Gene Russionoff Doesn’t Understand
Gene Russianoff, the grand poobah of the New York Public Interest Research Group and the Straphangers Campaign, is oft-quoted in the city’s media, and usually reliable for sensible good government critique. But Gene, apparently, doesn’t have a clue how unions work.
Responding in the Times to a City Council bill that recognizes that local unions are distinct political entities with their own agendas that are distinct from the larger federations to which they belong, Gene says, “It will allow the same decision-maker to make multiple contributions.”
I guess Gene’s opinion is skewed by how NYPIRG operates, where from Albany to Queens College to Stony Brook, the chapters carry the same message and work on the same campaigns: those that Gene decides. But in labor, while unity is the goal, the locals have their own goals and loyalties. For example, in SEIU, Local 1199 (health care workers) endorsed Freddy Ferrer while Local 32BJ endorsed Bloomberg. Obviously, SEIU President Andy Stern wasn’t “calling the shots” here.
The situation becomes even more complicated with mergers. The garment workers local 23-25 of UNITE HERE simply does not have the same political agenda as the hotel workers local 6 of UNITE HERE. The garment workers lobby to preserve special zoning for factories in the garment district. Without that special zoning, hotels would pop up in that valuable midtown district.
But the Campaign Finance Board, in interpreting the city’s campaign finance law, decided to consider all locals of the same international union one political entity and to cap their donations severely. The decision was an insult to labor and a threat to the integrity of the campaign finance law itself. Gene should do some more research.
Finding J.D. Salinger
Shedding itself of Sara Edward-Corbett’s delightful cartoon, “See Saw” and Alexander Cockburn’s enjoyably bilious essays long ago, the NY Press lost the rest of my interest when zinester Jeff Koyen resigned as editor. I’m glad, however, that I caught Sean Manning’s account of scanning a microfiche library of “New Yorker” back issues to read the most famous of J.D. Salinger’s “underpublished” short stories, “Hapworth 16, 1924.”
Salinger had a very formative influence on me as a teenager, and is most responsible for my overuse, as a writer, of asides and adjectives like “awfully,” “lousy” and “terrific.”
I also appreciate to hell the romantic mystery of this crazy guy going off to the country in New Hampshire to write in peace. He’s continued writing every day since he last published “Hapworth” in 1965. Some accounts have him as completing three whole novels. Others, more likely in my opinion, have him completing hundreds of short stories centered on the Glass family. One wonders just how bizarre these stories must grow with the passing of time, and with the elderly Jerome Salinger’s estrangement from regular society. Do his later stories focus on the kids, and grandkids, of Boo Boo, Franny and Zooey? Do those grandkids still talk like hyper-intelligent fantasies of the writer’s imagination? Do they sound like they haven’t left the house since 1965?
One day, after Salinger’s passing, we will know the answers to these questions when his work of the last forty years is finally published posthumously. In the meantime, we content ourselves with bootleg republished collections of the short stories that he published before 1965, the most famous of which appeared in an actual hardbound edition in the 1970’s, and was sued and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law that remaining copies command a princely sum. These short strories include some masterworks that were curiously left off of “Nine Stories,” as well as odd early uses of character names that would become more familiar later (Most notably, a hard-boiled sergeant named Vincent Caufield, whose “crazy” younger brother Holden goes MIA after D-Day), as well as early drafts of chapters from “Catcher.” One of these, “I’m Crazy,” includes an additional sister, a toddler named Olivia who asks her 15-year-old brother for olives (because he mixes martinis for himself on the sly?).
If I seem overly familiar with this material that hasn’t been mass produced since the 1940’s, it’s because I did my own equivalent of microfiche searching. Early in the popular Internet age, I searched for Salinger’s underpublished short stories and found a website that published the scanned and misspelled text of the lot of them. I promptly downloaded and saved them for posterity, assuming that the website would soon be sued out of existence.
It was an enormous pleasure finally reading these stories that I had long heard about. I suspect, sadly, that Salinger’s “new” material will never match what he published when he was still young and still a part of society.
My favorite story, “A Young Girl in 1941 With No Waist At All,” is a typically wonderful coming of age story. It features a teenager on a cruise with her fiance’s mother. The power of the story is communicated in details, side comments and awkward silences in the dialogue. To spare you a search for “Mademoiselle’s” microfiche catalogue, or to spur you on in your search, here is a legally permissable 479 word sample:
“I just don’t want to get married to anybody yet.”
“Well! This is certainly very – unusual – Barbara. Carl loves you a great, great deal, dear.”
“I’m sorry. Honestly.”
There was a very brief silence. Mrs. Odenhearn shattered it. “You must do,” she said suddenly, “what you think right, dear. I’m sure that if Carl were here he’d be a very, very hurt boy. On the other hand-”
Barbara listened. It amounted to an interruption, she listened so intently.
“On the other hand,” said Mrs. Odenhearn, “it’s always the best way to rectify a mistake before it’s made. If you’ve given this matter a great, great deal of thought I’m sure Carl will be the last to blame you, dear.”
The ship’s library novel, upset by Mrs. Odenhearn’s vigorous elbow, fell from the night table to the floor. Barbara heard her pick it up.
“You sleep now, dear. We’ll see when the sun’s shining beautifully how we feel about things. I want you to think of me as you would of your own mother if she were alive. I want so to help you understand your own mind,” said Mrs. Odenhearn, and added: “Of course, I know that one can’t alter children’s minds so easily these days, once they’re made up. And I do know you have a great, great character.”
When Barbara heard the light snap off, she opened her eyes. She got out of bed and went into the bathroom. She came out almost at once, wearing a robe and slippers, and spoke to Mrs. Odenhearn in the darkness.
“I’m just going on the deck for a little while.”
“What do you have on?”
“My robe and slippers. It’s all right. Everyone’s asleep.”
Mrs. Odenhearn flicked on the table light again. She looked at Barbara acutely, neither approving nor disapproving. Her look said, “All right. It’s over. I can hardly contain myself, I’m so happy. You’re on your own for the rest of the cruise. Just don’t disgrace or embarrass me.” Barbara read the look faultlessly.
“Good-by.”
“Don’t catch cold, dear.”
Barbara shut the door behind her and began to walk through the silent, lighted passages. She climbed the steps to A deck and walked through the concert lounge, using the aisle a cleaning squad had left between the stacked bodies of easy chairs. In less than four months’ time there would be no easy chairs in the concert lounge. Instead, more than three hundred enlisted men would be arranged wakefully on their backs across the floor.
High above on the promenade deck, for nearly an hour Barbara stood at the portside rail. Despite her cotton pajamas and rayon robe there was no danger of her catching cold. The fragile hour was a carrier of many things, but Barbara was now exclusively susceptible to the difficult counterpoint sounding just past the last minutes of her girlhood.
Cat
So Long, Armistice Day
It is amazing to think that a few veterans of the first World War still provide a living link to the war that provided the blueprint for the bloody twentieth century. Naked aggression and empire-building, chemical warfare and ethnic holocaust and official lies, deceit and stupid propaganda all marked that war, which left millions dead in its wake and the world’s people and governments vowing – briefly – never to do it again, only to do it again and again. Armistice Day – which marks the end of that war – was soon enough re-christened “Veteran’s Day” to honor the bravery of all the poor kids who fought in the bloody wars that followed the war to end all wars.
It is ancient history, but, conversely, still a living history and we would do well to heed certain lessons. Before he died today, Alfred Anderson was the last man left alive in this world who participated in the unofficial Christmas Truce of 1914, where French, British and German soldiers embraced in No Man’s Land, exchanged pictures from home, sang carols and even played a game of soccer.
Queen Victoria’s grandchildren had only that summer quashed any concerns about their inconvenient lineage in order to drum up nationalist fervor to recruit cannon fodder for their imperialist war mongering. Predictions of speedy victory, as is their wont, resulted in protracted stalemate, as the warring sides dug in for trench warfare in the French countryside. The trenches of December 1914 were not the elaborate network of tunnels and bunkers depicted in films like “Paths of Glory” and “A Very Long Engagement.” Those came later. These were shallow holes dug in bloody mud. It was likely as miserable an experience as a man could ever expect, and it’s hardly a surprise that the men could not muster enthusiasm to go on killing on that Christmas eve.
Gunfire was so sporadic, the air so quiet, and with only a few hundred feet between them the soldiers could at last hear each other’s voices. In their rusty second languages, soldiers called out to each other. They wished each other happy holidays. They talked about their families and girlfriends back home. Finally, they told each other, “we won’t shoot if you won’t” and all came up out of their putrid holes and met in between.
This story is something of a pacifist fairy tale, although it is true. It confirms our hopes about man’s better nature. How can a man swear another man is his enemy and must die because he wears a different uniform, after he has met him and discussed his family and life with him?
The same thing that gives us hope terrified the generals, who forbade the continuation of the truce and punished participants. Soon the fighting resumed, escalated and dragged on for four more years. Future truces would be officially sanctioned breaks to collect the dead from No Man’s Land and re-dig trenches after territory shifts.
I wonder if Alfred Anderson preferred the tributes of Veteran’s Day to the mourning of Armistice Day. Interviewed for this past November 11, he gave a hint: “I felt so guilty meeting the families of friends who were lost. They looked at me as if I should have been left in the mud of France instead of their loved one. I couldn’t blame them, they were grieving, and I still share their grief and bear that feeling of guilt.”