Have you read Inner Excellence, by Jim Murphy? Well, a lot of people are reading it right now — after seeing A.J. Brown read it on the sideline during a playoff game. (Mr. Brown is a football player, a star receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles.) I begin my Impromptus today with this subject. I also address Caesarism, nationalism, imperialism, and maybe other isms as well. Something for everyone to like, or dislike. Find it here.
Lately, I have been publishing some mail in response to my article about William F. Buckley Jr.: “WFB: Big, and Glorious.” A reader now writes,
Dear Jay,
. . . Toward the end, you say, “Critics called him ‘effete,’ ‘elitist,’ and worse. What he was, was himself — his wonderful, warm, wide-ranging self.” I had a small, inside glimpse of that warmth once.
It was the late ’70s. I had a bursary job in the Manuscripts & Archives department of the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale. One of my tasks was cataloguing Mr. Buckley’s personal correspondence, which he was donating to Yale over time.
His correspondents ranged from rich to poor, from prominent to unknown. These were people of every background and belief. And Mr. Buckley treated them all with the same attention, seriousness, wit, and — most strikingly to me — warmth. He seemed, at least on paper (the only way I knew him), to genuinely love every person he encountered.
Afterward, I began to read his magazine regularly, and have ever since.
In recent weeks, I have been writing about the memorization of poetry and other texts, and publishing letters on the subject, too. A reader sends me a list of things he memorized, way back: speeches in Shakespeare; “The Star-Spangled Banner,” by Francis Scott Key (all four stanzas); “a raft of Irish verses,” as he says. (He comes from an Irish-American family.)
But what got me was a song of the American Revolution by William Billings, which begins,
Let tyrants shake their iron rod,
And Slav’ry clank her galling chains,
We fear them not, we trust in God,
New England’s God forever reigns.
Strong stuff.
A reader writes,
Mr. Nordlinger,
In your review of Tosca, you say, “Only recently did I learn what an ‘intimacy coordinator’ is.” If you have informed your readers elsewhere, I must have missed it. Please let me in on this intimate knowledge. Grazie.
Oh, my apologies. The “intimacy coordinator” coaches cast members on kissing and sex scenes and the like.
And on that not-quite-G-rated note . . . my thanks to one and all.