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Literary Review
ENDPAPER
Edgy enthusiasms
PRADEEP SEBASTIAN
NETRA SHYAM
IT turns out that Ron Rosenbaum, the Shakespeare of investigative journalism, is the best-kept secret in narrative non-fiction writing. Perhaps that is as it should be — because what he writes about are secret societies, clandestine subcultures, conspiracy theories, obscure writers of genius and their secret subtexts, unsolved mysteries (that he often comes close to solving), cultural paradoxes and historical enigmas. He pursues the elusive and the complicated with great clarity. In short, "a master of the metaphysical detective story". He calls the subject of his intense investigations, "edgy enthusiasms". (His column in The New York Observer is called "The Edgy Enthusiast".) I've never encountered cultural journalism of such high order: original, provocative thinking combined with great prose. The writing is opinionated, brilliant, intensely (almost diabolically) researched, funny, deeply intelligent, and restlessly probing. His essays (always satisfyingly lengthy and intriguing) read like beautifully written spy stories.
Monumental anthology
The first, best, and last place to start reading him is his monumental, seductive, generous anthology (800 pages, 57 speculative essays) titled The Secret Parts of Fortune: Three Decades of Intense Investigations And Edgy Enthusiasms (Random House). This is an astonishing collection of compelling, thoughtful non-fiction; intellectual adventure stories that somehow manage to be philosophical, comical and suspenseful. His edgy enthusiasms include: the first ever story to reveal the occult rituals of Skulls and Bones, the legendary Yale secret society that has produced spies and presidents, the secrets of the Little Blue Box, the classic story (another first) about the birth of Hacker Culture, the unsolved murder of JFK's mistress, the secrets of The Dead Sea Scrolls and the scholarly infighting behind it, the underground realms of "unorthodox" cancer-cure clinics in Mexico, the identity of the unreliable narrator in Nabokov's Pale Fire, Starbucks' Orwellian New Age Culture, Oliver Stone versus Quentin Tarantino, revealing America's least known great writer, explaining Hitler, the spiritual self loathing of Martin Amis, cats versus dogs, the mysterious suicide of identical twin gynaecologists, Thomas Pynchon's true identity, and (my all time favourite piece) the hidden life of America's most haunted and haunting writer, Jerome David Salinger.
"I'm not sure what to believe about God," writes Rosenbaum in his introduction, "but I sort of like the notion of a God who takes delicious pleasure — who glories — in hiding things from us." What Rosenbaum is drawn to is the seductiveness of the hidden. He explains this as "the primal, almost theological, root of the hide and seek impulse in human beings. Whether its source is in the longing to find the hidden face — or at least the latent fingerprints of God, or the ineradicable conviction that the ultimate truths, the truths behind appearances, the keys to unlock the tormenting mysteries of existence are hidden, just beyond our grasp, or inscribed in indecipherable code. The glory of man is to fantasize about the hidden." His journalism, Rosenbaum says, is the "journalism that asks the same questions literature does." He feels journalists must investigate ideas as thoroughly as they do politics and crime. He makes his obsessions our obsessions. He's no ordinary journalist — I sometimes feel he is like some towering Talmudic scholar of the contemporary world, making exegetical interpretations of its mysteries, its unknowableness.
Silence as a work of art
The best explanation offered for Salinger's silence, his retreat from the world, has been Ron Rosenbaum's essay "The Catcher In The Driveway". Determined to at least discover where Salinger lives and leave him a letter, Ronsenbaum stands outside Salinger's driveway, near his mailbox, pondering S's baffling silence. I'm not going to reveal Rosenbaum's explanation — that would really spoil the story — but I would like to quote a small passage from the essay on S's silence which will let you see what a remarkable writer R is. "The silence surrounding this place in not just any silence. It is the work of a lifetime. It is the work of renunciation and determination and expensive litigation. It is the silence of self exile, cunning, and contemplation. In its own powerful, invisible way, the silence is in itself an eloquent work of art. It is the Great Wall of Silence J.D. Salinger has built around himself." The silence of a writer, he goes on to add a little later, may not be too different from the silence of God. Another reclusive genius writer (long out of print) he discovers for us is Charles Portis, best known, unfortunately, as the author of True Grit. But his true masterpieces, Rosenbaum says, are Masters of Atlantis, Norwood, Gringos and The Dog of The South. Portis is a "maddeningly underappreciated American writer," he writes, "perhaps the least known great writer alive in America. Perhaps the most original, indescribable sui generis talent overlooked by literary culture in America."
Pure pleasure
Even in his lighter pieces, Rosenbaum offers insight, wit, complexity, pleasure. "Stumpy Versus Lucille: The Great Pet Debate" is about cats versus dogs, in particular about his marmalade coloured cat, Stumpy. He loves dogs, he assures us, but what he objects to is the dog's owner who attributes ridiculous meanings to a dog's love. Cats, on the other hand, are not "emotional sure things" like dogs. It is you, the owner, who is asked to be the emotional sure thing! "This is the key difference between a cat and a dog. A dog always acts like he's afraid he's going to lose his job. A cat acts like the employer — you're always in danger of losing YOUR job. A cat's vast sense of entitlement may be delusive but at least it's honest. If you win the love of a cat you have something meaningful, you have something that can genuinely increase your self respect." And then follows a hilarious, enchanting account of why Stumpy is superior even to other cats! One of the sweetest tributes you'll see is on the inside jacket of the book cover: a tiny photograph of Stumpy under "About The Author" with this note: "Aware of the controversy over authors posing with their pets on book jackets, he has not posed with his soulful cat, Stumpy, whose comic genius is described on pages 702- 7 of this volume." Reading Ron Rosenbaum is one of the great pure pleasures — both visceral and cerebral — available in contemporary journalism.
pradeepsebastian@hotmail.com
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