From The Editor
Bill Girdner |
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Under deep, gray skies, in a
little town in Denmark, it starts to snow. In white flurries, it falls
on the dark cobblestones. Shoppers are wearing jackets and long coats,
children are fully bundled up in insulated jumpsuits, caps and gloves.
I am looking out on the main walking street from a dark-wooded cafe
with a Christmas beer in front of me, a dark, potent brew that is made
only at this time of year.
The Danes are an odd mixture of modern man and centuries-old man.
They are reasoned and open and wired. For example, the streets here
are being torn up by the city to provide high-speed internet access to
all the houses, with the government considering internet access a
utility like electricity, phones and water. At the same time, the
Danes are locked into traditions that go back and back in time.
In the anthropology museum in Copenhagen, they have artifacts
that are 9,000 years old, including silver jewelry that looks
strikingly like the jewelry that young girls wear today in Denmark. In
one of the oldest coffins discovered, on a forlorn headland on their
western coast, the surviving articles were a woman's reddish, dark
blonde hair, the same unusual tint that is common among women here
today, a long skirt and a beer bucket.
The farmland has been passed down through hundreds of years of
Danish generations. Even the ever-shifting sea of pop culture really
doesn't change that much here. On the radio — everpresent in kitchens
and cars and serving as a binding cultural tie — I recognize the same
Christmas songs that were played regularly last year and the years
before.
Another seasonal tradition is that kids collect "nisse" men,
or elves, that are greatly more prevalent icons of the season than
Santa Claus, and those collections of strange, small men with big ears
and red suits, hold over to the adults who festoon their houses with
nisse men this time of year. And as December proceeds, in a tradition
that I have often thought should result in death and destruction, they
light actual, burning candles on the branches of the Christmas tree in
the evenings. With a bucket of water kept at the base of the tree, in
case of emergency.
Over years of visiting friends here, I have tried to learn the
language, which bears a strong relation to old English. I have bought
a couple language books. But I also tried reading children's books on
the theory that the I was at a child's reading level in Danish. One of
the books was "Onkel Joakim Redder Jul", the Donald Duck version of
the Christmas Carol where Scrooge is Onkel Joakim who saves Christmas
or "Jul."
What strikes me in remembering that children's-book portrait of
the Christmas season, with the drawings of old houses and narrow
village streets and busy shops, is that it is not far off what I see
now, looking out over my Christmas beer. There are the small shops,
there are the bundled shoppers, there the centuries-old street, the
cold, dark winter weather, the snow.
It is like entering a fable to be here at this time of year.
Almost all the house windows display white Christmas lights or lights
in the shape of the Hanukkah candelabra, or a softly-lit red star. The
few windows with colored lights, as opposed to white lights, are said
to be those of people from Iceland, where that is the tradition. The
shops display string upon string of lights, both white and colored,
and all of them glint and glow more magically, it seems, in the
frosty, dark nights.
In the words of Onkel Joakim, "Glaedelig Jul", and in ours,
Merry Christmas!
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Coyote Speaks
Robert Kahn |
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Surely
the most prestigious, best-paying weekly publisher of fiction in the
world could find an editor who can distinguish interesting literature
from crap.
Not just pretentious crap, but pointless crap. I know,
I know. I am asking for too much. I will settle, then, if David
Remnick passes this memo around the office.
1. It is no longer compulsory to use the word
frisson in a New Yorker story. We have perfectly good words in
English that mean the same thing. Henceforth and forevermore, a
manuscript containing the word frisson shall be returned to the
author, who shall replace frisson with an English word, and the
story will be rejected.
2. Same goes for the words moue and soupçon.
They are no longer obligatory in a New Yorker story.
3. Also, weltanschauung and weltschmerz.
Not needed, old boys. The English language was good enough for mom and
dad and it’s good enough for you. Also, susurration. While susurration
is, technically, an English word, it is not necessary to use it in
every other story. First writer to use it each year wins. But after
that, please, no more susurrations.
4. Stories shall begin somewhere, lead somewhere and end
somewhere. They need not begin at the beginning nor end at the ending,
but the story must repay, in one form or another, the effort and time
spent in reading it.
5. Stories shall not be published if their point is to
mention cool products, trendy restaurants and clothesmakers – excuse
me, fashion designers – whose products only the cool people know
about, until the uncool people read the story. Stories like this are
called advertising. They belong in the advertising section. What’s
more, people who write stories like this will pay The New Yorker to
print them; The New Yorker does not have to pay for these stories.
6. Moving on to the movie reviews. First off, it’s OK
to call them movies, instead of films, or cinema.
7. At some point in every movie review, the
critic shall inform the reader whether the critic thinks it’s a good
idea to go to the movie, or not.
8. If the critic wishes to muse ruefully upon the sad
decline of the lesbian albino film community in Albania, that’s fine.
But at some point in the goddamn movie review, the critic shall inform
us whether he thinks it’s a good idea to go see the movie. Or not.
9. The word auteur shall be prohibited.
10. As for popular music criticism, the critic shall
understand that the topic is not one of high seriousness, and that the
ditties churned out by the latest drum-bangers and guitar-whompers are
not of comparable import to nuclear disarmament, global epidemics or
economic catastrophe. The critic shall be made to understand that the
products these people turn out are called tunes, and the critic shall
inform us, without referring to the tunes of other, even more obscure
bands, whether the tunes that form the ostensible subject of this
week’s review are worth listening to, or not.
11. The popular music critic shall understand that no critic of
popular music has ever been thrown in jail, or deprived of sustenance,
or beaten, for occasionally using a bit of humor or briskness in a
review. The popular music critic shall understand that if this ever
did happen, it was in the old Soviet Union, or in Ceausescu’s Romania,
but the people who did that are dead, dead, dead.
12. Before writing each review, the popular music
critic shall read the review he wrote for the issue published two
years ago, and the issue published one year ago, and he shall ask
himself the question: Where are these bands now? The critic shall bear
this question, and the answers, in mind when he writes his next
review, in the hope that, by pondering this question, he shall come to
understand that it’s just a rock and roll band, and just a music
review. |
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From The Courts
Milt Policzer |
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Here’s an interesting thought:
it takes greater competence to practice law without a license than it
does to practice it with a license.
If you go about your business in the
routine way, pass a bar exam and either get a job or start your own
firm, you can be as mediocre as you like. Think about all the mediocre
lawyers you know.
But if you skip the bar exam part,
you’ve got to be very, very good at what you do.
So the logical conclusion is that we should
be encouraging aspiring lawyers not to take the bar exam.
Do you find something wrong with this
logic?
Think again. Then check out a ruling
from the Kansas Supreme Court called In the Matter of Irwin S.
Trester.
What was the matter with Irwin S. Trester?
Well, not much actually. According to the ruling, he practiced law
successfully in California – not Kansas -- for 40 years.
I don’t know for sure, but it’s a
good bet that Mr. Trester did his job reasonably well for most of
those 40 years because he never passed the California bar exam and,
apparently, no one noticed.
At least they didn’t until he finally
slipped up and got sued for legal malpractice. That’s when he got into
trouble.
Consider this for a moment. If a
run-of-the-law-school-mill lawyer with a license makes a mistake and
gets sued for malpractice, it might be a little unpleasant and cost a
bit of money, but nothing much serious happens (unless the malpractice
consisted of running off with someone’s money or involved gunplay).
But this guy Trester makes one mistake after 40 years and the career
is over.
Which means, I think, that he didn’t make
many mistakes for 40 years. Hence, the public was better served by a
non-licensed lawyer who had to keep on his toes.
So state policymakers should encourage
non-licensed practitioners – because if they mess up just once,
they’re out. It’s a wonderful way to concentrate the mind.
But one or two of you may be wondering why
the Kansas Supreme Court was dealing with this. It seems that Trester
did pass the Kansas bar exam – he just decided to practice in
California where he failed the exam four times.
Said the opinion: “Trester testified before
the hearing panel that he was merely required to have a license to
practice in some state, not necessarily in the same state where his
office was located.”
You can see why he might have had trouble with
exams.
SCORING ASSIST.
It may be that referees really do give star players preferential
treatment.
The following is from an
Illinois appellate opinion in a dispute between basketball star
Michael Jordan and a woman he may or may not have had an affair with:
“In the spring of 1989, Knafel, a singer,
was performing in a band at a hotel in Indianapolis, Indiana. The
Chicago Bulls were also in town to play the Indiana Pacers. After her
performance, Knafel was approached by a National Basketball
Association referee, who eventually introduced her to Jordan over the
telephone.”
Shouldn’t that have been the job of
the team’s scout?
The Pacers should file a
protest.
SHOCK OF THE WEEK.
A press release with the headline “Celebrity
Divorce Attorney Offers Settlement Conference Tips” appeared up the
other day, and, amazingly, number one on the tip list was: “Don’t show
up without an attorney.”
Trying to make up with
the spouse didn’t make the list.
There’s no cause for optimism of any
kind.
I’d tell you who put out the press release,
but somehow I don’t think she needs the publicity. |
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