I spoke too soon (aka, The Terror!)

As Herodotus’s story of Solon and Croesus reveals, call no man blessed until he is dead, because we must wait to see if he will “end his life well.” By the same logic, count no story bland until it’s over. 

I wrote in passing in my last blog post that The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells featured “undistinguished” writing. Well, forgive me, for I have just arrived at the following pronouncement by the Invisible Man, a soliloquy so maniacally diabolical that it makes Captain Ahab sound merely peevish:

You have been amazingly energetic and clever, though what you stand to gain by it I cannot imagine. You are against me. For a whole day you have chased me; you have tried to rob me of a night’s rest. But I have had food in spite of you, I have slept in spite of you, and the game is only beginning. The game is only beginning. There is nothing for it, but to start the Terror. This announces the first day of the Terror. Port Burdock is no longer under the Queen, tell your Colonel of Police, and the rest of them; it is under me – the Terror! This is day one of year one of the new epoch, – the Epoch of the Invisible Man. I am Invisible Man the First. To begin with the rule will be easy. The first day there will be one execution for the sake of example, – a man named Kemp. Death starts for him to-day. He may lock himself away, hide himself away, get guards about him, put on armour if he likes; Death, the unseen Death, is coming. Let him take precautions; it will impress my people. Death starts from the pillar box by midday. The letter will fall in as the postman comes along, then off! The game begins. Death starts. Help him not, my people, lest Death fall upon you also. To-day Kemp is to die.

It comes in chapter 27 out of 28-plus-epilogue, and it’s perhaps the only great passage in the book, but it was worth the wait.

The Sun Also Rubbish

I’ve crossed Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises off my reading list, not as “read,” but as “abandoned.” This is an unusual move for me, though not because the list is impeccable. On the contrary, the list was made by my college-age self, and beyond the several dozen canonical works that were obligatory, many of the books on there are simply things I had heard of or other/lesser/obscure works by authors whom I had either read or who were moderately well-known. So it’s quite possible that I’ll come across so many dogs on this list that I’ll have to order a rubber stamp that says “abandoned,” maybe with a cartoon Dante next to it.

Up to this point, the only abandoned books on my list were some works by C. S. Lewis, because they were intellectually juvenile and thought themselves far more clever than they actually were. The college-age Czardoz was not nearly wise enough to realize that this is to be expected from the man who gave us Aslan, the Jesus lion. 

The Sun Also Rises, on the other hand, had some genuinely clever and insightful moments during the 90 or so pages I got through. And having read sufficiently from Hemingway, I don’t doubt his intellectual maturity. The problem with this book is that, by and large, it’s boring. This greatest of all literary crimes unavoidably stems not only from the plot, but largely from the Hemingway style, here at its most obnoxiously brutal. The book seems written more as an exercise in his trademark economical style than as a deeply felt exploration of the characters’ relationships and aspirations. The art is formal, not emotional.

The overall effect is that every single character talks like every other character, so that when Hemingway omits the identifiers in long stretches of dialogue, I invariably lose track of who’s saying what. Here is just a mild example:

“I believe it’s a brothel,” Mike said.  “And I should know.”
“Oh, shut it and go get your hair cut.”
Mike went out. Brett and I sat on at the bar.
“Have another?”
“Might.”
“I needed that,” Brett said.
We walked up the Rue Delambre.
“I haven’t seen you since I’ve been back,” Brett said.
“No.”
“How are you, Jake?”
“Fine.”
Brett looked at me. “I say,” she said, “is Robert Cohn going on this trip?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Don’t you think it will be a bit rough on him?”
“Why should it?”
“Who did you think I went down to San Sebastian with?”
“Congratulations,” I said.
We walked along.
“What did you say that for?”
“I don’t know. What would you like me to say?”
We walked along and turned a corner.
“He behaved rather well, too. He gets a little dull.”
“Does he?”
“I rather thought it would be good for him.”
“You might take up social service.”
“Don’t be nasty.”
“I won’t.”

I know I’m supposed to know who’s who based on characterization, but again, Hemingway’s characters all share a sort of Lost Generation cluelessness and cynicism. More than a few of the characters are swaggering blunderbusses, and all share an affection for snark, as though sincerity were simply passé. Even the purported protagonists have little to do but bemoan their lives through plastic sneers. 

Lest you think I’m unfairly picking on dialogue, the narrative prose is no better. Witness the following banalities:

There were pigeons out in the square, and the houses were a yellow, sun-baked color, and I did not want to leave the café. But we had to go to the hotel to get our bags packed and pay the bill. We paid for the beers, we matched and I think Cohn paid, and went up to the hotel. It was only sixteen francs apiece for Bill and me, with ten per cent added for the service, and we had the bags sent down and waited for Robert Cohn. While we were waiting I saw a cockroach on the parquet floor that must have been at least three inches long. I pointed him out to Bill and then put my shoe on him. We agreed he must have just come in from the garden. It was really an awfully clean hotel. 

I guess you have to be fairly talented to make a trip to Spain sound dreary. This relentlessly sterile reportage is the least attractive trait of the book. It’s as if Hemingway learned his trade from a court stenographer. I feel like I’m reading all the parts of the story that are supposed to be left out. You know how people sometimes ask, “Why don’t we ever see characters in movies use the bathroom? Are we supposed to believe that they never have to go to the bathroom?” Well, The Sun Also Rises is all bathroom. 

I’m reading The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells right now, and I’m not going to say that it’s a better book than The Sun Also Rises; it’s not.  It’s emotionally shallower and the writing is undistinguished, but at least the story interests me enough to want to know what happens in the end. The Sun Also Rises, as far as I can tell, is about the enormously traumatic impact that a whole lot of nothing can have on a sad bunch of nobodies.

I know that the art of the literary hatchet job, though time-honored and often delightful, can also seem rather petty. It’s not my belief that I understand books better than other people, and that dumping on a bad book in itself makes for worthwhile blogging. That seems more the demesne of movie reviewers. Rather, what is more valuable than any text in itself is that it be read, and it’s the relationship between the reader and the book that is worth writing about. 

If my reading seems lacking, then let’s look at another reading. According to The New York Times (as blurbed on the back of the book), The Sun Also Rises is apparently “lean, hard, athletic,” while somehow simultaneously being “beautifully and tenderly absurd.” In other words, it’s the literary equivalent of Brett Favre. Indeed, I think Favre is just the kind of guy that Hemingway would have liked: a wounded warrior, a lover of unattainable women, freighted with self-worship and unable to recognize that he had become a joke. Perhaps I go too far with that last bit.  But then I read something like this, and I wonder if the joke is on us:

            “No,” said the count.  “You don’t need a title.  You got class all over you.”
            “Thanks.  Awfully decent of you.”
            “I’m not joking you,” the count blew a cloud of smoke.  “You got the most class of anybody I ever seen.  You got it.  That’s all.”
            “Nice of you,” said Brett.  “Mummy would be pleased.  Couldn’t you write it out, and I’ll send it in a letter to her.”
            “I’d tell her, too,” said the count.  “I’m not joking you.  I never joke people.  Joke people and you make enemies.  That’s what I always say.”
            “You’re right,” Brett said.  “You’re terribly right.  I always joke people and I haven’t a friend in the world.  Except Jake here.”
            “You don’t joke him.”
            “That’s it.”
            “Do you, now?” asked the count.  “Do you joke him?”
            Brett looked at me and wrinkled up the corners of her eyes.
            “No,” she said.  “I wouldn’t joke him.”
            “See,” said the count.  “You don’t joke him.”
            “This is a hell of a dull talk,” Brett said.  “How about some of that champagne?”

Amen, sister!

The Golden Nunchuk

I guess this is what they call a “first world problem,” but I’m just going to plow ahead with the minimum amount of shamefacedness.

Which reward should I get from Club Nintendo?  

The Hanafuda cards for 800 coins, or the replica handset of Game & Watch: Ball for 1200 coins?

Both are snazzy in their own way, both are legitimate collectibles, both are utterly useless and, frankly, underwhelming, considering what our compeers overseas have been offered over the years. 

Briefly: you buy Nintendo games and register them at Club Nintendo’s website to acquire coins, which you can use to “buy” special items.  As is customary with all things in video gaming, the special items are always cooler in Japan and Europe than they are in home sweet America.

Witness: specially designed retro controllers, limited-edition games, exclusive soundtracks.  Not impressed?  How about a Kirby throwing disc (don’t call it a Frisbee unless you want Word to auto-capitalize it):

Or the deluxe Professor Layton box set:

There’s also the Wii Golden Wheel available in Europe:

And best of all, Skyward Sword owners need scratch their heads no more, because here at last is the Wii Golden Nunchuk:

 

Just not in America.  I mean, why would we bother with rewards that a person might actually use?  I realize this goes against the very meaning of “collectibles,” which I believe comes from a Greek word that means “crap you thought you wanted, but that ends up stuffed into a shoe box under your bed.”

(Ok, so I wouldn’t really use the Golden Wheel, but come on, people!  Imagine the gold Wii-mote nestled in that thing!)

I suppose I could mount either the Game & Watch or the Hanafuda set in a shadowbox.  My god, I could feel the futility oozing out of that statement as I wrote it. 

*          *          *

When I was a child, I dreamed of displaying all my G.I. Joe action figures in a massive glass case, each one posed to best feature his or her combat role and abilities (e.g., Snake Eyes dual-wielding swords, or Lifeline hunched over a prone soldier, medical case at the ready).  I also heard fables of people going to China and buying a gargantuan crate that contained the entire collection of G.I. Joes in one go.  Of course, I never acquired all the Joes, nor did I ever display them in such fine fashion.  And while I look back fondly on what was an innocent dream as a child, it makes little sense as an adult to keep hanging on to things that have no use. 

To be fair, there is an aesthetic justification for having such things.  Toys and trinkets are often little works of art, delightful to behold.  But art can be an isolating experience, visual art especially.  Art museums, more so than going to the movies or a concert, are best enjoyed with company, someone to talk to about what you are seeing.  And unless I’m going to host regular viewings of my swag collection, what use is it for me to gaze alone?  I imagine that the thief of the Mona Lisa finally tried to sell the painting only because he had grown bored of staring at La Gioconda on his dining room table every day. 

*          *          *

I think the very first super-swag I got was a free copy of Dragon Warrior for the NES that came with a subscription to Nintendo Power magazine.  This was a legendary limited time promotion – the gift of a full-fledged game, and a well-known and desirable one at that – and still the king of all promotional giveaways, at least in the nerdlyverse.  This was not a symbolic gesture like most swag; it was something I could pop into my Nintendo and use right away. 

Collectibles tend to walk a fine line between art and mere consumerism (isn’t that the line where pop art lives?), but I would argue that we don’t need to choose between the extremes of pure asceticism and vulgar consumption.  Luxury goods and leisure activities give resonance to serious work, and vice versa.  So I’m not saying we shouldn’t have luxuries.  I just enjoy them more when they are useful luxuries.

Although, looking back, I can’t say that Dragon Warrior was a very useful game, since I never got very far in it.  But hey, I tried.

Bonus: here’s a guy rabidly wetting himself over a moderately pleasant windfall.

I wore the mummer’s motley well, whatever that means.

I was recently asked where Final Fantasy XII stands among the Final Fantasy games.  There is no one-word answer to this question.  I could say that it ranks dead last, but that would be unfair . . . to the other Final Fantasy games.

There was a time when I thought I would probably never beat this game.  I started it, logged dozens of hours, got distracted by being an adult, and lived apart from it, occasionally wondering if I ever even enjoyed playing it. 

I didn’t know why I eventually came back to it.  I didn’t feel like it was a choice.  Maybe it was like the island in Lost, some awful place that compelled me to come back.  Maybe it was that knot in my psyche that had to be undone before I could move on with my life.

Maybe this was my Vietnam. 

*          *          *

My brother asked me if I felt a sense of accomplishment after beating this game.  “Accomplishment” is not the word I would use.  That would imply that I had done something.  In fact, I would say that the playing of FFXII felt more like something was being done to me.  It was like someone had been hurting me, and then finally, after years and years of it, they stopped hurting me. 

More than any of the previous games, it approximated what it would be like for an average Joe with barely any combat training, humble armaments, and an empty wallet to go out and wage war on monsters and fiends.  You would die quickly and often.  You probably wouldn’t want to go on living.  Your battle cry would be lifted from the knights of Monty Python and the Holy Grail: “Run away!”

Many role-playing games have the “monster in a box,” a monster that disguises itself as a treasure chest only to spring upon unwary adventurers.  FFXII has them.  It also has monsters disguised as save points.  That’s right.  Those things that normally heal you and represent refuge from the savagery of perpetual warfare.  Fake save points.  How messed up is that? 

Treasure chests have specific locations throughout the world and dungeons, but they only appear some of the time.  Oh, any particular chest might hold one of several items, depending on mysterious conditions, so instead of getting, say, the rare penetrator crossbow you hoped for, you will get 16 gil. That’s if the chest appeared at all, which it didn’t.  So, I guess, consider yourself lucky?

A glance at the strategy guide reveals that the most durable foe, Yiazmat, has 50,112,254 hit points.  That’s millions.  I mean, yeah, he’s an optional hunt, but still . . . that just ain’t right.

To the west of the main town of Rabanastre lies the Dalmasca Westersand, a vast desert.  To the west of this lies the Ogir-Yensa Sandsea, an enormous desert.  To the west of this lies the Nam-Yensa Sandsea.  No, that’s not a lush forest; it’s a large desert.  And no, you can’t fly an airship over the Yensas because they’re Jagd.  Instead, you have to walk through the whole thing to get to the Tomb of Raithwall, who was the Dynast King, who was given deifacted nethicite by the Occuria, which is not to be confused with manufacted nethicite, which is entirely different. 

I’m so glad this game is voice-acted, so I don’t have to imagine the appropriate way to deliver the line, “Zargabaath, do not tell me you join in this mummer’s farce!” 

For no reason whatsoever, mummers are a big deal in this world.

To use any particular piece of equipment, you have to unlock the “license” for it by earning “license points” in fights.  But even after doing so, you still have to buy the weapon or armor you want to use.  Money comes almost exclusively from selling “loot.”  Loot, when sold in specific combinations, unlocks “bazaar goods.”  The game tracks the “loot” sold, but does not inform the player of either how many of each kind have been sold, or what combinations are required for getting any particular “bazaar good.”  You could create a spreadsheet and keep track of it yourself, and then hoard the “loot” until you have the preferred combinations as reported in your strategy guide, but then you won’t have any money to buy weapons and armor, which means you won’t be strong enough to defeat enemies for their “loot,” which means you won’t be earning many “license points,” which means you won’t be able to unlock the “licenses” for equipment that you couldn’t afford anyway, which means you’ll be closing in on 65 hours of gameplay, and yet you’re still using a freaking Ancient Sword that was already underpowered when you got it near the beginning of the game!

This is a game where opening any of four unremarkable and unmarked treasure chests near the beginning of the game dooms you to not being able to acquire the game’s most powerful weapon later on.  Who on the development team came up with such a needlessly cruel way of punishing the player?  And more importantly, what did they get from doing this?  I ask you, What did you get?!?

Oh, in case anyone cares, the supreme weapon in question is the Zodiac Spear, to be found in the Necrohol of Nabudis, in the region of the Nabreus Deadlands, in the kingdom of Nabradia.  I’m pretty sure this game has more names in it than the Bible.  (Lazy Bible writers, take note: there are no repeat names in FFXII.)

I didn’t know this term, “buffs,” until after I started playing this game.  After I had earned enough “buff” spells, I discovered an excellent strategy for staying alive: keeping my characters buffed at all times.  One by one, I buffed my characters.  Protect, shell, regen, haste, even bravery and faith.  And berserk on Basch to dramatically improve his killing potential.  I usually had to cast berserk on him several times because, yes, it can miss.  Ten minutes later, as I finished buffing out the last character, the first character’s buffs were already wearing off.  Sometimes, other people would watch me play the game, and would complain that this ritual buffing was tedious to watch.  To which I reply: imagine how I feel. 

These strategies were ludicrous, but the power of the game was such that it made me think that completely crazy things were completely normal.  The moment I realized that I may have crossed the point of no return was when I stormed into a boss fight yelling at the TV, “We’re going to do this guy!  We’re going to do him into the ground!” 

 *          *          *

FFXII is the largest and most complicated game I’ve ever played; nothing else comes close.  I wouldn’t call my experience a love-hate relationship, because neither “love” nor “hate” reflects how I feel about this game.  It was more like agony and ecstasy – the agony of trying and failing to understand the gameplay on anything more than a superficial level, the ecstasy that came from giving in to the craziness, and allowing myself to engage the art in the most absurd way.  

What is my lasting impression of the time I spent in Ivalice?  I believe Clive Owen said it best in The Bourne Identity as he watched his life force fleeing from him:

“Look at this.  Look at what they make you give.”

The Goodbye Song

I was recently asked the question: If you could have a “goodbye song,” one song that would play for the entire world before you left it forever, what would it be?

The question doesn’t ask what your favorite song is.  That is a major implication, but you’re also invited to consider whether a favorite song is the one you’d want the world to hear.  And do you interpret the question to mean that, by extension, the world will remember the kind of person you were based on the song you chose?

Songs are like air molecules; they constantly float about me, and I keep sucking them in.  But I have to write about them before I can understand what they mean to me.  For me, writing is the process of figuring out what I think about things.  So here we go . . .

I could pick something like “Act Naturally” by the Beatles, if I wanted my kiss-off to the world to be that human existence is a great cosmic joke. 

If I want to send the message that life is about having a good time, it would probably be “Down on the Corner” by Creedence Clearwater Revival.  If I wanted that good time to play well among Europeans, I’d pick “Sexbomb” by Tom Jones. 

There are specific songs that I think of when I’m in certain moods.  When I’m having conflicts with people I care about, I always think of “We Can Work It Out” by the Beatles, which to me embodies a meta-level ballet/wrestling match between Lennon and McCartney.  When I’m sad, I automatically think of Sarah McLachlan’s version of “Song for a Winter’s Night,” or “Lost Cause” by Beck, or . . . anything by Natalie Merchant. 

If it’s the song I’ve sung the most times in Rock Band and Guitar Hero, it would be “Hungry Like the Wolf” by Duran Duran.

For a message of pure romance, nothing beats “The Way You Look Tonight,” written for and still best performed by Fred Astaire. 

If I wanted to be a greedy scoundrel, I would choose “You Never Give Me Your Money” by the Beatles, which is really like three songs in one (a technique that reached its apotheosis in McCartney’s “Band on the Run”). 

The song I loved best as a child: “Straight Up” by Paula Abdul.  The song I love best with my sexy inner child: “2 Become 1” by the Spice Girls.  The song I loved then and now with equal fervor: “Beat It” by Michael Jackson. 

The two songs I most recently tried to mash up were Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” and “Wish You Were Here,” but then I realized it wouldn’t work because I couldn’t remember which was which.  Or maybe it worked too well . . .

If I wanted the perfect jukebox song, I’d pick Sam Cooke’s “Another Saturday Night.”

“On Your Shore” by Charlotte Martin is the song that would play when Aeneas lands in Italy . . . in my film adaptation of The Aeneid.  Someday . . .

If it’s a brilliant song that I never play for guests because they’ll never like it (because it takes as its subjects sharecropping and an orphaned child), it would be “Annabelle” by Gillian Welch.  (Also “Names” by Cat Power – not safe for fragile souls.)

I shouldn’t neglect the influence of movies (and nostalgia), and it was Back to the Future that etched “Earth Angel” and “Johnny B. Goode” indelibly into my childhood.  (Equally memorable was “The Power of Love” by Huey Lewis and the News.  Don’t be a hater.)

If I’m going to express my ethical philosophy, then no song says it better than Queen’s “I Want It All.”  (Except maybe “Fat Bottomed Girls,” but that’s more what you’d call a personal history.  Kidding!)

If it’s the one song that will keep the aliens from enslaving humanity, which is probably the noblest ideal I’ve mentioned so far, it would probably be Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill,” because I honestly believe she sings the language of the aliens. 

*          *          *

Gather all those songs, and it would make a pretty good mix tape, which kind of leads me to my final answer.  I’ve always believed that music, and art in general, should be free.  Despite the fact that every artist you’ve ever heard of (except Emily Dickinson) has made money off their art, there is nevertheless something vulgar about selling that which is supposed to express the height of human creativity, and thereby reacquaint you with your soul.  So I think if I had to choose one goodbye song, it would be a song that realistically belongs to everyone.  The problem is, any song like that (“Happy Birthday,” “We Will Rock You,” your national anthem) has lost its meaning or ability to move you.  On the flip side, I could pick something hopelessly obscure, probably something I’d have to write myself, and that would express the world as I’ve absorbed it.  I feel like everything in between these extremes is just another great song. 

And so . . . I have to cheat.  I choose not a “song,” but an aria, “Che gelida manina” from La Bohème, because . . .

Because it’s opera, it is meant to be performed over and over and in a variety of ways.  You can hear it however you want, and you can probably play it better in your head than any orchestra or singer could perform it.

Because it predates recordings, there is no expectation of a definitive performance. So in theory, even I could sing it and make it my own.  In theory!

Because it’s a love song, and love, especially new love, is universal.

Because it’s a song about art and being an artist, a writer of poems and songs.  A song about song seems appropriate for this purpose.

Because it is as beautiful as anything else I could have chosen.

Finally, because I first heard La Bohème when someone shared it with me.  Someone wanted me to hear it.  So if there’s one song I’d pass on for others to hear, this would be it.

The Gateway City

For being such a well-known place and such an old city (by American standards), St. Louis is actually a relatively small city.  St. Louis is home to Anheuser-Busch of Budweiser fame; it hosted, in the same year, a World’s Fair and an Olympic Games (1904 – the first Olympics in the United States); the Cardinals are a storied baseball team.  Most of us are familiar with Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis and the film Meet Me in St. Louis.  St. Louis has most of the things that seem to characterize a cosmopolitan city: museums, trendy restaurants, nightlife, a large urban park, a symphony orchestra, a passable light rail system, an international airport, a well regarded research university, three major sports teams, and at least one iconic feature: the Gateway Arch.  Yet as I drove around town on a recent visit, seeing various neighborhoods, and trying to figure out what made this place special, it was hard to escape the feeling that there wasn’t much going on.  It felt like a smaller version of a city like Chicago, or even San Diego.  It was sort of a Portland of the Midwest, though less hipsterific.  But it’s hard to distinguish yourself by being a smaller version of something else.  As Emerson wrote in the Divinity School Address,

Imitation cannot go above its model.  The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.  The inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm.  In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man’s.

*          *          *

Gateway Arch, designed by Eero Saarinen.  The one thing everyone knows about St. Louis, this symbol is ubiquitous in the city, found in souvenir photos and knickknacks, integrated into logos, and even used as a replacement for the “N” in some signs.

   

A placid scene from the Occupy St. Louis presence downtown, in the shadow of the Arch and the Old Courthouse.

Washington Avenue with the lights on.  The locus of nightlife downtown.

The original office building at the Anheuser-Busch brewery.  I’ll never forget the smell that saturated the air around the complex, richly earthy and almost appetizing.  Malted barley, maybe?  Yeast?  I don’t know, but I like it.

Inside the City Museum, something like a funhouse crossed with a wrecking yard, but nothing like a museum.

Rue Lafayette, a café cum antiques and vintage goods store.  Note the A. E. Housman poem, “With Rue My Heart is Laden,” framed.  Is there a pun there?

What we know as Panera Bread actually started in St. Louis under a more local moniker.  (No, I didn’t go inside for a snack, although on my first visit to St. Louis, some seven years ago, I did go to this very one, and thought, "This food is good.  They should really expand nationally."  I guess they went with that.)

I found religion when I tried the gooey butter cake, one of the triumvirate of uniquely St. Louis delicacies (the other two being toasted ravioli and St. Louis-style pizza).  It tasted like a moist brownie, but not chocolate.  Or something like the widely available raspberry bars or toffee almond bars, but . . . gooey-er.  Like manna, my friends.  I'm talkin' Old Testament.

Toasted ravioli.  I felt very much that this is the right way to prepare ravioli.  I don’t dislike your typical boiled ravioli with sauce, but I don’t think I’ve ever thought to myself, “I really have a hankering for some ravioli today!”  And I’ve always thought it kind of silly when upscale restaurants have some version of ravioli on the entrée menu, whether something exotic like rabbit or elk (no matter how outlandish the animal, you never get any discernable flavor from the ground meat paste that goes inside the dough), or a token vegetarian option.  But when I tried the toasted ravioli, I thought, “Yes, this is something I could find myself craving.”  Perhaps, alongside the Arch, the home-grown cuisine can truly be considered the pride of St. Louis.

*          *          *

St. Louis compares favorably with another medium-sized Midwestern city I’ve visited: Cleveland.  That probably doesn’t sound like a recommendation, but both of these cities have beauty to find, and I’ve enjoyed my chances to visit less obviously enchanting places.  When you go to New York, if you’re a certain sort of savvy traveler, you try to look for “off the beaten path” attractions and “neighborhood joints,” and you marvel at your good luck and ingenuity when you capture a taste of what the “locals” do, as opposed to getting mired in tourist traps.  But when you visit a place like St. Louis, it’s pretty much all “off the beaten path,” and it allows you to appreciate discovering a place without the mist of preconception between you and it. 

My only regret upon leaving the Gateway City was that I didn’t try the St. Louis-style pizza, which is distinguished by the thin and crispy crust and the trademarked Provel cheese, a kind of processed cheese that I have heard will “stick to your mouth” and is “kind of gross.”  Apparently, this oddity can only be found in St. Louis and the environs, and the locals seem to either love it or hate it.  Maybe some even love to hate it, which is as strong a recommendation as I can think of for trying it. 

              

Next time, St. Lou.  Next time . . .

Herman Sinaiko, Superstar

At least two men who were known for wearing turtlenecks died last week. While Steve Jobs receives the kind of farewell that typically conducts American presidents down the River Styx, you probably won’t hear about Herman Sinaiko’s death on your evening newscast, or Slate, or CNN, or the Huffington Post. But those who heard the University of Chicago professor talk about Plato, Aristotle, art, criticism, beauty, knowledge, theater, and so many other subjects, will agree that with a single discussion, he could change something inside you, or rather, draw out some quality or thought that you didn’t know was in you. 

Sinaiko was hailed at UChicago for his dedication to teaching undergraduates. He was one of the greatest teachers I’ve ever had, one of the most humane people I’ve ever known, and a magnetic speaker. Listening to Sinaiko was, I imagine, like listening to Cicero or Demosthenes. The measure of this man was that he, in his greatness, didn’t make me feel small. Rather, he made me feel great as well, and that I could do great things. 

I used to attend rock concerts frequently, mostly smallish venues with medium wattage artists, stars who would show up occasionally on the radio and in Rolling Stone. Artists you could walk up to after the show, and who would sign an autograph and shake your hand. And though I invariably did approach them and ask them to sign my CD liner notes, it was always an awkward affair. What would I say to these people who didn’t know me, whom I would probably never talk to again? You were amazing? Thank you? 

In June of this year, I was at the University of Chicago for a day, and I happened to see Mr. Sinaiko walking rather jauntily on campus. I hadn’t seen him in over ten years. I wanted to walk up to him and re-introduce myself, but I didn’t. I suppose I was embarrassed to approach this monumental man who probably didn’t remember me, and tell him . . . tell him what? You were amazing? Thank you? 

I wish I had gone up to him and interrupted him just briefly. I would have told him that I took two classes with him, and in that short time, he left me with this indelible message: it is noble to help the helpless. It was the ethics not only of a humanist intellectual but of a comic-book superhero. I think in the minds of many of his students, he was both.