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Home , Leuce (mythology), Theophilus North, Thornton Wilder

But that story about the "some of us" orities: "If anyone gives you a shiny new equipment, the better." And the to Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. At the who "love to cook" captures only one cooking utensil for Christmas, you're as said about it, the better: "Your cooking same time, he was a consummate Amer- mode of and only one mod- thrilled as a janitor with a new bucket is a personal thing, like your sex life, ican theater professional, even playing ern iteration of the kitchen. There are of cleaning solvent," she writes. "The and it shouldn't be the subject of gen- the Stage Manager in innumerable per- other scenes, and these are absent from less attention paid to your cooking eral conversation." • formances of . And despite Wilson's engrossing book, though the Pulitzers, Broadway hits, and celeb- they're almost certainly a lot more com- rity friends, Wilder never acted the pri- mon than her absorbing AGA saga. donna. He didn't fuss or go in for star One scene is, of course, the kitchens of THE CHAMELEON turns; he simply got on with his work. the poor and struggling; another is the kitchens of middle-class people unen- 's multifaceted life and work enelope Niven, best known for chanted by food and its preparation. her biographies of Carl Sandburg What's a pleasure for Wilson and me is By Michael Dirda P and Edward Steichen, opens her a pain in the ass for a lot of people. In Life with a brief account of her subject's the past few years, fiftieth-anniversary austere New England ancestors, whose editions of two of America's most popu- Yankee virtues of thrift, temperance, lar cookbooks appeared. One—you've Discussed in this essay: and Christian high-mindedness were guessed it—was Mastering the Art of Thornton Wilder: A Life, by Niven, HarperCollins. 848 pages. $39.99. taken to unfortunate extremes by Wild- French Cooking, by Julia Child, whose .com. er's father. Three days before his wed- batterie de cuisine is now a foodie shrine Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays and Writings on Theater, edited by J. D. ding, Amos Parker Wilder felt morally in the Smithsonian. The other—which McClatchy. The . 888 pages. $40. loa.org . obliged to tell his bride that he would I bet you haven't guessed—is The I Hate Thornton Wilder: The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Other Novels 1926-1948, edited never get over his love for another wom- to Cook Book, by Peg Bracken, whose by J. D. McClatchy. The Library of America. 731 pages. $35. loa.org . an. As his wife, Isabella, later wrote, he pots and pans are now presumably in a Thornton Wilder: , , Autobiographical Writings, "never did. Never has." She once called landfill. More than 3 million copies of edited by J. D. McClatchy. The Library of America. 864 pages. $35. loa.org . their wedding day "the worst day that I Hate were sold, and, after the book ever befell either of us." had been out of print for some years, the For a while, Amos ran a newspaper rights were eagerly snapped up by pub- oor Thornton Wilder! He was a land of the living and a land of the in Madison, Wisconsin, but eventually lishers who reckoned it was "in sync awarded the three dead and the bridge is love, the only he wangled a post as U.S. consul gen- with lifestyles today" and that there p times, produced not one but two survival, the only meaning." eral in . The constant so- were millions of home cooks still yearn- high school classics—the short novel Alas, the strikes against Wilder cializing of their new diplomatic life ing to whip up something quick and The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) and the don't stop there. He remained unmar- overwhelmed Isabella, who grew in- tasty with a packet of onion-soup mix, play Our Town (1938)—and essentially ried, enjoyed the company of elderly creasingly neurasthenic and depressed. some canned peas, and that indispens- wrote the book for the phenomenally ladies, liked to pal around with hand- During the first six years of their mar- able tin of cream-of-mushroom soup popular Broadway musical Hello, Dolly! some young men, and seems to have riage she had dutifully produced four without using any piece of kitchenware Most of his seven novels became best- been either that old-fashioned thing, children, as well as the stillborn twin more exotic than a Jell-0 mold. The sellers, as well as selections of the Book a confirmed bachelor, or that politi- of Thornton. Eventually Mrs. Wilder middle classes, too, know their way very of the Month Club. Throughout his cally incorrect thing, a closeted ho- boldly took her two younger daughters well in and out of the microwave; they career, Wilder served as U.S. literary mosexual. Whichever the case, Wild- to Italy, then moved to Berkeley, Cali- are a profitable market for Whole ambassador to the world, going on good- er hardly lived up to his last name. fornia. Years would go by before the Foods's ready-made Harvest Squash will missions to South America, attend- Worst of all, he was your father's kind family reunited. They all became invet- Soup and Marks & Spencer's heat-and- ing conferences in Europe, and appear- of writer—successful. erate letter writers. serve chicken Kiev; they eat out a lot; ing on the cover of Time magazine with As Penelope Niven demonstrates in Amos proved to be a lackluster, even they often eat alone; and with many of the American flag in the background. her capacious and authoritative Thorn- incompetent, foreign-service officer. In- , the made-from-scratch meal for All of these were, of course, terrible ton Wilder: A Life, Wilder was in fact stead of wine he would serve grape juice the whole family is an endangered spe- career moves. Even before Wilder's among the most cosmopolitan of men, the work of a funnier Brecht, a more movie stars as and at official functions. While his elder son, cies. Just as the kitchen has become a death in 1975 at the age of seventy-eight, a writer who never repeated himself, a loquacious Beckett. . In the he also named Amos, won paternal ap- more social space, so the dining room he had come to be widely, if wrongly, fastidious stylist with a flair for every It may further surprise readers to tipped that era's literary kingpin, Alex- proval for his athletic prowess and reli- has fallen into relative disuse. perceived as the gray-flanneled Rotarian kind of comedy, from the most ironic to learn that Wilder met, and was es- ander Woolkott, to assist a promising gious bent, Thornton was derided as a We talk a lot about food, but much of American letters, at once middlebrow, the most farcical, a major interpreter of teemed by, a greater number of emi- eighteen-year-old actor named Orson "delicate, girl-playing aesthetic lad" who of it is just talk: our kitchens may be patriotic, and—pick one—sentimental and , fluent nences than that tuft hunter Truman Welles. In the late 1950s, he suggested liked to sing and to play the violin and well appointed, but the equipment, like or sententious. That his work repeat- in French, German, Italian, and Span- Capote could even dream of. Wilder that a young poet named piano. Both boys attended a German- the cookbooks—and a bit like the fish edly obsessed over the family and family ish, and a guy who could hold his liquor chatted with Sigmund Freud, received should try his hand at plays. run school in China before being knife—is often for show. Bee Wilson life didn't help. Out of context, even his at least as well as his friends Hemingway fan mail from Albert Einstein and T E. Wilder's affability and even temper, shipped to a boarding school in Califor- speaks to some of us, Peg Bracken to most-quoted sentence—from the close and Fitzgerald. Just as nearly all of Wild- Lawrence, counted heavyweight boxing steady application to his craft, and un- nia. Thornton was often lonely, espe- others. Wilson's people sit around in of The Bridge of San Luis Rey—sounds er's novels remain fresh, readable, and champion a close friend, wavering devotion to can cially for his mother. their kitchens, trading stories about as hokey as a Hallmark card: "There is remarkably difficult to categorize, so worked harmoniously with Alfred seem unromantic, almost insipid. But he Because two of the family's forebears had helped endow , and sous vide machines and immersion Michael Dirda is the author, most recently, of some of his plays, such as the famous The Hitchcock on the script for Shadow of a was, in many ways, a European-style blenders. Bracken's people are just as Classics for Pleasure (Harcourt) and On Skin of Our Teeth (1942) and The Long Doubt (1943), discussed existentialism , his favorite writers ranging because it was a theologically minded contemporary but have different pri- Conan Doyle ( Press). Christmas Dinner (1931), could almost be with Sartre, and consorted with such from Madame de Sevigne and Goethe institution with a tradition of social

Photograph of Thornton Wilder by Danford Barney 0 The Wilder Family LLC and The Barbara Hogenson Agency, Inc. Courtesy the Yale Collection of American 72 'S MAGAZINE! JANUARY 2013 Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, Connecticut REVIEWS 73 service, the senior Wilder sent both his comedy and tragedy, illusion and disil- ballet, the plays of Jean Girau- sons there for two years. Wilder loved lusionment, and spiritual belief and doux and Jean Cocteau. Even though Oberlin, but to his father's consternation earthbound reality that run throughout the action in Wilder's novel ostensibly spent most of his time writing short Wilder's work. takes place on the island of Brynos, the stories and plays. The Cabala proved a critical success, characters often seem to speak on an After transferring to Yale—and and though Wilder kept his day job almost bare stage like that of the great now set on a literary career—Wilder teaching French at the Lawrenceville play Wilder would write a few years later. managed to flunk three courses (Latin, School, he soon began work on a sec- Indeed, contains geology, and biology) in his first two ond novel, this one about five people the seed that will eventually grow into years. When the First World War who are killed when the finest bridge in Our Town. Chrysis relates the story of a broke out, he interrupted his studies to all suddenly collapses. Wilder was man who foolishly requests that the gods enlist, serving stateside as an artillery- in his late twenties when he wrote The return him to life for a single day: man before returning to Yale to gradu- Bridge of San Luis Rey, at once an in- ate in 1920. During the summers, quiry into God's unfathomable ways Suddenly the hero saw that the living Amos Sr., taking the notion of muscu- and a work of almost eighteenth- too are dead and that we can only be lar Christianity quite literally, mandat- century suavity. The story's abbess is so said to be alive in those moments when ed that his children work on farms or hated by the archbishop of Lima that our hearts are conscious of our treasure; as coaches at summer camps. None of the latter "counted the cessation of her for our hearts are not strong enough to the Wilder children—Amos, Thorn- visits among the compensations for dy- love every moment. And not an hour had gone by before the hero who was ton, Charlotte, Isabel, Janet—would ing." Wilder neatly balances irony and both watching life and living it called ever wholly escape their father's con- often poignant understatement: "Uncle on to release him from so terrible trolling "octopus-personality." Pio said that when they had crossed the a dream. The gods heard him, but be- Inevitably, as Niven writes, Wilder bridge they would sit down and rest, but fore he left he fell upon the ground and had "to get away from home in order to it turned out not to be necessary." Near- kissed the soil of the world that is too be himself" After his graduation, the ly all the book's characters inadver- dear to be realized. would-be writer spent a year in Italy, tently hurt those they love most. during which time he learned Italian, The Bridge of San Luis Rey won the he Woman of Andros provoked explored Rome, and visited an archaeo- Pulitzer Prize (edging out the oddly an unexpected and withering logical dig that would crucially influence similar and comparably beautiful T attack. The Marxist critic Mi- his artistic vision. There, as Wilder Death Comes for the Archbishop, by chael Gold lacerated Wilder as a toady wrote in a letter, he marveled at a series ), and its success made of the establishment and a practitioner of "faded paintings of a family called Wilder temporarily rich. His father, it of mannered, outmoded forms of writ- Aurelius" discovered underground while almost goes without saying, groused ing. Gold's tendentious barrage is now "the street-cars of today rushed by over that his son would probably just waste generally dismissed, but there is some us." The images of everyday domesticity the money or spend it on worldly fri- truth to his criticisms. Wilder's early prompted an epiphany: "We were volities. In fact, Wilder gave most of fiction scarcely acknowledges the mod- clutching at the past to recover the loves his earnings to his family. ern industrial world; his books, con- and pieties and habits of the Aurelius In 1930, further demonstrating his cerned with metaphysical and theo- family, while the same elements were artistic range, Wilder produced The logical questions, might almost be passing above us." Woman of Andros, a novel set in ancient categorized as contes philosophiques. Greece and composed in a crystalline, Even the beautifully wrought Bridge uring his European sojourn, serene prose reminiscent of Benjamin could be faulted for its Olympian re- Wilder, who had hitherto main- Jowett's translation of Plato. Its first half move. One never feels close to its Dly produced playlets for his col- focuses on Chrysis, a gracious and doomed characters—Wilder simply leges' literary magazines, began work on learned courtesan resigned to "the slow talks about them—and the high stylis- a book. In 1926, Albert and Charles misery of existence." An affair between tic gloss of the narrative exudes an Boni published The Cabala, Wilder's Chrysis' younger sister and the son of a almost Frenchified artificiality. deliciously witty first novel, in which a local chieftain constitutes the second Despite his claims to the contrary, young American arrives in Rome, falls half of this plaintive "notation of the Wilder may have taken heed of Gold's in with an aristocratic clique, and cool- heart," to borrow a phrase from The argument for a more relevant social- ly records its members' pretensions and Bridge. All ends in sorrow, leavened by realist art. His next book, Heaven's My unhappy love lives. Structured, like so prefigurations of the solace that Chris- Destination (1935), relates the picaresque, much of Wilder's later fiction, as a series tianity will one day bring to humankind. fast-paced adventures of a hayseed Don of intertwined "portraits," or episodes, If ever a work of fiction deserved to be Quixote in the Depression-era South- The Cabala could readily be mistaken called exquisite, this is it. The Woman of west. The hero, George Brush, is a good for an early work of Aldous Huxley or Andros has earned a place in the com- fool—Freud called him an "American Ronald Firbank. (Asked to say grace, the pany of the pseudoclassical works so fanatic"—who believes in the literal learned Cardinal Vaini begins: "Oh, prevalent in interwar Europe—think of truths of the Bible, eschews drinking pelican of eternity.") It also displays Paul Valery's Eupalinos, Cesare Pavese's and smoking, and tries to live by the those mixtures of fantasy and realism, Dialogues with Leuce, Igor Stravinsky's precepts of Gandhi, especially those

74 HARPER'S MAGAZINE! JANUARY 2013 concerning nonviolence. Brush is also a himself worried that Our Town might govern innumerable men but must ac - 1967, The Eighth Day, a mix of mystery traveling salesman, peddling school possibly be too painful, its somber knowledge that I am governed by birds and family saga, won the National Book textbooks, and on his rounds this in- truths too heartbreaking. According and thunderclaps. Award. The book opens with a dra- nocent mistakes a brothel for a boarding to Niven, as the original cast did its matic flourish: house, tries to save the soul of a hold-up first read-through of the famous third To many, The Ides of is its man during a robbery, and one night act, when the dead Emily returns to author's most winning novel, and fully In the early summer of 1902 John Bar- succumbs to the blandishments of a Grover's Corners for a single day, they the equal of Robert Graves's better rington Ashley of Coaltown, a small farmer's daughter, who disappears before had to stop, again and again, because known I, Claudius and Marguerite mining center in southern Illinois, was Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian. Wild- tried for the murder of Breckenridge he can do the right thing and marry her. of their weeping. Lansing, also of Coaltown. He was Turning away from the elegant and Responding to the outbreak of the er investigates the opposing tugs of or- found guilty and sentenced to death. often epigrammatic prose of his earlier Second World War the following year, der and disorder, the former represented Five days later, at one in the morning books, Wilder here revels in the poetry Wilder constructed his most ambitious by the dictator Caesar, the latter by the of Tuesday, July 22, he escaped from of the vernacular. In one chapter, for drama, a theatrical extravaganza that wild, thoughtless girl Clodia (who in- his guards on the train that was carry- instance, a well-to-do judge announces is half myth, half Marx brothers com- spires the love-racked poetry of Catul- ing him to his execution. his hope that George, whom he persists edy. tracks the lus, another character in the novel). Just in calling Jim, will take his rather plain history of the human race through before the death he has foreseen, Caesar On the run, Ashley abandons his daughter off his hands: time as a single, seemingly immortal declares that what matters most of all is family and flees to South America; three family (and its sexy maid) face one to live one's life with "intensity." of his four children, however, grow up to The judge paused, then began in a cor- crisis after another. It features, among Like his other works, The Ides of become world famous. The Eighth Day is dial and confidential tone: "Jim, young other things, a woolly mammoth and March reveals Wilder as a creative mag- Wilder's longest and most ambitious fella, you made a big hit with my a dinosaur, the arrival of the Ice Age pie, drawing on, and transforming, the novel, albeit one that divides readers. daughter, a big hit. I know that little and a biblical flood, the invention of work and thought of others, whether Some, like Wilder's Library of America girl and it's not every man that inter- The Woman of An- editor, the poet J. D. McClatchy, view it ests her, no, sir. Now listen. I want to the wheel and the alphabet, a visit to Suetonius or Sartre. give you a little tip. Just between you the Atlantic City boardwalk, a radio dros was partly derived from a play by as his masterpiece; others find it pon- and I, see? ... just man to man. That interview with the president of mam- , while The Skin of Our Teeth was derous and windy, a gallimaufry of girl ought to have a nice home of her mals, a global war, pratfalls and seduc- once assailed, somewhat ludicrously, as Theodore Dreiser, All the King's Men, own. See what I mean? You might say . tions, and audience participation. being a simplification of Finnegans and Shrugged (preternaturally she ain't really happy up at our house. By the time this "tragical-comical- Wake. During the 1950s Wilder labored gifted characters, inventions that could Jim, thirty-five thousand dollars goes historical-pastoral"—to borrow a over a never-published drama called revolutionize the world). I find it an with that girl. Yes, sir, if she can find a phrase from another playwright— "The Emporium," inspired largely by his uneven work, though parts of it are ir- good home, thirty-five thousand dol- opened, the forty-five-year-old Wilder fascination with Kafka's The Castle. resistible, like this distinctly Joycean lars goes with her. Depression year, too. was again in uniform. Assigned to in- Even his last major play, The Alcestiad summary of the blustery conversation Think it over. Yes, and what's more, of old-style newspapermen: I'm in a position to settle a young man telligence, he rose to the rank of lieu- (1955), would reconfigure an ancient in some good job around the Capitol, tenant colonel and earned a Bronze myth, used by many writers before him: The good wife Alcestis agrees to die for The talk turned largely on liquor (after- too. Well, that's just between you and Star. At war's end, Wilder was left effects of last night's consumption), I.... How does it appeal to you, eh?" physically and mentally exhausted. He her husband—and then returns from women (rapacity of, their staggering retreated to his family's home in Ham- the dead. over self-estimation, Schopenhauer's We've come a long way from the den, Connecticut, but was soon faced matchless essay on), politics (gorgonzola campy quips of The Cabala and the with several crises, starting with his he 1950s proved a frustrating in the City Hall, populace led by the meditations of The Bridge or The sister Charlotte's schizophrenia, the decade for Wilder. He delivered nose), their editors (exposure and down- Woman of Andros. This is the kind of final dashing of his sister Isabel's mari- T the Charles Eliot Norton Lec- fall predicted), literature (Omar Khay- homespun twang, suitably tempered, tal hopes, and his mother's death. tures at Harvard in 1950-51 but never yam, greatest poet that ever lived), phi- that will make possible Our Town. But Partly as therapy, Wilder started fid- managed to transform his reflections on losophy (Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, how, finally, we should regard Heaven's dling with what would become an epis- classic American literature into the towering intellect of), Chicago's rich crafted work of nonfiction he envisaged. men (hands and feet in the trough), re- My Destination remains elusive: Is it a tolary "fantasia" about the events sur- ligion (farcical character of, opiate of modern Pilgrim's Progress, or a critique rounding the assassination of Julius (American Characteristics and Other Es- the masses), venereal disease (wonder of cornpone fundamentalism? Is its Caesar. Published in 1948, The Ides of says was edited by Donald Gallup and doctor reported in Gary, Indiana). protagonist a simpleton, or a saint in March presents itself as a compilation published, posthumously, in 1979.) By the making? of documents—memos, letters, reports, 1962, the aging man of letters felt it was When The Eighth Day appeared, diary entries—swirling around a weary, time to light out for the territories. Wilder was seventy, and his financial y 1938, Wilder was well estab- politically astute Caesar, the existential Shortly after he was honored by Presi- future had recently been secured by the lished as a novelist, lecturer, hero as overworked executive: "I eh- dent Kennedy at a formal White House 1964 musical Hello, Dolly! (based on his Band teacher. The Happy Journey close in this week's packet," he writes dinner, Wilder packed his bags and unsuccessful 1938 farce The Merchant of to Trenton and Camden (1931) had also to his friend Turrinus, drove west. When his car broke down Yonkers, revised in 1954 as The Match- been staged on Broadway to respect- near the small town of Douglas, Arizo- maker). Though he might easily have a half-dozen of the innumerable reports devoted his later years to annotating able notices. But a new work about which, as Supreme Pontiff, I receive na, he stayed there for nearly two years. "the life of a village" juxtaposed against from the Augurs, Soothsayers, Sky Known as "the Professor," Wilder cooked or establishing the chro- "the life of the stars" was about to be- Watchers, and Chicken Nurses.... his own meals, drank at the local sa- nology of Lope de Vega's plays (two come the most popular play in the What's to be done? I have inherited this loons, and, to his own surprise, eventu- scholarly hobbies that obsessed him), American theater repertory. Wilder burden of superstition and nonsense. I ally started a new novel. Published in Wilder instead wrote one final novel.

76 HARPER'S MAGAZINE/JANUARY 2013 I REVIEWS 77 Set in Newport, Rhode Island, happy or unhappy, that it has been Theophilus North is a mixture of autobi- senseless." The dead implore us, she ography and fiction, its hero a young says, "to show them that their lives were adventurer with a flair for improvisation not empty and foolish." who comes to the aid of those in trouble, Virtually everything Wilder wrote freeing them from the psychological addresses this universal angst, this mys- bonds that prevent them from engaging tery. Artists aren't in the answer game, with, and enjoying, life. The book is, in but Wilder's work suggests, again and effect, one of those nostalgic, exuberant again, the vital importance of really homages to youth sometimes produced seeing the world around us, of relishing by a great novelist at the end of his life. the routines of ordinary life, of finding Think of 's Felix Krull or satisfaction in the quiet making and 's . appreciation of art. By 1973, the year of Theophilus North's Kurt Vonnegut once called Thorn- publication, Wilder was suffering from ton Wilder "the calmest, least strident, increasing deafness, loss of vision in one most humane and scholarly and for- eye, hypertension, and several other ail- giving and playful and avuncular ments, though his boyish spirits and American storyteller of the twentieth mental alertness were scarcely dimin- century." But Vonnegut also pointed ished. When he died—in his sleep, from out a "lack of immediacy and urgency a heart attack, with a copy of Ecker- and astonishment and suspense in all mann's Conversations with Goethe on the he wrote." That sounds quietly damn- bedside table—he had been toying with ing, yet surely there's a place for an art an idea for a mystery novel to be called of such intelligence and humor and "Theophilus North, Zen Detective." beauty and spiritual depth; we honor Apollo as well as . Perhaps iven's biography, the first to Edmund Wilson phrased it better still draw in depth from the Wilder when he said that Wilder's work ex- Nfamily archives, underscores hibits nothing less than "a Mozartian how much its subject regarded himself as combination of lightness and grace part of "the little republic of Wilders." with seriousness." • Niven portrays a man not so much riven as energized by opposing impulses. January Index Sources Though gregarious, Wilder also craved 1,2 The White House; 3,4 Enterprise Community Partners (Washington); 5 Bureau solitude. He loved his home in Hamden, of Labor Statistics; 6 U.S. Department of Connecticut, but could write only else- Agriculture; 7,8 Adecco Staffing (N.Y.C.); 9 where, usually abroad, often aboard a Instituto Nacional de Estadistica (Madrid); ship. Like Theophilus North, he enjoyed 10 Conselleria de Justicia y Bienestar Social "butting into turgid complicated lives" (Valencia, Spain); 11 Jennifer Ma, College Board (N.Y.C.); 12 The University of Phoenix; yet always contrived to remain "tangen- 13,14 American Association of University tial to someone else's whirlwind." Mar- Women (Washington); 15,16 Michelle ried women fell in love with him, but he Tompkins, Girl Scouts of the United States of discouraged intimacy while somehow America (N.Y.C.); 17 GLAAD (Los Angeles); 18 Music Today (Charlottesville, Va.); 19 preserving friendship. In his work too he John Fetto, Experian Marketing Services alternated between fiction and drama, (N.Y.C.); 20 IPAC-0O2 Research (Regina, between teaching and acting, between Sask.); 21 Yale Project on Climate Change scholarship and imaginative work. Communication (New Haven, Conn.); 22 Wilder's novels and plays, says Niven, Pew Research Center (Washington); 23 Public Policy Polling (Raleigh, N.C.); 24 raise the same tormenting questions Arlington National Cemetery (Arlington, over and over: "How does one love, and Va.); 25 Center for Investigative Reporting why? What is the nature and purpose of (Berkeley); 26 Chicago Police Department; art, and the function of the artist? How 27 Cook County President's Office (Chicago); 28 Chicago Police Department; 29 Amtrak does one truly live and bear the burdens Office of Inspector General (Washington); of life?" In a beautiful passage from the 30 Racebrook Capital (N.Y.C.); 31 Harper's seldom-staged Alcestiad, Wilder's hero- research; 32,33 UBS Equity Research (N.Y.C.); ine, Alcestis, reflects that the bitterness 34 Steak 'N Shake (Indianapolis); 35 U.S. of death is not in the parting but in the Department of Agriculture; 36 Congressional Research Service; 37 Harper's research; 38 "despair that one has not lived. It is the Kim Masters, The Hollywood Reporter (Los despair that one's life has been without Angeles); 39 Ministry of Business, Innovation, meaning. That it has been nonsense; and Employment (Wellington, New Zealand).

78 HARPER'S MAGAZINE/JANUARY 2013