It was difficult to escape the glowing obituaries of Philip Roth who died this month at age 84. They were ubiquitous, one more fawning than the next. I started seeing red – pun of course intended, since Roth is a name derived from rot the German word for red. The name was often connected to places with smelters, feuerroth or fiery red.

Fiery he was, in his search of identity issues, his willingness to defy the Jewish Orthodoxy around loshon hora, the evil tongue, which prohibits not just spreading lies but telling truths about fellow Jews that might be harmful to them. As he himself put it:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/authorinterviews/8521993/Philip-Roth-dont-be-numb-to-fiction.html

Roth was successful in bringing out the struggle for Jewish identity and ethics, and brilliant in describing a slice of history of second and third generation, secular East coast Jews being at once drawn to and repelled by assimilation. He sharply delineated the conflicted relationship between Jewish and Black communities, and the idea of having a man try to escape his racial fate as a Black person by assuming a Jewish identity, assuming that would free him of restrictions (and failing disastrously), was among his more interesting. But those accomplishments are undermined by that strain of narcissistic misogyny that weaves through every single novel, until the end.

Some say that we should beyond that because of his brilliance. Others say he just described the way the world is and thus holds a mirror to our eyes to stimulate improvement. I go with my gut: when I first read Portnoy’s complaints it was in translation.The German word is Beschwerden, a term that has double meaning. It means complaints but also ailments. After finishing the book all I could think was he has an ailment, indeed. A chip on the shoulder the size of New Jersey.

The gut feeling was borne out. His real life was a mirror of his protagonists’, in ways that make my skin crawl. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5764731/TOM-LEONARD-tempestuous-marriage-Philip-Roth-British-wife.html

It will be interesting to see if his body of work survives and continues to get the acclaim visible in all the obituaries with the advent of younger, less sexist generations.

Tom Wolfe, journalist and author, wearer of white suits, died on May 14th.  (Photographs today in his honor therefor are white flowers. All, by the way, in bloom around late May, early June.)

He was probably unsurpassed in choosing some weird titles – just think back to his exploration of California car culture for Esquire– “There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That Kandy Kolored (Thphhhhhh!) Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby . . .” but is most widely known for his novel Bonfire of the Vanities, a book that dissected the culture and power structures of NYC.

Wolfe was a brilliant journalist writing non-fiction before he turned to novels – and went back to non-fiction writing (with limited success, later) in the last years of his life. One of the founders of New Journalism, adding literary writing to reporting, he explored different worlds and delivered detailed, funny, critical descriptions to us readers of Rolling Stone or other publications.  Here is a fitting obituary from the magazine he was so closely tied to.

https://www.rollingstone.com/tom-wolfe-life-genius-impact-legacy-w520764

I am posting two interviews with him today, one from 1975 about his assessment of the art world, obviously close to my heart as a topic, and one about his take on Darwin (one I could not disagree with more, since he doesn’t even get the facts straight.) The latter was done late in his life, and I find it fascinating how a non-scientist takes on one of the fundamental theories on which so much of our science is based.

What interests me in the man and the work, is this curiosity and insistence on learning, that he displayed across an insanely wide array of topics. Whether he got it right or not is secondary to me, given that a critical reader can form her own opinion. He was clever and funny, and actually an incredible informant for a European reading him before being immersed into American culture. Never mind his knack for fashion……

RIP.

Ever read anything by Richard Powers? Even know the name? For someone like me whose research domaine is memory, who is deeply interested in music and who is probably more defined by “head than heart” (as he is often accused of) he is a favorite author.

I chanced into my first encounter with his work at the library: The Goldbug Variations in 1991, during a difficult pregnancy, a full teaching load and the demands of a lovely, temperamental toddler. Science with a science fiction slant, composed in the form of a Bach fugue, call and response through generations, rich with philosophical questions, fun literary and musical references – all a welcome focus and distraction. Burying my head in a book when life got overwhelming did the trick, once again.

I have been a fan ever since. I admire someone digging deep to learn new science and facts that he then weaves into his narratives; I am grateful for someone who is willing to write difficult books – which they undoubtedly are – in the age of beach reading. I can even take excursions into spirituality  –The Echo Maker (Memory, Ornithology!), Orféo (Music), Generosity (Gene manipulation)- when they come packaged within the larger philosophical issues of determinism. My enthusiasm, however, is not universally shared. He won prizes, yes, but a lot of the smart critics over the years have really torn into him, with snarky reviews found in the New Yorker and elsewhere.

And now he has a new book out, (84 holds in front of me at the Multnomah County Library….) that I can’t wait to read: The Overstory (Environmental issues anchored around trees.) Below is a NYT review by Barbara Ehrenreich that glows.

First I thought, maybe this time the review is positive since it is written by a woman – and Powers always struck me as a writer who could be a woman – but that speculation was shot down when I saw Tim Martin’s admiring review in The Independent.

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/deep-roots-36801794.html

James Wood from the New Yorker, some years back, judged the work to be too cerebral, focussed on larger issues rather than making the characters come alive for the reader. Does not strike me as true.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/05/brain-drain

For reviewers looking at Orféo, a story about DNA research, Mahler and Messiaen, not necessarily in that order, the verdict was: too gooey! Did not strike me as true, either.

“It seems that the Powers Problem — producing novels that are more head than heart — has here turned into its opposite.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/books/review/orfeo-by-richard-

So: contradictions, unsolved.  I’ll report back on the new book once I get my hands on it.

Beware of the mother who gives her non-German speaking child the middle name of Heinrich. Never mind, that it runs in the family, and that it was the name of the few German authors who truly stood against the menace of their times: Heinrich Heine and Heinrich Mann. Who would want to live with a name one can hardly pronounce?

Heinrich Mann is one of my favorite authors; he managed to turn his opposition to German nationalistic outrage against democratic values, liberalism and rational thinking into artful satire. His seminal novel, The Loyal Subject, was written between 1906 and 1914, skewering the Wilhelmian epoch and presaging the rise of an authoritarian state. That title, by the way, is one of many translations for the same book.

Mann himself joked that “every time the Germans loose a war, they publish my book.” And the English titles were echoing the Zeitgeist: The Patrioteer (1921), Little Superman (1945), Man of Straw (1947, 1972, 1984) – sort of in tandem with the interest in nationalism, fascism and eventually the authoritarian personality.

(No wonder the book in full form was first published in Russia…)

The novel describes the rise of a small town parvenue who learns to love his emperor Wilhelm II, to outsmart the competition and destroy his liberal home environment in favor of rising nationalistic power. He himself is weak, but desires to be hard, brown nosing his superiors while mistreating those below. He adores and condones violence as long as he is not its victim, except for masochistic tendencies in the bedroom. He is the reincarnation of conformism. The book provided an early blueprint for Adorno’s authoritarian personality, but was more than that. Mann understood and conveyed the roles that capitalism and the ideology of German imperialism played in the destruction of enlightenment ideals. (Which is part of why Heinrich and Thomas Mann really didn’t get along…..)

Now, why am I bringing all this to your attention? Because for years I have been photographing what you see in today’s musings: ubiquitous, varied forms of Lieb Sein glued to or sprayed onto the walls of the cities. The literal translation is: Be nice.  And it could be seen as a playful instruction to increase peace in the world and diminish conflict. Or put some innocuous color into the world. However, every German child knows that the words “Sei lieb!” are the equivalent of “You better obey!” Are these stickers satire then, encouraging disobedience in sly form? I’ve yet to find out. Probably overthinking it, as per usual – yet for the political mind it rings slightly ominous.

The stickers do, regardless, remind me of the quote attributed to some old Prussian:

The loyal subject is forbidden to measure the actions of the authorities with the yardstick of the subject’s limited insight.

I guess I have limited insight into the meanings of graffiti, however I put any yardstick I want to my evaluation of governmental   action….. in Germany and anywhere else!

Here is a clip from the movie Tales of Hollywood where Alec Guiness plays Heinrich Mann.

Auf Wiedersehen!