By Tommy Bourgeois
At this writing, the New Year is but two weeks old. I ask your indulgence, dear readers, of some personal reflection and editorial commentary. Within days of my January 4 lunch at Mama Lu’s Dumpling House in Pasadena, which afforded a welcome chance to visit with South Pasadena’s adopted son Tom Marcus and Swarthmore’s Ben Yagoda (in SoCal for a few days with his wife Gigi Simeone), the local mountains surrounding my Los Angeles Basin home suddenly became a ring of fire, fueled by hurricane-force desert winds and tinder-dry vegetation. Two blessedly wet winters had given way to severe drought (.16 of an inch of rain between May and December), creating ideal conditions for the perfect firestorm. Thousands of structures—homes, businesses, schools, recreation centers, churches, synagogues, mosques, and other houses of worship—are lost, over a hundred thousand Los Angeles County residents are dislocated, the death count as of mid-January stands at 24 and will most likely climb, and the air quality—less than wonderful on a good day—is rendered even more challenging by smoke carrying a toxic stew of particulate matter. Even worse, the political air is rife with ill will and misinformation, a scarcity of compassion, and tendentious critiques—many rooted in easily discerned falsehoods and most in bad faith—of local and state leaders. Talk of “conditioning” aid to my adopted home or tying its distribution to the next fiscal year’s budget emanates from our factionalized nation’s capital. Welcome to the bitterly divided and fact-challenged order of 2025!
On to matters more promising and pleasant:
I hope your arrangements to attend our 50th reunion (May 29–June 1) are in order. Cochairs Javade Chaudhri and Gunnar Knapp, along with treasurer Nancy Young and your humble scribe, have been working hard to make sure it will be special. By now you’ve received invitations to participate in a class survey and contribute to a class book. Steve Ballou and Skokorat have agreed to provide music for a Saturday night dance in the Davenport courtyard. (Spoiler alert: Steve has invited me to sit in.) Plans are underway for topical panels and a Friday night cabaret. (We have dibs on the University Theater, conveniently near our D’port headquarters.) In connection with the latter, I took part in a January 12 brainstorming Zoom conference hosted by the stalwart producing team of Peter Bubriski, Brock Holmes, and Joan Spear. Joining us in cyberspace were Mark Hewitt, Mark Peters, Bob Picardo, Sally Sanford, Ariane Van Buren, and Ben Yagoda. Counting a chance encounter with him and Gigi at the Huntington Museum the day before our Pasadena dumpling feast, the virtual meeting marked the third time I’d seen Ben in ten days. We should all be so lucky!
In other news, Ben’s Calhoun roommate Andrew Giarelli, permanent senior lecturer at the Anglo-American University in Prague, reports that the academic journal Brno Studies in English has published his article entitled “‘The Subtleties of the American Joke’: Mark Twain Versus Europe.” Here is its abstract: “‘Guides cannot master the subtleties of the American joke,’ Mark Twain writes after he finishes a bout of stymying European efforts to teach culture to him and his comrades in The Innocents Abroad (293). The joke is double-barreled: Europeans do not realize the joke is on them for being stuck in their past and because Americans are not as dull-witted as they seem, but the joke is also of course on clueless traveling Americans, thrashing about Europe for cultural self-improvement. However, and mostly overlooked in previous analyses, there really is a subtlety to that multi-layered term ‘the American joke.’ Acknowledging earlier socio-historical analyses of Twain’s confrontation between new and old worlds, as well as criticism problematizing the idea of authenticity in travel or implicating his book in Western imperialism, this paper instead explores via the lens of Menippean satire Twain’s complex narrative construction of his ‘joke,’ which ultimately blends humor and horror.”
Speaking of Americans thrashing about Europe for cultural self-improvement, I’m indebted to Andy for sharing information that enriched Ann’s and my 30th anniversary trip to Rome last September. Among his morsels of elucidation: a gloss on the history of the Piazza di Spagna (in the neighborhood where we lodged, bordered by the legendary Spanish Steps) and an explanation of the distinction between pizza and its oval-shaped cousin pinse. With Andy’s novel The Talking Statues in mind, we walked one day from our hotel to the Piazza del Popolo by way of Via del Babuino, stopping to admire the reclining figure of Il Babuino (The Baboon), one of the statues informing its title.
That’s it for now. As always, I invite your news. I’ll have only one more chance after this to say, “See you at our 50th!”