Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
—Tennyson, "Ulysses"
Greetings from the far left coast, where the Multnomah County Central Library has been closed for renovations since March of last year. My neighborhood library serves me well but is no substitute for the pleasures of roaming the stacks at the main library downtown. When I walked past on Tuesday I found that the fencing around the entrance has been removed. A notice posted on the door said the location is closed until 2-23-2024. That's the end of next week. Woot!
I finally drove a stake through the heart of Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country and returned it to the bookcase. I put the book down and picked it up again countless times over a period of months. Seeing it through to the end was an act of will.
Undine Spragg, the antiheroine protagonist, is as vacuous, vapid, utterly self-centered, and deeply uninteresting a character as I have come across, an intellectual and spiritual nullity. The saga of her never to be satisfied craving for amusement, respectability, and to be center of everyone's attention is singularly unsatisfying. Her striking beauty gives her entrée into high society. Of charm and wit, Undine has none. She is, to borrow a phrase from Marjorie Taylor Greene, a real little bitch to her husbands, all three of them, her son, her parents, and other lesser figures she encounters along the way.
The custom of the country is for the man to work hard and satisfy his wife's extravagance. Undine's only sense of money is that it should appear, supplied by husbands, parents, or suitors, whenever needed to satisfy her wants for only the most chic, au courant, and expensive outfits, a season in Paris, to be seen and admired at dinners and galas, and so on. This description of her third marriage to Raymond de Chelles, whose family of minor nobility is not nearly as well off as she first took it to be, conveys a sense of it:
She was beginning to see that he felt her constitutional inability to understand anything about money was the deepest difference between them. It was a proficiency no one had ever expected her to acquire, and the lack of which she had even been encouraged to regard as a grace and use as a pretext. During the interval between her divorce and her remarriage she had learned what things cost, but not how to do without them; and money still seemed to her like some mysterious and uncertain stream which occasionally vanished underground but was sure to bubble up again at one’s feet.
The Custom of the Country has left me mildly curious about Wharton, of whom I know nothing beyond the titles of books I have not read: The Age of Innocence, Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth. The library does not have anything that appears promising by way of biography. Perhaps I can find something online. Meanwhile, my reading dead white women writers project continues with Iris Murdoch's The Black Prince. It would not be mistaken for a gripping tale, but its outlandish, almost ridiculous characters and storylines can be entertaining at times.
Special counsel Robert Hur's report on the investigation into Joe Biden's handling of classified documents set off predictable Democratic handwringing about Biden's age, memory issues, and electability, and Republican screeching about his unfitness for office. Yesterday Will Saletan argued that Democrats are right to worry, but…
the election won’t be a choice between an old man and a young one. It will be a choice between two old men, each of whom has been investigated by a special counsel. These investigations have exposed two fundamental differences between the candidates. First, Biden is well-meaning, but Trump isn’t, and that’s why Trump, unlike Biden, committed crimes. And second, Biden’s cognitive flaws are small and benign, while Trump’s are enormous and dangerous.
Whether Hur's depiction of Biden is well-intentioned, mischievous, or outright malicious is worth examining at another time. For now, Saletan's conclusion cuts to the heart of the matter: "The upshot of these two investigations isn’t that Biden is old. It’s that Trump is corrupt and Biden isn’t" (Decision 2024: A ‘Well-Meaning’ Old Man vs. a Corrupt Old Man, The Bulwark, February 14, 2024).
With a partial government shutdown looming, House Republicans were laser focused this week on the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The Senate is not expected to spend much time on a trial that will end with dismissal of the charges, but any time at all is time that could be spent trying to keep the government open. I am waiting to see how the vote breaks down on the Republican side.
In the meantime House speaker and constitutional scholar Mike Johnson appears intent on not allowing a vote on aid to Ukraine and Israel without accompanying provisions for border security after proclaiming a bipartisan Senate compromise on border security dead on arrival, whereupon Senate Republicans spared him the trouble by torpedoing it in their chamber. A critical mass of the Republican Party now holds as a matter of principle that no legislation should be passed in an election year if it might benefit the other party. They come to Washington not to govern but to fail to govern.
Nice profile and interview featuring Jonathan V. Last of The Bulwark by Holly Berkley Fletcher at A Zebra Without Stripes (The Community-Building Curmudgeon: The Bulwark's Jonathan V. Last, February 13, 2024). Full disclosure: It's lengthy. I skimmed parts of it. Nonetheless, worth taking a look at.
Elections.
New at Portable Bohemia Substack:
The Musings of a Scribbler February 6, 2024. For the past week or so I have been making notes for a piece to be entitled “Russian Exceptionalism.” It opens with Michael McFaul’s account of a meeting in March 2011 between then Vice President Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin…read more>>
"Grace" (a poem), February 8, 2024. “Grace” was previously published in May 2006 at the Magnapoets blog, which was founded in 2005 by Canadian poet Aurora Antonovic. If memory serves…read more>>
A Tribute to Charlie Sykes, the Supreme Court and Section 3, and Threats to the Republic, February 9, 2024. This is supposed to be a day for focus on other projects but events intrude. I will keep it short. Charlie Sykes, a Never Trump conservative from the beginning…read more>>
The Obligatory Entry on Biden and the Whole Age Thing, February 12, 2024. Joe Biden has never stood accused of being a gifted orator or a man of towering intellect. He has enjoyed a reputation as a walking gaffe machine…read more>>
Keep the faith.
Stand with Ukraine.
yr obdt svt
