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Eric Mendelsohn, Daniel Mendelsohn, and Jennifer Mendelsohn

the breakfast table
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from: Daniel Mendelsohn

Forgiveness, Schmorgiveness--Shoot 'Em in the Feet!

Posted Monday, March 13, 2000, at 3:42 PM ET

Hi Jen & Er,

Since I hate waiting on lines of any kind (cf. Dad, who becomes apoplectic if there's one car in front of him at the gas station: Could this be genetic?), I personally would have no qualms about shooting in the foot anyone who kept me waiting in a bakery, or indeed anywhere else, for that matter. One of the more horrible aspects of living in New York City is that people seem to thrive on the misery of waiting in lines: Secretly, nobody thinks anything is worth doing (e.g., new shows at museums), or seeing (recently opened films), or visiting (all of Long Island east of Nassau County in the summer) unless there's some torturous line involved. Which is why I generally don't go to museums, recently opened movies, or the Hamptons. (Well, I don't go to the Hamptons because I hate living in dormlike situations with seven other people usually representing the groups I am trying to escape from by going away for the weekend in the first place; also, I am not rich). Yep, I remember The Sopranos episode where Christopher shot the bakery guy in the foot, and I remember, too, thinking: "Yessss!!!!"

Jen, I remember your 1976 Flying Hamill Camel Haircut, or whatever it was. In fact, I recall quite distinctly walking home from the bus stop and passing right by you because I failed completely to recognize you in your new Do. Anyway, of course I forgive you--in fact, I forgive you for the past 2,000 years of your various hairdos.

Jen's question about forgiveness goes to the heart of the past zillion years of religious thought, and for that reason I will gleefully avoid it so as not to antagonize my 37 fans and the seven people who are thinking of buying my book by means of the link thoughtfully provided by Slate. But I will say that when it comes to the ol' justice-vs.-mercy thing, it's mercy, as I get older, that looks a lot more alluring than justice. (Will the JCC still let me speak tonight? Hmmm.)

As for insurance claims from our murdered Polish relatives: I find it macabre, as Jen does, to want to claim money belonging to people whom one never knew, simply because it's legally possible (although, strictly speaking I suppose, it would be 'just' to do so). On the other hand, I perfectly understand people wanting to reclaim property and money that belonged to their immediate families: The settlement of such claims--or even the mere acknowledgment of the validity of such claims--represents something far more important than just dollars-in-the-bank for these people, clearly. What fascinates me about the law in general is the extent to which it is deeply concerned with human psychology: Think what it means, after all, to award an injured party "punitive damages." We humans have primitive desires and emotions: One of these is to hurt the person who hurt us. Another very crucial one is to have the person who hurt us admit that he hurt us (psychologically, this is often more important than being compensated). I suspect that the Swiss monetary awards belong to the second class.

My parting question is, alas, far more banal, although I secretly suspect it is one of the Great Cultural Issues of Our Time. OK--it's a two-parter: First, why do so many charities think that an appropriate freebie-enclosure is free return-address labels accompanying their desperate pleas for moolah? (Not, of course, that I mind in the least getting these.) The far more fascinating issue is, How do the charities that send you return-address mailing labels somehow know just when you're running out? It's amazing--inevitably, just as I'm down to my last two or three return-address stickers, the Central Park Conservancy or some museum or whatever will send me another plea for money, along with another 50 labels. Needless to tell, I trash the plea and keep the labels.

xoxo Dan

the breakfast table
entries
1234567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829
from: Daniel Mendelsohn

Forgiveness, Schmorgiveness--Shoot 'Em in the Feet!

Posted Monday, March 13, 2000, at 3:42 PM ET
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Eric Mendelsohn is the writer/director of the film Judy Berlin, currently in theaters and starring Madeline Kahn, Edie Falco, Barbara Barrie, and Julie Kavner. Daniel Mendelsohn is a regular contributor to the New York Times Book Review, and the New York Observer, a lecturer in classics at Princeton University, and the author of The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of Identity (click here to buy it). Jennifer Mendelsohn is Slate's Washington, D.C.-based "Keeping Tabs" columnist.
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Highlights from The Fray:


Don't the Mendelsohns remind you of J.D.Salinger's Glass family of precocious children?

--Patti

(To reply, click here.)

[Eagle80 was of the opinion that the Mendelsohns were in fact The Sopranos of the literati. Stacy Grover asked How did so much cleverness end up in one family? and this brought the Missing Mendelsohn brothers to The Fray: Andrew said I often wonder that myself. And you haven't even heard from the rest of us yet!
And Matthew responded:]
I have to agree with my brother Andrew. I've been feeling like Zeppo Marx all week. I think Slate should host a Breakfast Table with the forgotten Mendelsohn brothers. Jennifer, Eric and Daniel can host a discussion about gay culture while Andrew and myself discuss biotech stocks. You'll learn more with them but you'll make more with us.

(To reply--or to follow the thread in more detail--click here.)


Thursday's entry: As for Jennifer and marriage, I believe she is the star of an upcoming Fox special called, Who wants to Marry A Mendelsohn? Should be good.

--Bill Watrous

(To reply, click here.)

[If you want to read the marriage proposal for Jennifer (and her response) click here. Yet another member of the Mendelsohn family, Jay, entered The Fray here. Marriage proposal for Dan is here. Sorry, Eric, no proposal, but lots of Fraygrants did like your film and one of them liked your photo.

But there were also Fray readers who wanted to discuss serious issues, or at least give a short, thrilling history of religion down the ages:]

Typical drivel from the pseudo-intellectual phenoms. Here's some of my drivel. Let's see: there were 12 tribes waiting for the Messiah, He comes, they kill kill him because he wanted to give Caesar what was Caesar's, they wanted power, all he wanted was your faith and devotion to a Greater Good. The various churches spring up, (no-one mentions the Orthodox Churches and the atrocities they committed), Popes are killed, moved to France, etc., they offer forgiveness of sins for money, and kill, all for power using the popular religion of the time. Then we have Protestantism, (no one mentions the 2.5 million Catholics Cromwell killed and the killing that has gone on since then in Ireland) Let's leave for the New World, Puritan brothers, so that we the church leaders can have the power over every bit of your life (Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Al Sharpton, Pat Buchanan, et al) Oh yeah, you're a witch, die! (You also had a piece of land I wanted...)I am going to skip a century or two now... lets see Joseph Smith, ex-con, sees an angel called Baloney, no Maloney, no, Moroni... yeah that's the one. Yeah, Yeah, that's my wife...Morgan Fairchild...all 11 of them...God told me I could, I swear!

Well enough of this. People are the problem, not God, not Jesus, no matter what religion, faith, creed.

--St Pat

(To reply, click here.)


Is it possible that the pope's "doctrinal rigidity" and "gestures of expansive humanity" [Monday's entry] are of a piece? As I understand John Paul II's thinking, the humanity Mendelsohn admires arises almost entirely from the pope's dogmatic beliefs about God, man's nature, and the consequent requirements for living a good life. Liberals (and I don't intend that as a lazy epithet) should consider the possibility that the "humanity" they praise must rest either on certain irreducible truths or on a collection of insubstantial, albeit attractive, sentiments.

--Michael Pollard

(To reply, click here.)


Many have decried the pope's apology as a political ploy. I doubt it, if only for the reason that if it were, he would have vaguely referred to the Crusades and Inquisition as "youthful indiscretions" of a church that is now much more mature and therefore knows better as a result of the important lessons it has learned.

G Wiz

(To reply, click here.)


1. Gays (yawn). How over. How '90s.
2. Catholics. "Anti-Catholicism is the anti-Semitism of the intellectual."

--P.J.O'Connell

(To reply, click here.)


To P.J.O'Connell: Let's jump back in time to 1960...
Negros (yawn). How over. How 50's.
2. Jews. "Just ignore them and they'll go away."
It ain't over by a long shot!

--Dave

(To reply, click here.)


I'm glad Eric Mendelsohn cleared up the confusion over Beauty and the Beast. But I'm still not sure which Psycho he had in mind. Perkins or Vaughn? Or Christian Bale? I hope he clears this up before the Breakfast Table is wiped clear of bagel crumbs, the dishes go in the dishwasher, and he goes off to film The Magnificent Mendelsohns.

And, by the way, the poet Catullus [see Wednesday's entry] was really the Matt Drudge --or maybe Fray contributor--of his times. How low can you get?

--Eagle80

(To reply, click here.)

[The Catulluses of the modern age also discussed dogs, names, the Oscars, The Sopranos and many other Breakfast Table topics in The Fray this week.]

(3/17)

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