Overdrive (27 page)

It is as bright as it had been early in the morning, cold and fresh. There are only two other vessels visible in a harbor crowded with sail and powerboats during the summer, and we feel the keenness I felt yesterday, though today the boat is more maneuverable; indeed, with a crew conversant with its paraphernalia, there is little you can't do quickly. In my schooner
Cyrano
it required fifty-five seconds at full motor power (the sails furled) to return to where you were, and during those fifty-five seconds a passenger aboard
Cyrano
drowned in the Hudson River ten years ago.
Patito
, under power, can jump through hoops, this because the rudder is broad and juts back well away from the keel center. We stay out for only twenty minutes, during which Christopher catches me up on this and that. I am highly excited over his forthcoming book, having now read the manuscript and marveled at the skill of the book's conception and execution. I dislike its title
(Steaming to Bamboola
) as much as Christopher does, but the publisher is absolutely stuck on it, and for once, Christopher's defenses are worn down. He enjoys being the speechwriter for the Vice-President, but tells me that unlike those speechwriters who complain that their material is severely edited,
he
complains that his is virtually unedited. Christopher has become extremely fond of George Bush, and his only complaint is that some days he reaches such a pitch of exhaustion that on getting home he can't even summon the energy to eat, so achingly tired is he. That's the kind of life that leads to lots of junk food, he volunteers, advising me that he is going on a diet (he is about five pounds overweight).

We get back by a quarter to four and, reaching the house, I embrace my son, because I won't be here when he returns from church, and he speeds off. There are two large cars in the driveway. One will take the Nivens and Pat to New York, Jerry will take me to Kent, Connecticut, for Jim Burnham's seventy-sixth birthday. I called Marcia this morning and told her that there simply wasn't any way that Pat could come, as she would be working all evening at Seventy-third Street preparing the lunch tomorrow for George Bush, with twenty corporation heads invited. Marcia said how sorry she was, but that she understood.

I had brought up a dozen different wines from the cellar, and Pat had wrapped each one festively in different-colored paper, and the lot of them were now in a big basket, together with the video games I bought yesterday. I said goodbye to Jamie and Fernanda and the girls, and for David a bear hug—I would see him next in Switzerland. I'd see Pat "before midnight if I'm lucky," I said as we kissed. I walked then to the study, and Jerry helped me stash my papers into the car.

More correspondence. Gus Renson, a retired mechanic-engineer of vast erudition, Belgian, opinionated, and a compulsive correspondent whose letters are charming and informative, wishes to quarrel over the portrayal in
National Review
of the battle of Yorktown. I thought it entirely reasonable to refer him to Professor Thomas Wendel, who wrote the piece, but now he tells me that I share with Wendel a "common francophobia," which is the first I've heard about
that
phobia of mine. But I'm glad Gus got into the subject because I subsequently discovered an interesting linguistic anomaly. Webster's Third defines francophilia as being "markedly friendly or attracted toward France or French culture or customs," whereas anglophilia is given as "particular unreasoned admiration of or partiality for England or English ways." This would suggest that Webster's Third suffers from a little francophilic-anglophobia.

Harvey Shapiro of the New York
Times Book Review
has asked me to write a hundred words about "the book I wish I had written." I almost always agree to do anything Harvey asks, for reasons obvious and not so obvious, and I go along with this, but with mental reservations, because what the hell, I mean, how do you handle such a subject? I resolve to do it by taking liberties, so I write, "When I consider how my light is spent, ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, I lament that I did not compose the message by which John L. Lewis advised the American Federation of Labor of the direction in which he elected to take the UMW. We disaffiliate.' To make it all the more beautiful, it was written in pencil, on wrapping paper. Aaargh! as Swinburne would say." (Harvey called Frances later, apologized, said my contribution was too offbeat—everybody else had actually mentioned entire books—and would I understand if he didn't run my contribution, which I did.)

Lewis Feuer sends me an account of the odd association of the Frankfurt Marxists with Columbia (University) Liberals, an association effected, incredibly, by no less than President Nicholas Murray Butler, back in 1932. I speculate that perhaps it was the pronounced conservatism of Butler that led him to tender the Marxists the bizarre invitation to set up shop at Columbia.

Playboy
has a new mag called
Playboy's Fashion for Men
(I learn), and it apparently intends to go for the non-skin-flick-fashion-general-interest types, and the proposal is that I submit to the "main interview" for their Spring 1982 edition. "I realize that you rarely comment on this subject as a rule, but as you can see from the enclosed interview, we try not to limit our conversations only to fashion. Our first interview subject, Cary Grant, discussed his own perception of style and changes in films, among other areas; in the enclosed issue, pitcher Jim Palmer talks about his experiences with Madison Avenue and in the major leagues in addition to personal style. Since you exhibit quite a distinctive style, going back to your reminiscences of prep school and Yale, we'd like to use your personal tastes and observations as a basis for discussion and go on to the changes in Washington over the last administrations. . . ."

Frances had mentioned this letter over the telephone when it came in (I was out of town) and I told her I smelled a repeat of my situation with the conventional
Playboy
interview of ten years ago, when, upon being propositioned, I asked the managing editor how much I would be
paid
for submitting to a
Playboy
interview, and he practically fainted: we don't
pay
people we interview— to which the obvious response was, But
you
want to interview
me, I'm
not asking you to interview me; and finally we settled on three thousand dollars, which was by no means excessive, because one of those interviews takes hours upon hours upon hours, and leaves you with thousands of words to edit. The notion that I would be qualified to say anything at all interesting about fashions, even in a conversation en route to Reagan's deficits (where I knew the interrogation would soon lead), amused me. My wife is marvelously dressed, and I love it so—in fact she is in one of those permanent international best-dressed women categories—but I more or less wear more or less the same thing.

My father-in-law, who was a great big gruff no-nonsense tycoon with a nice, but generally inaccessible, sense of humor, went down for his breakfast one morning in Vancouver in his vast house to find the paper laid out for him as usual and his picture on the front page under the headline that he had been voted among the ten best-dressed men in Canada. That was bad enough, but what really did it was the caption: "Austin C. Taylor—Sartorial Gem!" It was, Pat says, two weeks before he would consent to go downtown. I answered
Playboy
with a single sentence, "To proceed with the planned interview I would need an idea of the questions you propose to ask, and the fee you propose to pay." I am in favor of philanthropy, but feel no impulse to exercise that imperative for the benefit of Hugh Hefner.

A woman writes in a) to ask my opinion of the Ulster problem, and b) to complain about Frances Bronson. She had telephoned to get a quick fix on a) above. "In your absence, I spoke to your Executive Secretary, Frances Bronson. I believe I broached a sensitive subject with this person who went on to give me her personal opinion, one I did not ask for. She was insolent and rude. Her final insult was to pull the plug on our conversation." On the bottom of the note Frances had scrawled, "Bill— My [English] accent offended her: I was not insolent—just said a very complicated issue, etc.—f." "Dear Mrs. O'Connor: It is conceivable that you know more than I or my colleagues about the public issues involved in the crisis over Northern Ireland, utterly inconceivable that you should know more than I after thirteen years of professional intimacy concerning the manners of my secretary Miss Bronson. I can only conclude that the sensitivity in the case of the first issue leads to bad judgment in the second. . . . With all good wishes."

A woman is writing a book to be called
How You First Heard the News: The Reaction of Others Around You
. She desires my memories of where I was and what I did when JFK was assassinated, and tells me she already has responses from Arthur Miller, Ralph Bellamy, General Westmoreland, Henry Cabot Lodge, Isaac Asimov, and so on, and while I think free-lancers should be encouraged I tell her I'll comply when she tells me she has a book contract. That disposes of eighty percent of requests.

Dick Wheeler, back in the early sixties, was the proximate cause of a recurrent professional nightmare. He had graduated, achieving singular distinction as a columnist in the undergraduate paper, from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and at the time was employed as an editorial writer on the Oakland
Tribune
, working for William Knowland. I was scheduled to debate at Berkeley in a large auditorium at eight with a professor of politics on the general subject of congressional investigations, and Dick and his wife had me up to their apartment for dinner with a few guests. As the clock approached the hour I kept making gestures, wondering whether we shouldn't leave. Don't worry about a thing, Dick kept repeating—"it's only a few blocks."

Well of course,
it
happened. Traffic jam. And at twenty minutes
after
The Hour I dashed out of the car and started to run in the general direction of where I assumed the stage was—hard to reach because the external passageways were like those in bullfight arenas, or Madison Square Garden. When I arrived I was breathless, and the speaker, although scheduled to speak second, was already well embarked on his speech (the assumption was that I had taken ill, or whatever, and would not be turning up). Everything got progressively worse. I simply couldn't
hear
the speaker from where I was seated, and so began to edge my chair away from what I assumed was a dead acoustical spot. The effect must have been Buster Keaton-droll, because the audience clearly thought I was attempting to ham things up. By the time my opponent had finished, I didn't have the least idea what it was he had said, and in the scheduled colloquy, from which I hoped to reconstruct his line of analysis, he grandly waived his right of examination, leaving me with
nothing
at all to react to. The nightmare is of running through endless hallways, making the wrong turns, even as I try desperately to find the stage door.

Our friendship survived, and now Dick tells me he is working for a little publishing house in South Bend, and has joined an Anglican parish, one of whose ministers is Fr. Gerhart Niemeyer, age seventy-four. Gerhart became a priest a year and a half ago, and I flew to South Bend to witness what must have been the single most beautiful ceremony I ever attended. For days I was struck by the vision of my old friend, a self-exile from Hitler Germany, a devoted husband and father, a man of huge intellect and humor, who decided at age seventy-three theologically to go all the way, so to speak. I see him, dressed in white surplice, prostrate before the altar, or standing and reciting his part of the priestly colloquy with the bishop:

. . . As a priest, it will be your task to proclaim by word and deed the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to fashion your life in accordance with its precepts. You are to love and serve the people among whom you work, caring alike for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor. You are to preach, to declare God's forgiveness to penitent sinners, to pronounce God's blessing, to share in the administration of Holy Baptism and in the celebration of the mysteries of Christ's Body and Blood, and to perform the other ministrations entrusted to you.

In all that you do, you are to nourish Christ's people from the riches of his grace, and strengthen them to glorify God in this life and in the life to come.

My brother, do you believe that you are truly called by God and his Church to this priesthood?

ORDINAND: I believe I am so called.

BISHOP: Do you now in the presence of the Church commit yourself to this trust and responsibility?

ORDINAND: I do.