"FIDELITY IN love for fidelity's sake has less attraction for her than for most women: fidelity because of love's grip had much...a blaze of love, and extinction, was better than a lantern glimmer which should last long years," wrote Thomas Hardy of Eustacia Vye, the passionate, faithless anti-heroine of his novel "Return of the Native."
I came across this yeasty quote--and many others--in Eric Felten's new book, "Loyalty: The Vexing Virtue." Felten, in quick, breezy and amusing style, examines the confounding, infuriating nature of loyalty. Loyalty in love....loyalty to country...loyalty to friends and family (do you snitch on that pal or brother/sister who just happens to be a heartless embezzler or mass murderer?) The author also considers loyalty to job, corporation and most terrifyingly, political loyalty. This is what Lyndon Johnson demanded: "I don't want loyalty. I want loyalty. I want him to kiss my ass in Macy's window at high noon and tell me it smells likes roses. I want his pecker in my pocket."
Felten--who writes for the Wall Street Journal--gives many examples, pro and con, of the sometimes excruciating tests of loyalty. But he's for it, wholeheartedly (though whether he would have kissed LBJ's backside in Macy's window remains open to debate.)
One of the reasons I found this book so appealing is that it is shot through with great snippets from various other works, and marvelous quotes. Which, of course, I intend to use. An exchange from John O'Hara's "Appointment in Samarra" was one of many: O'Hara's protagonist, Julian English, has gone off and left his wife for the day, drinking and whoring it up and generally running their lives in all manner of misbehavior. When he returns, he won't own up to what he's done. He simply demands his wife's loyalty. "This is a pretty good time for you to stick by me."
"I can't stick by you if you don't tell me what for. "Blind, without knowing, you could stick by me. That's what you'd do if you were a real wife, but what the hell." Writer Felten doesn't reveal the book's denouement. And while I think loyalty is a wonderful quality---in the words of writer Felten "a forgotten forlorn relic"--one can't help being on Mrs. English's side in this matter of her husband crazily stewing in his own juices. There's loyalty and then there is good sense. As Sinclair Lewis wrote in "Dodsworth": "Love has to stop somewhere short of suicide." Or Macy's window.
- OUR DAPPER friend Tony Lo Bianco has taken time out from teaching acting (in Italy!) to come to New York with his excellent one-man show "The Little Flower." This is about Manhattan's famous mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia. Tony is in rehearsal now. The show runs from October 23rd through November 2nd at the Dicapo Opera Theatre on East 76th Street (Bet 3rd and Lex) Call 212-868-4444.
- OKAY, SO there's Justin Bieber on the cover of Rolling Stone in a white tank top. "Hot, Ready, Legal" the cover insists. He looks like terrified jail-bait to me, ready to be put to bed with his favorite fuzzy toy. The story, by Josh Eells, follows the pattern set by most Bieber stories, such as the recent GQ profile. Everybody's trying really hard to emphasize he's just a kid, get him to grow up so his career will last, emphasize that he's just a kid. ("When he's being a prick, it's not because he's famous. He's being a prick because he's a kid.") Hmmm...well, among the things Justin is "ready" for, how about not being a prick?
- ALSO IN Rolling Stone is one of my favorite guys, Steven Tyler. I don't know, I just find him funny and adorable. He tells RS: "To be honest, in everyday dealings, I'll talk to people, and they go 'What are you talking about?' So now I just tell 'em 'You know what, screw you. At least I can sing good and write a good song now and again, so go screw yourself." I know that doesn't sound terribly adorable, but Steven has a way about him.
- CHLOE SEVIGNY is on the front of OUT magazine's Olympic Issue, looking hot in some kind of abbreviated boxer's outfit. (Well, she's holding a boxing glove,anyway.) Sevigny, so well known for her role as the often truculent Nicolette in HBO's polygamy series, "Big Love" (not to mention her Oscar-nominated performance in "Boys Don't Cry") is the classic indie actress. She is always working, always fascinating, never quite landingthe "big" role. Maybe she minds, maybe she doesn't. She rarely censors herself. Indeed, she tells writer Max Berlinger, "Hollywood does not know what to do with me. They do not like me! That's why I end up in all these seemingly difficult movies. That's what's offered to me, and I have to make a living."