Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“I must confess that I did not witness the ship strike the rocks or the crew tie up the captain.” David Grann, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.

“It was one of those Tuesday afternoons in summer when you wonder if the earth has stopped revolving.” Benjamin Black (John Banville), The Black-Eyed Blonde: A Phillip Marlowe Novel.

“I found Gotham City one night when I was about seven years old.” Maya Phillips, Nerd: Adventures in Fandom from the Universe to the Multiverse.

“It started with a phone call, deceptively simple and easy to ignore.” Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls.

“History books will teach that the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion on June 24, 2022.” Stephen Vladeck, The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic.

“Two young women climbed a narrow set of stairs toward the sound of laughter and music, Florence Darrow in front, dragged her hand along the blood-red walls.” Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“The number lay there, brazen, taunting me from the tatty piece of paper that sat neatly on the ancient oak table: zero.” Antonio Padilla, Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them: A Cosmic Quest from Zero to Infinity.

“’The thoughts of all present tonight,’ said Mr. Birley, ‘will naturally turn first to the great personal loss—the very personal loss—so recently suffered by the firm, by the legal profession and, if I may venture to say so without contradiction, by the British public.’” Michael Gilbert, Smallbone Deceased.

“On 20 July 1794 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe heaved himself into the saddle and rode from his house in the centre of Weimar to Jena, where he planned to attend a botanical meeting of the recently funded national historical society.” Andrea Wulf, Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of Self.

“O Mighty Caliph and Commander of the Faithful, I am humbled to be in the splendor of your presence; a man can hope for no greater blessing as long as he lives.” Ted Chiang, Exhalation.

“It’s hard to say exactly when PG&E Corporation began its fall.” Katherine Blunt, California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric—and What It Means for America’s Power Grid.

“Everyone who knew Benjamin Ovich, particularly those of us who knew him well enough to call him Benji, probably knew deep down that he was never the sort of person who would get a happy ending.” Fredrik Backman, The Winners.

“You learn to live with shame.” José Carlos Agüero, The Surrendered: Reflections by a Son of Shining Path.

“The Jebel es Zubleh is a mountain fifty miles and more in length, and so narrow that its tracery on the map gives it a likeness to a caterpillar crawling from the south to the north.” Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.

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Education and Tolerance and Discernment

“The highest result of education is tolerance.” Helen Keller.

“Education, properly understood, is that which teaches discernment.” Joseph Roux

Those accused of book bannings are often vilified, but maybe they just have bad public relations. Book banners often say that they are not banning books but only restricting them to appropriate ages. That seems noncontroversial. We can all agree that A Brief History of Time is not appropriate for second graders, at least not any I have ever known. But the parents searching bookshelves are not concerned with the difficulty of the text. Instead, no matter the ease of the prose, they seek to remove books that present certain ideas, observations, opinions, facts, or concepts. This, too, might be something all can agree upon or at least discuss. All topics are not appropriate for all ages. Perhaps we are only differing on the details: When is the suitable time to introduce certain ideas, observations, opinions, facts, and concepts?

However, that is not really what is going on. Those yanking books off shelves only remove books containing certain subjects — ones with ideas, observations, opinions, facts, and concepts that they do not agree with. These books primarily address nonheterosexual relationships and race. Apparently the subject matter touching on these issues is inappropriate no matter what the age of the student. Certain advanced placement courses in high school have been banned even though students taking such courses are mature enough to seek college credit. Indeed, some states have even limited the presentation of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) topics to college students. While these students are assumed to be fully adult, they are, apparently, not mature enough for such topics. Indeed, some states have gone even further and seek to limit these concepts being presented by corporations to their employees.

Even so, I may have something in common with those seeking to hide books. By their actions the censors indicate a belief in the power and significance of books. Why restrict access to a book if you don’t believe it can affect ideas and behavior, thoughts and actions? As an avid reader, I, too, want to believe in the importance and power of books.

But I suspect that the book restrictors act not just with a concern that students will learn “too early” about same sex couples, our history of slavery and continuing racial oppression. The book removers act out of a rigid worldview. There is right, and there is wrong. There is morality, and there is immorality. There is good, and there is evil. There is male, and there is female. The censors fear books because they can cause readers to question such inflexible categories. The censors do not want readers to conclude that the world is nuanced and complex.

This has made me think about Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi. This best seller, published in 2003, is about the author’s experiences during the Iranian revolution of 1979 and its aftermath. The book is interlaced with stories from a book group of seven women reading banned Western literary works led by Professor Nafisi.

Although she writes about works of fiction, what she says often applies to works of history and children’s books. Nafisi says about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, “You don’t read Gatsby to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil.” This, of course, is what some don’t want. Their rigid categories of right and wrong should not be questioned.

Perhaps most worrying for the censors is that books might lead to a sympathy and understanding of those whom the book removers despise and fear. Nafisi writes, “The respect for others, empathy, . . .is the quality that links Austen to Flaubert and James to Nabakov and Bellow.” Children with empathy are a threat. They may reject the rigidity of self-righteous adults. Nafisi writes, “This, I believe, is how the villain in modern fiction is born: a creature without compassion, without empathy.” Elsewhere she says, “Evil in Austen, as in most great fiction, lies in the inability to ‘see’ others, hence to empathize with them.”

The censors wish to stifle the natural curiosity of children, afraid of the possible empathetic results that could lead to questioning the censors’ moral authority. But, as Nafisi says in Reading Lolita, “Humbert [Humbert] was a villain because he lacked curiosity about other people and their lives, even about the person he loved most, Lolita. Humbert, like most dictators, was interested only in his own vision of other people.”

It is not really the specifics of the books that animates the censors’ actions. Instead, their fundamental concern is to prevent challenges to their rigid, authoritarian world view.

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Snippets

“But how aboutism” is rampant. Trump is indicted. And indicted again. And again and again. A constant response from the right: But how about the Biden family? But how about Joe Biden’s lies? But how about Joe Biden’s being on vacation? A response to the right’s how aboutism is, How about the Trump family? Questions are raised about Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. A response: How about Sonia Sotomayer’s book deal? And so on. Such how aboutism is just another way for us to talk past each other. Perhaps the how abouters address legitimate issues about Hunter Biden’s sleaze, but that says nothing about Donald Trump’s behavior. The concerns about the Trump family’s grifting are important, but it says nothing about the appropriateness of the behavior of the Biden family. We should address the important issues that confront us, not just try to deflect attention from them.

The liberal cable-news host was talking about the vacations and other things very, very rich people have given to Clarence Thomas. The host insinuated that if Thomas wanted to live like the extremely wealthy, he could do that if he left the Supreme Court for a position in a private law firm. Thomas, however, the host said, wants to retain his power, and so do some conservative richies. Thus, in what are extremely friendly gestures that almost none of us will ever encounter, Thomas has taken vacations regularly not on his dime, but on the tens of thousands, no, hundreds of thousands, of others’. What struck me, however, in this report was not only the slippery ethics of donor or donee, but also the host’s comment that Clarence Thomas gets only “a middle class, an upper middle class” salary as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. He makes $265,000 a year. The median household income in this country is about $70,000 per year. Clarence Thomas alone, even without considering what his wife Ginni Thomas procures,  makes more than 95% of what other households make. Please, let’s not call this middle class of any sort.

“Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.” Woody Allen

“Money really isn’t everything. If it was, what would we buy with it?” Tom Wilson

Did you ever wonder how the fool soon parted from his money got the money in the first place?

“When I was young, I used to think that wealth and power would bring me happiness. . . . I was right.” Gahan Wilson.

In the small-town bar, as I waited for my beer, a picture of Donald Trump came on the television. Without stopping to think, I said, “Trump is a horse’s ass.” The guy on the next stool socked me in the nose and stalked out. As I was stuffing paper napkins up my nostrils, I somewhat apologetically said to the bartender, “I should have realized that there could be Trump lovers in here.” The barkeep replied, “He’s not. He is a horse lover.”

“He was like a cock who thought that the sun had risen to hear him crow.” George Eliot.

A wise person said, “A windbag is a person who is hard of listening.”

Another wise person said, “The more you speak of yourself, the more you are likely to lie.”

“There is only one rule for being a good talker; learn to listen.” Christopher Morley.

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Ten Cartoons a Day

Ten cartoons a day. I was flabbergasted when I read that. I considered myself a bright person, but one with little creativity. Right after reading about ten cartoons a day, I paused and tried to dream up a cartoon. Nothing at all. I tried again two hours later. Zilch. In the afternoon I created nada. In the evening niente.

I could not come up with one idea for any sort of cartoon in a day, but Bill Mauldin said that while learning his craft, he forced himself to create at least ten new cartoons every day. That remarkable regime stuck in the recesses of my mind long after I had read about it in his bestselling book, The Brass Ring. However, it popped to the surface again when I recently saw a two-hour documentary about Bill Mauldin, If It’s Big, Hit It. The directors Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce were in attendance and said that their film had not yet found a distributor. They had bad timing, having finished the movie at the beginning of Covid. They explained further that few people today knew of Mauldin, and memories of World War II had faded.

Mauldin had gained fame for his World War II cartoons, meticulously drawn, featuring Willie and Joe, the unshaven, cigarette-dangling, front-line infantry dogfaces. First published in military newspapers, the cartoons were later syndicated in the United States. I knew from my reading that Mauldin was with the Army as it slogged north through Italy and was frequently at the front lines. And I knew that after the war, he was an editorial cartoonist for the St. Louis Post Dispatch and later for the Chicago Sun-Times. I had seen many of his cartoons before but saw them regularly in the Sun-Times when I lived in Chicago in the 1960s.

However, I learned much more from the documentary. I learned about a hardscrabble childhood in America’s southwest. He moved out of the house when barely a teenager; his cartooning began with a high school newspaper even though he did not graduate from that school. (He was given an honorary diploma many years later.) He enlisted in the National Guard before the attack on Pearl Harbor, at least in part because it was the only job he could find. The syndication of his WWII cartons made him a wealthy young man and a darling of the media. He had multiple marriages and had children from each of those unions. He drank too much and died of Alzheimer’s disease.

I did not know that the title of the film — “If it’s big, hit it” — was his own quote. It fit; His cartoons often lampooned and skewered the powerful. His World War II cartoons often satirized the brass, getting Mauldin in trouble with George S. Patton. (Mauldin’s work continued to run in the military papers because Patton’s boss, Dwight D. Eisenhower, maintained they were good for morale.) His satirization of the Bigs continued in civilian life; one of his post-war cartoons caused the FBI to open a file on Mauldin, under the frequently applied theory that if someone criticized the United States, he was communist inspired. He not only advocated hitting the big, he also, quite literally, got hit in return. When the police, instead of giving tickets, protected illegally double-parked cars of friends of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, Mauldin took pictures of the license plates. The cartoonist was rewarded with a fist to the nose, and photographs of his blood-smeared face ran in the papers.

The movie showed many of Mauldin’s cartoons. Some were classics that had burrowed into my memory, but others were new to me. Many of these were frightening; cartoons about racism, homophobia, suppression of rights, and other topics published a half-century ago could run unaltered today and be equally relevant and insightful. The United States has changed, but not as much as it should have.

I was impressed with Bill Mauldin before watching the movie, and even more so after the screening. Mauldin was unique, but he also fits into that category of creative people who amaze and mystify me. First there is the drive. Writers write; painters paint; and as Mauldin showed, cartoonists cartoon. They may desire and even achieve wealth and fame, but that is the byproduct of their creative urge. Ten cartoons a day. That came from a drive to be a cartoonist, not from a drive to be rich.

I understand that such creative drive exists, but as a non-creative person, I wish I better understood the source of creativity itself. How did Brian Wilson create “Pet Sounds” or Gabriel Garcia Marquez create One Hundred Years of Solitude? I know that creative people almost always work hard at honing their craft (ten cartoons a day), just as Usain Bolt spent much effort at perfecting his craft of running fast. While I feel as though I can grasp the concept of the ability to run fast, I can’t fathom artistic talent. For stretches of his career, Bill Mauldin published editorial cartoons six days a week. How is that possible? Maybe you could figure it out for me if you could see If It’s Big, Hit It. It is well worth seeing, but since it does not have a distributor, you won’t be able to. However, with a little effort on the internet or a little more looking for used books, you can still find Mauldin’s cartoons. Do it not to keep his memory fresh, but because it will help keep your mind and sense of humor and outrage more alive.

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Snippets

Distinguished lawyers state that no attorney would allow Donald Trump to testify in his criminal trials. That is misleading. A criminal defendant has the constitutional right to testify at his trial, and the law is clear that the attorney does not control this decision. The accused decides. The attorney may advise against such testimony, and the defendant usually follows that advice, but the defendant has the ultimate authority over whether he testifies or not. Would you be surprised, however, if Trump did not listen to his lawyers?

Does Trump fully know what he is charged with in the last indictment? That charging document is forty-five pages long. It is about him, so there is a chance he read it, but not a good one.

“A President’s hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.” Lyndon B. Johnson.

“The American Presidency, it occurs to us, is merely a way station en route to the blessed condition of being an ex-President.” John Updike.

Several women are running for president. With our concern over inflation and deficits, we should elect a female. We could pay 70% of what we pay a man for  being president.

“I’d like to get to the point where I can be just as mediocre as a man.” Juanita Kreps.

“He told me that he was a self-made man. Later I discovered that he would have been wise to get some help.” Joan Rivers.

When a woman refuses to respond to a man’s advances, he is not disconcerted; he is merely astonished that she could be so blind to her own feelings. With a nod to Helen Rowland.

“In passing, also, I would like to say that the first time Adam had a chance he laid the blame on a woman.” Nancy Astor.

“Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, that is not difficult.” Charlotte Witten.

“It’s sexy to be competent.” Letty Cottin Pogrebin.

“I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.” Gloria Steinem.

“My life is not up for criticism, just my work.” Cher.

A wise person said, “Women who think they are the equal of men lack ambition.”

Behind every successful man stands an amazed woman.

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The Big Bullshitter’s Big Defense

Commentators have said that Trump might have a good defense for his latest indictment. The prosecutors, they say, must show (among other things) that the ex-president knew that he was lying when he proclaimed again and again that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud and stolen from him.

Some of my past blog comments seem to support the Trumpistas’ position, for I have said that Trump is not a liar. For that conclusion I was relying on Harry G. Frankfort’s marvelous little book, On Bullshit.

Frankfort makes a convincing distinction between bullshit and lies. Lying calls for a degree of craftsmanship to get the lie accepted, and it also requires a concern for the truth. “In order to invent a lie at all, [the liar] must think he knows what is true. And in order to invent an effective lie, he must design his falsehood under the guidance of that truth.”

The liar, thus, has a concern for the truth. The bullshitter does not. A bullshitter’s “statement is grounded neither in a belief that it is true nor, as a lie must be, in a belief that it is not true. It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth—this indifference to how things really are—that I regard as of the essence of bullshit.” And since our President does not seem to craft lies as much as utter falsehoods with an indifference to the truth, he is, by this definition, not a liar.

The bullshitter has more freedom than the liar. The bullshit artist “does not limit himself to inserting a certain falsehood at a certain point, and thus he is not constrained by the truths surrounding that point or intersecting it. He is prepared, as far as required, to fake the context as well.” Frankfort continues, “He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.” The bullshitter is not rejecting the authority of truth, as the liar does. Instead, “he pays no attention to it at all.” Without regard to the truth, Trump makes assertions, such as that the election was stolen, to suit his purpose so as not to be the loser he was.

While Frankfort’s notions of bullshit fit Trump, I don’t believe that Trump’s attorneys will say, “Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, Trump is not guilty. He is not a liar. He is a bullshitter. If the bullshit fits, you must acquit.”

Okay. Since “He is a bullshitter” is unlikely to be the defense, Trump’s attorneys may contend that he was speaking the truth about the election’s being stolen. Such an assertion, however, will require convincing evidence from the defense of electoral fraud serious enough to have altered the voting outcome (the so-called “outcome-determinative fraud”). After the 2020 election such claims were made over five dozen times and lost in court. No credible information has been found to support such an assertion, and none is likely to be discovered now.

A second defense, as has also been suggested by Trumpistas, is that Trump was not lying in his claims because he honestly believed that the election was stolen. I have been thinking about how that might play out in court.

A trial is not decided in the court of public opinion but in a real courtroom where the decision comes from a jury. We often say that a criminal defendant has the right to a trial by a jury of his peers. That is not in the Constitution. Instead, the Constitution allows the accused the right to be tried “by an impartial jury.” Some think that this means that the jurors must know nothing about the case to be a member of the jury. That is not the standard. Instead, a juror must be able to honestly pledge to decide the case, using common sense, on the evidence presented in court and the law as given by the judge. The jurors cannot decide the case on information from outside the trial. If I were called to be a juror, I would be asked whether I could set aside my conclusion that Trump is a bullshitter and could decide the case solely on the evidence and law presented at trial. If I am able to maintain impartiality, I would be a valid juror.

The indictment indicates that dozens of respected people — people who might be called as witnesses and whose testimony would have to be considered by the jury — told Trump that the screams of fraud were false. This information came to Trump from federal officials, state officials, White House officials, and unanimous court decisions. Many, if not most, came from conservatives and people whom Trump appointed and had praised. Using common sense, a jury seems likely to conclude that anyone who heard again and again from people he had trusted that fraud claims were bogus could not have honestly believed the opposite — at least not without countervailing proof.

Perhaps Trump does have countervailing evidence and will present witnesses who told him with a straight face that the election was stolen, and, moreover, that he chose to believe them in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It does not mean, however, that he wins just because he could put forward such testimony.

Prosecution witnesses will testify as to what they said to Trump and explain why the cries of fraud were hogwash. If Trump has witnesses who testify that they told him otherwise, those witnesses will be asked what they told Trump to support their unsupported claim. All the witnesses can testify as to what Trump said in these conversations. Did he ask about the bases of the claims? Did he ask those claiming election fraud in Arizona, for example, why Arizona officials dismissed the claims of fraud? What is their proof? Since the election fraud deniers have the facts on their side, a jury is likely to believe that any normal person would believe the factual reports over those presenting false claims. Of course, you might maintain that Trump is not a normal person, but the jury can’t operate on preexisting knowledge of the ex-president, and an assumption of abnormality would be warranted only if evidence is presented to that effect. That would be fun to see.

It is the case, however, that mental states are often an important issue in a criminal trial. Think of a self-defense claim where the accused is not guilty of a homicide if he believed that his life was in danger. Sometimes the jury can be convinced of that from a thorough exploration of the killing’s context. Witnesses might testify that the victim was advancing on the defendant with a knife or ax or gun shouting frightening threats when the accused shot him. That might be analogous to Trump’s situation if all the credible people had told him that the election was stolen and had supported their opinions with convincing facts. Trump, in self-defense, might have thought it appropriate to behave as he did. However, that’s not what the credible people told him.

Many times in a self-defense case, there is no independent evidence about the killing’s context. Sometimes the facts seemingly contradict what the defendant may have claimed after the death. The victim may have had a cellphone or a wallet in his hand, but the defendant may have said, I thought I was going to die because I thought he had a gun.  In these circumstances, the defendant almost always has to convincingly testify about the belief that his life was in danger to avoid a conviction. That seems analogous to Trump’s situation. Could his attorneys convince the jury that Trump honestly believed what was untrue? It would necessitate Trump’s testifying that despite repeated and credible reports, he continued to believe a false narrative.  It is, of course, unlikely that he will testify at all; almost everyone seems to believe that he can’t win if he has to face cross-examination. That conviction seems assured if he testifies tells us a lot.

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Snippets

Let the people decide. That is the phrase I have heard from various right wingers after Trump’s latest indictment. The next election should settle his fate. That could, of course, be said every time an office holder is charged with a crime, something that happens many times each year. For good reasons, however, the determination of whether a person has committed a charged crime is not decided by an election. The people do decide, but they are the ones plucked from the stream of humanity to be jurors. That is our legal system, one embedded in the Constitution and our history.

          I know that those who proclaim “Let the people decide” do not believe in or understand the rule of law, but I wonder if they are foolish, are ignorant, have no memory, are hypocrites, or are simply trying to be funny. (Probably not the latter; I have noticed that right wingers rarely have a good sense of humor.) The indictment was handed up precisely because Trump was unwilling to let the people decide. The people voted in 2020 and decided decisively against him. There is no reason to believe that if he is on the ballot in 2024 and he loses that he will accept the people’s decision. Recent history shows that he won’t.

I love my small car. It is the right vehicle for parking on the streets of New York City. It can sometimes be parked where few other cars can. When either the spouse or I maneuver into such a tight place we proudly announce to the other, “I fit the Fit into a Fit spot.” Street parking is especially hard in Manhattan where the spouse recently had a doctor’s appointment. I found a small, but tempting opening at the curb and stopped to back in. A big truck waited behind me. I parked the Honda Fit on the first try with eight inches to spare in front and six inches behind. I heard honking. The truck had pulled up alongside me. The driver opened his window, smiled, stuck his hands out, and applauded. I smiled and waved. I was too late to yell out that I had gotten into tighter spots, but at my age it was nice to be acknowledged for a dexterous feat, even a mundane one.

Owning old houses, I have been through many renovations and repairs. I have learned that whenever a worker starts a job, if he did not do the previous work, he will tell me whoever did it before did not do it properly.

A mystery of life: I went to the new dollar store. And spent $78.76.

I have heard that you should live every day like it is your last. Hogwash. If l did that, I would never have clean clothes. On the last day of my life, I am not doing the laundry. Or the dishes.

“Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.” Mark Twain.

My latest diet that I am sure will work: I can eat anything I want, but I must eat naked in front of a full-length mirror.

“I am still looking for a man who could excite me as much as a baked potato.” Laura Flynn McCarthy.

“Never eat more than you can lift.” Miss Piggy.

Gouda, Roquefort, and cheddar make a fromage à trois.

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Lew’s Judah (concluded)

Civil War general and author Lew Wallace left the governorship of the New Mexico territory in 1881, but not to retire to domesticity. President James Garfield had read Wallace’s Ben-Hur shortly after its 1880 publication and became convinced that the author had a deep understanding of the eastern Mediterranean. Garfield appointed the author to be U.S. Minister to the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople.

The story goes that after his formal introduction to the Turkish Sultan, Wallace extended his hand to shake. The courtiers were aghast; no one touched the Sultan, much less a Christian. The Sultan, however, when he understood Wallace’s gesture, took his hand, and the two developed a close relationship.

Besides his diplomatic duties, Wallace toured the Holy Land. He had described it in Ben-Hur only from research, but he felt that his representations stood up to the first-hand observations and changed nothing in subsequent editions of the book. He toured parts of the Ottoman empire and drew upon these travels for his book The Prince of India; or Why Constantinople Fell, which he published in 1893 and thought his best novel.

The election of Grover Cleveland ended Wallace’s diplomatic career in 1885. The Sultan supposedly wished for Wallace to work for the Ottoman empire, but Wallace, still in his fifties, returned to Crawfordsville where he lived for the rest of his life.

He constructed a study outside his Indiana home. At first it was surrounded by a moat, which was stocked so that he could fish from it. He later filled it in because he thought it endangered children. It still stands now as the Lew Wallace Study and Museum, where his painting of the Lincoln conspirators is hung.

The remarkable man continued to write, publishing several more books, but he also displayed another talent later in his life — that of inventor. He obtained eight patents, including one for a travel fishing rod and reel. He died in 1905 working on his autobiography, which his wife finished after his death.

And now I have finally read his most noted accomplishment, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Well, not every word of it. Wallace’s research shows itself in the novel through many lengthy descriptions of such things as galley ships, stadiums, customs, and geography. These sometimes go on for pages and pages. I confess that I skimmed many of those as well as the long descriptive paragraphs that introduced each character. (Wallace certainly did not believe the advice given by the successful writer to the fledgling one in Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews: “You only need to give one or two details about a character’s physical appearance. It’s all the reader needs to build an image in her mind. Anything more is a distraction.)

The subtitle may indicate that Jesus is a central figure in the book, but that is not so. We read of his birth (in a cave, and he is not laid in a manger) that draws on the Bible, and we encounter him as a youth, but he then disappears until he emerges again near the end of the lengthy book. Mostly, the book reads like a typical nineteenth century adventure story, although it is better written than others I have read.

The plot in brief: The princely, Jewish Judah Ben-Hur is sent off as a slave to galley ships after he almost kills a Roman governor accidentally. His family estate is confiscated. His mother and sister are imprisoned and catch leprosy. Ben-Hur miraculously escapes from a galley ship during a battle. He saves a rich Roman, who adopts him. He trains to be a warrior and charioteer. He cripples a hated Roman in the famous chariot scene. Perhaps this book is ultimately about love and forgiveness, but if so, only after Ben-Hur exacts revenge on those who wrecked his and his family’s lives. Of course, there are two beautiful women, one of whom the readers know is not a good person — not the right one for Judah — while, of course, the other beauty is.

Eventually, Judah begins to follow Jesus as Jesus begins his public ministry. Judah at first believes Jesus will become a king who will overthrow the hated Romans. Gradually, however, Ben-Hur realizes that Jesus is offering a paradise not of this earth. We can breathe a sigh of relief that Judah ends up with beautiful, virtuous Esther and that with his riches, because of his new faith, he does good works.

Although it sounds like something planted by a modern public relations flack to sell books, it is said that Lew Wallace found his faith in writing the book. It did not have the same effect on me. However, while most of the book seemed a cut above ordinary, the description of the crucifixion, which follows the Bible closely, was both moving and powerful.

So…Lew Wallace, writer, illustrator, general, governor, diplomat, and inventor. A full life and a legacy that lives on in Ben-Hur.

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Lew’s Judah (continued)

By the end of the Civil War, Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur, had regained such respect that President Andrew Johnson appointed him to the military tribunal that would try the seven men and one woman accused of plotting to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. All eight were convicted. The tribunal sentenced four of them to prison terms, and the other four, including Mary Surratt, to death by hanging. Five of the nine military commissioners later recommended clemency for Surratt. Wallace, the only lawyer on the commission, was not one of them. The president did not grant the reprieve, and Mary Surratt was hanged. (See the posting on ajsdad.blog of May 6, 2020: “The Hanging in the Museum.”)

Six weeks after the Lincoln assassination trial concluded, Wallace was appointed to preside over another military tribunal, this one to try Confederate Captain Henry Wirz, the commandant of the notorious Andersonville prisoner of war camp in Georgia. Wirz, too, was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was hanged on November 10, 1865.

Digression: In high school, I became aware of the horrors of that Confederate camp when, seven years after it won the Pulitzer Prize, I read MacKinlay Kantor’s Andersonville. After I got used to Kantor’s punctuation—no quotation marks, later adopted by Cormac McCarthy and others—I found it to be a powerful book. Only later did I learn that some thought it age-inappropriate for secondary school readers and tried to have it banned from high schools. (See the posting on ajsdad.blog of June15, 2023, and June 19, 2023: “It Was So Age-Inappropriate What I Read.”) Perhaps the language bothered some; the novel is filled with profanities, which is not surprising because Andersonville portrays the inhumanities of the prisoner of war camp. It is not so much an antiwar book but one detailing human degradation. Henry Wirz, who suffered injuries during the war, is portrayed as a still sick man trying to do his best in controlling the horrors in an impossible situation. The military commission, if it was in the book, was merely a coda to the heart of the lengthy book about the construction and operation of the camp. The book may have introduced me to Lew Wallace, but I don’t remember him from the novel.

Wallace’s life took a strange turn after his service on the military tribunals. Apparently invited by Benito Juárez, he went to Mexico to become a major general in the Mexican Army. Juárez was elected to the Mexican presidency in 1861. Shortly thereafter with Mexico facing a major financial crisis, he repudiated foreign debt prompting French Emperor Napoleon III to seek the overthrow of the Mexican government. France invaded and installed Maximilian as emperor of Mexico. The United States at least nominally supported Juárez but, occupied with the Civil War, gave him little support. Even so, Juárez returned to the Mexican Presidency in 1867, and Wallace was off to support him. It is not clear what happened in Mexico, but Wallace soon returned to the U.S. deeply in debt.

He settled again in Crawfordsville, Indiana, to practice law, which he detested. Wallace published his first book in 1873, a historical novel, The Fair God, about Cortez’s conquest of Mexico. Wallace, however, was not the only author in the family. His wife, Susan Arnold Elston Wallace, published six books, two of which were illustrated by Wallace. Her most notable literary work was an 1858 poem titled, “The Patter of Little Feet,” which gave us the phrase.

It is not surprising that Wallace illustrated his wife’s books. They were a close couple, and he, among his many facets, was a talented artist. During the Lincoln assassination trial, he sketched all the defendants, except for Mary Surratt, whose face was nearly always veiled during the proceedings. Shortly after his failed Mexican excursion, Wallace used the drawings as a basis for a painting, usually called “The Conspirators,” which depicts those convicted except for Surratt. The large canvas, roughly five feet by five feet, now hangs in the General Lew Wallace Study and Museum in Crawfordsville.

Lew Wallace’s first novel sold well and perhaps this success inspired him to begin his work on Ben-Hur. He had not been to the Holy Land but did extensive research at the Library of Congress for the new book. Writing, however, was not then a full-time occupation, so when asked in 1878, he accepted a new appointment as Governor of the New Mexico territory.

Santa Fe may have seemed like the perfect place to finish his manuscript, which he did but with some major distractions. After engaging in Civil War battles, judging those charged in Lincoln’s assassination, dealing with the horrors of Andersonville, and seeking to defend the Mexican republic, the sparsely settled New Mexico could have been a haven made for writing. Instead, Wallace encountered the Lincoln County War and the almost mythical Billy the Kid.

The Lincoln County War started in 1878, the year Wallace came to New Mexico, and ended in the year he left, 1881. This is the only “war” I know of that started with a dispute over dry goods businesses and, of course, since this was the Old West, cattle. When a member of one faction was murdered, retaliatory murders ensued climaxing in a five-day gun battle in 1880. The most famous of the participating gunfighters was Henry McCarty, aka William H. Bonney, aka Billy the Kid, who, legends say, killed twenty-one men before he was killed at the age of twenty-one.

In the midst of the Lincoln County War, Bonney wrote Governor Lew Wallace offering his testimony about one of the murders in exchange for amnesty. Billy and the Governor met a few days later, and Wallace promised the gunslinger clemency for the testimony. To guarantee his safety, Bonney agreed to be arrested and placed in jail. Bonney testified, but the local district attorney refused to free him. Wallace felt double-crossed by the DA, and Billy the Kid by Wallace. Two months later Billy escaped from jail and vowed revenge on Wallace. Bullets were later fired into Wallace’s home, but no one knows whether Bonney was the shooter. Wallace, however, posted a $500 bounty for Bonney’s capture, and Sheriff Pat Garrett captured Billy and three others. Billy the Kid sent Wallace at least four letters seeking release, which the governor ignored. Bonney was convicted of murder and sentenced to hanging, but again he escaped, killing two men in the process. Wallace posted another $500 bounty, and three months later, Pat Garrett shot and killed Billy the Kid.

(concluded July 31)

Posted on by rjonakait

Lew’s Judah

Does a century end with a 99 or with a double zero? How you answer that question determines the answer to my trivia question: What was the bestselling American novel of the nineteenth century? Many sources say it was Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Life Among the Lowly (published in 1852), but others say that in 1900 Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ had passed Uncle Tom’s Cabin in sales. Ben-Hur, published twenty-eight years after Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book, was a phenomenon. It remained the largest selling American novel until it was surpassed by 1936’s Gone with the Wind, when the literate American population was much larger than it was a half-century before. My guess, however, is that while many readers of this blog not only know the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, they have read the book, and that many also have read Gone with the Wind and know that Margaret Mitchell wrote it. How many, however, have read Ben-Hur or even know the name of the author?

Although it did not make it to my small Wisconsin town until six months after its premiere, the 1959 movie first introduced me to Judah Ben-Hur. It was one of my first dates. However, any of my hopes for a makeout session before going home were dashed — not, I am sure, because of my lack of charm and appeal –but by both the film’s religious conclusion and its length. The movie is over three-and-a-half hours long and that does not include the overture (remember movie overtures?) and the intermission (remember movie intermissions?). The movie was a huge box-office success and won eleven Oscars, including for best movie and best actor for Charlton Heston, who seemingly did not learn from his role that you can be a hero without holding a gun. (Eleven Oscars have not been surpassed but that total has been matched by Titanic and one of those god-awful Lord of the Rings nerdfests.)Other actors were considered for the lead role including Burt Lancaster and Paul Newman, who apparently turned it down because he was convinced that he did not have the legs for a tunic. (Did Newman ever show his legs in any of his movies?)  

This movie was not the first visual depiction of the book. In 1899, a play of Ben-Hur opened on Broadway. The book’s author only consented to the theatrical production after stipulating that the crucifixion not be staged and that Jesus not be portrayed by an actor. Instead, Christ was suggested by a beam of light. In the 1959 movie version, an actor portrayed Jesus, but his face is not seen and his voice is not heard. In the 2016 remake, an actor for the first time portrayed the voice, face, and figure of Jesus. There was also a 1925 version. It starred the Mexican American heartthrob Ramon Novarro, né José Ramón Gil Samaniego, who became Hollywood’s Latin Lover after the death of Rudy Valentino and whose considerable appeal apparently also included his legs and whose closeted homosexuality helped cause his gruesome murder in 1968.

Of course, Ben-Hur is not complete without the chariot races which, in the 1959 movie comprise a thrilling nine minutes long segment (with a teenage boy yelling out during my initial viewing that the bloody face of a driver looked like a pizza, a food only recently introduced to my town.) In that long-ago live play, it was staged with live horses running on hidden treadmills. The stage production was so successful that it toured for two decades requiring four railroad cars to transport the equipment. Over twenty million people saw it.

Although I have seen televised fragments of the 1959 movie many times since my high school days, I gave Ben-Hur little thought over the next half-century. Covid changed that. At the beginning of the pandemic, the local, friendly library where I spend summers erected a plexiglass shield to separate patrons from staff at the checkout desk. On the patron’s side, two stacks of books held the plastic upright. The blue bindings, all the same, suggested “classics.” I now know that they were part of the International Collectors Library. An insert in each books said they came in “The William Morris Binding, a modern adaptation of a superb Old Victorian bookbinding specimen.” The original covering was designed by William Morris for his book Utopia.

Ben-Hur was on the top of the right-hand side stack of books restraining the plexiglass. After a few visits to the post-Covid checkout facility, I asked if I could take out Ben-Hur. I was told that I could not because it continued to be part of the protective device’s support system. Recently, however, I asked the wonderful librarian again about the novel’s availability. Mary Ann, tall and slender with a charming smile and sparkling eyes, said yes. (I have never had a real conversation with Mary Ann, but I am convinced that she is smart and witty. Alas, I confess to being too old for her.)

Reading the book has made me interested in Lew Wallace, who, of course, is the author of Ben-Hur, but it turns out that he was much more than a writer. I had known that he was a Civil War general but I knew little else about his remarkable life. Lewis Wallace was born in 1827 in Indiana. When the Mexican War started, the nineteen-year-old Wallace volunteered for the army. Serving under Zachary Taylor, he did not see combat but became a regimental adjutant and left this army service as a first lieutenant. He returned to Indiana, married Susan Arnold Elston, had a son, practiced law, and served a term as a Democrat in the state legislature.

Two weeks after the attack on Fort Sumter, Wallace, a firm believer in the Union, became the commander of an Indiana regiment. Five months later, after involvement in some minor battles, he became a brigadier general and was given command of a brigade. Early in 1862, after performing well in more major actions, Wallace was promoted to major general, the youngest (age 34) in the Union army. Within a month, however, Grant and others criticized his decisions at the Battle of Shiloh (Wallace maintained that his orders were unclear), and he was removed from front-line command. Throughout his life, Wallace felt that the blame from Shiloh was unjust, and even near his death fifty years after the battle, he was still defending his actions at the battle.

Wallace, however, continued with his military career with notable successes in Kentucky and in defending Cincinnati. However, what gained him most praise was not a victory. Confederate General Jubal Early, with superior forces, defeated Wallace’s troops at Monocacy Junction, Maryland, not far from Washington, D.C. With skillful maneuvering, however, Wallace’s army impeded the Confederate drive to Washington for a day, giving Grant time to send reinforcements to the capital. Grant recognized Wallace’s effective tactics and praised him at the time and later in his autobiography.

(continued July 27)