On ‘boom times’ at the box office; the case of Alice Munro; diamonds scandals, present and past; amateurism in golf; and more
During the pandemic, some asked, “Will people ever go back to the movies? Buying those tickets, and bags of popcorn and all that? Or will we all watch movies at home, forever? Perhaps on our phones?” Here was a headline from last Sunday: “ ‘Despicable Me 4’ debuts with $122.6M as boom times return to the box office.” (Article here.)
I’m glad about that. I myself don’t go to movies (although I think I should). But I’m glad that people are still doing it the old-fashioned way, so to speak. Call it conservatism, call it nostalgia, call it hanging on — in any case, there you have it.
• Sickening news, concerning Alice Munro. I was going to summarize it. But I will let this report do the talking:
The daughter of the late Nobel laureate Alice Munro has accused the author’s second husband, Gerard Fremlin, of sexual abuse, writing that her mother remained with him because she “loved him too much” to leave.
The report notes that “Munro, who died in May at age 92, was one of the world’s most celebrated and beloved writers.” One of the best too, let me add. A master of literary art. (I wrote about her, here in Impromptus, shortly after she died: “Alice the Wonder, &c.”)
More from that report:
Andrea Robin Skinner, Munro’s daughter with her first husband, James Munro, wrote that Fremlin sexually assaulted her in the mid-1970s — when she was 9 — and continued to harass and abuse her until she became a teenager. Skinner wrote that in her 20s she told the author about Fremlin’s abuse. Munro left her husband for a time, but eventually returned and was still with him when he died, in 2013.
“She reacted exactly as I had feared she would, as if she had learned of an infidelity,” Skinner wrote.
Let me quote something else, please: an essay I wrote in 2022. The impetus for the essay need not detain us now. This is how it opened:
Long ago, I made a rule: I had to separate art from politics. Otherwise I would be driven nuts. There will always be people whose politics you object to. If you rule out listening to them, or reading them, or watching them, or what have you — you may find that it never ends. Your blacklist goes on and on.
I then had a “but”: “But you will want to draw lines now and then, of course” — and not just over politics. There is “personal behavior,” including sexual abuse. Including the abuse of minors. The word “abuse” can be a little gentle — I’m talking about rape.
Not long ago, I was listening to recordings of Wolfgang Schneiderhan, with mixed feelings. He was a violinist, a great one. Married to a great soprano, Irmgard Seefried. He was a Nazi. People make excuses for him. But that’s what they are: excuses, and mere ones.
Oh, sure, I’ll continue to read Alice Munro. But I can’t help feeling . . . I don’t know: A shadow has been cast. Some readers will understand me, some won’t. That’s how it goes.
• You know who doesn’t get celebrated enough? (I’ve made this point a thousand times in this column.) Entrepreneurs, businessmen. I am recently aware of Reinhold Würth, whose company, the Würth Group, “will become the Salzburg Festival’s latest main sponsor,” according to a press release. Mr. Würth, a German, was born in 1935.
A bit of his bio:
At the age of only 19, Reinhold Würth took over running the family business after his father’s untimely death — at the time, it employed two people, now it has grown to more than 87,000 staff. . . . A hands-on approach to finding new ideas and solutions which help customers in their daily business is the guideline Würth acts upon. “Looking behind the mountain and around the corner,” and leaving well-trodden paths behind — these are two of the basic precepts of the company, as summarized by Reinhold Würth. “We are our customers’ employees,” is his creed.
Corny? Maybe. Don’t care. I like it.
• The Washington Post had an editorial whose heading was “Gone but not forgotten: Political prisoners are being disappeared.” Meg Greenfield was the editor of the page in the 1980s and ’90s. She laid great emphasis on political prisoners and human rights. So did Fred Hiatt, who succeeded her. He died in 2021. I’m glad to see the paper is continuing the tradition.
For a time, Greenfield had a rule (unwritten, and maybe even unspoken): There had to be some mention of Andrei Sakharov every week. That might help keep him alive. At some point, Greenfield told this to Charles Krauthammer, who, years later, told it to me.
• Have you seen this? “Brazil’s police say Bolsonaro embezzled $1.2 million in undeclared jewelry from Saudi Arabia.” I will quote from the article:
The police report alleges there was “a criminal association for the embezzlement of high-value gifts that were received due to the position of former President Jair Bolsonaro.” The jewelry included diamond-encrusted Rolex and Patek Philippe watches, a necklace, rings, and cufflinks. The report says some of the presents were given to government staffers acting on Bolsonaro’s behalf during international trips.
I don’t know about you, but, when I was in high school, I was on fire for world affairs. (Maybe I was strange.) (No comments from the peanut gallery.) Everything was so vivid, you know? Later on, you get a little jaded, a little weary.
Anyway, when I read the news about Bolsonaro, I flashed back to the “diamonds scandal” — my first. The president of France, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, was in hot water for accepting diamonds from Bokassa, the dictator of the Central African Republic. (Or was Bokassa calling it an “Empire” at that time? I would have to check the chron.) Giscard had done this before his presidency, when he was the finance minister. In any event, the scandal contributed to his defeat in the 1981 election, at the hands of François Mitterrand.
• I was going to jot some political notes — notes on U.S. politics — but I will continue with the diamonds business. Some years ago, I wrote a book about the sons and daughters of dictators. And when you do that — you have to write about the dictators themselves, naturally. Let me paste a paragraph or two:
Bokassa had friends, powerful friends, abroad, and some of them we’ve met. Mobutu, down in Zaire, was a friend. Bokassa called him “mon frère cadet,” his younger brother; Mobutu called Bokassa “mon frère aîné,” his older brother. Bokassa also had a friend in the dictator we’ll discuss next: Idi Amin, the boss of Uganda, to the east of the CAR. Bokassa had a quite good friend in Eastern Europe, Ceauşescu. And he had a very good friend in France: President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. The Frenchman would come to Central Africa once a year or so to hunt with Bokassa. The Central African leader once gave him a gift of diamonds — not very good diamonds, and not many of them, but diamonds nonetheless. Giscard’s acceptance of them landed him in big political trouble.
In 1979, the French (under Giscard) got rid of Bokassa. They didn’t kill him. But they engineered his dethroning. Bokassa spent seven years in exile — the first four in the Ivory Coast, the last three in France itself. While in the latter country, he did some writing.
Another paragraph from my book:
Bokassa wrote his memoirs, Ma vérité, “My Truth” — a book bearing the same creepily relativistic title that had appeared on Edda Mussolini’s memoirs. One unhappy reader was Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, now the ex-president of France. He sued, and won: A court found that 18 pages of Bokassa’s book were defamatory and libelous. The court ordered the book burned. Bokassa himself watched. He rode in his Mercedes limousine to a warehouse, where he saw 8,000 copies of his testament — Ma vérité — go up in flames. About Giscard, he was bitter: “For twelve years we were friends. I welcomed him to my home. I gave him diamonds. He has cheated me, chased me from my country.”
Yeah, that happens. “Friendship.”
• For the Wall Street Journal, Kevin D. Williamson has written a piece about men’s summer fashion. (“Want to Save American Civilization? Wear Seersucker.”) I was reminded of something I once said about William F. Buckley Jr. — in this 1997 piece:
For a demonstration of Buckley in stylistic splendor, I invite readers to locate the November 25, 1996, issue of National Review, in which Buckley has a piece on cigars. Now, I, personally, would usually rather slit my throat than read about cigars, but so glittering is this essay that I had no choice but to xerox it, to keep as an example of what “the performing writer” (Buckley’s words) can do.
• A headline over a golf story read, “Amateur Luke Clanton fires 65 Saturday to continue improbable run at Rocket Mortgage Classic.” I thought, “Man, that’s interesting” — but it wasn’t. Because Mr. Clanton is not really an amateur. He’s a college student. A college golfer (All-American at Florida State). Oh, he’s an amateur all right, technically — but he’s a pro-to-be. A pro-in-the-making. That’s different.
We really don’t have amateurs anymore. Jay Sigel was an amateur. (He was an insuranceman, who played excellent golf.) Carol Semple Thompson was an amateur — probably the greatest female amateur in history.
Before all that, you had Bobby Jones . . .
Look, I know that these college hotshots are amateurs. But not really.
• We have a new coach at the Detroit Pistons — J.B. Bickerstaff. Fine, but I expect a lot of dissension among the assistants.
• Over the years, there have been “Happiness Is . . .” books. Well, I say: Unhappiness is running out of Ted Lasso episodes (which I recently did, all too soon). Maybe I should return to the movies — the movie theaters. See them Minions.
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