Stormy Weather

It’s just an anecdotal thing—in contrast to a vast, exhaustive survey—but as I scan expressions of public critique of everything (excepting only certain sacred subjects) I am always reminded of reading the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a respected German daily back in the 1960s.  Just for the record, the FAZ has also changed; I’m not hoisting up some icon. But my memories are of lengthy analytical articles looking at current events and developments, written with huge care and empty of the emotions, clever flourishes, and ink-on-paper eruptions of outrage that now are pretty much routine.

Got to thinking, looked up the word “jeremiad,” reviewed the career-path of Savanarola (1452-1498), noted with pleasure that he burned objects like mirrors, cosmetics, playing cards, and fine dresses in what came to be known as bonfires of vanity, on which fascinating subject Tom Wolfe (he who also wrote The Right Stuff) fashioned a novel in 1987. Just in time, one might say, honoring the Japanese.

Got to wondering if this whole nexus of public speech ever resulted in appropriate reform? My guess is that it never did—or does. By the time the hell-fire preachers arise, secular or religious, the game is always over. The preaching is a symptom of its times. The preachers, to be sure, always find huge audiences. They’re entertaining. The times, at such times, have the character of vast storms. Huge masses of people are swayed this way, that way. All coherence disappears as baby carriages get magically embedded in the trunks of mighty trees. And above it all is a demonic howl—and that howl is then the public speech.

What helps small minorities of people then—and it is only small minorities that remain unaffected—is the still, small voice of reason, but it must also be publicly audible. It helps remind the members of the minority that they are not entirely alone. The proof that only minute groups retain some sanity is brought by the tiny circulation of a handful of periodicals one opens with pleasure when they arrive and, taking a glad breath, sits down to share with someone near.

Public Art

A comment by Brandon on public art in the context of a library—see the post on “Libraries” below—reminded me of the delights I once experienced reading a book by Thomas Wolfe entitled From Bauhaus to Our House. The book is about architecture—and Thomas Wolfe at his best. It was published in 1981. I saw excerpts of it in Harper’s magazine and then, delighted, rushed to buy my own copy.

To become an architect had been my earliest childhood ambition. I used to have to take naps in my Grandmother’s formal living room. It was virtually unused and had a lot of books. Left to myself I used to sneak books from the shelf. One of these was an architectural tome filled with floor plans and drawings. It became a great favorite of mine, a book I consulted daily—and this before I'd even learned to read… As for my calling in life, things worked out differently, but my interest in architecture has remained. It was Tom Wolf who labeled public art the “turd in the plaza.” But reading that phrase, to be sure, was but an incidental pleasure to finding my own views of modern architecture acidly echoed by Wolfe’s theme, which was a critique of modernism in its architectural expression. I loved every word of it… The book is available from Amazon here.