James Hynes

(Spoilers: Don't read this if you haven't seen the last episode of The Wire.)

I'm going to miss The Wire, of course, but I haven't got much more to say about it this morning than I've already said: in Simonworld, the only redemption is personal, institutions exist chiefly to perpetuate themselves, the powerful will do whatever it takes to keep and extend their power. For all of David Simon's talk of Greek drama, though, he doesn't seem to put hubris in the driver's seat. The effects of hubris, it seems, can be mitigated by a genuine regret for one's actions, which is more Christian than Greek. Jimmy McNulty walks away more or less scot-free at the end: he started the whole series with an act of hubris (going over his bosses' heads to Judge Phelan in season one), and he ends his career as a cop by trying to make good the damage done to an innocent homeless guy whose life was damaged by McNulty's even more outrageous act of hubris in season five (faking the serial murders). His only tragedy (if it is a tragedy) is his realization that the one thing in his life that he's really good at—police work—is also the thing that makes him a lousy human being—vain, arrogant, drunken, and angry. But while he may have lost his career, it seems he gets to ride off into the sunset—ruefully, but more or lessly happily—with the sexy-geeky Beadie and her family. And frankly, I wouldn't have it any other way. McNulty deserves his hard-won self-knowledge, and whatever peace it brings his way.

One other thing that's just occurred to me: David Simon and the other writers may be angry, bitter, and cyncical about the fate of what Simon keeps calling "the post-industrial city," but I don't think they're completely hopeless. There are moments of rough justice, even in The Wire. In a show full of wrenching deaths, I don't think any drug-killing ever made me happier than watching Slim Charles drop that blowhard Cheese Wagstaff (who, to be fair, had the best line in the episode—"There's no nostalgia in this shit"—just before he had the back of his head blown off). And while it's a tragedy that he's ended up on the street with a couple of murders to his name already, Michael has found (at least in the context of The Wire's West Baltimore) a more or less honorable niche for himself, as the new Omar. And in the only moment in the finale that brought tears to my eyes, Bubbles gets to come upstairs.

In the meantime, of course, we can all come down from our Wire addiction with the methadone of endless online debriefings, in Slate, Salon, the New York Times, and the Baltimore Sun. Salon also has a wonderful interview with the always entertainingly combative Mr. Simon, who manages to wax both humble and Christlike (but in a good way).

From my brilliant brother Mike, in LA:

Mission Accomplished

The latest literary scandal is a banal and predictable one: a new memoir (Love and Consequences, by Margaret B. Jones) that claims to be the account of a "half-white, half-Native American" young woman who ran with the Bloods in South Central LA, turns out to have been written by a privileged young white woman named Margaret Seltzer from Sherman Oaks, who went to a private school and probably ran with the Heathers, if she ran with anybody. You can read all about it in the New York Times. It comes on the heels of (another) fake Holocaust memoir (not to mention in the wake of James Frey and J. T. Leroy), and it will no doubt provoke the usual handwringing: How could this happen? Don't agents and editors check the veracity of the memoirs they publish? Don't publishers have fact-checkers? (Answers: Easily. Not really. Generally speaking, no.)

The only one of the usual handwringing questions that interests me is why any young memoirist in this day and age thinks he or she can get away with a fraud like this. The author in question is 33 and comes from an upper-middle-class background in Southern California, so presumably she's a lot more media and tech savvy than this 52-year-old novelist and novice blogger, but even I know that any author who makes extraordinary claims about his or her life is going to be put through the Internet wringer. There's a larger issue to be explored here about the veracity of any memoir; surely Casanova's memoirs aren't the unvarnished truth, and for all we know, even St. Augustine's Confessions contain a few exaggerations for effect. And there's even a pretty convincing argument to be made in defense of the literary merit of shading the truth, or even of lying, if it makes a better story. Should we even care if Nabokov is telling the truth in Speak, Memory? But the fact remains that in the world of the contemporary commercial confessional, thrill hungry readers for some reason demand the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. 

I wonder if some of these books are written as novels, and if maybe ambitious first-time authors aren't pressured by equally ambitious editors into publishing them as memoirs. I personally know of at least one memoir (and I ain't saying which one) where that's the case. It's a cheap effect to juice up a narrative by claiming it's true, but it's an effective one, I suppose. The same behavior that's so riveting on Jerry Springer would just seem contrived and cliched as a fictional narrative. We expect orginality, creativity, and insight from fiction (from the best of it, anyway), but we are thoroughly entertained by the cliches of reality.

The other thing that interests me about this particular case is that Ms. Seltzer wasn't actually caught by some journalist or blogger, but had her cover blown by her own sister, who is fourteen years older. Speaking purely pruriently (i.e., speaking as a novelist), that's the story, and the family dynamic, I'd like to read about. If Ms. Seltzer needs a new subject, I suggest she plan to write about her family's next Thanksgiving dinner in Sherman Oaks. Now that would be revealing.

And this just in, from today's Times: the pro forma tales of woe from the agent, editor, and publisher of the book.

The scene after work, about five o'clock. A couple hours later, after dark, when I came back for the caucus, the line ran halfway down the sidewalk from the school. Once I found out it was the line for the caucus and not for voting (I don't really understand this either), I took my place. A few minutes later, the line ran all the way down to street, turned right, and ran to the corner.

The wait ended up being about an hour; I'm not sure why. The caucuses were supposed to begin as soon as the voting ended, and the voting ended pretty soon after the polls closed at 7. Still, it was a mostly pleasant wait, chatting with folks from my neighborhood. Mostly what we talked about was, why are we waiting so long? Through the windows to the right of the school door we could see that the cafeteria, where the caucus was to take place, was packed with people. A few people actually came out of the cafeteria to wait outside, because it was so hot in there.

In the meantime, we were entertained by Obama supporters, mainly, especially a very high-spirited young woman who ran up and down the line in the dark, woo-hooing and handing out Quaker Oats granola bars. This was the closest I've seen the Obama campaign actually come to the kind of ward-heeling Chicago politics that they were accused of by that talk radio host who introduced John McCain last week: while they weren't actually emptying bars or drunktanks or graveyards to pad the vote, they were offering inducements in the form of granola bars. I took one because I was starving, and what the hell, I was going to vote for the guy anyway.

Meantime, a steady stream of election officials came out to explain what was going on (or what wasn't, as the case may be). The young woman next to me in line had a fancy cellphone with Internet access, and she was checking on the Ohio results periodically. Another, calmer, older Obama supporter came out with a box of blueberry muffins (I had two, further deepening my corruption), and she paused to explain how delegates were selected and apportioned. For the last few weeks, I've been struggling through Brian Greene's book about string theory, and frankly, string theory is easier to understand that the Texas Democratic Party delegate selection process. The women standing around me all seemed to be nodding as if they understood, but I was in a sugar stupor from the muffins and the granola bar and didn't follow a word of it.

It became clear pretty quickly that the vast majority of people in line were Obama supporters. At one point a woman came out looking forlornly for volunteers to be Hillary delegates, and she wasn't getting any takers as she moved down the line. Austin's a liberal town (compared to the rest of Texas, anyway), and my neighborhood, between Zilker Park, Barton Springs Road, and South Lamar, is one of the most liberal in the city. I was in line mostly with a lot of attractive white women in their 30s and 40s, soft-spoken, gently ironic, keeping in touch with their friends, partners, and families with their cells as they waited. There were a few middle-aged guys, older than the women, with salt-and-pepper beards and wearing Birkenstocks. (You can see one below.)

Finally they opened the doors (see the picture above) and we started to inch inside. Then they shut them again, and another official came out to explain that because of the overflow crowd, they were putting the line on pause momentarily to set up more tables. When the doors opened again a few minutes later, a few more people came out and said that Hillary supporters could come right in, because there wasn't that much of a wait, and a few of them streamed past us, but not many. The rest of us Obamanoids continued to creep forward.

Once inside, things moved pretty quickly. There was one table signing up Hillary folk on the left, while to the right there was a whole line of Obama tables. It looked like a mob (albeit a friendy, joking, gentle mob), and finally the forthright young woman with the fancy cellphone saw a break ahead of us, and beckoned our little group to follow her. A minute or two later, I was standing at the table, ready to sign my name as an Obama supporter. I asked the happy young guy behind the table to take my picture as I signed. Here's what I looked like, doing my civic duty:

Then I went home to watch the results on MSNBC. When I woke up this morning, I found out that despite my best efforts, my guy had lost in Texas (and Ohio and Rhode Island). So I'm feeling a little cranky and out-of-sorts this morning, though that might just be me coming down from last night's sugar high.

I dropped by Zilker School again at noon, on my lunch hour. Here's the Obama table again, from a different angle. The McCain sign, by the way, is not for John, but for a local candidate for constable. My neighborhood is the heart of liberal South Austin, so you see mostly Hillary and Obama signs, with a few Ron Pauls thrown in, just because it's Texas. McCain and Huckabee signs are pretty thin on the ground in my part of Austin.

Some members of the local media. There were trucks from two different stations here. Still no line out the door, and I didn't go into the school, but I'm expecting a crowd at 7 tonight, when the caucus is supposed to begin.

The Hillary contingent. It's a pleasant day for an election, sunny, temperature in the 50s and getting warmer. Yesterday's epic wind has died down, so all the lawn signs are safe.

Here's step one of the Texas Two-Step in today's presidential primary. It's a photo I took an hour ago, on my way to work, at my local polling place (Zilker Elementary School on Bluebonnet Lane in Austin). Since we have early voting in Texas, I voted two weeks ago at my local Randall's supermarket, where I picked up some fat-free turkey dogs, two twelve-packs of Diet Coke (with caffeine and without), and, oh yeah, voted for Obama. But I plan to be back at Zilker this evening for the second half of the two-step, and caucus for Obama. When I get back there at 7 tonight, I expect to see a line out the door. I plan to take a book and my iPod and wait for as long as it takes. It goes against my carefully constructed persona as the cynical, seen-it-all satirist, but I'll admit it: I'm excited!

More later, with photos, if possible.

PS: And here is Texas Monthly writer Mimi Swartz, in today's New York Times, writing cautiously but hopefully about the return of (dare I say it) the Texas liberal.

(Note: If you don't want to know what's happened in the next-to-last episodes of The Wire—say, for example, you're still working through season two on DVD—then don't read any further.)

(I'm serious, Steve. Stop right now.)

(Don't say I didn't warn you.) 

Over here at the Cultwriter Institute of David Simon Studies, we're all too blue about the death of Omar to craft a complete eulogy for him. We saw it coming, of course: Omar was made reckless in his final days by grief and by his lust for revenge, and it's possible that living the good life in the islands may have dulled his edge a bit. But it's also telling that he didn't get got by any of Marlo's seasoned and well-drilled killers, but by a member of the next generation of damaged children from the streets of West Baltimore. And it's also telling that in the end, Omar was killed, in large part, because of his sense of honor. If he hadn't come back from the Caribbean to avenge the death of Butchie, he'd be alive today. But then if he hadn't come back, then he wouldn't have been the Omar we all came to know and love.

These twin inevitabilites—that Omar would be forced to avenge his friend, and that his righteous anger would get him killed—are further evidence of Simon's debt to Greek tragedy, which he invoked when talking about the show in the New Yorker. On the other hand, there was something a little Shakespearean about the death of Snoop last night, which was a tad reminiscent of (bear with me) Henry IV, part II, in which Prince Hal, on his way to becoming Henry V, has to renounce his old mentor and drinking buddy, Falstaff. I realize I'm stretching a point here, since Hal and Falstaff never intended to kill each other, but still, Michael's killing of Snoop was a Shakespearean act of generational war, intimate ("You look good, girl") and brutal all at once. Sooner or later we all kill our teachers, even if we don't literally shoot them in the back of the head.

One more thought, preparatory, perhaps, to a full-blown eulogy for the whole series after the last episode next Sunday. Not that it was ever much of a mystery, but David Simon's politics are clearer than ever as all the plotlines are resolved and all the characters' fates are made clear. There's no doubting his liberal credentials, I suppose, but on the other hand, it's also clearer than it's ever been that he and his writers have no faith whatsoever in institutions or institutional solutions, which is a curious stance for a liberal. The only redemption in The Wire is individual and hard-won, either the result of an act of Dickensian (yeah, I know that Simon sneers at the adjective) charity, such as  Bunny Colvin saving Namond from a life on the streets (and turning him, apparently, into a National Merit Scholar), or the result of a supreme act of will. The two main examples of which, of course, are the amazing Bubbles, aka Reginald, who has bootstrapped himself up into nobility, and Cutty, who has earned a measure of nobility himself. Even McNulty cleaned up his act for a time, and though he's fallen back into his drunken, narcissistic ways, and appears to be taking a lot of folks with him, these last couple episodes have shown that he has a conscience, even if he still needs to work on his impulse control. Not to go all Aeschylus or anything, but it's all about hubris, finally. Or as Snoop might say, if she were still alive, payback's a bitch.