I’m writing from a secure, undisclosed location (though not my usual one) to announce that I resumed work on Hotter Than That: A Life of Louis Armstrong yesterday morning after a longish and eventful hiatus. The immediate stimulus was the recent arrival of the galleys of Thomas Brothers’ Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans, which comes out in March. I’ll be writing about it at length in a future issue of Commentary, so suffice it for now to say that it’s a very important book. No sooner did I put it down than I felt the irresistible urge to get cracking on Hotter Than That again–further proof, if it were needed, that I’m myself again.
Here’s something I wrote earlier today:
The coming of modernity not only shrank America to a manageable size, but drained away much of its romance. In an age of airports and superhighways, the Mississippi River has long since lost the symbolic resonance that Abraham Lincoln evoked in 1863 when he paid tribute to General Grant’s victory in Vicksburg by proclaiming that “the Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.” The phrase, borrowed by Lincoln from James Fenimore Cooper, now has a quaint, almost fustian air. How can we who take the miracle of transoceanic flight for granted think of a mere river–even a 3,900-mile-long one that cleaves the country from top to bottom–as the Father of Waters? Those who live near the banks of the Mississippi need no reminding of the fearful extent of its dammed-up wrath, but for most of the rest of us, it is not a destination but a landmark, something to be flown over or driven across on the way from one megalopolis to another….
Now it’s back into the barrel again. See you later!
P.S. I’ve been having such a good time that I forgot to post the Thursday almanac and theater guide before going to bed last night. Scroll down and you’ll find them in their usual places.