“There’s no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were.” Nina Simone
Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
It doesn’t do any good to think about what might have been. “Isn’t it pretty to think so,” Jake asks Brett, reminding us all that, had it not been for the war, the lives of the characters in The Sun Also Rises would have been more comfortable, more typical (and thus perhaps less worthy of the novel in which versions of Hemingway’s friends all appear).
My French bulldog Margot lounges about during the day, resting on an elbow on an arm of the divan like Édouard Manet’s Olympia before lulling back towards sleep, saving her strength for her 5 AM demands to be let out into the cool and healthier air. Insofar as six months is a quarter of her life, she may barely remember when people used to leave the house. Our animals have grown comfortable with our perpetual quarantine. Once when I was working in the garage, she had to exist for a few minutes without immediate companionship, so she expressed her displeasure by chewing up my second-favorite headphones. While the girl may make trouble, she never gets into trouble. She is our baby with canines.
I’m grateful for Margot, even if we cannot travel as easily as we could during those few months between dogs. And now there are so few places to go. I am grateful for our old house as it fills again with boxes, though sometimes I still imagine unpacking those same boxes in that other house. When a person dies, and she returns to us in our dreams, we live in two worlds, our brains not catching up so readily to the new absence, focusing almost unwillingly on what might have been.
America has been feeling a new absence since Friday with the loss of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Commentators on the news remind us how Ginsburg had radically improved the lives of women long before Hillary Clinton recommended to her husband that he choose her for the new job opportunity that made her even more widely known. Sometimes, such as when the current U.S. President asks the women at his maskless rally if their husbands “are OK with” their attendance at his event, we can imagine that alternate universe, a handmaid’s tale time when women had to ask permission, and were not present when important decisions were being made.
Writers know this sort of speculative double-consciousness well, for we spend so much of our time in other, private worlds of our own creation, interacting with or impersonating the characters who we have brought to life. Catherine Drinker Bowen said that “Writing is a kind of double living.” I hear an echo of Bowen’s idea in words spoken by Jennifer Egan, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel A Visit from the Goon Squad: “When I’m writing, especially if it’s going well, I’m living in two different dimensions: this life I’m living now, which I enjoy very much, and this completely other world I’m inhabiting that no one else knows about.”
Just as The Sun Also Rises makes me grateful for Paris in the 1920s, rereading Frank O’Hara’s book Lunch Poems as I did today makes me grateful for New York City in the 1950s. Creatives make distant places and times come alive, whether they be authors or musicians. African rhythms and tones had once transmogrified into the Blues, and strains of the Blues subsequently morphed (or matured) into Jazz. And Jazz, still tinged with the struggle of its practitioners, informed O’Hara’s poetry and the writing styles of many authors since, especially those who value invention and surprise. Whether we are American authors or musicians, we are inclined to rebel, to bristle when instructed by authorities to act properly, or to think or write in approved ways. As Oscar Wilde said, “A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.”
National Book Award winner and American statesman John Lewis called this sort of misbehavior “Good trouble.” As is the case with many mischief-makers, John Lewis became stronger because of the struggle that he helped to lead. Of the recent dark times, 2020 is the darkest of them all. The deaths of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Lewis, and even The Black Panther lead us to lament the loss of so many heroes. The deaths of 200,000 Americans to Covid-19 remind us how widespread the unexpected losses are being felt. We should remember that people like Lewis and Ginsburg struggled to make our country more fair and just, but insofar as they transcend the times in which they lived, they represent ideals that deserve our continued support, and labor. Ginsburg once said, “Dissents speak to a future age. It’s not simply to say, ‘My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way.’ But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today, but for tomorrow.”
Speaking of hope, and of a wish for the future, I will close with some encouraging words that Lewis published online two years ago: “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”
Yours in trouble,
Dr. Andy
In addition to the topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the following topics: households, same-sex couples, ghostbusters, baseball teams, a Caribbean free of pirates, peace preferences, runners up to Cinderella, steals, detectives, speedy thieves, European culture, greetings, famous statues that no one wants to topple, Harry Potter, Zillow, The Avid Reader Bookstore in downtown Davis, hitchhiking, jurisdictions, racial diversity, central heat, certain people feeling hushed by throttlers, heavy metal, Joe Biden, first ingredients, uncertainty, NASA science, impressive clocks, World War I, constitutional republics, bad news, musclebound villains, notable mountains, Pokemon Go, matrices, filters, candy bars, and Shakespeare.
Thanks and welcome to the following individuals or teams who are new subscribers to the Pub Quiz on Patreon: The Mavens, Dana Ferris, Keltie Jones (of Canada!), Craig Lowe, June Gillam (who signed up mostly to receive a weekly essay from me), Portraits, Greg Miller, Richard Deneault, Quizimodo, and Bono’s Pro Bono Oboe Bonobos.
Special thanks to our first Adamantium Tier subscribers, The Original Vincibles, one of whom will soon be mailed some swag: a hardback copy of the aforementioned Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara. Because of this team’s investment in this expanded enterprise, they now get video performances of the Quiz. Last week I purchased a new microphone, a new webcam, and even a green screen: today I shoot my first-ever video Pub Quiz. I suppose I will have to unpack one of my black shirts. Should that come together, everyone at the Gold or higher tier will receive a link to that video this week. Note: There will be less caterwauling in my house than there was in the Pub.
I invite you to join the fun over at Patreon. Even at the $4 a month level, subscribers are enjoying bonus Pub Quiz questions on most days, including some with visual hints. Expect also additional audio and video as I become more adept with the new equipment. I’m deeply grateful for all of you who subscribe.
P.S. Here are three sample questions from last week’s quiz:
- Energy Fields. What “A” word do new-agers use for a human energy field?
- Pop Culture – Music. Nicknamed the “Father of Rock and Roll,” what rock pioneer was born in St Louis, Missouri in 1926?
- With its elongated body and fast swimming speeds, what fish from the family Istiophoridae is the name of a Major League Baseball team?