“Ho, ho, ho! Why, thank’ee, guv’nor!” cried the red-clad figure
as I slipped him a five-spot. Tugging a wintry forelock, he pressed a bit of
paper into my hand. This surprised me. In 50 years of adding my mite to the
Salvation Army’s Christmas haul, I had never before been given a receipt. As I
continued on my way, I looked at it and saw that what I was holding was in fact
a coupon entitling me to a discount lifetime subscription to The New York Sun , the projected new
daily scheduled to commence publication next year.
This caused me to turn around and take a second, hard look at the
jolly imposing figure on the corner, fitted out in scarlet plush trimmed with
white fur, whom I had casually assumed to be a Santa in service to the holiday
ideals of General William Booth. And who do you think greeted my eyes? None
other than Conrad Black, the great media baron and investor in the fledgling Sun, garbed in the red velvet and ermine
regalia he is entitled to sport as a newly minted peer of Her Britannic
Majesty’s realm under his chosen style of Lord Black of Crossharbour (although,
to be honest, recent photographs indicate that Lord Black of Krispy Kreme might
be equally fitting). Never one to shirk trench duty, Lord Black was out
soliciting subscriptions for his new paper. A most elegant and imposing solicitant
he made. Right out of Iolanthe. Tantantara! Tzing! Boom!
How could I have mistaken such an eminence for a street-corner
Santa? I mean, as a former member of White’s Club, who knows from peers better
than I! Moreover, from the moment I saw it just a few weeks ago in the weekly
edition of the new noble Lord’s very own
London Telegraph -to which I am a subscriber both paid up and of long
standing-Lord Black’s investiture photograph has been a fixture on my office
bulletin board, right alongside a series of photos clipped from the
indispensable French society journal Point
de Vue et lmages du Monde showing a lady of fashion I once knew through
Madame Claude, but who has since gone on to great things in the gratin. In it,
the new milord beams at the camera with a self-confidence that bespeaks a deep
sense of what’s what. This is, after all, a man who was willing to forswear his
Canadian birthright and citizenship in order to be legally free to take his
seat among the commission-men and fixers “elevated” to the House of Lords by
successive British governments. It is the view-and the law-of Canada that the
only official scarlet get-up permitted of its citizens should be the tunic of
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but what was good enough for Sergeant
Preston of the Yukon clearly wasn’t what Lord Black had in mind.
This is not intended to disparage His (new) Lordship, any more
than one would disparage Stephen Hawking or any other person afflicted with a
crippling disability. Mr. Black is one of the brightest, most attractive people
I’ve ever met, but he suffers from that all but terminal social-climbing
compulsion that seems to be a specifically Canadian thing. The editor of Vanity Fair and the proprietor of the Daily
News are also plagued by the affliction, which suggests that it may
be limited to media personages born in our neighbor to the north, rather like
those genetic quirks that dictate that all the males in a given family will
have one blue eye and one brown. Perhaps we can call it “Beaverbrook Syndrome,”
or “Mad Proprietor Disease.”
In the event, it is obvious from his pleased expression that the
right to dress up like a Gilbert & Sullivan extra is what His Lordship most
wanted to find under his Christmas tree-and so, in the spirit of the season and
of my idol, Jack Aubrey of the Blue, I give Lord Black the joy of his joy.
As I give the same to all of you, my blessed readers.
But joy is one thing, and the holiday haul quite another. A
couple of weeks ago, two of my fellow Observer
writers, whom I think of as “Precious” and “Semiprecious,” posted lists of
desirable gifts, many of which sounded like theme and variations on Judy
Garland. In the course of the year, I too have reflected on Christmas gifts
that might lie within the compass of what’s left after the bulk of one’s
seasonal generosity has been parceled out to those whom difficult times have
thrust into need, disillusionment and grief. Nothing too fancy, in other words;
nothing that would qualify for the Styles section of the Sunday Times, where Harvard-educated young
women agonize over $3,000 handbags from Hermès (“A handbag!”-encore Lady
Bracknell).
To start with, great music is a gift that keeps on giving … and
exalting … and consoling … and uplifting. On the new Web site www.andante.com,
you can order up a four-CD compilation of the chamber works of Schubert in
remastered performances that are “historic” because they are, truly, Olympian.
When Artur Schnabel and Fritz Kreisler and the Pro Arte String Quartet and
others recorded these performances, it would seem that Orpheus himself tuned
the instruments and the muse Calliope turned the pages. This is blessed stuff!
Balm for even the most heartsore spirit. And between tracks, you can read about
Schubert’s music (and that of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, et al.) in David Dubal’s
brand-new rich and instructive The
Essential Canon of Classical Music . (Mr. Dubal will be signing at the
Juilliard Bookstore on Dec. 12 and 13-go forth and buy!)
Things to read and things to listen to that furnish a room, or a
tree, most handsomely: For overseas friends and family, or those located in
distant domestic parts, a gift certificate to Amazon.com does the trick. My
Milan-based daughter and her husband can easily acquire subscriptions to Hello! or the collected works of
Wittgenstein or Leonard Cohen’s new raspy CD.
As to specific titles to be sent, here are some ideas: First, how
about a subscription (I assume all little girls and boys are signed up and paid
up for The Observer ) to the International Herald-Tribune , whose
arrival every day is a lesson in what short shrift The Times is giving us (call 800-882-2884). And I can’t understand
how anyone who lives in this city seriously can go without City Journal , published by the Manhattan Institute (800-562-1973).
Books next: I don’t suppose there’s a one of us who hasn’t gone
through a ping-pong stage of life-mine was in the “butt-rooms” of Exeter-and
the novelist Jerome Charyn has produced a smash of a little book, Sizzling Chops and Devilish Spins: Ping-Pong
and the Art of Staying Alive , which I recommend to both those who prefer
foam and those who prefer sandpaper on their paddles. I also went through a
surf-casting period, and I’ve got to say that for whatever reason, fishing
seems to be consistently better written about than any other sport-hence my
strong endorsement of Peter Kaminsky’s The
Moon Pulled Up an Acre of Bass: A Flyrodder’s Odyssey at Montauk Point (Hyperion),
a volume that will bestir even those readers to whom the only finny creature
worth caring about is the kind they serve at Esca. Mr. Kaminsky’s book has a
lot in common with the late Charlton Ogburn’s The Winter Beach , for those of you who remember that wonderful
work.
The great New York novel is probably William Dean Howells’ Hazard of New Fortunes , which is just
out in paperback with a fabulous, enlightening introduction by Philip Lopate.
If you think a whole lot has changed, this book (first published in 1890) will
convince you otherwise. Then there’s A
Ned Rorem Reader , just out from Yale, a well-assorted selection from
Rorem’s diaries and criticism which is quite simply about as perfect a volume
for the civilized reader’s night table as I can think of. The chapter on Truman
Capote is worth the price of the book.
I guess we’re all interested in life at the top. Otherwise, there
would be no point in the publicists’ bulletin boards posing as “gossip columns”
maintained by the likes of Richard Johnson and Liz Smith. As indicated, I’m
addicted to Point de Vue , which
chronicles the goings-on in (mostly royal) Euro-society. Every story, branded
with a coat of arms, gives rise to the question famously asked by Ronald
Reagan-“Where do they get such people?”-but the party pictures constitute an
Olympus of the second-rate and pretentious: the real thing, in other words, as
opposed to the cheesy collection of mediocre would-bes that impress the David
Patrick Columbias of this world. A subscription can be had by calling
800-363-1310.
Finally, two books, entirely different in character, that show
what a properly organized big life looks like from inside. The first is a
limited-edition vanity production, Yesterday
Is Gone: The Story of Rosemarie Kanzler ,
as told to Kathryn Livingston. The late Mme. Kanzler (later Marcie-Rivière)
moved with panache, calculation, a sure tread and much horizontal ingenuity in
the highest circles, and her book is a hoot. She asked me to help her with it,
which I was only willing to do if she would tell the whole truth (it was
rumored that she had been a girlfriend of Hitler’s propagandist Goebbels),
which she would not. But even this more selective telling, voiced in the third
person, has its moments of insight. “What is it about postwar glamour … that
evokes such contemporary nostalgia?” she asks-and then answers: “Probably, its
authenticity.” I may have come in at the end of that epoch, but I grew up
knowing many of the players, and I think she’s right.
The Kanzler autobiography is to the best of my knowledge only
available at the Madison Avenue Bookshop, and while you’re there to get yours,
pick up several copies-once you look into it, you’ll be giving more than one-of
Duane Hampton’s marvelous valentine to her late husband Mark and the life he
made: Mark Hampton: The Art of Friendship
(HarperCollins). It’s about people and places, many with fancy or well-known
names, but mostly it’s about how if you’re blessed with both talent and
character, as Mark was, you make a life at the top worthwhile. It so happened
that as I opened the parcel containing the book, the adagietto from Mahler’s
Fifth Symphony was just starting on the stereo; there is nothing I know of more
evocative musically of time going, gone or lost (other than-just possibly-“Bob
Dylan’s Dream”), and as I turned the pages and the music played, I became
distinctly aware of ocular moisture.
But I will shed no tears for this awful, incredible year that now
dies and goes, I pray, straight to the Hell it has made for so many undeserving
lives, whether they worked at ground zero or for Enron; people who suffered the
fate of those who get in the way of zealots who care about nothing but their
own twisted notions of glory.
On that cheerful note, God bless us-every one! Well, most every
one. Even Tiny Tim would have drawn the line at Henry Kissinger.
