When Style Trumped Grammar

William Strunk, Jr.
“This rule does not, of course, mean that the writer should entirely discard the passive voice, which is frequently convenient and sometimes necessary.”

Read ’em and weep. “The singer did not disappoint.” “The movie dazzles.” “The oratorio inspired.”

What’s wrong with these sentences? They lack!

Direct objects, that is.

Especially in arts criticism, which is to say among people who should know better, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the venerable transitive verb is not only under attack, it is sorely wounded and on the brink of death. The transitive verb requires a direct object, but you’d never know it these days. To those few of us who still care about grammar, this is cause for concern, perhaps even for alarm, because the principal culprit is merely style.

It is style, after all, that tells us to avoid the passive voice. Rather than write, “The sentence was dictated by the editor,” we should write, “The editor dictated the sentence.” The desire to be stylish has instilled in many writers today an absolute terror of the word “was,” to the point that many now find themselves incapable of writing correct sentences such as, “The singer was not disappointing.” “Disappointing” in this instance is an adjective, and technically there’s nothing passive about the sentence, any more than there is in the sentence, “The singer was pretty.” But try telling anyone that.

E.B. White: A monster was created?
The index to The Elements of Style contains no reference to the correct use of transitive verbs.

Old-fashioned critics made liberal use of the Editorial We (which in the hands of some more closely resembled the Royal We) when writing their reviews, so that transitive verbs found their objects easily: “The singer did not disappoint us.” Thus the critic spoke for the newspaper as a whole, much as the editorial writer did.

However, probably sometime during the 1970s, when contemporary cultural upheavals began to make themselves felt not only in readers but also in writers, the Editorial We fell out of fashion. Part of the trend toward inclusion of bylines in news reports reflected this shift: we wanted to know who told us something, and in many cases we came to know a great deal about the writer, her background, her biases and affiliations.

Some American editorial pages still cling to the Editorial We, but you won’t find it anywhere else in your daily life. Of course, for the critic to write, “The singer did not disappoint me,” would give the game away. No writer who seeks to assert her authority would ever say such a thing. Perish the thought.

I admit, there are practical advantages to dropping the object of a transitive verb: you’re saving space and reducing the word count, which are important considerations to editors even on the Internet. Some writers and editors will attempt to justify their grammatical lapses by insisting that the object is implied, as it may be in the oft-quoted reminder that “Jesus saves.” This is sophistry, and should be recognized as such.

At Opera News, for example, that peerless bastion of high culture, the house style eschews the use of the serial comma — on practical-journalistic grounds, because it takes up valuable space in the print edition. The editors continue to spell out numbers, however, perhaps because The New Yorker does so, even though as much as a full page per year could be saved by using numerals instead. Discussions of three-hundred-twenty-seven-year-old operas and thirty-six-year-old coloratura sopranos do take up room.

In short, these house rules are arbitrary, and that’s fine: style is always arbitrary. But grammar is not, and allowing style to overwhelm grammar is like wearing high heels in a snowstorm.

Grammar shouldn’t be immutable, and in truth it isn’t. The injunction against splitting infinitives, for example, is a fairly recent development, born of the belief that, since in other languages one can’t split an infinitive, a single, unbroken word, then English speakers ought not do so. But the demise of the transitive verb seems to stem entirely from thoughtless expediency. Transitive verbs require objects because they facilitate understanding — communication — of the writer’s meaning. A transitive verb without an object invites misunderstanding.

“The singer did not disappoint.” Herself? Her mother? Her manager? You? The audience? The critic? The Boston Celtics? Go figure.

One unexpected result of the Information Revolution is that all of us are now typists, writers, and publishers of one sort or another, although the majority of us have no training. Many of us have no grammatical training, either: I never had a substantial grammar lesson until I took first-year French, in ninth grade.

We do have devices — with tiny keyboards. We broadcast our text messages in haste. Spellcheck makes it’s decisions without you’re approval. We make typos and grammatical errors, and we suffer the consequences — which is to say, no consequences at all. We do not lose our jobs. We do not lose our spouses. If we lose respect, it is only in the eyes of those who are too polite to call us out on our errors. Somehow, people figure out what we meant to say.

And so we as a society become more and more lax. Worse yet, we mock as elitists those who speak and write correctly. Educated people, editors, and snobs fulminate regularly about “Between you and I” and the collapse of correct usage of “your/you’re,” “their/they’re/there,” and “its/it’s.” I feel their pain. But in the meantime, the demise of the transitive verb goes almost unremarked, and whether you mourn it or not, you ought to realize it.

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The Wedding of the Century

All-star production: Dr. Stephen Gentle officiates.
Photo by Jim Carnahan.

Contemporary society is changing so fast! As he welcomed us to the wedding of Steven Bryant and Darren Woods on Sunday, Dr. Stephen W. Gentle of the Disciples of Christ admitted that he’d “never done anything like this before,” then paused. “It’s the first time in my 27-year career that I’ve officiated at the marriage of a couple who have been together for 32 years.”

He grinned, and we cheered. Darren and Steven have indeed been together a long time, and in Opera World they’re something of a hallowed institution unto themselves. You can’t say that by an exchange of vows on Sunday they made their relationship official, or even much different from what it was on Saturday — though because the ceremony was performed in Schroon Lake, New York, it certainly is legal now. Maybe when something is so right, so tested and true, people just need to acknowledge it, and so Darren and Steven did.

Of course, attending the wedding meant missing Pride in New York. Darren scoffed when I pointed this out. “This is a Pride Parade,” he said, almost like Miles Gloriosus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and in the event the turnout was exceptional, great throngs of people who were as proud as they were joyful.

Steven W. Bryant and Darren K. Woods: The official portrait.
Photo by Ellen Appel.

The date was significant, just two days before the anniversary of Darren and Steven’s first meeting, on this very ground: the Seagle Music Colony, where the boys were students, and where Darren is now artistic director and Steven supervises wigs and makeup for the annual productions of opera and musicals.* No other day would do.

Moreover, I knew I’d see at least two gleaming torsos, even if there were no go-go boys (and there weren’t) on this Pride Day: Steven is launching a line of men’s formalwear accessories, gorgeous and brilliantly colored ties, vests, and cummerbunds.** Sure enough, both grooms were decked out in eye-catching finery.

I also knew the music would be spectacular, and it was. A chorus made up of this year’s Seagle kids lined the stage of the Oscar Seagle Theater, under the direction of Tony Kostecki, in numbers by Vaughn-Williams and Daniel Pinkham. And the evening’s other selections together constitute one of the most radiant highlights of my listening year.

Soprano Ava Pine, herself a Seagle alumna, delivered a melting, shimmering account of Barber’s Knoxville: Summer 1915 — which just happens to be the year that the Colony was founded — with Tyson Deaton on piano, for all the world as if he were at the head of a full orchestra. Ava and Tyson returned at the end for “Let the Bright Seraphim,” from Handel’s Samson, which Ava ornamented with more fireworks than any other Pride celebration in history has known.

And a little later in the evening, bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch sang a tender setting of Browning’s “Grow Old with Me,” written by Jake Heggie as an anniversary present for another terrific couple from Opera World, baritone Robert Orth and his wife.

Ava has amused Darren, possibly by mentioning that I’m still angling to join them in Daughter of the Regiment
at Fort Worth Opera next season.
Photo by Daniel Okulitch.

Thereafter, we set about partying, and we took this as seriously as you would expect from a group of conscientious, professional, artistically minded folks — who were over the Adirondack moon with happiness. What struck me almost immediately was that the party was as important as the ceremony: a celebration of a community that has been brought together by the love of these two men.

So many of the people here are dear to me, and dearer by the minute, and that’s pretty much because Darren and Steven willed it so. Darren talks often about the families we’re born into and the families we choose for ourselves: add it all up, and Darren’s family is vast. On Sunday I looked up and realized that I’m part of it, too.

I’m not alone: every person present must feel the same way. What an extraordinary achievement!

Lucky WVM with Ava Pine, Janice Hall, and Daniel Okulitch.
Trivia note: I have interviewed each of these phenomenal singers both for this blog and for features in Opera News. (Ava for her profile in the June 2012 issue, Janice for a profile of Darren a few years ago, and Dan for a preview of Shore’s The Fly in Paris.)
I believe Kurt Howard took this picture, using Dan’s camera.

I thought back to the afternoon, when I arrived early and barged into Darren and Steven’s house, though they had better things to do (ya think?) than look after me. Cool and collected before the Big Event, Darren observed — with a note of wonder, if not surprise — the enthusiastic reactions he’d received from everyone in and around Schroon Lake. Even people who weren’t attending the wedding knew about it and happily supported it. Everybody got into the spirit, notably including Dr. Gentle, whose speeches during the ceremony revealed a sense of humor that chimed perfectly with Darren’s and Steven’s.

All of this may have surprised Darren, but it’s no surprise to me. The guys have been part of the Schroon Lake community since 1980, and all the moreso since 1996, when Darren took over as general director at Seagle, which, as the Colony’s slogan puts it, has been “Bringing Music to the Adirondacks Since 1915,” no small thing. It only stands to reason that Darren and Steven would make friends with their neighbors, the way they’ve made me their friend, the way they’ve made their other friends my friends.

The next day, as he drove us to New York through relentlessly pounding rain and a brief hailstorm, tenor Scott Scully grumbled, “This is what happens when you let the gays marry.” He was kidding, of course.*** Scott knows, as I do, that what really happens when you let gays marry — even when you merely let them live together in peace and love for 32 years — is that you strengthen the fabric of society. Simply stated, we’re all better off because Steven Bryant and Darren Woods are married.

Anybody who tells you different, is full of beans.

Scott Scully and WVM.
Photo by Daniel Okulitch.

Darren and Steven suggested that, in lieu of presents, their friends make contributions to Fort Worth Opera or to the Seagle Colony. I’ve spoken often about Fort Worth Opera (and I believe I’ve even mentioned that I’ll make my company debut there in 2013). The Seagle Colony is notable not only for its history — it is the oldest summer singer-training program in the country — but also for its approach.

The Colony provides young artists with a safe environment to try new things. The goal isn’t to be perfect, but to learn and to grow. Darren has no patience for those audience members who show no patience toward his kids; he’s been known to eject forcibly folks who came in with a bad attitude. I underscore, however, that this is no amateur hour, and many of the most impressive young American artists you’ll hear these days are Seagle alumni.

Over the years, the Colony has also become an important proving ground for new work, as well as new voices. It’s a remarkable place, and worthy of your support, as well as mine.

Jonathan Blalock (Lázaro) and Wes Mason (Reinaldo Arenas) in Jorge Martín’s Before Night Falls at Seagle, 2008.
Both singers graduated from the workshop to the world premiere,
at Fort Worth Opera two years later.
Photo by Ellen Appel.

*NOTE: I believe that Steven will be in charge of wigs and makeup for the Fort Worth Opera Festival of Ariadne auf Naxos next May. So if I don’t look pretty when I take the stage as the Haushofmeister — you’ll have to blame him, not me.

**I expect we’ll have more to say about Steven’s formalwear designs when the business is closer to commencing full operations.

***Scully is also an excellent driver. Navigating the monsoons in Houston turned out to be just the training he needed to get us home on Monday.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: It’s through the good grace of Joyce Castle that I met Darren and Steven in the first place. Joyce was unable to attend the wedding, since she’s in Central City, Colorado, preparing for opening night of Oklahoma! (a work that deserves its exclamation point more than ever before, now that she’s playing Aunt Eller); she’ll also reprise her legendary interpretation of the title role in Menotti’s The Medium with Central City Opera for two sold-out performances later in the summer. As the ceremony began on Sunday, however, I sent a silent message to the Universe: “I’m representing Joyce. Amen.”

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Dan Rather Turns 80

Nothin’ But Good Times: Who can forget our hard-hitting interview with candidate Bob Dole (center)
at the 1996 Republican National Convention in San Diego?

Dan Rather turns 80 today — a development that has the perverse effect of making me feel old, since for a very long time a principal determining factor in my stalwart belief in my own youthfulness was my ability to chase after him, from Cape Town to Alaska, from Osaka to Havana to Tbilisi to the eye of whatever storm happened along. Nowadays, I couldn’t keep up with him, and lately I haven’t been asked to. But Dan keeps charging ahead.

Spend a little time in Dan’s orbit, and the most outlandish notions begin to seem perfectly commonplace. Take, for example, his penchant for colorful expressions, or “Ratherisms.” Chances are, you don’t know anyone who talks like Dan — but I do — and in his company, you may start talking like him, too.

And so, in honor of my tee-total, me-mortal mentor, model, sometime boss and longtime friend, I’d like to wish him a happy birthday — his way.

Here’s hoping your birthday is happier than a fourth-grade field trip to a chocolate factory…

More festive than happy hour at the Chicken Ranch…

More memorable than a moonwalk…

More song-filled than a honkytonk jukebox…

Hotter than Kreuz’s barbecue pit…

Full of more kicks than a line dance at Billy Bob’s…

Wilder than a possum hunt on Crack Street…

More exciting than a doubleheader in extra innings … during a hurricane…

As dazzling as Jean’s smile…

…And just the start of another back-to-the-wall,
foot-to-the-pedal, eyes-to-the-stars,
call-your-mama-collect-’cause-the-baby’s-milk-money’s-on-fire
adventure.

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Occupying Myself around Wall Street

“Occupy Wall Street has become an event for its own sake, a destination for the aimless,” the columnist Richard Cohen wrote in the Washington Post today. On Saturday, if he’d seen me, Cohen might have thought my presence confirmed his analysis. After all, I was in Zuccotti Park primarily because I’d attended another event nearby, and I arrived at this particular hour because that event, a wine-tasting, had left me too buzzed to go to the gym, as I’d planned. Once I got there, I started taking pictures, and I bought two buttons for my mother’s collection of political memorabilia (somewhat neglected, lately). Just so, Cohen describes the ongoing protest in New York as “something that occurs on countless iPhone cameras, a tourist attraction with the usual vendors.”

Well, I don’t have an iPhone, but it’s true that I came mostly to observe. I’d been planning to do so for a couple of weeks, but you know how it goes: a new job at weird hours, the fact that Zuccotti Park lies at the opposite end of Manhattan Island … it took me a while. Yet I wasn’t quite “aimless,” and ultimately, like Richard Cohen, I find Occupy Wall Street interesting at least as much for the reactions it provokes, as for what’s actually happening in the Park.

Having heard so many tales from Madeline Gilford about how FBI agents used to station themselves at protest meetings (and any kind of gathering) to take photos of suspected left-wingers, I felt terribly conspicuous when I began to take pictures in Zuccotti Park. To make matters worse, the protesters kept moving around.

It occurred to me that the very blurriness of my photographs was a proof in itself that my intentions were benign.

See? I wasn’t spying.

I don’t disagree with the Occupiers, so much as I find myself constitutionally incapable of joining them. In life there are Antigones and there are Ismenes, the late Bruce Donovan used to say, and even as a boy in his classroom I knew I wasn’t an Antigone. Grown-up now, I confess that the solidarity I feel with the protesters is of a vague and somewhat awkward sort.

Occupy Wall Street is serious about tidiness and recycling.

This is my prerogative, not only as an American but also as a journalist, a calling that entitles me to get the story completely wrong, where Occupy Wall Street is concerned. Or so it would seem. We’ve been told that “the media ignored the protests for weeks,” yet when I got to Zuccotti Park, there seemed absolutely nothing suspect about this ostensible “media blackout.”

The demonstrations downtown are (still) very small, and the most remarkable thing about them — endurance — was by necessity untrue of them at their outset. I know it will come as a shock to the protesters, but there are other stories to be reported, competition for airtime or print space is fierce, and they simply didn’t stack up. Not at the start.

By now, the Occupy protests in New York (and several other cities) have engendered lots of media coverage, much of it wrongheaded. Some of the claims made by those who sympathize seem grandiose. Then you look at claims made by those who disagree — and they’re even more extravagant, especially in comparison with what you see when you go downtown.

This is what’s threatening our institutions, our prosperity, our national security, our very identity? Really? This is going to give aid and comfort to our enemies, and not incidentally make Barack Obama a one-term wonder?

Here for the long haul? The protesters have brought tents and sleeping bags.
Proof, perhaps, that the protesters aren’t all college kids.
How many do you know who make their beds every day?

Winter is coming, and it will get harder to camp out in Zuccotti Park. That’s why it was important to me to shlepp downtown, and not to wait any longer: I wanted to see this while it was still in some sense thriving. I wanted to observe, as I say, and also to think. Even if I never picked up a picket.

Ultimately, I wonder who’s more naïve: the folks who think their little sit-in may deserve some attention and bring about change — or the folks who thought they could toy with the economy and let the guilty run free?

At the very least, the scofflaws and their enablers know now that impunity isn’t a divine right: it was pure luck, and it may not last.

Beast behind bars?

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It Gets Better

Last fall, in response to a rash of teen suicides, the newspaper sex-columnist Dan Savage launched “It Gets Better,” a project in which grownups posted videos on YouTube to send messages of hope to gay teens and others. “It Gets Better” grew to encompass hundreds of such messages, and has now been adapted as a book — but on this Pride Day in New York City, what seems most remarkable is that the message seems to be turning out honest and true. There are still hurdles to overcome, but just in the past months, circumstances have improved immensely, culminating in Friday’s vote in the New York State Senate to legalize marriage equality.

Because this day is meant not only for partying, I’d like to take a minute to run down a few of the optimistic signs on the social and political horizon in the United States.


Standing up to Bullying
Savage started the “It Gets Better” project because so many gay teens had been so brutally harassed that, despairing, they took their own lives. Most of those who posted YouTube videos had been bullied as kids, and they sought to show today’s children that there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Hang in there, the speakers said, and you’ll be able to move out, move away, grow taller and stronger, make money, find acceptance, find love, and create new families.

This message resonated especially for me, because it reflects my personal experience — and yet I didn’t write about it here when Savage launched “It Gets Better.” In junior high school, I was bullied on a daily basis. I was teased, tripped, shoved, punched, slapped, spat upon, and insulted. And though I hardly knew myself what my sexual orientation was, the other boys had made up their minds: they called me “faggot.”

I dreaded going to school each day — above all, I dreaded going to P.E. class, where I was at my most vulnerable (to attack not only from other boys but also from the coaches). No one in authority — not the school administrators, not the other teachers, not my parents — did a thing to protect or defend me, or my brother, or the handful of other boys who suffered similar treatment.

Seth Walsh, 13 years old, committed suicide last September.

If I haven’t talked about this — and I haven’t much, anywhere — it’s not least because my history reflects poorly on my parents, whom I love. But there’s also a level of shame involved, and such experiences aren’t something we discuss even among ourselves. Was Feldstein bullied? I don’t know. Does he know about my trials? I don’t know. As victims, we sometimes persuade ourselves that we deserve rough treatment — I certainly told myself that I deserved it — and that’s one reason bullying leaves such lasting scars, and must be opposed.

Apparently I lacked the sort of imagination that leads a kid to kill himself. That’s not to say that I bore the slurs lightly. Unfortunately, I also lacked the nerve to fight back. But I held out the hope of a happier future, and as soon as I was able, I went looking for it.

And I found it. I found dozens — hundreds — of men and women who’d survived similar treatment. Some of us were wounded more deeply than others, but we have nursed each other with respect and affection. Together we joined and created communities, institutions, couples, and families that sustain us even now. It gets better — and it’s still getting better.

Ryan McGinnis and Mark Indelicato on Ugly Betty, 2010

Politics
Marriage equality got a big boost on Friday night, thanks to New York’s state legislators and Governor, Andrew Cuomo, who staked his political capital on this issue and who now makes other politicians (notably our President) look wishy-washy at best. But the issue is far from settled, and a minority of Americans are still deeply and sincerely opposed not only to marriage equality but to a host of other rights for their fellow citizens. It gets better, but it ain’t over.

We’ve made notable inroads, however, including the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the well-intended (really) but ultimately destructive Clinton compromise that ruined careers and lives, and sapped this country’s military strength. (How many Arab translators could the U.S. afford to lose?) The repeal has yet to go into effect, but the longer we wait, the more DADT seems like ancient history.

Signed, sealed, but not yet delivered

Perhaps most importantly, the legal weaknesses of the opposition’s arguments (based exclusively on religion or revulsion or both, none of which has standing) and the personal hypocrisies of its spokespeople are becoming more and more inescapably apparent. Bullies exist, and even thrive, far from the playground, but we are seeing them as such. When the state of Tennessee bans the use of the word “gay” in teachers’ lessons in its public schools, you get a sense of just how terrified and helpless the opposition is. Over the long term, that kind of hysteria can’t prevail.

At the same time, younger generations of Americans are becoming more and more accepting — even embracing — of their gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender neighbors. This in itself is a political victory, a confirmation of Harvey Milk’s declaration that “They can’t hate us if they know us” and the result of the coming-out stories of a couple of generations of Americans. We’re not perverts or monsters, and more and more of our fellow citizens know that, and support us.

It’s just a matter of time before greater change arrives, and the wait will be shorter for those who are just arriving — such as the teens to whom “It Gets Better” is addressed.

The Media
It remains to be seen how powerful an agent of change is represented by positive images of GLBT Americans in the media — but those images are multiplying and prominent. Kurt Hummel, the gay kid on Glee, is one of the most popular TV characters today, and he’s played by an out actor, Chris Colfer. That’s heartening, but it would have been unthinkable even a few years ago. A broad audience is witnessing Kurt’s struggles and triumphs, which chime with those of thousands of other American kids.

Darren Criss and Chris Colfer in Glee

Our stories are being told now, and even straight performers are telling them. Actors like James Franco and Darren Criss have no hang-ups about playing gay characters, reality shows could hardly exist without gay participants, and Lady Gaga has stepped boldly up to the vanguard where Elizabeth Taylor and Madonna once fought — not only artistically but also politically.

I didn’t have the benefit of such images when I was growing up. The most sympathetic portrayal of a gay man I saw as a teen was John Hurt’s tour-de-force performance as Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant, the true-life story of a man who remained true to himself even as he was brutalized, marginalized, and unloved. Was that the best I could hope for? I wondered — then promptly told myself I’d never need to find out, because, after all, I was straight.

John Hurt returned to the role of Quentin Crisp in 2009.

There’s still a lot of work to be done in popular culture. Gay panic still dominates most mainstream comedies, and thoughtless rappers and comics still congratulate themselves on “pushing the envelope” when they’re inciting violence. A lot of Hollywood is still directing its energies toward 14-year-old boys — straight ones. (And rather oafish ones at that.) But the range of representation has expanded, and it’s not only gay kids who are watching.

Why We Fight On
Plenty of Americans still believe that the institution of heterosexual marriage is so flimsy that it will be threatened by gay marriages. Many believe that the Constitution is an apt vehicle for what amounts to Christian sharia. Many believe that we’re promiscuous, marginal, and corrupt — and therefore ineligible for the stability and socializing benefits of marriage. Marriage is only one area in which civil rights are denied to GLBT Americans; we are still second-class citizens everywhere in this country, to whom equal protection under the law is denied.

It gets better — but it hasn’t gotten great. Not yet.

We will go out and party today, and late into the night. We will march and also dance in the streets, and we will applaud the New York legislature and the go-go boys with enthusiasm. We will kiss and grope each other and wear outrageous outfits and play loud music — we will irritate more than a few straights. But we will push our babies in strollers, too, and walk beside our parents. We will cheer the politicians who act in our interest, and we will comfort our sick and mourn our dead.

We will celebrate, and speechify. We will call ourselves “we,” even when we have little in common. We will be proud, if only because pride is the opposite of shame — and we will not be ashamed.

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Degrees of Change

It’s been years since I attended a high-school graduation — quite possibly not since I attended my own. And never mind how long ago that was.

Time enough for at least one significant change. Back in my day, we had one valedictorian and one salutatorian. That was plenty, or so we thought. But it seems we were deprived most cruelly.

Since Friday, when I attended a godson’s graduation ceremony in North Texas, I have understood the low esteem in which my classmates and I were held by school administrators. Four salutatorians trooped across the dais, and eight valedictorians orated at us. Clearly, my classmates and I were much less special than we ought to have been, and while the speeches on Friday struck notes of hopefulness and rosy futures, I heard only echoes of my own youthful inadequacy.

So be it. Easier to face up to one’s erstwhile shortcomings than to accept that this towering fellow who shaves and needs to, who speaks complete sentences whenever he isn’t eating, this legally recognized adult who drives automobiles and who answers to your godson’s name, can possibly be the infant you set down for his nap only a minute ago.

At least there was nothing shocking in the graduation speeches themselves. The abundance of valedictorians left no room on the program for honorary degrees or grownup speakers, and it was truly heartening to hear how little changed are the speeches of callow, grade-grubbing youths, from my day to this. They are ready now as they were in my day to tell us that a bright future awaits us all as we go forth confidently into the world.

And they may be right. I certainly can’t contradict them. They must know something, after all, for they are valedictorians. I never was.

I don’t have predictions to make or advice to offer to these kids. What can I possibly say to my godson, or to anyone, that might be of use in later life, or even ten minutes from now? From the first moment I held that boy, he has humbled me, as if it were a vocation to him, and no matter how small he seemed in the beginning, I have always felt smaller. How can I be for him the person he deserves that I be?

I can’t and I haven’t, and at this rate, I won’t. I hope I haven’t botched the job too terribly much, and with or without or despite me he has achieved sterling results in life thus far. But as I say, he deserves the best, as recompense for the riches he has brought me, simply by taking part in my life.

And so I keep struggling to improve myself. I keep searching for the words or deeds or gifts that will clear the path, part the clouds, and build the citadel for him evermore.

All the while, he keeps doing for himself all those things I ought to have done for him already. He has always known what’s best for himself; he tucks his head in and waits us out, then strikes out in the direction he chose to begin with, exactly as if we never said anything at all. I can take no credit for him, and while that is as it should be, it stings a little, sometimes.

So off you go, my boy. Have a good time! Live and learn! Be young while you can be, and then be something else!

I’ll just sit here, waiting nervously in the dark, until you get back. Do drop me a line from time to time, won’t you?

(Surely if I were a valedictorian, I’d be a better godfather, and I’d think of something wiser to say.)

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How Kate Thou Art

How to Kateboard

The news these days has been dominated by horror: insurgencies and repression, deadly violence, disasters and devastation of all kinds. Even beyond Capitol Hill, the news has been terrible.

Hard to know how to respond. Personally, I’ve been alternating between obsessive monitoring of news reports and writing frankly frivolous blog entries. But my optimism has been boosted, my faith restored, thanks to this photograph.*

Study it closely: the answer is there.

Now — don’t you feel better?

Around the time I wrote a letter proposing marriage to her.
(She didn’t answer.)

I shouldn’t be surprised that, in this dark hour, so long after she left us, Katharine Hepburn would provide for us. She has been my salvation, and perhaps yours, as well, many times before.

So I hope you will join me in singing that old hymn, so fondly remembered from so many, many worship services at the Brown Film Society, when I wouldn’t start the movie screening unless the entire audience joined in.

HOW KATE THOU ART

Who’s the gal with high cheekbones
That we love so truly?
K-A-T!
E-H-E!
P-B-U-R-N!
Kate Hepburn! Kate Hepburn!
Forever let us hold our standards high!
High! High!
Now it’s time to start the film
That we’ve all come to see!
K-A-T!
E-H-E-!
P-B-U-R-N!

*NOTE: I found the photograph on the New York Magazine website, where I was investigating the mysterious disappearance of Taylor Lautner.

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‘Home’ for the Holidays

Welcome.
The Karnows’ dinner table, Christmas 2010.
Photo by WVM

Living far from home, and quite often entirely uncertain where “home” as such may lie, I have for most of my adult life depended on the kindness of friends — and over time, several of these friends have become a kind of family to me, and their homes have to some degree become, if not my own, then warm and familiar shelters from storms both meteorological and metaphorical. In recent weeks, I’ve had occasion to reflect on this phenomenon, because several of these friends have yet again opened their homes and their hearts to me. (To say nothing of their larders and wine cellars.)

The Karnows’ tree, Christmas 2010.
Photo by WVM

Two of these friends, Kara and Cathy, have pushed the phenomenon somewhat farther, to a new and surprising frontier: in sharing their families, they have not only adopted me, but these “sisters” of mine have made their real-life brothers seem like kin to me. For example, imagine my pleasure at Christmas, when Michael gave me a down vest exactly like his own. Suddenly we were a team, with matching uniforms!

And yet the feeling I have doesn’t seem quite team-like. The only teams I’ve ever played on weren’t playing games, but working toward a professional goal. My adopted families are about process, not goals. We’re not striving; we’re evolving.

We’re dancing, as well.
At Jeremy’s, New Year’s Eve.
Possibly Incriminating Photo by Rachel Winokur©

Perhaps it’s a deficiency in my language, or in my personality, that accounts for my need to construe these friendships as somehow familial — but there it is. Explain it how you will, I can’t see it any other way. And I feel at home with my friends, in their homes.

Kara’s couch is my refuge; Mark’s Vermont, my Thanksgiving. Cathy, as if by magic, opens doors all over the world (three continents and counting!), then welcomes me inside. And Elise’s kitchen has been the scene of the nearest thing to fatherhood I’m likely ever to know.

Uncle Bill in the kitchen, with Emily and Elise.
Photo by Prabarna Ganguly©

Indeed, I’m reminded that there is a special place reserved for friends who make of their children my family, as well. Beyond the axiomatic belief that “It takes a village,” certain of my friends have entrusted to me that which is most precious to them, and sought to include me in the kids’ upbringing, often with specific duties and responsibilities. Without which, nothing.

I’m acutely aware that, in every case, my closest friends chose to become my family. This mystifies me: it’s one thing to be stuck with me by an accident of birth, and quite another to make a conscious decision to adopt me. These people are otherwise intelligent, rational, fully functioning adults. And yet they have chosen — without being forced — to overlook or to forgive my many, many unattractive qualities. (I would list a few, but don’t want to remind anyone of the random trait or two that might be a deal-breaker.)

Mal de pays: In search of France, I returned to the Cloisters.
Photo by WVM

Cathy recently suggested that our secret may be specialness: starting with our road trips to New York, when we were still just kids, we have tended to have adventures, separate from the routine of our daily lives. When those adventures are planned, they are exciting; when unplanned, they are magical. Yet Cathy’s personality is such — so curious and keen — that I’m confident that I’d never grow bored, no matter how humdrum our surroundings or how frequent our encounters.

Every magician needs a mustache! Kitty, Cathy, & Bill.
Big Sur 2010.
Photo by Elyakim Rinat©

And if Cathy’s right, how then to explain some of my other relationships, which have in fact been strengthened through my admission into the daily routine? Aren’t my coffee with Kara and my dinners with Elise and the kids in some way magical, too?

(The answer, if you were wondering, is yes.)

And so I begin the New Year with a toast to my friends, upon whom I depend more than they may guess. No matter where I am, I find my home — and sometimes, my self — in their embrace.

Reaching out — to Big Sur with love.
Photo by Sara Remington©

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Children of the Commandments

To my intense relief, William’s bar mitzvah ceremony
did not in any way resemble
that in the Coen Brothers’ film A Serious Man.
Pictured: Aaron Wolff as young Danny Gopnik

Today I am a man who has attended a bar mitzvah ceremony. It’s a bit late for me to be doing this for the first time, but when I was a boy, my Jewish friends didn’t invite me to their b’nai mitzvah. Whether because they didn’t think I’d be interested or because they didn’t really like me much (always a distinct possibility), I can’t say; surely no one could predict that I would become “an honorary Jew,” as my surrogate mother, Madeline Gilford, put it. Perhaps I required her blessing before I qualified to do so, but it was only as an adult that I entered a synagogue for a bat mitzvah, a few years ago.

That ceremony celebrated a friend who, as an adult, was called to read the Torah. In that case, I was so moved by the personal significance of the ceremony that some of its broader implications eluded me. After all, when a woman makes a conscious and committed choice to delve more deeply into the faith of her ancestors, it’s kind of a big deal. We’re in the 21st century, and no one is forcing her to uphold traditions from millennia long past; she already identified culturally as Jewish. But the ancient faith is modern and real to her, and unlike many a 13-year-old, she decided for herself to embrace it more fully.

Watching a more conventional celebration this weekend, including Sabbath services and a truly brilliant party the next day, for a boy the usual age, I was able to focus a little better on what this rite of passage may mean to other people — certainly on what it means to me.


Few things on earth seemed more unjust, when I was a boy, than that a handful of my classmates should be able to call themselves grownup simply because they’d passed their thirteenth birthday. Childhood seemed a form of slavery in those days; that another child should be emancipated was intolerable. Compounding the injustice was the celebration surrounding the rite, because it seemed (pretty accurately, I think) nearly comparable to a wedding feast. There was no equivalent in the Methodist faith in which I was brought up, and I resented the party, the gifts, and above all, the recognition my friends received. I can admit that now.

As I grew older, I came to understand better what it meant to become a bar mitzvah. It is a taking on of responsibility (which has never been my favorite pastime, and so maybe my friends did deserve a little extra credit for doing something I would not), but my vestigial Christian worldview misperceived this as a burden — a cross to bear. Watching and listening this weekend (enlightened by a Reform service that was almost too accessible), I understood the responsibilities of Jewish adulthood as something entirely different.

In music, especially, the rite proclaims its optimism and joy. As the celebrant chants, his lines are ascendant, rising to heaven, finishing in a higher place (literally) than where they started. I was reminded of a professor at Brown, who observed somewhat smugly that Judaism is the rare faith in which the emphasis is on what happens while we’re still alive. Of course, no Jew would argue that it’s easy to be a Jew, but the rewards of the faith are found within the faith, tied up with the hardships, yes, but also making clear why the suffering isn’t the main idea. And so we hit that higher note, brighter than those that came before.

Then on Sunday, the dancing began. We hoisted William* on a chair and danced the hora around him. This in itself is pretty great, like hitting a winning home run and being paraded on your teammates’ shoulders, and William appeared to enjoy the experience thoroughly. But then I stepped back to look at who was dancing: William’s brother, sister, cousins, aunts, uncles, parents, and grandparents: the living proof of the strength of the tradition of this faith. Small wonder that their friends, like me, joined in.

This wasn’t the first time that I’d shared such a milestone with this family. The wedding of William’s parents was one of the most joyous nights of my life (an historic blizzard notwithstanding), and his brother’s bris brought me to tears — not because of the cut but because of the continuity — when I heard his parents’ Hebrew names among the ancient prayers. I’m proud and grateful to have been included in these occasions, and while I may never fully take on the adult responsibilities of this or any faith, I thank all of my friends for making me a better (honorary) Jew.



*NOTE: It’s true: through sheer, unintended accident, the young man is my namesake. He sings opera, too.

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The Music of Power

It’s been a discouraging summer for those of us who look for signs of leadership among politicians. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy has made another of his periodic attempts to attract hard-right nationalists, namely by cracking down on illegal immigration: rounding up and deporting Roma. This is particularly distressing behavior, coming from a man who’s the son of one immigrant and the husband of another, and whose heritage is in part Jewish. And rounding up minorities this way looks especially bad in France.* But Sarkozy has long been consumed with the idea of stealing votes away from the Front National, and my guess is, he hoped that, by moving swiftly in the month of August, when most French people are preoccupied with their vacations, he wouldn’t alienate moderate voters too much.

Besides, in politics, one’s personal background does not translate automatically into sympathy for others in the same boat, as Ken Mehlman and Barack Obama have proved, in different ways. As chairman of the Republican National Committee in 2004, Mehlman was the principal foot soldier in an aggressively homophobic campaign — even though he’s gay.** Obama, whose own parents’ marriage was illegal in many U.S. states at the time of his birth, nevertheless clings to the “traditional” concept of marriage, even after Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision in the Prop 8 case left him no rational basis for his position — something the President, as a former professor of Constitutional law, surely realizes.

Yes, We Can (forget where we came from)

In the American “debates” over immigration and the Islamic cultural center this summer, we’ve seen less leadership than a sort of herd mentality, in which the mob charges off in one direction, and the politicians chase after them, hoping to arrive at the head of the pack. The former maverick, Senator McCain, is but one disheartening example. But the most curious display of dubious leadership this summer came from Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

It’s nothing new for a totalitarian regime to censor the arts. Art does not often speak its mind directly; it communicates by offering its messages to interpretation by its audience. It’s frequently subversive to the prevailing order, and it can be a good deal more effective than garden-variety propaganda and speechmaking. Even in free societies, there’s an impulse to control it: witness Tipper Gore, who worried about the negative influence of rap music (and who handily earned herself a national platform by speaking out); or J. Edgar Hoover, who for much of his career seemed unaware that he wasn’t living under a totalitarian regime, and who obsessed over the influence of Left-wingers in Hollywood.

Censorship Lite

The Nazis used censorship of the arts not only to squelch dissent but also to target the communities of whom they made enemies or scapegoats. Art by political opponents or “inferior races” was declared “decadent”: entartete Kunst. This signaled that anyone who read a banned book, or listened to unapproved music, was challenging the state and might expect reprisals.

The policy didn’t work, exactly. It seldom does. When the Nazis put on a display of entartete Kunst in a museum, they set aside one room where recordings of music by Kurt Weill were played. It turned out to be the most popular room in the exhibition, crowded to capacity, and the curators had to shut it down. Later, Weill’s song, “J’attends un navire” (I wait for a ship), became a coded greeting in the French Resistance. The Nazis didn’t recognize it as Weill’s work (and the Resistance may not have, either), but that’s the thing about those tricky Jew composers: they’re always sneaking around and writing music that sounds as if it was written by normal people.

What the Nazis didn’t attempt was to ban all music — but this seems to be the direction that Khamenei is heading. Already, when he was president, he followed the time-worn totalitarian tradition by banning Western music, forcing many artists to flee the country. Last month, however, according to the Fars news agency, Iran’s supreme leader went further, telling a young follower that, “Although music is halal [lawful], promoting and teaching it is not compatible with the highest values of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic.”

In other words, while it’s permissible to play music, you can’t tell anybody you’re doing it, and if you don’t already know how to play, you’re out of luck. Khamenei’s word is considered law in Iran today.

“It's better that our dear youth spend their valuable time in learning science and essential and useful skills and fill their time with sport and healthy recreations instead of music,” Khamenei is reported to have said.

If he enforces his policy, it will be almost breathtaking in its audacity. And yet we know from close reading of history that, ultimately, these policies never work. Khamenei isn’t known for pragmatism, but what on earth is he thinking?

I suspect that this is one more sign that the regime is absolutely terrified of losing power. We had plenty of evidence of this last year, in the trumped-up election results and the violent crackdown on protest and opposition. Even Iran’s pursuit of nuclear power is a sign of fear and weakness. For one thing, the regime saw how easily the United States invaded next-door Iraq, but didn’t touch North Korea. The message was clear: members of the “Axis of Evil” who possess nuclear capability are safe.

So banning music is just one more piece in a puzzle-portrait of totalitarian anxiety. That which cannot be controlled must be suppressed. And this is the best plan that the Supreme Leader could think of. Talk about leadership: we may count ourselves lucky if Sarah Palin is the worst we have to contend with.

The Persian culture has a proud tradition of music; indeed, the illustrations of classical musicians here are taken from an Iranian website. It will take more than a peevish mullah to put an end to that tradition. Unfortunately, however unsteady it may be, the regime has been successful so far in tightening its grip on the people. For now, I don’t see how the opposition can prevail. But I’m pretty sure that they’ll be singing when they do it.




*NOTE: Sarkozy’s partisans indignantly denied that the roundups resembled the “Rafle” of French Jews during the Occupation. This only served to confirm the resemblance.

**Now, of course, Mehlman has come out and is throwing a fundraiser for marriage equality. While I hope for a Damascus-style conversion on his part, and I’d rather have him on our side than continuing to oppose us, he’s got a lot to atone for, and a single event won’t suffice. By your actions, we will know you, Brother Mehlman.

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