Monday, August 29, 2022

Book review: 'The Gatsby Affair' was not



I suppose the insertion of the word "affair" in the title of any book would help it sell better. Surely, a Ph.D. student has researched this matter.

The Gatsby Affair: Scott, Zelda, and the Betrayal that Shaped an American Classic by Kendall Taylor is a misnomer since there is no proof that Zelda Fitzgerald had an affair with a French pilot which was 
"consummated." Is a summer fling of a few weeks an "affair"? Then I suppose most of us had had hundreds.  The author contends that Zelda's "affair" served as a springboard for much of her husband's book, The Great Gatsby.


Zelda's fling with Edouard Jozan consumes a small portion of Taylor's book, a few pages front and aft.


At the beginning of Affair, it was great fun to live vicariously with Zelda, being wined and dined by all her boyfriends, going to the parties, the dancing, the attention, the prom queen! Ahhhh...such is youth! 

It ends too soon.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
   Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
   Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
   The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
   And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
   When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
   Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
   And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
   You may forever tarry.*


After she marries Scott, the book takes a turn from fun to depressing. (That's what marriage can do!)

He promises her a luxurious lifestyle which they lived for a while on his writing income in New York, on the edge, partying constantly late into the next day, doing crazy things and spending too much money which Scott did not have. He was constantly borrowing on his future earnings.

They take off for Europe which was a cheaper place to live, and their marriage continues its downward spiral.

He was mean; he was an alcoholic who stifled Zelda's creativity and forbade the publication of some of her works he wanted to use himself.  He was rude to friends. Here, he's the antagonist, a control freak when it comes to Zelda.

He stifled her creativity and kept her in hospitals. Some of the medical treatments she received are painful to read. He said he was due part of the money she earned from her few publications to pay for her medical bills. Fair enough.

They return to the U.S. In California Scott worked to earn more money as a script writer and...

The book is not so much fun any more.

After Scott failed again on writing assignments in Hollywood, he returned to Montgomery, Alabama, Zelda's family's home, where she was furiously working on a story of their lives in Europe; he forbade her from writing her story because he wanted to use the material for his own.

About 20 years ago two friends and I took the day off from our jobs in Nashville to drive to Huntsville, Alabama to see a small exhibition of Zelda's works.  The Fitzgeralds' only child, Scottie, had loaned the pieces to, I think it was, the Huntsville Museum of Art. 

As I recall, the art on the walls was mainly line drawings of ballerinas in small frames, no larger than 8 x 10". In Europe Zelda prided herself on her constant feverish training to become a ballerina which Scott did not take seriously. That she was invited to participate in a professional production in Europe gives credence to her talent. (She did not join the company.)

The hospital fire in Asheville, N.C. which claimed her life in March, 1948 was likely caused by an arsonist. The hospital had no fire codes.

Rather than an "affair," this book is really about Zelda's personal crash and is very sad. May I suggest instead, Matthew Bruccoli's 
Some Sort of Epic Grandeur which is much better written, throughly documented (not denying Taylor's research), and about twice as long, well worth a serious reader's look at the Fitzgeralds' lives and careers.  (But if you're serious, you'll be reading Taylor's, too. Bruccoli died in 2008 and was considered "the preeminent expert" on F. Scott Fitzgerald [Wikipedia].)

In Affair, modifiers sometimes go AWOL and I found myself having to review previous sentences to find out what or whom the author was writing about.

Disjointed words are found scattered throughout, and often, pronouns and subjects don't match, which may be another example of a publisher's reduction in staff. Sigh. (This publisher is Rowman & Littlefield.) 

Until I read a little about the author, I thought she was British, and it was a British way of writing.  Seriously.

But, it's a great dream book to carry a reader away for a while, to the shore, the man, the fun, and the scenery. If it only had a happy ending, but it was not to be.

* To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

The graves of F. Scott, Zelda, and Scottie Fitzgerald, St. Mary's Catholic Church, Rockville, MD, Feb. 19, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie
The graves of F. Scott, Zelda, and Scottie Fitzgerald, St. Mary's Catholic Church, Rockville, MD, Feb. 19, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie
The graves of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, St. Mary's Catholic Church, Rockville, MD, Feb. 19, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie



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Saturday, August 13, 2022

Earth v. humans in photos at the National Gallery of Art


Robert Adams,  Kerstin next to an Old-Growth Stump, Coos County, Oregon, 1999 gelatin silver print, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser 

Thousands of persons can now see the haunting photographs of the American West taken by Robert Adams from 1965 to 2015 which are now on display in eight galleries at the National Gallery of Art.

Mr. Adams, now 85 and of no relation to Ansel Adams, is an American photographer whose reputation has risen over decades, now in sync with the impacts of climate change, its destruction and effects of humans on the Earth. 
Robert Adams, Clearcut, Clatsop County, Oregon, c. 2000 gelatin silver print, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Robert and Kerstin Adams 
Robert Adams, Newly Occupied Tract Houses, Colorado Springs, 1968 gelatin silver, private collection, San Francisco
Robert Adams, Pikes Peak Park, Colorado Springs (detail), 1969 gelatin silver print, Yale University Art Gallery, purchased with a gift from Saundra B. Lane, a grant from the Trellis Fund, and the Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund

With his wife, Kerstin, the photographer has chosen the National Gallery of Art for his current exhibition of 175 of his photos to afford opportunities to as many people as possible to see the pictures for free.

This according to National Gallery's curator, Sarah Greenough, who began working with the Adamses ten years ago on the show.
Robert Adams, North Denver Suburb, 1973, printed 1981 gelatin silver print, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Purchased with the Alice Newton Osborn Fund, 1982 


Robert Adams, Nebraska State Highway 2, Box Butte County, Nebraska, 1978, printed 1991 gelatin silver print, National Gallery of Art, Washington, The Ahmanson Foundation and Gift of Robert and Kerstin Adams 

In the exhibition, the pictures are segregated by themes: "the gift," "our response," and "tenancy."

In bleak settings of black and white horizontal landscapes void of most humans, Mr. Adams's pictures show the Earth's lands in all their stark nakedness, the blemishes uncovered, but herein lies truth and beauty which often evoke moonscapes and document a lack of gratitude for Earth's gifts, abandonment of the planet by its guests.

Robert Adams, Store, Elizabeth, Colorado, 1965, printed 1988 gelatin silver print, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund and Gift of Robert and Kerstin Adams.  Compare to Edward Hopper's Lonely House , 1922, below.
The catalog shows the print above by Edward Hopper, The Lonely House, 1922, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Josephine N. Hopper Bequest
Robert Adams, Schoolyard, Ramah, Colorado, 1968 gelatin silver print, private collection, San Francisco

Robert Adams, Colorado Springs, 1968, printed 1983, gelatin silver print, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Mary and Dan Solomon and Patrons' Permanent Fund.  Does this remind you of Edward Hopper?

Robert Adams, The River’s Edge, 2015, gelatin silver print,  National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Stephen G. Stein.  Seven years ago this dry riverbed forecast today's drought-striken lands of the West.  The tree stub is similar to a human skeleton like  those found at Lake Mead near Las Vegas this year, after the water level dropped significantly, an effect of climate change.

Robert Adams, North Edge of Denver, 1973-1974, printed 2008, gelatin silver print, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Robert and Kerstin Adams. A sad and lonely industrial side of town on first glance, but then a viewer starts to think more about it, and...

For the large, 300+ paged catalogue, American Silence: The Photographs of Robert Adams ($65) which includes a complete timeline of Mr. Adams's life, Ms. Greenough has written a marvelous biographical essay about him


He was born in 1937 in New Jersey to liberal Methodist parents who moved to the West where the boy often went hiking with his dad, exploring the outdoors, rafting rivers, working in camps.

The son was a Boy Scout who attained the lofty Eagle Scout award. The outdoors became his paradise and later, the subject of his pictures.  

He loved reading and visiting the Denver Art Museum with his sister.  An architectural drawing course he took in high school influenced his life.

In college Mr. Adams met his wife who was a book worm like he and another lover of nature.
A fellowship enabled him to become Dr. Adams and earn a Ph.D. in English literature while he was teaching at Colorado College.
While there, he began taking pictures part time, giving up teaching in 1970 to devote himself full time to his passion: taking pictures of the outdoors.

The author of many books, one, The New West published in 1974 (and on display at the Gallery) helped launch his career. Later came a prayer book set in the forest, Prayers in an American Church. (Earlier in his life, Ms. Greenough said Adams considered becoming a Methodist pastor but decided organized religion was too confining.) 

Another of his memorable titles is Our Lives and Our Children (1984, with a new 2018 edition) which describes in pictures the people who lived at risk downwind from the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant near Denver where the Adamses lived. 

Ms. Greenbough in her essay and Arthur Lubow who interviewed Mr. Adams for the New York Times (July 13, 2022) cite the influences on the photographer of Paul Cézanne and Edward Hopper and their emphases on melancholy and loneliness, easy to spot in many of Mr. Adams's pictures . 

Ms. Greenbough notes that Mr. Adams is also well versed in Emily Dickinson and Henry David Thoreau.

Some find hope in his pictures, but for others, hope is buried in the stark portrayals of the detritus left by humans.

But look, there on the horizon, hope comes with the passage of President Biden's climate justice bill and what can be. 

This is a large display of stimulating pictures to spark a conversation, as great art does, about what was, what is, and what we can do about it.

Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Adams, the National Gallery of Art, Jeffrey Frankel, Terry Tempest, and many others. 

The show travels to the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno for exhibition Oct. 29, 2022 - Jan. 29, 2023. 

What: American Silence: The Photographs of Robert Adams

When: Now through Oct. 2, 2022, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Where: West Building, Ground Floor, Galleries 23-29, National Gallery of Art, 6th and Constitution, Washington

How much: Admission is always free at the National Gallery of Art.

Metro stations for the National Gallery of Art:
Smithsonian, Federal Triangle, Navy Memorial-Archives, or L'Enfant Plaza

For more information: (202) 737-4215

Accessibility information: (202) 842-6905

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Saturday, August 6, 2022

Assassinate Putin? Discuss

 

Olena Zelenska, the first lady of Ukraine, accepted the Dissident Human Rights Award at the Victims of Communism Annual Captive Nations Summit held at the Victims of Communism Museum, July 19, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie


The question was posed to a panel at the Victims of Communism Annual Captive Nations Summit last month at its new museum in Washington.

Peter Humphrey who identified himself as a former diplomat asked the question.

For a few seconds, stunned silence filled the room. The 50 or so in attendance wondered if they had heard correctly.

They had.

Finally, panel member 
Marek Jan Chodakiewiczblurted out the obvious: Do you mean, kill Putin?

Yes was the reply.

Olena Zelenska, the first lady of Ukraine, second from right, with officials from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation including, from left, Ambassador Andrew Bremberg, Edwin J. Fuelner, and Ambassador Aldona Wos at the Victims of Communism Captive Nations Summit held at the Victims of Communism Museum, July 19, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie


After a few seconds of silence, Mr. Chodakiewicz said an assassination really wouldn't achieve anything since the Russian government would just pick up the pieces and continue.

Eliminating Putin means someone else would step in and take over, and not necessarily for the better.

Brian Whitmore, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and another panel member, agreed. At least, Putin is a known quantity, more or less.

Panel members from left, Brian Whitmore, Michael Sawkiw Jr., Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, and Milda Boyce, moderator, at the Victims of Communism Captive Nations Summit, July 19, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie


At the event, the first lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska, was present to receive the Dissident Human Rights Award, and she spoke briefly before leaving for the White House and a meeting with President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden.

In a somber mood, Ms. Zelenska, in her remarks, renewed focus on those fighting communism, denouncing Joseph Stalin's legacy which must not be permitted to continue.

On the panel, Mr. Chodakiewicz noted that Ukraine is not drawing as much attention in Europe as expected.

"Spain is more concerned about the invasion from Africa" than Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Chodakiewicz is a Polish-American historian who specializes in Central European history of the 19th and 20th centuries and teaches at Patrick Henry College and the Institute of World Politics.

He said Kazakstan, Poland, Belarus and more are on Putin's "menu."The "land bridge" to Crimea allows Putin's "incrementalism" and although Putin knows he's not immortal, he has no incentive to stop his aggression, but perhaps he may move "more slowly."

No one is calling for the destruction of Russia.

Also on the panel was Michael Sawkiw, Jr., a member of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America Executive Board, who said Russia denies the facts, makes war and claims victory.

"Putin will never negotiate until he has to negotiate." Putin has noted how he wants to emulate Peter the Great. (Watch out, Baltics!)

Whitmore said this coming December will be the centennial anniversary of the founding of the Soviet Union. In 1922, the West was "not engaged." It's a very different world now. 

Putin is "very cognizant of the anniversary and he would like nothing more than to put Russia back" the way it was. Georgia is on his radar, too.

"We're kind of in 1947 and everybody's got to watch their backs."

The Victims of Communism Memorial Statue at the Victims of Communism Museum/Photo by Patricia Leslie
At the Victims of Communism Museum/Photo by Patricia Leslie
The 
Victims of Communism Museum has several small galleries with artifacts and photographs devoted to the message of fighting communism/Photo by Patricia Leslie

At the Victims of Communism Museum/Photo by Patricia Leslie
At the Victims of Communism Museum/Photo by Patricia Leslie
At the Victims of Communism Museum/Photo by Patricia Leslie
At the Victims of Communism Museum/Photo by Patricia Leslie

On the second panel Hyun-seung Lee, Ambassador Martin Palous, and John Suarez addressed "The Lessons of Ukraine for Captive Nations Around the World" with Carlos Ponce, moderating.

They talked about North Korea, Cuba, and other nations where freedom is unknown.

"Freedom is not free," Lee said. If you don't fight for freedom, it will not survive.

Ambassador Paula Dobriansky is a VOC trustee and the daughter of former Ambassador Lev Dobriansky, chairman emeritus of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation which hosted the event.

She sent a video message that the VOC Foundation "stands in solidarity with the nations around the world held captive by communism."

Those nations were identified as China, Iran, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea and possibly, Ethiopia.

Ambassador Dobriansky said that victims of communism will not be forgotten, but "let us recommit ourselves to the defense and promotion of individual liberty."
At the Victims of Communism Museum/Photo by Patricia Leslie

At the close of the gathering and before lunch, five members of the Carpathia Folk Dance Ensemble dressed in native Eastern European costumes and waving colorful floral wreaths, entertained attendees with graceful dancing.

The Victims of Communism Museum opened June 13, 2022 and is a $40 million project supported by the nations of Poland, Hungary, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, among others.

On its website, the museum says it is dedicated to the estimated 100 million people killed by the murderous ideology in the past century, as well as to the 1.5 billion others still living under its jackboot.
The Victims of Communism Museum/Photo by Patricia Leslie

What: Victims of Communism Museum

Where: 900 15th St., NW, Washington, D.C., across the street from McPherson Square.

When: Monday - Friday, 9 a.m. - 3 p.m.

Cost: No charge

Metro station: McPherson Square

For more information: info@victimsofcommunism.org(202) 629-9500

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