Month: June 2003

This being a space where people are normally used to reading about politics, I’ll start with a true story concerning politics and the late John Fergus Ryan. In 1954, the 23-year-old Ryan, an Army vet with a wife and baby, decided to have a go at what he might have called, in that peculiar Runyonesque Southern vernacular of his, the “politics game.”

A scion of North Little Rock, Arkansas, Ryan became the all-purpose factotum for an obscure no-name candidate for governor of his native state. He set up shop one day in a rented room at the old Marion Hotel, a venerable Little Rock establishment which was, and had been for decades, the center of Arkansas politics.. (It was later razed to make way for the Excelsior, a more modern hostelry where a politician name of Bill Clinton would get in trouble with one Paula Jones.)

Ryan — known to his family as Jackie and to his wife Carla, then as now a looker, as Jack — went to work. He put out word on the street that would-be office-holders should stop by the rented room at the Marion, make their campaign contributions and sign up then and there for the state job they could expect to get when Ryan’s man was elected. It was a methodology which cut out all the frills and differed from the actual patronage policies then in place only by being unvarnished and direct.

Naturally, the main state newspaper, the old Arkansas Gazette, got wind of the scheme and sent a reporter over to pose as a job-seeker. The ringer would write up an account that made the paper’s front page the next day and ended Jack Ryan’s career as a political mover and shaker.. Anybody looking at the old yellowed clip decades later would be forced to conclude two things: that John Fergus Ryan, the author, could have written it better; and that the details of the story were the sort that belonged to Ryan’s own patented genre of the down-home Gothic.

The latter point is key: John Fergus Ryan, one of those writers unique enough to have invented a style, was in his own way a realist. He wrote some non-fiction, too, mainly for Esquire, but he was at heart a fiction-writer, and his outlandish plots and cartoonish characters reflected his sense of the way things really were.

HE WAS A PRO. There was method and exactness in the way he worked — in a cramped and windowless converted pantry space smack dab in the middle of his modest Midtown house, hard by the campus of Rhodes College.. Back in the Ô70s, when I used to teach creative writing at Memphis State University, I used as one of my basic texts a weighty compilation of materials — donated by Ryan — that started as a series of random notes: the kind of isolated quotes, details, and plot sketches that originate in a writer’s notebook as elements in search of a story.

Another set of pages showed those notes as they went through a process of development, embellishment, and elaboration into the first draft of a story. Then a second draft. A third and even a fourth, all Xeroxed and replete with marginal notes and handwritten line changes.

Then the final product — the story, entitled “The Bazemore Gala,” as published in The Evergreen Review, a leading periodical of the time.

Over and over, that series of progressions from beginning to middle to end did the trick and actually got student writers to tackle what might otherwise have seemed the implausible task of translating random thoughts and apercus into fiction. It was a kind of how-to manual for them, and if you ask, say, Arthur Flowers, the distinguished African-American author of several novels by now, how he got started, he would probably cite that student exercise of 30 years ago as key to his development.

Hell, I know he would. Flowers is one of several actually flourishing writers out there in the world that I was lucky enough to help incubate, and he is on record in several interviews as naming that class as his literary point of origin. He started keeping a notebook there, and I well remember his first complete effort, a Ryanesque effort that freely combined the comic, the grotesque, and the nitty-gritty into a neo-Faustian saga of other-worldly muckers called “The Devil’s Hell of a Plan.” His literary model would have been — in fact, was — pleased.

ONCE HE CROSSED THE RIVER into Memphis, where he earned his daily bread as, first, a social worker and later as a probation officer, Jack Ryan (who had also been a Pinkerton man) became simply John Ryan, the name he was known by to most of his friends. (It is also these days well known as the name of his son, namesake, and kindred spirit, the Memphis artist John Ryan, whose two siblings, Carla and Andy, round out what is a remarkably good-natured and bright-edged clan.) The “Fergus” part, though his by birth and certainly suggestive of the pagan Gaelic elements of his psyche, was added on for literary purposes because the classic American authors he had studied in school all had three names and he meant, at some point, to join their company. He very well may.

By the time of his death last week, of long-term complications from diabetes and Parkinson’s Disease, the ailments that had made his once Falstaffian physique unwontedly frail, John Ryan had compiled a body of work that had been published and read and admired on virtually all the continents of Planet Earth. And perhaps that “virtually” is an unneeded qualifier.. Even before he attracted the attention of American critics and readers, he had been taken up by the British periodical press, where his affinities with writers like the poet A.E. Housman and the belles-lettrist P.G. Wodehouse did not go unnoticed..

A spate of published stories would be followed in the last couple of decades by three well-received novels — The Redneck Bride, Little Brothers of St. Mortimer, and Watching. Ryan also did a play or two (one I remember concerned a patient at a mental hospital who ended up taking over the institution and running it — as good a metaphor as any for the circumstances to be observed during Ryan’s life and times). And there were screenplays by others. Billy Bob Thornton, the celebrated actor/writer/director from Ryan’s native Arkansas announced plans to produce a version of The Redneck Bride, and another entrepreneur actually did make a movie in 1999 based on Little Brothers. Called The White River Kid, it starred the likes of Bob Hoskins, Antonio Banderas, and Randy Travis, and, though for various reasons it never got released in theatres, it is available as a DVD online.

THAT JOHN RYAN HAD GIFTS as an artist and that he leaves behind a legacy of literary achievement are both givens. Those who knew him, though, will most remember him not primarily for his tropes but for his friendship. It is ironic that Ryan liked to see himself characterized by his wry and often quoted aphorism, “People are no damn good.” The fact is, as a person he was damn good. Let me count some of the ways.

He was the kind of guy who, when he heard you were moving house, would come over to lend a hand. He did so for me when, as a Gazette reporter and newlywed, I settled into a Little Rock apartment in 1967. He was there moving furniture and yanking doors off their hinges to create the illusion — and, in the fact, the reality — of more space. (It is no accident that so many people remember him as having been a “bear” of a man.) He was the friend who lent me his typewriter when I rushed back to home-town Memphis after hearing the news of Dr. Martin Luther King’s death in 1968 and discovered I’d left my own machine behind.

It was that vintage instument — the same one, or so I reckoned, that produced at least a portion of his own oeuvres — on which I wrote an account that, illustrated with classic photographs from another master, the great Ernest Withers, would appear 25 years later in a special King commemorative issue of Memphis Magazine. Never did I feel myself so honored by multiple associations.

I WENT TO THE VERY MOVING memorial service at the Church on the River in the company of several members of my immediate family Monday and heard number of graceful tributes, including one that made bold to describe Ryan — a cynic and hard-boiled religious skeptic, to say the least — as having been akin, in the warmth of his heart and in the nature of his own special ministry, to Jesus himself. To that I could say amen.

With me Monday was my oldest son Marcus, who almost three decades ago was in a Memphis hospital undergoing exploratory surgery that turned up a dreadful diagnosis and an even more dreadful — and immediate — prognosis. Keeping the vigil along with me in a waiting room had been John Ryan, and he was there when Marcus’ mother and I got the news, helping to cushion the shock. He was always available in the months that followed, in which treatment and convalescence were followed by a wholly unexpected recovery for which the term “grace of God” is the only proper signifier, and I could not help reflecting this week that Ryan’s good will had been among the elements that accompanied that miracle

I also could not help reflecting that Ryan, who had been consigned to years of unaccustomed frailty by his own illnesses, was deserving of his own miracle. What he had instead was the next best thing, an attitude that — born of his own incorrigible hustler’s optimism — was literally one of never-say-die.

As he lay on his deathbed, semi-comatose, he was still thinking ahead, according to his family, still trying to figure the angles and asking about the mail, still waiting for a publisher or filmmaker here or abroad to nibble at one of his overtures, still hoping to get news that he had received one of those whopping “genius” grants from the MacArthur Foundation that he thought, not without reason, he was entitled to.

And he was still able to stay in touch with things and to keep his hand in, even very late in the game. Once, last week or so, lying abed and seemingly unconscious, he heard family members and friends grouped around him trying to recall the punchline to a joke. Struggling to lift his head, he supplied the missing phrase:

“What’s time to a pig?” he said.

Next question: What’s time to a legend?

THE VISION THING — AGAIN

The most studied piece of real estate in the county is about to get it again.

But the committee appointed this week by the county commission to study the future of Shelby Farms is a much more diverse and political group than the one proposed by former mayor Jim Rout and businessman Ron Terry a little more than a year ago.

The Rout-Terry proposal, which was shot down by the commission, was built for consensus, speed, and fund-raising ability. It would have taken control of Shelby Farms out of public hands and turned it over to a nonprofit conservancy with a privately funded $20 million endowment. The new 21-member advisory committee has more elected officials, more administration input, more women, more blacks, more developer-friendly types, and more people, period, than its would-be predecessor.

One thing it doesn’t have, for now at least, is private money, which was one of the big hooks in last year’s proposal. But that could change. Walter Bailey, chairman of the commission and the key opponent of the Rout-Terry plan, says he personally favors a Central Park model for management of 4,500-acre Shelby Farms. The Central Park Conservancy has managed 843-acre Central Park since 1998 under a contract with New York City. The conservancy has raised nearly $300 million for park operations and improvements. It has 60 board members.

What rubbed Bailey the wrong way last year was what he saw as an end-run around the commission by the former administration and a hurry-up mandate to approve what was essentially a done deal for the next 50 years. The new committee, he says, will take its time and hold meetings and hearings for a year or more.

“We don’t want people with preconceived ideas,” he said.

Members from the political side include commissioners Michael Hooks, Julian Bolton, Marilyn Loeffel, Tom Moss, and Bruce Thompson as well as state Rep. Henri Brooks, the city and county chief administrative officers, and Public Works director Ted Fox. From the business side, there are, among others, Union Planters Bank executive Ken Plunk, attorneys Charlie Newman and Charles Carpenter, Steve Epple from Friends of Shelby Farms, former commissioner Bridgette Chisholm, and Dawn Kinard. The chairman is Gene Pearson, director of the graduate program in city and regional planning at the University of Memphis.

Thompson was elected last year, partly on a promise to oppose commercial development of Shelby Farms. Kinard is the daughter of suburban developer Jackie Welch, the most outspoken proponent of developing part of it.

“At the corner of Germantown Parkway and Walnut Grove there needs to be a hotel,” Welch said this week.

He plans to offer to pay for a rendering of what the eastern edge of Shelby Farms would look like if the Shelby Showplace Arena, an existing restaurant, and the farmers market were replaced by a new grand entrance off Germantown Parkway, two or three hotel sites, a 50-acre lake, and other commercial sites leased by the county.

Reminded that such ideas have generally been considered political heresy in the past, he said, “The tighter the budget, the friendlier they’re going to be to it.”

Bailey said the advisory committee was created with the blessing of Mayor AC Wharton, who is on record opposing the sale and, presumably, lease of public lands to raise money for government operations. The broad makeup of the committee and its lack of a financial benefactor and driving force such as Terry could insure that Shelby Farms stays pretty much as it is for a while. The park has been under more or less continuous study since the Sixties. The private conservancy is one of many aborted ideas. A plan for a major new road and intersection in the park that was several years in the making has also been scrapped by the new administration.

Quiet controversies underlie several of the park’s bucolic and seemingly mind-your-own-business uses. On a languid summer morning the day after the commission meeting, four men were training their dogs in a pasture in the northeast corner of the park at sunrise. When told about the new committee, one of the dog trainers, Lanier Fogg, perked up like a retriever watching a shot duck.

What could possibly be controversial about dog training?

Well, trainers haul their dogs and gear in trucks, and the trucks go off the dirt roads and drive on paths through the pasture. So do horse trailers. To get to the paths they go through gates, which can be open or locked depending on park policy. If dog trainers and horsemen can drive off road, what about fishermen? Or four-wheelers? Or anybody having a picnic or looking for some privacy? And how does that impact compare with the impact of the series of eight outdoor music concerts in the park this summer and their attendant stages, light poles, and set-up crews?

In short, Fogg was very interested to know how the new committee was going to relate to the current park board chaired by Ron Terry and the current park superintendent Steve Satterfield, whose predecessor was fired by the last county mayor.

The answer, right now, is that nobody knows.

My, my, my, the great Iraqi gold rush is on, and

who should be there at the front of the line,

right along with Halliburton and Bechtel, but our old friends at WorldCom,

perpetrator of the largest accounting fraud in American history.

WorldCom, shortly to become MCI, has been given a contract worth $45

million in the short-term to build a wireless phone network in Iraq. I learned via

the Associated Press that Washington

Technology, a trade newspaper that follows computing-related sales to the U.S.

government, “found WorldCom jumped to eighth among all federal technology

contractors in 2002, with $772 million in government sales.” And that is

only counting the deals in which WorldCom is the primary contractor. It is

actually getting much more as a subcontractor.

The Securities and Exchange Commission recently reached a

settlement with WorldCom, fining the company $500 million for its $11 billion

defrauding of investors. The company did not have to admit any guilt. “The $500

million is in a sense laundered by the taxpayers,” Tom Schatz, president of

Citizens Against Government Waste, told AP.

WorldCom got the Iraq contract without

competitive bidding, to the anger of rival companies AT&T,

Sprint, and others, which actually have experience in building wireless

networks, according to AP. A WorldCom spokesman “also stressed the

company’s deep, overall relationship with the U.S.

military and government.”

Among those continuing to make a good thing out of the Iraqi war is

Richard Perle of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board. According to the

Los Angeles Times, last February Perle and the

board received a classified briefing on the potential for conflict in Iraq and

North Korea, including information on new communications networks. “Three

weeks later, the then-chairman of the board, Richard N. Perle, offered a briefing

of his own at an investment seminar on ways to profit from possible

conflicts with both countries,” wrote

reporters Ken Silverstein and Chuck Neubauer.

It’s a subject on which Perle is fully qualified. He was forced to resign as

the Policy Board’s chairman (though he did not resign from the board itself) in

late March after it was learned he had been employed as a consultant by

Global Crossing Ltd., then trying to get Pentagon clearance to sell itself to an

Asian concern. Perle also serves on the board of several defense contractors and is

co-founder of Trireme Partners, a venture-capital firm that invests in the

defense and homeland-security industries.

Also according to Silverstein and Neubauer, Perle’s partner at

Trireme, Gerald Hillman, has been put on the Defense Advisory Board, despite

having no background in national security or defense.

One has to scramble to keep up with the gold rush and its players.

Tim Shorrock has an excellent article in the June 23rd issue of

The Nation detailing the state of play: Hundreds of major

corporations are interested in getting a piece of this pie. Meanwhile, the

invaluable Rep. Henry Waxman of California is keeping an eye on Halliburton. He

is raising questions about the company’s ties to countries that sponsor

terrorism, specifically Iraq, Iran, and Libya.

As President Bush begins his two-week, $20 million “shock and awe”

campaign fund-raising sprint, we will naturally be keeping an eye on the

connections between the campaign contributions and government contracts. And

if you think that’s too cynical, boy, have you not been paying attention.

One of the many horrors Shorrock found was a statement by

Martin Hoffman, former secretary of the Army and close adviser to Donald

Rumsfeld, on the privatization of Iraq. He told Shorrock his strategy is like that of

the strategic hamlets program in Vietnam. “That was basic economic

development,” Hoffman said.

Ooops. The only problem is that the strategic hamlet program was a

colossal failure, producing untold damage, chaos, and hatred. It was a key

reason we lost that war.

Another player with business interests in all this is Paul Bremer, the

American viceroy in Iraq. Bremer’s company is Crisis Consulting Practice, set up

after 9/11 to advise multinationals on how to handle terrorism. Naomi Klein

concludes in The Nation: “Many have pointed out that Bremer is no

expert on Iraqi politics. But that was never the point. He is an expert at profiting

from the war on terror and at helping U.S. multinationals make money in

far-off places where they are unpopular and unwelcome. In other words, he’s

the perfect man for the job.”

Other efforts to abruptly introduce a capitalist economy into a state-run

system have had awful results. The “shock therapy” applied to Russia after the

Soviet Union broke up almost destroyed the country, and it still hasn’t recovered.

Argentina went through a similar process.

So where’s a president like Franklin D. Roosevelt when we need him? “I

don’t want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result

of this world disaster,” he said during World War II.

Molly Ivins writes for Creators Syndicate and the

Ft.Worth Star-Telegram.