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Elaine Showalter and Christopher Benfey

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from: Christopher Benfey

My Father the Divine Question Mark

Posted Wednesday, July 7, 1999, at 3:09 PM ET

Dear Elaine,

I notice that in the July 5 New Yorker, Joan Acocella sidesteps the implied politics of La Bayadère. She writes that in the A.B.T. production, "when, during Nikiya's big solo, the excellent Ethan Brown, as the Radjah, turns away and walks, smack on the beat, to the back of the stage, we know that she will die soon. She is beauty, but he is power."

I see your point about causes for optimism, though I was referring to the American fascination with mixed-race secrets--Jefferson-Hemings, Julius Erving-Samantha Stevenson, George Washington-Venus--and not to white-supremacist violence. But (wary as you now make me regarding "rational explanations") maybe there's something else at work here as well, namely our collective desire to have impressive forebears. The excitement generated by the Dr. J revelation was (as the Times said) that "Cinderella's Father Has a Name," and a very famous name at that. The three major kids' movies of the season (as the father of a 6-year-old and a 9-year-old, I only see kids' movies) have themes of mysterious paternity. Star Wars minus three, or whatever it's called, has all sorts of New Testament echoes: a supremely gifted child, a Madonna for a mother, and a divine question mark for a father. At the end of Austin Powers II, Dr. Evil tells Austin that he is Austin's father, then says he's just kidding. And Tarzan is one long story of paternal mystery. How nice to find out that you're descended from an English lord--or a Jedi, or George Washington, or Thomas Jefferson.

Tarzan gets an interesting twist in the letters section of the Times today. Several readers weigh in with objections to Stephen Jay Gould's Op-Ed argument that there is no "difference in quality" between humans and chimpanzees. One claims that chimpanzees don't have the power to choose; another says that only humans can "create and understand new sentences never before heard"; while a third says that "[n]o group of chimpanzees could produce a Descartes or a Hegel." I love the way this last objection is phrased, as though a smart chimp might be able to pass as an assistant professor, say, but don't expect him to write the Discourse on Method. A fourth writer argues that humans have more advanced "gender relations," having learned that to raise more than one infant at a time requires a partnership, or "mothering team," with an appropriate male. "Raising more than one infant became possible, and evidence points toward the female as the one who is selective, who chooses the friendly over the dominant male in courtship rituals." How's that for a story of happy paternity?

And finally, there's a nice write-up in the "Dining Out" section on a Southern speciality called "beer-can chicken," where the bird is "smoked upright in a singularly undignified position--straddling an open can of beer." The article concludes by suggesting that instead of the beer "you can use a can of Coke or Sprite." What do you think the Belgians would think of that?

Best,
Chris

the breakfast table
entries
123456789101112
from: Christopher Benfey

My Father the Divine Question Mark

Posted Wednesday, July 7, 1999, at 3:09 PM ET
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Elaine Showalter, chair of the English department at Princeton University, is the author of numerous works of literary criticism, including Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media (click hereto buy the book). Christopher Benfey is a professor of English at Mount Holyoke College and the author of Degas in New Orleans (click hereto buy the book). He covered art for Slate for two years.
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