The “By the Book” column in yesterday’s New York Times Book Review featured a writer I had never heard of citing authors I had never heard of. The book on her nightstand, the last great book she read, the book people might be surprised to find on her shelves, the book she would most like to see turned into a movie, the last book that made her laugh, the last book that made her cry, the last book that made her furious – they were all written by people unknown to me. Even the three guests at her imaginary literary dinner party were writers I was unfamiliar with.
My first thought, as a fairly well-read citizen, was that there is an enormous population of writers these days. Fran Lebowitz has complained that there are way too many books being published. The problem, as she sees it, is that young people have been taught self-esteem, which leads them to believe they have something to say.
I tend to agree with her, though it’s hard for someone who writes books that get published (most of them) to admit that there are too many books in the world. On the other hand, the thought occurred to me that the author the Book Review interviewed was simply taking advantage of the opportunity to give her friends some needed publicity.
We had lunch with a friend in West Palm Beach yesterday and the drive up was pleasant until near the end, when we saw the first sign for the Donald J. Trump Airport.
Soccer fantasy: I would like to see a match in which the two goalkeepers get so fed up with their teammates that they start kicking long balls back and forth to each other.
Soccer question: Why does a successful penalty kick carry the same weight, in a player’s goal count, as a goal scored during play? It’s a bit like adding to a hitter’s home runs the ones he hit in a home run derby.
Well, that was an eventful weekend. In addition to the World Cup and Wimbledon, the United States celebrated its 250th birthday and Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce got married. If only, instead of Madison Square Garden, they had chosen the antenna of the Empire State Building.
New Yorker editor David Remnick recently interviewed the British historian Dominic Sandbrook and one of the topics was the American revolution and its miniscule place in British history textbooks. Sandbrook insisted that it’s not a question of sour grapes, because “there’s nothing the British like more than a tragic defeat.” The American revolution, he said, “is eclipsed by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. There seems to be a parade of quite boring men talking very earnestly about liberty, battles that involve 20 people in a field somewhere in the great vastness of the American continent. It’s not Waterloo, it’s not Borodino.”
For an American used to the deification of the founding fathers, this was refreshing and rather amusing, particularly when delivered in a smart Oxbridge accent. But as I thought about it further, it seemed a glib caricaturing – about the personalities, not the battles – especially coming from a citizen of the land of Keir Starmer and Liz Truss. (Some might add Boris Johnson, though he is anything but boring.) More than that, it seemed a willful, if witty, denial of historical reality. Jefferson, Franklin, Adams - to name just three - were, even with all the mythologizing, remarkable men, part of a group that gave birth to what would become the richest and most powerful country in the world. Their achievement, their moment, should be more than a footnote in the British interpretation of history.