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I was reading an article by Caitlin Flanagan on Oprah, “The Glory of Oprah,” in December’s Atlantic. It was one of those articles you don’t plan to read, but you’re avoiding brushing your teeth or whatever, so you might as well read another paragraph.

There are hyperbolic superlatives, which increasingly have become the norm in such articles: Why Oprah “understands women and the power of television better than anyone else.” Yeah, yeah.

Here are a couple of moments that will have caused me minor tooth decay. The first:

One of the highlights of [Oprah’s] finale [was] a dazzling performance by Beyonce of her song, “Run the World (Girls).” …[F]or all her sophistication and sexuality, one of Beyonce’s great talents is her ability to exude the breathless innocence of youth itself. To the accompaniment of “Pomp and Circumstance,” in an outfit of leotard and high heels that somehow managed to signal that her remarks were in the style of a commencement address, she announced: “Oprah Winfrey, because of you, women everywhere have graduated to a new level of understanding of what we are, of who we are, and, most importantly, who we can be…Oprah—we can run the world!” There was a quivering, building excitement, because you knew she about to burst into the number, and after a few tension-filled moments, she did. A team of gorgeous backup dancers in black hot pants and red stilettos marched onstage, and Beyonce handed each one a diploma, then launched into the exciting song.” (111)

To YouTube we go:

What a scene of contradiction. That’s not quite a complaint. No, watching it again as a man, I don’t suppose I’m complaining at all. But you can’t watch it with a straight face: it’s that fine line between entertaining and ridiculous. Somehow the mind can’t accept it as both, so you go back and forth: it’s entertaining, no, it’s ridiculous, but I like it, but I’m ashamed of myself, but look at her, but I'm a chauvinist hog, etc.

The second moment considers Oprah’s appeal to her female fan base more directly, despite the slightly annoying provocative rhetoric (“There are certain things about women that men will never understand, in part because they have no interest in understanding them”). Oprah is being interviewed in a lightning round series of questions and the moderator asks her, “What is your favorite Favorite Thing?”

Oprah sat back, clearly aware of the implications her answer would have; it seemed she was preparing a way of evading the question—but she wasn’t. She leaned forward in her chair and said—in all seriousness and sincerity, and in tones of great certainty—“The Breville panini maker.” […] The appliance— “which can also be used for bacon,” Oprah said, “and can be used for fish”—was the clear favorite, and she said its name again, a coronation: “The Breville panini maker.” (118)

My first take on that confession was, Wow, Oprah’s so down-to-earth. She could have said a car or the iPad or whatever else she had given away [cough, promoted] to an audience of screaming women, but then within the same second, I thought, Wait, panini maker? Who has a panini maker? And it hit me that Oprah, like Beyonce, like any successful American empress, thrives because they traffic in desire. She brings you so close to a noun, using herself as the reference point, that you begin to enjoy her world as if it were your own, or to say it more precisely, as if it could be your own. When Beyonce is convulsing, part of you thinks you can do that (check out all the imitation videos for “Single Ladies”).

Almost (here’s that journalistic flourish I was complaining about) is one of the most powerful motivators. Only is another.

Tomic has the flexibility of Djokovic and also an unstudied, balletic grace to his movements. Consider his left hand in this photograph. It's a gesture out of a Renaissance painting, the gentleness. It makes me think of the soft bellies of birds.

Here's my favourite image of him--Tomic in grand jete.

Milos Raonic lives in Thornhill, Ontario, through which is one route to Toronto from where I live--a bad route because you'll be stuck in traffic and have to face countless traffic lights, but it's a route nontheless.

I like that he's on the world stage as a Canadian who, like most Canadians in the GTA, are also from somewhere else. He's got a good game: big serve, mentally tough. Balanced, practical, sensible, cool-headed. But most endearing is a slight hunch that gives him a lumbering quality as he waits around on the court between points.

Here's Dolgopolov, also affectionately known on tour as the Dog, serving. He swings when the ball is on the rise, when the ball isn't quite high enough, so he nets a lot of first serves as a result. But when everything's in synch, he catches his opponents by surprise. They expect to have a few more milliseconds but the ball is already screaming towards them.

This second video might be a better indication of why I like Dolgopolov. I supsected he'd be this kind of guy: messy bag, into brands, a goof. He's a good time. Check out the little dance at 2:35-2:40, then his little rap from 2:47+. He's like an adorable younger brother, eh?

Apart from Nadal, Federer, and Djokovic (in that sequence), my new favourite male tennis players are Alexandr [sic] Dolgopolov, Milos Raonic, and Bernard Tomic.

Dolgopolov has a serve like a strobe light. Raonic, well, he's Canadian. Tomic's open mouth is like the black mouth of death, so old for a teenager, or, in my better frames of mind, like Munch's The Scream.

Dogeared:

"Today's statistics tell us that fathers in David Baldwin's situjation often leave home. But Jimmy's stepfather did not leave home--he went mad." (5)

Countee Cullen's advice to Baldwin and all young writers: "Read and write--and wait." (29)

"What one can and cannot see 'says something about you.'" (35)

Baldwin's words: "I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain." (41)

Baldwin again: "I'm not really interested in being what Americans call 'happy.'" (112)

Baldwin comes to believe, apparently (I don't believe he believed it), that "The public man was the same as the private one; the view of reality that determines how one behaves in the bedroom also 'dictates one's behavior in the office.'" (252)

Baldwin's claims to be "a lover and therefore an optimist...the trick is to love somebody.... If you love one person, you see everybody else differently." (329)

Baldwin, during an interview with Maya Angelou, says, "A writer can never be a success." (334)

Leeming: "To him education meant the coruage to ask questions, to confront the dominant priorities, and to challenge them." (340)

Leeming describes Baldwin's concerns on his deathbed: "During the night he wanted to talk about religion. He realized that the church's role in his life had been significant, especially with respect to what he called his 'inner vocabulary.'" (384)

Okay, so I had no intention of reading this from cover to cover. It was one of those books in the orphanage bookcase, and my guilt over not loving Go Tell It prompted me to start it up: maybe I could admire Baldwin the man.

Leeming was Baldwin's secretary toward the end of his life, and I get the sense that he's interested in protecting Baldwin. He handles the life with consummate respect, so much so that I begin to suspect all sorts of skeletons in Baldwin's closet (har). Leeming definitely isn't sensational. Some parts are cluttered with names of Baldwin's crew, but Baldwin did have an entourage, and folks (and their families) probably want to see their name in print, flattering print. Leeming tends to orchestrate a positive legacy for Baldwin's work. He might say that the critics panned a novel, but then he'd focus on the one critic who wrote a few good sentences and quote and praise the reviewer's intelligence. And there were violins whenever Leeming cast Baldwin as a prophet, a man always searching for the interior story.

There were sixteen pages of photographs, indeed, but I wanted more personal ones. Should I ever grow to Baldwin's stature, there are a bunch of photos of me wearing plaid shirts that would be of more interest to fashionable readers than my posed graduation shot.

There were aspects of Baldwin's life that I admired. His expatriation in France and Turkey didn't feel so much a renunication of America as an understanding that there are other habitable places on the planet. Really, there are North Americans who believe folks everywhere else in the world are rubbing stones together for fire. I admired his political activism, his work on behalf of the Civil Rights movement. I admired his relationship with his brother, David. He liked to call people baby.

But could I be friends with Baldwin? I don't mean Facebook friends, but real, let's-drive-across-the-country, share-socks, buy-an-investment-condo friends. He was frustrating. He wanted love so desperately. He drank too much. Indulged too much. He squandered money. When a life is so neatly packaged that one can see its complete narrative arc, it becomes misapprehended and easy to pinpoint its errors, lapses of judgment, in a way contrary to how real life functions: mired in the middle of desire and business and triviality, one does not see the same mistake being repeated.

I prefer this Baldwin, without the obstruction of fiction.

It reads like a first novel, like dressed-up autobiography. Even if it is, it shouldn't read like as such. The novel just doesn't have the freedom, the abandon, of a masterpiece (a Lolita or a Beloved, say). I'm sorry for saying all of this.

Round 2. It's not a bad book. It's actually a very good book on some levels.

Baldwin faces the usual difficulty of trying to incorporate music into a silent art (assuming that most novels are not read aloud). Sometimes the songs are popular, like "It's me, it's me, oh Lord." Other times, not so much. I'm sure in Baldwin's head, those moments of music are powerful, but most readers don't sing out the lines, even internally, when reading unless the author makes more hoopla about the music, the sound of the piano or whatnot.

Quick structural summary: the novel has three parts; the first and last are from the POV of John who is ambivalent about his religion; the second section is the longest of the novel and divided into three sections, prayers, that are mostly flashbacks of the characters' struggle. You can read full summaries online. The suicide of Elizabeth's boyfriend, Richard, is the most tragic and moving part of the novel.

Here are some other moments when Baldwin seemed to break through:

Gabriel's mother is on her deathbed and Baldwin finds that regal, stately, Biblical cadence:

"Now she, who had been impatient once, and violent, who had cursed and shouted and contended like a man, moved into silence, contending only, and with the last measure of her strength, with God." (93, 1981 Doubleday edition)

• The sentence shares the same rhythm as a Pauline epistle; specifically I'm thinking of the first few verses of Ephesians 2 (And you hath he quickend, who were dead in trespasses and sins [the rest]).

Hot moment, a seduction:

[Elizabeth] muttered apologetically that she only wanted to buy some lemons. She expected him to get them for her in his sullen fashion and go back to his book, but he smiled, and said:

"Is that all you want? You better think now. You sure you ain't forgot nothing?" (158-59)

• Love that "You better think now." Mac.

Elizabeth confides in Florence (Gabriel's sister, if you don't remember):

"[O]n looking back, she was able to see clearly what she then so incoherently felt: how much she needed another human being, somewhere, who knew the truth about her." (178).

I know this look that babies give people:

"John looked with a child's impenetrable gravity into the preacher's face." (183)