You Can't Go Home Again, But You Never Give Up Trying - Thomas Wolfe And The Oases Of N'djamena

Berkeley Arnold had led a successful life - well not exactly Winston Churchill or Niels Bohr.  He had won no military victories, led a nation, nor probed the mysteries of the quantum world but he he could be proud of his minor achievements.  He had been a good father, a world traveler, a respected teacher, and popular writer, and that had to count for something. 

Or did it? When he was spending nights with Mme. Dolores' girls in Niamey, drinking G&T's with expatriate daughters in Mombasa, or golfing in the shadow of Chimborazo he could have been on the concert stage or in the operating theatre.  A life of leisure, la dolce vita, a que sera sera life led within some vague Hobbesian existential notion?  

 

Doing mattered little in a short, nasty, brutish life - there were no such things as happy anodynes only fictions, religious faith, progressive idealism, fairy tale mornings.  No, the best that the philosophical world could offer was Epicurus or Nietzsche, and he was no Ubermensch. 

Vladimir Nabokov was a self-styled memorist - a man who understood that the present was only a matter of microseconds and the future only a probability at best.  Only the past had some substance, some relevance, some clue to meaning and identity.  So, from a very early age he did his best to capture those moments of the present which he knew would be defining and essential to give meaning to his later life.  He deliberately fixed Cannes, Biarritz, St. Petersburg, and Paris in his memory, playing scenes over and over again until they were indelibly fixed to be recalled years later. 

And so it was that Berkeley Arnold, now an older man with few adventures ahead of him, embarked on his journey into the past.  He had not fixed events, lovers, scenes in his memory like Nabokov and relied only on mnemonic devices for recall - returning to N'djamena, Nairobi, Port-au-Prince, and St. Tropez would resuscitate the past and be the inspiration for recovering it. 

Lovers of course were at the center of his return journey.  What had happened to Artemis de Meuron a young Swiss cartographer in the mold of Almasy, the model for Michael Ondaatje's novel The English Patient, a man mapping the desert but hoping to find a world without maps?  She had arrived in the Chadian capital without caravan, seconds, or equipment more than a compass, early 20th century maps drawn by German adventurers, and inspiration. 

She was brilliant, a prize, so far removed from the debutantes and Park Avenue arrivistes of his youth that she would have stood out anywhere; but here framed against the unimaginable beauty of the Sahara, she was a visitation. 

Their affair was brief - just a taste - before she went off into the desert, bound and determined to follow the old salt routes of Arab traders and find the mythical Wadi-al-Haroon.  Where was she now, Berkeley wondered.  Did she ever make it out of the desert? Was she still alive?

N'djamena today of course is not what it was.  Thanks to decades of corruption, mismanagement, and amoral disregard for the governed, the capital had become a palace and a sinkhole side-by-side in horrific irony.  The Hotel de la Paix, the small pension-like hotel run by French ex-colons from la France profonde no longer existed, nor did the Lebanese restaurant where Berkeley and Artemis enjoyed meze, grilled lamb and vin gris.  The streets of the capital had been paved but never maintained and were thoroughfares in name only, patches of asphalt amidst the potholes and ruts. 

Most importantly was the air of mistrust everywhere, an insecurity, the fragility of being a foreigner where foreigners were not wanted.  There would be no soft, Sahara wind, no courtesy, no affection for each other in this last outpost of civilization.  Whatever romance there had been, it was gone. What had he been thinking?  Why did he return, and why didn't he keep the memories as is, unbothered by what had come afterwards?

He thought of travelling to Bern where Artemis was from - a small chance of finding her but what worried him was not the failure of the search but the success.  Did he want to see an old woman scrubbing the stoop?  Better leave well enough alone.  It was bad enough that the images of their idyll had been ruined - defiled - by the reality of N'djamena.  If he were to see an old Artemis, the entire vision would be erased. Thomas Wolfe:

You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood...back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame...back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time - back home to the escapes of Time and Memory 

He had met Blanche de Castille, namesake and descendant of the medieval queen of France, in Port-au-Prince during the period of the Duvaliers.  He met her at the Olaffson, the old Victorian hotel made famous by Graham Greene in his novel The Comedians and as attractive a place as he described - rum punches on the verandah, the martinet Petit Pierre, the sounds of voodoo drums in the hills above Kenscoff...and the gingerbread houses, meringue, the dancehalls of Carrefour, and the beaches of Les Cayes. 

 

This cannot have changed, thought Berkeley.  This was the heart and soul of Haiti, the Afro-Caribbean culture, vestiges of Dahomey, candomblé and voodoo, zombies and mock funerals for the dead...It could not change; but of course it had.  Haiti today is as chaotic and lawless a place as Somalia - ruled by gangs and drug lords, a city in name only, a miserable, desperate, feral place. 

He and Blanche had stayed in the Douglas Fairbanks suite of the Olaffson and never left.  With the windows open, Haiti was there.  From the rooftop they could see the harbor, the downtown, the cruise ships and the port; and from their balcony see the far hills above the city.  

The affair was as it should be - brief, temporal, but permanent - the kind of affair that is indelible, a Nabokovian one, one easily recalled.  Berkeley knew that he could not go back to Port-au-Prince but certainly he would be able to find Blanche in Paris or Versailles where the family lived in the same chateau as their famous ancestor; but what would be the point?  

Of course there was the chance that they both could suspend disbelief, forget their old bones and relive the memories of the past.  That was all Berkeley was after, not a recreation of the past but to relive it in whatever way he could. Yet she might not have been captivated by the day and nights at the Olaffson as he had.  It might not have met the same thing, and the Lawrentian epiphany that he hoped for might be only his desire, not hers.  The successive years after the Olaffson might have intruded in ways that erased it completely. 

 

After his affair with Petra, he replayed it in detail in his head again and again.  It was like replaying a videotape, rewinding it, and replaying it again, stopping to correct a detail, recalling a smell, a view or words.  He did this for months until he forgot to do it, and when he tried again, things got muddled, events reversed, extraneous bits had intervened, disrupted the flow, turned it into a travelogue; and then he never bothered with it.  A trip to Copenhagen, like to Haiti or N'djamena might revive it, her, the place and time; but probably not, a hopeless vanity. 

'There are all kinds of love in the world', wrote Fitzgerald, 'but never the same love twice'. True enough thought Berkeley; but when age had take its toll and there were to be no more future, different, engaging loves; and when there was only the past to rely on, then what?

'The past is a flimsy excuse for the present' wrote Antiochus. Perhaps, but as life fades and the present is just 'a waiting room for eternity' what else is there? 

Bats In The Belfry - Was It A Passionate Desire For Moral Justice Or Was She Just Nuts? The Tale Of A Trump Hater

Vicki Barker was a settled woman in most respects - a tenured white woman at a Historically Black University, a published author (Slave Journals From Georgia), a cute house in the suburbs, a dutiful husband, and two children - but there was always a raw nerve that irritated, a dissatisfaction with the very America that gave her academic prominence, financial security, and comfort. 

Ever since her college days Vicki was a member of the Left, an outspoken advocate for the black man, women, and peace; and in her later years the climate, the environment, and a more equitable allocation of wealth.  This political temper did not come from either her parents or her schooling.  Mr. and Mrs. Barker were quiet Republicans from Chicopee, and Vassar was a serious academic parallel to Harvard and Yale in the days before co-education. 

It was also the stepping-off point for finding a husband - the college had even rented a bus to take girls to and from New Haven on weekends.  There were no campus revolts, no Columbia student take-overs, no massive civil rights protests, just study in the rural setting of Poughkeepsie, and the chance to suss out prospective suitors from among the best and the brightest. 

It was at graduate school in Chicago that she began to see things differently.  Perhaps it was because of her choice of study - comparative literature, a discipline which had come under the influence of French deconstructionist philosophers Lacan and Derrida - or because of the growing unrest on campus among a small, but restive minority for whom the modest progressive policies of the time were nothing more than empty gestures; or because some inner chord had been struck, an innate sense of justice, righteousness, and rectitude. 

It was likely all three, the perfect storm to change Vicki from dutiful scholar, proper citizen, and suburban wife to political activist.  Yet many girls of her age and background paid little attention to the blandishments of campus radicals, sailed through the straits of good fortune and hard work, and ended up respected matrons of Greenwich, Shawnee Mission, or Lexington. 

Professor Langston Petrie of Princeton studied the nature and origins of political dissension in the young, and had described 'the nexus of revolt' - an innate psycho-biological empathy; post-adolescent identity 'neediness'; and demographics, the bulge of under 25s - as the perfect storm of 'irritable dissatisfaction'. 

The origins of the Dissatisfied Woman are in her medulla oblongata, a particular brain configuration common in those given to a stern moral rectitude and an uncommon, inflexible, and unarbitrary conviction about right and wrong. As girls, these women are often stubborn, defiant, and willfully opposed to their parents when they felt wronged; and as young women take the moral ills of the world at large upon their shoulders. 

Vicki was indeed a pissy little child, a pain in the ass, her father admitted with a smile.  Her temper tantrums were volcanic, her refusal to give in was heroic, and her will was Herculean.  All admirable in a way, but in a toddler, insufferable. 

 

She grew out of the Terrible Twos which in her case lasted for years but like Job who was wrestled by God and brought to his senses, Vassar did what parents, priests, and school teachers could not - it tamed the shrew.  There was something comforting and stable about the college - a kind of informal zeitgeist of privilege and brains that was settling.  

Yet, as Professor Petrie went on to say, 'the irritable gene' does not disappear and needs only random forces to stimulate and revive it. 

The Irritable Gene experiences periods of dormancy - a kind of sleep function that gives the troublesome dissatisfaction to retreat for a period before it reemerges even stronger and more pronounced. 

And so it was that after the rebellion of graduate school the gene receded and Vicki took associate professorships at minor colleges in the Midwest before a final landing at her university where her serious academic bent and her social justice ambitions were felicitously joined.  What could be more satisfying than promoting scholarship among black students?

Yet, the fires of reform were only banked, never put out; and the irritable gene kept niggling, bothering, and annoying.  At times she felt like tearing off her clothes, running naked through the campus, and angrily defying God for his indifference. Of course she never did a Lady Godiva-Mad Prophet ride but the sentiment was still there. 

 

'Mania is a sequela of this genetic configuration', Prof. Petrie wrote; 'and when conditions are right, it can be full-blown'; and so it was when Donald Trump came to town.  Suddenly, the lid to her emotions came off, the volcano erupted and spewed bile, hatred, and animus every waking hour.  

She hated the man with venomous, poisonous anger and vowed to do everything in her power to bring him down, to restore sense and sensibility to the Nation's Capital, and to move forward once again to a more verdant, peaceful, compassionate world. 

As Americans have seen, the phenomenon of viral Trump hatred is remarkable for its sense of absolute indignation and righteous anger - so virulent that it needs no logical exegesis of the President's policy, positions, or initiatives.  It has a life of its own. 

The Dissatisfied Woman and her irritable gene are not uncommon - the XX female chromosome link is significant and demonstrated conclusively (Baldwin, Epp, and Bristol, 2022; Phipps & Stone, 2023; and Arthur, Cambridge, and Lockley, 2024).  Women when they 'get their dander up' (Shecky Greene, Grossinger's 1979) and act in concert become a feral force. 

Vicki, in the social room at the Institute of Living, a private mental institution for the wealthy in Hartford, still deeply sedated but far from cured, begged her sister to have her released.  'The Evil is brooding', she said, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her.  The attendant nurse, always present during visitor sessions stepped in. 

 

'Now, now, Mrs. Barker, we must behave when we have visitors, mustn't we?, and with that led Vicki back to her room. 

'Untreated women may be in the tens of thousands', wrote Prof. Petrie.  'Vicki Barker was one of the lucky ones'. 

What about the other tens of thousands of women without Dissatisfied Woman syndrome and irritable genes who are in the streets protesting like rabid hyenas? 

'Contact high', answered Professor Petrie, referring to the infectious quality of being stoned - even those who don't take a toke feel high. 'These women feel the burn, and before you know it you have a hysterical crowd'. 

Petrie was taken to task for this 'hysterical crowd' comment.  The idea of women's biological febrility had long been discredited and now was an expression of misogyny; but Petrie was unapologetic. 'Call it what you want', he said. 'Women in a state of complete emotional anarchy acting in wild concert without control are...'

Here Petrie stopped himself before stating the obvious but for which he would be excommunicated; so he just whispered in the ear of an associate, 'nuts'. 

Enjoy The Greatest Show On Earth - Only The Left Still Flummoxed By Donald Trump Cannot Bear To Watch

Anyone paying attention to the Trump rise to power knew that his presidency would not be one of quiet rectitude - a Jimmy Carter presidency of sweaters, good will, and fireside chats.  Nor would it be that of patrician, Kennebunkport, George Herbert Walker Bush, or any one of a number of 'presidential' presidents who had preceded him. 

He was a vaudevillian, a tummler, a  Borscht Belt comedian.  He was as raw and hilarious as Jackie Mason, Don Rickles, and Joan Rivers put together.  He was the master of the personal parody, the caricature, the takedown, the smear.  He was a one-man band, a stand-up comic, a master of ceremonies of a circus act. 

His Washington would not be the old, staid, wood-paneled, protocoled Robert's Rules of Order Washington.  More at home with the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas, its bright lights, sequins, tinsel, and runways, he would fashion the White House in that image.  He would take down the old traditional icons of American history, get rid of Chippendale, Townsend, and Reynolds and deck the halls with his images - starlets, American baroque, and all the glamour and fantastical expressions of contemporary culture he could find. 

 

No one expected Pablo Casals or Robert Frost, icons of the Kennedy Camelot years, artists of the old, forgotten generation, no Ronald Reagan and George Bush II brush clearing, back-forty cowboy grit, no FDR aristocratic patrimony, no Jefferson Monticello.  The Trump administration would be a departure, a break from the ossified traditions of the past.  His years would be not just populist but popular - American popular culture is what defines the nation not the Washington ballet or the New York City opera. 

He was not a compromiser, an across-the-aisle supplicant - he was a bullying, aggressive, no-holds-barred street fighter who made his bones in the dog-eat-dog world of New York real estate.  'So sue me', was his calling card.  Braggadocio, empty promises, wheedling, and canny back-door deals were his stock-in-trade.  There was nothing genteel or reserved about him.  

Trump has made good on all his promises - the White House ballroom, the Triumphal Arch, beautiful people - not the Jackie Kennedy Euro-dames but blonde, blue-eyed, peaches-and-cream beauties from Iowa, young women proud of their simple heritage, patriotic to the core, and with an unmistakable American enthusiasm. 

He and his staff have taken no prisoners.  When grilled by gotcha Democrats in Congressional hearings, they have tossed aside the old prayerbook, refused to genuflect, and have barked back retorts to their tormenters recalling their own smarmy ways, calling them out, refusing to sit back and toady to fools.  Trump's Press Secretary has shut up reporters with a summary 'Next', and the President himself has not hesitated to call opponents stupid.  

The Left has cried foul.  Trump is not acting presidential, they say.  Where is his sense of decency, respect, honor?  His arrogance and flippancy dishonor the office of the president.  His remaking of the White House in a meretricious, bourgeois style offends the spirit of the Founding Fathers.  His boorish, crude, barnyard behavior does a disservice to American exceptionalism and the righteousness of a nation of principle, responsibility, and good faith. 

His supporters, on the other hand, and most of America outside the liberal warrens of the coasts, cheer every takedown, every invocation of the real America. The WWF (World Wrestling Federation) will showcase its muscles and macho bravura at the White House, and nothing could be more Donald Trump.  Of course professional wrestling is fake, but what a show it is! Popular by any measure, and like stock car racing, very American.  

There are few scripted Trump presidential press conferences. Trump is the most accessible President in history, eager to answer shouted questions from reporter, turning the whole presidential scene into a marvelous three-ring circus. He is the ringmaster, but his spot-on caricatures of his political opponents - sharp, hilarious images, fit to a tee - are the stuff of Grossinger's comedy.  No one tunes in to the news to hear about his policy initiatives - they are clear, unequivocal, straightforward, and predictable - but for the show, the circus act.  What will he say next?

Everything he has done has been well within the margins of Constitutional government.  His deployment of federal troops to enforce the laws against illegal immigration and to halt the increase in inner city crime; his destruction of Iran's nuclear capacity; the current war against a murderous, terrorist Iranian regime, the removal of a brutal Venezuelan dictator, the opening up of oil and gas fields, the reversal of the corrosive social policies of the Left all are the other half of the show.  

Yet, the American Left cannot help themselves and conflate the two.  They attack Trump for his behavior and for their own unhinged, fantastical assumptions about him - a king in waiting, a tyrant, a dictator, a homophobic racist - not his policies.  Their hate has metastasized to the point where it has become viral, epidemic, with a life of its own.  

The Trump circus cannot be the exciting, anticipated extravaganza it is without the clown show of the Left.  They are the perfect foils, the dupes, the fools which make it fun to watch Trump's lashing of them. Everything Trump does is designed to enrage the Left to apoplexy.  Yes, a new White House ballroom is long overdue, but such a showy, glitzy bourgeois creation?  The Kennedy Center, home of opera, symphony, and ballet was also showing its age, but the planned Trump renovation, like the ballroom, was designed to madden his outraged opponents. 

The Great Washington soap opera would be nothing but reruns if it weren't for the likes of AOC, the Squad, Pocahontas, Chuckie Schumer, and the felines of Congress.  The Left is a caricature of leadership, a feral pack of scavengers, a hysterical mob claiming legitimacy.  Gender choice and reassignment? White supremacy? Homophobia? All fictions, balmy assumptions, a priori conclusions, nonsense and bad taste.  Americans get it, see it, dismiss it, and are glad that progressivism has been outed for the sham that it is. 

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said it best: 

Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence, and hence our form of government. It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from the government. It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a Constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights.

 

That's being polite.  What is on display is 'a romp of the addled' - a St. Vitus' dance of the obsessed, a ship of fools, a freak show.  It may come to pass that the  sage wisdom and historical understanding of Thomas and the wild crew of Donald Trump will finally come together in a perfect storm to eradicate the virus; but for the time being, the circus doesn't come around that often, so enjoy it while you can.