A Common Reader

A Common Reader is moving

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Thu, 04 Feb 2021 13:53:00 +0000

I have wanted to have my own site for quite a while, so I'm taking the plunge (even though I have no idea what I'm doing) and moving the site. The new location is

A Common Reader at acommonreader.st

I know, original, right? I will be leaving this site as is and no longer post here. I've decided not to redirect to the new site since I don't have everything set up how I want it. Yet. I sincerely want to thank everyone who has read and participated here over the past 14+ years. It's meant a lot.

An additional "thank you" for your patience in my lack of posting over the past couple of years. I plan on posting on books again as soon as I finish getting everything in place.

Summer Classics at St. John's College: The Examined Life

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 22:45:00 +0000

St. John's College brochure for their Summer Classics program came today and there are several tempting seminars I'd love to take. They should update their information page to reflect this year's program (The Examined Life) in the next few days so you can see in detail what they will cover. It looks like there will be four weeks of online classes and two weeks in-person at their Santa Fe campus.

I would really like to do an in-person class. I'm tired of online meetings, but who knows what restrictions will be in place by then. Plus the online option does have a discount from the in-person option. I know it will be out of the range of many, but I can still dream, right? If you're interested be sure and get on their mailing list. For the record, everyone I have dealt with at St. John's has been extremely friendly and helpful. One day I'll actually make it there.

Check their website next week for more details. From their site:
"Seminar topics and schedule posted here no later than February 5, 2021
Registration opens online February 8, 2021"

Undula by Bruno Schulz

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 18:55:00 +0000

Undula by Bruno Schulz
Translation and Afterword by Frank Garrett
Seattle: Sublunary Editions, 2020
Paperback, 42 pages

Time trickles with the kerosene lamp's faint hissing. Old equipemnt rattles and creaks in the silence. Besides me in the depths of the room there are the shadows, pointy, crooked in shard, who skulk and cheme. They stretch out their long necks and peer over my shoulder. I don't turn around. Why should I? As soon as I look they'll all quiet down again in their own place, just a floorboard somewhere will groan, the old wardrobe will creak. Everything will go back to the way it was before. Unchanged. And silence once more, and the old lamp will sweeten the boredom with its lulling hiss.

How the lamp fumes. Gray limbs of the candelabrum sprout like a polyp from the ceiling. The shadows collude and conspire. Cockroaches dart noiselessly across the yellow floor. My bed is so long that I cannot see the opposite end. I'm undeniably sick, gravely so. How bitter and full of agony is the way to the thresing floor.
(pages 4, 10)

The available works written by Bruno Schulz would not take up much room on a bookshelf. Two collections of stories, a few essays and reviews, a number of paintings and drawings. In spite of its size, this small collection provides a glimpse at an extraordinary world. A world that is a little demented...definitely askew, but at the same time intriguing. For me there's a similarity at the core between Kafka and Schulz, but they shaped their expressions in different ways.

Schulz's descriptions may detail something we haven't experienced ourselves, but we can recognize things we feel or see in them. Even his death as related by one of Schulz’s Hebrew translators, Yoram Bronowski, provides a pitch-perfect Schulzian description:

In the Drohobycz ghetto Schulz had a protector, an S.S. officer who had exploited Schulz to paint murals on the walls of his house. The rival of this S.S. officer shot Schulz in the street in order to provoke the officer. According to rumor, when they met thereafter, one told the other, ‘I have killed your Jew,’ and received the reply: ‘All right, now I will go and kill your Jew.’

David Grossman goes on to explain that this story may have been used to explain another murder and not Schulz's, but the fact that such a story exists falls into the "metaphsical core" of things that Schulz describes. Especially when his writing is compared to other accounts of his and many others' deaths during that time period in Drohobycz.

Getting back to Undula. This short story was found last year by a Ukrainian researcher named Lesya Khomych in a 1922 edition of a Polish oil journal. The fact that such a journal existed sounds like something out of Schulz's writing. The story's author was listed as Marceli Weron, but the story itself is similar to Schulz's other stories. The title name of Undula is the same as the titles of some of the sexual pictures he drew around this time. There's a maid named Adela, whose name and demeanor are similar to a common character in Schulz's other stories. There are many similar images and words (cockroaches, confinement, polyp) in his other stories, too. The writing style uses (overuses) the repetitive nature of his stories. Fortunately he would refine the use of repetition in his later stories and make the technique more effective.

But there are differences fron those stories, too, that makes "Undula" more than a mere curiosity. The other stories often have a child narrator, which means that anything sexual is described unknowingly (and more effectively, at least for me). Here, sexual tension dominates the story, even if it is still elusive in description. The story relays the thoughts of a man "locked up in isolation," intertwining his description and feelings in his room with the bacchanalia, months earlier, that led to his confinement. Undula is the woman spurning the narrator's advances, causing him to revel in his humiliation.

This short story was published about a decade before his first published stories under his name, and I'm sure plenty of people are scouring anything literary in that gap to see if Schulz may have published anything else under a pseudonym. "Undula" will probably appeal mostly to prior readers of Schulz, but if you've never read his stories this isn't a bad place to start (keeping in mind his other stories are more polished and not as consistently dark or consistently sexual).

Bruno Schulz - Undula the Eternal Ideal (1920)
Picture source

Links:

Sublunary Editions announcement of the release of "Undula," with background on the finding of the story
An excerpt from Frank Garrett's translator notes
“Undula”: a newly discovered story by Bruno Schulz, at Notes from Poland. This includes background on the story and a translation by Stanley Bill. If you're interested in the story, be sure to support Sublunary as well.
The Art of Bruno Schulz: be sure to check out A Book of Idolatry in the Gallery section for a few of the Undula pictures. Also, "A Bench" and "Procession" seem to fit right in with "Undula."
My first reading of Bruno Schulz's stories

Page from Świt and the start of "Undula"
Picture source

Online release party:
On October 7th, I "attended" the online release party hosted by Sublunary Editions with translator Frank Garrett. Garrett provided quite a bit of background on the dicovery of the story, some of which is in his Afterword, as well as some of the difficulties he faced and choices required with translation. He read some passages, including what was termed as the demonic blowjob scene. While that scene is only part of one sentence, Garrett went into more detail about the difficulty in translating Schulz and, in this case, something with so many grammatical mistakes. Not to mention just flat-out weird. I'm sure that description will get people scrambling for a copy.

Dædalus now online

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Sat, 16 Jan 2021 19:57:00 +0000

In January 2021, Dædalus became an Open Access journal. The editors of Dædalus thank you for your patience while they work to digitize the back catalog.

The current edition of the quarterly journal Dædalus is available online, and as you can see from the above quote from their "About" page they are working to make their back catalog available online, too. Many thanks to M. A. Orthofer at the Literary Saloon for noting this. As he mentions, the archive "will be something to return to again and again."

The entire Winter 2021 issue, "On the Novel" edited by Michael Wood, is available for free online. The articles feature

fourteen essays, written by scholars with a variety of approaches and interests, that offer remarkable insights into the behavior of this versatile literary form—how old the novel actually is, shifts in dominant patterns, the art of word-play, connections between the novel and TV and videogames, and the novel in the classroom—glimpses of where and what it has been and where it may go in the future.

The articles and their authors in the Winter 2021 issue
Introduction: In This World
(Michael Wood)

The essays in this volume of Dædalus do not survey or summarize the fate of the novel, but they do offer remarkable insights into the behavior of a versatile literary form, glimpses of where and what it has been and where it may go.

What Is It Like to Write a Novel?
(Lorrie Moore)

Two Theories
(Franco Moretti)

Finding the Time for Ancient Novels
(Simon D. Goldhill)

Some Endangered Feeling
(Nancy Armstrong)

Henry James in—and out of—the Classroom
(Ruth Bernard Yeazell)

The Hole in the Carpet: Henry James’s The Bostonians
(Sharon Cameron)

“A Woman Is a Sometime Thing”: (Re)Covering Black Womanhood in Porgy and Bess
(Daphne A. Brooks)

We “Other Victorians”? Novelistic Remains, Therapeutic Devices, Contemporary Televisual Dramas
(Rey Chow and Austin Sarfan)

The Survival of the Unfit
(Wai Chee Dimock)

Poets in Prose: Genre & History in the Arabic Novel
(Robyn Creswell)

Organic Reformations in Richard Powers’s The Overstory
(Garrett Stewart)

Video Games & the Novel
(Eric Hayot)

Losing Track of Time
(Jonathan Greenberg)

Quartet for the End of Time by the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective (Live from Wigmore Hall)

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Thu, 14 Jan 2021 01:50:00 +0000

I recently discovered the Wigmore Hall channel on YouTube and have been impressed by the recordings they have. This past Monday night (well, afternoon for me) I was able to catch their live performance of Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time), one of the most remarkable 20th-century compositions. Messiaen (1908–92), a Frenchman, composed the quartet in the winter of 1940–41 while a prisoner in the Nazi Stalag camp 8A at Görlitz. The prisoners had to make do with battered instruments, and the piece premiered in front of almost 400 prisoners-of-war. As has been noted in several places, Messiaen recalled: "Never was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension."

While the inspiration for the piece comes from the Book of Revelation, there is a glimmer of hope at the end. There are eight movements, and it helps to read Messiaen's notes, which can be found here. Lawrence University has a site covering musical elements, analysis, and Biblical notes.

You can watch a recording of the performance at the Wigmore Hall channel (also embedded below). The performers from the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective are Matthew Hunt (clarinet), Elena Urioste (violin), Sheku Kanneh-Mason (cello), and Tom Poster (piano). The live portion starts around the 4:30 mark and the performance lasts just over 50 minutes. All players are excellent and shine, but due to the nature of this piece Kanneh-Mason and Hunt really stand out. Enjoy.

Wishing you a happy new year!

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Wed, 30 Dec 2020 12:32:00 +0000

It has been a busy year, so I'll take this opportunity to apologize for staying mostly silent. We have been incredibly fortunate and blessed this year in spite of everything that 2020 managed to throw at the world. What could be called my 'workload' multiplied this year with caretaking a friend's property, but it has been fun and educational. My reading suffered because of the extra work, but I hope to post soon on several books I think others would enjoy.

In addition, part of the silence came from things I saw on social media earlier this year that disgusted me, leading me to disconnect from the online world. It's disheartening to see repellent thoughts from people you've followed and held in high regard. We're all human, and my tendency in such circumstances is to simply withdraw and avoid the unpleasantries. Unfortunately, it also means I miss the pleasantries. So if I'm not commenting on your blog, please don't take it personally. It's just me.

It can be a magical world, though, and that's what I'm going to focus on in this coming year.

Too Loud a Solitude: One of RPI's Czech Books You Must Read

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Fri, 16 Oct 2020 18:59:00 +0000

Radio Prague International named Bohumil Hrabal's Too Loud a Solitude one of its Czech Books You Must Read. It's an insightful and informative post that I highly recommend. Here's a comment about the book from Esther Peters, Associate Director of the Center for East European and Russian Studies at the University of Chicago:

“The world would be a better place if more people read this book. It is an incredibly engaging read. It is so much fun and yet it is incredibly intellectual. It makes you think. Every time I read it there are new things to think about and it is one of the few books that I think combines these aspects so perfectly that you can delve into it, love reading it and just enjoy the process of reading.

“It is about knowledge, language, process and ritual, but it is also just a good story. That combination of things is quite rare I think. It challenges you to think, but keeps you entertained at the same time.

“Every time I read it something new pops out. I think that is another thing. It changes with the reader. I think that it probably changed with Hrabal as he wrote it. It is something you can take with you. It is a companion.”

Peters delves into why Hrabal is so difficult to translate, and the article talks about the three versions of this book, how it was semi-autobiographical, and more. Check it out, along with the other "must read" books they have highlighted.

My post on Too Loud a Solitude can be found here.

Upcoming (re-)releases: William Gaddis' first two novels by NYRB

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 20:52:00 +0000

I'm sure most people have seen the news that New York Review Books will release William Gaddis' first two novels, The Recognitions and J R, this fall. From the Publishers Weekly article:

NYRB editor Edwin Frank, asked why the press planned to republish what he called Gaddis's "two showstopper doorstoppers," said that the answer was simple: "really good books, great books, don't represent things so much as they represent themselves: they change things, change the way we see language, change the way we see the novel, change the way we see the world around us, and The Recognitions and JR do all of that to this day."

If you're planning on tackling either or both of these novels, I'd like to recommend getting a copy of the audiobooks with Nick Sullivan reading them to go along with reading them yourself. I know, I know. That sounds strange, but trust me it will help you make sense of what is going on, especially in J R. The Neglected Book Page posted on these audiobooks when they were released and he was right: they are phenomenal accomplishments by Sullivan. (Wow, that was ten years ago.)

Also of help for first-time readers (and maybe repeat readers, too) will be The Gaddis Annotations (although I saved that for after I was through with sections of the book), and Gaddis' 1986 interview with The Paris Review.

These are two of my favorite books, so I'm looking forward to the responses of those who decide to tackle these difficult-but-rewarding books.

Update: Chris Via reviews Gaddis' J R at Splice. Reinforcing why listening to the book might be a good idea:

Indeed, with the early scene depicting the rehearsal of the Ring cycle, and repeated invocations of Mozart and Wagner, Gaddis effectively signals that he is conducting an operatic epic so that we, as readers, will not only need to scan his words but also listen to him (as Bast implores J R to do). And, as we listen, attuning our ears to his dialogue, we become acquainted with his characters solely through their voices, which in turn become the book’s leitmotifs.

Another recent post/review of J R is in The Paris Review blog, written by Joy Williams: William Gaddis’s Disorderly Inferno.

Dustin Illingworth has an article at The Point that addresses the two books: Unrecognizable, William Gaddis’s American pessimism.

Yekaterina Vasilievna Korotkova-Grossman

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Sun, 11 Oct 2020 19:12:00 +0000

Vasily Grossman, with mother and daughter Katya
Picture source

From Robert Chandler's Facebook page earlier today:

A few minutes ago I received the sad news of the death of Yekaterina Vasilievna Korotkova-Grossman, the daughter of Vasily Grossman. She was someone unusually sensitive, perceptive and witty. We got on well from our very first meeting and I always greatly enjoyed our conversations. At one time in her life she worked as a translator from English. She read through our translation of The Armenian Sketchbook and made many helpful suggestions, not only correcting my misunderstandings of the Russian but also, here and there, coming up with stylistic improvements.
Yekaterina Vasilievna was ninety years old when she died.

In a separate post, Robert links to "a beautiful short memoir the late Ekaterina Korotkova-Grossman wrote about the years she lived in the city Russians call Lvov and which is now becoming known as Lviv." The story is Ukraine: On the Edge of an Empire.

In a 2010 interview, Yekaterina was asked what was the favorite work of her father:

Good Wishes - his account of the two months he spent in Armenia in late 1961. This is his kindest, most good-natured work. I also especially admire "In the Big Ring", one of his very last stories. This, I believe, will last for ever.

Robert Chandler adds: "In the Big Ring" is about a child from an elite family who is rushed to an ordinary village hospital. Acute illness throws the little girl into the company of women from other social classes, broadening and deepening her sense of life. We have not included it in The Road (the selection of Grossman's stories to be published this September by MacLehose Press) because we did not feel we could reproduce the wordplay that is so crucial in this story. But I, too, love Good Wishes - and my wife and I hope to translate it next year.

An excerpt from Good Wishes can be found here.

One last link: a 2010 conversation between Yekaterina and Robert Chandler can be found at the London Review Bookshop Podcast.

All right then... I'm a psychopath

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 19:22:00 +0000

Happy anniversary to this tweet! It couldn't have been me judging from where Mr. Gay lives and writes. Not to mention I don't like coffee and never drink it. I'm sure, though, I have engendered the same respone from others in coffeeshops that I have patronized for other caffeine delivery methods. Well, all that plus usually there's a book open on the table in front of me.

Tim Wilkinson (1947 - 2020)

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 13:52:00 +0000

I was extremely sad to see a post from hlo.hu on the passing of Tim Wilkinson, "One of Hungarian literature's most prominent translators, known best for his work with Imre Kertész and Miklós Szentkuthy." I've read quite a few books translated by him and have posted on some of them.

Wilkinson translated many academic books, mostly related to Hungarian history, and it was only decades later, in the early 2000's, he published his first book-length literary translations. From then until the present day, almost twenty literary fiction and non-fiction titles were published in Tim Wilkinson's name, including works by Iván Bächer, László F. Földényi, Miklós Mészöly, György Spiró and Péter Zilahy among others.

I was looking forward to Contramundum Press' fall release of Miklós Szentkuthy's Chapter on Love. Although the translator isn't named, I would assume it is Wilkinson. I love his attitude toward his translation projects (quote from one of the links on my posts):

I often translate just for my own pleasure, independent of whether I’ve been commissioned or not by a publisher. If I manage to “sell” one of these translations later on, then all the merrier, but there’s usually no guarantee that this will ever happen. Consequently, I’ve done translations of works—usually one or two—written by ten to twelve different authors, but these manuscripts are still slumbering in the depths of my desk drawer. There is also a list of authors I haven’t translated yet, but would if I only had the time. Among them are István Szilágyi, László Végel, György Spiró and Dezső Tandori, whom I’ve lately included. Ádám Bodor and Péter Lengyel are also on this list, but I know others are already translating them.

Wishing comfort and strength for his family and friends.

Additional links:

His Proust Questionnaire at Asymptote Journal
An additional interview at hlo.hu
His obituary in The Guardian

Dean's Lecture Series at St. John's College

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Tue, 15 Sep 2020 17:42:00 +0000

I'm a little late in posting this, but here is the 2020 Fall Semester Dean's Lecture Series at St. John's College. There have been two lectures already, one on Hesiod and one on Montaigne. Hopefully the transcripts for these will be available soon at their archives site (link on the Lecture list page). Speaking of which, the archive site looks like it will be fun to explore.

Tomorrow's lecture for Constitution Day will be on the Grutter v. Bollinger case. The remaining lectures cover a wide variety of subjects, from pendulums to Aristotle's De Anima to photography. If you find something good in the archives, let me know!

The Fairy Inn of Dry Creek

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Tue, 25 Aug 2020 16:47:00 +0000

It's easy to get bogged down in negative things right now (well, at any time, really), so I thought I would share a few pictures of things that make me smile when I'm walking our dog. On a nearby trail it appears kids have painted rocks and set up a "fairy inn" to house them. They also leave rocks in places along the trail. The kids' work brightens every day we walk there.

Charley Crockett and Deep Ellum History

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Sun, 23 Aug 2020 18:27:00 +0000

The Proving Grounds: Charley Crockett and the Story of Deep Ellum is a fun article that covers Crockett's career as well as the long history of Dallas' Deep Ellum story. It also caught my eye since I wanted to see if it covered the time I spent there in the mid/late 1980s. I was happy to see that it did. One of my first visits to the Theatre Gallery was to see the Del Fuegos. Just before their set started four or five extremely tall guys walk in, and it takes me a few moments to realize they're Dallas Mavericks' players. You never knew who was going to be in the audience with you at any of these places.

Theatre Gallery was a refuge for musically inclined misfits as much as it was a concert venue. Everything about its early days was DIY and, in all likelihood, very illegal. “We just gave away free beer,” Liles said. “You paid $5 and got beer all night. There were no licenses. ... Soon, [Russell] Hobbs opened up the Prophet Bar and Club Clearview in 1985, Club Dada in 1986. ... In the mid-80s, Deep Ellum was a scene with no rules and no definition of cool.

Even though I didn't move from Dallas until 1992, my days in Deep Ellum (and similar venues) slowed down and eventually ended around 1990 when I was working on my masters' degree and decided to take the CPA and CMA exams. It's a fun article and covers much more than the slice I relayed. Check it out!

The first time Ken Bethea, guitarist for the Old 97’s, went to Deep Ellum was in the fall of 1987. He’d just graduated from the University of Texas. In Austin, he had been indoctrinated to believe that everything in Dallas was lame, but his favorite band, the Butthole Surfers, was playing at Club Clearview on Main Street, just off of Elm. “I thought, ‘I bet that’s in the Deep Ellum place they talk about. Elm? Ellum?”

He left the show with a black eye and a notion that there was something special about the area. “I went there on a Wednesday night and had the best time that I’d ever had in my life going somewhere solo,” Bethea said.

Poster at Jeffrey Liles' "Concert poster art" Pinterest page

College Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Fri, 21 Aug 2020 23:12:00 +0000

I don't think I have mentioned I have been receiving material from several universities' and colleges' admissions departments, marketing their college to names of people that do not live at our house. At first I laughed at them, but then I was concerned. What if there really was a kid out there that wasn't getting contacted from the college of his choice because they had the wrong address? So I contacted the colleges and universities regarding the various names through whom we were receiving information to let them know that either (a) they had the wrong contact info for the addressee, or (b) there was no person out there by that name.

A couple of the ~~propaganda~~ marketing mailings stopped, but a few have stuck with "us" from our move from California to Idaho. So I'm really enjoying reading and analyzing the material we're getting, and for the most part I'm really impressed. If you have ever wondered what the various fees and tuition actually pay for beyond salaries of professors and administrators, rest assured they are spending it on hiring very good marketing firms.

I don't mean for this to sound mean-spirited. I'm not to going to show anything from inside the booklet I received, but I will quote from the letter that was enclosed with it:

The Life of the Mind is more than numbers, anecdotes, and fun facts. It is a window into the rich texture and color of life at UChicago. It follows students, scene by scene, as they engage in our holistic education, where activities of the brain and the body, the academic and the extracurricular, and even the studious and the frivolous, are inseparable.

I have to hand it to them. As I read through this I was thinking how much this would have appealed to the 16/17-year-old me. I would have been "all in" after reading this. (Although I'm sure it's going to be a little harder sell with virtual classes in a hysterical COVID setting. Not to mention Chicago's recent history of ... well, I'm not going there.) It's an admirably done product that conveys what those that want to have the "college experience" hope to have. As I mentioned, it's what I hoped to experience in going off to college at 17.

The New Criterion, September 2020

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Fri, 21 Aug 2020 05:01:00 +0000

The New Criterion September 2020 edition is available online. I want to highlight four articles, the first two behind a paywall, alas. If you’re interested in those articles, be sure to find access to a copy of the magazine. Also note, the other articles currently accessible may not stay available once the October edition is available online.

The first article is “True Lies” by Andrew Stuttaford, detailing the complicated career of Curzio Malaparte and focuses on his recently released Diary of a Foreigner in Paris (translated by Stephen Twilley) by New York Review Books Classics. I’ve been an admirer of Malaparte’s prose, if not his personal history.

Malaparte described the Diary as being, in part, “a portrait of a moment in the history of the French nation, of French civilization.” And so it is. Amid interminable rambling about the malign impact of Cartesian thinking on the French, a vivid picture emerges of a France still broken by the German occupation. Malaparte, referring to the foreign occupations of other peoples—including his own—over the centuries, sees this as an exercise in self-abasement: an unsympathetic observation so soon after the Panzers had been driven out, but a reflection, possibly, of the disappointment felt by this lifelong Francophile, and lifelong narcissist, that France appeared to be disappointed by him.

One more quote:

Even as he publicly moved to the left, Malaparte’s break with fascism never seemed entirely clear cut, an impression, if inadvertently, bolstered by the Diary. Malaparte stresses that his opposition to fascism predated the fall of Mussolini, a claim backed up by tales of imprisonment and exile that were at best exaggerated, at worst fictitious, and, with the exception of one failed intrigue, had little or nothing to do with politics. While the Diary is by no means a complete account of Malaparte’s time in Paris (it contains almost nothing on his literary or—a new detour—theatrical activities), it may be telling that there is nothing on his sending funds to Louis-Ferdinand Céline, a brilliant writer, disgraced by anti-Semitism and collaboration, then skulking in prudent, if impecunious, exile in Denmark. That said, Malaparte does reveal that at least some of his socializing was with individuals sullied by the war years.

As Stuttaford notes, this may not be the best place to start if you’re interested in reading Malaparte. “For the most part, this diary is a work for Malaparte completists who will pass over the fatuous philosophizing to savor again the dropping of aristocratic names, the wildly un-reliable gossip, the unexpected erotic tangents (armpits!), and of course the old lies, so many of them, sometimes with extra embellishment, sometimes pristine.” The notes I have on some of Malaparte’s books in translation can be found at these links:

Kaputt summary
The Volga Rises in Europe (I was happy to see Stuttaford’s note that “in my minority opinion, his greatest work” as I quite liked it, too)
The Bird that Swallowed its Cage: The Selected Writings of Curzio Malaparte

The second article is “Forests of Arden” by Paul Dean, a celebration of the completion of the Arden Shakespeare Third Series. The Arden series has long been my favorite “go to” for the plays and I enjoy their introductions. Dean goes through the history of each series, detailing the work involved as well as noting some of the changes in each series. He also provides an abundant amount of information (critical and praising) about some of the choices made.

Textual theories and critical fashions come and go, but annotation is probably the feature of the Ardens which students and actors have valued most highly. In this respect, too, there have been changes, notably in what earlier editors felt they could assume was general knowledge, and which they therefore left unremarked.

One more quote to highlight what the literary landscape looked like at the start of the first series, as well as the length of time each series took to complete and the time between each series' completion:

When Arden 1 began in 1899, the major critical authorities were still Dryden, Johnson, Lamb, Coleridge, and Hazlitt, and of these, only Coleridge went much beyond thinking of Shakespeare in terms of character and morality, to consider dramatic structure and poetic texture. Keats’s insights in his letters are irreplaceable, but they are not systematic. Swinburne, and one or two German scholars such as Gervinus, represented (then) contemporary criticism. By 1924, when Arden 1 came to an end—with Much Ado About Nothing, rather delightfully—there was little to add to the belles-lettrists, apart from A. C. Bradley and T. S. Eliot. By contrast, Arden 2, appearing from 1951 to 1982, could profit from the work of a galaxy of distinguished names on both sides of the Atlantic, following the rise of the New Criticism, the proliferation of academic writing (and academic journals), and the first phase of literary theory imported from continental Europe.

The third article is “Gray Mists & Ancient Stones,” an excerpt from the forthcoming translation of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s memoir Between Two Millstones, Book 2: Exile in America, 1978–1994. “These pages, written in 1987 but published here for the first time in English, describe portions of Solzhenitsyn’s 1983 trip to the United Kingdom: his visit to the western highlands of Scotland, speech at Eton, and meeting with Prince Charles and Princess Diana.”

I’m no confirmed monarchist, to sympathize wholeheartedly with each and every crown, and, in addition, I gravely reproach the British throne: frightened of public opinion, George V refused to offer basic shelter to his deposed cousin, Nikolai II. None of the past was forgotten, yet there prevailed in me that bittersweet sympathy for this amiable young couple [Charles and Diana] in the stifling calm before the storm.

The last article is “Hildebrand’s Aesthetics of the Universal” by Gerald J. Russello, a reflection on Dietrich von Hildebrand’s philosophy. This interested me because I have lined up his recently translated Aesthetics to read but haven’t worked up the courage to tackle it yet. Other books included in the discussion are Graven Images, My Battle with Hitler, and Morality and Situation Ethics.

In his monumental two-volume Aesthetics, the German philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889–1977) rejects the notion that beauty is unimportant to nurturing civilization or is somehow reserved only for the elite or privileged: “One should not make the mistake of assuming that because many people today apparently lack any sensitivity to beauty, beauty is not a fundamental source of happiness, even for the simplest people. . . . The atrophy of this sensitivity is a terrible loss, and this ought not to be interpreted as a progress that modern man has made in the industrialized world.” As a consequence of our rejection of beauty, we have confused our understanding of aesthetic experience. Now everything is “art” if it expresses some feeling, no matter how vulgar or ugly, and it seems we must promote—and pay for—anything designated as art.

One of Hildebrand’s quotes from Graven Images struck me as extremely relevant today, and heightens my interest in reading his writings:

Moral goodness is identified with broad-mindedness, desire of progress, tolerance. Several fundamental amoral values such as purity, reverence, humility are not included in morality. Other moral values such as justice, veracity, generosity are seen in the light of the open-minded liberalism, erroneously interpreted as consequences of this morality.

Stanford Continuing Studies, Fall Courses

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 01:22:00 +0000

I want to highlight the enrollment period of Stanford University's Continuing Studies fall courses. I took Christopher Krebs' spring 2020 course on Tacitus and enjoyed it. I wanted to take several courses over the years, but the money hurdle and the commute time (when I was living in the Bay Area) was more than I could commit to spending. With the switch to online meetings, part of that unfavorable equation evaporated. The money part hasn't disappeared, but I can still dream of taking courses in the future.

One thing I've started doing is looking through the courses and browsing the recommended texts. Based on the one course I've taken, they will change and the instructor will provide additional articles and texts. Even so, if you're like me and want to add to your ToBeRead list/stack, this is a great resource. And there are other continuing studies courses at many colleges and universities that you can take advantage of in the same manner. Don't dismiss or disparage your ability to create a learning plan/course!

MUBI

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Sun, 16 Aug 2020 22:51:00 +0000

If you enjoy watching out of the ordinary movies and haven't watched the MUBI streaming service, I highly recommend checking it out. I really enjoyed watching Werner Herzog's Family Romance, LLC and several other movies over the past couple of weeks. One film I wanted to highlight is The Portugese Woman, based on a Robert Musil story, which will leave the site in a few days. I'll include a quote from The Hollywood Reporter, which I found fairly faithful to my reaction.

For her latest lavish literary adaptation, Portuguese writer-director Rita Azevedo Gomes revisits a 1924 novella by Robert Musil, the Austrian modernist author most famous for The Man Without Qualities. With its painterly visuals and highbrow pedigree, The Portuguese Woman disguises its lightly surreal and experimental elements beneath sumptuous period-drama trappings. Perhaps too successfully, as it often plods even during its most potentially gripping moments.

... The Portuguese Woman is a classy piece of work, but too traditionally art house to appeal beyond film festivals and specialist connoisseur circles. Despite its high-caliber polish and some inspired casting choices, including Fassbinder veteran and cult screen icon Ingrid Caven, this sluggish historical pageant never quite coalesces into a persuasive, engrossing narrative.

I enjoyed watching it nonetheless (and despite some of the changes from Musil's story), and fancied several other movies which I probably would have not found on other platforms. There are around 30 movies available at one time, with a new movie added each day and the oldest movie dropped from the rotation. The site also has a library, with movies to rent (which I haven't a chance to check out yet) and a Notebook page that has information on the movies selected and films they have produced. If you've checked out MUBI, let me know what you think of it.

Fourth of July, X (1986 Farm Aid)

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Sat, 04 Jul 2020 16:41:00 +0000

2020 strikes again. We were go rafting in Hell's Canyon this coming week, but a rockslide closed the only direct road to it (from our direction). I've already been to Hell (Grand Caymans) and the Gates of Hell (Stanford campus), so I was looking forward to Hell's Canyon. Hopefully later this year.

On that note, I'll leave you with a song of independence that is a little different from most, but one of my favorites. The lineup has Dave Alvin on guitar and, if I remember correctly, Tony Gilkyson from Lone Justice (both replacing Billy Zoom). This is the lineup the second time I saw them. Which remind me, I have a quote from John Doe's follow-up to Under the Big Black Sun I want to share (and saw a reference to the other evening, strangely enough). One of these days I'll be able to get back to semi-full time blogging...

Available to watch

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 19:09:00 +0000

On Amazon Prime I stumbled across a couple of films based on Bohumil Hrabal's writings that are available for free to Prime members. First was The Snowdrop Festival, directed by Jiří Menzel. As I mentioned in the post, it's a quirky, fun movie with a strong undertow of poignancy. Menzel doesn't capture the full complexity of Hrabal's writings, opting for a lighthearted capriciousness, but he gets the banality and quirkiness of these residents' lives. I enjoyed watching it a second time.
From my original post,

"Even though the movie provides many laughs and smiles, a sadness permeates the bucolic setting. Like the stories, alcohol provides a social lubricant as well as an escape. Just what people are trying to escape isn't quite clear, amplifying Hrabal's ambiguous messages, although you wouldn't be far off the mark if you simply answered "their lives." While some things give these characters joy, many things drive their desire to escape, including family, work, government, opportunity, and materialism."

Larks on a String, another Menzel film adaptation of Hrabal's stories. The movie came out in 1969, so the lack of delicacy around political issues feels even more pronounced today. From my original post:

“The screenplay of Larks on a String is based on a book of short stories. All the stories have the same location but different characters. What was important was to make a coherent screenplay based on all those different characters. Hrabal used to say, ‘We have to plait it all into one braid.’” When we were looking for a way to link the separate storylines, how to unite these various characters, I remembered an old political joke from the ‘50s: The workers are ordered to attend a meeting where a comrade gives a lecture explaining, ‘In the present, we have socialism, but in the future we will have communism.’ After the lecture, he asks the workers if they have any questions. One of the workers raises his hand and says, ‘It’s good that we have socialism and will soon have communism, but where is the bread, where is the milk, where is the butter?’ The comrade answers, ‘This is a rather complicated question. Ask me again at the next lecture.’ A week later, the workers are ordered to attend another meeting, and the same thing happens—the comrade extols the virtues of socialism and communism, and afterwards asks if anyone has any questions. Another worker raises his hand and says, ‘It’s good we have socialism and will soon have communism, but where is the bread, where is the milk, where is the butter, and where is the worker who asked about this last time?’ So this old political joke gave us the key to the whole structure of the screenplay."

There's a political feel that is a little too close to today's cancel culture for not towing the party line:

"You wanted to see where the production of steel starts. This is the place, the scrap heap. All that you can see here will be smelted down into high-grade steel. We'll make tractors out of this steel to plough our fields. We'll make more washing machines so you can wash your dirty overalls. [Looking at an idling worker] These are our voluntary workers. Mostly of bourgeois origin. We'll also smelt them down into a new kind of people."

There are several more Czech movies available to watch for no additional fees on Amazon Prime, such as Lemonade Joe, The Good Plumber, and My Sweet Little Village, among others. I don't know how long these movies will be free on Prime so watch them soon if you're interested.

And now for something different, but free online until July 1...
Folger Theatre's Macbeth. From Terry Teachout's review at The Wall Street Journal (no link since it's behind a paywall):

While I’d hesitate to say which of those 13 “Macbeths” I liked best, the one of which I have the most indelibly specific memories is the version co-directed by Aaron Posner and Teller (Penn’s silent partner) in 2008 for New Jersey’s Two River Theater Company and the Folger Theatre in Washington. Fortunately, a live performance from the Washington run was recorded and is now streaming on the Folger’s website. Viewing it has confirmed all my impressions of the show, which I saw twice, once in each city, the second time purely for my pleasure. It is a “Macbeth” of explosive dynamism, a high-speed production running for just over two hours (the text has been extensively but discreetly trimmed) that is both flamboyant and essentially serious. The directors call it “a supernatural horror thriller,” which is true enough but a bit misleading. Stage magic, stage violence, stage blood: All are here in copious quantities, yet all illuminate, rather than obscure, the play’s timeless truths about humankind’s flawed nature.

The above link has both parts of the performance as well as several special features. I'll embed one of the special feature videos once YouTube gives me the link.

Virtual Summer Classics at St. John's College in Santa Fe

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Wed, 13 May 2020 22:31:00 +0000

I have mentioned the Summer Classics program at St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico (most recently here), so I wanted to give an update in case you have been interested in the courses but were unable to travel to attend. This summer's program has been changed to virtual seminars, so you'll be able to attend from home. Check out their updated registration page.

A reduction in cost and not having to travel does have its appeal, although wanting to attend in person was what I had hoped to do. Regardless, if you want an in-depth dive into some great works, check it out. From their website:

A Summer Classics seminar is not a lecture, nor is it a book club. At St. John’s, seminars are lively, in-depth, highly participatory conversations on the reading at hand. Discussions begin with an opening question presented by a tutor, but can take on a myriad of dimensions. Everyone contributes in some way to the conversation, bringing ideas to the table (online this year) whether they have expertise in the topic or not. Listening is just as important as speaking.

National Theatre Live: Antony & Cleopatra with Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Fri, 08 May 2020 20:18:00 +0000

National Theatre Live has been making some of their broadcasts available on their YouTube channel. This week's offering is Antony and Cleopatra, directed by Simon Godwin, starring Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo in the title roles. The recording can be played for free until 7pm UK time on Thursday 14 May 2020. This is one I wanted to catch in the theaters but was never able to make it.

Keep checking in on their YouTube channel each week to view the next offering as long as they are able to do so.

Link for the current week: Antony & Cleopatra by the National Theatre.

Robert Harrison's online meetings about The Decameron

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Thu, 16 Apr 2020 15:51:00 +0000

Cynthia Haven had posted on Robert Harrison's meetings on Boccacio's The Decameron, the book that seems to all be the rage given the situation now. Her posts can be found here and here. If, like me, you missed the meetings, you can listen to them at his Entitled Opinions website:

For more from Harrison, check out Haven's post earlier this week that is an excerpt from his interview by Neue Zürcher Zeitung. An excerpt:

So Boccaccio was an incorrigible optimist because he shows how the worst person can make a story that inspires other contemporaries.

On the one hand, Boccaccio shows us how a bad cheater makes other people stronger in their belief–and on the other hand, he lifts the veil and lets us see how we indulge in fictions. But we need these fictions to outgrow ourselves in life. So for Boccaccio there are only stories that help us live better and stories that help us live worse. That is its form of radicalism.

American Shaekspeare Center's online productions

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Sat, 11 Apr 2020 15:56:00 +0000

Once again, many thanks to Terry Teachout for directing me to American Shakespeare Center's online productions. From his wsj.com article:

To date I’ve watched “Much Ado About Nothing” and both installments of “Henry IV, ” all of which are part of ASC’s “Actors’ Renaissance” series, which takes Elizabethan-style authenticity a radical step further. These productions, as was the case in Shakespeare’s day, have no director: Instead, they’re staged by the actors themselves. The no-frills three-camera shoots, like the stagings, are wholly to the point, and while the results are all of a piece with ASC’s fast-moving house style, it’s still thrilling to see the (mostly) youthful, colorfully costumed casts do things their way. The productions are full of musical surprises—the first part of “Henry IV,” for instance, kicks off with a bluegrass-flavored acoustic version of Blue Öyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” an ingeniously apposite touch—and the acting, as always at ASC, is excitingly energetic.

For tickets, go to the above link. Tickets are available through April 19 and shows can be viewed for one week after purchase. This is the third in a series of online play productions Teachout has mentioned (that I've seen). I enjoyed Amadeus and plan on watching 1984 this weekend. These are great stay-at-home entertainment values!

Houston's Alley Theatre: 1984 streaming through April 12

noreply@blogger.com (Dwight) — Sat, 04 Apr 2020 17:29:00 +0000

Many thanks once again for Terry Teachout's post on Houston Alley Theatre's production of 1984, available online through April 12. More information can be found at their website, and the playbill can be found on issuu.

I've found Terry's blog extremely informational and enjoyable. His posts in the last few months regarding the severity and difficulty of his wife's medical issues have been troubling on a level that's difficult to explain regarding someone you've never met. As others have noted on his wife's death, it's difficult to explain the sadness I feel over someone's passing that I never directly knew or had any interaction with. Much of that has to do with the excitement that comes through in Terry's posts, whether it be about growing up in Smalltown, about finding the love of your life, or about the joy found in the arts.

His writing about being with Hilary on her last good day, Joy in the Afternoon is a post I highly recommend. If you're not an organ donor, please follow the links on becoming one at the end of the post.