Stripping Hillary

So the Times has gotten ahold of some letters Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote to a friend while she was in college, and set Mark Leibovich to analyze them.

It's an exceedingly odd and cringe-inducing article--there's no awareness of how weird it is to parse the words of a college freshman, no sense of embarassment, no acknowledgement of invading her privacy (it's her letters, made public by the person she wrote to), no caveats--just straight-forward literary analysis, as if they were going over the text of her latest stump speech.

Which, come to think of it, I've never seen the Times do.

More than anything it's pathetic; there are insights in there, much like any biography would benefit from such primary source material--but the difference is the letters section would be placed in context within a long biography, whereas here we have a front page Times article making much out of her scribblings 40 years ago.

If they're going to go that route, they need to analyze the friend Hillary sent the letters to, what he was like, what the nature of their friendship was (reading between the lines he seemed to like her more than a friend, she not at all). These weren't meant for public consumption, so whatever peek of intimacy the Times gleans from them should be offset by an understanding that they were tailored words.

But none of that's there; the words are quoted at face value, as if they speak for themselves.

I conclude the guy Hillary wrote to was a bit of a prat--there's no acknowledgement by him or the Times that what he's doing, in releasing her side of a two-way conversation, isn't right.

He's even quoted as saying:

Mr. Peavoy’s letters to Ms. Rodham are lost to posterity, unless she happened to keep them, which he doubts. He said he wished he had kept copies himself. “They are windows into a time and a place and a journey of self-discovery,” he said in an interview. “This was what college students did before Facebook.”

Oh yes, what a loss that we weren't able to read your words too, John Peavoy.

At least wait until she's dead; apparently he missed the day at school where they taught manners and how to be a gentleman.

And thank you for placing this within a wider cultural context--of course that's why you made the letters available and the Times printed them, it's almost your duty in this Facebook age to remind us all of that archaic form of communication you used to utilize.

If you wind up reading the article, you're struck by how the Times tries to torture conclusions out of her words; it's quite sad, actually--and of course, Clinton comes across all the better for it.

This is why a lot of good and qualified people refuse to run for office; who wants stuff like this considered fair game?

There's gotta be room for people to form themselves without thinking it could all be dredged up years later--and in this particular case, the Times should really question dealing with the kind of person who lets you read another person's private letters without their consent.

The Times may argue it's an unvarnished, unspun look into the life of a famously tightly-controlled politician.

Odd; that's what the tabloids say about their ambush snapshots of celebrities.

Era photo of Hillary Rodham from a fan site.

Fallen giant

There's a lengthy, interesting interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn (yes, he's still alive!) in Der Spiegel; reading it--a German publication talking to a Russian about totalitarianism and its enduring stain--made me think how truly foreign the experiences of a Europe that grew up either directly under or in the shadow of first Nazism and then Communism can be to us.

His political views aren't what I expected, based on what I remember from reading the Gulag Archipelago and what I'd assume the leading anti-Communist dissident (along with Natan Sharansky) would think about post-Communist Russia.

His take on Vladimir Putin was particularly surprising:

Vladimir Putin -- yes, he was an officer of the intelligence services, but he was not a KGB investigator, nor was he the head of a camp in the gulag. As for service in foreign intelligence, that is not a negative in any country -- sometimes it even draws praise. George Bush Sr. was not much criticized for being the ex-head of the CIA, for example. ...

SPIEGEL: How do you assess the period of Putin's governance in comparison with his predecessors Yeltsin and Gorbachev?

Solzhenitsyn: Gorbachev's administration was amazingly politically naïve, inexperienced and irresponsible towards the country. It was not governance but a thoughtless renunciation of power. The admiration of the West in return only strengthened his conviction that his approach was right. But let us be clear that it was Gorbachev, and not Yeltsin, as is now widely being claimed, who first gave freedom of speech and movement to the citizens of our country.

Yeltsin's period was characterized by a no less irresponsible attitude to people's lives, but in other ways. In his haste to have private rather than state ownership as quickly as possible, Yeltsin started a mass, multi-billion-dollar fire sale of the national patrimony. Wanting to gain the support of regional leaders, Yeltsin called directly for separatism and passed laws that encouraged and empowered the collapse of the Russian state. This, of course, deprived Russia of its historical role for which it had worked so hard, and lowered its standing in the international community. All this met with even more hearty Western applause.

Putin inherited a ransacked and bewildered country, with a poor and demoralized people. And he started to do what was possible -- a slow and gradual restoration. These efforts were not noticed, nor appreciated, immediately. In any case, one is hard pressed to find examples in history when steps by one country to restore its strength were met favorably by other governments.

He's nuts! Gorbachev didn't renounce power--he renounced a sham by which the USSR, by starving its people via a permanent war-time footing, put forth the ultimate Potemkin village for seven decades.

It was a farce that could not last in the Information Age, that managed to hang on only when the state had a shot at controlling all lies and truths.

And Putin hasn't revived anything--it's been the monstrous jump in the price of oil that's dragged the Russian economy back from collapse; all Putin's done is set up a cult of personality dictatorship under the guise of nationalism.

I guess what we forget is that Solzhenitsyn was so anti-Communist in part because they enslaved what he saw as the greatest of all nations, of all people. For him, Russia's natural place is in front, which to me is ridiculous.

Aside from the steroid-like 'power' that the Communists projected, Russia after the devastating Mongol invasions of the 13th century has always been at least decades behind the West. Their tiny intellectual class has been fiercely productive, but the vast majority of the country has always been a brutish wasteland.

Look at the astonishing rates of alcoholism in Russia; and how it's about the only industrialized country that's suffered a decrease in life expectancy, currently standing at 59 years for males and 72 years for females.

That, and a startling decline in its birth rate (forcing the government to try bribing women to have kids), adds up to a place that, if you took away their nuclear weapons, would be the definition of a Third World country.

But Solzhenitsyn being so Russian there is also this:

SPIEGEL: Your recent two-volume work "200 Years Together" was an attempt to overcome a taboo against discussing the common history of Russians and Jews. These two volumes have provoked mainly perplexity in the West. You say the Jews are the leading force of global capital and they are among the foremost destroyers of the bourgeoisie. Are we to conclude from your rich array of sources that the Jews carry more responsibility than others for the failed Soviet experiment?

Solzhenitsyn: I avoid exactly that which your question implies: I do not call for any sort of scorekeeping or comparisons between the moral responsibility of one people or another; moreover, I completely exclude the notion of responsibility of one nation towards another. All I am calling for is self-reflection.

You can get the answer to your question from the book itself: "Every people must answer morally for all of its past -- including that past which is shameful. Answer by what means? By attempting to comprehend: How could such a thing have been allowed? Where in all this is our error? And could it happen again? It is in that spirit, specifically, that it would behoove the Jewish people to answer, both for the revolutionary cutthroats and the ranks willing to serve them. Not to answer before other peoples, but to oneself, to one's consciousness, and before God. Just as we Russians must answer -- for the pogroms, for those merciless arsonist peasants, for those crazed revolutionary soldiers, for those savage sailors."

And then, there's this example of myopia:

SPIEGEL: But Russia often finds itself alone. Recently relations between Russia and the West have gotten somewhat colder (more...), and this includes Russian-European relations. What is the reason? What are the West's difficulties in understanding modern Russia?

Solzhenitsyn: I can name many reasons, but the most interesting ones are psychological, i.e. the clash of illusory hopes against reality. This happened both in Russia and in West. When I returned to Russia in 1994, the Western world and its states were practically being worshipped. Admittedly, this was caused not so much by real knowledge or a conscious choice, but by the natural disgust with the Bolshevik regime and its anti-Western propaganda.

This mood started changing with the cruel NATO bombings of Serbia. It's fair to say that all layers of Russian society were deeply and indelibly shocked by those bombings. The situation then became worse when NATO started to spread its influence and draw the ex-Soviet republics into its structure. This was especially painful in the case of Ukraine, a country whose closeness to Russia is defined by literally millions of family ties among our peoples, relatives living on different sides of the national border. At one fell stroke, these families could be torn apart by a new dividing line, the border of a military bloc.

So, the perception of the West as mostly a "knight of democracy" has been replaced with the disappointed belief that pragmatism, often cynical and selfish, lies at the core of Western policies. For many Russians it was a grave disillusion, a crushing of ideals.

At the same time the West was enjoying its victory after the exhausting Cold War, and observing the 15-year-long anarchy under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. In this context it was easy to get accustomed to the idea that Russia had become almost a Third World country and would remain so forever. When Russia started to regain some of its strength as an economy and as a state, the West's reaction -- perhaps a subconscious one, based on erstwhile fears -- was panic.

Anyone who calls the bombing of Serbia--a last-ditch and successful effort to stop ethnic cleansing via the slaughter of civilians by Slobodan Milosovic and his ilk--"cruel" is living in a fantasy world borne of some pretty deep-seated prejudices, perpetuated by delusions of grandeur and the daily slap of shame from reality.

That's really the legacy of the Communists--via the shortcut of five-year plans built on the hidden muscle of slave labor camps, they perpetuated a psychological fraud on the Russian people in making them think they had caught up with the West and could take their "rightful" place.

But what they've left behind is a deluded populace that not only can't catch up to Europe--but is in the process of being passed by Asia.

Which more than anything lends a sense of sadness to Solzhenitsyn's archaic beliefs, anchored in the false memories that Communism must have instilled even as he fought it:

But did not Russia clearly and unambiguously stretch its helping hand to the West after 9/11? Only a psychological shortcoming, or else a disastrous shortsightedness, can explain the West's irrational refusal of this hand. No sooner did the USA accept Russia's critically important aid in Afghanistan than it immediately started making newer and newer demands. As for Europe, its claims towards Russia are fairly transparently based on fears about energy, unjustified fears at that.

Isn't it a luxury for the West to be pushing Russia aside now, especially in the face of new threats? In my last Western interview before I returned to Russia (for Forbes magazine in April 1994) I said: "If we look far into the future, one can see a time in the 21st century when both Europe and the USA will be in dire need of Russia as an ally."

Ah, yes, Russia as an ally against Islamic fundamentalism--why no mention of Chechnya in your interview, Alexander Isayevich?

Friends like that we don't need.

Jurij Filistow photo of Solzhenitsyn in Der Spiegel

Thoughts on finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I think you'd have to go back to the days of Dickens to match the anticipation for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

J.K. Rowling doesn't disappoint. I raced through the book on a beautiful mid-summer New York day, propelled forward by the desire to know but balanced, always, by the acute awareness as each page slipped by that there was that much less Harry Potter, ever, to read.

It's a great read, for any Harry Potter fan. A lot of things come back; many red herrings just float away; for me, the book matched my expectations and was one of the rare finales that didn't fall short.

Rowling must have increasingly felt like Potter himself as she wrote the finale, with all the pressure and huge expectations and legions of critics with their knives all sharpened ready (hoping?) to pounce.

And like him, she's true to who she is, and follows that through to the end, for better or for worse. And, in my mind, pulls it off--without magic, no less.

I was struck by how accurate some of the fan sites had been in their speculation about some important small items; and any close reader (or rereader) of the series will be rewarded with nods 'of course' throughout.

That's one of the great things about Rowling, she's internally and logically consistent; she's not making up things as she goes along, throwing up everything and the kitchen sink to dazzle and distract us--her world has core principles, and even when they call for hard choices she makes them and plays them out to their end.

And so how right--yet totally unexpected--the overall story was. Like the best explanations, that always seem so obvious and singular and elegant in hindsight. Of course it had to end the way it did--it makes sense, in every sense of the word, from plot to Rowling's style to our expectations and beliefs about how life plays out.

Like our fairy tales there's a connection to something that predates all of us, and Rowling follows the rules, even as she finds new ways to illuminate and play with them.

As Michicko Kakutani notes in her oddly once-over review, the story "could be Exhibit A in a Joseph Campbell survey of mythic archetypes."

Maybe that's why it felt so satisfying to close the thick tome.

And yet, of course, because although Rowling is no great shakes as a writer she's an amazing storyteller, finishing the book--the series!--leaves you with a certain emptiness.

I'd never thought I'd see the kind of outward passion for books Harry Potter has kindled; who'd have ever thought thousands of (creatively costumed!) kids and adults would pack a bookstore for the chance to, together, start reading a 759-page book?!

That the city of New York would shut down a city block so people could gather in celebration of a world that gushed from the pen of a former Scottish welfare mother (now certainly a queen)?!

I feel bad for people who haven't been reading the books, who haven't had a chance to experience the solitary wonders of Rowling's creation mixed with the communal passion of Harry Potter's fans, without whom the entire journey wouldn't have been nearly as much fun.

There's a diversity, an innocence, to Potter fans that I've never found in Trekkies and their ilk; maybe because it's so obviously a series for children that happens to stretch to create lots of room for adults, I've seen little of the weird obsessiveness that seems to me to mar other outwardly-similar events. There's plenty of room, for everyone to share their own version of Rowling's world.

It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing, I think; there will be others along these lines, but now that we've experienced it, the next time can only be 'better' at the margins, it can never spark this type of authentic phenomenon, at least not in this genre.

And not, at least, for us--first love being what it is.

I'll leave for another day the parsing of the meaning of it all (the series definitely changed after 9/11, or to be more accurate grew to encompass more of the world as we see it now); the recounting of what was guessed and wasn't, the musings about why Rowling writes the way she does, my subjective list of what made sense and what was muddled.

What a great ride it's been; I'm sad to see it end, but happy for all the pleasures of the journey.

Image of Deathly Hallows cover found everywhere.

King it

There are actually three stories in Kenneth Chang's piece in the Times, Champion at Checkers That Cannot Lose to People.

One the putative subject; another the astonishing human; and third the step closer to humans feeling like second class citizens on our own world.

Oh well; at least we'll always have each other to jump over.

Checkers has been solved.

A computer program named Chinook vanquished its human competitors at tournaments more than a decade ago. But now, in an article published Thursday on the Web site of the journal Science, the scientists at the University of Alberta who developed the program report that they have rigorously proved that Chinook, in a slightly improved version, cannot ever lose. Any opponent, human or computer, no matter how skilled, can at best achieve a draw. ...

The earlier incarnation of Chinook, relying on artificial intelligence techniques and the combined computing power of many computers, placed second in the 1990 United States championship behind Marion Tinsley, the world champion, who had won every tournament he had played in since 1950.

That achievement should have earned Chinook the right to challenge Dr. Tinsley, a professor of mathematics at Florida A&M University, for the world championship, but the American Checkers Federation and the English Draughts Association refused to sanction a match. After much wrangling in the checkers world, Dr. Tinsley and Chinook battled for the man-versus-machine checkers title in 1992.

Dr. Tinsley won, 4 to 2 with 33 draws. Chinook’s two wins were only the sixth and seventh losses for Dr. Tinsley since 1950. In a rematch two years later, Dr. Tinsley withdrew after six draws, citing health reasons. Cancer was diagnosed, and Dr. Tinsley died seven months later. ...

The next game Dr. Schaeffer hopes to conquer is poker, which is harder to solve, because players do not have complete knowledge of their opponents’ positions. Next week, his program, Polaris, will take on two professional poker players in Texas Hold ’Em for the $50,000 man-versus-machine world championship.

Soon, computers may not just be winning games, but taking people’s money, too.

Photo of Tinsley found in various places online.

Blackout redux

It was 30 years ago that New York City was plunged into darkness (again)--and this
time, looters came out before the lights came back out.

It's astonishing how much the city has changed, for the better, since then--much of the period articles almost read more as if they're movie reviews of Escape From New York, Batman or Soylent Green than actual dispatches from the flesh and blood city.

The Times' perpetual reporting machine Sewall Chan has pulled together a nice section looking back at the coverage of the blackout that features some great first-person accounts from users who were there.

Although, oddly, no HTML links to the original Times reporting.

Nevertheless, via the magic of a PDF link in a photo caption, we start with the authoritative Times, and their now-legendary (and still working) spot news man, Robert D. McFadden: Power Failure Blacks Out New York; Thousands Trapped in Subways; Looters and Vandals Hit Some Areas

A power failure plunged New York City and Westchester County into darkness last night, disrupting the lives of nearly nine million people.

Spokesmen for the Consolidated Edison Company said that power for all of its 2.8 million customers would not be restored until late this mornign.

By 2 A.M., the utility had restored power to 150,000 customres in the Jamaica, Flushing, Queens Village and Kew Gardens sections of Queens, and to 50,000 customers in the Pleasantville area in Westchester County.

Thought not as big as the nine-state blackout that hit the Northeast in November 1965, last night's power failure was in some respects an uglier experience. There was widespread looting in Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn, and four hours after the blackout began, the police had arrested nearly 900 people.

Several thousand subway riders were trapped in trains between stations--but nowhere near the masses stranded 12 years ago during the rush hour.

With hindsight, the subhead should've put the Looters part about the subway part, since that's what was different about this blackout.

But a masterpiece of concise, this is what happened and this is what you need to know writing. If the looting seems a little undercovered, it's because they broke that part out into the left margin article, by Lawrence Van Gelder.

The PDF of the front page is worth reading; other pieces cover how people helped their neighbors, explained what exactly happened with the lightning bolt, covered the subways, noted Long Island was fine, and detailed doctors at Bellevue using hand-squeezed air bags to resusciate some patients.

Next, the Daily News' lead article, written by Dick Brass: Blackout! Lighting Hits Con Ed System

A massive power failure plunged New York City and most of Westchester County into darkness in sweltering midsummer weather last night, stranding millions in buildings, disrupting communications, slowing fire-fighting efforts, encouraging looting and evoking grim memories of the great 1965 Northeast power collapse.

A Con Ed spokesman blamed the blackout on severe lightning strikes at about 8:40 p.m. on a 345 kilovolt transmission cable suspended across the Hudson River to the company's nuclear plant at Indian Point on the Hudson. The lightning strikes led to what the spokesman called a "cascading effect" that shut down the power system at about 9:30 p.m.

I think Brass tries to do too much with his lead, and in trying to put it all in context leaves you breathless.

In contrast to today's paper, the rest of the News piece is written in a very dry tone; it's facts-on-a-stick, no real personality.

The next day's News lead article, by Donald Singleton, is better and reflects that the News, like just about everyone else, missed the lead the previous night: Lights Go on, End Nightmare: 3,400 Jailed, 558 Cops Hurt in 25 Hours of Terror

The Great Blackout of 1977 ended late last night after 25 hours that saw the city racked by arson and looting in a night and day of "terror."

The awakening from the total power blackout left many streets littered with ugly debris, and a strange, groggy day of empty skyscrapers and locked stores and hushed subways and streets without traffic lights, and buildings that were burning for no sensible reason.

Oddly, the New York Post doesn't have their original coverage up; instead, they've been running boring lookbacks.

The Times' Joyce Purnick, who was at the Post then, remembers what it was like: The ’77 Blackout: Inside the Command Center

I was a reporter at The New York Post then, a mayoral election was under way, I was covering it, and the blackout hit just as I was leaving The Post’s office downtown on South Street that very hot summer night. I ran up the stairs to the city room, said I would find the mayor, Abe Beame, ran back down the stairs, and walked over to City Hall. It was deserted. ...

There were frequent briefings — many by the shirt-sleeved mayor, who was 71 at the time. Throughout the night and into the morning hours, he and members of his administration reflected confidence that the city would get through the emergency, that the mayor was in firm control of a tough situation. “You couldn’t buy this attention,’’ said one of Mr. Beame’s political deputies, obviously confident his candidate had done well.

I still wonder whether they were not fully aware of the city’s trauma that night. Because reporters in the command center didn’t get a valid sense of the city’s reality. We were in a bunker, living on shards of fact, fragments of information, in an era, remember, without cellphones and text-messaging, and on a night without television.

Only later did we learn about the extent of the chaos and looting in the South Bronx, Harlem and in Bushwick. In pockets of the city — in lower Manhattan where the mayor toured hospitals and fire houses at 2 a.m. — things were calm. And in other pockets, New Yorkers were frightened of New Yorkers. In some places New Yorkers were abusing their neighbors.

Only when I got back to The Post the next day did I realize the destructive toll the blackout had taken.

Beame's aides thinking they had handled things well has gotta be one of the all-time political blunders.

Finally, Time magazine's article after the blackout shows the advantages of its extra time, with a great lead and all sorts of interesting details that didn't need to be filed over the phone or by candlelight (oddly enough, there's no byline on the piece): Night of Terror

It was a crisis of light, and of darkness—the kind of event that brings out the best and the worst in people. Certainly the 1965 blackout could never happen again, or so New Yorkers had thought. But something very much like it struck Wednesday the 13th, only this time it was frighteningly different. Through the long, sweaty night and most of the following day, the nation's largest city was powerless, lacking both the electricity on which it depends so heavily and any means to stop a marauding minority of poor blacks and Hispanics who, in severe contrast to 1965, went on a rampage, the first since the hot summer riots of the 1960s. They set hundreds of fires and looted thousands of stores, illuminating in a perverse way twelve years of change in the character of the city, and perhaps of the country. ...

At Hearn's department store in Brooklyn, youths stripped clothing from window mannequins, broke their limbs and scattered them on the floor. Said Miguel Ten, a Viet Nam veteran who stood guarding Arnet's Children's Wear store: "This reminds me of Pleiku in 1966. There was a war out here. And the mannequins remind me of the dead people I saw in Nam without legs and arms." ...

Many looters seemed scarcely aware that they were stealing. Said one of two black boys standing outside a stripped bicycle shop near Columbia University: "We're just out shopping with our parents. This is better than going to Macy's." Some blacks resented all the fuss over the looting. Said Lorraine, 14, who had helped plunder a drugstore in East Harlem: "It gets dark here every night. Every night stores get broke into, every night people get mugged, every night you scared on the street. But nobody pays no attention until a blackout comes."

More people than just store owners had to make fresh starts on the morning after the night of darkness. Rose Stevens, an elderly widow, wandered weeping down Broadway in Brooklyn, looking for a new place to live after spending the night alone in her $57-a-month apartment above a meat market that had been burned out by vandals. "I wish I died," she cried. "I'm almost 70 years old, and I have no place to go."

Many black and Hispanic leaders across the country were dismayed by the rioting. In a typical comment, Carlos Castro, president of Chicago's Puerto Rican United Front, noted that the plunderers were poor and lived in slum housing, though he said of the violence: "You can't justify it." So far, there were no signs of a white backlash, even though many broadcast and newspaper accounts of the power failure emphasized the disorders. Sample headline from the Los Angeles Times: CITY'S PRIDE IN ITSELF GOES DIM IN THE BLACKOUT. Newspapers abroad also focused on the looting. A headline from Tokyo's Mainichi Shimbun: PANIC GRIPS NEW YORK; from West Germany's Bild Zeitung: NEW YORK'S BLOODIEST NIGHT; from London's Daily Express: THE NAKED CITY. ...

Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of New Yorkers and visitors responded to the crisis with some of the same good humor and willingness to help each other that they had exhibited twelve years earlier. At Beame's request, stores, banks and most offices closed, reducing traffic on the city's streets. At the intersection of Park Avenue and 79th Street in Manhattan, an athletic young man wearing a cape and holding a pink flare controlled traffic like a matador handling a bull. On the other side of the island, traffic was directed on Riverside Drive by David Epstein, 17 He joked: "My mother told me to go out and play in the traffic, and here I am." Sixteen passers-by turned Coney Island's 150-ft.-high Wonder Wheel by hand, enabling stranded riders to reach the ground. ...

Few bars remained open, and they were packed with thirsty people even though their ice supplies were rapidly melting. Said one woman who had visited three other bars before she stopped at P.J. Clarke's, a well-known East Side watering place: "We're typical New Yorkers. We're going to get smashed." At Elaine's restaurant on Manhattan's upper East Side, tables were moved outdoors for a block party. The guests included Woody Allen, Al Pacino, Andy Warhol and Designer Calvin Klein. At One Fifth, a Greenwich Village restaurant decorated with fittings from the cruise ship R.M.S. Caronia, a patron quipped: "We've hit an iceberg." Pianist Nat Jones scrounged a candle to light his keyboard and played It Ain't Necessarily So. Unfortunately, it was. ...

Times photo of people on Broadway in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn looting by Tyrone Dukes.

Fourth fireworks

It's in some ways appropriate that Wimbledon always falls on the Fourth--even as the Brits are reminded of their biggest loss ever, they can also futilely try to win their own tournament (Virginia Wade was the last Englishwoman to win, in 1977 (on her 18th try); Fred Perry was the last Englishman to win, in 1936).

Oh well, at least the British press can have a field day with Rafael Nadal (who's my favorite player, largely thanks to his French Open blogging the last two years) and his match today:

Nadal Beats Soderling and the Rain at Wimbledon , John Branch in the Times: Rafael Nadal and Robin Soderling took the court eight times. The first was on Saturday. The last was today.

Their five-day, five-set passion play at Wimbledon finally ended after more than 4 hours of tennis on the court and 92 hours of waiting off of it. Nadal beat Soderling and the rain, ending a tedious and testy match, 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (7), 4-6, 7-5.

Nadal, from Spain and seeded second in the tournament, dropped to his knees in joy, as if he had won something far more meaningful than a third-round match over a 28th-ranked player. Soderling, a Swede, challenged the last point before offering a tepid congratulatory handshake.

“Very happy,” said Nadal, who called it the toughest match of his career. “Very happy with the victory. Very happy about finishing the match.” ...

The drama of the day belonged to Nadal and Soderling, and much of it came after their match ended. Nadal sniped at the perceived slights he felt from Soderling. Among other things, Nadal said Soderling would not say hello to him, even after Nadal greeted him repeatedly.

“After four days, that’s not normal, no?” Nadal said. ...

When the it finally ended, Nadal was relieved to advance to the fourth round, where he will meet Mikhail Youzhny. But he struggled to look forward, not back. He accused Soderling of many discourtesies, on and off the court.

Soderling picked at his shorts between points, imitating a Nadal habit and drawing laughter from the crowd. In the 10th game of the fifth set, Soderling cheered with a fist pump when a ball hit the tape atop the net and trickled over for a point, though it has become custom among players to offer a sheepish apology. Nadal, annoyed by the post-match frostiness, later imitated Soderling’s handshake by sticking out his hand and turning his head away.

He was asked how he thought Soderling conducted himself.

“Really, the truth, maybe worst possible,” said Nadal, who speaks with fractured, but improving, English, and sometimes asks an interpreter for help.

“In the end, we will see what’s happening in the end of life, no?” he added. ...

Soderling did not hear Nadal’s comments, and seemed surprised to learn of the criticism. He said he would not air such laundry in public.

“If he’s complaining about that, that I never say ‘Hi’ to him, what can I do?” Soderling said.

Asked about the omission of a courtesy wave when his ball struck the net and trickled over, Soderling seemed perplexed by the custom.

“Why should I say I’m sorry when it’s the happiest moment of my life?” he said.

European Pressphoto Agency photo of Nadal by Lindsey Parnaby in the Times.