Michael Putney The Miami Herald

November 16, 2011
Michael Putney
The Miami Herald

RE: “Thanks for a warm hand on a cold morning” – Some comments on your column about books – one of the great donors of guiltless tactile sensation – in today’s Miami Herald.

Mr. Putney,

I wait, sometimes years, to use that line. I know it’s not a cold morning but, what with Florida now being vouchsafed from Gaia’s revenge because hurricanes hardly ever happen after the official No More Hurricanes date, it is time to break out the virtual cashmere.

Let me add to the growing legend of Norman Mailer.

He was a champion head-butter. One of the great activities at the bar in the Players’ Club in Gramercy Park, NYC was the selection process for the evening’s main event. A 3 inch difference could inadvertently result in smashed noses and chipped teeth.

Only a very, very bright guy could give himself absolution for causing the death, by murder, of an absolutely innocent bystander. His citing Martin Luther King is proof positive of his status as a “Smarmy bastard of the Year”. In Mailer’s case we grant him eternal status. The Sacrament of Penance requires a duet. In the world of modern American Liberalism, a world without boundaries, a world with no knowledge of the “Permanent Things”, all that is required for perfect contrition is for the alleged perpetrator to say, “OOPS”.

In addition to scratching a throbbing itch the library I built in my house in West Orange was a jobs creator. 7 shelves, each one 12 inches high, 12 inches deep, and not quite a yard wide times 13 separate cases was a lasting reminder of my gilded age when conspicuous consumption was the norm. It was the class project of the 11th grade woodworking class at Glen Ridge High School. I don’t know what the teacher paid his students. I know that I paid him cash. It was a win, win, win situation for all concerned. And, very importantly, not one cent was borrowed from the Chinese.

I had an English teacher whose job when he was in graduate school at Columbia
University was to fetch Dylan Thomas from the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street in lower Manhattan. Nothing compares to hearing a poet read his poems. Thomas’s voice made Richard Burton, his literary executor, sound like Pee Wee Herman. It will be a test of my failing powers of persuasion to keep my 3 Texas ladies attentive to all of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” this year.

I had another teacher who was taught by T.S. Eliot. He said his voice was like an egg shell.

I always keep my Plutarch handy. Harry Truman read him every day he was in the White House.

I suggest that you keep a copy of “The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy” close at hand. It was compiled by E. D. Hirsch. It beats Wikipedia.

I search vainly for a segue to why I am writing today.

Mitchell Kaplan

I moved to Florida in October, 1996. I found Books & Books by Halloween. I in possession of an early edition of “The Wasteland” that I intended to give to my son for Christmas. I went to Books & Books to get a selection of prose by Ezra Pound. Not finding any I asked a most attentive sales lady where I could find him. She told me that the store didn’t carry him. I was speechless. Almost. Imagine, said I to her, 20th century literature without him. Joyce, Eliot, Yeats, Hemingway. He edited them all. Why, said I.
She pointed to a thin man with a black beard. Ask him, she said. He’s the owner. He told that it was his store and he would never have Pound in it, the reason being that he hated Jews

.As a champion of private property – I suggest “Property and Freedom” by Richard Pipes – I agreed with him. I walked out of the store. I haven’t been back since.

Every time I would see him getting an award for championing some oppressed group, said group being well within the boundaries that “eclectic indignation” allows, I would write to him recalling the incident. Surprisingly, such surprises being proof positive that there’s no fool like and old fool, he never wrote back.

“Chilling effect” and “slippery slope” notwithstanding, it all depends on whose Gore is being oxed.

I have yet to come to the 140 character world of Twitter. It is well to note that 5 words can say a lot. “Mom’s dead”, “Fire One”, “It’s a boy”, “Todt Juden”, “Of course I love you”, “Next”, “You’re fired”, “Strike 3”, “Cuba Libre”…..

To which I can only add

A little says a lot

Have a nice day


KS