Inputs
Great Expectations by Vinson Cunningham: Is about David, a guy in his early twenties working on the campaign of Barack Obama, who is never named. Also never named is David’s toddler daughter or her mother, with whom David had a brief college fling before the pregnancy brought college to an end for both of them, and I was not sure what to make of that. Reflections on race, parental figures, and religion twine around what came across as very accurate descriptions of the mundanity of campaigning both in the scrappy underdog and slick machine phases. A formidable entry in the 2008 financial crisis literary cannon, if that subgenre interests you.
Outputs
After my grandmother died I started thinking about what I would say about my grandfather, but once I wrote it down it made me sad to think about the draft sitting there waiting for him to die, so here it is now. Here are some things I’ve never seen my grandfather do: Drive. Leave the house in anything more casual than sharply creased slacks and a long sleeved button down shirt. Eat meat, or eggs in any form where they can be identified as eggs. Every few years a new doctor would tell him to quit cigars and would perhaps be startled when he did so, cold turkey, humoring the doctor who would eventually realize his blood pressure was actually going up and tell him to go back to doing what he wanted. Well into his sixties he could stand on his head, I saw him do it.
When he came here in the early fifties to study he wanted to learn about American cotton processing methods, so the Boston cotton brokerage firm where he was interning sent him on a tour through the Deep South. No amount of badgering has ever elicited any information from him about that trip other than “They just said I couldn’t go to Atlanta. And they got me a driver. So I wouldn’t have to take the train.” His father had him blackballed from that same firm after he married my grandmother, so he moved the family to New York and started importing cotton and silk fabrics from India. His sales to Ralph Lauren- like, the actual Ralph Lifshitz, who really understood plaid, could picture a repeat from seeing just a few threads unlike Calvin Klein who could not get it unless a whole sample bolt was made up- were fueled by the preppy fervor for Madras. He assumes there are layers of scams and hustles in any situation and feels that at the end of the day everyone is entitled to do what they need to get by, up to a point. Making sales required lavishing buyers from clothing manufacturers with fancy meals and theater tickets, but when he talks about it now he’s less angry about the kickbacks than about what the Four Seasons got away with charging for a grilled cheese sandwich back then.
At any given moment he is only listening to about 40% of anything you say to him. His prejudices are less virulent than my grandmother’s but they are impressive in their breadth. “You know what Parsis are like,” no gramps, you’ll have to enlighten me. I cannot imagine what he would say if I ever referred to him as “gramps” to his face. His actions are dictated by values utterly alien and obscure to the people who were closest to him for the past seventy years. When he first got here there were so few Indians in America that he was brought over to meet Rocky Marciano at a baseball game they were both attending because RM heard there was an Indian guy there and wanted to meet him. When the immigration laws changed in the sixties, many members of the same family that had disinherited him asked for his help in settling here and he went through a lot of trouble to do so without any expectation that his assistance would restore his status in the family, which was prescient because it didn’t. A large part of my understanding of what it means to be a morally adult person was shaped by watching him over and over doing what he thought was right with full knowledge of what it would cost him and the unlikelihood of any earthly reward.
Back to frivolity next time, promise!
Condiment Corner
A few months ago we were taking the Port Jefferson-Bridgeport ferry part of the way home from my mom’s house. We had some time to kill so we went into a coffee shop with a tomato pickle, cream cheese, and bacon sandwich on the menu, which I knew I must have. The minutes ticked by. I asked if it was almost ready because I had to catch the boat and the harried girl said “There’s just three orders ahead of yours!” which meant I left without a sandwich. It lingered in my dreams until I used this product to attempt it. Perhaps there exists a condiment that could ruin a sandwich of which the other two elements are cream cheese and bacon, but this is not one of them. How many of those sandwiches can I responsibly eat, though, and then what of the rest? I just got Anything is Pastable from the library and Dan Pashman has ideas!