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Michael Chabon and Frank Rich

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from: Frank Rich

Breaking Out of the Maze

Posted Thursday, Jan. 25, 2001, at 1:45 PM ET

Dear Michael,

Your skeleton permeated my dreams last night. Which, I learn this morning, leaves me considerably better off than the rats featured on the front page of the Times. Brain science has reached the frontier of animal dreams, and we thus learn that "four pink-eared, black-and-white laboratory rats" were found to have been dreaming of nothing more or less than exactly the maze they were learning to run in the lab. Dr. Matthew Wilson of MIT says: "It's not necessarily that rodents have simpler dreams but we limit them by restricting the experiences they have. It might be that a wild subway rat's dreams are as exciting as our epic adventures in sleep."

While Dr. Wilson says this research might someday lead to "a kind of animal correlate of Freudian psychoanalysis," there seems something reductive about this early analysis of these poor rats. If their dreams are really literal re-enactments of their limited experience, does that make them dreams? Wouldn't a dreaming rat, if dreamer indeed he is, take the memories of the maze experience, limited as it may be, and rearrange them into another pattern? Conversely, might not that wild subway rat dream of what he longs for and can't have--say, some orderly life resembling life in a laboratory maze?

In this vein, it now turns out that Al Gore, who often disdains and condescends to journalists in his waking life, secretly dreamed of re-entering the news profession, which he had worked in before entering politics. He has announced that his first postelection jobs will include lecturing at the Columbia journalism school about the relationship between the news media and public policy. We can only hope this course description is bowdlerized and that the actual lectures will tell us what Gore really thinks of Hardball, David Broder, and Cokie Roberts.

But that probably won't happen. In the interview with the Times' Kevin Sack in which he announces his new plans, Gore seems every bit as evasive and hostile as he was in his press dealings during his inept campaign. Asked the question of how he felt emotionally after the ordeal of the 36-day postelection, he fudges the answer ("I feel fine") and launches into more of that platitudinous and disingenuous boilerplate that made Americans drift off almost every time he opened his mouth last year. Then he basically slams down the phone on the reporter before a follow-up question could be asked. If Al Gore is going to break out of his maze, it may be time for him to start getting in touch with his dreams, I'd say.

See you later!
Frank

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Frank Rich

Breaking Out of the Maze

Posted Thursday, Jan. 25, 2001, at 1:45 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

(To reply, click here.)

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