Socially Distanced

We are in a demographic more likely than many others to tolerate more or less equably the enforced social isolation of the past two months.  We are far from being social butterflies.  Our greatest sense of “crowd” deprivation comes from the cancellation of the program of musical concerts to which we subscribe.  But there is also a highly enjoyable periodic dinner, what we call the “Dinners for Six,” that we now have to forego—or, rather, “virtualize”..

To explain this dinner I call upon the talented Peter Arno, the nom de plume of Curtis Arnoux Peters, Jr., the artist who established the tradition of great cartoons for which the New Yorker magazine is justly famous.  Roger Angell, another New Yorker stalwart, called him “the magazine’s first genius.”  He was not primarily a political cartoonist, but he did come up with some memorable pieces on political themes.  The cartoon above appeared in 1936.  I cannot say I remember enjoying it at the time.  That was the year of my birth, and though I am sure that I must have been precocious, I was probably still bogged down in Junior Scholastic.  Nineteen thirty-six also initiated the second term of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency.  FDR has long since enjoyed political beatification, and most Americans regard him as a figure semi-divine.  Arno’s cartoon reminds us that he was once highly controversial.  A quartet of the New York upper crust are passing by the open window of some of their peers.  “Come along,” one of the women shouts out in invitation to those in the house.  “We are going to the Trans-Lux to hiss Roosevelt!”  The Trans-Lux was an art deco movie theater at 52^nd and Lexington, and cinema programs in the good old days usually began with News Reels devoted to more or less current events, including presidential appearances.  The cartoon satirizes moneyed fat cats, of course; but it preserves an anti-Roosevelt attitude held by millions at the time.  Conservatives liked to call him “a traitor to his class.”

Though the parallel is not exact, a Dinner for Six is a little like a group trip to the Trans-Lux.  The “six” are three couples of very old friends.  We all share a number of interests in common, and though there is a certain amount of difference in our political views, there is probably a good deal more agreement.  Fairly early in the Trump administration we found ourselves sufficiently alarmed by the state of things that we decided to have regular meetings at roughly six-week intervals to discuss the latest developments.  These discussions focus in the main on the White House—to such a degree that an alternative term for Dinner for Six is “Trumpian Dinner”.  The actual dinner is an important part of the Dinner, if you follow, and we rotate among our private houses and share the preparation of an entrée, a salad, and a dessert on a regular rota.  Heaven forfend that we should get competitive on the culinary aspects; but I can say that everyone sets a pretty high standard.  The meals themselves, accordingly, are memorable.  We do not actually hiss the President, but we do subject his deeds and his words to sometimes frankly censorious review.

Since we are very old friends, and since there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in half of anyone’s philosophy, and thus endless fruitful topics of conversation, we sometimes take rather a long time arriving at the Trumpian theme, and one evening we came close to never getting to it at all.  But we invariably end the evening with predictions.  There is always something cooking, after all—the Mueller Report, impeachment, the latest hiring and firings, portentous developments pregnant with the apparent likelihood of effecting dramatic change.  Our predictions, which are actually written down to be recalled at the next dinner, are mostly wrong and even if not exactly wrong, rendered more or less irrelevant by the time of the next meeting by other unforeseen developments.

We are continuing our conversations “virtually”, but if you take away the food you do risk losing an important part of dinner.  That essential etymological element of companionship that I so often mention—the sharing of bread—is lacking in the virtual and socially distanced world.  I have been trying to clarify in my mind just what it is about the current situation that is so off-putting.  Such reflection is probably an idle enterprise.   There are many disturbing aspects, some quite serious, others merely annoying; and the scene changes significantly from day to day in response to accidental and trivial circumstances.  But one constant is the unnaturalness of social isolation.  We are built not for isolation but for community.