Snippets from Recent Reading

Translating Humor

“Works of humor are the hardest part of a literature to translate—even harder than poetry, because although you can think you understand a poem when you don’t, with humor you must not only understand but also laugh, and you can’t fake that. The difficulty of humor’s crossing cultural lines makes the laughter all the sweeter on the rare occasions when it succeeds.” (Ian Frazier, “A Strangely Funny Russian Genius” New York Review of Books, May 7, 2015.)

Barney Frank

   I just finished reading Barney Frank’s A Life in Politics: From the Great Society to Same Sex Marriage. A very good read. I’m prejudiced, of course. Like Barney, I’m Jewish and, more important, I’m a liberal Democrat, a class for which he was a most effective champion. And while Frank’s pursuit of  measures in support of LGBT [Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender] causes were, as himself a gay person, passionately close to the essence of his persona, his goals cohere with my less emotion-laden ideology.

   When I read Frank Bruni’s New York Times review of the book, I was critical of his stressing the LGBT themes of the book. Now, having read it, I feel much more benign, since, indeed, that is an important theme of Barney Frank’s political activity, crowned by his crucial leadership in seeing to the demise of “Don’t ask, Don’t Tell.

   There are extensive accounts, of course, of many other goals he pursued as a member of Congress, down to the monster Dodd-Frank bill which will now, one hopes, play an important role in preventing banks from plunging us into another recession.

   In the case of some of these accomplishments Frank was in charge of the committee working to bring them about. But in the case of many, he was not. But he was a natural leader, whatever his official position, because [1] he is incredibly smart, [2] he is capable of remaining focused through every kind of distraction, [3] he is remarkably quick and articulate, and [4] and not least, he is wonderfully witty—usually more disarming than cutting.

   Barney Frank was a Congressman’s Congressman. So much so that when Tip  O’Neill, then Speaker of the House found out that Frank was gay, he said  to him “I’m sorry to hear that” (quick intake of air?) “because I was hoping that you would be the first Jewish Speaker.”

Young Woody

“The lat year of high school everyone was picking professions and directions to go in and I had no real vision of anything. . . . I had  originally toyed with being a detective, being in the FBI. I thought about becoming an optometrist—that was one of my more mature thoughts. I also thought of the possibility of being a magician. Occasionally in some very spontaneous way, I thought a little bit about becoming a comedian—such as the first time I saw Bob Hope in The Road to Morocco with my mother—then it would vanish off my mind and later resurface again.”   (Eric Lax, Woody Allen, a Biography, Knopf, 1991, p. 70.)

How the Other Half Lives—At Least for a While

   John Barrymore began life with the name John Sydney Blyth, as a member of an acting family. But as perhaps the leading performer on the American stage and as a prolific actor in Hollywood films, he amassed a sufficient fortune so as to enable him, “In the fall of 1927 [to buy . . .]  an estate, called Bella Vista, on the edge of Beverly Hills. . . . The estate ultimately consisted of sixteen structures, including an aviary, and fifty-five baroquely furnished rooms, among them a rathskeller. There were six swimming pools, a skeetshooting range, a bowling green . . . .” (Paige Williams, “The Tallest Trophy,”  The New Yorker, April 20, 2005, p. 38.)

Alas, when he died at the age of sixty, Barrymore no longer owned Bella Vista. Alcohol was a major cause of his descent.  Thanks to YouTube you can see for yourself:                                                                

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTnfoZRZheY

Fiddler on the Roof

   When {Norman Jewison . . . made his three-hour film adaptation . . . he placed Zero Mostel with Chaim Topol . . . . This sort of Americanizing made some others complain that the show wasn’t ethnic enough. Sholem Aleichem had often been cited as ‘the Yiddish Mark Twain’ (to which Mark Twain graciously replied that he considered himself  ‘the American Sholem Aleichem’).” (Robert Brustein, “Fiddle Shtick,” The New York Review of Books, November 18, 2014, p. 83.)