17. A Letter to My English Lit. Professor

May 20, 1992

Dear Karen,

I thought of you on Saturday as I perused the offerings at the new Cambridge University Press bookstore and saw your 1985 book on typology.  I picked it up and read a few excerpts, but I regret to say it remained unsold, as interesting as it sounded (seriously, for I am at last reading the Bible—up to Chronicles so far).  What a book store, though it is a mortal thought to see more than a lifetime's reading.  A little later in the day the dons gathered a few doors down to vote on the controversial honorary degree for M. Derrida.  It passed by a fairly close vote.

BBC foreign service chief had an interesting article in the weekend paper about the trials of translating English into 37 other languages.  One of the complaints: English has a multitude of fudge words like "fairly," which are quite difficult to translate into languages requiring more precision.  Ours is a language of compromise and nuance, though certainly more so over here.  This morning on Radio 4, the interviewed Virginia state prosecutor called his convicted murderer's innocence, "ludicrous," and I was reminded how we lawyers overuse that word until it doesn't have the same strength it once had.  People over here take better care of their language, and use greater restraint.  Hence words have greater meaning.  The American equivalent of a British citizen saying, "I am quite upset over thus and so," is to sue the person who caused the thus and so.  We swagger our words, like the cowboys we are, and have to invent new words like "proactive" to replace the overused ones.  I hate it, if only because I hate having to keep up with fashions, being Brooks Brothers all the way.

The Derrida affair was in the papers for weeks, as was the Cambridge history fellow who was accused of shoddy scholarship on the English Civil War by a Harvard professor, and has just, we have learned, taken on a job outside the university.  Ted Hughes and Salmon Rushdie are always in the news, but then so is the Church of England and speeches by Archbishop Carey.  The Resurrection was a lively topic for editorials over Easter.  What a difference from home!  Most crimes are relegated to little boxes on the inside pages; politics are the front page priority in the "quality" dailies (Times, Guardian, etc.).  The tabloids are more like the Las Vegas Sun or National Enquirer with top billing for the Royals.  The Sun is the leading tabloid, outsells all the qualities put together, and has a daily foldout, but then Europeans don't get as excited about nudity as Americans.  (I've read that the Basic Instinct sex scenes are a minute longer over here.  Cathy and I are still debating whether to go to what the Sunday Telegraph film critic has retitled "killer lesbians go bananas."  One thing very different here, if a film is certificate 12 or 15 or 18, under those ages cannot go, even if accompanied with adult.  Very good idea!)

We have been over here for almost 11 months.  It has been better than a dream.  Theater (lot of Shaw these days, but we have neglected our Shakespeare), concerts (Mozart bicentennial, Christmas Messiah), art museums and shows (Mantegna, Dix, Rembrandt), all the architecture, churches with their graveyards; the rivers and greenery.  Trips to France (Paris, Caen, Bordeaux, Lourdes, Cannes), Ireland (Cork, Dublin), Scotland (Edinburgh) and Italy (Venice, Rome, Tuscany), Austria (Salzburg), Germany (Munich, Dachau), Belgium (Brugges).  It was only when I was about 20, at UCLA, that I realized how fortunate I was to have spent a similar year in England when I was eight; before that I had never given it much thought.  But for a year history and nature were really alive (didn't Wordsworth say something like that?) to a kid who had grown up being entertained at Malibu beach, where history was a trip to my grandmother's house in Pasadena and nature was a field of winter weeds if there happened to be a wet year.  Ever since 1970 or so I have always wanted to do this again, for myself, but knowing the children would have their own experience, as well.  (Las Vegas is even more removed than Malibu from history and green.)  I think it has been a successful experiment, but I will be curious to observe whether my children recognize at an earlier age than I did the magic of the year, and into what lesson (?) each of them will translate this year.  Jeffrey at eight says he will bring his children here to keep the tradition alive (he was the only one to throw the coin into the Trevi Fountain); by now we have a tradition: our family in 58-59 and my mother's family in long trips to Europe in the 30's and 40's.   

Cathy and I have been to the Sunday Times Literary Banquet (open to the public if you pay), where William Trevor gave a reading; and to the Folio debate (ditto) where (Baroness) P. D. James proposed that crime fiction these days is more interesting than the real thing, opposed almost successfully by John Mortimer.  (The debate ended in a draw after a recount.)  At the end of March, I attended a weekend class on Coleridge in the Lake District.  Both teachers (adult education professors in danger of losing their jobs if Tories won--oops!) and students (mostly retired people) rattled off Coleridge and Wordsworth as if it really meant something!

Everyone seems interested in America.  People want to know if it is possible that George Bush can really lose, many lament the Americanization of England during Mrs. Thatcher's time.  (When you listen to people talk about her, it's hard to believe she ran the country for so long.  Best summary I heard was that in her first two terms she did everything right, and in her last term she did everything wrong.)  I get the impression people like the US where it is, don't like it exerting any cultural influence over here.  American commercial influence continues to spread; but there are battles, e.g., the fierce debate over Sunday trading.  The sad part is how far down the road we (US) have gone.  Amidst the Christmas concerts of classical and sacred music (British really get into that; Christmas school concert was at St. John's college chapel, absolutely lovely performance of Nativity readings and Christmas carols.  What a change from Rudolph and the 12 days of Christmas), we hear complaints that Christmas is too commercialized.  If only they could see our subdivision back home, with the blinking house decorations, especially Santa's workshop with the lifelike, moving deer and elves!

As lovely as it is over here, one can see that it is much easier to put it all together in countries with essentially one dominant culture and one religion.  As recent events are proving, some of the countries do not do well with mixing it all up, as the US has done for 200 years.  I read something by Karl Rahner in The Tablet last week, talking about celibacy, but I think it applies to life in general:  "There is no human freedom without decision.  But decision means giving up other alternatives in favor of one limited good, which—by being chosen--, becomes a living reality and as such establishes a more positive relationship to the alternatives sacrificed than a man can have who, wanting `everything', never really makes a choice and therefore never really gets hold of anything."  I can see how the principle applies to a life; but it also makes sense in a culture, though how do you decide what you want to be?  For so long it was all decided for us, now it seems up for grabs.  Can a country as diverse as the US ever decide what it wants to be?  Can there be many small decisions which preserve the one choice (e.g., one culture), which then can better relate to others who have made similar choices? . . .

Exciting times here this past year: the Soviet coup, the (sadly) civil war in Yugoslavia, Bob Maxwell, general elections, rise of the far right hate groups, German strikes, Bishop Carey and Annie Murphy (good article by Germaine Greer in the Sunday paper here on that one, about Annie's own responsibilities, knee jerk reaction of the commentators that celibacy and not human nature is to blame). 

My autobiographical book was rejected, nicely.  I entered and lost (not surprisingly) an essay contest and a poetry contest, but comfort myself by having done (in addition to the travels) much reading I always promised myself I would get around to: Dante, Aeneid, St. Augustine, Trollope, more Austen and Eliot.  This week I have begun working my way through Ulysses.  My third try, but this time, with the help of a guide book (The New Bloomsday Book) and our visit to Dublin, I think I'll make it. 

Meanwhile, I am working on a novel, mystery type, hoping I can slap something together about Las Vegas, and fooling around with a play.  I work at my desk all day, reading, writing, then at five or six the children come home (having left at 7:30) in their red blazers to tell me about their days.  Jeffrey is first, then Mara (10).  Lately Robert (11) shies away, doing other things; he also I notice has swings of emotions, and I try to remember the lessons I have learned about adolescents. . ..

Cathy says I shouldn't write such long letters, but, consider it your letter from London in The New Yorker.  I hope you are well, safe from earthquakes and riots, and faculty politics!

All my best. . . . just call me Ozzie Nelson!