Exuberance: The Passion for Life (51 page)

1.
“grows hot and lives within us”: William James,
The Varieties of Religious Experience
(1902; New York: Penguin, 1982), p. 197.

2.
“monarchical” in their power: “The passions,” writes Philip Fisher in his excellent book
The Vehement Passions
, “are best described as thorough. They do not make up one part of a state of mind or a situation. Impassioned states seem to drive out every other form of attention or state of being.… [They] are what we could call monarchical states of being.” Philip Fisher,
The Vehement Passions
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 43.

3.
“We cannot write well”: Henry David Thoreau, journal entry, September 2, 1851, in Henry D. Thoreau,
Journal
, vol. 4: 1851–1852, gen. ed. Robert Sattelmeyer, ed. Leonard N. Neufeldt and Nancy Craig Simmons (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 27–28.

4.
intoxicates more quickly: Andy Coghlan, “Fizz, Bang, Wallop,”
New Scientist
, December 22, 2001, p. 7. The scientists at the University of Surrey who conducted the study speculate that the carbon dioxide in the bubbles speeds up the flow of alcohol into the intestines. Champagne is dangerous in other ways, reports the
Wall Street Journal
(June Fletcher, “Champagne Openers: Popping in Safety,” December 28, 2001). Flying corks result in hundreds of visits to the emergency room every New Year’s Day. “Corks are very small and they travel at tremendous velocity,” noted one ophthalmologist interviewed; they can cause black eyes and detached retinas, among other injuries.

5.
the capacity for excess: It is difficult to imagine greater excess in the pursuit of joy than that reflected in a deadly statistic used in advertising for Joy, the Jean Patou perfume. One ounce of Joy, boast its manufacturers, contains the “essence” from more than ten thousand jasmine flowers and twenty-eight dozen Bulgarian roses.

6.
“hath such a charm”: William Shakespeare,
Measure for Measure
, Act IV, scene 1, lines 14–15.

7.
“Surely the fever process”: James,
Varieties of Religious Experience
, p. 15.

8.
“A Heart—how shall I say?”: Robert Browning, “My Last Duchess,” in
Browning: A Selection
, ed. W. E. Williams (New York: Penguin, 1954), p. 67.

9.
“there was this restless creativity”: Mark Leithauser, quoted in
The Georgetowner
(Washington, D.C.), June 27, 2002.

10.
“something buoyant”: Paul Richard, “The Touch of Class,”
Washington Post
, June 19, 2002.

11.
“lope into others’ pastures”: J. Carter Brown’s comments about exuberance are drawn from his conversations with the author and correspondence in response to specific questions, March 15, 2000.

12.
“His text was beauty”: The Reverend Peter J. Gomes, memorial service for J. Carter Brown, Washington National Cathedral, July 17, 2002.

13.
“I’ve put a lot of energy into my students”: Richard Feynman, quoted in John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin,
Richard Feynman: A Life in Science
(London: Penguin, 1997), p. 212.

14.
Feynman was a magician: Marc Kac, quoted in
No Ordinary Genius
, ed. Christopher Sykes (New York: Norton, 1994), p. 19.

15.
“who was always in front”: A. A. Milne,
The House at Pooh Corner
(1928; New York: Puffin, 1992), p. 75.

16.
“Americans really believe”: Leon Wieseltier,
Kaddish
(New York: Knopf, 1998), p. 576.

17.
“Rainbows flowered for my father”: Wallace Stegner,
Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs
(New York: Random House, 1992), p. xx.

18.
“Led by pillars of fire and cloud”: ibid., p. 3.

19.
“Complete independence”: ibid., p. 200.

20.
“probably time we settled down”: ibid., p. 206.

21.
“[t]he principle of Barnum’s museum”: Christopher Irmscher,
The Poetics of Natural History
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1999), p. 115.

22.
“Ya got trouble”: Lyrics are from Meredith Willson’s
The Music Man
, first performed in 1957; book, music, and lyrics by Meredith Willson, Frank Music Corporation.

23.
“Not only fools”: John Kenneth Galbraith,
A Short History of Financial Euphoria
(New York: Penguin, 1993), p. viii.

24.
“Some artifact or some development”: ibid., pp. 2–4.

25.
“the mass escape from reality”: ibid., p. 12.

26.
“wishful thinking on the part of investors”: Robert J. Shiller,
Irrational Exuberance
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. xii.

27.
“equivalent to no less than three hundred times”: Mike Dash,
Tulipomania
(New York: Crown, 1999), p. 220.

28.
“In reading the history of nations”: Charles MacKay,
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
(New York: Three Rivers Press, 1980), p. xvii; first published in 1841 as
Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions
.

29.
“Men, it has been well said”: ibid., p. xviii.

30.
“the world can’t show a dye”: ibid., p. 93.

31.
“Many persons grow insensibly attached”: ibid., p. 94.

32.
The fact that the flower: Anna Pavord,
The Tulip
(London: Bloomsbury, 2000).

33.
a singlebulbwas exchanged: MacKay,
Extraordinary Popular Delusions
, pp. 94–95.

34.
A lone bulb of “Semper Augustus”: Dash,
Tulipomania
, pp. 108–9.

35.
“I must say I’m not very fond”: Sinclair Lewis,
Arrowsmith
(1925; New York: Signet, 1998), p. 241.

36.
“being galvanized”: ibid., p. 226.

37.
“I learned during the war”: quoted in obituary for Sir Mark Oliphant,
The Economist
, July 22, 2000, p. 85.

38.
“The only reaction that I remember”: Richard Feynman,
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
, ed. Jeffrey Robbins (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 1999), p. 10.

39.
“All invasive moral states”: James,
Varieties of Religious Experience
, p. 90.

40.
“always affords some of the enjoyments”: Mme the Baroness de Staël-Holstein,
Germany
, 2 vols., trans. O. W. Wight (New York: Derby & Jackson, 1861), vol. 2, p. 361. She went on to say, “We ought to choose our object by enthusiasm, but to approach it by character; thought is nothing without character; enthusiasm is every thing for literary nations, character is every thing to those which are active; free nations stand in need of both” (p. 362).

41.
“It is well that war”: Robert E. Lee to James Longstreet after the battle of Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862.

42.
“a transformation of the personality”: Paul Fussell,
The Great War and Modern Memory
(London: Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 114–54.

43.
It is for some a romantic quest: Eric Auerbach’s ideas are discussed further by Fussell, ibid., p. 135.

44.
“a blood-red blossom”: Alfred Lord Tennyson,
Maud: A Definitive Edition
, ed. Susan Shatto (London: Athlone Press, 1986), p. 156 (Part III, verse 4, line 53).

45.
“All men who feel”: Theodore Roosevelt, quoted in Edmund Morris,
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
(New York: Ballantine, 1970), p. 654.

46.
“we were all in the spirit”: quoted in Nathan Miller,
Theodore Roosevelt: A Life
(New York: William Morrow, 1992), p. 303.

47.
“was just revelling in victory”: quoted in Morris,
Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
, p. 656.

48.
“Power when wielded”: Henry Adams,
The Education of Henry Adams (1
907; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), p. 417. Mark Twain commented that Roosevelt was “clearly insane … and insanest upon war and its supreme glories” (quoted in Morris,
Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
, p. 12).

49.
“restless agitation”: Adams,
Education
, p. 418.

50.
“when in the hottest of a battle”: letter from Captain David Embree to his sister, September 1863, in
War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars
, ed. Andrew Carroll (New York: Scribners, 2001), pp. 92–93.

51.
“the memories of which will remain”: quoted in Niall Ferguson,
The Pity of War
(London: Penguin, 1998), p. 361.

52.
“Once you have lain in her arms”: quoted ibid.

53.
“There is a part of me”: Chris Hedges,
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
(New York: Public Affairs, 2002), p. 5.

54.
“I’ve been having a blast”: Laura Palmer, “Mystery Is the Precinct Where I Found Peace,” in Tad Bartimus, Denby Fawcett, Jurate Kazickas, Edith Lederer, Ann Bryan Mariano, Anne Morrissy Merick, Laura Palmer, Kate Webb, and Tracy Wood,
War Torn: Stories of War from the Women Reporters Who Covered Vietnam
(New York: Random House, 2002), p. 257.

55.
“First, when they start shooting at you”: ibid.

56.
“I never knew”: ibid. Psychiatric difficulties of Vietnam veterans who engaged in atrocities are discussed by the social worker Sarah A. Haley in her article “When the Patient Reports Atrocities: Specific Treatment Considerations of the Vietnam Veteran,”
Archives of General Psychiatry
, 30: 191–96 (1974).

57.
“in strange and troubling ways”: William Broyles, Jr., “Why Men Love War,”
Esquire
, November 1984, p. 56.

58.
“beatific contentment”: ibid., p. 59.

59.
“joy of slaughter”: Joanna Bourke,
An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare
(London: Granta Books, 1999), p. 31.

60.
“I had thought myself more or less immune”: quoted ibid.

61.
“The everlasting battle”: T. E. Lawrence,
Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph
(1926; New York: Doubleday, 1935), pp. 29–30.

Winston Churchill wrote that “Lawrence was one of those beings whose pace of life was faster and more intense than the ordinary. Just as an aeroplane only flies by its speed and pressure against the air, so he flew best and easiest in the hurricane. He was not in complete harmony with the normal.” Winston S. Churchill, “Lawrence of Arabia,” in
Great Contemporaries
(1937; Safety Harbor, Fla.: Simon, 2001), p. 123.

62.
“I liked the things underneath me”: Lawrence,
Seven Pillars
, p. 564.

63.
“It began as a border patrol”: Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson,
Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence
(Boston: Mariner, 1996), p. 17.

64.
“That day [during World War II]”: Chuck Yeager and Leo Janos,
Yeager: An Autobiography
(Toronto: Ballantine, 1985), pp. 84–85.

65.
“a subtle change happened”: Lawrence,
Seven Pillars
, p. 511.

66.
“To rouse the excitement of war”: ibid.

67.
“God but I wish”: quoted in Stanley P. Hirshon,
General Patton: A Soldier’s Life
(New York: HarperCollins, 2002), p. 50.

68.
“When the cave man”: quoted ibid., p. 84.

69.
“You have seen what the enthusiasm”: quoted in Carlo D’Este,
Patton: A Genius for War
(New York: HarperCollins, 1995), p. 93.

70.
“You play games to win”: quoted ibid., p. 312.

71.
“all-pervading, visible personality”: Hirshon,
General Patton
, p. 200.

72.
“one of those men born”: quoted in D’Este,
Patton
, p. 818.

73.
“This is a damn fine war”: quoted in Hirshon,
General Patton
, p. 411.

74.
“Where are the damned Germans”: quoted ibid., p. 318.

75.
“We’re going to go right in”: quoted ibid., p.270.

76.
“We’ll rape their women”: quoted ibid., p. 271.

77.
“dashing, courageous, wild”: quoted ibid., p. 297.

78.
“an extreme case”: quoted in D’Este,
Patton
, p. 812.

79.
“I think he was about half mad”: quoted ibid., p. 815.

80.
“I am convinced”: quoted ibid.

81.
“He will be ranked”: obituary in the
New York Times
, December 22, 1945.

82.
Mitchell, the son of a U.S. Senator: In addition to Mitchell’s own writings, I relied upon biographical information in Emile Gauvreau and Lester Cohen,
Billy Mitchell: Founder of Our Air Force and Prophet Without Honor
(New York: Dutton, 1942); Ruth Mitchell,
My Brother Bill: The Life of General “Billy” Mitchell
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1953); Isaac Levine,
Mitchell: Pioneer of Air Power
(New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1958); Alfred F. Hurley,
Billy Mitchell: Crusader for Air Power
(New York: Franklin Watts, 1964); Burke Davis,
The Billy Mitchell Affair
(New York: Random House, 1967); James J. Cooke,
Billy Mitchell
(Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2002). Lieutenant Colonel Johnny R. Jones has compiled a helpful anthology of Mitchell’s published and unpublished writings:
William “Billy” Mitchell’s Air Power
(Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.: Airpower Research Institute, 1997).