Reviews and News:
The strange tale of the best-selling crime novel of the 19th century: “Publishing history is full of strange tales, and that recounted by Lucy Sussex in Blockbuster! Fergus Hume & the Mystery of a Hansom Cab is certainly among the strangest and most poignant. In late 1880s Australia a would-be dramatist decided that he might gain more attention from theater impresarios if he were a published author. So Fergus Hume sat down to produce what ultimately became the best-selling crime novel of the 19th century.”
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Another Elizabeth I: “Elizabeth sanctioned, and even encouraged, the activities of the notorious Catholic-hunter and rackmaster Richard Topcliffe, who tortured suspects in a “strong room” in his house in Westminster. Indeed, ‘strong archival evidence exists that she knew him personally, thoroughly approved of his activities and received reports directly from him rather than through intermediaries’. The smoking gun which proves her acquiescence in some of Topcliffe’s worst atrocities lies buried in Burghley’s papers. When the Jesuit priest Robert Southwell was arrested in 1592, Topcliffe wrote to tell Elizabeth how the prisoner was shackled to the wall in his ‘strong chamber’ and had responded to interrogation ‘foully and suspiciously’. Topcliffe sought the Queen’s permission to ‘enforce’ the prisoner ‘to answer truly and directly’, by stretching him out against the wall using ‘hand gyves’ (iron gauntlets). Although the Queen’s reply to Topcliffe’s letter was not written down, the fact that he proceeded with the torture methods he had described and with no further warrant as the law required, is in Guy’s view ‘chilling proof that she gave her consent in the full knowledge of what he was about to do. Topcliffe would not have dared to act as he did had the Queen forbidden it, and she was far from squeamish’. Moreover, when, after a two and a half years of solitary confinement in the Tower of London, Robert Southwell was finally brought to the gallows at Tyburn, Elizabeth specificallyordered that he be forced to endure extra suffering, and after being hanged, Southwell should be cut down while fully conscious and disembowelled. This was no one-off. Ten years earlier, she had issued similar orders when William Parry, a failed assassin, made the journey to Tyburn. After just one swing of the rope he was cut down from the gallows on Elizabeth’s order and while he was still fully conscious, had his heart and bowels ripped from his body with a meat cleaver. Finally, after he had let out a ‘great groan’, his head and limbs were severed from the corpse and the head set on London Bridge as a warning to others of the ‘terrible price of treason’. So much for Good Queen Bess.”
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Before Marcel Duchamp there was Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.
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Julian Barnes on three 19th-century Scandinavian artists: “Købke was the son of a baker, Balke came from ‘the lowest rank of peasant society’, while Eckersberg’s father was a carpenter. Each made his way early by talent, and by the luck of that talent being recognised by those around them: Balke’s studies were funded by local farmers – several of whose farms he decorated in recompense. All three were trained at state academies (Balke in Stockholm, the other two in Copenhagen), and attracted official, even royal support. This was partly genuine connoisseurial interest, but also a patriotic impulse. Painting, then, there, was part of nation-making, of the visual defining of those northern countries.”
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Forever 1968: “My two literate and thoughtful sons complain that I’m always invoking the sixties to explain today’s pathologies. I hope they now see that events have caught up with the argument.”
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Fact-checking Marianne Moore: “In her poem ‘To a Snail,’ Moore quotes the assertion that ‘compression is the first grace of style,’ and in a footnote attributes this to the Greek philosopher Democritus. An Internet search turns up many cases where the quote is indeed attributed to fifth-century B.C.E. philosopher Democritus, and just as many times it’s attributed to fourth-century B.C.E. philosopher Demetrius. Danny Heitman, the HUMANITIES author, correctly quoted Moore, but did Moore correctly quote Democritus?”
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Essay of the Day:
In Harper’s, Martin Amis reviews two of Donald Trump’s books—Trump: The Art of the Deal and Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again—published nearly 30 years apart. His take? “I can report that in the past thirty years Trump, both cognitively and humanly, has undergone an atrocious decline“:
“If you have ever wondered what it’s like, being a young and avaricious teetotal German-American philistine on the make in Manhattan, then your curiosity will be quenched by The Art of the Deal. One of the drawbacks of phenomenal success, Trump ruefully notes, ‘is that jealousy and envy inevitably follow’ (‘I categorize [such people] as life’s losers’); but the present reader, at least, felt a gorgeous serenity when contemplating Trump’s average day. Nonnavigable permits, floor-area ratios, zoning approvals, rezoning approvals (‘involving a dozen city and state agencies, as well as local community groups’), land-rights and air-rights purchases, property-tax abatements, handouts to politicians (‘very standard and accepted’), and, if push came to shove (‘I’m not looking to be a bad guy when it isn’t absolutely necessary’), coerced evictions.
“On the other hand, think of all the exceptional human beings he is working with. Alan ‘Ace’ Greenberg, CEO of Bear Stearns; Ivan Boesky, crooked arbitrageur; Arthur Sonnenblick, ‘one of the city’s leading brokers’; Stephen Wynn, Vegas hotelier; Adnan Khashoggi, ‘Saudi billionaire’ (and arms dealer); and Paul Patay, ‘the number-one food-and-beverage man in Atlantic City.’ And on top of all this there’s Barron Hilton, ‘born wealthy and bred to be an aristocrat,’ and ‘a member of what I call the Lucky Sperm Club.’ (An ugly formulation, that: I respectfully advise Mr. Trump to settle on a more demotic alternative — the Lucky Scum Club, say.)
“Then you have the social life. A sustaining can of tomato juice for lunch (‘I rarely go out, because mostly, it’s a waste of time’); a minimum of parties (‘Frankly, I’m not too big on parties, because I can’t stand small talk’); and an absolute minimum of hanging about in cocktail bars (‘I don’t drink, and I’m not very big on sitting around’). But of course there are treats and sprees. Take the dinners. A dinner at St. Patrick’s Cathedral with John Cardinal O’Connor and his ‘top bishops and priests.’ A dinner, chaired by Trump, for the Police Athletic League. A visit to Trenton ‘to attend a retirement dinner for a member of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission.’
“It is thus exhaustively established that Trump has a superhuman tolerance for boredom. What are his other commercial strengths? Nerve; tenacity; patience; an unembarrassable pushiness (indulgently known as chutzpah); a shrewd aversion to staking his own money; the aforementioned readiness, at a pinch, to play the villain; the ability to be ‘a screamer when I want to be’ (but not when he senses that ‘screaming would only scare them off’); and the determination to ‘fight when I feel I’m being screwed.’ Above all, perhaps, his antennae are very sensitive to weakness.
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“In Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, however, ‘His written, or dictated, sentences, while grammatically stolid enough, attempt something cannier: very often indeed, they lack the ingredient known as content. In this company, ‘I am what I am’ and ‘What I say is what I say’ seem relatively rich. At first, you marvel at the people who think it worth saying — that what they say is what they say. But at least an attitude is being communicated, a subtext that reads, Take me for all in all. Incidentally, this attitude is exclusively male. You have heard Chris Christie say it; but can you hear a woman say, in confident self-extenuation, that she is what she is?
“Fascinating. And maybe there’s some legible sedimentary interest in ‘Donald Trump is for real.’ Or maybe not. As well as being ‘for real,’ Trump has ‘no problem telling it like it is.’ To put it slightly differently, ‘I don’t think many people would disagree that I tell it like it is.’ He has already claimed that he looks like a very nice guy, on page ix, but on page xiv he elaborates with ‘I’m a really nice guy,’ and on page 89 he doubles down with ‘I’m a nice guy. I really am.’ ‘I’m not afraid to say exactly what I believe.’ ‘The fact is I give people what they need and deserve to hear . . . and that is The Truth.'”
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Image of the Day: Thunderbolt
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Poem: Yusef Komunyakaa, “Slingshot”
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