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Michael Chabon and Frank Rich

the breakfast table
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from: Michael Chabon

A Rush of Ashes and Knucklebones

Posted Thursday, Jan. 25, 2001, at 1:15 PM ET

Did you hear this? Natchez, Miss. They're doing some restoration work on a pre-Civil War building that now houses some kind of gift or jewelry shop. They open up the chimney, and out in a rattling rush of ashes and knucklebones comes a human skeleton. Which turns out to be the remains of a guy who disappeared in 1985. Apparently he was trying to rob the place, climbed down the chimney, got stuck, and died a fairly horrible and Poe-esque death. Either that or the elves have been covering for Santa these last 15 years.

I guess the reason the whole Santa thing got started was because at one time chimneys must have been large enough to accommodate a person, even a large, bowl-full-of-jelly type person. Chimney sweeps, chim-chiminy and all that. I was always puzzled as a kid by the 8-inch flue of our chimney--not that Santa was even going to be coming to our house in the first place. I was always sort of cowed by the whole Santa myth, but my own (very small) children are shockingly aggressive about disillusioning their little gentile playmates, and my 3-year-old son made a career this past Christmas out of informing strangers that there was no such thing as Santa, in particular people who had no intention of discussing the matter with him or any 3-year-old. He also greeted every cheery "Merry Christmas!" with an ill-natured "I'M JEWISH!" I think it must be a Berkeley thing. This is a town in which total strangers feel free to approach you with long, often quite well-informed critiques of your child- or pet-rearing techniques, your approach to recycling, a statement they just overheard you making about Herbert Marcuse.

See you later,
Michael

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Michael Chabon

A Rush of Ashes and Knucklebones

Posted Thursday, Jan. 25, 2001, at 1:15 PM ET
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Michael Chabon's latest novel is The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Frank Rich is an op-ed columnist for the New York Times and author, most recently, of Ghost Light.
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Reader Comments From The Fray:




Thank you Mr Rich for bringing up the no tanks in the streets comment repeated by all the talking heads on TV. I too was shocked by it. We should be celebrating because there are no tanks in the streets? We settle for so little. They had an election in Canada recently, with very high turnout(by American standards) modern voting machines, and yes no tank in the streets. The winner was declared within hours. Unlike the US they can be certain that the man in charge was elected fair and square.

Why do the talking heads repeat empty pieties? Healing, closure, no tanks, peaceful transfer? Is it to create a false sense that the system works even when there are signs that the system failed?

--James Lynch

(To reply, click here.)


The news coverage of the inauguration seemed so rote. It reminded me of my local cable access channel, which replays the same prom footage over and over and at odd times. It's odd to channel surf and come across high-schoolers decked out in tuxes and gowns, standing awkwardly on lawns, getting into limos, walking into a dance hall over and again. I'm sure the kids in the video might like the event, and must love seeing it.

So too this inauguration. The hard core Bushies and the hard core Clinton-haters were likely cheered and moved by the whole coronation process. But really. It was so forlorn.

And even Bush's well-crafted--it's a pleasure to read--acceptance speech sounded tin coming from him. Every time he speaks, even when the rhetoric's lofty, I can't help but hear the C- student he usually is, the one who describes or explains things by restating the obvious (I'm a uniter, not divider, and that means I try to bring people together, not push them apart.). I'm so used to circular logic from Bush that I'm edge whenever he speaks.

And too, Clinton's 7.5 minute farewell, it seemed to me, had more oomph and staying power than W.'s 14 minute at bat. So as Rich suggests, W. pales not only because I usually find him dim, but also, in this case, by comparison to Clinton's superior oratory style.

--Nick Carbone

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