“Come, woo me, woo me; for now I am in a holiday humor, and
like enough to consent.”

William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Like some people who are taking a lot of heat of a rather ugly and blustery variety for saying so, I’m no fan of the writing workshop. I was in one good one once, though. That anomalously great fiction-writing workshop took place in the later 1980s and was taught by one Luis Alberto Urrea. The new novel by my old teacher, The Hummingbird’s Daughter, is quick becoming this summer’s literary sleeper: the much to be trusted Moorish Girl, who reviewed it for the Oregonian last weekend, provides links to other enthusiastic notices as well.

Although this is all happening because Urrea’s a marvelous writer, and although my brush with him occurred awfully long ago, I feel compelled to add that it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy or a more inspiring teacher. Bravo. (And yes, I’m certainly going to read the novel when I can work it in.)

“‘So tell me, Superintendent,’ he said in a voice which stayed just this side of patronizing. ‘This was your first trip to America? What did you think of it?’

“Dalziel thought for a while, then said with saloon bar judiciousness, ‘Well, what I think is, it’ll be right lovely when they finish it.'”

Reginald Hill, Recalled to Life

The White Sox are playing the Tigers, so I’m watching baseball. The play-by-play guys for the Sox are driving me crazy, though. In what seems to me an insincere display of folksy familiarity, they call all the Chicago players by their first names, adding a “y” whenever plausible, never mind felicitous: Pauly (Konerko), Scotty (Podsednik), Hermy (I don’t know who this refers to, but I’m sure I heard them say it). For one thing, “Konerko” is a great, spiky name that it’s a shame to squander. That’s bad enough. What’s really objectionable, though, is the attempt to manufacture a chummy, affectionate bond between fans and players that should spring up organically or, if it doesn’t, be left alone. Maybe that is the case here, but to me it sounds like they’re pushing it.

Mind you, I grew up on the comparatively dry style of the great Ernie Harwell, whose relative formality didn’t preclude a definite down-home appeal. Harwell, of course, had that gently cadenced southern purr going for him, making it sound like politesse and respect but not stiffness when, say, he called opposing players “Mr.” Like anyone in his line of work, he had the trademark phrases that never fully escape becoming a bit of a schtick: the most theatrical and probably my least favorite was the home run call, “it’s looooooong gone”–though, gosh, it was a pretty little tune–and the one I most delighted in was his standing strikeout call, “He stood there like the house by the side of the road and let that one go by,” stresses in all the right places. But the best thing about Harwell’s work was everything he didn’t say, his modesty and his economy. You got from him crisp accounts of the action, frequent reminders of the score, and the occasional well-placed anecdote–but mostly you got what what you needed to know.

These guys I’m suffering now cloy in (admittedly unfair) comparison to Harwell–not to mention being some of the worst homers I’ve heard. The ones on the radio are, I think, more respected by the fans but share this tendency. I’ve seldom heard a Sox game in the car without them letting loose something along the lines of “if this Sox batter gets on and the player on deck hits a home run, we’ll have a tie game.” Or “if this guy hits a single in just the right location, the runner on first could score,” rash speculation stated as if it’s considered expert opinion. Sigh. Is it so hard to simply report what happens on the field? If that most unlikely circumstance occurs, does the Sox fan find it enhanced by having been predicted in about the same way a broken clock is right twice a day? Somehow I doubt it.

Also, this game is now going to the twelfth inning, tied 3-3. There’s little doubt the White Sox are the better team on the field–they’re the best team in baseball, comfortably–but the fact is that the Tigers have threatened in each of the last four innings while the White Sox have mostly been quiet. Do the play-by-play guys acknowledge this, the characterizing feature of the late going of the game? Hell, no. I don’t think that’s in their job description. They say this: “The White Sox have only had two hits since the 9th, so the Tigers bullpen has done its job–as has our bullpen. Neither side has given up a run” (emphasis added). No, but one has had six hits and stranded a bunch of runners in scoring position! Seriously, these guys are the Pravda of baseball announcing. One of the things that was awesome about Ernie Harwell, and made all of us who listened to him a little bit better too, was his unfailing generosity toward the opposition. He announced for the Tigers, and his pleasure was discernible when the Tigers did well, but at bottom what the man served was the game.

If you follow these things at all you’ll remember that in 1992 the Tigers organization experienced a brain freeze that remains inexplicable and outrageous to this day, and let Ernie Harwell go. I was living in New York City at the time, and when the Tigers came back without the great man the following season, I was certain I could sense from my Bowery digs the difference in the timbre of a Michigan summer night. They brought him back, of course, and all was well in the world of Detroit baseball again, even with terrible teams and even after his proper retirement three years ago at the age of 84. As was only fitting, he was ultimately the one to choose the time and manner of his departure from the game. One misses him, though–some nights more than others.

(Postscript: Looks like the White Sox might take this one in the 13th inning. Even if they don’t tell it this way in Chicago, they were lucky to get out of more than a couple scrapes along the way.)

Once more, dear friends, I hit the road, this time to see the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival‘s production of The Tempest and Barrington Stage Company‘s revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies. Our Girl will post my weekly Wall Street Journal drama-column teaser and the almanac entry for Friday, but otherwise you’ll hear no more from me until next week.

Have a glorious Fourth. If you live in a firecracker-friendly locale, shoot one off for me!

My distinguished colleague Deirdre Bair, the author of Jung: A Biography, has written to fill me in on a disturbing situation pertaining to the publication of the German-language edition of her book.

What follows is a statement by Bair which will appear in that edition:

This is a chilling moment in the annals of Jungian scholarship. The heirs of C.G. Jung, led by their spokesperson Ulrich Hoerni, have raised objections concerning the alleged invasion of their privacy that, due to German law, has forced Knaus Verlag [the publishers of the German edition of Jung: A Biography] to include their opinions of Jung’s life and work within the pages of my book. These will appear as annotations to my extensive notes that follow the text. This unprecedented invasion of my book by the Jung heirs is an appalling act and is happening against my will.

Members of the Jung family who granted me interviews, conversations, and other meetings, were told from the beginning of my research that they would not be permitted to read my book before it was published. I explained to them as tactfully as I could that this was necessary because, whether true or not, their reputation within the scholarly community is that they are intent on slanting the “truth” to their own purposes. Through articles in the world-wide press, they were known to have been obstructive to scholars and writers whose work preceded mine, and therefore, I could not risk letting them take such action with my biography. Throughout the seven or so years that I met with them, it was my understanding that they honored this agreement and would not attempt to thwart it.

Now, with their forced intrusion into my book, the Jung heirs’ intention is clearly to discredit the conclusions within my biography by implying that the book contains numerous inaccuracies. In fact, as my publishers and I have shown them repeatedly since it was first published in English in November, 2003, most of the Jung heirs’ objections are not to the content of the book but rather, to differences of editorial opinion. This became evident when I supplied them with several point-by-point refutations to their detailed lists of objections. I then asked leading scholars in the Jungian community to read both the Jung heirs’ objections and my rebuttals, and they confirmed that there was nothing whatsoever in the heirs list of alleged errors that undermined the overall conclusions of my book. All biographies will have some minor errors or fact and (unfortunately) many typographical errors therein; in common with the usual practice, I have already corrected all such errors that were called to my attention.

I regret that the Jung heirs have succeeded in intruding upon my book rather than writing their own, but my deepest regret is that through this unprecedented action they have dishonored their illustrious patriarch and brought opprobrium to his name. I must now leave it to history to decide whether my decade of serious research and objective writing about the life and work of C.G. Jung will withstand the test of time.

Speaking as a fellow biographer, I couldn’t agree more: this is bad news indeed.

As Deirdre Bair said in her original letter to me, “That such an enormous and powerful publisher caved in to threat and intimidation will have far-reaching consequences, not only for anyone who tries to write objectively about Jung, but for all other writers as well. Anything you can do to help get this information before the public will be very much appreciated.”

I’m glad to oblige. I hope you’ll do the same.

Despising,

For you, the city, thus I turn my back;

There is a world elsewhere.

William Shakespeare, Coriolanus

• Very few people who don’t write for a living understand that writing is work, much less that a writer who is sitting in a chair, reading a book or staring absently into the distance, may be as “busy” as one who is clicking away at his computer. My mother, for one, has never quite grasped this basic fact of the writer’s life, which is why I find it hard to get any work done when visiting Smalltown, U.S.A. I once yelled at her for coming into my bedroom three times in a row and attempting to strike up a conversation while I was doing my best to polish off a column and e-mail it to a waiting editor in New York. I think it’s the only time I’ve ever raised my voice to her, and I felt terrible afterward. (It worked, though–she didn’t come back again until I was finished, and then I apologized.)

I fear that I myself have soaked up some of her obliviousness. After returning to New York on Sunday afternoon from a four-day trip to Alabama, I found myself faced with back-to-back deadlines: I had to write my Wall Street Journal drama column on Monday and my Washington Post “Second City” column on Tuesday. I blithely took it for granted that both pieces would write themselves, but they didn’t, and by the middle of Tuesday afternoon I was too tired to eke out another word. Fortunately, my Washington Post editor is an understanding soul, so I sent him a note of warning, took my phone off the hook, and went to bed for two hours. I got up at five-thirty, plugged the phone back in, finished the column, and went out for sushi, marveling at how middle age has undermined my stamina. Time was when I could have knocked off both pieces in a single day, then gone out to a nightclub and listened to two straight sets before bedtime.

Like the song says, I’m not half the man I used to be–but could it be that the man I am now is twice as good a writer?

Nah.

• A friend of mine who’s going into the hospital today for major surgery e-mailed me to ask if I could suggest an amusing book. I cast my eye around the shelves and spied a copy of In Black and White, Wil Haygood’s biography of Sammy Davis, Jr., which I hadn’t read since I reviewed it for The Wall Street Journal a year or two ago. I remembered it as being hugely entertaining and suggested that she give it a spin. Then it occurred to me to look up my review. Here’s the money quote:

Wil Haygood…labors mightily to exhume Davis from the mass grave of half-recalled celebrities, and despite a slapdash prose style and a certain amount of factual sloppiness, he gets the job done.

Having just reread the first couple of chapters, I’d stand by that judgment, but I wonder whether my own bias toward elegant prose might have caused me to undervalue In Black and White a notch or two. No, it’s not beautifully written, but it tells a fascinating story in a very effective way, so much so that my memory of the book was more enthusiastic than my review.

Is beautiful prose an absolute value? Obviously not. Does it matter more to me than it should? Perhaps.

• I love film music and write about it fairly often, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s as good as Mozart or Stravinsky. Most of it is purely functional, and even the best of it is sometimes barely listenable when wrenched out of its cinematic context and performed in isolation. The other night, though, I rose wearily from my desk, turned on the TV to relax before bedtime, and found myself watching The Magnificent Seven. No sooner did Elmer Bernstein’s score start to play under the credits than I said to myself, “You know what? This is a really, really good piece of music.” And so it is. If only Bernstein had shaped the main-title music into a freestanding seven- or eight-minute concert overture–and if only MGM hadn’t greedily allowed it to be used in a famous series of cigarette commercials back in the Sixties–I bet it’d now be every bit as popular as Rodeo or Billy the Kid.

He didn’t, but you can listen to the whole score on its own by ordering the soundtrack album. Try it, and see if you don’t agree.