Charles Addams 30th Death Anniversary

#CharlesAddams30thDeathAnniversary 

Robert Mankoff answering the question "What influence has Charles Addams’s work had on cartooning and American humor?":
"I think his influence is, like the man, largish. He tapped into that vein of American gothic that has a touch of paranoia about it, seeing behind every comforting façade the uncomfortable truth about the duality of human nature. But where Gothic literature usually combined these themes with romance, Addams made the horror hilarious: disturbing, but at the same time friendly, identifiable, and acceptable. In cartooning, you can see the direct influence of his work in someone like Gahan Wilson, and in many other cartoonists. Horror films that combine humor with horror, such as “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” with its wise-cracking Freddy Krueger, are also in his debt. And, of course, Addams’s humor was “black” and “sick” before those terms applied.

But I think his influence extends beyond the horror genre, to humor not as a comforting “laughter is the best medicine” anodyne but as something deeply skeptical of the purported values of middle-class American life. By making us laugh at, and with, his fiendish protagonists, he makes us temporarily share their values, and doubt our own."

Charles McGrath:

“Punch failed, moreover, to produce anyone on the order of a Saul Steinberg, a Peter Arno, a Charles Addams — an artist who raised cartooning to something approximating fine art.” 

Andrew Stark:
“....The mix, in Charles Addams's world, of virtue and "evil"—of love and sadism, of the grotesque and the homespun—makes his drawings, taken as a whole, much richer than cartoons aimed at simple gags and artistically more nuanced—if unsettlingly incomplete. Addams furnishes a perspective on our own world, too: a world in which the average human has learned to be physically nonviolent in light of our physical fragility and emotionally intact (more or less) in the face of the emotional abuse that life regularly hurls our way.

We are lucky in our own physical and emotional ecology. Ours may not be the best of all worlds. But Addams's inability to realize the alternative fully suggests that it may be the best of all possible worlds. One of the signs of genius is that an artist sheds new light on the human condition. Or, in Addams's case, casts new shadows....”

"Medusa for Haircut"

The New Yorker,  August 15 1936

The New Yorker, February 9 1946

२०व्या शतकातील एका सर्वोत्कृष्ट व्यंगचित्रकाराबद्दल काय लिहायच?...... त्यांची अनेक कार्टून ह्या ब्लॉगवर आली आहेत.

Charles Addams's Old Man and the Love He Found Near the Sea

 

 

Artist: Charles Addams, The New Yorker, Feb 1951

Vision of a Great Cartoonist: Where Will It Ever End?

Bloomberg Business reported on February 18 2015:

"Robots Could Make Even High-Tech Workers Worse Off...Have you ever worried that robots would one day be the ruin of humanity? According to a newly published paper, you might not be too far off base...

While there can be several of these so-called “boom-bust” tech cycles, over time robots “can leave all future high-tech workers and, potentially, all future low-tech workers worse off,” the paper states. “In short, when smart machines replace people, they eventually bite the hands of those that finance them.”

The model also predicts a long-run decline in labor’s share of income, which has been underway in the U.S. since the 2000s, as well as “a growing dependency of current output on past software investment.”..."

Artist: Charles Addams (1912-1988), The New Yorker, 9 February 1946

Robots making more robots?

Almost seventy years ago, Mr. Addams was onto something

Tabula Rasa: Dnyaneshwar, Chales Addams, Hindi films

Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature" is my favourite book.

It's a spirited attack on "tabula rasa" models of the social sciences.

Tabula rasa is the epistemological theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that their knowledge comes from experience and perception.

Are individuals borne without built-in mental content?

Read Dnyaneshwar (ज्ञानेश्वर) on the subject.

"जे विवेकग्रामींचां मुळीं । बैसले आहाति नित्य फळीं । तया योगियांचिया कुळीं । जन्म पावे ॥ ४५१ ॥

मोटकी देहाकृती उमटे । आणि निजज्ञानाची पाहांट फुटे । सूर्यापुढें प्रगटे । प्रकाशु जैसा ॥ ४५२ ॥

तैसी दशेची वाट न पहातां । वयसेचिया गांवा न येतां । बाळपणींच सर्वज्ञता । वरी तयातें ॥ ४५३ ॥

तिये सिद्धप्रज्ञेचेनि लाभें । मनचि सारस्वतें दुभे । मग सकळ शास्त्रे स्वयंभें । निघती मुखें ॥ ४५४ ॥

ऐसें जे जन्म । जयालागीं देव सकाम । स्वर्गीं ठेले जप होम । करिती सदा ॥ ४५५ ॥

अमरीं भाट होईजे । मग मृत्युलोकातें वानिजे । ऐसें जन्म पार्था गा जे । तें तो पावे ॥ ४५६ ॥

आणि मागील जे सद्बुद्धि । जेथ जीवित्वा जाहाली होती अवधि । मग तेचि पुढती निरवधि । नवी लाहे ॥ ४५७ ॥

तेथ सदैवा आणि पायाळा । वरि दिव्यांजन होय डोळां । मग देखे जैसीं अवलीळा । पाताळधनें ॥ ४५८ ॥

तैसें दुर्भेद जे अभिप्राय । कां गुरुगम्य हन ठाय । तेथ सौरसेंवीण जाय । बुद्धी तयाची ॥ ४५९ ॥"

("Just as light spreads out all around before the rise of the sun, so ominiscience weds him in his childhood without waiting for him to become a youth. Then the intelligence and all the lores acquired in the previous birth attend upon him and all the scriptures issue from his mouth. This yogi takes birth in such a noble family. destring which the denizens of heaven murrer prayers, perform sacrifices (451-455) and sing praises of this mortal world like bards,

Then he acquires the wisdom which he had attained at the end of his previous birth. Just as a fortunate person born with the lags foremost is able to discover, by applying antimony to his eyes, and underground treasure, in the same way his intellect is able to grasp abstruse philosophical doctrines without receiving insttruction of a teacher.")

Now, one mayn't believe in rebirth. But there is no denying "the intelligence, all the lores, the wisdom" one is borne with.

Clearly Dnyaneshwar rejects Tabula Rasa.

Wikipedia:

"Pinker argues that modern science has challenged three "linked dogmas" that constitute the dominant view of human nature in intellectual life:

* the blank slate (the mind has no innate traits) — empiricism
* the noble savage (people are born good and corrupted by society) — romanticism
* the ghost in the machine (each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology)[1] — mind/body dualism"

Hindi cinema has often- almost every second movie- tackled themes related to 'tabula rasa'...Birth, bringing up, twins/siblings separated at birth...

Look at the picture below.

Straight out of Hindi film's plot? Mallifert twins, after separating at birth, accidentally meet at Patent Attorney's office.

Look at what they have brought along. The same product!

(I can imagine what they will do next. Embrace each other crying and singing a song- "Yaadon Ki Baaraat Nikali Hai Aaj Dil Ke Dwaare. Dil ke dwaare...")


Artist: Chales Addams, The New Yorker, May 4 1981

मी एक स्नोमॅन, हा एक स्नोमॅन...Charles Addams, B S Mardhekar, Snowman and Ants

"मी एक मुंगी, हा एक मुंगी,
तो  एक मुंगी, तूं  एक मुंगी,
ही  एक मुंगी, ती एक मुंगी,
पांच एथल्या पांच फिरंगी;
... "
(१६, पृष्ठ ८८, मर्ढेकरांची कविता, १९५९-१९७७)

"मी एक स्नोमॅन, हा एक स्नोमॅन,
तो  एक स्नोमॅन, तूं  एक स्नोमॅन,
ही  एक स्नोमॅन, ती एक स्नोमॅन,
पांच एथले, पांच फिरंगी;
...."

 Artist: Charles Addams, Jan 1972, The New Yorker

Climbing the Podium to Start Joyous Riots

My favourite actor Gene Hackman's character in "Mississippi Burning" is asked: "Do you like baseball, do you, Anderson?"

And he answers: "Yeah, I do. You know, it's the only time when a black man can wave a stick at a white man and not start a riot."

Thankfully a lot has changed since 1964. Not just in US but world over.

In London 2012, a lot of black men and women will climb the podium to start joyous riots.

Look at the following cover of the New Yorker from year 1936:


Artist: Constantin Alajalov, The New Yorker, August 1936

Although the picture is very good- a Jewish man beating hulking, blond-haired runners, presumably Aryans- I thought the artist missed a wonderful opportunity.

He could have shown a black winning the race because after all it indeed was a black- Jesse Owens- who won four gold medals there: one each in the 100 meters, the 200 meters, the long jump, and as part of the 4x100 meter relay team!

The New Yorker apparently didn't learn from this.

John Updike has said:

”(During the fourth decade of The New Yorker 1955-1964) the foremost domestic issue of the time was the struggle of the black minority for civil rights, yet people of color are almost totally absent from these cartoons.”

courtesy: Getty Images and BBC

Following picture is probably one of the few exceptions to Mr. Updike's observation. (For another exception see a previous post here.)

I don't know what Mr. Addams meant but I see it as how the black Africans are looking down on a white, attempting to clear a tiny height in pole vault, with certain amusement. It's cruel because blacks are NOT there to participate in the event. Reminds me of Sherpas of climbing.

When I see men's 100m final line-up on August 5 2012, I too will feel like a Lilliputian.

Artist: Charles Addams, The New Yorker, 23 February 1963

p.s.

Morning of Aug 6 2012 became memorable to me for this:


Picture courtesy: http://www.london2012.com

Scream!...Charles Addams at Cinema

Artist: Charles Addams, 1947

...But Already It Was Impossible to Say Which Was Which...George Orwell, Charles Addams, Animal Farm

 George Orwell, Animal Farm, 1945:

"..."Gentlemen," concluded Napoleon, "I will give you the same toast as before, but in a different form. Fill your glasses to the brim. Gentlemen, here is my toast: To the prosperity of The Manor Farm! "

There was the same hearty cheering as before, and the mugs were emptied to the dregs. But as the animals outside gazed at the scene, it seemed to them that some strange thing was happening. What was it that had altered in the faces of the pigs? Clover's old dim eyes flitted from one face to another. Some of them had five chins, some had four, some had three. But what was it that seemed to be melting and changing? Then, the applause having come to an end, the company took up their cards and continued the game that had been interrupted, and the animals crept silently away.

But they had not gone twenty yards when they stopped short. An uproar of voices was coming from the farmhouse. They rushed back and looked through the window again. Yes, a violent quarrel was in progress. There were shoutings, bangings on the table, sharp suspicious glances, furious denials. The source of the trouble appeared to be that Napoleon and Mr. Pilkington had each played an ace of spades simultaneously.

Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

 

Artist: Charles, Addams, The New Yorker

It's Me Solomon Grundy on...

Today is my birthday.

"Solomon Grundy,

Born on a Monday,

Christened on Tuesday,

Married on Wednesday,

Took ill on Thursday,

Grew worse on Friday,

Died on Saturday,

Buried on Sunday.

That was the end,

Of Solomon Grundy"

   

I feel today I am on Thursday (By the way, I was borne on a Thursday)...or who knows even Friday!

 

Artist: Charles Addams, 

courtesy: The Charles Addams Mother Goose (UK; public library), 1967 and one of the greatest wonders of the internet http://www.brainpickings.org

India To Become Shining City Upon a Hill. Again!

Harsh Mander, The Hindu, March 9 2013:

"Depleting water tables and a shift from farming for food to cash crops have transformed thriving villages into wastelands...The Indian countryside has become, transformed into this wasteland of near-terminal despair and increasingly impossible survival, by new technologies, forced integration with globalised markets, and an uncaring state. For a sector which employs 51 per cent workers, contributes 14 per cent of GDP, the state invests as little as five per cent of total public expenditures. No wonder that tens of thousands of farmers each year drink pesticide or hang themselves; and millions of the young flee,  when they can, wherever they can."

D D Kosambi:

"The subtle mystic philosophies, torturous religions, ornate literature, monuments teeming with intricate sculpture and delicate music of India all derive from the same historical process that produced the famished apathy of the villager, senseless opportunism and termite greed of the ‘cultured’ strata, sullen, uncoordinated discontent among the workers, general demoralization, misery, squalor and degrading superstition. The one is the result of the other, one is the expression of the other…it is necessary to understand that history is not a sequence of haphazard events but is made by human beings in the satisfaction of daily needs."

John Kay in Financial Times, November 20 2012:

"...Reports of his tax policies suggest that Shah Jahan may have appropriated as much as 40 per cent of what we now call gross domestic product to support a lifestyle of exceptional ostentation and self-indulgence. He was overthrown by his son, who was exasperated by his father’s penchant for monumental building, anxious to maximise his own share of the loot and concerned by the scale of the levies on the population. But it was all too late. The Mogul empire was in irretrievable decline.

The activities of Shah Jahan epitomise rent-seeking – the accumulation of a fortune not by creating wealth through serving customers better but by the appropriation of such wealth after it has already been created by other people. Both are routes to personal enrichment and the tension between them has been a dominant theme of economic history..."

Henry Miller:

"To most men the past is never yesterday, or five minutes ago, but distant, misty epochs some of which are glorious and others abominable, Each one reconstructs the past according to his temperament and experience. We read history to corroborate our own views, not to learn what scholars think to be true. About the future there is as little agreement as bout the past, I’ve noticed. We stand in relation to the past very much like the cow in the meadow — endlessly chewing the cud. It is not something finished and done with, as we sometimes fondly imagine, but something alive, constantly changing, and perpetually with us. But the future too is with us perpetually, and alive and constantly changing."

Anirudh Deshpande, EPW, February 16 2013:

"The persistence of an unjust society based on profit, class, caste, race and patriarchy highlights the need to study history, because of its abiding ideological importance. The history of society will remain a history of ideological contest despite the end of ideology proclaimed by globalisation."

रा भा पाटणकर :

"शिवाजीने रयतेच्या भल्यासाठी केलेल्या गोष्टी सर्वश्रुत आहेत. पण तरीही तेथील सामान्य रयत सुखात होती असे म्हणता येणार  नाही ."

(पृष्ठ 56, 'अपूर्ण  क्रांती',  1999)

William Dalrymple (WD)  wrote an essay on India for New Statesman on Oct 11 2012. Read it here. 

For most part, it is a severe indictment of today's India and makes sad reading. 

However, towards the end the essay stunningly turns around:

"In the longer view of history, India has only recently come to be seen as a poor country. As early as Roman times there was a dramatic drain of western gold to India; during the reign of Nero, the Pandyan kings even sent an embassy to Rome to discuss the latter’s balance of payments problems. A thousand years later it was India’s extraordinary wealth that drew in the merchant adventurers of the East India Company. They came to India not as part of some Tudor aid project, but instead as part of a desperate effort to cash in on the riches of the Mughal empire, then one of the two wealthiest polities in the world. In Milton’s Paradise Lost, the Mughal city of Lahore is revealed to Adam after the Fall as a future wonder of God’s creation: by the 17th century, Lahore had grown richer than Constantinople, and with its two million inhabitants it dwarfed London and Paris combined. It was, in terms of rapid growth, prosperity and opportunities, the Gurgaon of its day.

What eastern Europeans are to modern Brit­ain – economic migrants in search of a better life – the Jacobeans were to Mughal India. It was only after the arrival of the various colonial powers that India came to be perceived as poor. What is happening today is merely India’s slow return to its natural place at the forefront of the world economy. History is on its side."

It feels good to read all this but I really wonder if this all is true.

Is India slowly returning to its natural place at the forefront of the world economy? Is history indeed on its side


In recent months, I have kept reading and re-reading  a wonderful, small book in Marathi  'Maharashtrachi Kulkatha' (महाराष्ट्राची कुळकथा), 2011- 'the ancestral-story of Maharashtra'-   by Dr. Madhukar Keshav Dhavalikar (मधुकर केशव ढवळीकर) . It's just 148 pages long and attractively priced at INR 140. It has no index and some minor errors have crept in.

Although the book's primary focus is Maharashtra it often talks about the whole of India. To my delight, the book is richly illustrated.

Although Dr. Dhavaliker respects D D Kosambi a lot, my reading of the book suggests that he very much is his own man.

The book is based entirely on the archeological evidence and treats any other evidence- such as found in literature and art- with suspicion.

Dr. Dhavalikar argues that India's economic prosperity started around 600 BC and  lasted up to 4th century CE. The decline started right after that.

On page 145, MKD says:

"... गुप्तकालीन आणि गुप्तोत्तर काळात जे संस्कृत आणि प्राकृत  वाङ्गमय मोठया प्रमाणावर  निर्माण झाले, त्यात आपल्या प्राचीन  नगरांच्या वैभवाची राजे-रजवाड्यांची जी  रंजक वर्णने आहेत,  त्यांवरून सर्व काही  आलबेल  होते अशी आपली गोड समजूत आहे. परंतु प्रत्यक्ष परिस्थिती खूपच  वेगळी होती.  कारण पुरात्ततत्त्वीय पुरावा या उलट आहे आणि त्यावर आपण विश्वास ठेवला पाहिजे. वारंवार पडणारे दुष्काळ हे भारताच्या आर्थिक अवनतीचे कारण आहे.  जोवर आपण त्यांवर मात करू शकत नाही, तोवर परिस्थितीत फारशी सुधारणा होणे शक्य नाही..."

(...engaging descriptions of the wealth of our old cities and kings and their palaces that is contained in the great amount of Sanskrit and Prakrit literature which was created during Gupta and post-Gupta period make us feel that everything was alright. But the actual reality was very different. That is because of the evidence that is found in archeology and we should trust it. Frequent droughts are the reason of India's economic decline and unless we overcome it, the conditions can never improve...)   


In today's India, most of the Indians live in 'economic decline' as most of them always  have since 4th century CE.

Even the existence of Ajanta caves does not prove economic prosperity.

"...आर्थिक स्थिती खालावलेली असताना अजिंठ्यासारख्या भव्य वास्तूंची  निर्मिती  कशी शक्य  याचे आश्चर्य   वाटणे साहजिकच आहे.  परंतु हा प्रकार भारतात पुढेही चालू राहिला..."

(...in the economic downturn the creation of a majestic structure like the Ajanta Caves may surprise. But such things kept happening in India even later...)


Dr. Dhavalikar ends the book on a sombre note as far as Maharashtra is concerned:

"...आजही एक मुंबईचे डोळे दिपवणारे  वैभव सोडले, तर महाराष्ट्राची काय  स्थिती आहे हे  सांगणे नको."

(...even today if eye-popping wealth of Mumbai is left alone, there is no point telling about the condition of Maharashtra.)

'Maharashtrachi Kulkatha' really excavates a live human- as in the picture below- rather than just  fossils!



Artist: Charles "Chas" Addams (1912-1988), The New Yorker, August 23 1941

(Mr. Addams was one of the greatest artists of  20th century. The picture is a testimony to that. I have seen a lot of humour around the subject of archeology but had never seen such an orthogonal thinking- bringing out our ancestor alive- as seen here. Look at the faces of all four of them!)
 
But after reading MKD's book I wonder where does the optimism of WD come from?

It surely doesn't come from the study of India's archeology. It can't come from India's current largely disastrous ecological situation.

Therefore, is he lacing his history with feel-goodness because he wants to pitch his books to the young English specking economically better-off Indians?


Or will the rest of the world fall apart so badly that India will 'once again'  become 'shining city upon a hill'? 


WD told The Times of India on December 7 2012:

"While we've seen wonderful long-form journalism, the only other guy really writing narrative non-fiction is Ramachandra Guha. He's working brilliantly with modern political history but despite universities chock-a-block with brilliant historians here, none of them seems to be writing for a general audience. There's no Indian equivalent of say, Simon Schama. Where are the Indian versions of Niall Ferguson, Linda Colley or Maya Jassanof? Meanwhile though, it`s lovely to have the field to myself. I've no complaints."

I wonder how WD makes such a claim that 'the only other guy' is Ramachandra Guha.

Is he familiar with history writing for general audience in Indian languages? Has he heard of the Marathi book or its author I have mentioned in this post? Does he know that Vishwas Patil's (विश्वास पाटील) - and of a few others before him- Marathi books on historical subjects have sold probably as much as some of his and Guha's? 

Death of Dreams: Of Arthur Miller's Salesman and G A Kulkarni's Madhukaka

The Economist magazine commenting on pioneer of self-help books Samuel Smiles:

“………But, like other self-help gurus, Smiles probably affected behaviour less than self-perceptions. He set out to tell people that morality and hard work were needed for success. What his readers took from his writing was the reassuring notion that their success must have been the result of morality and hard work” (April 22 2004)

J. M. Tyree:

What vexed Miller were the stories Americans have told themselves about the power of positive thinking, the instant money and spiritual purity that are sure to follow from unfettered entrepreneurship, the decency of the profit motive, the goodness of the national past, and, when all else fails, the possibility of escape and reinvention in the West. This land is your land: Henry David Thoreau crosses uneasily with Norman Rockwell; the tenets of Ayn Rand crash into the gospel of Jesus Christ; the Book of Mormon reads strangely in parallel with the Bill of Rights; Huckleberry Finn lights out for the territory but never becomes the Marlboro Man, exactly. Above all, Miller responded to a culture that cherished a sanctimonious and noxiously sentimental vision of family life as a beacon of health and wealth.

ALGIS VALIUNAS:

The most famous suicide in American theater is that of Willy Loman, in Death of a Salesman (1949). Exhausted by years on the road, his mind going, Willy is suitably beaten down by heartless business forces, so that his killing himself is at once supremely pitiable and supremely noble: He fakes a car accident so his widow and sons can collect the $20,000 insurance payout. Willy's wife admonishes her sons, who despise their father's doddering and weakness and failure, "But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid." Miller's attention is fixed on larger concerns than the fate of one man. For him, the universal tragedy of American life is the fundamental capitalist insistence that business is business. That's exactly what Willy's boss says as he's firing him; Willy agrees reflexively, but then goes on to qualify and plead. The truth is incontestable nevertheless: If you can't make a killing you get murdered.

Although my father (and my mother) struggled more than Willy, from Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman' 1949, to support us, unlike Elia Kazan, the play’s first director, Willy was NOT our father in one important aspect.

Selling was an alien profession to us then. You could be a teacher, a doctor, an engineer, a barber, a mason, a carpenter, an electrician, a plumber, a milkman, a shopkeeper, a clerk, an accountant, a maid, a priest, an engine driver, a bus conductor, a soldier, a farmer...but selling...what was that?

Willy says in Act Two:

"And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want. ’Cause what could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone, and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people?"

Now, I can't identify my father with this. However, my father then being a young, popular college teacher, I can relate him to "remembered and loved and helped by so many different people".

I can also easily relate to the interplay between Willy and his sons and among the two brothers- Biff and Happy. Tim Lott chooses the play for his 5 best books "on brothers"- love and rivalry among siblings with these words: "Death of a Salesman is more about the relationship between fathers and sons than brothers, but the motif of maimed brother relationships runs in all directions."

It's easier to identify my mother with Linda. She, like Linda in Act Two, could have easily said- and probably did- this to my father: "Why must everyone conquer the world? You're well liked, and the boys love you..."

(BTW-Eerily Willy's act of suicide for the family reminds one of farmers' suicides in India.)

LEE SIEGEL has written a great essay 'Death of a Salesman's Dreams' on the revival of 'Salesman' on Broadway in NYT on May 2 2012.

"Certainly few middle-class people, or at least anyone from any “middle class” that Loman would recognize, are among the audiences attending this production. What was once a middle-class entertainment has become a luxury item. Tickets for the original run, in 1949, cost between $1.80 and $4.80; tickets for the 2012 run range from $111 to $840. After adjusting for inflation, that’s a 10-fold increase, well beyond the reach of today’s putative Willy Lomans."

Isn't this true of even latter-day Hindi plays featuring Naseeruddin Shah? Does Mr. Shah make an effort to stage his plays where they can reach beyond English-NDTV-watching audience?

"Not only have the industries that employed the salespeople, factory workers, middle managers and others in the plentiful, humbler realms of mid-20th-century capitalism begun to dry up, but today’s capitalists no longer share Willy’s belief that he could attain dignity through his work. "

Do young Indians believe that they "could attain dignity through their work"?

"In 1949, Willy’s desperate cry — “the competition is maddening!” — must have chilled theatergoers for whom competition still had a mostly positive connotation. In 2012, a fight to the death for shrinking opportunities in so many realms of life renders the idea of fair competition an anachronism. It is a sign of the times that sitcoms, in which trivial, everyday conflicts are comfortably resolved into neighborly harmony, are giving way to the Darwinian armageddons of reality TV. It is as if the middle class were being forced to watch the gladiatorial spectacle of its own destruction."
In India, haven't nepotism and crony capitalism consumed the concept of fair competition and opportunities?

"Even what’s left of the middle class disdains a middle-class life. Everyone, rich, poor and in between, wants infinite pleasure and fabulous riches."

How true of middle-class Indians...If they have one house, they want one more...They have a car, they want really a big second one...Soon they will send their kids to US, UK, Australia starting Class VIII...

"Mr. Miller’s outrage at a capitalist system he wanted to humanize has become our cynical adaptation to a capitalist system we pride ourselves on knowing how to manipulate. For Mr. Miller, Willy’s middle-class dreams put the system that betrayed them to shame. In our current context, Willy’s dreams of love, dignity and community through modest work make him a deluded loser."
Yes, any one who does not follow their path is a deluded loser. Linda by saying- Why must everyone conquer the world?- is a loser.

"Perhaps there is a simple, unlovely reason “Death of a Salesman” has become such a beloved institution. Instead of humbling its audience through the shock of recognition, the play now confers upon the people who can afford to see it a feeling of superiority — itself a fragile illusion."

Do they watch the play to draw comfort that they are not 'losers' like Willy; that they are 'successful'; that since they are not falling apart like Willy, they are smarter than him?
Do they watch even Marathi 'Natasamrat' (नटसम्राट) to feel superior to the old, hapless Belvalkar (बेलवलकर) couple in there?

Do they watch 'Ekach Pyala' (एकच प्याला) to draw the comfort that they will never turn Sudhakar (सुधाकर) because unlike him they drink only expensive wine and scotch?

Do they watch 'Sakharam Binder' (सखाराम बाइंडर) to conclude that they will never be sexually frustrated or feel castrated like him because they can buy little blue pill?

I hope not.

Artist: George Booth, The New Yorker, 2 December 1972

However, on the whole, "Death of a Salesman" endures because, for me, it is more about what happens in a family rather than it's about Willy's dreams.

The play brings to my mind a classy short story 'Ghar' (घर) by G A Kulkarni (जी ए कुलकर्णी) from the collection "PinglaVel", 1977 (पिंगळावेळ).

I had written to G A about how I liked the story 'Ghar' and he replied saying his fans seldom mentioned that story although he had 'soft corner' for it. This is his letter:

G A Kulkarni letter in Marathi dated 16 Feb 1983- right click to open in another window to magnify and read ( I had compared GA to Marathi saint-poets in my letter to him. I- and GA himself more than me- knew I was exaggerating but now I think it was baloney. No Marathi writer since the death of the last great, Samarth Ramdas समर्थ रामदास in 1681, is any where close to them.)

'Ghar' is the story of middle-class (Brahmin?) Madhukaka (मधुकाका), his wife Mai (माई) and their children Ramesh, Shantaram and Malati.

Now in his retirement, Madhukaka has built a house for the first time in his life and is planning to move into it...housewarming is coming up...he also has plans for his young children...

Will he move into his new house?...Do his children agree with his plans for them?...What happens to his dreams?...Is that family still together at the end of the story?...

The story ends on a sombre note:

"पण त्या कोर्या पांढर्या भिंतींनी मात्र त्यांच्या भोवती घर होण्याचे सराईत नाटक सुरु केले."

(But those blank, white walls started smoothly playacting home around them.)

Epigraph of 'Pingla Vel' is the following quote of August Strindberg:

"Shallow people demand variety – but I have been writing the same story throughout my life, every time trying to cut nearer the aching nerve".

It is no coincidence that G A chose Strindberg who, like a fellow Swede Ingmar Bergman, was a purveyor of domestic hell!

Willy and Madhukaka are great tragic figures but what moves me most is the magnanimousness shown by their wives Linda Loman and Mai(Janaki). They probably never told their husbands how they really felt.


Artist: Charles Addams, The New Yorker, November 14 1942

Linda and Mai are my heroes. I see a lot of my mother in them.

p.s.

It's also no coincidence that I chose a picture by the creator of "The Addams Family" to conclude the post.

ANDREW STARK writes of that famous family:

"It is worth pausing to contemplate what the Addamses' world is really like, beyond its fantastical and droll qualities. In our ordinary world, we don't routinely inflict physical violence on one another, and of course when we do somebody gets hurt. The reverse is the case for the Addamses. They are always meting out wonderfully horrendous acts of physical mayhem: beckoning unwitting drivers to launch their vehicles into the paths of onrushing moving vans, tying each other to homemade racks, bricking guests up behind walls, larding soups with poison. And yet somehow nobody dies, nobody gets dismembered, nobody writhes in agony, nobody's hair even gets mussed.

In short, the Addamses aim to hurt with delicious malevolence, but the physical damage ends up being invisible or, to put it another way, nonexistent. Emotionally, the dynamic is reversed. The Addamses are loving and caring to one another, convivial and concerned as friends; they wouldn't dream of hurting anyone's feelings..." (WSJ, March 12 2010)

Now Fallen Sperm Count May Trigger Next Mahabharat

Times of India reported on October 8, 2007:”A new study by researchers at the University of Sheffield suggests that people having an elder brother are more likely to have reduced fertility, as compared to individuals having an elder sister."

My reaction. Oh no, another reason for brothers to fight.

Hindus keep making noises about Bhagavad-Gita and Ramayana but the book they follow most is Mahabharat. (Or is that the book follows them?)

If one wants to understand India, she must understand Mahabharat.

Excellent commentaries on Mahabharat are available in Marathi – Vyasaparva by Durga Bhagwat दुर्गा भागवत and Yuganta (also available in English) by Iravati Karve.

Columnist and writer Gurcharan Das of late has often resorted to the epic to press home his point. He recommends editions of University Of Chicago Press and Clay Sanskrit Library from Oxford University .

Mahabharat at its heart is a story of feuding brothers and cousins. In Marathi, there is a word for this conflict-‘Bhaubandki’. I feel Indian Y chromosome is not programmed to coexist with its kind!

For example, just see what is happening in business empires of Ambani’s; Bajaj’s, soap operas, movies, dominant political families etc. Indian history (of both Hindus and Muslims) is replete with many examples.(I was shocked to read in John Keay’s “India” that the great Harsha-Vardhana had had a hand in his brother Rajya-Vardhana’s ‘imminent removal’.)

I don’t see this ‘feuding brothers’ a dominant theme in Western Civilization.

On October 4, 2007, world celebrated launch of Sputnik 50 years ago. A hurting Indian brother may not mind sending his sibling along!


Artist: Charles Addams The New Yorker Jan 6, 1951

There's Nothing Sadder in this World than to Awake Diwali Morning and not be a Child!

Erma Bombeck:

"There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child."

Charles Dickens:
 
“Lost friend, lost child, lost parent, sister, brother, husband, wife, we will not so discard you! You shall hold your cherished places in our Diwali hearts, and by our Diwali fires; and in the season of immortal hope, and on the birthday of immortal mercy, we will shut out Nothing!” 

Sorry, dear old Charlie for my some deft find and replace! How dare I? Because just like Christmas hearts we have Diwali- in my case high BP- hearts and you bet we have Diwali fires and then some. (BTW-Avoid coming to Pune from 7 PM to 11 PM tonight!)


This Diwali I do have a lost friend, lost both parents of a friend,   lost parent, cousin-sister, aunts, grand-ma&pa, artists, teachers, dog, cat, bird, town...And I will shut out nothing...I can't...until of course dementia kicks in
 
Happy Diwali 2012 

Fire crackers have become so weird that if indeed some day I come across a volcano like in the picture below I will think of  it as no more than a flower pot cracker!


Artist: Charles Addams, The New Yorker, 13 June 1964 

Tribals in the picture above feel the gods are not angry.

I am not so sure about goddess Laxmi. They say Laxmi Puja Muhurat is after 6 PM today. The goddess Laxmi must be  tough and  fearless because she dare enter our homes during those hours avoiding serious injuries to her limbs, ears and lungs.

Earth’s Love Song of Kusumagraj कुसुमाग्रज Is Prophetic

On March 11, 2008, DENNIS OVERBYE wrote for NYT “Kissing the Earth Goodbye in About 7.59 Billion Years.”

“If nature is left to its own devices, about 7.59 billion years from now Earth will be dragged from its orbit by an engorged red Sun and spiral to a rapid vaporous death…

… Earth’s basic problem is that the Sun will gradually get larger and more luminous as it goes through life, according to widely held theories of stellar evolution. In its first 4.5 billion years, according to the models, the Sun has already grown about 40 percent brighter.

Over the coming eons, life on Earth will become muggier and more uncomfortable and finally impossible...

… About a billion years from now, the Sun will be 10 percent brighter. Oceans on Earth will boil away. The Sun will run out of hydrogen fuel in its core about 5.5 billion years from now and start burning hydrogen in the surrounding layers. As a result, the core will shrink and the outer layers will rapidly expand as the Sun transforms itself into a red giant…

… As a result, the red giant version of the Sun — at its maximum — will be 256 times as big across as the star is today and 2,730 times as luminous…”

This article brought to my mind a Marathi poem.

V V Shirwadkar वि वा शिरवाडकर aka Kusumagraj कुसुमाग्रज wrote पृथ्वीचे प्रेमगीत “Earth’s Love Song” in the first half of 20th century ( विशाखा Vishakha 1942).

I had this poem to study in school (9th standard?). I liked it on the first reading.

I remember a little embarrassment of our Marathi teacher (Mr. Ligade?) reading out to the whole class carnal desires of mother earth!

One of its stanza reads as follows:

गमे की तुझ्या रुद्र रूपात जावे
मिळोनी गळा घालुनीया गळा
तुझ्या लाल ओठांतली आग प्यावी.
मिठीने तुझ्या तीव्र व्हाव्या कळा.

(“Feel like in your fierce beauty
I should merge by necking
Drink fire of your red lips.
Should feel acute pain by your embrace. “)

This is no more poet's fantasy. We think this all will happen!

The robots or cockroaches or whoever that is running the Earth in a billion years will know.


Artist: Charles Addams The New Yorker 25 July 1983

Mona Lisa Once Had Eyebrows But No Smile!

On October 23, 2007, newspapers world over printed Mona Lisa story very prominently.

Times of India: “Ultra-deatiled scans show Mona Lisa has eyebrows”.

Asian Age: “Scan shows Mona Lisa has lashes, eyebrows”.

Sure, but did she have a smile to begin with?


Artist: Charles Addams The New Yorker 12 April 1952

Supermoon and Supertoon

The phenomenon, called supermoon, this year coincides with 'Buddha Purnima' on May 6 2012.

Such a moon always brings my attention back to super cartoon by one of the greatest.

"Maynard, I do think that just this once you should come out and see the moon!"

I wonder what Maynard is doing.

Watching IPL or his favourite sitcom? Is he capable of enjoying the moon? I mean his eyesight is not a problem because if he comes out the moon will be in his face. Did he ever enjoy looking at the moon? Does he like to watch the moon more on National Geographic than the one in his backyard?

Artist: Charles Addams, The New Yorker, 25 July 1983

Don’t Anger Gods During This Diwali…

Diwali always brings to my mind these words of Charles Dickens:

"…………a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of other people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys" (A Christmas Carol 1843)

Was Mark Twain fair in saying:

"It is a curious people (Indians). With them, all life seems to be sacred except human life." (Following the Equator; a Journey Around the World 1897)?

At Miraj, I remember when mother kept earthen lamps outside the house and in windows, they were stolen, not for decoration but for cooking oil.

It's hard to be indifferent to such poverty.

Rajendra Pachauri has asked us:

Say no to firecrackers
Use diyas and candles
Don’t choke gifts with plastic wraps
Cut down on materialism. Gift a plant
Keep your car parked in the garage. Use the public transport to visit the friends.

(Indian Express November 4, 2007)

The Economist November 3, 2007, our thought-leaders' Reader's Digest, has called India "the world's most religious country". Therefore let us invoke god.

Open your “shut-up hearts freely” and observe green ways during the festival otherwise gods will be angry!


Artist: Charles Addams The New Yorker 13 June 1964

Covid-19 Changes the Caption....The Addams Office

Andrew Stark:

"It is worth pausing to contemplate what the Addamses' world is really like, beyond its fantastical and droll qualities. In our ordinary world, we don't routinely inflict physical violence on one another, and of course when we do somebody gets hurt. The reverse is the case for the Addamses. They are always meting out wonderfully horrendous acts of physical mayhem: beckoning unwitting drivers to launch their vehicles into the paths of onrushing moving vans, tying each other to homemade racks, bricking guests up behind walls, larding soups with poison. And yet somehow nobody dies, nobody gets dismembered, nobody writhes in agony, nobody's hair even gets mussed.

In short, the Addamses aim to hurt with delicious malevolence, but the physical damage ends up being invisible or, to put it another way, nonexistent. Emotionally, the dynamic is reversed. The Addamses are loving and caring to one another, convivial and concerned as friends; they wouldn't dream of hurting anyone's feelings..." (WSJ, March 12 2010) 

Wikipedia:

"The Addamses are a satirical inversion of the ideal 20th-century American family: an odd wealthy aristocratic clan who delight in the macabre and are seemingly unaware, or do not care, that other people find them bizarre or frightening."

“In this company, Simmons, we hold our hands steady in the middle and shake our bodies.”  

Artist: Zachary Kanin, The New Yorker, April 2015

This post was written before Covid-19 hit us. Now the picture should show no hand-shake and the caption could read:

"In this company, Simmons, we do NOT hold hands at all BUT shake our bodies."