Hymning & Hawing About America: A Few Symbol-Minded Essays

Hymning & Hawing About America is a collection of essays by Frank Trippett, who has been called “one of the really mind-blowing talents of his generation as a journalist, essayist, and story teller.” The subjects of his essays range from politics and personalities to social conditions and psychological phenomena. It is a brilliant look in the rear view mirror at the American scene during the Twentieth Century.

The book begins with the timeless reverie of A Season For Hymning And Hawing.

“…So autumn is a blatantly vital season, contrary to the allegations of sorrowful poets who misconstrue the message of dying leaves…Yet almost everybody recognizes that the season's character transcends those familiar bracing days, crystal nights, bigger stars, vaulted skies, fluted twilights, harvest moons, frosted pumpkins and that riotous foliage that impels whole traffic jams of leaf freaks up into New England…No hymning—or hawing—in behalf of autumn should neglect to note that the coming season is a self-contained climactic cycle. It offers every weather—at its end, days icy enough for any sane person, and along the way, those indefinite Indian summers that put the real ones to shame…”

The Ordeal Of Fun explores our obsessive quest for fun.

“…We are conceived in a moment of profound fun. This fact may not fix our destiny, but it strongly insinuates our complicity in some cosmic carnival. Fun becomes us. Born out of fun, we are born into it too…The infant is hurled into the air: He opens grinning gums to the skies and issues an ecstatic gasp as he plummets. To be? To be is to be in disequilibrium, visually, physically, aurally, internally. Life comes thus, and the infant is in love with it…Later, when he comes as close as an adult can to recapturing the dizzy totality of it all, he will speak of falling in love…An axiom emerges: For man, fun is not only scratching where he itches, it is itching where he scratches. Fun takes such myriad forms it smacks of illusion. This is appropriate. Illusion means literally ‘in-play.’…You may find fun elsewhere—but only the fun you bring with you. For that, as every child knows, is where it is at…”

In Louisiana: Jazzman's Last Ride is an elegy to a rich New Orleans’ tradition.

“…Boom! A second shot signals the stricken cadence of a dirge. The white gloves of the pallbearers flash in the morning sun as they float their burden to the silver-gray Cadillac hearse…A jazz funeral is beginning in New Orleans. Though hardly disrespectful, the underlying temper is festive. The reason lies in tradition: when the funeral is done, the streets will explode with jubilant jazz and antic celebration…A young woman in frayed jeans curves backward, in an affront to gravity, all the while clapping her hands, rending the air with throaty singing— ‘Oh, when the saints’…”

The Suckers explains the inner world of compulsive gamblers.

“…They talked about gambling, and deep into the night I listened to voices that scarcely mentioned such things as cards and dice and horses. Gambling seemed an abstract rite, as they spoke of it, severed from apparatus, remote from any habitat…My gamblers seemed to get their special feeling, the compelling thing, not at the resolution of a bet, not at the winning or losing, but while the bet was pending. While the gamble was pending resolution they knew those special sensations, almost indescribable. The feelings vanish when the gamble is resolved, but they want them again, and so they bet again, and again...In action, he was living, lost child alive, running, ever running behind horses, clinging to the tingling reins, two wild horses, one Yes and one No, one Win and one Lose, one Love and one Loveless, running on, running on…”

The Scientific Pursuit Of Happiness focuses on how the essence of happiness has eluded the scientific method.

“…mc² may well = E in the known physical universe. Nothing quite that pat can be said about the cosmos of the human temperament. In the play of emotion, logic is seldom evident, and the laws of gravity and thermodynamics never…Only now is it becoming clear that our gladness is likely to be subjected to the same methodical research and analysis that has been lavished for generations on our madness…Given time, the happyologists could conceivably come up with a useful, or at least a discerning, answer. Perhaps the question is so fundamental that, like love and wisdom, it will always elude human definition…Happiness, in short, awaits its Newton, its Galileo…”

The Great American Cooling Machine addresses the subtle and subversive effect air conditioning has had on American culture.

“…In a century that has yielded such treasures as the electric knife, spray-on deodorant and disposable diapers, anybody might question whether air conditioning is the supreme gift. There is not a whiff of doubt, however, that America is far out front in its use…But not everybody is aware that high cost and easy comfort are merely two of the effects of the vast cooling of America. In fact air conditioning has substantially altered the country's character and folkways…Is it really surprising that the public's often noted withdrawal into self-pursuit and privatism has coincided with the epic spread of air conditioning?…While the car has been a fine sign of the American impulse to dart hither and yon about the world, the mechanical cooler more neatly suggests the maturing national compulsion to flee the natural world in favor of a technological cocoon…”

The Bull Market In Personal Secrets delves into the decline of decorum.

“…Today nobody bothers to lift an eyebrow at the seamiest intimate tale, not even when it is about the life of a President. The reason is plain: tidings of intimate goings-on have become as common as junk food in the U.S. In fact, the country has developed what looks like an enduring bull market in personal secrets…Something more than a mere departure from decorum must be involved when a society begins to live habitually in a blizzard of under-the-rug sweepings. Only the simple-minded could shrug it off as nothing more than a side effect of the open and permissive social mode that emerged in the 1960s…The traffic in intimacies may be a naive, if elaborate, response to the generalized loneliness and isolation that are characteristic of the times: it may represent a form of sharing, though a desperate form…”

A Few Symbol-Minded Questions definitively runs the flag burning issue up the pole.

“…Lawmakers looking for a way to protect the flag have a lot of searching to do if they hope to cover all possibilities. An amendment or statute simply outlawing desecration of the U.S. flag is not going to do the job…If there is only one official U.S. flag, would it be permissible to burn an unofficial one—say, an obsolete model with 48 stars? Since a flag is, by usual definition, made of fabric, should a wooden representation of it be protected?…Philosophically speaking, is it even possible to desecrate the U.S. flag? One can desecrate something that is sacred, holy or religious (which is just what desecrate primarily means, according to the Oxford English Dictionary). Is the U.S. flag sacred, holy or religious? Or is it a symbol of a secular state?…That raises yet another question: Should it be a crime to burn a statute or constitutional amendment that makes flag burning a crime?…”

Looking For Mr. President examines the face of leadership.

“…The U.S. is eternally looking for somebody who supposedly looks like a President. Once aga