by Peter Cates

Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) has recently become my favorite novelist of all, supplanting such favorites as Graham Greene, John Le Carre, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. His combination of slyly understated wit, of a very perceptive awareness of the hearts of darkness in all hu­man­kind and of his own genius level of mastery of English as a second language are seen in his Lord Jim, Typhoon, Victory and Under Western Skies.

I have been slowly but surely reading his 1913 novel Chance, a book that others find not one of his best; I disagree most vehemently.

The story focuses on a young woman Flora de Barral who runs off to sea in holy wedlock with a Merchant Marine Captain Anthony who is more than old enough to be her father. The novel deals, quite captivatingly, with the repercussions of this marriage. The Anthonys simply want a private life in which they mind their own business but are surrounded by people who make it impossible.

Much of the time in this novel, Conrad uses the first person narrator Charles Marlow who is constantly brooding on the significance of everything he sees and hears with respect to the couple.

One situation has Marlow conversing with an unnamed acquaintance about the gap between people with real integrity, such as the Anthonys who , through no fault of their own, get caught up in absurd, even traumatic situations; and the people who think they’re better than everyone else, but are actually ignorant, if not downright destructive guttersnipes:

“‘They say,’ pursued the unabashed Marlow, ‘that we laugh from a sense of superiority. Therefore, observe, simplicity, honesty, warmth of feeling, delicacy of heart and of conduct, self-confidence, magnanimity are laughed at, because the presence of these traits in a man’s character often puts him into difficult, cruel or absurd situations, and makes us, the majority who are fairly free as a rule from these peculiarities, to feel pleasantly superior.’ “

One could say that Conrad had a very cynical view of human nature but what distinguished him from other writers with a similar worldview was his having made peace with this cynical view and the sense of humor he maintained.

Finally Conrad incorporated elements of his own experiences as a Merchant Marine officer from the age of 18 to 37 when he left that life behind to devote himself full time to writing into his fiction, especially drawing on his own travels to the Far East and other such exotic locales. The grand impersonal immensities of the ocean and its depths, combined paradoxically with its ability to shelter the individual from the toxic humanity on land, held ardent fascination for him, as seen in another quote from Chance, in which the chief petty officer is on night watch:

“The very sea, with short flashes of foam bursting out here and there in the gloomy distances, the unchangeable, safe sea sheltering a man from all passions, except its own anger, seemed queer to the quick glance he threw to windward where the already effaced horizon traced no reassuring limit to the eye.”

One highly recommended novel.

by Peter Cates

Rev. Timothy Dwight

During the late 1980s to early ’90s, I taught American lit survey classes for the Houston Community College System in the Lone Star State and used the humongous two-volume Harper American Literature anthology, each consisting of 2,500 pages. Being a bit obsessive compulsive curious about anything and everything, I read through both volumes over a 15-year period and encountered several lesser known literary figures, along with the classic legends such as Thoreau, Washington Irving, Walt Whitma , Hemingway etc., whose writing was also of interest.

Two such individuals were based in Connecticut for most of their lives. The first was the very formidable Reverend Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), who wrote prolifically, established a private coed school, worked two farms, and eventually became president of Yale University.

The reason for using ‘formidable’ has its roots not only in Dwight’s personality but in 18th century Connecticut society. The authoritarian Calvinistic Puritanism that prevailed in Massachusetts during the 17th century had waned by the end of the 1692 Salem witch trials and the Bay State had become a more mild-mannered society with a more easy going governing world view while Puritanism had transferred its base of operation to Connecticut.

This theocratic influence was so insidious that, when Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, church women in the state were burying their Bibles in the backyard because they considered him a dangerous apostate.

Meanwhile, Timothy Dwight had been born and raised in Northampton, Massachusetts, and was the grandson of the preacher Jonathan Edwards, an unreconstructed Puritan whose own claim to fame was the frequently anthologized Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (which I studied as a teenager at Kent’s Hill and, 20 years later, taught in Houston.).

Back to Dwight’s own formidable personality. Like his grandfather, he was an absolutist of the Puritan faith and became a very popular preacher among the Puritans in Connecticut. Stubbornly unwavering and dogmatic, he ranted and railed against even the tiniest specks of what he considered heresy in a most pushy, heavy-handed manner.

Even his best friends were at times intimidated by him and referred to him as the “Protestant Pope of New England.”

The 20th century historian Vernon Parrington commented that Dwight’s “mind was closed as tight as his study window in January.”

Paradoxically, Dwight was an innovator in education and, upon assuming the presidency of Yale, expanded the University’s curriculum to courses in “modern” literature, languages, geography, medicine, chemistry, etc.

While president, Dwight undertook a number of research journeys through New England and New York State, from 1795 to 1815, to study anything and everything that attracted his curiosity within its constricted parameters and to take painstakingly detailed notes. The results were collected after his death into four volumes, Travels in New-England and New York, and published in 1821 and 1822.

As an example, Dwight visited several upper class families in Boston and wrote some particularly trenchant observations on the methods by which such parents were raising their children, comments that might be perceived as relevant to families in more recent years:

“The end proposed by the parents is to make their children objects of admiration. The means, though not sanctioned, are certainly characterized by the end. That I have not mistaken the end may be easily proved by a single resort to almost any genteel company. To such company the children of the family are regularly introduced, and the praise of the guests is administered to them as regularly as the dinner or the tea is served up. Commendation is rung through all its changes; and you may hear, both in concert and succession: “beautiful children, ” “fine children, ” “sweet children, ” “lovely children,” “what a charming family!” “what a delightful family!” “You are a fine little fellow.” “You are a sweet little girl.” “My son, can’t you speak one of your pieces before this good company?” “Caroline, where is your work?” “Susan, bring Miss Caroline’s work and show it to that lady.” “Susan, bring with you the picture which she finished last week;”…..Were you to pass a twelve month in this country, and to believe all that you heard said by people not destitute of respectability, whatever opinion you might form of the parents, you would suppose that the children were a superior race of beings, both in person and mind; and that beauty, genius, grace, and loveliness had descended to this world in form and determined to make these states their future residence…Children educated in the manner to which I refer soon learn that the primary end of their efforts, and even of their existence, is ‘appearance only. What they are,’ they soon discern is of little consequence; but, ‘what they appear to be’ is of importance inestimable.”

by Peter Cates

Margaret Dickson

Lewiston-born writer Margaret Dickson published a 1985 novel, Octavia’s Hill, which follows four generations of a family, and from which a chapter was anthologized in the book, Maine Speaks.

The excerpt takes place during the horse and buggy days in the very rural community of Monson, itself north of Dexter and Guilford and quite close to Baxter State Park and the 100 Mile Wilderness Trail. It depicts a mother raising her eight-year-old son, Marl, by herself.

One passage that stood out describes a stone wall in the woods that the son uses for shade during his explorations. The words evoke a timeless universality in the landscape, almost spiritual in its dimensions:

“The wall was lichen-covered, its crevices turned to rich humus and scratchy rock crystals that were almost like beach sand. It was in dark, comfortable shade, because this wall went right through the pine forest. Marl sat and stared off into the soundless, sun-dappled, fly-whirling woods and chewed a piece of sweet grass. He could have used his shirt right now, maybe, to keep the bugs off, but he didn’t care. The whole hill was his to play on, and he guessed he could go down and get that old shirt whenever he wanted to. He was happy. Under the wall, his old fortress, the hill breathed and moved with things to do on other days, but for now he was like a baby settled on its breast, so close to the heartbeat of it that it sounded like his own.

“For a little while he thought about the men who had built this wall. They’d slung those old stones day after day to build these rock piles that meandered along the sides of their fields. Then they’d grown old or moved away and left the grass to turn into woods again. It was as if the hill knew something they didn’t. Somehow Marl knew you had to listen to the hill if you wanted things to last.”

Googling for additional information on both Margaret Dickson and Octavia’s Hill, I came across two intriguing off-the-beaten-path items related to these names.

A. Margaret Dickson was the name of an impoverished Scottish maid who was sentenced to death in 1722 by hanging for murdering her infant shortly after its birth. After she was cut down from the rope, she was placed in a coffin inside a wagon by her friends for burial.

On the way to the graveyard, the wagon bounced around constantly and, to the horror of her mourners, she suddenly woke up. Considering this an act of God, the authorities pardoned her and Margaret Dickson lived another few decades.

B. Octavia Hill (1838-1912) was an English social reformer who fought for better living spaces for working people and the preservation of woodlands, but detested government handouts because it eroded self-esteem and individual initiative. She was also a gifted fundraiser with the rich in her encouragement of their volunteer charity.

Black History Month

Black History Month evoked memories of reading the very powerful 1945 memoir, Black Boy, by Richard Wright (1908-1960) in its personalized account of racism during the author’s formative years growing up in Natchez, Mississippi, and Memphis, Tennessee.

Recommended viewing:

The acting of Lee Grant, still living at 97, as a bereaved widow in the 1967 In the Heat of the Night and as a cold-blooded, but very charming murderess in Columbo’s 1971 season opening episode, Ransom for a Dead Man.

* * * * * *

Actor Robert Emhardt (1914-1994) frequently portrayed crooks on such series as Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the Twilight Zone, and had a particularly ominous smile. During the early 1940s, he was one of the co-founders of the Actor’s Studio, in New York City.

* * * * * *

Recommended listening on YouTube and elsewhere – anything by the early 1960s girl vocal group, The Angels – especially The Night Has a Thousand Eyes; and, from a different category, a dreamlike gem of early 20th century music by English composer Frederick Delius (1861-1934), the Prelude to Irmelin, via the recording of this composer’s foremost interpreter, Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961).

by Peter Cates

Richard Aldridge

Born in New York City, poet Richard Aldridge (1930-1994) attended summer camp here in Maine most of his childhood and, as an adult, would eventually settle down with his wife in Phippsburg while teaching high school English in Bath.

Although his name is new to me, his work became renowned among other poets and he edited and published a 1969 anthology, Maine Lines.

Before sharing a poem of his that is contained in the ever-fascinating 1989 anthology Maine Speaks, I offer his own very astutely stated words on why poems matter:

“The most important thing in life to any person is another person, not a whole number of other people. That is why poetry will always fill a vital place-in essence, it is an art where three really is a crowd. You should be able to hang around with a good poem just as you do with a good or best friend. As with a best friend, a poem you really like will have said something to you in a way that touches bottom, while at the same time it will just be there, on call any time. If it could see and think, it would observe you growing and changing and reaching all the time. And you, coming back and back to it from time to time, will see new angles and depths and reaches that you never quite knew were there at first acquaintance.”

I read this credo of belief that does resonate while also remembering that most all of the successful poets in America still needed day jobs, Robert Frost being one of those select few who earned a living from his books after his first one was published in 1913 when he was 38.

Now for Richard Aldridge’s, A Sharing of Silences, with the inscription, West Point, Maine, underneath the title:

“late fall, the summer people gone
into the village store I go
six fishermen are sitting around
just talking joking supper done
because I have stuck out
now seventeen Maine winters
still have the wife I started with
have had their children now and then
up at the high school off in town
they let me in a little
by not going quiet like wind dying down
or worse just up and easing out
and yet their talk takes on
the slightest shade of guardedness
because I do teach English
after all which means of course
good grammar is my holy flame
and too (they hear) write poems
and such so who knows what
I might go off and copy down
if they could only understand
the only words I care to find
are those the counter image of
the windworn creases in their brows
the bark-like hardness of their hands
the upright carriage of their pride
and those are not for finding”

West Point, Maine, is roughly seven miles southeast from Bath where, as stated earlier, Aldridge taught and it is part of Phippsburg on the Casco Bay Peninsula.

The poem evokes a way of life and the divisions that can occur among different people living that way of life in a small community, the ever perpetual theme of aloneness in the community, of experience that is shared versus experience that can never be shared.

People want to know things about you but do not want you to know things about them, watching you yet wary of you.

The poet injects elements of great potential for more than one story in certain lines- we’d like to know more about “the summer people gone” , those sometimes obnoxious individuals from a distance who do boost the local economy with their dollars; “six fishermen…just talking… joking… [at] the village store ” who fear most all outsiders; and the poet narrator who teaches the children of those fishermen “now and then/up at the high school off in town” but still has the fishermen interacting with him in their minimally sociable manner combined with “the slightest shade of guardedness”…not ever knowing what their children’s English teacher “might go off and copy down.” God forbid!

These hints of story brought to mind another Maine poet Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) who lived out most of his life in Gardiner and later in New York City, but who was born in Head Tide which is 26 miles northwest from Phippsburg.

Robinson’s poems such as Mr. Flood’s Party, Richard Cory, Miniver Cheevy, Tristan, etc. had innumerable hints of stories.

A poem well worth brooding upon!

In his rambunctious 1930 book on theology, Treatise on the Gods, H.L. Mencken comments – “The only real way to reconcile science and religion is to set up something that is not science and something that is not religion.”

Rachmaninoff

Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Symphony, a masterpiece of unutterable beauty, has generated shelves of different recordings in which the score is either presented in its over 1 hour complete, sometimes sprawling magnificence or with some cuts in the passages. Both approaches were sanctioned by the composer, depending on his mood.

I own a batch of different recordings, each of which has interest, but one I have consistently enjoyed of the cut version, and for more than 45 years, is a 1959 recording featuring Alfred Wallenstein (1898-1983) conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic in what might be the greatest one he ever made. It has pulse, characterful detail, and delectable notes and hangs together like no other recording I know of.

It can also be heard on YouTube .

Gene Rodemich

A 1921 ten-inch acoustically recorded Brunswick shellac disc (#2060) features one of the better dance bands of that era led by Gene Rodemich (1890-1934) who later worked for NBC Radio before dying from lobar pneumonia at the young age of 44.

The two selections are Margie and the rather obscure Irving Berlin Home Again Blues, both which can be heard on YouTube.

The Killers

Two movies that still stick in the memory are Bing Crosby’s 1944 Going My Way, in which he portrayed a Catholic priest, with the very good co-stars Barry Fitzgerald, mezzo soprano Rise Stevens, and the Little Rascals own Alfalfa; and the 1964 film noir, The Killers, starring Lee Marvin and Clu Gulagher as two highly professional hit men who do convey much nuance in their character development, as unlikable as they are; former President Ronald Reagan in what would be his last movie role before he entered the political arena, and a role in which he very convincingly portrayed a gangster; Angie Dickinson as Reagan’s devious wife; and the now underrated actor John Cassavetes as the victim of the hit men.

The film was very, very loosely based on Hemingway’s classic short story.

by Peter Cates

Woody Shaw

Jazz trumpeter Woody Shaw (1944-1989) recorded a very fine LP, United, in 1981 for Columbia records which can also be heard via YouTube. It consists of six tracks, of which three are original compositions by Shaw and one is an imaginative reworking of the Cole Porter classic What is this Thing Called Love.

Shaw was joined by trombonist Steve Turre, pianist Mulgrew Miller, double bassist Stafford James, drummer Tony Reedus and also saxophonist Gary Bartz, each of them outstanding as soloists and as ensemble team players.

For me, some of the five or more minute jazz improvisations can get quite tiresome, Ornette Coleman being an example. Shaw’s gifts are such that the music making held my interest. Some of the most beautiful blends, dynamics and sonorities are to be heard here.

Shaw wrote that his first three choices for instruments to study in school were the violin, trombone and saxophone but they were already taken; hence, he got stuck with the trumpet. When he griped to the music teacher, the latter told him to be patient and that the older man had a good feeling about Shaw’s destiny, which proved to be true.

His major influences included Harry James, Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie.

By the late 1980s, Woody Shaw was suffering from severe kidney ailments and a degenerative eye disease, and, due to being struck by a subway car in Brooklyn, his left arm had to be amputated. He had also been a heroin addict. When he died on May 10, 1989, he had been on a respirator for more than a month due to kidney failure.

In his essay Maine Speech, E.B. White writes the following:

“If you have enough wood for winter but not enough to carry you beyond that, you need wood ‘to spring out on.’ “

Inger Stevens

Highly recommended viewing recently was the gifted actress Inger Stevens (1934-1970) in the 1960 Twi­light Zone episode, The Hitchhiker and the 1967 made for TV movie The Borgia Stick, in which she and actor Don Murray (still living at 95) portray a suburban couple in New York’s Weschester County who funnel millions of dollars from a shadowy outfit known as the “Company” into legitimate businesses.

It can also be viewed on YouTube, although the quality of the video on the site I accessed was a bit below par. One hopes that a better print will be made available soon. Even so, it remains well worth watching.