Conger, Schmonger--Be a Shrudilee
By Daniel Mendelsohn
Posted Thursday, March 16, 2000, at 3:10 PM ETDear Franny and Zooey
Yes, I saw that Salinger thing, too: dreamy. Tho paranoid moi, I'd assumed it was sarcastic ...
Anyway, I just sent you a posting just a second before I got your most recent one, and at least some of this one replies to your long and, if I may descend into some "Fray"-ish ranting here, entirely too demanding e-mail, dammit! All those questions; really, dear, what do you think I am ... sentient??!!
Yeah, I saw the thing about virtual universities, or whatever they are. I have to say, as someone who loves to teach, that the problem with this idea, like the problem with so much of this cool-looking Internet stuff, is that it fails to reckon with the human element, which is nowhere more important than in teaching, which is (OK, here goes) nothing if not about a kind of seduction. So I'm skeptical, I have to say. But then, that's probably wholly self-protective, since I'm out of a job (or one of my jobs, at any rate) if this cyberuniversity thing is the Way of the Future.
Go ahead and sneer about that movie about "older" swingers; you're not the one who's turning 40 in 3 weeks, babe. For my part, I can think of few recent films as uplifting and inspirational as that documentary. It sort of gives you the will to keep going ...
You quite demandingly insist on getting answers to your "earlier questions about what your version of purgatory would look like, your title for an Oliver Sacks chapter about people who can't stop laughing, what the "institution" is that George W. Bush represents, and your thoughts on Darva Conger." OK, here goes:
1) It's pointless (if you'll allow me to be annoyingly pedantic for a sec) to talk about a vision of Purgatory since as you know, Purgatory is the one you eventually do get out of, so it's not as funny. Don't you mean Hell? At any rate, after last night I'd have to say that Daniel's Idea of Hell would be to be forced, through all eternity, to take the minutes of an endless meeting of the New Jersey Transit Fares & Schedules Committee. Or, perhaps, to be on the Track Clean-up Crew of that same organization for about two minutes.
2) One of the Fray-mers posted the single funniest thing I've read in years as a response to your Oliver Sacks question: He said the book ought to be named "The Man Who Mistook His Wife. Please." Genius! (Slate editors: give that guy a column toot sweet, non?)
3) George W. Bush, and What He Represents. Well, to me, GWB confirms my long-secret theory that when you get right down to it, the world is run by the people you used to make fun of in high school. That's the group he represents, to my mind. Total buffoonery. Watching a news clip of him promising to clean up political campaigns the other day, as all these red-white-and-blue-wearing people clapped and cheered in the background (they had to do something, since they clearly haven't read a paper in two years), I couldn't help thinking of those Roman emperors who married their favorite horses, or whatever, and everyone had to stand around cheering and congratulating the happy couple, for fear of their lives. We live, as they say, in Interesting Times.
4) I have no temperamental objection to updating opera. I just don't date opera singers.
5) I am embarrassed to admit that I have no idea who Darva Conger is, although I'm fairly sure she didn't go to high school with us. "Conger" sounds to my ill-informed ear like a kind of genital fungus. Am I getting warm?
6) "Zestpoole Najestica Shrudilee" made me laugh so hard that someone came into my office to see if I was OK.
love Seymour
Conger, Schmonger--Be a Shrudilee
By Daniel Mendelsohn
Posted Thursday, March 16, 2000, at 3:10 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)