After Listening to Meryl Streep on Teri Gross

I listened to Meryl Streep being interviewed on Fresh Air yesterday while I was driving to karate, a couple days after Donna and I went out on a snowy night to see her in The Iron Lady. Like many, I consider her to be, if not the best there is, then so close that it really doesn't matter. If I were dying, stuck in prison, stranded on an island somewhere that had decent power and access to Netflix, I can think of few better ways to idle away my precious hours than to watch her and Stanley Tucci in Julia & Julia, again and again and again.

So it kind of hurt my feelings when she told Teri yesterday that most men, unless they're gay, don't get any of her roles except the one where she played Linda in The Deer Hunter, a role that she was good in, excellent perhaps—a breakthrough role—but one that really doesn't stand out for me. Certainly not in the way that Robert Deniro stood out, or Christopher Walken, all the Russian Roulette stuff in Nam, and getting drunk and going on a deer hunt, and all the other shit in the movie that guys really get into.

Frankly, I remember the guy who played Axel better than I remember Meryl Streep in that movie. Which wouldn't flatly rule out the possibility that I'm gay (and just won't admit it), but couple that with the fact that I haven't seen Mamma Mia, and it would seem at least plausible that I might be one of those rare straight guys who like her, and get her, in pretty much all her roles.

Even the one, in Kramer vs. Kramer, where she plays the mother who runs away from her family, then wants to come back again after Dustin Hoffman has made the kids pancakes and taken them to school and done all kinds of other things that have him coming off as a fucking saint, while she, to a more common sensibility, comes off looking like shit—hey, I can understand that whole dynamic a lot better than Streep might imagine. Just sayin.

And I liked Out of Africa, way more than even a lot of gay guys I have a feeling. And not just for the landscapes, and the flying around in bi-planes, and Robert Redford—he and Paul, now those were some men. And I admire women like Isak Dineson, and Katherine Hepburn (who, as it turns out, didn't admire Meryl Streep, probably due to some deep-seated female-type bitchiness that I wouldn't understand, being a straight male), Beryl Markham, Amelia Earhart, the character Streep played in The Devil Wears Prada, where Stanley Tucci was, once more, great, if too short, and bald, for me, if I were gay, but alas ...

Madonna, can't forget Madonna ...

Can't see the point in being married to, or deeply involved with, any of them, I have to admit. Any more than Robert Redford's character in Out of Africa, before he died (like single men who want to fly around and do whatever they damn well please should, and will, if they don't settle down and get married and learn to love the joys and pleasures that can come, in rare situations, from commitment and domesticity), could see the point in actually staying put with Isak Dineson, great sex and food and Mozart on the Victrola notwithstanding.

But, having reflected further on Streep's remarks to Teri (very un-straight male of me, pondering such things while doing crunches, punching/kicking a bag—perhaps I should see someone about this), she did say it wasn't meant to be a generalization—though it certainly seemed like one to me: men, if they're straight, don't get my roles like women, and gay men, do—that really the crowd she was getting at were the male critics ...

Who, based on the reviews I've seen of The Iron Lady, haven't been as appreciative as, I think, they should have been.

Thus, she may have a point.

While many of the reviews say, in general, to see the movie for the performance rather than for the movie itself, since, well ... they aren't sure what the point of portraying this great woman (whom many of them probably hated, given their politics, or don't remember as well as they think they should, given their politics, and worldly sensibilities) in her senescence, looking back on her life with her husband (Jim Broadbent, reprising his role, partly as a ghost, as The Great Woman Who Is Losing Her Mind's husband [see: Iris—another film that no self-respecting straight man, even a writer, would be caught dead at, especially in a theater by himself, when he could otherwise be watching football, or Ultimate Fighting, but don't get me started], who is dead, talking to her, cracking jokes, being charming in smart, clever ways while often pointing out how selfish she could be, neglecting her family and the like, subtext being: as all kinds of men in the same position, with the same ambitions, would be, though that key isn't banged too hard, lest the movie be an obvious sort of polemic that even a straight guy might get, and get bored with, and want to get out of there as quickly as possible, to get back to the flat screen and Ultimate Fighting ...

Suffice to say, there are many subtleties to the movie, many of them overlooked in the surfeit of safe, similar, three out of five star reviews, not all of them written by men, but most of them.

And the performance, which is flat out awesome (in the old sense of the word), and bang on if you remember anything of Maggie and those days, takes little turns on commonly remarked upon themes—the woman, if she doesn't want to be wiping teacups on her dying day, having to become more of a man than the men, and to what consequence finally?—that in lesser vessels might have been less interesting, and felt even dated. Instead, it feels Shakespearean. As full of equivocation as "MacBeth."

Streep, understandably, perhaps, was disappointed that this not too abstruse point seemed lost on many of our best male critics. Though, to be fair, it was lost on a lot of the women as well—who, as a bunch anymore, at least those who have made it to the perceived safety of The Club, aren't any more courageous, or smart, or inciteful, than the men. Not reliably. Even Pauline Kael, especially when she got in the door, could be obtuse on occasion. How could someone not like Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid? Redford and Newman ... music by Burt Bacharach, Katherine Ross, riding on the handlebars with her petticoats showing, BJ Thomas breaking into "Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head" ... What kind of woman doesn't eat that up?

Yet, don't you have to admire a woman who doesn't? Who won't ... even if, as a straight guy, you wouldn't want to be married to them.

Leave them for the Jim Broadbents of the world. Who, sooner or later, if only on occasion, end up not quite what the Maggie Thatchers of the world had hoped they'd be.

And there's the rub.

Imagine fighting over who does the wash and the dishes with someone like Pauline Kael or Maggie Thatcher ... or Meryl Streep, for that matter. You'd just end up doing it, all of it, to spare yourself the brain damage, if you were a straight guy. Any guy, really. And then where would you be?

In the same position women, married to guys like those women, were in for years. Wondering WTF?

Donna and I saw another movie awhile back, The Descendents. Saw it at the Ellie Caulkins, at the Denver Film Festival. Afterwards, we were over in the Galleria Bar having a drink and this woman behind us was going on about how George Clooney's [Oscar nominated] character was "just weak." Why, it just made her sick ...

She didn't get it at all.

Donna and I looked at each other and didn't say anything.

I thought about that woman, that evening, the other day when I was driving to karate and heard Meryl Streep tell Teri Gross that men, straight men, didn't seem to get the full range of her roles, just the ones like Linda in The Deer Hunter, while women, and many of the gay men that presumably fussed over her, did. I listened to that and remembered that clueless middle-aged, well-dressed woman who should have known something by this time, going on behind us after The Descendents, about George Clooney's character—who, ironically, would have been one of those clueless men Streep was speaking of at the beginning of the film, but not by the end (Director, a man, straight: Alexander Payne, from Omaha, Nebraska), and thought: Meryl, be careful, and wake up ... there's plenty of clueless to go around.

The Good Life (on the Backs of the Sick)

Let us be glad that we live in a country where so many can make so much bank on the backs of the sick, and that few among us are troubled by it; let us be thankful as well that to keep this juggernaut going we spend twice as much per captita as any other developed nation on "health care", that, by law, taxpayers can't negotiate for the Medicare drugs they pay for, and that many of us who aren't over 65, or veterans, or destitute (driven to or otherwise), are at present paying more for their health insurance (much of it far less than adequate, though they won't realize it unless they get sick) than they are for their mortgages. Let us be thankful, mostly, that here in America one is allowed the opportunity to experience, along with serious illness, the tandem possibility of being financially ruined from it, which, after all, builds character in a way the rich and the fortunate and those with good plans in this country all the other developed nations will never understand, and wouldn't tolerate for a second--let us pity their lack of wisdom, and rejoice in our plentiful Kool-Aid. Amen.

Predictions for a New Year

One may as well start with politics.

Reliable Righty Rick Santorum is surging in Iowa, as nearly everyone in the Republican Field (except Jon Huntsman) did before him. The candidates and the media, still stunned from liquor and rich food and other holiday distractions, no doubt, haven't had time to give him the thrashing he's due to get, if not in time for the caucus voting on Tuesday. Thus, he could very well win on Tuesday, in Iowa. He very well might. Even though it's getting more obvious by the day what the final outcome will be ...

Romney. Versus Obama. Obama wins. Gets stuck for four more years unraveling a country from the excess and expectations brought on largely by its post-WWII good fortune.

Still—that doesn't mean Iowa has to set the tone and kill all the drama and pageant before potentially each and every Republican candidate has a turn at being in first place. Moreover, the Republican Show in Iowa, along with being a munificent economic windfall to the state, tends to give brief, unrealistic, and ulitimately fleeting hope to personalities such as Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson, Mike Huckabee—and now, just maybe, to Rick Santorum.

So, expect Santorum to be the next candidate up, the next candidate down, in the Republican's surprisingly egalitarian nod to life imitating art, to Uncle Andy's famous prediction that all of us (with the possible exception of Jon Huntsman) will have fifteen minutes of fame.

Ron Paul? Newt Gingrich? Been there, done that. So last year.

And what are we supposed to do for fun when and if it becomes painfully obvious (well before the pageant directors think it should) that Mitt Romney is going to get the nomination?

Wait to see Ron Paul jump in as a third party spoiler.

Don't laugh, he probably will. Especially if he does well in Iowa. Especially if he figures the Republicans don't have a chance in November. Which they probably don't, regardless of the state of the economy, which, btw, won't so much recover as continue on like a formerly top-notch, ever hopeful, 46-year-old athlete who is accident-prone, with high deductibles.

Any other time in recent memory, running against even one Republican who wasn't either plain nuts or beset with a host of unruly contradictions, and Obama would be toast in November.

But not this time, not with this crowd.

This time conventional wisdom gets turned on its head, and a poor economy will work in Obama's favor. Ironically, what Obama needs to worry about, if not very much (and contrary to everything you've heard), is the prospect that housing and the stock market will rise up again, fueling a renewed belief in hunky dory expansive living brought about by tax cuts and giveaways to the fortunate, alleviating for just enough time the nagging fear that, if something doesn't give, and the Republicans axe our Medicare and Social Security, our grown children and poor relatives will be living in our basement—or us in theirs—leaving no extra cash for sushi, or a spa day, a trip to Cancun, none of that. And we'll all be living like people did before that evil socialist Roosevelt became president.

More likely, though, 2012 will be a tipping point, slouching toward aging Boomers (the vast majority of them reckoning with much less cash than they'd hoped to have by now) looking to protect their tax-payer funded entitlements more than their 401K returns. It'll be a difficult pill to swallow—getting by on 200K for the next twenty years rather than the 2 million they were counting on, if only their house and 401K had continued to go up 15%-20% a year for the next 15-20 years—but swallow it they will.

Which will have its consequences, like everything else the Boomers decide to do.

No, I'm thinking the Fear Vote this year, contrary to recent convention, votes Democratic.

And that many of those who left the fold to trust the hotshots and their methodologies will be coming home—like the Boomerangs.

And yes, it'll be hard when they discover that, eternal faith in compounded returns wasn't really where it was at, after some job creator who didn't, some faceless entity flush with cash and recognized as having rights by the Supreme Court of the United States, has taken from them everything they can steal ...

"How does it feel?" I can already hear Obama asking the crowd—at least I wish he would. And then Romney replying, "Hey, you fucked up. You trusted us!"

Wouldn't that be fun? We wouldn't need Ron Paul if we could count on that.

Another thing ... our faith-based currency, the almighty dollar, will continue to be strong, at least relative to the rest of the world's faith-based currencies currently in more or less precipitous decline. This so long as Europe's woes keep us on the brink of a global recession, and that traders on the FOREX, known to have the hearts and loyalty of lizards, don't decide otherwise. In any event, know that much of the world's fate is at their fingertips on any given day. Rejoice in the fact that they can bring excitement for no particular reason, with a simple pratfall, to a world that craves it, and makes bank from it.

Gold will still see $2000 before it sees $1000, and I will still take bets of up to $100 from anyone who thinks otherwise. Though gold will languish in the shadows and perceived safety of a strong dollar, test the mettle and faith of those crazy Gold Bugs, in time people without jobs, in houses under water, will cry out in unison with large banks and hedge funds hungry for hot money to leverage: "Help us, Helicoptor Ben! You're our only hope!"

And Ben will say, Better money from a keystroke, raining from the sky, than a depression.

And we shall be thankful, possibly, maybe (who knows?), that contrary to what history would suggest from a bunch of nations absurdly in debt, over-committed, and threatened with losing all that we've been trained to believe is near and dear to us, the narrative to our times may well end up looking more like a game of Monopoly (albeit, stuffed full with added dollars) than a game of Risk. After all, why go to war with China when we could just let them buy us. One of the perks of globalization. Of letting the Central Banks and Treasury Tim sort it out for us.

On lighter topics ...

Timmy and the Broncos, having luxuriated in their fifteen minutes of fame and endearment to the Almighty, will get beaten in a way consistent with reversion to the mean probabilities, with generous padding on the spread, next Sunday afternoon. By the fourth quarter John Elway will be imagining how, without incurring death threats from the Tim Zealots, he might pick up Matt Flynn in the off-season.

Tonight, the luck goes to Luck ...

And, sooner or later there will be snow in the mountains! Enough that you can ski or board without scratching up the equipment on rocks and gravel.

Brad Pitt will win Best-Actor at the Oscars, and maybe at the Golden Globes, whether for Moneyball or The Tree of Life remains to be seen.

Jonah Hill, however, will win Best Supporting Actor for his role in Moneyball—though he's had other good roles this year as well.

Meryl Streep will likely get nominated again for The Iron Lady. But who else, among the actresses? Help me out ...

What else?

If you're a pessimist, this'll be a good decade to get a book out, to crow on at parties, yet maybe not such a good decade to quit a good job, sell a profitable business, to write a book. Still, for another ten years or so, maybe longer if you're lucky, you'll feel as good as you'll feel your whole life being a pessimist.

That said, to the rest of you, quit worrying, it'll all be fine. The species isn't geared to manage luxury anyway. Having it all isn't our bag as humans. Seriously, the only thing we like better than a good mess to fix is a well-constructed, sturdy cage. And the desire between the two fluctuates; it's our idiom.

Look for lots of it in 2012.

And try to smile more.

Cheers!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Author's note: the following yuletide greeting comes from the pen of our legal staff, the august firm Dewey, Diddlum & Howe, at the insistence, we're sorry to say, of the esteemed partner who gives us most of what ends up, we're again sorry to say, being pretty poor advice most of the time. That said, we haven't mailed the firm a check in a long time (though we certainly have sent Les a lot of olives), so what should we expect?

Greetings one and all!

It's been another great year here at Dewey, Diddlum & Howe. We're doing more business than ever with some of the shadiest people imaginable, and yet they continue to pay and we continue to care, and the help continues to steal us blind while N Howe, who does all the work, looks the other way and, well, does all the work.

For this we give thanks.

And also for Michelle Bachman, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, possibly Ron Paul, and anyone else the Republican base believes, however fleetingly, is a better candidate to run for president against Barack Obama than Mitt Romney. May they all be our clients one day, with money in their checking accounts.

Let us also be thankful this holiday season for Mitt Romney, who was VC back when most of us still thought VC was Charlie, who, as someone else pointed out, looks like a guy who might play the president in a movie calling for a president in a bit part.

Let us be thankful, too, that the Good Lord gave us the eloquent atheist and apostate Christopher Hitchens to get after all the charlatans and clowns and sanctimonious folk who make this Hobbesian existence of ours even more Hobbesian.

Let us be thankful for Facebook and other fine social networking sites, for giving us the illusion that we are close and cosy and keeping in touch. As Ibsen said, a vital lie is critical to the sanity of most of us—lies, in my case. As in: All is well so long as N Howe is doing the work. And I have olives.

Let us be thankful for Greece, btw, for their olives, for giving us civilization, for being the kind of client we here at Dewey, Diddlum & Howe would love to have if they had any money in their checking account.

Let us be thankful for snow, which we here in Louisville (if not in Summit County) have in abundance, for the moment.

For a White Christmas, Charlie Brown's Christmas, and It's a Wonderful Life.

For fudge and cookies and stuffing and pumpkin pie.

For quiet nights with the associates, after a stiff drink ...

For our clients, even the ones who don't pay their bills ...

That is all.

Sincerely,

Les Diddlum, Of Counsel (Part-time)

Dewey, Diddlum & Howe

[You Pay, We Care]

Wishing all a very merry holiday season!

cb

Penn State as Metaphor

A man high up in the chain of Penn State football is caught buggering a 10-year-old boy in the showers by a 28-year-old man, an assistant coach with Penn State football, who doesn't stop the man, doesn't call the police, but does report what he saw to someone presumably with some power to do something, being another link in the chain of Penn State football.

The matter is handled internally. In a similar fashion to the way the Catholic Church handled and continues to handle such problems. In a similar fashion to the way our financial system polices and smoothes out its more grotesque excesses that end up buggering the relatively innocent for life.

It's the rare individual, the rare program, that is brave when there is much to lose for being so. Better to sweep the mess under the rug than risk a noisy, unwieldy fuss. In the case of Penn State, one can imagine certain questions being wrestled over: Are we really going to risk bringing down a program we've spent years building just because one of our coaches has a predilection for buggering young boys? A man like Joe Paterno is going to live out his twilight years in shame over something that random and bizarre and, let's face it, just plain sick? No, that would be unthinkable. What we need to do is manage it as best we can, keep a close eye on Jerry, pay off those we need to—everyone has a price, especially the families of 10-year-old boys we have to hope—and not screw up what the rest of us have worked a lifetime to achieve. We will not let this unfortunate incident, nor any of the rest, or those in the future, compromise the program.

One can almost see the tears welling in the eyes of those coming to the conclusion they almost always do as they wrestle with their cowardice in the face of losing everything dear to them, as they come bit by bit or perhaps all at once to a decision to save themselves.

One can understand the difficulty of the struggle. The Church, before choosing to save itself from their minions of pederasts, had to save itself from other difficult messes. During World War II, for instance, ten or so years before Joe Paterno began his career with Penn State, The Church could have spoken out when it was known within their ranks that Hitler was slaughtering Jews, and many others. Why didn't they say anything? it is often asked. Why didn't they encourage the reluctant democracies that the Jews of Europe trusted to not let them down to do something, sooner? Could it be that the great Catholic Church established nearly two thousand years earlier was afraid of what Hitler, and Mussolini, would do to their world, and their Swiss guards, and their remarkably rich and lovely enclave, if they did? Yet what other reason is plausible, for the original Christian faith to not speak out when masses of humanity, not to mention the Chosen People, are being slaughtered?

And what about the United States? And Great Britain? And all those powerful Jewish And Swiss Bankers that supposedly ran the world? What up?

One can imagine the hand-wringing. But ... to risk the program for a few million Jews, and gypsies, and homosexuals? Rather, let's pray, all of us—and thank God there's a Heaven for those poor souls. Yes, we'll pray for their souls, and wait for this hell on earth to end. A few million Jews and other heathens aren't worth a Sisteen Chapel. And the Americans have already blown up a monastery.

Similarly, the banks in Europe and America—the great churches of our modern commercial times—who have lent their money foolishly to people and nations with low FICO scores and to otherwise untold numbers of greedy schemes that haven't worked out as well as they'd hoped are not going to risk the future of their organizations for the sake of some quaint principle known as free enterprise, where risks are taken and sometimes rewarded, sometimes not. No, the days of manning up to such silliness are long gone, and besides, many of their own are fine, mostly dedicated people, many of whom have families and are generally thought to be decent, some of whom donate money to good causes, to the symphony, the opera, outfits that would be in a real fix without them—yes, good people, not unlike many of the Nazi officers who were merely carrying out orders, like certains priests who couldn't help themselves or their natures, like Mr. Sandusky, surely, who says he's no pedophile, though admits to "horsing around."

Good people. Our own. Taking care of each other with all their power, regardless of the consequences, principle, Christian decency or any other kind, for as long as they can, until they can't anymore. Until the jig is finally up.

How Reading Jim Harrison Could Save Your Life

Or at least lift it a little in the near-term, yes? Perhaps we ought not ask for the world at the moment ...

I promised my friend Paul on the way back from walking the boys to school that I wouldn't dawdle around worrying about world events or how much laundry there was to do still, that I wouldn't fret over burned out lightbulbs and leaves that need raking, plants that need to get brought in before it freezes tomorrow night, that I wouldn't stare at Bloomberg or diddle away my precious time on my devices and that, rather, I would sit down As Soon As I Got Home and get to work on tailoring what everyone who has read them agrees are inspired revisions to the middle of the novel that I have been working on since the waning days of the Clinton presidency, and get the goddamned thing done, once and for all.

But here I am, feeling the need to say a word about Jim Harrison before I really buckle down and get going, before I have to get to karate at noon ...

Now, one must admit we live in a time where to manage the fear and trembling over what we're as yet still reluctant to accept is an intractable state of affairs, brought on (more than we're still willing to admit, of course) by our trusting the capitalists too much, while at the same time being greedy little pigs ourselves, we have sunk to taking comfort in platitudes, in low-fat foods and promising lotions, in headlines celebrating, for instance, the second win of the season by our local professional football team, its ranks not too long ago decimated in a way no less thoroughly than a five-year-old wielding a Harry Potter wand might have, by a hooded, high-strung, thirty-something-year-old hired in equivocal times—though hardly desperate times; desperate happened after—to replace the man who won two Super Bowls and is now the current coach of the Washington Redskins, by an owner who very soon thereafter had to admit that he'd made a big mistake, the kind for which in the old days, in more noble cultures where a person was expected to do more than say something fatuous like they "took full responsibility" to manage the magnitude of the wrong, and the shame, and the embarrassment, a person might have literally fallen on his sword. Instead, we got a new high-strung, relatively short Christian quarterback who is now, after much ballyhoo, our number one man behind center not to mention our only hope left, and our team—check it out—came out of yesterday's pitched and much-viewed battle with a spectacular three-point overtime win over a team that has so far, unless I'm mistaken, not won a game this season. To add even more significance to the day, Our Man Tim—his name is Tim, lest you're completely shut out of the world we live in now—won this game against the Dolphins, in Miami, which is fairly close to if not on the same field where he played in college. "Tim-tastic!" read today's headlines—not on the sports page, but on the Front Page of the whole fucking paper! Such are the times, even here, where they are still pretty good compared to, say, Florida, especially in Louisville ...

But I digress. The point I was going to make was that, in times like these, I'd expect that roughly 80% of my readers—a good five to ten people at least, distracted with all that they are—are asking themselves about now: "Who the fuck is Jim Harrison?"

Well, I suppose you can hardly be blamed. Although the Seattle Times referred to him as "A force of nature in American letters," who the fuck reads the Seattle Times, right? Moreover, who has time to bother with American Letters, whatever the fuck those are in late September of 2011, when a person can just fiddle with his or her devices, or go for a run, or do some much needed work in the yard before it gets cold?

Nonetheless, I'm telling you that many of you would feel a whole lot better if you picked up one of his books and shoved your devices and stuff to the side and told everyone and everything in your face at the moment to fuck off and just sat someplace quiet and read for a while. That's all I'm saying. That, and that you could do worse than start with Jim Harrison, with, I'd say, the collection of novellas, Legends of the Fall, the worst of the three being the title story, in my opinion, the one they made the relatively shitty movie out of, with Brad Pitt, who has since been in better stuff, notably Moneyball, which you should go see rather than waiting to download it one day on your device, but ... whatever ... if you read "Revenge," or, especially, "The Man Who Gave Up His Name," and think, What was that? or, I think I'll just stick with my devices, well then, I'll leave you to your fate. Perhaps your well-diversified 401K and a shitload of Apps and skinny lattes on the fly is all you'll need for future happiness—let's hope you're right. But if you're starting to seriously wonder, and you like the novellas previously mentioned above, go down to your favorite bookstore—there still are some out there that aren't listed on the NYSE, or going broke themselves; for instance, in Louisville, there is the estimable Barbara's Book Cellar, which really isn't in a cellar, not anymore, it's right on Main Street in clear view of anyone who isn't looking down, staring at a device while heading down the street—and tell them that you want something by Jim Harrison; tell them you'll take anything they have, even his new one, The Great Leader, which you'll want in a 1st Edition, or the one before that ...

The English Major ... I'm reading it now, and I can tell you, without equivocation, that it has been a helpful tonic to my soul. It wasn't a big hit. It got okay reviews when it came out. He's not your all over NPR and Terri Gross and Charlie Rose kind of guy, though he's not Hunter Thompson or Charles Bukowski either. More like an aging Henry Miller who likes to fish. Who has a better way with words, and is probably wiser. Reviewers, especially the really esteemed ones who go nuts over stuff that oftentimes, when you read it, feels like someone added just the tiniest touch of drama along with some jacked syntax to a collection of thrown-together Wikipedia facts, that puts you to sleep in a way that your devices or a good book with vampires or zombies or thoughtful dogs, or even something by Shel Silverstein, never would—anyway, those people feel like they have to be careful and not too effusive about Jim Harrison, in the same way that one should be careful with certain thoughts that come to mind and not just blurt out, for instance, how someone's seventeen-year-old daughter is fucking beautiful. All to say, it's best if you're a reviewer, and want to stay esteemed, to be a little circumspect when reviewing a book by Harrison, who, himself, is not circumspect in any way that I've been able to detect, especially when it comes to the driftings of the human mind, and to human appetites generally, even the lingering ones of a sixty-year-old, who, himself, the hero of The English Major, finding that his libido has left certain parts of his anatomy raw and itching, says he has "endured rather than prevailed."

Here are the lines that follow that one: "My senior students had yawned when I tried to teach them the glories of Faulkner's Nobel Prize speech. A chunky little cheerleader named Debbie who would later grow into a human bowling ball squeaked, 'I don't get it.'"

See what I mean?

Here's another one (and I'm only to about page fifty): "My AD (alcoholic doctor) friend had said at a poker game that there was a certain kind of monkey that will give up lunch to see photos of female monkey butts. AD tends to say odd things when he's trying to pull a bluff during a poker game in order to throw the rest of us off."

This meditation comes in the context of our hero, who has gone traveling around the United States in his Taurus with 250 thousand miles on it, in the wake of his beloved dog dying, and his less than beloved wife having left him—the first line of the book, the laconic and oddly affecting, "It used to be Cliff and Vivian and now it isn't."—and him running into a student from twenty-five years earlier, who is forty-three now, in a terrible marriage, thinks she might be bipolar, and finds that the state of Nebraska brings out a kind of randiness in her that our hero at first finds exciting, yet, by turns, even with a stash of Viagra and Levitra given to him by AD, is growing weary of—he's sixty, after all. The sort of guy his dad had said would end up "high-minded and low-waged" from reading to much Emerson. His girl for the moment, Marybelle, has by contrast only slowed down due to a sunburn she got along a Nebraska river, and is now wearing only one of his T-shirts as they travel onward. "A gas station attendant in Chadron was treated to a sleeping beaver shot when he washed our windshield. He smirked and blushed highlighting his troubled skin."

It isn't so much that his heroes are dirty old men as they are caught off guard by things, by images, like those seen by our gas station attendant, that can't be easily disposed of. That one can no easier avoid thinking about having seen it than, say—as Harrison does, through another character in his new book—a person can stop thinking about having seen a white horse.

Anyway, lest I keep on ... I've got to get to my novel before I have to get to karate (too late!), and then go pick up the kids before I get Ian off to hockey, and then to the karate I missed earlier, and to the homework, and eat and clean up before I get to sleep at a decent hour so I'm not tired in the morning and can write again tomorrow.

You know how it is.

And all I'm saying is, if you get tired of worrying, of thinking if you just go a little faster and stay positive that the economy and jobs and the stock market and even the Greeks and the prospects for print and literary fiction in particular will break out of it's current obdurate range, and that property will take off again and we'll all be rich if we're just patient and pray and are hopeful every day no matter what and don't raise taxes here in this difficult economy at what is surely a very brief if difficult moment brought on by trusting the wrong people and behaving like fools ourselves for many, many years ... when you finally come to terms with the fact that it's been a long, long night of partying and more kegs and whiskey and weed and all the rest at five in the morning isn't going to amount to much for very many, that we're looking at a long hangover and a big mess to clean up and possibly even a few lawsuits here and there before we get that skip back in our step again, think about picking up some Jim Harrison and doing a little correcting yourself. You just might be glad you did.

Bachman's Promise

During a President Bachman Administration, gas will drop to under two dollars again ...

"That will happen," she says.

Talk about cool!

But imagine if I—Bartleby Productions and, uh ... Ministries—could get your gas down even further, say to under $1.85/gallon ...

Before the election!

How cool would that be?

Of course, seeing through such a highly ambitious and delusional plan will require some financing. And I realize many of you are stretched, but ... ten dollars a day, all of it fully tax deductible (unlike campaign contributions), seems like a more than reasonable amount for me to try and hustle from y'all, and given the worthwhile nature of the goal, I'm sure that ...

If you really care about getting back your cheap gas, you'll have me set up the Pay-Pal—or pay me cash; actually, cash is preferred here at BP&M—as soon as possible in order to get on this bit of business right away, and not wait (and in the meantime pay double) until Prez MB and VP Ricky are sworn in.

Our operators are standing by ...

This week's poll: Will Gold hit $2000.00 before the Rapture? Give us your thoughts.