Disquiet, Please!
Page 21
But his visitors, instead of feeling rebuffed, copied out the notice and awarded it pride of place in their dens. Thus, a truism became widely established once and for all (until recently): that the name of Johannes Brahms was a joke (even to people who had never heard a note of his music), and that George Bernard Shaw was an unimpeachable de-bunker of sacred cows. Indeed, by 1940 so secure was Shaw’s reputation that there was only one person in the entire English-speaking world capable of cutting him down to size.
LYNDON Baines Johnson was a young congressman from Texas when, in July 1940, Shaw came through the state on a lecture tour of the U.S. At the Houston airport, Johnson headed the delegation of local celebrities assigned to greet the distinguished visitor from abroad, who was to address a luncheon at the Houston Junior League Tea Room and then spend the night as Johnson’s guest at his ranch (which probably he wasn’t rich enough to own yet, but it could have been a summer rental). Waiting on the tarmac, Johnson took a minute to riffle through the press release he had been given on Shaw, and remarked, “This son of a bitch has got some kind of mean mouth on him.” So Johnson was really up for a confrontation. Whereas Shaw was too busy hating Brahms to be bothered thinking about a junior U.S. congressman whom he hadn’t even heard of yet. As soon as they met, Johnson immediately established dominance by a tactic he later became famous for—his “laying on of hands.” The spindly, white-bearded Irishman, who didn’t like being mauled by strangers, tried to counterattack by snapping at the big Texan in boots and Stetson. “What is this—some kind of tour de horse?” But it came out sounding pretty feeble. Nobody laughed, and Shaw lost crucial momentum. Johnson sensed right away that he had the edge, and he kept it. He was just a master of humiliation. On the way to the Junior League Tea Room, he asked Shaw to get him his dress boots out of a gym bag that he had purposely put on Shaw’s side of the seat. At that point, Shaw overthought the situation and drew a bad conclusion. He decided to just go along with everything Johnson did and cater to him, on the theory that Johnson would quit bothering him once he saw he couldn’t get a rise out of him. This was a huge mistake. The more quiet and docile Shaw got, the more Johnson tortured him.
At the luncheon, Johnson pretended not to be able to hear anything Shaw said, so Shaw had to repeat himself in a louder voice and came off as strident. The whole time, Johnson sat with his body angled subtly away from him, as if they weren’t really together. During the lecture, he had a phone brought to the table and called his answering service. Then there was a question period, so Johnson asked Shaw his opinion of a book, Pratfall into the Abyss, which didn’t exist. When Shaw said he had never heard of it, Johnson said, “What’s the matter—you too dumb to recognize a joke when you hear one?,” but he said it in a funny way that would have made Shaw look oversensitive if he got mad.
Then—here’s another thing Johnson did. At the end of the luncheon, they were supposed to go right to the ranch, but Johnson dawdled a lot, which drove Shaw totally nuts. Finally, after a two-hundred-mile ride in a bouncing pickup truck, which Johnson drove himself—fiddling with the radio the whole time and refusing to talk, because they were alone, and if Shaw complained to anybody later he could never prove it—they got to the ranch, where the vegetarian Shaw was confronted with the sight and aroma of grotesque sides of beef barbecuing over smoking mesquite in earth trenches sodden with fat drippings. (Johnson hadn’t even known that Shaw was a vegetarian—it was just a lucky break that fed into his strategy.)
The final blow was that night, when Johnson made Shaw dress up in an oversize cowboy suit with woolly chaps and showed him off like a performing monkey to a crowd of oil barons. The most galling part of it for Shaw was that by this time he had forfeited his right to protest. If he said anything now, Johnson could come back with “Well, why the hell didn’t you speak up sooner?” or accuse him of being passive-aggressive. Anyway, so much of it was the kind of stuff Shaw couldn’t exactly put his finger on.
Shaw’s wounds were still raw the next morning when he woke up in an uncomfortable bed made out of a wagon wheel and saw hanging on a wall the following notice, framed in mesquite:
RULES FOR VISITORS
1. Never cross LBJ.
2. Obey all rules.
Shaw later claimed that he escaped by walking a hundred and ten miles, in sandals, to a private landing strip outside Waco, where he bummed a flight to L.A. But Johnson always told reporters that while he remembered Shaw’s lecture, Shaw had spent the night in Houston at a friend’s who was out of town, and never set foot on the ranch. He knew this would get back to Shaw and make him feel psychologically annihilated.
In 1950, when Shaw died, his last words were “Don’t tell LBJ. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.” Every year since their meeting, Johnson had bugged Shaw by sending him a Christmas card with the printed message “Thank you for your support.” Johnson enjoyed this joke so much that no one had the heart to tell him when Shaw died. Every Christmas, he personally signed the card, and his secretary pretended to mail it. Although he suffered some reverses late in his own life, this annual power play lightened his spirits until the very end. He rests in peace, unlike Brahms.
1985
HENRY ALFORD
UNSPOKEN O’NEILL
THE Playwrights Theatre’s current mission to stage all forty-nine of Eugene O’Neill’s plays during the next eight years will provide New Yorkers with a wealth of gin-soaked poetry and genius, but one aspect of the playwright’s oeuvre will go unheralded—his stage directions. Each line of the reconstituted playlet that follows is borrowed from one of O’Neill’s plays.
JOHN (appears from the front parlor in a great state of flushed annoyance)
MARY (trying to appear casual)
JOHN (carefully examining the front of her dress)
MARY (writhing—thinking)
JOHN (He stares at it with a strange, stupid dread.)
MARY (She sees he has guessed her secret and at first she quails and shrinks away, then stiffens regally and returns his gaze unflinchingly.)
JOHN (He stares at her, stunned and stupid.)
MARY (with a low tender cry as if she were awakening to maternity)
JOHN (nodding his head several times—stupidly)
MARY (stung but pretending indifference—with a wink)
JOHN (His face grows livid in spite of the sunburn.)
MARY (She seems to be aware of something in the room which none of the others can see—-perhaps the personification of the ironic life force that has crushed her.)
JOHN (frothing at the mouth with rage)
MARY (unruffledly—obsessed)
JOHN (He makes a motion across his neck with his forefinger.)
MARY (with a moaning sound)
JOHN (He presses his lips tightly together—an effort to appear implacable that gives his face the expression of a balky animal’s.)
MARY (looking at him queerly)
JOHN (He whirls defensively with a snarling, murderous growl, crouching to spring, his lips drawn back over his teeth, his small eyes gleaming ferociously.)
MARY (She raps him smartly, but lightly, on his bald spot with the end of her broom handle.)
JOHN (pounding his temples with his fists—tortured)
MARY (Their physical attraction becomes a palpable force quivering in the hot air.)
JOHN (He hides his face in his hands and weeps like a fat child in a fit of temper.)
MARY (more and more obsessed by a feeling of guilt, of being a condemned sinner alone in the threatening night)
JOHN (He begins to sob, and the horrible part of his weeping is that it appears sober, not the maudlin tears of drunkenness.)
MARY (with a return to her natural tone—but hysterical)
JOHN (spitting disgustedly)
MARY (spits also)
JOHN (He spits leisurely.)
MARY (spitting calmly)
JOHN (Iterrible look of murder comes on his face.)
MARY (She takes his head and pr
esses it to her breast and begins to weep. Weeping.)
JOHN (In a frenzy of self-abnegation, as he says the last words he beats his head on the flagstones.)
MARY (As for her, during his speech she has listened, paralyzed with horror, terror, her whole personality crushed, beaten in, collapsed, by the terrific impact of this unknown, abysmal brutality, naked and shameless.)
JOHN (He begins to laugh, softly at first—a laugh so full of a complete acceptance of life, a profound assertion of joy in living, so devoid of all self-consciousness or fear, that it is like a great bird song triumphant in depths of sky, proud and powerful, infectious with love, casting on the listener an enthralling spell.)
MARY (They both chuckle with real, if alcoholic, affection.)
JOHN (His voice is heard in a gentle, expiring sigh of compassion, followed by a faint dying note of laughter that rises and is lost in the sky like the flight of his soul back into the womb of Infinity.)
MARY (In the midst of this, these two incongruous, artificial figures, inert and disharmonious, the elder like a gray lump of dough touched up with rouge, the younger looking as if the vitality of her stock had been sapped before she was conceived, so that she is the expression not of its life energy but merely of the artificialities that energy had won for itself in the spending.)
JOHN (He gulps and his lips twitch.)
MARY (more and more strongly and assertively, until at the end she is a wife and mother)
JOHN (He falls forward on his face, twitches, is still.)
MARY (with a strange cruel smile of gloating over the years of self-torture)
JOHN (He dies, laughing up at the sky.)
MARY (Her face is again that of a vindictive maniac.)
1998
NOAH BAUMBACH
VAN GOGH IN AOL
It may be that people attracted to the Internet are by their natures a lonelier group of people. —Letter to the Times, February 22, 2000
TO: Theovg23@aol.com
FROM: Vincentvgo@hotmail.com
Arles is bleak, and the blasted mistral keeps me indoors. I go days without speaking a word to anyone. Thank you for the money. With it, I bought a blazing tangerine iMac, which I am e-mailing you on right now. You were right, the Hotmail account was very simple to set up and free, so I can still survive on five francs a day.
TO: Theovg23@aol.com
FROM: Vincentvgo@hotmail.com
Just got an Instant Message from Gauguin, who clearly has me on his Buddy List. Do you know if there’s a way to block this? I like Gauguin, but he is so depressed and seems to stay on-line for hours. I go on at random times in the day just to check my e-mail or to survey the landscape (what vibrant colors these websites have!) and then there’s that blasted chime and, voilà, his grating “ ’Sup?” Did you get the pictures I sent you? One is of my room here in Arles. That brilliant, burning orange object in the middle is the iMac. I painted it with the enthusiasm of a Marseillaise eating bouillabaisse, the tangerine like a halo over the computer. Thanks again. :)
TO: Theovg23@aol.com
FROM: Vincentvgo@hotmail.com
Gauguin has come to Arles to live with me. Next to my tangerine iMac his magnificent blueberry iBook is quite simply music. What a still-life they will make. But Gauguin insists on taking the iBook with him to Starbucks. Yes, they have one in Arles now, too! I would paint infinity, a computer of the richest, intensest blueberry, like a star in the
TO: Theovg23@aol.com
FROM: Vincentvgo@hotmail.com
Whoops, pressed “Send” accidentally. Was going to say, “like a star in the azure sky.” By the way, that NPR petition you forwarded me is a hoax.
TO: Theovg23@aol.com
FROM: Vincentvgo@hotmail.com
Sorry for the delay. Gauguin is very depressed and spends hours on-line. (I know, I know, we should get another line!) God knows what he does there, but the junk mail I keep receiving from polynesianhoneys.com gives me an idea. Visited an Impressionist chat room today. Depressing. These people know nothing of painting. Felt less bad on discovering most were seven. Normally I wouldn’t send something like this, but I thought you might get a kick out of it. Degas forwarded it:
HOW TO DETERMINE YOUR STAR WARS NAME:
FIRST NAME
Take the first three letters of your first name & add the first two letters of your last name.
LAST NAME
Take the first two letters of your mom’s maiden name & add the first three letters of the city in which you were born.
HOW TO DETERMINE YOUR STAR WARS HONORIFIC NAME:
* Take the last three letters of your last name & reverse them, then add the name of the first car you drove/owned/rode in.
* Insert the word “of.”
* Tack on the name of the last medication you took.
P.S. Don’t worry I bcc’ed you.
Vinva Cagro
or
Hgopeugeot of DayQuil
TO: Theovg23@aol.com
FROM: Vincentvgo@hotmail.com
Surviving mostly on coffee and absinthe. And since Pissarro turned me on to Kozmo.com I don’t have to brave that miserable mistral. You mentioned getting a busy signal the last time you tried to call me. (I know, I know, I should get another line!) But it’s Gauguin. I mean, I have a curiosity about the Internet, but he’s addicted, IMHO! He is teaching me Quark, however, which I find fascinating.
TO: Theovg23@aol.com
FROM: Vincentvgo@hotmail.com
Gauguin and I quarrelled after I fragged him with a rocket launcher while playing Quake III. He says my computer’s faster, so it isn’t fair. (Doom is more his game, but the mulberry-tree-yellow graphics in Quake III are worthy of Renoir!) In any event, I waved an open razor in his direction, and he left. I’ll miss his company, but now that he’s gone I can go on-line whenever I’m inclined. Did you get the pictures I sent you? I don’t think those girls are really in college. And what about that dancing baby? Eerie.
TO: Theovg23@aol.com
FROM: Vincentvgo@hotmail.com
In your last E-mail you wrote: «What is lol?»
It means “laugh out loud.” Something I do less and less of now.:(
TO: Theovg23@aol.com
FROM: Vincentvgo@hotmail.com
I hate to admit it, but I’m missing Gauguin’s Instant Messages. Now that he’s in Tahiti, I don’t think he’s on the computer much anymore. Either that or I no longer make the cut on his Buddy List. BTW could you send a little more money? I need new paintbrushes and a faster modem.
TO: Theovg23@aol.com
FROM: Vincentvgo@hotmail.com
I know you try your hardest to sell my work, but have you considered eBay? I put two sunflower paintings, “The Provençal Girl,” and one “Sower” on there. The “Sower” is already up to 43 francs! Then typed in Seurat and saw that some tiny sketch of his called “Monkey” is at 230! Depressing.
TO: Theovg23@aol.com
FROM: Vincent2@VanGo.com
I’ve started to work again. Check out my home page (and note new address). I designed it with a soft malachite green, a fiery iMac raspberry, and a troubled Prussian lilac. I may’ve mastered the brushstroke and HTML, but am a novice with Java. There’s always more to learn.
TO: Theovg23@aol.com
FROM: Vincent2@VanGo.com
Hey, I won a bid on the Christina Aguilera CD! Mint condition, still in the shrink-wrap, too! I’m sorry, but I need another 500 francs.
TO: Theovg23@aol.com
FROM: Vincent2@VanGo.com
Someone called MadDaddy bought “Peasant Shoes” for 27 francs and then refused to pay. Sent me into a rage. We flamed each other back and forth and eBay is going to ban him from future auctions. Little consolation, as I need the money. I got the last laugh, however, as the actual shoes went for 150 francs!
2000
STEVE MARTIN
PICASSO PROMOTING LADY WITH A FAN
THE ENTERTAINMENT CHANNEL: First of all, we loved Lady with a Fan.
PICASSO: Thank you. People seem to be very excited by the painting, and the test scores have been great.
E.C.: What was it like painting Lady with a Fan?
PICASSO: Very, very exciting. I was excited by the prospect of painting it and working with so many exciting people, the paint people, the canvas stretcher …
E.C.: So it was a very exciting project for you.
PICASSO: Yes, I was really excited. Sometimes I was more excited, and sometimes I was less excited …
E.C.: But you were always excited?
PICASSO: Oh, yes, always excited. That’s a good way to put it.
E.C.: And the model?
PICASSO: Oh, my God, I almost left her out. That’s hilarious. I’ve so admired her posing through the years and finally I got a chance to work with her. I actually loved going to the studio every day.
E.C.: Tell us what she’s like.
PICASSO: Oh, she’s so down-to-earth. You would expect her to be aloof and distant, but she wasn’t like that at all.
E.C.: Were there sparks?
PICASSO: Oh, boy, this is a tough interview! (Laughter) Actually we liked each other a lot, but that’s as far as it went. I have a rule about dating my models.
E.C.: We talked with her and she said, “Picasso was great to work with. We laughed and laughed.” What did you laugh about? Any anecdotes?
PICASSO: Gee. Hmm. Oh, yeah. Once, I told her I needed her to be nude. Well, you should have seen the look on her face. Of course I told her immediately that I was just kidding.
E.C.: That’s hilarious.
PICASSO: It was really, really funny.
E.C.: Lady with a Fan is so different from the other work you’ve been doing. Do you think your audience will accept it?