Rest Not Completely In Peace

The Wall Street Journal ^ | 7 September 2001 | Joseph Epstein

[BluesDuke]

Hamlet famously complained about his mother's remarrying so soon after his father's death that, it will be recalled, "the funeral bak'd meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables." Not that a decent delay could have made this most troubled of sons happy, but Hamlet was here setting out the generally agreed upon notion that, such is the profound mystery of death, a respectable interval ought to be allowed before taking any action that might dishonor the deceased.

[BluesDuke]

I can think offhand of no better elaboration, even if unwitting, of Clarence Darrow's dictum, I have never wished a man dead, but I have read a great many obituaries with a great deal of pleasure. Also a useful enough antidote to those who might still believe a certain New York Post columnist was unduly nasty toward the demise of and funeral for a certain barely-distinguished singer of forgettable pop songs...

[2Trievers]

I hate funerals and would not attend my own if it could be avoided, but it is well for every man to stop once in a while to think of what sort of a collection of mourners he is training for his final event. ~ Robert T. Morris ~

[jobim]

I don't know this Joseph Epstein, or, rather, perhaps I know him too well after this column.

Mortimer Adler, for whatever his personal idiosyncracies, which I certainly wasn't privy to, was a major figure of the 20th century. His heroic achievement in bringing a nation's attention to the greatest minds of the Western world is a service of the first order. What school district, town library, parish school, has not been influenced by the Great Books program? Young people across America have found joy in the world of the intellect since the 1940s in part because of the vision and passion of this one man.

Mr. Epstein's meanness, no, his inconsequentialness, renders his column so much spittle.

An interesting sidebar is that Adler converted to the Catholic faith in his 98th year - old Aquinas prevailed after all. Is this Epstein's axe he's grinding? He probably thinks Pius XII was Hitler's friend.

As for old Pauline, yes, she found art where often there was simply fart, but she prevailed in her way, and carried many of us with her on those high-gloss New Yorker ramblings. At least she had something to say - she was at least consequential. Epstein: find a real job.

[2Trievers]

There are three kinds of death in this world. There's heart death, there's brain death, and there's being off the network. ~ Guy Almes ~

"and there's being off the network."

Does that mean I can't get on FreeRepublic anymore?

[BluesDuke]

Unfortunately, a good many Major Figures (many of whom, we both know well enough, turn out to be major in name only) across history prove to be men and women of towering enough achievement and equally towering disgrace as people. (One distinction might be that some of those at least know and regret such, whereas others could hardly care less about whatever disgrace or destruction they leave in their wake.)

Inasmuch as Mr. Epstein - who, by the way, is not exactly some obscure sudden contender in the belles lettres arena (he has published a good number of books of criticism and has been a longtime contributor to the like of the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, The New Criterion, The American Spectator, The American Scholar, and other publications, many of which I have seen carry his essays) - actually knew and worked for Mr. Adler, he has perhaps a different insight into the being of the man than we Mr. Adler's dear readers. Mortimer Adler did indeed engage a good many people who might otherwise have shunned the world of the intellect and for that he deserves our praise, but that is something entirely distinct from considering whether he was as a person equal to his intellectual achievement.

For better or worse, it is only too frequently true that a man or a woman can give the world a towering achievement of mind or of art or of whatever, and yet prove to be the sort of person you wouldn't dare bring into your own home, or to within a statutory mile of your own family. Not to mention, it is equally true that only too many men and women of great influence prove in the long term to have been granted an influence out of all proportion to their actual work. (Pauline Kael may be a vivid case in point: that she was influential and even popular is not in question; the lady could write well enough but only too much of her prose talent was deployed toward an awful lot of claptrap in praise of an awful lot of claptrap, thus giving the decomposition of the cinematic art an unwarranted sheen of intellectual assent.)

Try a comparison in another world: baseball. I still remember the opprobrium with which Jim Bouton (a former Yankee pitcher) was heaped after he reported (he was a sports reporter/commentator for local ABC at the time) the death of Yankee catcher Thurman Munson in a plane crash. Bouton reported the crash and, asked for any recollection of Munson, could only offer one and it was an unpleasant one: Bouton had previously sought Munson for a spring training interview and Munson, as was his apparent wont, was as rude as his reputation had it, suggesting Bouton perform a few anatomically impossible acts upon himself. In reporting Munson's death, Bouton simply recalled Munson as a hustling ballplayer (which he was, even if he was far from the Hall of Fame caliber his hagiographers have him) and remembered the spring training incident with regret that his only actual encounter with the man had been so unpleasant. You'd have thought Bouton (who had a reputation for brutal candor) had brought a plague of leprosy to New York the way he was hammered for that one - never mind that Munson was just as often equally rude with the fans who paid him the salary (we tend to forget just where the money comes from that lines these players' pockets; Munson was paid rather handsomely for his time, though today his salary might seem like pocket money by comparison) that among other things enabled him to buy the jet in which he crashed.

As to whether or not Mr. Epstein thinks Pope Pius XII was Hitler's friend, only Mr. Epstein (I do not know that he has ever written on the subject) knows for himself. And in the context of his foregoing commentary, the question is really irrelevant.

[BluesDuke]

I guess it depends on what your definition of "network" is! *grin*

[2Trievers]

My definition, or your definition, wise-blues-guy?

[jobim]

Touche' - at least in part.

If Mr. Epstein writes for those publications, I more than likely have read him and probably liked what I read. I was quick on the trigger because of his nasty dismissing of Adler as the Great Boor, without elaborating on why we should agree with him. But then, as he states, he wrote 4000 words on the topic and I need to find his reasoning in that article. No matter what old Mortimer was like, I will go to my grave placing him high on the Ladder of Consequence to Humanity; Epstein will never be on the same rung, no matter his charms.

I agree with you regarding Kael: shimmering prose about shower curtains is, nonetheless, drawing our attention to shower curtains. Her prose matched her subject on occasion, though. My crack about Pius XII was too flippant for publication, so I expunge it from the Congressional Record.

I don't remember the Bouton/Munson anecdote, but you have to love that candor, a kind of hallmark among athletes. If Clinton were to meet his Maker (the mind runs: "Put some ice on it.... Oh God, honey, put that thing DOWN!) would I find myself saying: "He was Falstaffian - larger than life" ? No, I would tell the truth.

BluesDuke has something to do with the Master himself, Mr. Ellington?

[BluesDuke]

My definition, or your definition, wise-blues-guy?

Oh, no...you are not going to get me to begin speculating on the definition of "my" or "your"!! (*chortle*)

[BluesDuke]

BluesDuke has something to do with the Master himself, Mr. Ellington?

You may not believe this, but you are the first person who has ever figured that out from the word "go"! (The screen name is in tandem honour of my favourite music and my favourite of those jazz musicians who didn't forget the blues...)

[jobim]

Will have to give our fellow Freeps the benefit of the doubt and assume they never asked about your name, thinking it as obvious as the fact that the Master was a genius. Bravo on a superb selection. My bias toward great musicians shows in my own selection of screenname. Nice chatting with you, BD.

[BluesDuke]

My pleasure! Antonio Carlos Jobim is a longtime favourite of mine as well; I still love his 1963 set, The Composer of "Desafinado" Plays (Verve). And I'm also a fan of his earlier set on Capitol, Joao Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim. It's not that our fellow FREEPs don't ask about my screen name, but usually they ask first - they don't just come right out and guess first, never mind guessing first and hitting it on the head the way you did.