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Daphne Merkin and Christopher Caldwell

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from: Daphne Merkin

Obsessing Over the Times

Posted Monday, July 12, 1999, at 5:46 PM ET

Chris,

I have now--literally as of today--decided to re-order home delivery of the Times, which I had stopped mostly because I couldn't get myself to throw out any part of it until I had perused the whole goddamn voluminous thing. A touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder, obviously, which Jack Nicholson was supposed to have rendered spitefully charming in As Good As It Gets (am I getting the name right? I'm feeling woozy, thanks to some strong anti-inflammatory medication I'm taking for my back). I myself disliked the movie intensely; I think I accused it of being "tinny" when I was reviewing movies for The New Yorker. I suppose I have Slate to thank for this re-engagement with the material world, but what will I do with all those piled-up newspapers?

I agree with you about the prestige versus "dirty lucre" characterization that seems to define the left's view of itself. Sort of like expecting to be rewarded because you live on the colorful West Side in a multi-million-dollar apartment rather than in the equivalent pad on the sterile, ostensibly homogenized (except for 86th street, which is more Broadway than Broadway) Upper East Side. Having just sold my own apartment because I received an inflamed offer for it, I'm wondering where in God's name I will move to, since every other apartment out there is similarly overpriced. Don't you hate it when people tell you that they bought their sprawling Manhattan apartment or little house in the Hamptons for $30,000 back in the years when Ronald Perelman had a full head of hair? I always have a sense that they expect to be admired for having responded to different market conditions, as though it were all their own doing. I keep thinking I should try and leave New York for a while: Go West, not-so-young woman. David Mamet, who is high on my list of overrateds, once said that New York was a good place to celebrate one's success in, but not a good place to actually create in. I kind of agree; it seems to me that there is an impatience--make that an actual non-comprehension--of the creative process here. You've either Made It or you haven't. Do you remember years ago Esquire ran a map of the literary world that featured a "red-hot center" and then various satellites? I think my own name appeared down at the bottom of some abysmally removed-from-the-center list; as you can see, I'm still smarting from the brutal cartography of it.

I presume you didn't just happen to idly mention Randall Jarrell's name, but that you realize he wrote the introduction to Stead's The Man Who Loved Children. It's a full-fledged essay and quite an extraordinary piece of writing. I was struck by its powers of appreciation when I read it; it's so easy to knock other people's work and so much harder to sing someone's praises in an interesting way. Jarrell says that one of the things that makes a novel "great" is that "it does a single thing better than any other book has ever done it." He goes on to suggest that Stead's novel "makes you a part of one family's immediate existence as no other book quite does." It's true, although it's not a family in whose bosom you'd want to nestle. Odd you mention Adam Bede, since I was about to return to Middlemarch. What would George Eliot have made of Hillary, I wonder.

Best,
Daphne

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Daphne Merkin

Obsessing Over the Times

Posted Monday, July 12, 1999, at 5:46 PM ET
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Daphne Merkin is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she writes "Reckonings," a column on personal and cultural life. She is the author of Dreaming of Hitler, a collection of essays (click hereto buy the book). Christopher Caldwell is a senior writer at the Weekly Standard and a columnist for the New York Press.
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