In Memoriam: David McCullough, 1933-2022

 

David McCullough, author and popular historian, died last Sunday at age 89.  He was a fine writer and a fine American; his biographies of Harry Truman (1992) and of John Adams (2001) won the Pulitzer Prize, and he was the recipient of many other honors and awards during his long career.  A perspicacious man of wide learning, good humor, and grace, in all his works he kept a spotlight on the American experiment in democracy:  an experiment he, like the people he wrote about, always believed was worthwhile, enduring, and noble.

McCullough also had a wonderful baritone voice, which many of us even now remember from his narration of the Ken Burns documentary The Civil War, first shown on PBS in 1990, a masterpiece of filmmaking.  It should be required viewing for every schoolchild, and indeed, for every American.  If you haven't seen it, you should.

I also highly recommend his biography of the 33rd president, entitled simply Truman, which is a masterpiece of biography.  The chapter on Truman's whistlestop campaign for re-election in 1948, leading to a surprising upset victory over Thomas Dewey, his Republican opponent, is particularly vivid and engrossing.

McCullough may be the last of his breed:  neither a crusader nor a revisionist, but in essence simply a good storyteller with a fine mind, profound respect for the truth, and a keen instinct for the telling detail.  The American mind has been so dumbed-down in recent decades, and hamstrung by propagandists both left and right, that it is difficult to imagine there is any future in history-writing at all.  

Especially when, as I have heard, there will soon be machines to write anything and everything, in any genre, any style, any viewpoint you please - what then will be the point of knowing any history - indeed, of knowing anything at all?

Here is McCullough interviewed by Morley Safer on 60 Minutes in 2013:

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Better Than Magic

Wow. J. K. Rowling gives the Commencement address at Harvard, four years ago. A powerful statement that you should listen to.



Full text here.

Writer's Lives

Found on Sullivan's blog::

The intimate lives of writers have always had a special attraction for readers, perhaps because we imagine that people who can shape ideas and arrange scenes on the page should be able to offer us some special insight into how to order our messy off-the-page lives. This has rarely been proven the case—writers often seem less, rather than more, gifted at the mechanics of everyday existence; all the same it has not stemmed our interest in finding out what Sylvia said to Ted or why Simone pimped for Jean-Paul. This interest speaks, I think, to a dream of coherence—a matching-up of intellect and emotion, of romance and reason—that continues to inspire us even as it eludes our grasp.

And of course, that idea that we can truly know someone merely through what they write is utterly fallacious.  As anyone who's ever tried online dating knows, or ought to know.

A Writer's Job

Found this a while back on Andrew Sullivan's blog.  I think it is still very much to the point.

I am disgusted to see Dos [Passos] said that writers should not write now. If a writer has any guts he should write all the time, and the lousier the world the harder a writer should work. For if he can do nothing positive, to make the world more liveable or less cruel or stupid, he can at least record truly, and that is something no one else will do, and it is a job that must be done. It is the only revenge that all the bastardized people will ever get: that somebody writes down clearly what happened to them.

-- Martha Gellhorn, 1941.

Insult the King, Go to Jail

No, this is not a story about the Bush administration. The Times of London reports:

An Australian novelist was jailed for three years by a Bangkok court on Monday, the latest in a growing number of Thais and foreigners prosecuted for the crime of “insulting” the family of King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

Harry Nicolaides, a 41-year old teacher and part time writer was convicted on the basis of a 103 word paragraph about the alleged sexual peccadilloes of the royal family, particularly Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn.

He could have received a sentence of as much as twelve years and his decision to reverse an earlier plea of not guilty persuaded the judge to hand down the minimum sentence possible for the crime of lèse-majesté, or insulting the monarchy.

“He has written a book that slandered the king, the crown prince of Thailand and the monarchy,” the judge told the court.

“The court has sentenced him to six years, but due to his confession, which is beneficial to the case, the sentence is reduced to three years.”

Mr Nicolaides appeared emaciated and emotional as he was led into court in orange prison overalls and leg irons.

“This is an Alice in Wonderland experience,” he told reporters before the beginning of proceedings. “I really believe that I am going to wake up and all of you will be gone... I was aware that an obscure law existed, but I was not aware it would apply to me.”

His offence was to publish a novel entitled Verisimilitude in 2005, containing references to rumours about the “romantic entanglements and intrigues” of the Crown Prince. A few dozen copies were printed and only a few of these sold. But in August last year, he was arrested as he attempted to fly to Australia after several months teaching English at a university in the
northern city of Chiang Mai.

He joins a list of people, including several foreigners, to have been prosecuted for lèse-majesté. The present law was enacted in the 1950s but has never been invoked by members of the royal family themselves.

The International Herald Tribune reports:

Speaking to reporters before the verdict was announced, Nicolaides said he had endured "unspeakable suffering" during five months of detention. "I would like to apologize," he added. "This can't be real. It feels like a bad dream."

Nicolaides, who had been an English teacher in Thailand, was detained Aug. 31 as he was about to board a plane home, apparently unaware that an arrest warrant had been issued against him.

"At nighttime he's in a cell with at least 50 other people," Nicolaides's attorney, Mark Dean, said in an interview last month with the Australian Broadcasting Corp. "The sanitary conditions, to put it mildly, are basic. People suffer from TB and HIV. There is violence within the cell."

A news release about the novel, posted on a blog called Costa del Gangster, called the book "an uncompromising assault on the patrician values of the monarchy." It said the book was "savage, ruthless and unforgiving" in revealing a society "obsessed with Western affluence and materialism."

Nicolaides reportedly printed only 50 copies of the book - a paperback, with a bright blue butterfly on the cover - and sold just 10. Long out of print, it is not listed on Amazon.com or other booksellers' Web sites.

"I think it's reasonable to say that just writing a simple paragraph in a novel, to expect that would land you in such serious legal trouble, must have come as a surprise for Harry," Andrew Walker, a fellow in the Asia-Pacific Program at Australian National University, said on ABC. "I think Thailand is trying to send a message to international media, to writers, to bloggers, to people who are putting material on the Internet that the royal family is out of bounds."

You can read more about the case in Australian newspapers here and here. A CNN video report is here. There's no mention of a wife or kids . . . but that would be beside the point anyway.

Lèse-majesté sounds so 18th-century to our American ears, don't it? Have no idea how anybody can help this poor fellow, but I'm sure going to include him in my prayers tonight. Bless him.

There's a lot that needs fixing about America right now, but thank God there's a lot that's still right about our country. Not since the Alien and Sedition Acts were repealed has it been a crime to criticize the President in writing or speech. Even Bush didn't dare bring that back.

Good thing too, because half the population would have been in jail the last 8 years, huh?

King Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit. According to Wikipedia, "the lèse majesté laws are not really designed to protect the institution of the monarchy. In the past the laws have been used to protect governments, to protect military coups. This whole [royal] image is created to bolster a conservative elite well beyond the walls of the palace." Sound familiar?

Now that I've got this thing rolling . . .

. . . after fiddling around with the controls and features, the question is, What to write about, and how to write it?

No doubt somewhere, somebody has written some great guidelines on successful blogging . . . but I'd rather figure it out myself. First of all, it seems intuitively clear that the temptation to make this a confessional or a dear-diary must be avoided at all costs. That sort of thing can be theraputic in private; but it's not terribly interesting to read all about someone else's inner angst at length, unless it's done by a truly great writer. Which I know I'm not.

Much more interesting to read what someone thinks about the world he or she encounters - and glimpse the inner person between the lines of the commentary.

Second, homophobia is alive and roaring here in the Redlands of America . . . where it's still 1950 in many ways and many minds. So unlike bloggers who live out there in the Big World, I don't feel free to share all kinds of personally identifying details. Now the truth is, I absolutely loathe, despise, and hate beyond measure the need for hiding my identity as a gay man. Equivocation is not in my nature. But I realized long ago that there is just no point making yourself a victim when it serves no higher purpose.

(Some reader is wondering, If you feel smothered there, why don't you leave? Answer: Economics. Like many another middle-aged guy, I'm tied to my job and no prospect in the near future of anything else anywhere else that would pay me enough to live on.)

Anyway, as I was saying . . . I think of great essayists I admire: E. B. White and Joan Didion spring to mind. And I think of professional bloggers I enjoy like Andrew Sullivan and the others on my blog list. All these folks somehow make me return again and again to their writing; they are sharing their minds, but they aren't usually telling the-story-of-my-life or describing what-I-did-today. Sometimes they share an anecdote from their personal lives, but usually with an implicit literary point to make, a viewpoint that transcends the ordinariness of quotidian affairs. They have a talent for relating the personal and private to the global and universal.

I didn't realize I knew this until I wrote that last paragraph. Not sure I have that much talent. But guess it's worth taking a shot at. What the hell, it's a free country, right?

One more concern I'm mulling over: what level of frankness to use here? The sex and language question. Naturally, one writes in order to be read. If I'm really going to do a blog, it would be nice to have some family and friends read it; but not to be embarassed by it. Which of course springs the trap of self-censorship on the writer. When discussing sexuality--or politics--should I use the word f*ck, or better yet, f*cked over, if I feel like it? It's 2008, after all; but how far is too far for a "respectable" blog? Standards have changed dramatically in my lifetime, and blue state bloggers would probably just laugh at the question. But when I think about my kinfolks reading this . . . What would Aunt Martha say? Did William Faulkner ever worry about this sort of thing? Or Tennessee Williams? Not that I'm in their league, but . . . .

Actually, I had a creative writing professor once who said that "both Aunt Martha and Henry James [a big ol' queer, I later learned] are worthy of being pleased." So there you go. But how to please both at the same time? I forget what the prof said about that . . . .

Well, guess I will just figure it all out as I go along. Gotta get some chores done in real life, so adios for now, Gentle Reader.