Anything Can Happen Read online

  And yes. She is as lovely as a Rembrandt.

  Tyranny for Beginners

  Lyndon Johnson badgered Hubert Humphrey into killing a deer on a visit to Johnson's Texas ranch, then he sent the vice president the severed head of the animal as a reminder of his power over him.

  That's really all there is to it. The first thing a tyrant learns is to make people do what they do not want to do—not by using physical force but rather by cajoling or teasing or manipulating the intellect, so that they not only lose all self-respect but also become so weakened in spirit that they believe the tyrant alone can lead them on the right path.

  The time you made someone else apologize for something that you did wrong, for instance. That was a start.

  Don't Take Your Soul to New England

  Your mind, yes. You can take your mind to New England without doing it any great damage. But your soul—up there in the dark pines and the frozen water and the lengthening shadows of small mountains over empty fields and suicidal cows, it's no place for a soul. Read Hawthorne, the Mathers, and the Lowells, if you don't believe me. Spars, spires, white clapboard Congregational churches screaming murder in the night. And Harvard Square at twilight, when the zombies hang around the bookstores before they head for your porch. Do not speak of it. Makes one's blood freeze.

  Stopping by Words on a Snowy Evening

  Can it be possible? We've lost ourselves again? When we had such a nice brand-new compass and this GPS? Well, c'est la vie. What I meant to say, the thing I meant to say was, "Look—our snow." But all I said was something about having miles to go before I sleep.

  On Your Conduct at the Dinner Party

  Nothing you said struck a bell. You named a name, but no one knew it. You cited a date. No one had heard of the occasion. Nobody was familiar with the town you mentioned—or with the country that the town was in, for that matter. And while you were admirably forceful in stating your positions on the issues, not a single one of them provoked the slightest reaction. At last, you changed the subject. But that engendered no response, either. One by one, heads turned away from you in boredom, disgust, or bafflement, leaving you to yourself at the table.

  Well done.

  My Stump Speech

  Gesundheit. [Applause] My favorite flavor is vanilla chocolate chip. And I'm from the South. [Applause] I'm from the great state of New Hampshire. [Applause] Madonna will be with us in a moment. But first, you are going to win the lottery. What do you think of that? Subway heroes are both sandwiches and vigilantes. What do you think of that? [Applause] I got drunk last night, but I'm sorry. I blame it on the evil Dewar's. [Laughter] Does anybody read Edmund Spenser anymore? [Sighs and a smattering of applause] Pupu platter [Laughter] Death to the farmers! You know, when I was a boy, Ben Franklin was dead. What do you think about that? I really want to know. I feel your pain. I hear your anger. I smell your dirty underwear. [Laughter, cries of Oh!] Whoopie Goldberg will be with us in a minute. It's usually about here that I pause and look up to see if anybody is listening to a word I'm saying. But I know better. Shall we go on? [Cries of You bet!] When I was a boy, I loved going huntin' with my three beautiful children: Kelly, Kelleye, and Genipher. We'd go out and shoot and shoot until every dog and cat in the neighborhood lay paws-up on the sidewalk. Which reminds me: Let's bomb China. If elected, I promise to bomb the shit out of China. [Applause] She's my daughter. [Slap] She's my father. [Slap] She's my daughter and my father. [Slap] Let's all sing: "We'll kiss again/Like this again." Less employment, more enjoyment! Bomb China! [Applause, cheers] Yet I come as a man of La Manchuria. I walk softly but I carry a big stump. Yes, I had sex with sects. So what? Wouldn't you? [Laughter] But taxes are too low. As my great aunt, the king of France, used to say: "It's the taxonomy, stupide! Where's the boeuf? Je would like to know." Let's bomb France! Let's bomb Social Security and our children and grandchildren. [Cheers, hoots of joy] And everyone is goin' to have a good-payin' job. And there'll be twenty women in my cabinet, and twenty more in my cupboard, and they'll all be cute as buttons. Hey! Uncle Ben! That's right, you. [Applause starts to mount] Uncle Ben up there in the balcony. Uncle Ben of Uncle Ben's Converted Rice House, will you please sit down? [Earnest applause] Finally, let me say: Val Kilmer. Hello? [Ovation]

  On Class Distinctions

  You can tell a burgher from a peasant by the way his belly quivers.

  You can tell a professor from a burgher by the watery leer in his eyes.

  You can tell an aristocrat from a professor by the relatively few times he refers to his work.

  But the street they walk on looks like all streets—the same sidewalks, trees, sewers, the same rubbish.

  Shorter Than Bacon's

  On Politeness

  Politeness is gentility in everything that does not matter. No one ever said: "Please excuse me if I ruin your life."

  On Conservatives

  Conservatives conserve what liberals have won for them. You'd think they'd be more grateful.

  On Rich Men

  A rich man is always accorded more honor than a talented one because people understand money.

  On Love

  Shortly after one falls in love, one wants to be naked with the person one loves. Naked. Meaning exposed, vulnerable, unprotected. That should tell you something about love.

  On Despair

  Do not force your despair upon others. It isn't that they will not sympathize or wish you rid of it. But it is a lot to ask of people to add your despair to their own. People are not that strong.

  On Heroes

  You have to risk your life to be one. But there are lots of ways to do that. One can be a hero who seeks nothing he has gladly left behind. You, for instance. When you walked away from them. You were a hero.

  On Journalists

  Journalists are alarmists by nature. That's why they're untrustworthy.

  On Cleverness

  A French writer—Sartre, I think—was asked the age-old question about what he would take from his house if the place were on fire. He said he'd take the fire. Not his wife, not his children, not his pets, books, letters, or insurance policy. The fire. That is a good example of being too clever by half.

  On Women and Men

  One never hears a woman say: "I wasted my life." From which one may conclude that (a) women do not waste their lives; (b) they are too considerate to say so; (c) men are ridiculous.

  On Censorship

  I have no way of knowing this, of course, but I would bet that every civilization that destroyed itself began to do so when someone in power demanded to know what the people were reading.

  On Assisted Living

  I could use some.

  A Song for Jessica

  If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands, because you're way ahead of the game, and there's something to be said for the perseverance of the itsy-bitsy spider and the weasel who went pop. Of course, from time to time the bough is liable to break, Humpty-Dumpty will fall, London Bridge will fall, all will fall down. But the wheels on the bus do go round round round, and when you row row row your boat merrily merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream.

  New Year's at Luchow's

  Luchow's was a famous old German restaurant in downtown New York, situated just about where Irving Place and Fourteenth Street make a T. It was a bustling spot all year long, but especially at Christmastime when the proprietors propped up a huge Christmas tree for all to admire, and a hefty group called the Oom Pah Band tooted "O Tannenbaum" as the customers sang along. Diamond Jim Brady proposed to Lillian Russell in Luchow's, offering her a suitcase filled with one million dollars if she'd consent. (She didn't.) That's the sort of place Luchow's was until it closed some years ago.

  My parents used to take my brother, Peter, and me to Luchow's every so often, even though my father suspected the restaurant of having been a Nazi hangout during the war. There we went, nonetheless, to stuff our faces and gape at celebrities. I saw Jackie Gleason there once, looking like the comics' L
ittle King, and leading a retinue including Jack Lescoulie, of mellow memory, among the crowded tables. That was not on New Year's Day. My family never went anywhere on New Year's Day, though for two years running Peter and I, while never going anywhere, still managed to spend the day at Luchow's.

  You see, when my brother was in high school, he acquired his own telephone, the number of which was but one digit removed from Luchow's. At first he was annoyed by this coincidence, as calls for Luchow's and calls for my brother came in at a ratio of twenty to one. So, eventually tiring of the phrase "Wrong number," he began to accept a few reservations. This was a cruel prank, to be sure, but partly justified in his, and later in my own mind, for our being on the receiving rather than the phoning end of the calls.

  Returning from graduate school one Christmas vacation, I was delighted to discover my brother's new enterprise and immediately joined his restaurant business with all the high spirits of the season. Embellishing his practice of taking reservations straight, I would ask—whenever someone called requesting a table for eight, for example—if the caller also wanted chairs. In no instance, and there were dozens, did the people calling for reservations treat my question as odd. As long as they thought they had Luchow's on the phone, everything was jake.

  During spring vacation we adorned our business further by adding a touch of professionalism. Because of frequent requests for the Luchow's headwaiter, we learned that the man's name was Julius, which Peter, for reasons of his own, insisted on converting to Hoolio and adopting it whenever a call came in. I would answer the phone and transfer the call to Hoolio, who would do most of the talking in a Spanish-German accent so difficult to penetrate that requests for tables—and chairs—often took ten minutes.

  We then began to push things a bit, in part to test the limits of human credulity. We asked people if they wished to be seated in the Himmler Room or if they wanted to try our special "Luftwaffles" instead of rolls. ("They're light as a Messerschmitt," we would boast.) We asked them if they would care to try Luchow's "blitzes." These, we explained, were blintzes dropped onto one's plate from a great height. There were long pauses at the other end of the line when we would ask such things, but the answers, when they arrived, were always polite and sincere. Once we asked a fellow if he'd mind taking a table for three instead of four—one of his party could eat elsewhere, and they could all regroup for coffee. He declined our suggestion, but he had considered it.

  Our best customers were big shots who presumed a favored relationship with the restaurant. These customers made their reservations in barks: "Julius. Mr. Van Kamp. For two. Tonight. Good." Whenever Hoolio would hear such talk, he would warm up the tone immediately, keeping Van Kamp on the line for interminable periods as he, Hoolio, confessed his deepest, most intimate problems to his personal customer. After a while, Hoolio would get around to the fact that he was broke. Perhaps Mr. Van Kamp could see fit to make Hoolio a gift of five hundred dollars as a token of their long friendship. No? In that case there was no table for Van Kamp.

  As these transactions continued over the summer, my brother and I became a little ashamed of the havoc we thought we were causing. We did not stop altogether, however, until the following Christmas vacation when we started asking people if they would mind being seated on the roof, where we had set up a cold buffet. This was late December, and the temperature in New York often fell below zero when it wasn't snowing. Still, there were one or two takers for our rooftop seats—though that was not the event that persuaded us to give up the restaurant business.

  That event occurred on New Year's Day itself when a sugar-voiced lady phoned in the morning to cancel a reservation for lunch. Hoolio was furious. How were we supposed to run a restaurant—he told her—if everyone called up to cancel reservations? No, madam, it was impossible. Under no circumstances could we accept her cancellation. When the woman apologized and started to change her mind, we felt it was time to close up shop.

  Yo, Weatherman

  I have trouble understanding your terms. When you are exceedingly cold to me but do not really mean it, is that the wind-chill factor? And when you appear to love me more than you do, I assume that's the heat and humidity index. Or is this all bullshit, you cheerful son-of-a-bitch, and you don't give a rat's ass how I feel?

  The Men's Room Wall: A Fantasy

  GOOD LUCK, EVERYBODY!

  I LOVE MY BOSS.

  LONG LIFE TO AFRICAN AMERICANS,

  ASIANS, AND LATINOS!

  IF YOU WANT A GOOD TIME,

  CALL A THEATER OR A MUSEUM.

  HURRAY FOR PENISES AND VAGINAS!

  THE SWASTIKA IS A VILE SYMBOL.

  GO IMPROVE YOURSELF.

  SICK—MY DUCK.

  Beautiful Houses

  Beautiful houses give me the creeps; though, of course, I never say that to the owners. I say: What a beautiful house! This is beautiful, and that is beautiful. This half bath is beautiful. And that dining alcove is beautiful. And I do not wish to omit mention of the latticework on the gazebo, the wainscoting in the attic, the built-ins, the one closet (it's a room in itself) for him, and the one for her ... while in my foul, lying heart I seek the bottom of the armoire (what a beauty!) in which to hide or die.

  This is not fair- or broad-minded of me, I know. There's nothing morally or ethically wrong with a beautiful house. It's not a sin to have four working fireplaces or a kitchen to die for. To have called upon Messrs. Williams and Sonoma in order to display a wooden encasement for a set of knives (twelve) or a chrome toaster (three slices) does not a criminal make. I do know that. And perhaps I would feel differently if I myself lived in a beautiful house with a step-down living room and a medium-size media room, rather than the house I do live in, where the pictures pop off the walls spontaneously because the walls are made of thickened paint.

  I leveled the kitchen floor (whoever put these tiles in originally did it all wrong, mister). I had the chimney rebuilt (the house leans, the chimney leans, mister). The paint on the doors is cracked in so many directions, it looks like a Pollock. The lawn, what there is of it, resembles the skin of a shaved horse. And the porch is sinking. And the gutters are feeding water back toward the foundation. And the floorboards don't line up because there have been a dozen room shifts since the house went up in 1882.

  And now—because the house has been revealed as old—you expect me to say that I find all its deteriorations beautiful, more beautiful than any house where the window frames are not rhomboids and the doors close flush. But I do not. It drives me wild and wastes my time to be forever shoring up the place or panicking like some desperate villager in Mexico when the floods have risen to the second story. Frankly, I half expect the arrival of a flood, the spill-off from a hurricane. The house is near the sea.

  And if a flood should happen, something like the hurricane of 1938, my old house will undoubtedly be whacked into the bay, and so will all the beautiful houses around here. Then everyone will have to rebuild. The people who occupy the beautiful houses will make new houses that are even more beautiful. And I will make a beautiful house, too—just as beautiful as theirs—and it will give me the creeps. But what can I do? It is impossible to reconstruct a house such as the one I've got now. It simply could not be done, which is, of course, my point.

  Lines Written Nowhere Near Tintern Abbey

  On How to Tell You've Been at a Dinner Party with Witty People

  For no reason at all, you feel like hosing down a butcher shop.

  On Why People Get Married

  Form rescues content. That's why.

  On Madness: A Primer

  First, ask about her former lovers.

  On Laughter

  A great big laugh ends in a sigh. I don't understand that, but I thought I'd mention it.

  On Learning to Hate English Literature

  The pathetic fallacy is not a fallacy; metaphysical poetry is not metaphysical; Henry James is hardly worth the time; and a whale road is not a kenning. It's a whale road.

&
nbsp; On Ambition

  "The real is a wilderness/that ambition calls a garden," wrote Harold Brodkey. It could be true, even useful, but only if you prefer a garden to a wilderness.

  On Zealotry

  The zealot who stands on his head sees everything that the man who stands upright sees. So it's never a good idea to argue with him in terms of the world he takes in. You just have to note that he's standing on his head.

  On the Nature of Scholarship

  A scholar of renown wrote a love letter to a lady he wished to marry. It consisted of much rational thought and many references to theology. Certain spaces were deliberately left blank in the text. He then handed the letter to his secretary for typing with the instructions, as regarding the blank spaces, "insert endearments here." This is a true story.