It's My Party Too

Christine Todd Whitman's political memoir contains so much good, common-sense thinking that it's a crying shame she balances it with so much whiny, partisan apologia. She correctly identifies the enemies of moderation -- the "social conservatives" and "ideological zealots" who have taken charge of the Rebuplican party's agenda for more than 20 years now -- but then excuses herself and the rest of the shrinking band of "moderate" Republicans who have subordinated themselves to this crowd, and further has the audacity to argue that Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney somehow represent moderation.
Ms. Whitman looks back to the Republican party in which she grew up -- the party that produced Dwight Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits, Lowell Weicker, Charles Mathias and others, and laments that this is no longer the party in which she finds herself today. She rightly points to fiscal responsibility, a strong national defense and small government as "bedrock" issues that could attract a significant majority of voters and understands that the right wing, fueled by the rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh, could lead Republicans to an increasingly marginal position.
But where is any sense of mea culpa for putting her own positions on the back burner to support candidates like the two Bushes who embrace the intolerant, anti-feminist, racist positions of the radical right?
When she argues that the Republicans must re-assert themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility, she conveniently ignores the Reagan-Bush records of profligate spending coupled with tax cuts, blaming the whole deficit problem on the lack of a line-item veto.
While she makes an intelligent argument that Republicans must find a way to appeal to African Americans and other minority voters, she finds nary a word for the damage done by the Willie Horton ad campaign or Reagan's ugly characterizations of Cadillac-driving welfare queens and the willfully homeless.
She understands how much damage was done by the coupling of rejection of the Kyoto accords with questioning of the scientific basis of global warming, but fails to hold Bush accountable for betraying her on this issue (he was poorly advised) and in her defense of the environmentalist positions of Republicans neglects Reagan's claim that trees cause pollution or Bush's embrace of Ken Lay and the price-fixing Enron.
It's My Party Too is clearly an opening shot in a 2008 campaign for a place on the Republican ticket (I'm not sure if she wants the top spot, but she is obviously positioning herself as a logical choice for the vice presidency).
Ms. Whitman tackles a number of interesting issues -- the environment, civil rights, feminism -- and her own positions seem quite reasonable. If all I had were her position papers, I might be able to vote for her.
But when I read her description of Dick Cheney as "intelligent, insightful and understated," I am stopped right in my track. She doesn't seem to understand what a vile joke it is to describe Newt Gingrich as a fellow moderate, or how strange it was that Donald Rumsfeld was running the Office of Equal Opportunity in 1969. And while she mentions Arnold Schwarzeneggar's "girlie-man" remark in passing, she doesn't pause for even a momentary reflection on what it says about him.
In fact, that last statement pinpoints what is wrong with this book. While it fairly states a number of reasonable political positions, it fails to hold Republicans accountable for their opposition to them -- other than a nameless band of "social conservatives."
On the other hand, I found not a single positive reference to a Democratic politician in the entire book. We see Robert Byrd described as an ex-Klansman in a passage defending poor Trent Lott for his warm look back at the 1948 Strom Thurmond campaign. Of course, she fails to mention that Byrd has called his Klan membership his "greatest mistake" while Thurmond never either repudiated his segregationist views or even acknowledged his mixed-race daughter.
She smears her predecessor at the EPA, Carol Browner, as tolerant of racist policies; describes her one-time opponent for the U.S. Senate as sexist; and finds time to trash Christopher Dodd, Bill Clinton, Al Gore and numerous other Democrats.
There was a time when I felt somewhat sorry for Ms. Whitman for her humiliating experience as EPA administrator. I believed that she entered the job feeling she could make a positive difference and, like Colin Powell, found that too many forces were lined up against her. That may be true, but her failure to put the blame where it belongs cheapens her own positions.
In It's My Party Too, Ms. Whitman makes it clear that she is part of the problem, not the solution.

The Pleasures of Reading in an Ideological Age

The Pleasures of Reading in an Ideological Age makes for a very pleasurable read, even though I have trouble with its central thesis -- that contemporary modes of literary criticism are damaging to the act of reading itself.
Robert Alter, a biblical scholar who has recently published a new translation of The Five Books of Moses, takes on the post-structuralist crowd in this volume, arguing that students are spending too much time these days (the book was written in 1989) reading Derrida, Foucault, Lacan and other French literary critics, and too little time reading Dickens, Tolstoy and the Bible. He may be right in terms of what is being taught in universities, but I think he's wrong that contemporary criticism should be blamed. I'll concede that people may be misusing the French critics, but I would argue that they have provided useful new insights into the ways that texts (a term he despises) of all sorts are perceived by readers.
There's a long argument to be engaged in here, and I'm not sure I feel like getting into it.
Let's just say that Alter's disagreement with contemporary critics takes up only parts of the first and last chapters of his book. The rest of the volume is, fortunately, full of his thoughts about great literature, and it has the pleasurable effect of an afternoon spent flipping through a library, reviewing and reflecting on passages from Anna Karenina, The Aeneid, Tom Jones, The Sound and the Fury, Moby Dick, and other great works of fiction and poetry.
In successive chapters he considers the issues of Character, Style, Allusion, Structure and Perspective, showing how value can be
I love books like this. They conjure up warm memories of days spent with great literature, and open our eyes to literature we've missed. The book this one most reminded me of is Mary McCarthy's Ideas and the Novel, another tome whose thesis may be questionable but whose value is in the insights provided into great books.
It's a book worth reading, owning and using for suggestions on expanding your literary horizons.

Sideways

I watched Sideways on an airplane, which is a terrible way to see a movie, but it seemed somehow appropriate for this one in its tininess.
Sideways is a wee thing, an extremely slight but nevertheless smart and enjoyable comedy about the messiness of attraction and affection. It's very well-written and performed, and yet having seen it -- albeit in the usual chopped-up and -down edit for airplane audiences -- I can understand why it has engendered something of a backlash from those who believe it has been overpraised.
When a cinematic work is deliberately kept small and within strict confines -- a "short story" as opposed to a novel on film -- it can inspire a "so what" response in a culture that responds to size and special effects.
But Sideways would be terrible if it were bigger. A cast of stars and a big budget might overwhelm and cheapen its quiet pleasures. Imagine it recast with Tom Hanks, Mel Gibson, Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts and you'll see what I mean. They're all fine actors, but much too recognizable and baggage-laden for this charming, sad, yet ultimately hopeful story about two buddies on a rambling, wine-drunk trip through the Santa Barbara wine country, and the women they encounter.
Sideways kept reminding me of Breaking Away, the small 1979 feature about a teenaged bicycle racer that received similar praise -- and a similar Oscar nomination for Best Picture -- before being mostly forgotten. That is not small praise. I loved Breaking Away, and I expect I will harbor similar fond memories of this one. Especially if I can manage to catch it on a better screen and in its full edit.

Million Dollar Baby

By all the available evidence, Clint Eastwood is a thoughtful, intelligent person and is thoroughly dedicated to his craft. Even his politics have become more nuanced and interesting over the years. What he is not is a good actor or director.
Eastwood's obvious care and dedication aren't enough.
Million Dollar Baby, like its predecessor, last year's Mystic River and other Eastwood films going back more than 30 years, is a heavy-handed piece of work. The story of an aging fight manager and the female boxer he takes on is square and stolid, drab even. It's paced like a dirge, with mostly tedious dialogue that does nothing to relieve the heaviness.
Eastwood's acting is mostly one-note. He has always been a wonderful physical specimen for the film, and in his old age his graggy face and pained eyes are a powerful image. But he doesn't suggest the emotional turmoil of his character. And his voice doesn't have the shades and nuance the role requires. I kept wondering how Paul Newman, who is a few years older than Eastwood, might have played the part, or the late-career Burt Lancaster, who might have brought more heft to it.
Visually, it's a hideous piece of film. The predominant color throughout is a mildewy gray-green, which may be meant to suggest the sweaty, smelly milieu of the gym, but instead makes the picture look as if it were shot with a cheap 8-millimeter home movie camera from the 1950s. There's no variation -- the gym, the characters' apartments, the exteriors in L.A., London -- all are rendered in the same gray-green tones. Even Eastwood's and Freeman's gray hair takes on the tint. It's awful.
What does work is the handling of the central moral issue -- the one that has turned this film into a political hot potato. It is worked out with both an ear for the ethical complexities, and a real sensitivity to the human suffering of the characters. The final quarter of the film builds tension and interest in a way the lead-in has not. It makes it almost worth sitting through.

Gilead

Marilynne Robinson's second novel is lovely, but I can't think of a whole lot to say about it.
I urge everyone to enjoy its quiet pleasures, its meditative prose, its reflections on life and fathers and sons and goodness and grace.
Written as a letter from a very old, dying father to his young son, Gilead reveals the history of a family of churchmen from the Civil War through the 1950s. The title is the name of the Iowa town in which they reside, but the story is only incidentally about the town, which was a safe haven for escaping slaves. Race has something to do with the story, but it would be misleading to say that Gilead is about race.
It's a perfect book for daily reflection.

Carly Simon: Anthology

Carly Simon never quite made it into the top echelon of female singer/songwriters. Her songs were neither as hauntingly confessional as those of Joni Mitchell, nor as consistently tuneful as those of Carole King.
Still, her Anthology presents a distinctive personality that has aged well. If her best song is still her first hit, the trenchant and chilling, "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be," she nevertheless had enough high points over the years to justify this collection.
Back in the 1970s, Carly Simon was the woman my female college friends wanted to grow up to become (Hell, I wanted to become her). She was smart and urbane, funny and sexy. She had James Taylor and an apparently happy and normal domestic life, while at the same time managing to be creative and successful in her career. That's the personality she projects in her best songs of the period -- "You're So Vain," "The Right Thing To Do," "Haven't Got Time For the Pain."
As the '70s proceeded, she began to reveal the insecurities behind the successful image. As a songwriter, her great theme became the suspicion and mistrust that are the flip side of a too-romantic outlook. It surfaces even in wistful tunes like "Boys In The Trees." She's often the first to betray ("In Times When My Head"), but then she turns that betrayal around and uses it as a defense against being hurt.
But she's an inconsistent writer, and that has been her limitation. Her first couple of albums, as I recall, were nearly unlistenable except for the one or two hits they contained. And that's still true of some recent outings.
Her worst songs have a sing-song, nursery rhyme quality, ironic in that some of her more interesting work has involved children's songs. She recorded a children's album with her sister Lucy before her solo career took off, and on Coming Around Again she does a sweet take on "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" with her children. The rendition a little bit jazzy, and she segues nicely into the title song, from the film Heartburn.
Ms. Simon's skills as a cover artist have never gotten enough due. Her taste is superb: Covering Stephen Sondheim, she chooses the little-known, "Not A Day Goes By" rather than a more obvious selection like "Send In The Clowns." And her selection of songs by the Doobie Brothers, Everly Brothers, John Lennon and others are are nearly as wise and careful as those made by the greatest cover artist of our era, Emmylou Harris. Better yet, Carly Simon seems to understand really understand the standards she sings, unlike, say, Linda Ronstadt, who never encountered a lyric she couldn't shout.
In general, I don't have a lot of use for rock-era singers who have reached back and recorded "standards" albums. I find their work almost uniformly over-orchestrated and underfelt. Carly Simon's ventures into this territory are a lovely and surprising exception. Ms. Simon's version of "My Funny Valentine" is, for my money, one of the very best I have encountered. It's a song I never loved until I heard her sing it.
As she approaches 60, Ms. Simon still has the rich alto she first revealed nearly 40 years ago. Here's to more from her.