My Despair

By Crispin Sartwell

I begin every Sunday as a happy, relaxed householder, beaming benevolently upon this sun-drenched, wholesome world, looking forward to a waffle for brunch and an afternoon of football.

This friendly mood, however, dissipates as I read the New York Times. Folding and unfolding the broadsheet, I spiral downward into an infinite abyss of despair. I become convinced that human life is without meaning, is a mere morsel in the all-devouring maw of fate. In short, I experience a profound existential nausea, and only a large dose of the NFL prevents me from hanging myself, relishing my own slow strangulation.

Indeed, by the time I'm finished, I am actually comforted by the thought that our redemption is impossible. That itself is a kind of cosmic justice, for the fact of the matter is that we the human race do not deserve redemption, and would reject it were it available. The Sunday New York Times makes evident to me that homo sapiens is a sheer pollution, a pure and utter filth. The annihilation of the universe as a whole is desirable in that it entails the extinction of the human race.

What gets me down is not the crime and perversion and terrorism invariably represented on the front page or the Week in Review. Rather, it is Sunday Styles, a cesspool of reeking nihilism, displaying for all to see the valuelessness of human values, the despair that lurks at the heart of all our desires.

If conspicuous consumption were virtue, Sunday Styles would be an uplifting. If fawning on the shreds of celebrity took guts, Sunday Styles would be courageous. If licking extremely expensive shoes were nutritious, Sunday Styles would be an all-you-can-eat buffet of manna.

In short, if black were white, up down, inside out, Sunday Styles would be decent.

Contemplate with me if you can bear it the two top stories on the front of December 8th's section: "A New Eurofestation" and "Creating a Scene from the Lobby Up." And let us not even quibble with the editors who wrote these headlines, admitting that even a genius can have a doltish day.

The former:

"Mr. Fernandez-Versini's evening had gotten off to a bumpy start," reports Julia Chaplin. "He had canceled his usual 10:30 p.m. dinner with an entourage of models and European friends at Downtown, because Giuseppe Cipriani, one of the owners, was in Italy. . . . Instead, he rerouted to Serafina on Lafayette Street.

"There he spotted a stunning young woman at a long table for 20, and jumped up to whisper to one of the restaurant's promoters, 'Can you ask her to come over to my table when I'm finished eating?'

"She joined Mr. Fernandez-Versini as soon as he'd washed his last bite down with a Red Bull and vodka. 'Come to St. Bart's for New Year's!' he proposed."

The latter:

"It's 9 on a recent Monday morning and Kelly Wearstler is hard at work in her Day-Glo orange and white conference room. Dressed in a sleeveless pink t-shirt, silver cargo pants and a pair of gold stilettos, Ms. Wearstler is all but grimacing as she ponders the design challenge posed by the toys belonging to her 5-month-old son, Oliver. . . .

"A onetime Playboy model who as recently as nine years ago was working as a waitress at a Beverly Hills steakhouse, Ms. Wearstler has become one of the brightest, if most polarizing, figures on the city's design scene."

What is fascinating about Mr. Fernandez-Versini is, no doubt that he is known as Mr. "Fernandez-Versini," which to the American ear presents a sophistication so profound as literally to be stupefying. Juxtapose "Fernandez-Versini" with "models" and "St. Bart's" and you have a kind of perfect story for Americans: one that arouses simultaneous envy and incomprehension. I wish Mr Fernandez-Versini well, though I feel this wellness may be compromised by "Red Bull and vodka," or would be, if Red Bull and vodka could be swallowed. But I sincerely pray that anyone who wrote, enjoyed, or indeed finished this story, like a savior, redeems us all by her profound suffering.

And I found myself rather sympathizing with the plight of young Ollie Wearstler, whose mom - the Playboy model perched atop gold stilettos in her Day-Glo conference room - adjudges the simple, wholesome, primary-color pleasures of childhood to be tacky. No doubt when she is through, Fischer-Price will make Neiman-Marcus look like Manny, Moe, and Jack.

I could, indeed almost must, go on. But there is a Red Bull and bocculism on the TV tray that has my name on it.