Eric Mendelsohn, Daniel Mendelsohn, and Jennifer Mendelsohn
VulvaMae SchmulvaMae--Smoke a Clove Cigarette!
By Daniel Mendelsohn
Posted Thursday, March 16, 2000, at 12:02 PM ETHi Jen and Er
Dateline: Princeton, N.J.
Good morning, Jen and Er. Actually it's kind of a depressing, grayish morning; already I am afflicted by the thought that this is our last day. It's been really great getting to know you both, and I'm gonna miss you.
Jennifer, I noticed that your round-up of the animal-gossip section of the Washington Post (if one had any lingering doubts that D.C. is a second-tier city, that has got to be it) failed to mention a certain highly publicized recent incident of bichon frisé foot-shooting in flagrante (or should I say fellante?) delicto. I'm a tiny bit wounded to have been overlooked ...
Actually, and far more seriously, I'm a tiny bit at loose ends this a.m. because I realize I've left my New York Times at home and now I'm in the office (on a virtually empty campus, I might add: it's Spring Break, and the students are off in Ft. Lauderdale--if they have any sense--while I sit here looking at a pile of 51 midterms. Argh.). So all my inspiration must come from you two today since I'm not in a position to leaf through the paper in order to find something to comment about. Unless of course I pull down a book from my office and use that for inspiration, although I somehow suspect that a riff on "Greek Tragedy and Political Theory" (Berkeley, 1986: University of California Press) is not going to galvanize the point-and-click brigades.
Speaking of which: OK, OK, I have (as Cedric Hardwicke says to Anne Baxter in The Ten Commandments) "broken my own law with my own lips" and peeked into "The Fray" comments late last night. I was particularly hurt by a posting by someone calling herself, rather fancifully, "KARENNA," which I can only assume is a pseudonym for an "adult entertainment worker." She accuses us of being like the "beret-wearing, clove-smoking hipsters that [she] used to see loitering around coffee shops ... yammering nonstop about existentialism or some other esoteric subject matter." Esoteric--nous? It's common knowledge that I've never smoked those pretentious clove cigarettes: Everyone knows I smoke those gold-tipped Sobranie Black Russians. Anyway, anyone who finds Oscar chitchat esoteric must be impressively--blond, if you know what I mean. Since no one has seriously yammered about existentialism for about 35 years, I assume it's a rather elderly woman, and for that reason will refrain from responding--she seems a bit of a bore, whom I'd adore to gore, but it'd be a snore.
I have to get a coffee in order to rev up for this, our Final Day, but will be back at my post shortly, with a fresh supply of cigarettes, berets, and crumpled paperback volumes of L'etranger. I missed Law & Order last night; can someone fill me in? Do we all agree that it is the single best thing on American television?
More later. The "Arts" section of the Times seemed awfully thin this morning; should I dash out and get it or can you guys just get me up to speed?
love Dan
VulvaMae SchmulvaMae--Smoke a Clove Cigarette!
By Daniel Mendelsohn
Posted Thursday, March 16, 2000, at 12:02 PM ETEric 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. 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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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)