Readers searching for a brainy gallimaufry (there ought to be a word for this, but trust me, there isn’t) need look no further than the daily blog of Lance Mannion. A passel of brainiacs (there ought to be a word for this, but trust me there isn’t) already knows about LM—his following is considerable. His cerebral readers include Tom Watson, Farran Nehme, James Wolcott, Maud Newton, Melissa McEwan (Shakesville) and many more.
Why should I wish to be Lance Mannion? Well, for one thing, I knew him when he was a graduate student at the University of Iowa’s “Writer’s Workshop” and from the get go I saw I was in the company of a generous and amused mind—a sensibility—for he appeared at my door one day (having answered a bulletin board ad for a reader for a blind guy) with a book under his arm, “The Heart of Midlothian” which he read to me entire, and in the manner of Dickens, which is to say he “did” the voices. Please take the time to think about that. A young man (for Lance was young in those days) who could “do” a dozen Scottish voices without destroying the book is rare. I’ll venture he was the only man in Iowa City who could have done it.
Of course a gift of that kind would ordinarily mark a man as eccentric and that would be that. (I know “from” eccentric: my maternal grandfather built early automobiles and motorcycles before World War I, then converted his factories to munitions plants and gleefully spent the rest of his life dynamiting rural homesteads in New England.)
If Lance was eccentric he was neither formidable or vast. It’s not my aim to launch a taxonomy of anomalous personalities (that is “so” last century) only to say Lance was both odd and kind. And “is”. Which is why I believe Mr. Mannion is our contemporary Samuel Pickwick, who as Simon Callow noted, is benevolence personified, decent and determined. Mannion is our American Pickwick: observing our contemporary foibles while rooting for his friends to endure and succeed.
Mannion’s Winkle, Snodgrass, Tupman, and Weller are harder to spot than Dickens’ originals because America is santized for your protection and mediated beyond easy measure. Whch is why he offers us “Mannionville”—a place more muscular and analytical than Lake Wobegone, for the Mannionville women are learned, its men don’t care much how they appear (not precisely) and one imagines more than a few of the residents have read Mutual Aid. Certainly the people of Mannionville have read Babbitt (which they liked though not without a moue of disgust) and An American Tragedy (which they didn’t like but agreed was largely accurate). The Mannionville folks don’t like Ford Madox Ford who was never much interested in being accurate about people. They do like Mencken (only provisionally) They love Huck Finn. They care a good deal about Roger Ebert.
The Mannionville-istas can tell you why Rudy Giuliani is a cynic. They can also convince you a second rate Disney animated flick is worth watching (Pickwick would have liked it) and why America desperately needs to read fiction (hint: a GOP legislator in Montana wishes to ban Yoga pants.)
There’s a hint of George Orwell in Mannion’s wanderings. Orwell didn’t merely fear our fears will ruin us—he feared the falsified nature of fear, its easy plasticity, the way fear itself can be the distraction. All advertising is built from fear—or “agitation” if you like—your skin is loose; you’re bladder is insurrectionary; you drink the wrong brand of soft drink; or worse—you’re driving a proletarian automobile. Orwell understood the entertainment industry of fear all too well. Lately there’s been a ubiquitous commercial for a British luxury car which suggests that you also can be a James Bond-esque villain if you fork over $75,000 for the accoutrement. People are indeed controlled by inflicting pain, and imagining that you’re doing the inflicting is one of the centrifugal bumble puppies of falsified fear. So my money’s still on Orwell.
I think Lance Mannion would agree with this.
The reason I wish I could be Mannion has to do with his upright and decent lapsed Catholic’s faith in his neighbors. I like that. I don’t have nearly enough of it. Faith in the villagers goes a long way to dispeling fear. There are no vitamins for this. So while my money’s still on Orwell, its also on the people of Mannionville.
Planet of the Blind 