Ian Buruma is no longer the editor of the New York Review of Books after he published an essay by Jian Ghomeshi, who was accused (but acquitted) of sexual assault and battery. “Reps confirmed Buruma, who took the job last May, ‘is no longer the editor,’ but didn’t say if he resigned or was dismissed,” reported the New York Post.
The celebrity profile is dead, and that’s a bad thing, says Jon Caramanica. “Taylor Swift hasn’t given a substantive interview and access to a print publication for at least two years… Imagine how wildly illuminating probing conversations with Beyoncé about ‘Lemonade’ or Ms. Swift about ‘Reputation’ would have been, a boon to the curious as well as an opportunity for the interview subjects to be shown in their full complexity.” Uh, imagine Beyoncé being “wildly illuminating.” Imagine thinking that what’s wrong with American culture is Taylor Swift not speaking.
Henry James in California: “James never published anything of significance about the West Coast or the Midwest, and never fulfilled his later promise to Fullerton on August 8, 1907, implying some fictional use: ‘I have a great many other & inédites Impressions – but shall have to use them in some other & “indirect” way’. But we can catch some glints of the missing pendant – of ‘California and the Pacific Coast’ in particular – if we attend to James’s unobtrusive arrival on the West Coast late on Thursday, March 23, 1905, boldly announced two days later by the Los Angeles Times: ‘Henry James Here. Well-Known Novelist, Alone, Slips Quietly into Apartments at the Van Nuys’.”
The OED turns to teenagers for help understanding their “particularly elusive” language.
Dominic Green remembers Big Jay McNeely: “Walter Sickert defined genius as ‘self-preservation in a talent.’ McNeely was a genius of the tenor saxophone. Though music is a collaborative endeavour, McNeely can be said to have invented the rock’n’roll sax with ‘The Deacon’s Hop’ (1949). He preserved his talent, too, and with it the lineage of barnstormers and grandstanders that runs from the origins of the jazz saxophone to its twin apogees in the high-minded honking and squealing of late John Coltrane, and the stadium-friendly honking and squealing of the late Clarence Clemons. The technical tricks required to produce the honks and squeals are identical for both. Decide for yourself who you’d rather hear playing them.”
Michael Dirda revisits Walter de la Mare’s children’s books.
Essay of the Day:
What has happened to ecumenism? Michael Root attempts an answer in First Things:
“In 1870, during a plenary session of the First Vatican Council, the Croatian bishop Josip Strossmayer complained that the introduction to what would become the Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith contained an unnecessary and false claim that modern unbelief could be traced to Protestantism. On the contrary, argued Strossmayer, the roots of unbelief stretched back to medieval Catholic culture. Voltaire had come from Catholic France, and many Protestants were able defenders of Christian truth. At this point, the bishops assembled in St. Peter’s Basilica began to shout Strossmayer down. Cardinal Filippo de Angelis, presiding at the session, rang his bell and proclaimed, ‘This is not the place to praise Protestants.’ Strossmayer tried to continue, but his words were lost in the tumult, and eventually he gave up in protest.
“Some ninety-four years later, in the same St. Peter’s Basilica, George Lindbeck sat as a designated Lutheran observer at the Second Vatican Council. It was the third session of the council, and the Decree on Ecumenism, which would transform Catholicism’s terms of engagement with non-Catholic Christians, was being discussed. The French bishop Léon Elchinger commented that the right understanding of faith and justification had at times been better preserved among Protestants than among Catholics, and that Catholics needed to learn from Protestants. No uproar ensued. Lindbeck found that, as he listened, he had begun to cry. He had never expected to hear such words from a Catholic bishop in such a solemn setting. Words that had been unspeakable in that building less than a century before were now welcome.
“Time has not stood still, and the high emotions of mid-twentieth-century ecumenism have given way to predictable gestures and general indifference. Last year, the Vatican joined in the commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. A Vatican stamp was issued, depicting Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon at the foot of the cross. On October 31, 2016, the pope himself attended a prayer service in Sweden sponsored by the Lutheran World Federation to launch its year of commemorative activities. A few observers complained about false ecumenism. An equally small number proclaimed that a breakthrough in Protestant-Catholic unity must be just around the corner. Most, however, took no particular interest, and rightly so. It was ecclesiastical business as usual in Sweden: prelates being nice to each other, gestures of goodwill that had no consequences. Fifty years ago, ecumenism could make grown men cry. Now it is mundane.
“Many reasons can be given for the dampening of the ecumenical excitement of two generations ago. The mainstream Protestantism that had been a driving force of the ecumenical movement has declined precipitously in recent decades. Traditional church-dividing issues—infant baptism, the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist—can seem arcane not just to the laity, but even to a church leadership that is far less theologically attuned than it was in the recent past. Church unity can seem irrelevant to church life, and ecumenical texts are often written by committees—a recipe for boring prose.”
Photo: Yuanyang rice terraces
Poem: James Arthur, “To Geoffrey Chaucer”
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