact. He managed too to combine his practice and his writing while a partner in estates at another firm. To me, he was a good not great writer. As a social analyst, he was second to the outsider John O'Hara, who really yearned for the glittering prizes that were denied him by the literary establishment. Auchincloss already belonged to one Establishment, which apparently was enough for him.

Reagan

In today's prewrites for Obama's State of the Union tonight, one piece urged him to show the charm of Ronald Reagan. Despite my disdain for Reagan's policies, one must concede that he understood a lot about politics that many other presidents have not.

First of all, he realized that you had to keep your "to-do" list short and sweet, no more than three items. Make them big ones. Then do your damnedest to make them happen.

Second, he knew that Americans like both strength and charm. As an actor, even if his forte was B movies, he had learned how to project both qualities well.

Third, he grasped the essence of the style of monarchy without ever losing the common touch. He limited his appearances. He also limited his work day.

Last, maybe he was not so smart. So what? While I prefer a smart president, some of them fail to understand the office. Carter was smart and tried to manage everything; in his own crazy way, so did Nixon, who was always trying to prove to everyone how smart he was.

I've so far been dealing with style, mostly. In the end, Reagan was a disaster for this country. He began the process of wrecking the middle class, only to benefit his rich friends. Clinton was almost as bad because he bit on the trade mantra--without bothering to go through the tedious process of negotiating good terms. Bush Senior at least knew enough to end a war and declare victory quickly. It was also a war we didn't need to fight.

Bush Junior picked up every bad quality of all of the above. He gloated in his ignorance. He started wars we didn't need. What we needed was the kind of expedition that set out in pursuit of Pancho Villa. This time, the quarry would be Osama ben Laden. OK, they didn't catch Pancho. But that was the right approach anyway.

None of the tax cuts helped anyone but the rich who got them. Next to Bush II, the faults of other candidates shrink in comparison. Gore was a nerd. Edwards was a populist and populists nearly always do things to discredit themselves. We can certainly say Edwards did that. McCain was a would-be maverick who decided it was more important to get nominated.

Then there were the candidates unfairly maligned. Howard Dean was taken over the coals for raising his voice. It might have been helpful to have a former governor who happens to be a doctor as president. Hillary Clinton was either shrill or a bitch on wheels or perceived as too tolerant of Bill's peccadilloes. I think we are seeing her true qualities emerge as Secretary of State. She is a bright woman and far more disciplined than her husband, who certainly did know a lot about how to be a successful candidate.

Obama should resist the temptation to be Reagan. Indeed, communication en masse is one of his strong points. But he might be less stand-offish in deferring to other politicians. He took the Reagan mantra too far in limiting his list and emphasizing the wrong item. Back to Carville 101: It Damned Well Is the Economy, Stupid.

The Middle Class

The major failing of the Reagan-Bush I-Clinton years, brought to total fruition in Bush II, was the war the powers that be effectively conducted against the middle class, without which class no democracy has ever flourished. I'm not sure it was always intentional. Usually it was just dumb belief in the market uber alles combined with unlimited greed on the part of Wall Street. As a result we have let the raiders rip apart our manufacturing sector with no replacement parts. Combined with a failure to protect against the worst effects of globalization sealed the deal.

I was thus surprised to read a populist piece in today's Times by one of the first perpetrators of deregulation and the other sins of the 80s and 90s, one David Stockman. Stockman now has taken up the cause of Wall Street's most traditional opponent--not the unions but Main Street. He notes how the Fed has taken care of the banks, let them become so big that they cannot be allowed to fail, and then taken care of them so they can behave profligately and still clean up. So in the end he supports Obama's tax on the banks.

Strange bedfellows indeed. A lot of the tea-party crew is motivated by populism and the history of populism did include generous amounts of racism. But allowing for some of that, the sad story is that these populists seem to think the Republicans are their salvation. I don't think so. Sure, politics as usual is awful and it would be just as bad if the Senate minority cooperated a little. But these folks yelling for the government to keep its hands off my Medicare somehow think that the escalating costs of health care will be dealt with by their keeping all the benefits they may now have.

It makes me wonder where we are when people take the side of insurance companies. This is a little like taking the side of baseball owners in salary and labor disputes. Sure, the players make a ton (rather them than Wall Street!) but unlike most of us, they have unusual skills and abilities. You try to do what Ted Williams said was the hardest thing in sports: hit a pitched baseball. And did you ever cheer for an owner?

The ugly atmosphere, though, is the result of the Republicans and Clinton pitching fear for years at people and the progressive decline of the middle class. Obama deserves credit for keeping things from moving right into Great Depression II but now he needs to take the gloves off and give it hard to Wall Street. If Geithner doesn't like it, fire him. Obama saved these guys from themselves and the public turns on him. I think it's because he doesn't fight hard enough--for a consumer protection agency in finance, for return of regulation like Glass-Steagall, for real jobs creation rather than earmarking and budget padding.

Haiti, Among Other Things

Things were bad enough in Haiti when I was there last autumn. I never really gave the prospect of an earthquake a thought. If I had, I might have thrown up my hands because all the third-world housing hanging onto hills was enough to presage disaster when what could happen happened. It was almost a break from total disaster to see on ABC last night that the Hotel Montana took a hit. I almost stayed there and it was the hangout for Americans and Europeans so you inevitably met people there. But it was high on a hill, on one of the roads to Petionville, which is supposedly the fancy suburb but isn't as fancy as all that.

My friend who runs a project in Port-au-Prince is ok. He and his crew got under some tables so they wouldn't be hit by flying china etc. and seem to have come out of it all right. But how on earth he can hope to get anything done on his project--knowing him, he will pitch in and help as much as he can, which is a lot, because he has lots of basic skills and knows Haiti well.

I was hoping that the national penitentiary might have been damaged so that everyone would be let out. Don't laugh--this happened the last time there was a major government upheaval and it turned out to be a good thing for just about everyone. I saw the Physicians Without Borders medics on tv and recalled the doctor from Miami who came in to work with us on getting control of the prison guest list while he and his staff provided what treatment they could.

It's interesting to me that as there is very little that can be done to anticipate this kind of natural disaster, people respond as well as they can when it happens. They become very pragmatic and truly employ principles of triage, a word used terribly licentiously in connection with budgets and the like. Lexington, the columnist for The Economist, wrote this week about how he was man-handled just going to see someone in the U.S. Embassy in London by whoever the hired goons were guarding the doors.

His experience made me realise yet again how we still turn off so much of the world by trying to guarantee everyone that no terrorist of any stripe will get past our gate. Foreign countries now get back at us by terrorizing passengers getting on flights for the U.S. who undergo screening unlike that used to go anywhere else. The attitude of the uniformed screeners abroad--doubtless following the instructions of the Americans who hired them--resembled that of Claude Rains in Casablanca when he told Bogart that he had urged his men to be particularly destructive in their searching for the "usual suspects" so as to impress the Germans.

One yo-yo slips past a security guard taking an unauthorized break at Newark Airport and they shut the place down for hours. He was going to kiss his girl friend good-bye and in the end, I gather he's hardly getting penalized at all. The only ones to suffer are the thousands delayed and pushed around by our zero-tolerance idiocy: the minds that seem to think that by shutting the place down and rescreening everyone, you can guarantee safety.

It all started with the business about not allowing jokes at the security barriers. We need the equivalent of all the comics in It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World (Milton Berle, Jonathan Winters, Phil Silvers, and of course, the most inimitable of all, Dick Shawn, later the star in The Producers movie in "Springtime for Hitler.") to counteract the two-bit big shots who cause us to spend billions in search of a security that is unobtainable.