Free Lapham Rising by Roger Rosenblatt Page A

“paramount” to striking at the club’s heart, though he allowed as how he’d been young once himself and well recalled how “darned uncomfortable” those neckties could get on an August night.
    And then there is a sampling of the candidate’s “fugitive thoughts” on various issues. On the economy: “Business is good for business.” On gay and lesbian marriage: “I think it should be left up to the cities.” On jobs: “The more jobs, the better.” On immigration: “If foreign people will work for less pay, fine. But they should not drive out real American workers.” I think I’ll print out that one for the Mexicans.
    On war:
    I do not believe that Americans should send our young people into harm’s way where they might lose life and limb unless the war is in America’s best interests. For example, if some country somewhere is having a civil war, I say that’s OK as long as it doesn’t get out of hand. If England or Russia or some European country had interfered with our Civil War, where do you think we would be now? On the other hand, if the American man, woman, or child is going to suffer because some other country attacks us or has something we need, then I declare: Bring it on!
    I wish I could say it was inconceivable that a man like Lapham could gain public office. But look who holds public office now. The times call for a man who believes in nothing. He runs because he knows the people expect him to believe in nothing, and want him to believe in nothing, because they too believe in nothing. Thus he becomes a man of the people. Nothing comes of nothing.
    Say, do you think I would make a good King Lear? Gold pointy crown? White flowing beard and robes? There’s no heath on my island, but I could be holding a Heath Bar. Tell me. Don’t hold back. Bang bang bang bang bang .
    “There’s no doubt about it now,” I tell Hector. “No question as to my course of action now.”
    “Really?” He yawns, his jaws gaping like a crater.
    “Yes. No question at all. You know, Hector, it occurs to me that this may be the most important day of my life, the moment when all the stray and whorling strands of my existence merge into one clear, straight ribbon of light, and I at last win the towering moral satisfaction due all those who are driven to defend what is decent, modest, and right in the world.”
    He looks up devotedly. “Then again, you may be ready for a straitjacket.”
    Yes, by all means run for the Senate, Lapham, old boy. And after that, who knows? Perhaps the country cottage you are building across the creek from me will one day become the nation’s next Hyannisport or Kennebunkport or Key Biscayne or Crawford. How lucky I will be to live so close to the President’s summer White House. The dignitaries who will come for visits. Foreign ministers. Supreme Court justices. Country-and-western singers. Astronauts. The Bassoonist Marching Band from Little Rock. The national champion cow tipper from Omaha. The Secret Service agents with their trousers rolled, carrying Uzis and patrolling the creek in narrow-eyed vigilance. To think: a poor boy like myself, a humble artist with no claim to noble lineage, hanging out my shingle so near the home of the leader of the free world. How should I put it? A stone’s throw?

Eight
    W hy do people give lectures?”
    “To hear themselves talk.”
    “Is that why you’re doing it?”
    “No. I’m providing an indispensable lesson.”
    “Oh, yes. I forgot.”
    “Because ideas matter, Mr. Tail.”
    “ Your ideas.”
    If only the construction of the lecture gave me as much pleasure as that of the Da Vinci. Words: I still believe in them. I do. It’s in my blood. Yet I could present the Chautauquans with whole pyramids of words, the Great Pyramid itself, cladded with words on the outside, and words within, and detailing the entire disastrous course of the twentieth century from Sarajevo to Sarajevo, and the immense edifice would not hold a candle to some