This Living Hand: And Other Essays
Edmund Morris
αα»ααΆ 2012 Β· Penguin Random House Audio Β· ααα·ααΆαααα Edmund Morris
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When the multitalented biographer Edmund Morris (who writes with equal virtuosity about Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Beethoven, and Thomas Edison) was a schoolboy in colonial Kenya, one of his teachers told him, βYou have the most precious gift of allβoriginality.β That quality is abundantly evident in this selection of essays. They cover forty years in the life of a maverick intellectual who can be, at whim, astonishingly provocative, self-mockingly funny, and richly anecdotal. (The title essay, a tribute to Reagan in cognitive decline, is poignant in the extreme.)
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Whether Morris is analyzing images of Barack Obama or the prose style of President Clinton, or exploring the riches of the New York Public Library Dance Collection, or interviewing the novelist Nadine Gordimer, or proposing a hilarious βDiet for the Musically Obese,β a continuous cross-fertilization is going on in his mind. It mixes the cultural pollens of Africa, Britain, and the United States, andΒ propogates hybrid flowersβsome fragrant, some strange, some a shock to conventional sensibilities.
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Repeatedly in This Living Hand, Morris celebrates the physicality of artistic labor, and laments the glass screen that todayβs e-devices interpose between inspiration and execution. No presidential biographer has ever had so literary a βtakeβ on his subjects: he discerns powers of poetic perception even in the obsessively scientific Edison. Nor do most writers on music have the verbal facility to articulate, as Morris does, what it is about certain sounds that soothe the savage breast. His essay on the pathology of Beethovenβs deafness breaks new ground in suggesting that tinnitus may explain some of the weird aural effects in that composerβs works. Masterly monographs on the art of biography, South Africa in the last days of apartheid, the romance of the piano, and the role of imagination in nonfiction are juxtaposed with enchanting, almost unclassifiable pieces such as βThe Bumstitch: Lament for a Forgotten Fruitβ (Morris suspects it may have grown in the Garden of Eden); βThe Anticapitalist Conspiracy: A Warningβ (an assault on The Chicago Manual of Style); βNuages Gris: Colors in Music, Literature, and Artβ; and the uproarious βWhich Way Does Sir Dress?β, about ordering a suit from the most expensive tailor in London.
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Uniquely illustrated with images that the author describes as indispensable to his creative process, This Living Hand is packed with biographical insights into such famous personalities as Daniel Defoe, Henry Adams, Mark Twain, Evelyn Waugh,Β Truman Capote, Glenn Gould, Jasper Johns, W. G. Sebald, and Winnie the Poohβnot to mention a gallery of forgotten figures whom Morris lovingly restores to βlife.β Among these are the pianist Ferruccio Busoni, the poet Edwin Arlington Robinson, the novelist James Gould Cozzens, and sixteen so-called βUndistinguished Americans,β contributors to an anthology of anonymous memoirs published in 1902.
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Reviewing that book for The New Yorker, Morris notes that even the most unlettered persons have, on occasion, βpower to send forth surprise flashes, illuminating not only the dark around them but also more sophisticated shadowsβfor example, those cast by public figures who will not admit to private failings, or by philosophers too cerebral to state a plain truth.β The author of This Living Hand is not an ordinary person, but he too sends forth surprise flashes, never more dazzlingly than in his final essay, βThe Ivo Pogorelich of Presidential Biography.β
Β
Whether Morris is analyzing images of Barack Obama or the prose style of President Clinton, or exploring the riches of the New York Public Library Dance Collection, or interviewing the novelist Nadine Gordimer, or proposing a hilarious βDiet for the Musically Obese,β a continuous cross-fertilization is going on in his mind. It mixes the cultural pollens of Africa, Britain, and the United States, andΒ propogates hybrid flowersβsome fragrant, some strange, some a shock to conventional sensibilities.
Β
Repeatedly in This Living Hand, Morris celebrates the physicality of artistic labor, and laments the glass screen that todayβs e-devices interpose between inspiration and execution. No presidential biographer has ever had so literary a βtakeβ on his subjects: he discerns powers of poetic perception even in the obsessively scientific Edison. Nor do most writers on music have the verbal facility to articulate, as Morris does, what it is about certain sounds that soothe the savage breast. His essay on the pathology of Beethovenβs deafness breaks new ground in suggesting that tinnitus may explain some of the weird aural effects in that composerβs works. Masterly monographs on the art of biography, South Africa in the last days of apartheid, the romance of the piano, and the role of imagination in nonfiction are juxtaposed with enchanting, almost unclassifiable pieces such as βThe Bumstitch: Lament for a Forgotten Fruitβ (Morris suspects it may have grown in the Garden of Eden); βThe Anticapitalist Conspiracy: A Warningβ (an assault on The Chicago Manual of Style); βNuages Gris: Colors in Music, Literature, and Artβ; and the uproarious βWhich Way Does Sir Dress?β, about ordering a suit from the most expensive tailor in London.
Β
Uniquely illustrated with images that the author describes as indispensable to his creative process, This Living Hand is packed with biographical insights into such famous personalities as Daniel Defoe, Henry Adams, Mark Twain, Evelyn Waugh,Β Truman Capote, Glenn Gould, Jasper Johns, W. G. Sebald, and Winnie the Poohβnot to mention a gallery of forgotten figures whom Morris lovingly restores to βlife.β Among these are the pianist Ferruccio Busoni, the poet Edwin Arlington Robinson, the novelist James Gould Cozzens, and sixteen so-called βUndistinguished Americans,β contributors to an anthology of anonymous memoirs published in 1902.
Β
Reviewing that book for The New Yorker, Morris notes that even the most unlettered persons have, on occasion, βpower to send forth surprise flashes, illuminating not only the dark around them but also more sophisticated shadowsβfor example, those cast by public figures who will not admit to private failings, or by philosophers too cerebral to state a plain truth.β The author of This Living Hand is not an ordinary person, but he too sends forth surprise flashes, never more dazzlingly than in his final essay, βThe Ivo Pogorelich of Presidential Biography.β
α’αααΈβα’ααααα·αααα
Randall Stross writes the βDigital Domainβ column for The New York Times and is a professor of business at San Jose State University. He is the author of several acclaimed books, including eBoys, Planet Google, and The Wizard of Menlo Park. He has a Ph.D. in history from Stanford University.
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