Jayne Anne Phillip’s Night Watch, winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction, was described by Dwight Garner in the New York Times Book Review (Sept. 25, 2023) as “sludgy, claustrophobic, and pretentious.”
Last week we drove to Holiday Park to check out the new restaurant, The Federal, that overlooks the Florida Panthers practice rink. We got there a little before noon and were delighted (at least I was) to see the players slapping shots on the rink. Just seeing a large oval of ice in the middle of Fort Lauderdale was impressive enough. I know people at the nearby tennis center were opposed to the complex when it was approved, but I think the resulting building is an excellent addition to downtown. A major sports team practicing in its heart gives Fort Lauderdale a big city feel. Now, instead of driving all the way out to Sunrise, residents can pull off Federal Highway, park under a tree, and enter for free a building in which some of the world’s greatest hockey players are honing their skills. This, along with another Stanley Cup run, will surely win the team new fans.
(We didn’t stay to eat, but I’m planning to go back one evening to watch a game, where the atmosphere, I imagine, will be as close to that at the arena as one can get.)
Today is Polish Constitution Day (commemorating the document adopted in 1791) and yesterday was Polonia Day (Polonia is the term for the Polish community abroad). As I write in my memoir, the fact that the diaspora has been given a name testifies to its long and significant history.
Our hotel on Dupont Circle was a few blocks south of the Washington Hilton, which Saturday night hosted the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. So I was not that surprised to see men in black tie and women in evening gowns. What puzzled me was the fact that they were not heading to the Hilton, but congregating on the terrace of our hotel and filling the Japanese restaurant across the street. A hostess at the former told us that these were alternate parties. Apparently, people who did not get invitations to the correspondents’ dinner dressed up anyway and went out on town. Following the Oscars, there are after-parties; in Washington, there are during-parties.
Flying to DC last Thursday I recalled that it was 50 years ago (this summer) that I moved to the city after my college graduation. Riding from the airport to our hotel, we passed the restaurant where my roommate’s father and uncle, both successful Washingtonians, had taken me to lunch shortly after my arrival and asked me where I saw myself five years hence. I had had no good answer for them, and felt very small. Sitting in the taxi I thought: Now it’s 50 years later and I’m getting the Amicus Poloniae award from the Polish ambassador on Friday and speaking at the Arts Club of Washington on Sunday.
I’m behind in my reading, which means I only recently read Yascha Mounk’s brilliant piece in the Easter issue of The Spectator: “Why the British think differently from Americans.” He notes that opinion pieces in the New York Times and Washington Post are logical and unsurprising. “In American journalism, to be right – or, at any rate, to argue for the position that the right people consider to be reasonable at the time – is much more important than to be brilliant or entertaining.” Further on he states: “For American journalists, the cardinal sin is to be wrong. For British journalists, the cardinal sin is to be boring.”
I agree with him wholeheartedly (though I wonder how strongly writing in a litigious society contributes to an obsession with accuracy - and a tendency toward blandness). The two weeklies I read are The Spectator and The New Yorker, and I get more pleasure out of the former than I do out of the latter, which is earnest and informative but not especially enjoyable, even, lately, many of its cartoons. The one exception is Anthony Lane, but Lane is a Brit and, notably, was recently relieved of his movie reviewing chores.
I'm off to the nation's capital for a few days. Will be back here next week.