And the winner is...

J. and I received quite a few Christmas cards this year, which we are obviously happy about. They came, as usual, in two batches -- the first from people who cared and remembered to send us a card. The second, just before or in some cases right after Christmas, from people who got ours and thought, "sh!t, forgot all about those two -- better send them a card." This year's best card, though, is electronic. I never thought I'd say that, but there you have it. It is, strictly speaking a New Year's card, and comes courtesy of my non-holiday-celebrating friend (click to enlarge):

Happy Holidays

I have a friend who claims to abhor Christmas, and goes out of her way to tell everyone how much she doesn’t care about it, how she doesn’t send out any cards and how she doesn’t buy any presents. She does it, as far as I know, out of atheism and a desire to dissociate herself from anything even remotely having to do with organized religion. Fair enough – I am a flaming atheist myself – but frankly, I think she is missing out a bit.

It’s patently obvious that for the vast majority of people, Christmas has lost all religious dimension. And, like it or not, our culture is built on a Judeo-Christian foundation, so it was natural for Christmas to evolve the way it did. Eventually, other holidays that fall conveniently during the winter season, like Hanukkah, have been added to reflect the inclusiveness our society claims to aspire to, and we’ve created the acceptably general Holiday Season. So far, so good. Question is, should we have? Someone like Christopher Hitchens would say no – it is precisely by secularizing originally religious holidays rather than eliminating them outright that we enable the insidious spread of religion into spheres of life where it does not belong. But I think there is value to celebrating a winter festival of one sort or another.

Recall that Christmas has evolved out of the pagan custom of celebrating the winter solstice. Also a religion, paganism – I know. But this is not about Thor and Freya, or Zeus and Hera. The pagans were in tune with nature far more than we are today. They paid attention to the seasons and to the way those seasons affected their daily life. And those things are well worth paying attention to in this speeding-up and heating-up world of ours. A winter festival allows us to pause and notice the cyclical nature of life, the passing of time, to remind ourselves that both the good and the bad that has passed will likely come again, for such is the nature of things. And while one can argue, successfully, that this can be done at any time, doing it around the winter solstice makes sense – it’s the deadest time of the year as far as nature is concerned. Everything that was going to die has died, and everything else is showing no signs of life yet (ok, a Euro-centric view of nature, climate and weather – you got me there). There is a reason the solar calendar, with the dead of winter serving as the beginning of a year, has caught on. I think the Japanese have it about right – whether Christian, Buddhist, Shinto, or none of the above, they celebrate the arrival of the new year as the chance to leave behind the sorrow and embrace the joy as they enter a new cycle.

Happy Holidays, everyone, and a Happy New Year!

Heelys

I have a colleague who is in his late thirties. He is good at what he does, hard worker, and is usually willing to help others. Yesterday, he showed up to the office wearing Heelys. I quipped something along the lines of it being the latest approved way for us to release our inner child, but got a feeling that he was not entirely unserious about wearing them. We went to lunch (him, me and two other guys) and chatted while walking, and he kept skating away a few feet in front of everyone else, sometimes in mid-sentence. Am I the only one who finds the entire thing (I was going to use the word “behavior” but I think there is a philosophical, or at least an attitudinal, component here, too) a little odd, and not in a good way?

Dinner chez C.S.

It seems that the holidays have crept up unexpectedly this year, and didn't leave me enough time to see everyone I wanted to see beforehand. J. and I did, however, make it out to C.S.'s house last night to give him and B. their Christmas presents and have one of his incredible dinners. It was great to see them – I missed them; we haven't seen them in what seems like ages, especially B. But it's the meal that's truly worth writing about for posterity.

Both J. and B. had commitments right after work, so C.S. and I hung out for a while and enjoyed a bottle of Unibroue Térrible that I brought along – a dark-brown, relatively sweet, bottle-conditioned 10.5% ABV monster of a Belgian-style ale. Not the best aperitif, perhaps, but delicious nonetheless. C.S. commented that it didn't taste that strong, but I definitely felt some warmth on the back palate. It was smooth, though. Dangerously so – good thing I only brought one bottle. C.S., being who he is, had set out some delicious chorizo, smoked salmon, and some amazing Italian olive oil.

Eventually, the ladies arrived and we sat down to dinner. C.S. had recently discovered a mail-order source of heirloom beans (how he finds these things, I will never know), so the first course was Tuscan white bean soup. It was simple but lovely. The beans were excellent. I'm not sure I could tell the difference between them and a non-heirloom variety without a side by side comparison, but they were very good, and the broth was quite flavorful as well. To my astonishment, C.S. announced that there was no stock involved in making the broth at all – just some onions, bacon, herbs and spices. So we were essentially slurping bean water. Described that way, I realize it sounds unappetizing, but it was the best soup I've had in a long time. We accompanied it with an odd white wine of unknown varietals made by Trappist monks in Northern Italy.

For the main course, C.S. made roast pork – a four-chop segment from a crown roast. It was, quite possibly, the best pork I have ever had, certainly in the top five. He had roasted it ahead of time and was just going to bring it up to temperature before serving. Turned out that it was way undercooked, so he had to carve it and finish it in a saute pan, but that took absolutely nothing away either from the flavor or the tenderness of the meat. It blew me away. His secret was brining – evidently, the technique has spread beyond Thanksgiving turkeys. And it helped that the recipe for the brine was Thomas Keller's, so it was a far cry from just salt dissolved in water – C.S. rattled off more than a half-dozen ingredients. He served the pork over some delicious braised red cabbage strongly spiked with cumin and accompanied it with an herby cream sauce. The whole combination was phenomenal – I had no compunction picking up the bone with my hands and gnawing off every last fiber of meat. We drank Oreana's “Winemaker's Mistake” -- I recently got a case of it directly from the winery (proving that I can, in fact, have wine shipped to me – yay!) and brought along a bottle. It worked well – with just a touch of residual sugar, it complemented the cabbage in particular.

The dessert – there is always dessert at C.S.'s house; I'd complain that it was too much food if it wasn't always so damn good – was chocolate cheesecake. We were in a bit of a food and drink coma by this time – to be perfectly objective, it was a little too much food, and the strong beer and pre-dinner munchies didn't do me any favors – so the subtleties of the cake were probably lost on me just a little, but it was definitely more than up to C.S.'s usual high standard. Perfect tang (why are so many cheesecakes one-dimensionally sweet?), just a hint of chocolate and – probably the most remarkable for me – custard-smooth. Not a hint of graininess to the texture. I don't know how he does it. Twelve weeks in pastry school, I guess.

We, and J. in particular, paid with not being able to get to bed until after midnight – far past both of our bed times these days, especially hers, but I'd sacrifice sleep for another meal like this any day. Great big “Thank You” to C.S. for outdoing himself yet again.

New York

J. and I took a whirlwind trip to New York City this past weekend. I cooked it up a couple of months ago when I discovered that Hélène Grimaud was playing Ravel's piano concerto with the NY Philharmonic, somehow failing to realize (even though the calendar was right in front of me) that it was less than a week and a half before Christmas. So the timing wasn't ideal, but we managed to have a good time.

The drive was the easiest in recent memory, we arrived at my parents' house in Ft. Lee, NJ around lunch time, spent a couple of hours fulfilling familial obligations, then headed into the City sometime after 4:00. The previous day, I discovered to my great dismay, though I should not have been surprised by this, that we were not the only ones wanting to have an early dinner in the Lincoln Center neighborhood, and most restaurants were booked up solid. I did end up getting a reservation at Pasha, a Turkish place a few blocks away, and though we were in the mood for something a little more dressed up, we figured better safe than sorry, especially since the restaurant came with a glowing recommendation from my parents. In the event, the trip into Manhattan took no time at all, and we found ourselves on the Upper West Side with an hour to kill. Having a drink seemed like an obvious thing to do, and just as J. and I were discussing this while walking along 72nd Street, we happened upon a quaint looking bar wedged between two classically New York ultra-luxury apartment buildings. The name of the place was Riposo 72, and long story short, we spent the next two hours there, canceling our Pasha reservation and making a meal out of small plates and cheese at the bar.

The place opened recently according to the waitress, and judging by the crowd that had gathered by the time we left around 7:00, was doing well. It features a medium-sized wine list that leans in the Italian direction and a selection of appetizers, small plates and cheeses. We settled on some mussels in a tomato broth followed by a flatbread with wild mushrooms, onions and goat cheese. The mussels were delicious – plump and fresh-tasting – but it's the broth that made the dish. Chock-full of herbs and spices, it was positively bursting with flavor. I would have been happy to spend the rest of the evening dipping chunks of bread into a bowl of it.

The flatbread was Riposo 72's excuse for pizza. I was initially skeptical – I understand the headache and expense of installing a real pizza oven – but in my experience, trying to substitute an unleavened imitation, which is what flatbread essentially is, always falls flat (pun fully intended). It turned out to be quite satisfying, however. The relatively dry, bland crust functioned to offset the intense toppings and, being relatively crispy, provided an excellent vehicle for getting them into your mouth. The toppings were delicious and plentiful – the mushrooms were firm, meaty and very mushroomy – there is no other way to describe the flavor, and the goat cheese fresh and of high quality. I could have used a little more of the goat cheese, but the overall balance was good, the red onions providing a tangy foil for the mushrooms and a crunchy contrast to the unctious cheese.

We accompanied the meal with a couple of different red wines from Riposo's selection of glasses. We started with a Pinot Noir from Oregon whose name escapes me but whose flavor was excellent – a little more assertive than some Oregonians, but not quite Californian, with an enormous floral nose and good balance. I followed that with a glass of Zinfandel that was also delicious. Once again, I can't think of the name. J. opted for Barbera with her flatbread – it was excellent as well despite being only $8 for a semi-generous glass (a steal on the Upper West Side), and exhibited none of the flabbiness of cheap Barberas.

The evening's unintentional entertainment was provided by a thirtyish woman holding court at the bar (we were seated at a high-top near the window, away from the bustle), worshipped by a small gaggle of drooling (but behaving -- it was only 6:00 p.m. after all) young men. Attractive and stylish in a beautiful person kind of way, she appeared to have enjoyed some of Riposo's delicious wines already and was quickly losing her naturally low inhibitions. She would have been obnoxious had she not been so funny. Though we were focused on our own conversation, we left the place knowing that she was from Leesburg, VA (yikes -- almost a hometown girl), that her friend's new husband was a complete jerk, and that she was ovulating and it was a good time to get pregnant.

Amused and sated (but not so much that we would fall asleep at the concert) we walked the handful of blocks to Avery Fisher Hall. Despite all my connections to New York, I have never seen a performance at any of Lincoln Center's spaces, and have never heard the NY Philharmonic live, so I was looking forward to the experience. They started with Ibert's Homage à Mozart, a five-minute ditty they programmed, I am convinced, so that the late-comers could be seated after it was over and not miss any of the main attractions. Then it was time for my classical music crush Grimaud to play Ravel's piano concerto. It was the “normal” one in G, as opposed to the other one, written for one hand for a soloist who lost an arm in WWI. It's a great piece, and Grimaud and the NY Phil. did it full justice. The outer movements are frenetic and angular, and Grimaud tossed them off with casual nonchalance. There was little emotion in her playing, but that's because there is little in the music – it keeps the listeners on their toes, and communicates something about the world that surrounded Ravel when he wrote it, but the deep feeling is reserved for the slow movement, for my money one of the most beautiful in all of piano repertoire. Grimaud shined here, too – her playing was absolutely gorgeous. The orchestra provided solid support but let the soloist do the talking – exactly as it should be. The biggest surprise of the first half came at the end – the audience response was far more enthusiastic than anything I have heard in DC, and they called Grimaud back for three (!) curtain calls. One of the many ways in which New York is special, I guess (the hall was packed, too, I should point out).

The second half was dedicated to Shostakovich's Fourth symphony which I had never heard. Composed in 1936, it was not premiered in Russia until 1961. The long-standing story is that Shostakovich pulled it during rehearsals, but it's pretty much certain that he was told to pull it or suffer the consequences. Not surprising, either – it's a sprawling work (a full hour long), dark, and full of diametrically opposing contrasts. Despair and dread are far more apparent that revolutionary fervor. Shostakovich can be accused of neither subtlety nor economy of expression: doubled horns, extra basses and a contrabassoon. Mahler would be envious. The opening section alone, with the entire orchestra blasting away at triple-forte, is enough to push you into your seat. Structurally, the symphony is loose – there are themes, they recur, sometimes altered or inverted, but on the first listening I could not glean an overall architecture. It could also be shorter. A lot shorter – J., who is normally so natural at orchestral music, had trouble focusing by the third movement. But the visceral impact is undeniable, and some of the solo passages are amazing. The bassoon solo in the first movement, in particular, is great, and the farting – sorry, no better word for it – tubas have no equivalent in other composers' work that I know of. The symphony was well worth the effort, though I don't know that I would want to own a recording.

If I have any complaints about the concert at all, it is the acoustics at Avery Fisher. The Kennedy Center symphony hall where we usually hear the NSO has mediocre acoustics, and, spoiled by the Phoenix hall (surprisingly good sound) and, above all, Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Gammage Auditorium at ASU, I was hoping for something better in New York. I was disappoitned. From where we were sitting – rear orchestra, usually some of the best seats in the house, sound-wise – the sound was bone-dry and the bass was sorely lacking. The Shostakovich made an impact regardless, but despite all those extra low-end instruments, I was acutely aware that I was missing the bottom dozen or so cycles.

Sunday morning, through buffeting winds and freezing rain, we trudged to Gramercy Park to meet my old friend D. for brunch at Irving Coffee. Nice place. Very New York – cramped but cozy, with efficient but none-too-friendly staff and the clientele consisting primarily of independently wealthy denizens of the neighborhood writing travelogues on their laptops. Good muffins and delicious, eggy quiche. D. was his usual bright-eyed and bushy-tailed self, we caught up on his doings at NYU, where he teaches art history, and in a stunning reversal of his previous claims of helplessness, he promised me a complimentary copy of his first book. We made our way back to Ft. Lee early in the afternoon and hit the road for an amazingly smooth return trip.

Napoleon vs. Napoleon

Our detachment from history and the subversion of the relative hierarchy of intellectual references is complete.

There is an executive at my company. He is a very small man – shorter than me by several inches (and I am not tall), skinny, with small, beady eyes and an equally small quantity of hair on his head. Though I don't know him well, based on my few interactions with him he seems to compensate for his small stature by being unpleasant and inconsiderate. I was at an office holiday party last week at which he was also present. A colleague, standing next to me, pointed him out and commented that he didn't know much about him. “I don't either, “ I replied, “but Napoleon comes to mind.” The colleague gave me a quizzical look. Then, after a few seconds, a look of recognition. “Oh, Napoleon... for a second I thought Kip.” It was my turn to look quizzical. “Napoleon Dynamite,” the colleague said, “the brother.” I don't care if Kip Dynamite is a spitting image of the short executive – this is just depressing.

Rant: Photo cards

Photo cards are here in a big way. You know the kind – single-sided, printed on glossy photo paper, with a big photo of the sender and/or their family and some canned Christmas greeting. J. and I got two already. I am not so much of a curmudgeon that I am going to complain that no one hand-writes their Christmas cards anymore. I know that's a lost cause. And never mind that these cards are the latest manifestation of the MySpace phenomenon – a way for people to focus yet another thing, formerly a small gesture of friendliness towards others, on themselves. It's the pictures!

Take the two cards sitting on our bookshelf. Both are from friends who live far away. Both sets of friends are couples, each with a small child. The cards could not be more different. Exhibit A: A., her husband S. and their little daughter. The entire family is in the picture. A. and S. are both smiling, looking healthy, and A. has a stylish new haircut. Exactly what I want to see, if I am going to get a photo in the mail. I don't really care about the kid – it's my friends I want to see. I mean, I do care that the kid is healthy and growing up well, but I have to be honest – I care mostly because if the kid is happy, my friends are happy. But there is more. While her parents are smiling beatifically, the little girl has the crankiest, most sour expression on her face. It's obvious that she had to be dragged in front of the camera kicking and screaming. The contrast between her and her parents is hysterical. Surely there were other pictures available. Surely she could be made to smile long enough to take a snapshot with a various combination of candy, teddy bears and what have you. But my friends chose to send this one, so even the anti-kid elements among us could get a chuckle out of a picture of a child.

Exhibit B: Only the kid, wearing both a Santa hat and a "Santa's Little Helper" sweatshirt, grinning inanely into the camera, floating against a blue background – obviously a studio shot. The parents are nowhere to be seen. It screams: “Look at what we've created! Look how adorable it is! Don't you love it?” Apparently, I am supposed to focus on nothing but the kid. I haven't seen the parents in three years, this is the only thing they will send me all year, and I still don't know what they look like nowadays. I guess the kid is all I am expected to care about, even though I've never met him, and by the time I will, if ever, he will look like nothing like the picture. The parents have become non-entities. Ah, well. What was that The Who said about my generation?

Trigger-happy

The Russian government demanded today that Britain close all Russian Offices of the British Council – a UK government-run cultural outreach and language instruction organization. The pretext was typically lame, contrived and, in fact, non-sensical – that the Council, registered as a non-profit in the UK, has no diplomatic standing because it is a for-profit organization (e.g. they charge fees for their services). This is so infuriatingly Russian – no, Soviet – on so many levels, that it makes me want to drink a shot of vodka (and I don't drink vodka).

First of all, it is patently obvious that the demand is a salvo in the battle over the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi, whom the British accuse of murdering Alexander Litvinenko, a Putin critic living in London at the time of his death from radiation poisoning. But that is actually the least Russian aspect of the deal – many countries resort to this kind of childishness in diplomatic disputes.

Everything else is pure KGB. First, it makes no logical sense -- you have no diplomatic standing, therefore you must close. Well, how about other kinds of standing? Did they go on vacation all of a sudden? Then, the very demand to shut down. “Ve vill kill you if you don't do az ve say.” Shoot now, ask questions later. The Washington Post thinks it's unclear how the Russians will enforce the order to close down if the British defy it. I think it's very clear – they will send in the infamous “tax police” with flak jackets and assault rifles. They've done it to Russian non-profits a million times, why not to a foreign one? I bet they'd haul the staff off to jail, too, if the members are not too highly-placed in the British diplomatic circles. In most other governments, someone reasonable enough to see this as an opportunity would step up to the plate. “We'd like to do all we can to help you remain open, but there is this pesky question of the fees you charge. Our, ahem, law requires us to do likewise – could we arrange, how do we say this, a profit-sharing agreement of some sort?” But not the Russians. Blast the whole thing to shreds; who cares about money! Ah, never mind -- it's not about the money anyway.

Finally, there is the target. The British Council does essentially educational and entertainment kinds of things – language classes, movies, lectures. Do I smell the old cocktail of equal parts information control, jingoism and xenophobia? The last thing the Soviet government wanted its citizens to do was to learn about Western countries, their culture and their way of life from natives of those countries, in other words, to learn the truth. So anything even remotely cultural and educational would always be the first on the list of targets for elimination. Welcome back to the 1970s, Russian-style.

Opinions

It is a slow day in the op-ed section of the Washington Post, apparently. Surely Anne Appelbaum, usually an incisive, or at least a relevant, commentator, could find something better to write about than John Darwin? How about Putin's anointment of a successor? How about it, Anne? You understand Eastern Europe from the inside, and have been one of the few to remember that when an iron curtain falls, those who erected it do not go away quietly. Surely you have something to say about Medvedev and the West's naive hope that he would be better than Putin because he is not a former KGB officer?

SUVs

In a recent column, the Boston Globe takes Toyota to task for selling the Sequoia, a full-size SUV. Their complaint, essentially, is that Toyota is encouraging its customers' bad behavior:

“...the company remains happy to profit off Americans who cannot look past their hood ornament.”

As much I think most large SUVs are unnecessary, I am with Toyota 110% on this one. Last time I checked, Toyota, along with thousands of other corporations, was in the business of selling product at a profit. So if the customers will buy the Sequoia, Toyota will sell the Sequoia. It's a no-brainer.

To their credit, Toyota did respond, though their response was far more meek that it could have been. It appeared in the company's official blog on their website, read presumably by people who are already fans of the brand or owners of its products. Why not reply in the very paper that published the original attack? As an op-ed perhaps, or at least a letter to the editor? If the Globe has any journalistic integrity left, they would publish it in a second. But I digress. Eventually, after criticizing Derrick Jackson, the author of the original article, for lapses in fact checking (trivial in the grand scheme of things), and praising some of their fuel-efficient models (also irrelevant to the main point), they do eventually get to the meat of the question:

“...how can Toyota be responsible to its stockholders (to whom it is compelled by both law and by ethics to be responsible), and to its customers, if it fails to offer such vehicles [as the Sequoia]?”

and eventually, almost all the way at the end:

“Toyota’s position is that people should make their own decisions about what they drive. It’s our job to provide them with the best choices possible, which is precisely what we’re doing.”

Thank you. Amazing that this still needs spelling out, isn't it?

What is Jackson trying to argue here, exactly? As far as I can see, it is that companies like Toyota should be dictating what consumers buy by offering only those products. That, not to put too fine a point on it, is preposterous. See above – Toyota is not in the nanny or moral righteousness business. They are in the business of selling cars. But maybe something more sinister is going on here. Whenever the question of fuel economy and the wastefulness of SUVs comes up, the discussion turns very quickly to the proposals, currently before Congress, to revise government fuel economy standards. Jackson, needless to say, if wholly in favor. So is he really saying that if companies don't dictate what people buy, the government should do it, even if it is done indirectly, by legislating what the companies sell? A nanny state, one that purports to know what's good for its constituents and require, by law, that they behave in accordance with their own moral standards? Do I need to remind him that in a world where people aren't free to buy a giant SUV, he probably would not be free to write about it?

Snow

We had our first snow yesterday. It started in the morning and snowed steadily through the day and into the evening. By the time it ended sometime in the middle of the night, we had a good three inches on the ground. The traffic and public transit fell apart instantly, of course, but that goes without saying around here. I thought the snow was great. First of all, it was simply beautiful. We got the complete package – after snowing all day yesterday, this morning it was sunny and clear, with bright blue skies, and the still clean, sparkling white snow looked gorgeous on tree branches, buildings, even cars. I think fresh snow is one of the most visually pleasing things nature has come up with. In addition, I hate to say it, but it made me a bit nostalgic.

You see, snow was a daily occurrence for me during large chunks of my life. Last night, when it was still coming down steadily, I had an errand to run, so I pulled my waterproof boots out of the closet and trudged out there to brush off my car, and it reminded me of my college days in Rochester, NY, when from early December well into February, and some years even earlier or later, I had to do this every morning. It was much colder, of course, so much so that the car – a late-model Honda I was borrowing from my father that even in its day was supposed to be usable in any weather – had trouble starting. When I finally got it going, I would diligently walk around, knee-deep in snow, brushing the car off in sections – first the roof, then the rear window, then the windshield, brief interruption to pry the frozen windshield wipers off the glass, then the hood and the trunk. If the snow was still coming down, as was frequently the case, I had to do it quickly, so that the front wouldn't be covered again by the time I made it to the rear. Last night it was just like that.

I was also reminded of my childhood, when my father and I would have to do that to his car, except for an even longer portion of each year. Sometimes, the car – a 1968 Fiat – would not start at all, but we would go out and brush it off anyway, because if we didn't, subsequent snowfalls would bury it completely, and after a while the snow would freeze into a miniature iceberg that the Fiat's pitiful heater would never melt even on full blast. Sometimes, we would have to borrow an icebreaker from our building's custodian to crack the ice in front of the car lest my father wouldn't be able to pull it out of its parking space. I was too young to wield the icebreaker effectively, so I just watched, thinking how resourceful my dad was. Ah, memories...

Academia

L. was in town for a couple of days last week and over the weekend. She came for a conference, but since she didn't have funding to pay for a hotel, she stayed with us. She is finishing up her PhD dissertation and applying for professorship positions. In fact, the reason she came to this conference in the first place is to meet some people from some of the departments where she has applied. She has applied to 28 jobs so far. Naturally curious about how the academic world, and the academic job market specifically, works, I asked her how high the likelihood of not getting a single offer out of the 28 was. “Oh, very high,” she replied non-chalantly. She had given a job talk at McMaster some months ago. She didn't get the job. The guy who did get it, she later found out, has applied to something like 40 positions, and McMaster was the only school that even short-listed him. That sort of competition seems completely insane to me. It's amazing that we have any university faculty at all. Sacrifice anywhere from four to ten prime years of your life to get a PhD only to be confronted with this kind of odds of getting a job? I had contemplated entering academia some years ago and, recently, with the looming cloud of IT outsourcing and the deeply ambivalent feelings I have about my current management work never too far from my thoughts, I have been contemplating it again. But after what L. told me, I just don't think I have the determination to climb a mountain that steep. I don't feel passionately enough about anything I would be likely to study, and then research and teach, to see it through.

Edward Hopper

B.B. was passing through town yesterday, so I took a day off and took him to see the Edward Hopper show at the National Gallery. It was excellent. Arranged in more or less chronological order, it started with a dozen or so etchings he made as a young man in the first decade of the XX century. Aside from the one of a man walking along a street under a streetlight, which I vaguely recall having seen somewhere a long time ago, probably at the Whitney, I had never seen any of the etchings before, and they were all beautiful. I think they are shown fairly rarely in general, at least compared to his paintings, but the current show was an excellent opportunity to see them. There were tons of watercolors, also lovely, and, of course, most of the famous oils, including the endlessly parodied Nighthawks, Automat, Room in New York, etc. Very comprehensive.

Hopper has always been one of my favorite artists, even back when I thought Dali was god. Something about the minimalist, yet decisively concrete way in which he depicts things, especially buildings, had always appealed to me on a purely emotional level. The occasional need to be grounded in reality in art as in life, I suppose. And, of course, most of his works, even ones with no people in them, positively ooze loneliness, and any artist who can do that, especially as effectively as Hopper, is alright in my book. But I actually haven't thought about him, and have not come across images of his work, either accidentally or deliberately, in a long time. This made the exhibit that much more enjoyable – I was reminded just how much I love his stuff. There was a quote from a critic – Clement Greenberg, I think – in an on-wall introductory paragraph in one of the rooms. It was something to the effect that Hopper wouldn't have been as good of an artist had he been a better painter (meaning technically). Bunk, I say. The thing that hit me the most yesterday – something I was vaguely aware of before but never really stopped to think about – was the quality of his light. He could pinpoint precisely the time of day or evening (especially evening) by the color of the sunlight on the side of a building, or the angle at which the shadows fell. That's not technique?! His watercolors, too, are astonishingly precise in line, color and composition – all aspects that the watercolor medium supposedly renders so difficult to control.

If I have a complaint about the show at all, it is trivial in the extreme – I was hoping the gift shop would have a reproduction of at least of one of the uncommon etchings. I would have bought one and hung it at home in a second. But, as usual, the lowest common denominator ruled the day, and all they had were the famous oils and a couple of later, colorful large-format watercolors. I contented myself with a poster of House at Dusk and a handful of postcards.