Letter from the Editors: Second Act
Ho Lin
Spring has sprung, and with it comes a familiar refrain: Where do we go from here? As we tentatively venture into public once again, like debutantes being unveiled (unmasked?) to not-so-polite society, it’s a natural question to ask. But even if COVID-19 never existed, there would be plenty to mull and mope over in 2021. Politics, economics, climate, social justice: pick your minefield. If America has always been the most adolescent of nations, swaggering forward with bluster and braggadocio even as it hoards its insecurities, a time of reckoning may finally be at hand. What do you want to be when you grow up? It’s a question this country has never quite willed itself to answer, even as it dances on the edge of mortality.
Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway certainly understood the pratfalls of mortality. Recently I watched Ken Burns’s documentaries on the two writers, and if there’s one overriding thesis to be gleaned from both programs (apart from the enduring qualities of their work), it’s that growing old gracefully is tricky business. Sure, elder stateman Twain regaled fawning fans, and Hemingway played the “Papa Hemingway” image to the hilt in his declining years, but like the country that inspired them, they were both susceptible to extravagance, vulnerable to ego, afflicted by romanticism and ridiculousness, doomed to outlive their initial creative burst of youth. F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote (in a line that has often been misinterpreted) that there are no second acts in American lives; perhaps it’s more accurate to say that as a country we’re eager to skip second acts entirely. The rise to glory, the happy ever after—why bother with all those pesky complications in-between?
Twain and Hemingway were stuck in stasis for their dotage; we now collectively find ourselves in a similar pickle, forced to contemplate complication while we brace for the next tide, and just as a rising tide lifts all boats, it could just as easily capsize us. Que sera sera—Doris Day was so charming when she first sang those words, and we’ve gotten away with such maxims in the past, yet now such views seem inadequate. Time to adapt or perish. Or more appropriately: publish or perish.
Which brings us to our latest issue, which bristles with the possibilities of spring, and also acknowledges the thorniness of our current times. Essays by Christopher Kuhl, Annette Leavy and William Martin contemplate major issues of the day, while Jon Fotch’s “Beatrice” and Abhishek Pandit’s “Closure Café” open the door to unorthodox futures. Speaking of doors, Diane Webster’s poems open plenty of doors to perception, Rebecca Fifield finds the beauty and tragedy in seclusion, and Dennis Ross and Jane Stuart demonstrate that being borne back into the past isn’t a bad thing. Meanwhile, Christopher Arnold’s photography of Burning Man celebrates communal experiences, while Colette Hannahan’s art invites us to consider the open skies above us, and fill them in.
Fitzgerald once wrote of being “enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” If there is much that is repellant about our current circumstances, may we all live to find enchantment in our second, third and even fourth acts—and maybe even grow old gracefully.
Ho Lin is co-editor of Caveat Lector, and author of China Girl, published by Regent Press. For more on his work, visit www.holinauthor.com.
Image: Ho Lin