Veracity
Editor’s Letter
Telling the truth is almost never easy. We finds excuses, we obfuscate, we tell related tales, we blame, we deny — and many times, like our current political administration, we only ’fess up when we are caught, trapped.
I have an 84-year-old woman friend, a sculptor, who possesses a life that is very hard and over the top with riches. Lots of deaths and huge financial success have combined to create what looks like heaven from the outside, but when you strip away the artifice there have been devastatingly difficulties.
I was recently babbling to her about therapy, about grown kids, about attempting to get over the knocks and kicks life gives out, and I mentioned the word denial. Denial is a modern-psychology term that has crept into our convivial parlance. It means okay, we know something is true but we deny it or shove it under the bed. My sculptor friend looked at me gob-smacked. “You mean you want to get rid of denial? Oh, Dearie, I think they should invent a pill that gives it to you. What would I do without it?”
Maybe she’s right, but for this issue we decided to take off some blinders and take on the truth. Dave Gibbons interviews the wise, ebullient Dr. Ruth. She talks about sex, something so few of us want to be honest about. And following Dr. Ruth is “No Thanks for the Memories,” by 94-year-old Gertrude Berger, an honest rendering of a first love.
We have a meaty excerpt from a first-hand account of the devastation following the bombing of Nagasaki. It was written by George Weller, a man who by chance became my godfather. His crumbling carbons were found in a house in Italy by his son, Anthony Weller — and Jerry Tallmer interviews Anthony Weller about that quest. By a further twist of fate, Tallmer himself was a distant witness of Nagasaki on that August day in 1945.
We have Judy Young’s truth about travel, and E.J. Ruskin rounds up some summer-school classes for your consideration, but only if you have, truthfully, been very good. In all, I love this issue because, truth be told, its contents are not all equal in my eyes. And since veracity is a quest I relish, this issue rings true to me.
Wickham Boyle
Editor
