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Monday, September first, 2008
I guess this must be a common dilemma for historians (or "popular writers of history" -- Wyden is a journalist, not a historian): whether to relate the course of events from an eagle's-eye view, and risk losing the lived experience of the events, or to follow the people who are living the events, and risk losing the larger picture. Wyden errs quite clearly (and I think consciously) on the personal side -- his narration is vivid but the connecting thread between episodes is quite weak. It would help if he could pay a little more attention to giving dates -- each chapter is pretty much continuous so if he gave a date at the head of the chapter it would be much easier to fit the chapter's events into the broader narrative. As it is the reader needs to spend a fair amount of time flipping back and forth to figure out what year it is right now (or I do, anyway). Right now the Fascists are about to launch an attack on Madrid, and I had somehow gotten the idea it was the fall of 1937; as it turns out it is still 1936. I certainly do not want to fault Wyden for this choice however -- the personal narratives are a great thing, they make the book shine. I would much rather read this way with a bit of confusion about the course of events, than a dry narrative of troop movements.
posted afternoon of September first, 2008: Respond
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In comments to NickS's covers post, Matthew links to a fantastic version of "Strawberry Fields Forever", by Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. Lovely! And it gives me a chance to remember Ellen's brief memoir "1996", published in In My Life: Encounters with The Beatles,  about playing Anthology 2 for her fourth-grade class in East Harlem. "Draw me what you hear in the music," I say. They show me giant strawberries growing next to an apartment building, the sun's rays as streams of musical notes, the word music in big colorful letters, a strawberry tree identified with phonetic spelling swter breey fealds.
It was Ellen's first full-time teaching job (after many years of adjuncting), and she had a good time with the class, and her students had a good time learning to read and write. "So were you a Beatlemaniac?" Yazmine asks. "Oh, sure, of course," I answer in all seriousness. "I always will be."
Los Fabulosos Beatlemaniacs, below the fold.
posted morning of September first, 2008: Respond
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Sunday, August 31st, 2008
The story of Spain's gold reserves being transported to Moscow in 1937 seems like it would make really excellent raw material for a thriller. I wonder if such a thing has been written or filmed.
posted evening of August 31st, 2008: 2 responses
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I found a radio interview with Orhan Pamuk -- the January 22nd episode of Robert Harrison's show "Entitled Opinions" on KZSU. The blogger at Coisas do Gomes alerted me to this interview when he posted this quote: There were unfortunate institutional attempts in Turkey to purify Turkish in mid-thirties and forties but I don't believe in it. My standard for using the language is the language I hear from my grandmother, from my mother, from my father. I am a conservative, in the sense that I want to keep Turkish as it is. In my novels I use the language of my mother, of my grandmother, which is actually the language I also hear on the streets. This is nice; and I also like, later in the interview:
When I published my Istanbul book, some four years ago in Turkey, my readers from the younger generation object to the fact that this is not the colorful, happy, sunny Istanbul -- and I agreed with them. I wrote my Istanbul, and that's the Istanbul I like. The Istanbul of long winter nights; black and white, a poor black and white place, where the ruins of Ottoman empire, the ruins of all extravagant, wooden Ottoman buildings, they're in ruins -- that's how I spent my childhood, playing football among the Ottoman ruins, among the wooden houses, which were in the next two decades burned down one by one. My Istanbul, in the fifties, sixties, seventies, was an extraordinarily provincial place, where the sense of community was out, the sense of being outside of Europe, but so close to Europe, and still being poor; the sense of "nothing will change here, there is no future here," was still hovering around; perhaps a place where the presence of the loss of Ottoman empire, that this city had once upon a time, was once the capital of a great, magnamious (?) and very rich empire, now is in ruins and leading a poor, provincial life, hoping to develop a relationship with Europe...
I believe I have read similar sentiments to this in a published article of Pamuk's -- it sheds new light on them, to hear them straight from the horse's mouth.
posted evening of August 31st, 2008: Respond
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Over at Before You Listen, NickS is asking, "What makes a good cover?" Well -- I've been thinking about it some and the more I reflect, the more it seems like I'm a really easy target for cover versions in general. This came to me today when I was listening to WFUV's Sunday Breakfast, and Alison Kraus came on the radio singing Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" -- this is just fantastic! and what is it about cover versions that gets me so reliably interested? I think it's pretty simple really: When I listen to a cover of a song I like, I've got the version I know playing in my head and the version I'm listening to playing harmony. Lots of opportunities for interplay between the variations, a psychic duet between the two singers. Fun! Even better, when I get to know multiple versions and have them all playing together. (Take a look at this list of covers of "Summertime Blues" -- some great stuff in there. I guess The Who's version and Eddie Cochran's are the two most familiar to me; Blue Cheer's, which I heard for the first time yesterday, is totally worth while. Plus T. Rex! Richie Valens! Bruce! James Taylor! and many more. A couple of versions below the fold.) (Note: Doing a clumsy post like this makes me grateful for the existence of bloggers like NickS who can write meaningful, articulate takes on what is happening in the music they're listening to.)
posted morning of August 31st, 2008: 3 responses
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Saturday, August 30th, 2008
So everyone is very excited about Bolaño's 2666, which will be available in English translation soon. I wish I could be! I just found out about this author's existence pretty recently, from Orbis Quintus IIRC; and I have had too much else on my reading plate to think about getting acquainted with him. Looks like I am going to miss out on a pretty major literary event; but I sort of don't want my first acquaintance with Bolaño to be this book. I reckon sometime down the road a little, I will start reading his short stories and work my way up to 2666 -- the cutting edge continues to elude me. MetaFilter offers up some resources for readers interested in getting acquainted with Bolaño. (via Conversational Reading.)
posted evening of August 30th, 2008: 2 responses
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 As I was leaving the theater tonight -- my eyes wide open, my heart still racing -- I heard someone muttering to his date, "A lotta holes..."
And yeah -- the plot was not perfectly formed. There was some implausible stuff if you stop to think about it, some threads that if you spun them out would lead to contradictions or impossibilities. But I had to wonder, when in the movie had this guy gotten the chance to think about the plot holes? Tell No One is a thriller, I thought it was a very well-realized example of the genre. I could not move a muscle for much of the movie, I was gazing rapt at the screen and my head was full of fear and excitement. That seems to me like a well-spent 2 hours. (Well an hour and a half; the first thirty minutes was more confusing than gripping.)
posted evening of August 30th, 2008: Respond
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Friday, August 29th, 2008
 We are watching an early Almodóvar movie tonight, Dark Habits (1983). He had not quite worked out his story-telling ability yet -- the story of this movie is too tangled, too busy -- but God: this guy is a visual genius.
The photography of the nuns is beautiful but what really gets me is Yolanda's face, both when she's made up for performances and when she's plain.
 ...Yolanda's concert, with the nuns backing her up: totally worth while. And oh my God! The Mother Superior took an icon of Yolanda's face from her towel!
posted evening of August 29th, 2008: Respond
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Thursday, August 28th, 2008
 Trouble in Rome for artistic freedom; but mainly just hilarious.
Martin Kippenberger's sculpture "First the Feet" has been singled out for criticism by the Vatican. What a lovely image! Pure luck that on the way home after I saw this article this afternoon, "Globe of Frogs" came on the stereo. (There's got to be some clever way to tie this in to the wave of extinctions of frog species, but I am not up to it, I fear. Also: The Frog Prince → The Frog Messiah.)
posted afternoon of August 28th, 2008: Respond
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Via the magic of Google, I just found out that a band I never heard of, Elysian Fields, has a song (without lyrics) called "Dog of Tears." I guess there's no way it could be anything other than a reference to Blindness. Busy, busy, busy! I will listen to it later on.
posted morning of August 28th, 2008: Respond
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