Most presidencies demand dissection by historians and political scientists. The tenure of George Bush and Dan Quayle, it seems, may be best left to the editors of Golf Digest.
The September Golf Digest includes author Dan Jenkins` (”Semi-Tough”)
mildly amusing cover story on playing a round of golf with the president at Holly Hills Country Club in Ijamsville, Md. This follows a recent Sports Illustrated account of its top editor and a reporter playing golf with Quayle. The latest foursome included Bush, Jenkins, former Chicago Bear Walter Payton and U.S. Rep. Marty Russo (D-Ill.). The White House press pool was allowed to surface at four spots, including the ninth green, prompting Russo`s childlike spasm after making a birdie on that hole.
”Can you believe it? This is the greatest minute of my life! I`m with the president and I birdie the hole for CNN!”
On the first tee, Jenkins had been embarrassed enough by Bush`s ratty golf glove (”looked like it had been worn by a tree-planter a decade earlier”) to give him a new one. Bush botched his first drive but recovered to shoot a respectable 86 (not including three mulligans, or do-overs, his partners allowed). Payton shot an 85, Jenkins a 78 and Russo a formidable 68. This wasn`t the most tranquil of rounds. ”Throughout I would take a club out of the bag and start to line up a shot,” writes Jenkins, ”but would be distracted by the sight of a golf cart on a distant hilltop,” the occupants peering through large binoculars. It was the Secret Service. Nearby was a briefcase-toting aide with the ”situation phone” for crises.
No surprise, the account by normally acerbic Jenkins, who lunched at the White House and spent the night at Camp David, verges on fawning (then, again, it would be tough to rip Bush unless he, or the Secret Service, cheated on his score). Meanwhile, a seven-panel analysis of Bush`s swing will give insights to Saddam Hussein: Bush doesn`t flex his knees enough, holds the club too firmly and swings his arms too low on his backswing.
September Guitar Player chronicles the mystery-shrouded life of Robert Johnson, the ”greatest country blues artist who ever lived,” and concludes that his 1938 death at age 27 probably resulted from drinking too much at a party, flirting with somebody`s wife, and then being handed a glass of poisoned whiskey . . . Israel Shenker pens a tyically elegant profile, of Agatha Christie, in September Smithsonian, noting that despite Edmund Wilson`s disdain (”her writing is of mawkishness and banality which seem to me literally impossible to read”), she flourished, with stories whose gracious settings and intelligent plots reflected her personal disdain for what she called ”the tough kind of thriller.”
Inspired by controversies over federal funding of art, Summer Critical Inquiry has stellar, if high-brow, essays on public art. They include academic Michael North`s inspection of public sculpture, including the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, asserting that ”the common dogma that public monuments depend on public agreement” is belied by the memorial and other works. Monuments, he contends, can ”achieve a public resonance by taking up topics too important for agreement” ($6.50, University of Chicago Press, Box 37005, Chicago, Ill. 60637).
The premiere of Men`s Life, via Rupert Murdoch, is passable, but way too busy, with a good effort on adroit marketing of Nintendo games, as well musings by behaviorist Desmond (”The Naked Ape”) Morris on, ”What is it About Blondes?” He attributes the lure to the average blonde having more hairs on her head (140,000) than brunettes or redheads and thus thinner, softer strands; their body hair being less conspicuous (”in moments of extreme intimacy she has a clear advantage over her darker friends”); and the hair conjuring a more juvenile image since lighter locks are associated with youth.
Is New York City hell or paradise? Sept. 17 Time cover story suggests a
”plunge into chaos” marked by murder, while October House & Garden cheerily finds the living ”rewarding precisely because the city offers so much.” Tom Wolfe details a lawyer chum`s snappy reconstruction of an East Side townhouse. Footnote: House & Garden is owned by Conde Nast. The wife of Wolfe`s chum is an editor at Conde Nast Traveler. Another story profiles the style director of Vanity Fair, also owned by Conde Nast.
