Bookish 9.11.22
Thing 1+Thing 2: Close-Reading History (and Life) in Real Time
Sunday newShrink greetings, with the first-draft read on a whirlwind week.
Beyond its significant commemorative date, this 9.11 edition has taken on unanticipated gravitas, archetypal heft and ceremony in the later days of a remarkable news week on national and world stages.
These are depicted visually in the left- and right-column photo images above and discussed in numbered items below.
Today’s title salute to all things Bookish remains. Illustrated in the center column, in one sense it’s a tribute to fall’s peak-season for reading of all kinds, books and book clubs. This core theme also notes and explores a transcendent, even transformative, power of the reading process itself. It’s a move depth psychologists and scholars might refer to as a close reading. Here are a few notes on some of these ideas, terms and themes in this edition:
🔷A close reading involves looking at something, then looking again, and again — from one angle or through one lens, and then different ones, across a passage of time and considering future prospects.
🔷Close reading is especially helpful where conflicts, choices, decision-making and problem-solving are involved. It involves bringing one thing, then another, together to compare, contrast, and consider any effects of the combination. (Hence the descriptive, though completely inelegant, terms “Thing 1, Thing 2” in the title!)
🔷 Borrowed from academia, various thinkers and authors from Jung, Hegel and Hillman to Dante and Nabokov, close reading has been described as spiral-like, a looping back-to-past-and-forward-to-future way of looking at things — instead of solely in linear progression.
🔷We might be doing a literal close reading of a text of some sort, of events or subjects such as news or history, public or biographical figures and characters. The term can also apply to how we approach our own felt-experiences and the way we envision our lives.
🔷A close reading approach is in dynamic motion, always weighing, comparing and contrasting combinations of things — not fixed, static or rigid.
🔷In case all of that sounds too wonky or fuzzy, in everyday terms close reading follows a deceptively simple-sounding, possibility-opening suggestion from James Hillman: That we replace BUT with AND wherever possible in how we think, speak and take action. It’s thinking more in “Thing 1 PLUS Thing 2,” less in Point/Counterpoint or this-versus-that terms. (Hence that + sign in the title…)
Now looking at the photo-illustration’s center-column focus on joy and power of words, books and the close-read…
#1. “Staircase of Knowledge’’
The repeat-favorite photo is of stunning steps at the University of Balamand Library, Lebanon.
#2. Official Great Seal of the United States
Of primary interest is the Seal’s Latin motto e pluribus unum: out of the many, one.
The visual and particularly the motto’s message express my increasing conviction that preserving the unum/unity of democracy — our “Republic, if we can keep it,” as Franklin said — might require and call on us to be not only informed but close readers, constant and vigilant ones. Depth psychologists Jung and Hillman describe as transcendent the transformation and possibilities that result when we intentionally hold and attend to different things — hold “the many” — in this way.
For those concerned with “originalism,” this motto is on the original Great Seal of the United States created by founders Adams, Jefferson and Franklin and enacted in 1782. It was 176 years later, in 1956, that Congress passed an added “official” motto, In God We Trust, to appear on our money. The Seal retains the original motto.
#3. Tale of 2 People: Delia and Peter
Beneath the motto are photos of a couple and a related book I recommend, this month’s selection from my book club.
Books by and for booklovers
At right is Delia Ephron’s memoir Left on 10th: A Second Chance at Life, by the best-selling novelist, essayist and screenwriter of warm-hearted comedies like You’ve Got Mail. She and husband Peter are the couple at center with their Havanese dog.
Delia Ephron Writes Her Way Through Cancer to a Happy Ending
(Interview in The New York Times. Photos by Naima Green.)
Her new book is a medical thriller, a cancer memoir, a love story and a hero’s journey — except there were two heroes: Ephron and her husband, who walked with her.
This last part is the Ephron story — along with that of her beloved new second husband Peter, a Jungian-MD/psychiatrist — that’s most of interest on many levels for me. The two and their many relational circles embody and model a core newShrink purpose: To track and highlight what conscious (ie. soul-engaged), mature psychological adulthood and relationships of all kinds might look and feel like in today’s America.
Outside the psychotherapy room in our culture we don’t tend to speak about, or put much thought or value on, emotional intelligence or capacity for healthy, varied, deep and loving relationships of every kind across gaps of time, geography and life’s challenges.
I believe we should. These are essential, all-too-rare life skills, at which many or most of us are cluelessly in need of role models or inspiration. With this in mind the focus shifts here from book review to its soul- and relational dimensions.
Please note, this shift is entirely mine. Humble and wryly humorous throughout, Ephron in no way writes or presents herself, Peter or their story as a “how-to-do-illness-grief-and-late-life-love” by some poster-paragons of psychological savvy. (If she had, the book would likely be insufferable!)
Here is a more personal and relationally focused review, also from The Times. (Though a wide traveler, Ephron is devotedly a New Yorker. The memoir title refers in part to her longtime Manhattan street address.)
Delia Ephron’s Memoir Could Be Called ‘Love, Loss and Love Again’
Beyond Peter’s profession there are many synchronicities and other Jungian/soul-psychological elements here. Ephron prominently highlights and cites Peter’s favorite Jung quote, and one of mine, from Modern Man in Search of a Soul:
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
My recap:
Around 2015 began a dizzying rapid succession of deepest sorrows and ecstatic joys for the then 70-year-old Delia. She was still mourning the loss of her very close, occasional co-author/famous-writer sister Nora Ephron, to a fierce leukemia called AML. First came the death of Delia’s beloved husband of three decades, theater, film and TV writer Jerome Kass, after 10 years with prostate cancer.
In the aftermath of Jerry’s death Ephron wrote a wry-humor column for The New York Times about widowhood’s maddening practicalities such as getting an Internet account cancelled. Improbably, across-country in the left-coast Bay Area, an also-widowed 70-something Jungian [yes, really!] psychiatrist named Peter read and enjoyed her piece. It also cued his memory (though not hers) of a couple of casual dates he and Delia had had — over 50 years before, set up through her sister Nora.
The two began a few weeks’ all-email cross-country correspondence that unfolds on the page as a beautifully thought, felt and written relationship. It rings emotionally true, a rare delight to read. Things deepened and intensified so much, so quickly that the two were admittedly, madly in love and moving toward a mostly east-coast life together by the time they met in person.
Four months later, Delia, too, was diagnosed with the AML that had killed her sister.
She and Peter married, at his wise and ever-cheerful insistence, in the hospital as she began the excruciating two-year ordeal of a newly available kind of bone marrow transplant that had not been an option for Nora. The transplant would ultimately heal, but not before torturing and very nearly killing, her.
With another writer this stretch of memoir could be unreadable. With Ephron the through-line of the story is less about deaths, losses and return from near-fatal illness than of two 70-somethings finding deeply devoted love, and exuberant life, with each other plus an astonishing range of loved ones:
Theirs is not the story of comfy, late-life companionship. Ephron presents a moving and heartfelt portrait of romance — also of passion. She doesn’t tell us much about the sex part [beyond its] restoring “all the madness and thrill of falling in love at the stage in our lives when all that was supposed to be over.”
I’d add that comedy-writer Ephron shines here. Her spot-on comic take on surprising absurdities in finding themselves to be pretty-sexy-old-guys is deftly hilarious, yet tender and appropriately private on details.
Not surprising given the extended incapacities during her illness and long recovery, throughout Left on 10th Ephron, now 77, rather charmingly appreciates, but doesn’t quite get or have language for, the many unconscious/soul- and depth-psychological dimensions of Peter or of her life and their story thus far.
This sets up and animates a lively dance of mutual mystery and curiosity between them. Theirs is not a caregiver-patient, or a survivor, vibe at all.
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The bottom center-column’s highlighted quote features another favorite memoir: Memories, Dreams, Reflections is the title of Jung’s.
#4. Reflections
The NewYork City 9.11 Memorial picture at bottom center is of one of the Lower Manhattan park site’s two, stunning reflection pools, each in the footprint of the Twin Towers. Here’s a link to last year’s 9.10.21 newShrink edition featuring the tragedy’s 20th anniversary, the section titled “Visiting Ground Zero: Reflections on Healing and Wholeness.”
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On other somber notes of the week…
In memoriam: Two giants of journalism
Anne Garrels, longtime foreign correspondent for NPR, dies at 71
(from NPR, audio and text versions available)
Anne Garrels, longtime foreign correspondent for NPR, died on Wednesday of lung cancer. She was 71 years old.
At NPR, Garrels was known as a passionate reporter willing to go anywhere in the world at a moment's notice if the story required it. She was also a warm and generous friend to many.
Bravery led Garrels into many war zones. And when it came to covering a war, she was there at the beginning, in the middle of the battle, and at the peace table. She was the kind of reporter who would drive alone across a war zone if that's what it took to get the story.
CNN anchor Bernard Shaw dead at 82
(CNN)
Former CNN anchor Bernard Shaw died Wednesday at a Washington, DC, hospital of pneumonia unrelated to Covid-19, his family announced Thursday. Shaw was 82.
Shaw was CNN's first chief anchor and was with the network when it launched on June 1, 1980. He retired from CNN after more than 20 years on February 28, 2001.
During his storied career, Shaw reported on some of the biggest stories of that time -- including the student revolt in Tiananmen Square in May 1989, the First Gulf war live from Baghdad in 1991, and the 2000 presidential election.
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Looking now at the left-column photos…
#5. Tale of 2 American Legacies
With the long-delayed ceremonial first-revisit to the East Room of the White House, Thing 1…
The Obama portraits
Many of my thoughts and commentary on this occasion are captured in the top-left column photos, headlines and stories below. I highly recommend going to You Tube videos of both Obamas’ full speeches and the dynamic between them. I particularly recommend and will be revisiting several elements of Michelle Obama’s in upcoming editions. Meanwhile, if I were to be granted a magic-wand speech I would love to have written, this one of hers would be on my short wish-list. For what it’s worth she would similarly top a short list of my fantasy-unicorn candidates for president in 2024.
Obamas return to the White House, unveil official portraits (The Washington Post)
Painting Michelle Obama Took 9 Months. Keeping It Secret Took 6 Years. (NYT)
Sharon Sprung, an instructor at the Art Students League of New York, is a realist painter of the old school.
When 2 pictures in a White House say a few thousand words (Politico)
The unveiling of Barack and Michelle Obama portraits revealed far more than paintings.
The Politico piece does an excellent job of reading-the-room, capturing a lot of the tone, camaraderie, relationships along with well-communicated and nuanced messages both shadowed and light.
Here’s some history and a look at all of the White House historic portraits.
This widely televised event’s contrasts, with the back-and-forth news reports on various legal wranglings and more developments from the more recent previous administration, were jarring. As was the interruption in the course of historic tradition, with President Trump having simply refused during his presidency to host the traditional unveiling and hanging of the Obamas’ portraits.
The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin, pre-Trump a moderate conservative voice, spoke for many with her column, “Thank you, Obamas, for showing us how a First Family should behave”:
Former first lady Michelle Obama put it most eloquently when she explained: “We hold an inauguration to ensure a peaceful transition of power. Those of us lucky enough to serve work ... as hard as we can for as long as we can, as long as the people choose to keep us here. And once our time is up, we move on.” She added, “And all that remains in this hallowed place are our good efforts. And these portraits.”
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Looking farther south to Thing 2…
Trump’s Mar a Lago
Here again, bottom-left column photos, headlines and quotes below largely convey developments and key issues in this unfolding story of the federal investigation of illegally held government documents, including 100 known to be classified, at the former president’s Florida beach club. I additionally recommend Robert Hubbell’s September 7 Today’s Edition newsletter, “Judge Cannon did everyone a favor.” (roberthubbell.substack.com).
Hubbell summarizes and links in one piece a wide range of legal and other experts on the “special master” ruling. Among other experts and their legal points, Hubbell cites both the precedent-setting U.S. v Richard Nixon case and this week’s firm public criticism by former ardent Trump defender and Attorney General Bill Barr. This brought to mind, again, how many people, threads and relationships involving Donald Trump connect all the way back to the early ‘70s administration of disgraced President Nixon — and how many of their efforts ever since seem partly compensatory or in retaliation for Watergate.
If my memory serves, Bill Barr’s attorney father was in the Nixon administration during the son’s later college or law school years. Nixon’s, and the nation’s, first TV, media and press expert was Roger Ailes, who went on to create and run Fox News to counter if not eliminate post-Watergate journalism. Others include Roger Stone and Paul Manafort. Much of the ‘80s Reagan conservative movement, too, had similar deep roots in Nixon-era backlash. All of which makes Bill Barr’s latest public about-face this week, even on today’s Fox Channel, more interesting.
On reading Judge Cannon’s ruling itself, I’m no lawyer. Even for me elements in the ruling’s tone — eg. such slangy language as “in a league of its own” — quickly seemed jarring and bizarre. Cannon’s November 2020 appointment to the bench by Trump, just days after he’d lost the presidential election, is eyebrow-raising if not jaw-dropping. (Do these federal judges ever recuse themselves for anything?) Other than that, based on the story below and other more biographical profiles she has seemed just solidly conservative, not wacky. (Eg: Undergraduate education at Duke, Michigan law school, federal prosecutor experience mainly on appeals rather than litigation, positive comments on her demeanor and relationships.)
Both the long-seasoned veteran professional Barr and Cannon are current examples on a long list of of those demonstrating a hypnotic sort of group-think or participation mystique effect once involved or working closely with Trump. It’s a bit like the “flashy-thingy” effect in the original Men in Black movie.
Of this participation mystique, Jung wrote in Visions seminars:
People with a narrow conscious life exteriorize their unconscious, they are continually in participation mystique with other people… [by contrast] If more unconscious things have become conscious to you, then you live less in participation mystique.
The more conscious or awake we are, the less susceptible to group-think manipulations.
Judge Grants Trump’s Request for Special Master to Review Mar-a-Lago Documents (NYT)
The ruling also effectively barred federal prosecutors from using key pieces of evidence as they continue to investigate whether Mr. Trump illegally retained national defense documents at his estate.
Trump Ruling Lifts Profile of Judge and Raises Legal Eyebrows (NYT)
Judge Aileen M. Cannon has issued the first highly scrutinized ruling of her short judicial career, involving the person who put her on the bench: former President Donald J. Trump.
Bill Barr calls judge’s special master ruling “deeply flawed” and urges DOJ to appeal (CBS News)
Justice Dept. Asks Judge to Lift Block on Trump Documents Investigation (NYT)
The Justice Department asked a judge to hold off on enacting key parts of her order, including a temporary ban on its ability to use files seized from former President Donald J. Trump in its inquiry.
Holding these glimpses of America as Thing 1, the lenses widen across the Atlantic…
#6. Tale of 2 Democracies
… much as our collective lenses began to do around midafternoon Thursday with news of the era-defining death of Britain’s longest-ever reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. Photos and images in the far-right column depict various elements.
Great Britain
It was by chance, and fitting, that some of the first commentary I heard was the voice of historian Jon Meacham, author of The Soul of America. The full text of his quote highlighted at top right column begins from Shakespeare’s Henry V:
“What infinite hearts ease must kings neglect that private men enjoy! What have kings that privates have not too, save ceremony, save general ceremony?”
And yet, counters Meacham:
“Ceremony is how we elevate human experience to a higher plane.”
A sampling of the stories…
Queen Elizabeth II Dies at 96; Was World’s Longest-Reigning Monarch (NYT)
The Reign of Queen Elizabeth II Has Ended (The New Yorker)
Elizabeth, who died on September 8th at ninety-six, led a life made up of privilege and sacrifice, and even those who resented the former acknowledged the latter.
Here, acknowledgment of the monarchy’s long, dark shadow…
Queen Elizabeth's death revives criticism of Britain's legacy of colonialism (CBS News)
Critics are responding to "the relationship of the monarchy to systems of oppression, repression and forced extraction of labor, and particularly African labor, and exploitation of natural resources and forcing systems of control in these places”…
The Queen of the World (The Atlantic)
The paradox of Elizabeth II’s reign was that in presiding over a shrinking empire, she became a modern global monarch.
In closing images at bottom right, the new monarch Charles III on Friday walks with his “darling Queen Camilla” among floral remembrances from thousands of Brits. The double rainbow had broken through clouds outside Buckingham Palace Gate shortly after the public posting of the queen’s death there.
Camilla Becomes Queen Consort, Capping Years of Image Restoration
#7. A view forward
From a depth psychological standpoint this week’s events on both sides of the pond point to many, many themes and threads for more curiosity and exploration in future newShrink editions. For now here are just a few for later revisiting.
In Britain
Tracking shadow themes of British Empire and monarchy across generations of the royal family could be a fascinating full-time project for someone. To me most compelling:
🔷 First is the specter-theme of taboo love, sexuality, divorce and marriage vs duty that haunted, yet ruled supreme, throughout Elizabeth II’s life and reign from the time of her uncle’s abdication of the throne. This has defined, sometimes tragically, her destiny and that of her sister and her heirs.
🔷Second, as with America’s grappling with our enslaving history, reckoning with pervasive lingering impacts of Britain’s long history of racist imperialism — and meanwhile unconscious projection of this shadow onto visible public targets — has seemed almost inevitable. An example to watch is Harry, the new king’s second “beloved,” by-choice untitled, transcontinental son and heir. Harry, his biracial American wife Meghan and their two children are eerily near-caricature examples of carrying the monarchy’s enormous, largely still unconscious, shadow.
🔷Also interesting from the standpoint of the collective soul or unconscious, this shift of the dominant collective shadow emphasis to Harry and family emerges just as Charles III ascends the throne — and the Brits have stopped beheading rejected consorts and excommunicating or banishing kings over divorce, love, sex and producing male heirs.
In the U.S.
And here in the States, as I’ve said and written before, I am no monarchy fan or follower. But there are up-sides to Parliament/Prime Minister democratic systems. Their clear separation of roles, responsibilities — and especially public projections and expectations — between those elected and accountable for governing and those serving as permanent ceremonial, ie. archetypal, figureheads can benefit both. (This weekend I found myself agreeing on this with opinion columnist George Will… though not so much with his unnecessarily ponderous language and tone.)
From the standpoint of the collective unconscious psyche the ceremonial and figurehead functions provide containment big enough to hold the immense, potentially destructive, energies of momentous change. Of late this comes to mind more and more often as I contemplate such horrific, uniquely American, debacles as the January 6 U.S. Capitol Insurrection and our continued, inexplicably tangled, efforts to correct them.
You might have gotten a small sense of this collective containment if you, as I did, happened to walk through a room Friday afternoon just in time to be caught and reduced to tears and jello-legs by the voices of Brits in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Amid a host of daunting and divisive economic, societal, political and global challenges, they were singing together their national anthem. For their first time ever, it was God Save the King.
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In the spirit of today’s Bookish themes here are a couple of closing thoughts…
… for, as a novelist (who ought to know) reminds us:
And, that is all I have! Talk to you next week.
🦋💙 tish
… it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
— William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”
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