Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Here's a website for the film, with a trailer down the page some.

<https://www.meritsproductions.com/projects/the-paradox-of-seabrook-farms>


In ways, it's about a vanished place in a vanished society,
partnering paternalism and exploitation.  "Being taken care of"
along with "toeing the line".
  

    
Wow.
  

    
John, thanks so much for being here and of course your notes! I have
the book but haven't got to it yet; slow reader, piles of books, ai
yi yi. Meanwhile the book isn't going anywhere. heh. It was
astounding to read the reviews and now this. Just thanks again.
  

    <scribbled by jreacher Thu 25 Sep 25 13:10>
  

    
It was a good day when Lisa, your wife, told you to get off the
sauce or she would leave you. Finding it a creditable ultimatum, you
came under the care of a Manhattan family therapist who for years,
helped you find your way back to sobriety. Jack and C.K. had both
been heavy drinkers, so, as she told you,  you came by the problem
honestly. Today, Seabrook House, your grandfather's home, is
headquarters of a network of drug and alcohol centers. Can you tell
about learning to manage your drinking and the importance of your
children, particularly Rose, in your rehabilitation. And please say
something about the drug and alcohol centers. 
  

    
Second that. The river of booze running through the book was well-
written, and definitely made me prick up my ears.
  

    
Well, regarding alcohol...as you know if you've read the book it was
really part of my patrimony. The word "capacity" kind of haunts the
book. Alcohol meant a number of things to the Seabrooks. First of
all, it was a class signifier. The Seabrooks needed to master class
signifiers like wine and clothes because they were in a hurry to
convince their wealthy contacts that they belonged among them. C.F.
never finished high school and the culture into which he was born
was provincial, illiberal, and working class. So mastery of
cocktails and French wine was a way of "passing" socially. It was a
deadly serious business. 

But alcohol was also a test -- although you weren't told you were
taking a test. Empty glasses were always refilled, to see who would
have the self control to stop short of getting plastered and who
wouldn't. Often it was the upper class people who the Seabrooks had
managed to finagle as guests who got the drunkest -- which gave the
Seabrooks great satisfaction, and made them feel superior. 

And finally, it was tribal, booze was like this sacred juice that
made you one of them, taken around the time of puberty. 

Anyway I flunked the test, repeatedly. This was tolerated, even by
mother, which is kind of crazy because she came from a family of
alcohol abusers. And since they never seemed to think I had a
drinking problem, I never thought I had a drinking problem either.
Lisa my wife also put up with it for a number of years, until it
reached a point where she gave me that ultimatum -- which I was
stunned by. But of course she was right. 

Therapy helped me recognize how my drinking was tied up with family
heritage, which kind of mitigated a lot of the shame around it, but
going to AA was the thing that made me stop. Not doing the steps,
just sitting in those rooms with people who came to their drinking
in all kinds of different ways, but realizing we were all really the
same -- addicts. 

Also writing about it helped. Writing about it was kind of like
standing up in a room and sharing, but it also creates a permanent
record, like an oath you've sworn to on the page, and a pact you've
made with readers, who kind of act as witnesses. Like, I've sworn,
I'm sober, it's in print, there's no taking it back.
  

    
Yes, the one point where your parents introduce you to alcohol, and
you get smashed, and then later you overhear the comment that maybe
you weren't as mature as they had hoped ... all the subtext there.
  

    
I tried your old-fashioned recipe last weekend and got right
cheerful and even a trifle silly --

A triple shot of bourbon on ice with a teaspoon of sugar, bitters,
and a wedge of orange. 
  

    
And of course, self-medication for people who had doubts about their
place in their society, in their family, their success, and their
definition of success.

Your father's avocation of the four-in-hand driving felt like
another defense mechanism - this unassailable esoteric niche of
mastery with its "money-pit" aspect.  I can't even imagine what it
cost to ship horses to England.  And of course was it Fedex or UPS
that the company paid for to send them to Canada?  Fedexing
horses!!! The logistics. 

What were his thoughts on other horse endeavors such as dressage and
the Clydesdale teams? 
  

    
>an oath you've sworn to on the page

Nice.
  

    
It took a fast study to know so much about so many things at such a
young age. Jack's knowledge of the best wines must have exceeded a
master sommelier's, and he he seemed to know the proper attire for
whatever occasion -- garden parties, picnics, receptions, weddings, 
funerals, formal dinners, etc. He knew when to wear a cutaway
morning coat with striped trousers  and when a white tie with black
trousers would be more approriate. His wardrobe was vast and he knew
all the best Savile Row tailors. I suppose all this fits in with the
defense mechanism Sweeney mentions.
  

    
I was shocked by a couple of things I ran across in Stephanie
Hinnershitz's book _Japanese American Incarceration: The Camps and
Coerced Labor During World War II_ (U. of PA Press, 2021):

One, that Seabrook Farms employed German POWS! They had vacated by
1944, requiring replacements by Japanese Americans. (242)

Two, the Japanese American workers included Japanese Peruvians, whom
the Peruvian government detained when Peru joined the Allies and
agreed to ship the Japanese Peruvians to the prison camp at Crystal
City, Texas, to be used in potential exchanges with American POWs
that Japan was holding. That's a whole other sordid story, but the
Seabrook connection that is shocking is that they were treated worse
than the continental US Japanese Americans. For one thing, they
"were forced by Seabrook to pay extra 'taxes' to the company because
of their supposed illegal entry. Seabrook deducted 33 percent from
the paychecks / of the Japanese Peruvians, 'so by the time they got
their paycheck there was hardly anything. And because there was so
little left, they couldn't go to town to buy groceries, 'cause then
you had to pay the bus which was like twenty or ten cents . . .'
This forced the workers to go to the company store which afforded no
opportunities to save money to leave Seabrook Farms." (242-243)
  

    
I wish I'd known about the Hinnershitz book when I was writing mine.
I didn't know about the 'taxes' and the 33 percent. Holy shit. 

One of the issues I had writing this book was balancing the
admirable things the Seabrooks did with the awful things. Which kind
of goes to my twin roles as family memoirist and muck raking
journalist. As a journalist investigating and exposing corruption,
racism, and fascism in a business, you want to lay it on as thick as
possible to blacken the reputation of the perpetrators forever. But
when it's your family you're investigating, your loyalties are
divided. If it's too negative it's off putting for the reader; the
narrator seems like a rat. And in the Seabrooks case, they did do
some good or at least admirable things. They basically invented
frozen vegetables, though of course Birdseye owned the process. In
doing so they got a lot of vitamins into people who didn't have
access to fresh and didn't eat canned. Also frozen vegetables were
more affordable in a lot of cases. And then there was their
ingenuity, their drive, the science they brought to growing and
producing vegetables (growth units) and all the workers who felt
like working at Seabrook Farms was the best time of their lives. The
book is a balancing act. There were places I had to cut stuff (like
the Estonian opera singers) because it threw the balance off. I'm
not sure what I would have done with that information about the
Peruvians. The journalist would have wanted to use it!

Yes, that's the recipe for an old-fashioned that will definitely
light a warm glow inside you.

Regarding horses. The coaching world is distinct from the racing
world which is different from the polo world and the dressage world
and the Clydesdales/farm horse world, and it's not that uncommon in
my experience for people to know a lot about one and nothing about
the others. Each attracts a different kind of person. My dad did
know quite a bit about Morgan horse, which were bred in Vermont.
It's why he ended up getting Nimrod North. He had a friend who was a
pretty serious polo player, George "frolic" Weymouth. He went to the
Garden State Race Track from time to time. But coaching eventually
swallowed his attention as well as much of his money. 
  

    
Speaking of money, IIRC, 25K acres of the Seabrook farm were owned
outright by the family, and of that some 2K acres wound up in a
trust for you and your children and grandchildren. At age 66, will
you now focus on managing that trust exclusively, or do you plan to
continue with a writing career?
  

    
I'm back to writing for the New Yorker. (I have a short piece in
there this week and a longer one about sports architecture coming
soon. I'll be in Sofi this Thursday for the Rams Niners game.)
I'm much more competent at writing than I am at managing money.
Most of the Seabrooks money ended up with the Princeton Theological
Seminary, the Westminster Chois College, the Bridgeton Hospital, and
my Aunt Thelma. 
  

    
In today's political ecosystem we're seeing  themes of ambition,
power, and decline play out. If I'd written a book two decades ago
with a narrative that resembles what we're seeing now, it would've
been rejected as too crazy. 

Much of The Spinach King touches on just those themes.  Do you see
your family's story as uniquely American? Do you see personalities
in today's politics that make you think of your grandfather and
father?
  

    
> One of the issues I had writing this book was balancing the
admirable things the Seabrooks did with the awful things. Which kind
of goes to my twin roles as family memoirist and muck raking
journalist. . . . The book is a balancing act. 

Oh absolutely, John. And I think you do a great job with the
balancing.
  

    
Yes. Yes!
  

    
I just got done reading the most appalling chapter in the Seabrook
Farms story: the 1934 summer strike. 

You can see some footage of a moment during the strike, when Black
women strikers started pulling scab-picked beets off a truck and
were wrestled away by strikebreakers. Halfway through this: 

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmGaJuAPJkQ>
  

    
John, is that something you wanted to talk about further with
relatives?
  

    
I'm glad you put that link to the strike footage into the thread.
It's incredible that it exists. Just one of many things that turned
up on the internet in the course of my research. Of course we're
used to everything being recorded on video today - but in 1934? On a
farm in remote South Jersey. Just incredible. 

Well yes in fact there is a father and son in today's politics that
resemble my grandfather and his relationship with his sons. That
would be "the Henry Ford of Housing" Fred Trump and his sons Fred
and Donald. Fred Jr spiraled into alcoholism as a result of his
father's abuse, and Donald became a malignant narcissist to survive.
My dad charted kind of a middle path between those two toxic
reactions to the abusive patriarch and founder. My dad thought
Donald was vulgar and paid him little mind, but I'm kind of grateful
that he died before Trump became a candidate because I'm pretty sure
he would have voted for him. He did vote for McCain a few months
before he died. I remember sitting in his bedroom with my hippie
niece Adriana when we got the news Obama had won, and celebrating
while he kind of moaned in his sleep. 

If anyone in my family would like to discuss the book/CF with me I'd
be happy to. So far no one has. 
  

    
>If anyone in my family would like to discuss the book/CF with me
I'd be >happy to. So far no one has. 

Huh.  Interesting.  Families can be so weird.
  

    
By all accounts, and from pictures in your book, the Seabrook 
children appear to be healthy and happy. Rose, now 15,  has a big
smile on her face and is in every respect a Generation Alpha girl,
growing up with more integrated technology and AI than all the
children of previous generations. 

She came to you and Lisa by way of adoption at just 18 months of age
following the catastrophic 7.0  Haitian earthquake of 2010. That
quake left an estimated 300,000 dead and over a million persons
homeless or displaced. 

Is Rose curious about her roots in the disaster? Has she visited the
island? Is there any contact with her biological mother? Is she in
the prep school you and your father attended? Will she be a
Princeton girl? And what about her siblings? You said you aren't
sure you're doing them any favors by passing on a generous
inheritance to them. Please tell us about your kids.
  

    
This discussion was scheduled for two weeks, and that two week
period ends today. The topic will remain, and participants are
welcome to continue, though we only asked John to commit two weeks
of his attention. 

Thanks to John and to all the other participants here - great
discussion!