... having been breathed out

Nowhere did DiMaggio seem so gallant, or so tragic, as in the aftermath of Marilyn Monroe’s death, when he stepped in to take care of the details of the funeral, seeing that it was conducted in dignified privacy and arranging that fresh roses be sent to her crypt every two weeks ‘forever.’ At the time, I remarked on the impressiveness of this to Saul Bellow who knew Arthur Miller, who was Monroe’s husband after her divorce from DiMaggio. According to Bellow, Miller had said DiMaggio used to beat her up fairly regularly. 'You know,’ he added, 'brutality is often the other side of sentimentality.’

—Joseph Epstein, Masters of the Games: Essays and Stories on Sport

Sadly Epstein goes on to make excuses for DiMaggio’s abuse of Monroe (he only hit her occasionally! she said he did it “with reason”!), so I wouldn’t recommend this essay overall. But that last remark of Bellow’s really hit home for me. It is, isn’t it, the same kind of privileging of one’s own sentiment over other things or other people–I’m in love with her so I’ll make her (and everyone around me) feel it too; I’m angry with her so I’ll make her hurt too–that lies behind the grand gesture and the lashing-out. Things that smack of grand gestures almost always make me uncomfortable unless they’re very specific to, and in context of, the boundaries of a particular relationship, but I never really articulated why that was until now. There’s a certain entitlement about them–a certain claiming–that often sets off alarm bells for me.