Ron's View

Slumdog Millionaire

I’ve posted many times recently about the Naipaul biography I finished two Saturdays ago, and then a couple of days ago about the book on Vietnam and McGeorge Bundy. I’m in the midst of three other non-fiction books: the history of the Byzantine Empire that I’ve also written about, the recent bestseller on traffic that I started just after Christmas, and a short book about the history of Daylight Saving Time that Joel read when he was home and left for me. But I decided it’s time for some fiction. Which leads me to an aside.

One of the larger figures in the Naipaul biography was his longtime editor Diana Athill, now 91. By chance, just last week her second memoir, Somewhere Towards the End, was reviewed in the NYT. Having edited Updike, Mailer and many others as well as Naipaul, Athill knows a thing or two about fiction. Yet, when I read the review, I was stopped by this passage:

I was surprised that this longtime fiction editor has declared that she has “gone off novels.”

Why? She no longer feels the need to parse the intricacies of human relationships and love affairs, “but I do still want to be fed facts, to be given material which extends the region in which my mind can wander.”

I’m not there yet. I think I’m not anyway, but then again, I haven’t read a novel in months. What I have read, this morning, is
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I don’t know much about wine. Our October exploration of the wine valleys of northern Sonoma County (discussed in assorted posts at the time, such as here and here) was great fun, and we continue to explore the wines we shipped up here from eleven different wineries. But I’m still suspicious of wine-tasting terminology and hesitant to take it seriously. One thing I learned from the trip is how to swirl my glass around while holding the base on the table before tasting, so I can get the wine high on the sides for better smelling. It’s changed my life.

Even before the trip, I had started to read and enjoy Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher’s wine column in the Saturday Wall Street Journal. Today, Gaiter and Brecher write about Washington Syrahs. You can find the column here, but you may need an online WSJ subscription for it to work. Alternatively, you can go to here, which I think is a link to their latest column, so if it works, it will take you to the Syrah article only temporarily. And if you get there, you’ll also find a link to an accompanying video. Whether you get there or not, I can tell you that they are crazy about Washington Syrahs, convinced that the Syrahs may just be the best American red wines available. This seems rather extreme, but really, it’s what they say: “As a group, these are the most exciting red wines being made in America today that you might actually find on a shelf.” I’m not going to argue. In a sidebar, they list their six favorites. One gets their highest (and rarely given) rating, “Delicious!”. It’s the Dunham Cellars 2004 from Columbia Valley, with a price of $44.99, and with the following description:
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John Kennedy and McGeorge Bundy

At the end of November, I wrote a post about two books I had to read, based on their reviews in the preceding two Sunday NYT book review sections. One, of course, is the Patrick French biography of V. S. Naipaul that I finished a week ago and have written about many times. The other is Gordon M. Goldstein’s Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam. Having finished it just two nights ago, I’ll say a few words about it.
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As a follow up to my most recent post, which was written in honor of Ricardo Montalban and the “soft Corinthian leather” option on Chrysler Cordobas that he made famous, I bring you the video above on the making of books. (HT: Andrew Sullivan.) Just past the 2:22 mark, we learn that “the pages of a book are sourced exclusively at Italian forests.” This is a good reason not to get a Kindle.

The video doesn’t mention what kind of leather is available for the cover.

Ricardo Montalban’s death today brings back many memories: Fantasy Island, The Wrath of Khan, but perhaps most compelling, the Chrysler ads of the 1970s. The NYT obituary notes: “As the celebrity spokesman for mid-1970s models of the Chrysler Cordoba, Montalban unwittingly opened himself up to endless imitation when he described the car’s optional seats as being ‘available in soft, Corinthian leather.’”

If you have never seen the Cordoba ad, or wish to refresh your memory, see the youtube video of it above. Or go to the blog post about International Corinthian Leather Day, which has the ad with cleaner audio.

You know those acronyms that have passed into written English from instant messaging and texting? Like imho and lol and wtf? (In case you don’t, imho is “in my humble opinion,” lol is “laugh out loud,” and wtf is, well, you can figure it out. It’s my favorite of the bunch, though I’ve never actually used it. I see it mostly in comments to people’s blog posts. Sample use: “I heard that John McCain nominated Sarah Palin to be his vice-presidential candidate. WTF?”)

Well, I have decided to create a new one. This is hard to do. There are so many already. But I came up with one this morning, and as far as I can tell, it’s new. Gail was trying to print something onto a piece of thick green paper, craft paper of some sort, and the printer kept jamming. It couldn’t get the paper to make a 180 degree turn. Every time it jammed, we’d pull the offending sheet out through the opening in the back, then the printer would whir and make all sorts of weird noises for over a minute before settling down and announcing that it was ready for another try. I eventually went off to the kitchen, where I heard Gail say this time the printer was whirring longer than ever. I thought to myself, but didn’t say to Gail, “If it ever stops, quit while you’re ahead.” And then I thought, “quit while you’re ahead” is such a useful phrase that it must have been acronymized by now. QWYA!

Next I did some searches. Wikipedia has a handy list. Checking under the q-acronyms, I couldn’t find QWYA. A google search brings up just one link, to a Facebook group involved in educating people not to smoke. The name of the group is Quit While You’re Ahead, and the acronym is displayed in parentheses.

Based on my research, I think I’m heading into new territory here. If I use QWYA in a text message or blog post, I’ll be starting a trend. I’m going to do it. Feel free to copy me. In fact, please do. Let’s see how soon QWYA enters common usage. (Or should I just QWIA?)

I wrote about g-dropping here and here and here during my two-month obsession with Sarah Palin. (It seems like a dream now. Does she actually exist? Did she really run for vice president? Wake me up.)

I return to this topic via an unexpected route, with stops at Bernie Madoff and Eartha Kitt. How do these all connect? Let me explain.
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Pat and Vidia Naipaul

I finished Patrick French’s riveting biography of V. S. Naipaul (The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul) just before dinner yesterday. I already wrote at the end of November about my desire to read it, after I read George Packer’s lead Sunday NYT review of it the week before. And I wrote at the end of December about having started it, with additional comments just a few days later. I didn’t expect to devote yet another post to it. Yet, it is an extraordinary book, and I can’t let it pass without additional comment.
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As I watched the Eagles beat the Giants in their NFL playoff game today, I suddenly realized that the three teams qualifying up to that point for the four slots in the NFL conference championship games next Sunday were the (Philadelphia) Ravens, the (Arizona) Cardinals, and the (Philadelphia) Eagles. I had to think for a moment about the two teams yet to play for the fourth slot, to see if maybe birds would sweep all the slots. Then I remembered — (Pittsburgh) Steelers vs. (San Diego) Chargers. And the Steelers have since gone on to beat the Chargers, grabbing that fourth spot. So, it happened! Four bird teams playing for the conference championships next Sunday: Cardinals vs. Eagles for the NFC championship and Ravens vs. Steelers for the AFC championship.

That’s right, isn’t it? A steeler is a common bird in western Pennsylvania, no? That’s why a Pittsburgh team is called the Steelers. (See video above.) Well, I hope so, because the 14 teams in the AFC other than the Ravens and Steelers definitely aren’t birds. So the only way two bird teams from the AFC can meet is if the Ravens play the Steelers.

Actually, I wasn’t quite sure that the other 14 AFC teams aren’t birds. I was a little confused about the (Buffalo) Bills. “Bill” sure sounds bird-like. Birds have bills. Mammals don’t. Amphibians don’t. So a Bill must be a bird. But after further research — I asked Gail, who knew, and then confirmed her explanation on-line — I discovered that the Bill of the Buffalo Bills is Wild Bill Hickok. The All-America Football Conference of the late 1940s had a Buffalo Bill team that merged with the Cleveland Browns when the Browns entered the NFL in 1950. When the new American Football Leauge was created in 1960, Buffalo was given a team and once again took the name Bills. Wild Bills, not bird bills. That leaves the Ravens and Steelers as the only AFC birds.

So there you have it. Four birds fighting next week for the chance to go to the Super Bowl. Go Birds!

Roland Burris, Governor Blagojevich’s choice to replace Barack Obama as the junior senator from Illinois, has been much in the news this week. (See for instance this article in today’s NYT and Gail Collins’ light-hearted column in tomorrow’s NYT.) As we prepare to welcome him to the Senate, I would recommend reading this column by Eric Zorn in the Chicago Tribune last week. (Hat tip: von.) It’s actually a reprint of his column from March 3, 1998.

You may recall that Blagojevich’s predecessor as governor of Illinois, George Ryan, was in the national news just before he left office in January 2003 for commuting to life terms the sentences of everyone then on Illinois’ death row — some 167 convicts — because he believed the death penalty could not be administered fairly. One of the cases on his mind was that of Rolando Cruz, whose conviction for murder had been reversed in 1995 because of recanted testimony, the DNA evidence, and the lack of any substantiated evidence against Cruz. Governor Ryan pardoned him in 2002.

Why did Cruz have to wait until 1995 to be acquitted? Well, as Zorn explains in his column, part of the problem was the unwillingness of the state attorney general to take action in 1992. And who was the state attorney general in 1992? Yes, Roland Burris. Here’s a portion of Zorn’s column:

On Valentine’s Day 1992, Mary Brigid Kenney, the assistant attorney general whom Burris had assigned to fight the appeal of Death Row inmate Rolando Cruz, sent Burris a memo identifying numerous errors in the investigation and trial that had put Cruz on Death Row for the 1983 murder of 11-year-old Jeanine Nicarico in DuPage County.

The memo concluded, “I cannot, in good conscience, allow my name to appear on a brief asking . . . to affirm this conviction.” Rather than re-examining the case, Burris took Kenney off it.

She then resigned with a stinging letter to Burris. “I was being asked to help execute an innocent man,” she told him. “Unfortunately, you have seen fit to ignore the evidence in this case.”

The evidence he ignored included apparent “perjured testimony” and “fraudulent investigations by local officials,” to use Burris’ words from last Thursday.

The context for Zorn’s 1998 column was the race then taking place for governor, Burris being one of the candidates. Zorn concludes, “So when he speaks today of the experience in office that makes him qualified to be our governor, I can’t help but imagine him sitting at a desk in 1992 behind a little sign that reads: ‘Stopping the buck is not my job.’”

As for George Ryan, he of course is now in jail.