Stephen Fry in America
Page 7
My taxi and I are on our way to a place that has hammered its own nails into the coffin of Jersey’s reputation for refinement. Atlantic City.
Best known in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for its boardwalk, all seven miles of it, Atlantic City on the south Jersey shore was one of the most prosperous and successful resort towns in America. After the Second World War it freefell into what seemed irreversible decline, until, as a last-ditch effort in 1976, the citizens voted to allow gambling. Two years later the first casino in the eastern United States opened and ever since Atlantic City has been second only to Las Vegas as a plughole into which high and low rollers from all over the world are irresistibly drained.
And so I find myself driving into hell.
Trumpery
The weather does not help; heavy bruised skies brood over grey Atlantic rollers and on the beach the tide leaves a line of scummy frothing mousse and soggy litter. The signs advertising ‘Fun’ and ‘Family Rides’ on the vile seaside piers tinkle and clang in the sharp wind, a forlorn and spindly Ferris wheel squeaks and groans. Styrofoam coffee cups and flappy burger containers are rolled and tossed along the deserted boardwalk–New Jersey’s urban, eastern reinterpretation of the mythic tumbleweed and sagebrush of the West. Above tower the hotels, the ‘resort casinos’, blank façades in whose appearance and architectural qualities the developers have taken a precisely double-zero interest.
Would it not have been better to let this seedy resort town, the home of Monopoly and remnant of another way of holidaying, simply fall into the sea? Instead we are given this obscene Gehenna, a place of such tawdry, tacky, tinselly, tasteless and trumpery tat that the desire to run away clutching my hand to my mouth is overwhelming. But no, I must brave the interior of the most tawdry and literally trumpery tower of them all…The Trump Taj Mahal. For taking the name of the priceless mausoleum of Agra, one of the beauties and wonders of the world, for that alone Donald Trump should be stripped naked and whipped with scorpions along the boardwalk. It is as if a giant toad has raped a butterfly. I am not an enemy of developers, per se; I know that people must make money from construction and development projects, I know that there is a demand and that casinos will be built. I can pardon Trump all his vanities and junk-bonded dealings and financial brinkmanship, I would even forgive him his hair, were it not that everything he does is done with such poisonously atrocious taste, such false glamour, such shallow grandeur, such cynical vulgarity. At least Las Vegas developments, preposterous as they are have a kind of joy and wit to them…oh well, it is no good putting off the moment, Stephen. In you go.
* * *
NEW JERSEY
KEY FACTS
Abbreviation:
NJ
Nickname:
The Garden State
Capital:
Trenton
Flower:
Common meadow violet
Tree:
Northern red oak
Bird:
American goldfinch
Shell:
Knobbed whelk (honest)
Motto:
Liberty and Prosperity
Well-known residents and natives: Grover Cleveland (22nd and 24th President), Thomas Alva Edison, Alfred Kinsey, William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Roth, Andrea Dworkin, Martha Stewart, Abbott and Costello, Jerry Lewis, Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Danny DeVito, Joe Pesci, John Travolta, Ray Liotta, Bruce Willis, Kevin Spacey, David Cassidy, James Gandolfini, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, Whitney Houston, Shaquille O’Neal.
* * *
The automatic doors of the black smoked-glass entrance hiss open and I am inside. I see at once that the exterior, boardwalk side of Atlantic City is deliberately kept as unappealing as possible, just to make sure people stay inside. All you need is within, mini-streets complete with Starbucks and burger outlets, there is even a shop devoted entirely to the personality of Donald Trump himself, with quotes from the great man all over the walls: ‘You’ve got to think anyway, so why not think big?’ and similar comforting and illuminating insights that enrich and nourish the hungry human soul. Everything sold here is in the ‘executive’ style, like bad eighties Pierre Cardin: slimy thin belts of glossy leather, notepads, cufflinks, unspeakable objects made of brass and mahogany. There is nothing here that I would not be ashamed to be seen owning. Not a thing. Oh, must we stay here one minute longer?
Perhaps I am just in a bad mood. At the top of the main staircase that leads to the gambling hall I meet up with the PR lady who has arranged for me to be trained as a blackjack dealer. She is perky and charming and seems to love her work.
‘You’re so very welcome indeed to this facility,’ she breathes. ‘If there is anything I can do to make your visit with us more pleasurable…?’
It would be churlish to suggest a flame-thrower and bazooka, so I grin toothily and follow her to the servants’ quarters, the backstage area.
Trainee Dealer Fry
Down we travel, by service elevator and stairway, through numberless corridors until we reach the zone where the staff uniforms are kept. Thousands and thousands of tunics are held on rails which, at the touch of a button leap to life. Great circulating loops of human-shaped shirtings process around like flapping zombies in a spooky dumb show reproduction of the gamblers above, the same robotic gestures–animated but with all the flesh sucked out.
I am given a ‘butter’-coloured chemise (a new colour line which has just come in to replace the ‘garnet’ still widely in use) and a strange black thing edged in gold that goes around my waist. Where a purse would be if I were an Austrian café waiter. A name tag tells the world that I am ‘Stephen Fry: Trainee’.
Blackjack is universally referred to as BJ without a trace of humour or even any apparent awareness that those initials have another common application. A girl called Kelly has been deputed to initiate me into the mysteries of BJ and she is fierce. Really fierce. I am familiar with blackjack as a player and think myself reasonably competent with a pack of cards. But Kelly’s impatience and contemptuous astonishment at my inability to work out the 3–2 insurance coverage on aces dealt to the dealer, my use of the right hand instead of the left hand to collect money from the left-hand side of the table, my slowness in payout calculation…all these conspire to make me feel more than usually clumsy and behave more than usually ham-fistedly.
The Trump Taj Mahal, triumph of tat over taste.
Kelly shows Trainee Dealer Fry how it is done.
Slap. ‘No, no. You get it wrong!’
‘Sorry, but…’
‘No “but”, no “sorry”. Not difficult.’
By the time a group of real players come along I am feeling hot, bothered and nervous. Kelly, originally a Vietnamese immigrant, is happy to let me sink or swim.
Slowly, after a few mistakes, gently pointed out by the seasoned pros sitting opposite me, I start to get the hang of things.
Above my head glitter the chandeliers that for some reason Trump is so proud of. ‘$14 million worth of German crystal chandeliers, including 245,000 piece chandeliers in the casino alone, each valued at a cost of $250,000, and taking over 20 hours to hang,’ trumpets the publicity.
‘An entire two-year output of Northern Italy’s Carrera marble quarries–the marble of choice for all of Michelangelo’s art–adorn the hotel’s lobby, guest rooms, casino, hallways and public areas.’ Yes, it may well have been the marble of choice for Michelangelo’s art. English was the language of choice for Shakespeare’s, but that doesn’t lift this sentence, for example, out of the ordinary. And believe me the only similarity between Michelangelo and the Trump Taj Mahal that I can spot is that they’ve both got an M in their names.
‘$4 million in uniforms and costumes outfit over 6,000 employees.’ Including one butter-coloured shirt as worn by me.
‘Four and a half times more steel than the Eiffel Tower.’
The thrill of it all.
Too exciting for words.
‘If laid end to end, the building support pilings would stretch the 62 miles from Atlantic City to Philadelphia.’
‘The Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort can generate enough air conditioning to cool 4,000 homes.’
You see, all this mad boasting says to me is ‘Our Casino Makes A Shed Load Of Money’. They can afford to lavish a quarter of a million bucks on each chandelier, can they? And where does this money come from, we wonder? From profits from their ‘city within a city’ Starbucks concession? From sales of patent leather belts and onyx desk sets? No, from the remorseless mathematical fact that gambling is profitable. The house wins. The punter loses. It is a certainty.
This abattoir may be made of marble, but it is still a place for stunning, plucking, skinning and gutting sad chickens.
Hey, but it’s fun, Stevie! It’s gaming. People want to play, don’t be such a Savonarola.
Well, perhaps I am a bit of a grumpy guts today. I am treated very well and I do enjoy the dealing part of the game. The players facing me are grown-ups. They know what they are doing. Who am I to pee on their parade?
Still, it is with real pleasure that I leave Atlantic City behind me, certain that I shall never return.
South we drive, the taxi and I, towards Cape May and the Delaware Bay.
DELAWARE
‘A policeman I met in Lewes where the ferry lands told me that “soft and slow” is the Delaware way.’
Poor old Delaware. I don’t know why I say this. She is a beautiful state. Only Rhode Island is smaller, but Delaware can make greater claims to history. Being the First State to ratify the US constitution is her proudest boast. Being home to the DuPont empire another. DuPont invented nylon, polymers and Teflon and is still the second-biggest chemical company in the world.
For most Americans the word Delaware conjures up the painting by Emanuel Leutze, ‘Washington Crossing the Delaware’. It commemorates an important moment in the colonial wars–or the Revolutionary Wars as Americans prefer to call them.
On Christmas Day 1776 Washington led his army, which had been twice defeated by the British, across the river and, making landfall in Pennsylvania, led them up to Trenton, New Jersey where they surprised the British and won a famous victory.
It is one of those fine historical moments of generalship on which reputations rest. General Wolfe scaling the Heights of Abraham to win Quebec, Horatius on the bridge, Hannibal passing through the Alps. Washington crossing the Delaware.
Unfortunately for Delaware none of this took place within the state itself. Washington crossed from New Jersey into Pennsylvania. Only the name of the river has any connection with the state of Delaware. He would today have taken the Delaware Memorial Bridge, the longest twin-span suspension bridge in the world.
Stopping to admire beautiful Delaware before I head on.
A policeman I meet in Lewes where the ferry lands with considerably less hoopla and ice than Washington’s boats, tells me that ‘soft and slow’ is the Delaware way and now, as I rattle hard and fast up the main road towards the state capital Dover, I feel a bit of a heel for betraying the state philosophy quite so brutishly and insensitively.
I drive along, humming the words of the Perry Como song, ‘What did Della wear?’ I think about where exactly we are.
Delaware is in a kind of middle area. This is not yet the South, but nor am I any longer in New England, that much is clear. The countryside is beautiful and one or two trees still sport bright fall colours, but the architecture and the landscape have subtly changed. Less dramatic in terms of crags, valleys and hills, less clapboard and slate in terms of housing. Dutch barns, Dutch gabled houses, softly rounded hills.
Dover comes and goes, then I pass Wilmington, the biggest town in the state. I am already very nearly in Pennsylvania.
Well aware, Delaware, that I did not give you much attention. Another time.
* * *
DELAWARE
KEY FACTS
Abbreviation:
DE
Nickname:
The First State
Capital:
Dover
Flower:
Peach blossom
Tree:
American holly
Bird:
Blue hen chicken
Macroinvertebrate:
Stonefly
Motto:
Liberty and Independence
Well-known residents and natives: The du Pont family, Howard Pyle, R. Crumb, Elizabeth Shue, Judge Reinhold, Susan ‘The Producers’ Stroman, Sean Patrick Thomas, Ryan Phillippe.
* * *
PENNSYLVANIA
‘There is something in the hope and idealism of this frustrating and contradictory nation that still makes my spirits soar.’
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is the only state to be named after a person. Oh, apart from Washington of course. And New York, because that was named not after the city of York, but after James, Duke of York. Oh, and the Carolinas were named after King Charles I. And Virginia after Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen. And Maryland after Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I…all right. All right. So actually lots of states have been named after people. Pennsylvania is just one. It gets its name from William Penn, the Quaker who was the founder and absolute controller of what was in its day the largest of the colonial states. Although in strict fact it was named after his father, Admiral Sir William Penn, who had lent Charles II a great deal of money and received in return the rights to the land west of the Delaware River on behalf of his son. The Admiral himself was not a Quaker (you cannot really have a Quaker with a military rank, it doesn’t compute) and did not like the fact that his son was, but William Jnr, a remarkable man who had braved much contempt, imprisonment and persecution for his pacifist, heterodox beliefs, used the family money, his father’s favour with the King and his own intelligence and natural leadership skills to carve out this great tract of land, which functioned independently under a democratic constitution long before independence came.
Philadelphia (an adaptation of the Greek for ‘brotherly love’) is the chief city, although not the capital. Here can be found Independence Hall and the famously, and perhaps proleptically, cracked Liberty Bell amongst other tourist attractions.
Although America was consecrated, if that is the right word (and you will soon see why I chose it) on July 4th, 1776 in Philadelphia when John Hancock became the first to append his name (one’s ‘John Hancock’ in America is to this day one’s signature) to the Declaration of Independence, for me and for many the moment America grew up was when it was re-consecrated ‘four score and seven’ years later on a battlefield 140 miles to the west of Philadelphia, towards which I am now driving, under heavy clouds and through torrential rain.
Gettysburg
The weather improves with dramatic suddenness the moment I pass the sign that tells me I have arrived in Gettysburg. The clouds depart, a clear autumnal sun lights the still bright leaves of the trees around the cemetery and makes the puddles glint and flash as I pass.
I am welcomed by Abraham Lincoln. Well, by an actor, historian and lookalike called Jim. Jim conducts me around the cemetery, contriving to stay in character in a way that is not irritating or twee.
It might seem something of a puzzle that a nation born out of such high ideals, such humanitarian vision and such intellectual clarity and rational enlightenment as America should have descended, by the 1860s, into the bloodiest war that humanity had ever recorded. Man for man, no conflict has ever been more attritional and deadly than the American Civil War of 1861–65.
Jim offers the view that it is perhaps only in the clear light of history that one can argue the war had to happen. America’s written constitution, with its lofty air of permanence and marmoreal splendour, had not addressed what America might be in the modern world. To us all now the Civil War was, or should have been, about the evils of slavery and that is how most will think of it. But many of the Northerners who fought so bitterly, and with such ample fundi
ng, were fighting because their paymasters and political leaders looked across the Atlantic at the Industrial Revolution that was propelling Britain to unimagined heights of prosperity and they saw that their own country, with its two economies, one powered by slavery and the other not, was at a huge disadvantage. Slavery was outlawed across Europe, whose countries would not trade with America–not so much out of moral repugnance as annoyance at the unfair advantage a labour bill of zero gave the plantation owners. The North wanted to create conditions for a modern industrial state, an enterprise economy, and to do that it had to bid an enforced goodbye to the plantations. It was no good having two Americas: a neighbour with a slave economy was never going to allow the kind of commercial equity the North demanded. So it was, au fond, an economic and commercial war. Nothing new there. Are not most wars? Ironically, Britain, the mother country, the old tyranny, the stuck-in-the-mud monarchy, had in many respects become a more modern and democratic country than America. Without one United States, a democracy founded on fairness, America could never prosper in the way Britain did: the true meaning of democracy was at stake.
* * *
PENNSYLVANIA
KEY FACTS
Abbreviation: