Michael Putney The Miami Herald

June 13, 2012

Michael Putney
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693

RE: Buckle up! The other shoe is airborne. – Some comments on your delightful column this morning.

Mr. Putney,

Forgive me, please, for not thinking of you as I rushed pell-mell through the task of “unbooking” myself. I am told that when someone is dropped from a Twitter or a Facebook list the proper phrase is “unfriended”. I am past the limits of Ockham’s Razor. Empty shelves and dust bunnies abound.

You say that John Sullivan has “found ways to incorporate the technology of fiction into reportage”. I imagine you read the New York Times by IV each morning. You are probably running out of “good” veins. Having stopped the puzzle cold turkey on October 3, 1999 I chucked the rest of it when front page reportage in the beginning of 2003 devoted more space to the horror, the continuing horror, of there be far too many urinals at Augusta National than the upcoming war in Iraq.

Since I don’t – never – lend books Logic would dictate that I can’t borrow them either. I mention this because I have given away at least 20 copies of “A Confederacy of Dunces”. The last one went in March to an Englishman I met in a saloon in Antigua in 1979. [My uncle Adam, a canny Scot, said that “more good has come from an inn than any other invention of mankind”] I put a paper clip around the introduction written by Walker Percy. I tell reluctant donees that if they read that and are not grabbed by the more thoughtful short and curlies to devour the book put it down. Further, I tell them that if that is the case their secret is safe with me.

The other line from Percy, one that should be writ in stone, one that is transcendental, is “The road to Auschwitz begins in an abortion clinic”. It is almost Augustinian. “Love God and do what you will.”

Reading – not Googling – is the last mental pong game. One hit triggers another. Pretty soon things are popping up all over. I have been a fan of the Classics – Fan of the Classics? Hubris, no? Ah well, the Gods will sort it all out, won’t they? – for a long time. If Xanax isn’t available I suggest that a silent reading of the Iliad and the Odyssey plus a sleep mask will help you through a Pet-Scan or MRI of your skull. I realized last month that Caroline, my 10 year old granddaughter, the one who had her hair cut for “Locks for Love” when Grammy had her chemo, the one who raised $5,000 for St. Jude Children’s Hospital, knows more, far, far more about Greece and Rome than I did at the same age. I will see to it that she has a delightful summer.

My lists [enclosed] have been to Russia, China, and even New Jersey. Who knows where else? A tells B who tells C who skips over D but tells H and M. It’s like tossing a bottle with a message into the Gulf Stream. Quien sabe?

The whistling sound of “Incoming” grows louder.

On or about November 1, 1996, my second week in Florida, I tracked down Books& Books in Coral Gables. I was a regular by Christmas. I went there to pick up some poems for presents. I had a few tomes in hand when I noticed that a name was missing from the shelves. I asked where this author was. The most helpful sales lady directed me to a bearded thin man [Full disclosure demands that I announce that I too am bearded. I have no memory of ever being called thin.] I asked him, and this was before I knew him to be a champion of free speech, where Ezra Pound was. He said that it was his store and that he wasn’t going to carry that anti-Semite. Joyce, Eliot, Hemingway, Yeats. It is impossible to think of 20th Century literature without thinking of Pound. Free market devotee that I am I agreed. I walked out and haven’t been back since.

It is fitting and proper to note that Star Chamber lockups did not begin with WOG terrorists. Modern American Liberals who champion the detainees in Camp Gitmo, America’s first adult sleep away camp, have sent Pound so far down the Memory Hole that he is beginning to come out the other side. 13 years in the booby hatch without having been arrested, arraigned, tried, or convicted. Thank God we still have “eclectic indignation”. It’s better than none at all.

Nat Hentoff wrote a book titled “Free Speech for Me but not for Thee”. I mention him because he told me if I got arrested protesting a restrictive speech ordinance in Lauderdale by the Sea he would write a column about me. “That’s easy for you to say”, was my response.

Walker Percy to Nat Hentoff. Perfect together. The circle expands.

Thank you for a non-alcholic eye opener



Kevin Smith