Les Belle-lettres en RALPH
From: mrb@boumanlaw.biz
To: carlosamantea@yahoo.com
Sirs:
The article by Shaff and Shaff about Gutzon Burglum is ridiculous. Pure opinion on his artistic ability and asinine.
Attorney at Law
Pinehurst, Texas
TO: lolitalark@yahoo.com
Dear Sir or Madam:
In all modesty, let me remind you that RALPH has published some essais rather like those of the French philosopher/essayist Pascal Bruckner. I just realized this after reading a review of Bruckner's latest book.
In "The Political Is Personal," your faithful writer made the following observations about the New Left: "The SDS kids confused politics with personal adornment, hence the mock guerrilla fatigues... [R]ather than trying to persuade, they were making a personal statement: it was just like wearing green hair. ...This dress-up view of politics also explained their obsessive search for extra-territorial idols, as a sort of badge of identity: Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh, or Mao, or Fidel, or Che."
Here is Pascal Bruckner, reminiscing about the same population years later: "Because we were not lucky enough to be where the action was, we vented our frustrations by rites of imitation, by using sympathetic magic. Beards and berets like Che Guevara's, Mao jackets, a cigar like Castro's, and today an Afghan turban...
On the sidewalks of Berkeley, the boulevards of the Latin Quarter, or the streets of Berlin, wearing such outfits was an attempt to make mere loitering look like The Long March."
Although I am still tickled by my analogy to "wearing green hair." I have to admit that Bruckner has a better line in "making mere loitering look like The Long March." Priceless. Elsewhere, Bruckner observes: "true old age, that of the spirit...begins when one is no longer able to communicate with others except by complaints and grumbling." He obviously has my number. And maybe his own?
