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great friends.
“STEVE WINWOOD SAID, ‘HEY, PRINCE IS OVER THERE.’ AND I Wow, this is such a treasure! To know what the players/producer were actually thinking during this performance! I have watched this performance probably a million times — it never, ever gets old, and of all the Prince clips floating around right now, this is definitelymy favourite.
STAR WARS: “GEORGE, YOU CAN TYPE THIS SHIT, BUT YOU SURE From Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘N’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood by Peter Biskind. Star Wars went into production at Elstree Studios outside London on March 25, 1976. Lucas chose to shoot in London to get away from the studio and to save money, but right away he ran into trouble. His relationship with the cast and crew was prickly, to say the least. THE CREEPY MITFORD SISTERS The Mitford sisters were all caught up in the enormous upheavals of the mid-20th century, many of them on the wrong side of history. They were ardent fascists and anti-Semites, Hitler-lovers (especially Unity Mitford, who appears to have been truly in love with Hitler. She ended up shooting herself in the head – and SURVIVED. LIKE DOLMENS ROUND MY CHILDHOOD, THE OLD PEOPLE Like dolmens round my childhood, the old people. Jamie MacCrystal sang to himself, A broken song without tune, without words; He tipped me a penny every pension day, Fed kindly crusts to winter birds. When he died his cottage was robbed, Mattress and money box torn and searched. Only the corpse they didn’t disturb. KATHARINE HEPBURN AND HOWARD HUGHES: “DEDICATED LONERS Cary Grant and Howard Hughes were best friends. Cary Grant also, in the early 30s, had become very good friends with Katharine Hepburn. Hepburn, at that point, hard as it is to believe, was finding it difficult to get work in Hollywood, despite her two back-to-back Oscars. She had then appeared in 4 flops in a row, she couldn’t gether own
DEAN STOCKWELL: 3 STORIES ABOUT ERROL FLYNN Speaking of Errol Flynn . In 1950, Dean Stockwell appeared in Kim with Errol Flynn. Stockwell was 12 or 13 when they filmed it, and nearing the end of his run as a child-actor. In Kim, Stockwell is on the brink of adolescence.He has described how he, unlike other normal kids, YEARNED for acne and awkwardness, because that would then mean he wouldn’t have to be a “child actor” anymore. R.I.P. MILTON MOSES GINSBERG R.I.P. Milton Moses Ginsberg. Posted on May 26, 2021 by sheila. I was so sad to hear of the passing of director Milton Moses Ginsberg, who directed many things but one which I hold very dear: 1973’s Werewolf of Washington, a political satire/monster movie starring Dean Stockwell as a White House press secretary who – unfortunately for THE BFI’S TEN BEST FILM BOOKS OF 2020 The BFI’s Ten Best Film Books of 2020. The British Film Institute has published their list of the Ten Best Film Books of 2020. A rich list, some I’ve read, some I haven’t, but now I have a list to base my next purchases off of. Congratulations to everyone whose books made it to the list. My pal Glenn Kenny’s Made Men – on the making THE BOOKS: “DECLINE AND FALL” (EVELYN WAUGH) But somehow, one of the pranksters steals Paul Pennyfeather’s pants (from off his body) and, mortified, he runs across the quad, under the eyes of the Dons. So it seems as though HE is the instigator of the madness – and he is expelled. Paul Pennyfeather THE BOOKS: FINDERS KEEPERS: SELECTED PROSE 1971-2001: ‘THE On the essays shelf (yes, there are still more books to excerpt in my vast library. I can’t seem to stop this excerpts-from-my-library project. I started it in 2006!) NEXT BOOK: Seamus Heaney’s Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001.. Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes weregreat friends.
“STEVE WINWOOD SAID, ‘HEY, PRINCE IS OVER THERE.’ AND I Wow, this is such a treasure! To know what the players/producer were actually thinking during this performance! I have watched this performance probably a million times — it never, ever gets old, and of all the Prince clips floating around right now, this is definitelymy favourite.
STAR WARS: “GEORGE, YOU CAN TYPE THIS SHIT, BUT YOU SURE From Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘N’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood by Peter Biskind. Star Wars went into production at Elstree Studios outside London on March 25, 1976. Lucas chose to shoot in London to get away from the studio and to save money, but right away he ran into trouble. His relationship with the cast and crew was prickly, to say the least. THE CREEPY MITFORD SISTERS The Mitford sisters were all caught up in the enormous upheavals of the mid-20th century, many of them on the wrong side of history. They were ardent fascists and anti-Semites, Hitler-lovers (especially Unity Mitford, who appears to have been truly in love with Hitler. She ended up shooting herself in the head – and SURVIVED. LIKE DOLMENS ROUND MY CHILDHOOD, THE OLD PEOPLE Like dolmens round my childhood, the old people. Jamie MacCrystal sang to himself, A broken song without tune, without words; He tipped me a penny every pension day, Fed kindly crusts to winter birds. When he died his cottage was robbed, Mattress and money box torn and searched. Only the corpse they didn’t disturb. KATHARINE HEPBURN AND HOWARD HUGHES: “DEDICATED LONERS Cary Grant and Howard Hughes were best friends. Cary Grant also, in the early 30s, had become very good friends with Katharine Hepburn. Hepburn, at that point, hard as it is to believe, was finding it difficult to get work in Hollywood, despite her two back-to-back Oscars. She had then appeared in 4 flops in a row, she couldn’t gether own
DEAN STOCKWELL: 3 STORIES ABOUT ERROL FLYNN Speaking of Errol Flynn . In 1950, Dean Stockwell appeared in Kim with Errol Flynn. Stockwell was 12 or 13 when they filmed it, and nearing the end of his run as a child-actor. In Kim, Stockwell is on the brink of adolescence.He has described how he, unlike other normal kids, YEARNED for acne and awkwardness, because that would then mean he wouldn’t have to be a “child actor” anymore. THE SHEILA VARIATIONS It is the longest continuously-running band in American history. There’s a wonderful and informative article in The NY Times about the West Point Band, established in 1817, celebrating its bicentennial in 2017.. My cousin, Master Sergeant Joshua Economy, seen in the picture above, is a trumpeter with the West Point Band (among many other duties).The article details the schedule of this REVIEW: SKATER GIRL (2021) ←Language most shows a man. Speak that I may see thee.” — BenJonson
THE BFI’S TEN BEST FILM BOOKS OF 2020 The BFI’s Ten Best Film Books of 2020. The British Film Institute has published their list of the Ten Best Film Books of 2020. A rich list, some I’ve read, some I haven’t, but now I have a list to base my next purchases off of. Congratulations to everyone whose books made it to the list. My pal Glenn Kenny’s Made Men – on the making THE BOOKS: “SOMETHING UNSPOKEN” (TENNESSEE WILLIAMS) Nobody pulls back the veil to reveal the truth like Tennessee Williams. And watch how when Grace finally starts to spit out that “something unspoken” – Miss Cornelia is not angry or offended. She eagerly listens, she wants more. Because it is THE TRUTH. Andnobody in
THE BOOKS: FINDERS KEEPERS: SELECTED PROSE 1971-2001: ‘THE On the essays shelf (yes, there are still more books to excerpt in my vast library. I can’t seem to stop this excerpts-from-my-library project. I started it in 2006!) NEXT BOOK: Seamus Heaney’s Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001.. Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes weregreat friends.
THE BOOKS: “HELLO OUT THERE” (WILLIAM SAROYAN) From Hello Out There: A One-Act Play, by William Saroyan. [ There is a fellow in a small-town prison cell, tapping slowly on the floor with a spoon. After tapping half a minute as if he were trying to telegraph words, he gets up and begins walking around the cell. At last he stops, stands at the center of the cell, and doesn’t move for a long THE BOOKS: “IT” (STEPHEN KING) Because I challenge anyone to read the following excerpt and NOT want to read on. Damn – I knew I shouldn’t have come here today! I read It one summer about 23 years ago, and although I don’t remember all the details, I do remember it being terrifying. Now I guess I’m going to have to go back and see whether the 38-year-old me is as scared by it as the 15-year-old me was. LIKE DOLMENS ROUND MY CHILDHOOD, THE OLD PEOPLE Like dolmens round my childhood, the old people. Jamie MacCrystal sang to himself, A broken song without tune, without words; He tipped me a penny every pension day, Fed kindly crusts to winter birds. When he died his cottage was robbed, Mattress and money box torn and searched. Only the corpse they didn’t disturb. DEAN STOCKWELL: 3 STORIES ABOUT ERROL FLYNN Speaking of Errol Flynn . In 1950, Dean Stockwell appeared in Kim with Errol Flynn. Stockwell was 12 or 13 when they filmed it, and nearing the end of his run as a child-actor. In Kim, Stockwell is on the brink of adolescence.He has described how he, unlike other normal kids, YEARNED for acne and awkwardness, because that would then mean he wouldn’t have to be a “child actor” anymore. DEAN STOCKWELL AS “BEN” IN BLUE VELVET Dean Stockwell as “Ben” in. Blue Velvet. Posted on August 3, 2007 by sheila. David Lynch asked Dean Stockwell to play Ben, the creepy pan-sexual pimp and drug dealer who appears in only one scene in the film. But with all the scary crap that happens in that movie, that scene – and its absurdity – with everyone in it obeying a set of R.I.P. MILTON MOSES GINSBERG R.I.P. Milton Moses Ginsberg. Posted on May 26, 2021 by sheila. I was so sad to hear of the passing of director Milton Moses Ginsberg, who directed many things but one which I hold very dear: 1973’s Werewolf of Washington, a political satire/monster movie starring Dean Stockwell as a White House press secretary who – unfortunately for THE BFI’S TEN BEST FILM BOOKS OF 2020 The BFI’s Ten Best Film Books of 2020. The British Film Institute has published their list of the Ten Best Film Books of 2020. A rich list, some I’ve read, some I haven’t, but now I have a list to base my next purchases off of. Congratulations to everyone whose books made it to the list. My pal Glenn Kenny’s Made Men – on the making THE BOOKS: “DECLINE AND FALL” (EVELYN WAUGH) But somehow, one of the pranksters steals Paul Pennyfeather’s pants (from off his body) and, mortified, he runs across the quad, under the eyes of the Dons. So it seems as though HE is the instigator of the madness – and he is expelled. Paul Pennyfeather THE BOOKS: FINDERS KEEPERS: SELECTED PROSE 1971-2001: ‘THE On the essays shelf (yes, there are still more books to excerpt in my vast library. I can’t seem to stop this excerpts-from-my-library project. I started it in 2006!) NEXT BOOK: Seamus Heaney’s Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001.. Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes weregreat friends.
“STEVE WINWOOD SAID, ‘HEY, PRINCE IS OVER THERE.’ AND I Wow, this is such a treasure! To know what the players/producer were actually thinking during this performance! I have watched this performance probably a million times — it never, ever gets old, and of all the Prince clips floating around right now, this is definitelymy favourite.
STAR WARS: “GEORGE, YOU CAN TYPE THIS SHIT, BUT YOU SURE From Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘N’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood by Peter Biskind. Star Wars went into production at Elstree Studios outside London on March 25, 1976. Lucas chose to shoot in London to get away from the studio and to save money, but right away he ran into trouble. His relationship with the cast and crew was prickly, to say the least. THE CREEPY MITFORD SISTERS The Mitford sisters were all caught up in the enormous upheavals of the mid-20th century, many of them on the wrong side of history. They were ardent fascists and anti-Semites, Hitler-lovers (especially Unity Mitford, who appears to have been truly in love with Hitler. She ended up shooting herself in the head – and SURVIVED. LIKE DOLMENS ROUND MY CHILDHOOD, THE OLD PEOPLE Like dolmens round my childhood, the old people. Jamie MacCrystal sang to himself, A broken song without tune, without words; He tipped me a penny every pension day, Fed kindly crusts to winter birds. When he died his cottage was robbed, Mattress and money box torn and searched. Only the corpse they didn’t disturb. KATHARINE HEPBURN AND HOWARD HUGHES: “DEDICATED LONERS Cary Grant and Howard Hughes were best friends. Cary Grant also, in the early 30s, had become very good friends with Katharine Hepburn. Hepburn, at that point, hard as it is to believe, was finding it difficult to get work in Hollywood, despite her two back-to-back Oscars. She had then appeared in 4 flops in a row, she couldn’t gether own
DEAN STOCKWELL: 3 STORIES ABOUT ERROL FLYNN Speaking of Errol Flynn . In 1950, Dean Stockwell appeared in Kim with Errol Flynn. Stockwell was 12 or 13 when they filmed it, and nearing the end of his run as a child-actor. In Kim, Stockwell is on the brink of adolescence.He has described how he, unlike other normal kids, YEARNED for acne and awkwardness, because that would then mean he wouldn’t have to be a “child actor” anymore. R.I.P. MILTON MOSES GINSBERG R.I.P. Milton Moses Ginsberg. Posted on May 26, 2021 by sheila. I was so sad to hear of the passing of director Milton Moses Ginsberg, who directed many things but one which I hold very dear: 1973’s Werewolf of Washington, a political satire/monster movie starring Dean Stockwell as a White House press secretary who – unfortunately for THE BFI’S TEN BEST FILM BOOKS OF 2020 The BFI’s Ten Best Film Books of 2020. The British Film Institute has published their list of the Ten Best Film Books of 2020. A rich list, some I’ve read, some I haven’t, but now I have a list to base my next purchases off of. Congratulations to everyone whose books made it to the list. My pal Glenn Kenny’s Made Men – on the making THE BOOKS: “DECLINE AND FALL” (EVELYN WAUGH) But somehow, one of the pranksters steals Paul Pennyfeather’s pants (from off his body) and, mortified, he runs across the quad, under the eyes of the Dons. So it seems as though HE is the instigator of the madness – and he is expelled. Paul Pennyfeather THE BOOKS: FINDERS KEEPERS: SELECTED PROSE 1971-2001: ‘THE On the essays shelf (yes, there are still more books to excerpt in my vast library. I can’t seem to stop this excerpts-from-my-library project. I started it in 2006!) NEXT BOOK: Seamus Heaney’s Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001.. Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes weregreat friends.
“STEVE WINWOOD SAID, ‘HEY, PRINCE IS OVER THERE.’ AND I Wow, this is such a treasure! To know what the players/producer were actually thinking during this performance! I have watched this performance probably a million times — it never, ever gets old, and of all the Prince clips floating around right now, this is definitelymy favourite.
STAR WARS: “GEORGE, YOU CAN TYPE THIS SHIT, BUT YOU SURE From Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘N’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood by Peter Biskind. Star Wars went into production at Elstree Studios outside London on March 25, 1976. Lucas chose to shoot in London to get away from the studio and to save money, but right away he ran into trouble. His relationship with the cast and crew was prickly, to say the least. THE CREEPY MITFORD SISTERS The Mitford sisters were all caught up in the enormous upheavals of the mid-20th century, many of them on the wrong side of history. They were ardent fascists and anti-Semites, Hitler-lovers (especially Unity Mitford, who appears to have been truly in love with Hitler. She ended up shooting herself in the head – and SURVIVED. LIKE DOLMENS ROUND MY CHILDHOOD, THE OLD PEOPLE Like dolmens round my childhood, the old people. Jamie MacCrystal sang to himself, A broken song without tune, without words; He tipped me a penny every pension day, Fed kindly crusts to winter birds. When he died his cottage was robbed, Mattress and money box torn and searched. Only the corpse they didn’t disturb. KATHARINE HEPBURN AND HOWARD HUGHES: “DEDICATED LONERS Cary Grant and Howard Hughes were best friends. Cary Grant also, in the early 30s, had become very good friends with Katharine Hepburn. Hepburn, at that point, hard as it is to believe, was finding it difficult to get work in Hollywood, despite her two back-to-back Oscars. She had then appeared in 4 flops in a row, she couldn’t gether own
DEAN STOCKWELL: 3 STORIES ABOUT ERROL FLYNN Speaking of Errol Flynn . In 1950, Dean Stockwell appeared in Kim with Errol Flynn. Stockwell was 12 or 13 when they filmed it, and nearing the end of his run as a child-actor. In Kim, Stockwell is on the brink of adolescence.He has described how he, unlike other normal kids, YEARNED for acne and awkwardness, because that would then mean he wouldn’t have to be a “child actor” anymore. THE SHEILA VARIATIONS It is the longest continuously-running band in American history. There’s a wonderful and informative article in The NY Times about the West Point Band, established in 1817, celebrating its bicentennial in 2017.. My cousin, Master Sergeant Joshua Economy, seen in the picture above, is a trumpeter with the West Point Band (among many other duties).The article details the schedule of this THE SHEILA VARIATIONS Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020; d. Aaron Sorkin) I liked this. I liked the script, which surprised me, since I’m not a Sorkin fan, in general. But the movie laid out the complicated situation very clearly, and I also really liked Eddie Redmayne as Tom Hayden (not a Redmayne fan so again nice surprise) and Sacha Baron Cohen as Abbie Hoffman the clashes between the two – I think the REVIEW: SKATER GIRL (2021) ←Language most shows a man. Speak that I may see thee.” — BenJonson
THE BFI’S TEN BEST FILM BOOKS OF 2020 The BFI’s Ten Best Film Books of 2020. The British Film Institute has published their list of the Ten Best Film Books of 2020. A rich list, some I’ve read, some I haven’t, but now I have a list to base my next purchases off of. Congratulations to everyone whose books made it to the list. My pal Glenn Kenny’s Made Men – on the making THE BOOKS: FINDERS KEEPERS: SELECTED PROSE 1971-2001: ‘THE On the essays shelf (yes, there are still more books to excerpt in my vast library. I can’t seem to stop this excerpts-from-my-library project. I started it in 2006!) NEXT BOOK: Seamus Heaney’s Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001.. Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes weregreat friends.
THE BOOKS: “SOMETHING UNSPOKEN” (TENNESSEE WILLIAMS) Nobody pulls back the veil to reveal the truth like Tennessee Williams. And watch how when Grace finally starts to spit out that “something unspoken” – Miss Cornelia is not angry or offended. She eagerly listens, she wants more. Because it is THE TRUTH. Andnobody in
THE BOOKS: “IT” (STEPHEN KING) Because I challenge anyone to read the following excerpt and NOT want to read on. Damn – I knew I shouldn’t have come here today! I read It one summer about 23 years ago, and although I don’t remember all the details, I do remember it being terrifying. Now I guess I’m going to have to go back and see whether the 38-year-old me is as scared by it as the 15-year-old me was. LIKE DOLMENS ROUND MY CHILDHOOD, THE OLD PEOPLE Like dolmens round my childhood, the old people. Jamie MacCrystal sang to himself, A broken song without tune, without words; He tipped me a penny every pension day, Fed kindly crusts to winter birds. When he died his cottage was robbed, Mattress and money box torn and searched. Only the corpse they didn’t disturb. DEAN STOCKWELL: 3 STORIES ABOUT ERROL FLYNN Speaking of Errol Flynn . In 1950, Dean Stockwell appeared in Kim with Errol Flynn. Stockwell was 12 or 13 when they filmed it, and nearing the end of his run as a child-actor. In Kim, Stockwell is on the brink of adolescence.He has described how he, unlike other normal kids, YEARNED for acne and awkwardness, because that would then mean he wouldn’t have to be a “child actor” anymore. DEAN STOCKWELL AS “BEN” IN BLUE VELVET Dean Stockwell as “Ben” in. Blue Velvet. Posted on August 3, 2007 by sheila. David Lynch asked Dean Stockwell to play Ben, the creepy pan-sexual pimp and drug dealer who appears in only one scene in the film. But with all the scary crap that happens in that movie, that scene – and its absurdity – with everyone in it obeying a set of THE SHEILA VARIATIONSSkip to content
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MUSIC MONDAY: WASSUP, WASSERMAN!, BY BRENDAN O’MALLEY Posted on May 25, 2020 bysheila
_My talented brother Brendan O’Malley is an amazing writer and actor. He’s wonderful in the recent _You & Me_, directed by Alexander Baack. (I interviewed Baack about the film here .) His most recent gig was story editor/writer on the hit series _Survivor’s Remorse_. Brendan hasn’t blogged in years, but the “content” (dreaded word) is so good I asked if I could import some of it to my blog. I just wrapped up posting his 50 Best Albums. But I figured
I’d keep “Music Monday” going with more of the stuff Bren wroteabout music._
_ _
_Bren’s writing is part music-critique, part memoir, part cultural snapshot. Many of these pieces were written a decade ago, so I am happy to share it with you!_WASSUP, WASSERMAN!
Rob Wasserman is one of those musicians you’ve probably heard on someone else’s record. He is a bass wizard. He has transcended the anonymity of the side man to the point where he has established himself as a true collaborator and creator in his own right. He put out an album called _Duets_ back in the 1990’s that featured him paired with a variety of different artists. They performed old standards, original pieces, anything they had a mind to. This is one of those perfect albums that seems like a soundtrack to a forgotten classic film. It seems to have a visual quality to it, so perfectly etched are the sounds. One song in particular became important to me. Jennifer Warnes, yes, the “Up Where We Belong” with Joe Cocker Jennifer Warnes, sings an old Leonard Cohen song called “The Ballad of the Runaway Horse”. Before I even talk about the performances, I have to address the song itself. When Cohen recorded it, he titled it “Ballad of the Absent Mare”. I’ve never heard his version of the song. Jennifer Warnes and Rob Wasserman’s version is stark and sparse. Only the bass and the voice. The bombast of “Up Where We Belong” is nowhere to be found. Subtle and epic, she virtually coos the entiresong.
A cowgirl waits for a wild horse. They’ve ridden before. Every time they do she feels whole. Then his wildness reasserts itself and their union is torn apart. Somehow this song wound up being the song that my ex and I danced to as our first dance. Think of this if you are attempting to get married without a wedding planner. They just might step in and say, “Yes, beautiful song, make another choice.” But in listening to the song, I’m once again struck by how unbelievably romantic and beautiful it is. In spite of the central metaphor of loss. And whether we’d stayed together or not, it was anapt choice.
Really long, though. The crowd got a bit antsy while we danced and we joked as we danced that we could have faded it out at a certain point. I am still transported to that day whenever I hear the song. When it comes up on random play I often skip it because I simply can’t gothere.
Long story short, the marriage ended. The metaphor carried over and our love couldn’t survive our most basic nature. I swam upstream in Brooklyn trying to get to a still pond. I wore my nerves to thethinnest edge.
Then one night I found myself out with Quasi Uncle Andy and Buzz. Andy is one of my oldest friends, dating back to college. We shared an apartment on the Upper West Side when I first moved to the city. He met Buzz working at a Mexican restaurant in the Village. Buzz is Iranian and moved here when he was 10. His father was a general and fled the country when the Shah was overthrown. Imagine coming to America in 1979 from Iran. Buzz said he fought every kid in his school. Buzz wound up rapping with my cousin and I in a group called New Mischief, but that’s a story for another day. I don’t remember how but I convinced Andy and Buzz to go with me to The Wetlands to see Rob Wasserman in concert. They knew nothing about him. There were maybe 30 people there, a shameful display of publictaste.
By the end of the concert, Andy, Buzz and I stood at the lip of the stage and screamed at the top of our lungs that we wanted more, play more, play something else, play anything. During the show we kept marveling at the fact that we were witnessing obviously historic music and NO ONE was there. We vowed that our response would not be muted in spite of the space around us. I let the cares of my increasingly stressful life fall away and Rob Wasserman made me forget that he’d been at my wedding. Posted in Music | Tagged family , Music Monday| Leave a comment
REMEMBERING, HONORING Posted on May 25, 2020 bysheila
_U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Tiffany Robinson, assigned to 449th Air Expeditionary Group, kneels in front of a battlefield cross following a Memorial Day ceremony at Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti, May 26, 2014. The cross was created with combat gear representing each of the five U.S. military branches, in commemoration of fallen service members. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Eric R. Dietrich/Released) From Wikimedia Commons_
To those who have sacrificed their lives in service to their country, we do not forget. We honor your memory. We remember. _Memorial Day Garden of Flags, Boston Common, 2015_ Posted in On This Day | Tagged war | 3 Comments RECOMMENDED BOOKS: MEMOIRS Posted on May 24, 2020 bysheila
More recommendations:Recommended Fiction
Recommended Non-FictionMEMOIRS
_The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre And The Thirties_,
by Harold Clurman
Probably the most famous of all the Group Theatre-related books. Harold Clurman writes his memories of that time and what those people.Essential reading.
_Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years_,
by Diane di Prima
A fascinating memoir by poet Diane di Prima, which gives an amazing collage of New York in the 1950s and 60s, the artists and poets and bohemians clustered in and around Greenwich Village. She created a magazine – The Floating Bear – with LeRoi Jones (Amir Baraka), which she ran out of a Village bookstore. Many poets now anthologized the world over were first published in her magazine. She was good friends with Frank O’Hara. She created the New York Poets Theatre. She had many babies (got pregnant in high school and decided to have the baby and her family basically – for all intents and purposes – disowned her). When she was just a teenager, she started writing letters to Ezra Pound, incarcerated in the mental institution. I think she took a bus ride up to see him. The memoir is fascinating but I have to say – it’s the opening chapters detailing her childhood that is the real takeaway, the macho Brooklyn-Italian world into which she was born, its male violence, the strict border between men and women … she captures it in exquisite detail, unforgettable. When I think of this book, it’s the opening I remember. _The Men in My Life: A Memoir of Love and Art in 1950s Manhattan_,
by Patricia Bosworth R.I.P. Patricia Bosworth. I came to her, like most people did, through her biography of Montgomery Clift, one of the greatest biographies of an actor ever – and forget “of an actor” – one of the greatest biographies period. I came to know her, albeit very casually, through the Actors Studio. I admired her so much. She has written two memoirs, one about the effect of the Hollywood Blacklist on her family (which was extreme), and then this one, about her life as a young woman in 1940s Manhattan: the men, the acting jobs, the romances, reflections on what romance/sex even meant in the 1950s. She was a wonderful writer. I’m so sad she’s gone, that Covid would take one of our great writers at the age of 86. She has a book coming out this fall._Life Is a Banquet
_,
by Rosalind Russell
A fantastic memoir. Sometimes it’s the “peripheral” things that makes a memoir like this great – like Shirley MacLaine’s descriptions of her mother, or her father, or her childhood – if the person is a good writer, it’s a pleasure to read such books all on their own. This isn’t always the case with memoirs by famous people. They’re surface only, or poorly written, or ghost-written. Here, it’s Russell’s portrait of her childhood – that crazy house of siblings – running a craps game out of the attic? LOl!! – as well as her marriage – that really sticks in my mind. Beautifully vivid and heartfelt. You just love her. _Baby Doll: An Autobiography_,
by Carroll Baker
I have written before about the impact this book had on me. In a way, it was a door opening, THE door. She led me to the people who would change my life forever – Elia Kazan, James Dean, Tennessee Williams – and I was only 12 years old. It’s not even that well-written a book. It didn’t matter. _Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968_,
by Heda Margolius Kovály A harrowing read. If you can get past the first paragraph – which runs chills of horror down your spine – then the rest of the book just goes downhill from there. Kovály hails from Prague, and tells the story of the growing clouds of war, of Hitler overrunning her country, of being captured by the Nazis. She actually escaped from a concentration camp and made her way back to Prague – a treacherous journey – and THEN about what happened after the war – the brutal oppression of the Communists – she lost everything, her whole family to Hitler, she lost her husband to Stalin. She’s an amazing writer, and was born at just the wrong time, to be caught between the gigantic murderous pincers of two raving fascist lunatics._Just Kids
_,
by Patti Smith
There are sections too painful to even really read. I had to gear myself up to endure it. But it made me think of all the friends I made in college, my dearest friends to this day, and how much we love each other, and how we fell in love with each other before we were fully formed, and we continue to transform with each other, loving each other, growing up together. She captures it so beautifully. _A Story Lately Told: Coming of Age in Ireland, London, and New York_,
by Anjelica Huston
What an interesting life she’s had. And continues to have. _Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me_,
by Marlon Brando
I remember people pooh-poohing this book at the time, or dismissing it – maybe they still do. Yes, he wrote it in a frenzied weekend (exaggeration) to try to beat Peter Manso to the punch, who had written a disgusting poison-pen TOME, which was basically a 900-page character assassination. So … celebrities aren’t allowed to DEFEND themselves against a personal attack? I love this book. If you DISMISS it, you’re missing some of his revelations about acting and his process. Brando was notoriously (and understandably) cagey about talking about how he did what he did as an actor – and truthfully he probably couldn’t have put it into words. But here, he does. And there are some invaluable insights._Long Shadows
_,
by Shane Leslie
My father was one of the top Shane Leslie experts in the world. He gave talks on Shane Leslie. I wish I had paid more attention when Dad was alive to all this. I would ask him about Shane Leslie and he’d say, “Oh, he was a little pompous, he knew everyone, he was a name-dropper.” After Dad died, I read Shane Leslie’s memoir, and was so sad I hadn’t done so when I could talk to Dad about it. It’s fascinating! He and Winston Churchill were first cousins, so there are very amusing anecdotes about their shared childhoods. It’s weird to picture Churchill as a little kid._The Periodic Table
_,
by Primo Levi
While probably his _Survival in Auschwitz_ is better known, this memoir – to which Auschwitz only gets one chapter – is equally as good. Primo Levi was a chemist, and so this book uses the periodic table as its organizing principle. Each chapter represents an element, and then he tells a story, which loops us into that element, in all its metaphorical and actual qualities. It’s beautiful. I love him. _The Making of the African Queen: Or How I Went to Africa With Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind_,
by Katharine Hepburn There are anecdotes included here which I have used in my writing time and time again, particularly John Huston’s delicacy in giving her a crucial piece of direction which unlocked the whole character for her, allowing her to know how to play it. And yet it’s the WAY he gave the direction – without ever seeming like he was telling her what to do – that shows his genius. You don’t just say to Hepburn, a gigantic star, “Listen, you’re doing it wrong.” You have to be very careful in your approach, like he was here. And Hepburn recognized it, and was grateful for it. _Last Waltz in Vienna_,
by George Clare
A devastating read about a totally lost world, the Vienna and Austria of George Clare’s youth. He was born into a Jewish family (last name Klaar), who were assimilated Jews in the Hapsburg monarchy. Just like Stefan Zweig. There was a sense of safety in Austria, even though there were still anti-Semitic elements, as well as laws that barred Jews from climbing the ladder in companies. But still. It was a haven. Clare’s father worked for the Bank, one of the few Jews present. They didn’t “feel like” Jews. They felt like Jews who were Austrians. So when Austria went fucking insane in the 1930s … and the Klaar family realized the danger – too late – it was devastating. As well as dangerous. George Clare lost practically his whole family to the concentration camps – his grandmother, his parents, aunts, uncles … the only reason he survived was his parents moved heaven and earth to get him to safety in Ireland. It’s a terrible story but beautifully told, and his descriptions of Vienna right before and right after the _Anschluss_ (such a terrible word) are absolutely vivid and terrifying. A very important book. He doesn’t just give his own perspective as a child (he was born in 1920, so he was a teenager when shit started getting hairy), but provides a wider political context, peppering the text with prophetic chilling statements like “if we knew then it would be our last chance to get out …” The book makes you see red. And there are many many connections and correlations to what is going on now. _Burning the Days: Recollection_,
by James Salter
A real writer’s writer. He didn’t write much. A handful of novels. But once you’ve read him, he climbs to the top of your list of “man, that can guy can WRITE” people. It’s fascinating to read this, to hear where he came from, what he was about, and all in his absolutely perfect prose – which is difficult for me to describe. I’ve written about him here and tried to put it into words, how he does what he does. I’d compare it to Lee Strasberg’s sense-memory exercises in a way, although he doesn’t go on and on about sights/smells/touches. But his work is so based in the senses it makes other writing seem shallow by comparison. _My Lucky Stars: A Hollywood Memoir_,
by Shirley MacLaine
I’ve read all her books, even the woo-woo ones. She’s a very very good writer. I recommend all of them, just to enjoy her prose, but this one I’m putting on here because it’s so chock-full of great show-biz stories. From Bob Fosse to Dean Martin to Debra Winger to Meryl Streep. Peter Sellers. Wonderful stuff. _Elvis: In the Twilight of Memory_,
by June Juanico
This, for me, is the best “I knew Elvis” memoirs. She was Elvis’ girl in the summer of 1956, the summer he moved from regional star to national star to international notorious phenom – all in the matter of, like, 2 months – and she was dating him as it happened. It’s a wonderful book and I’m so glad she wrote it. _The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin_
Christopher Hitchens: “There are two kinds of people: those who read Franklin’s celebrated _Autobiography_ with a solemn expression, and those who keep laughing out loud as they go along.” I am of the second variety. This shit is hilarious. My favorite part is when the young Ben creates a system to keep himself on track morally, to watch out for vices and flaws. He created a little chart, and he would check things off, like “I did this right” “I avoided this today” and then he realized how PROUD he was of avoiding vices, and realized that pride is, of course, a Mortal Sin, so he figured, “Oh well, that’s that” and gave up worrying so much about having correct morals. How many people do you know who are PROUD of being “good”, are PROUD of holding the “correct” attitudes, are PROUD of being more clear-headed, more compassionate, more social-justice-committed, more Christian, more “woke”, more WHATEVER, you name it, than other people? The PRIDE is the thing. Pride is a sin, yo. Check yourself. Ben Franklin figured that out and figured it out young. _Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir_,
by Frank McCourt
This book swept through my family like a forest fire. I read it while I was in grad school. I was sitting in the library at the New School, and I was reading the section when Malachy McCourt, a small child, got a pair of false teeth stuck in his mouth, and the father raced him across town to a doctor, Malachy sobbing, with these huge teeth jutting out of his mouth, and I started laughing so hard and so loud I had to get up and leave. Weirdly, in the years to come, I would meet both Frank and Malachy, through the Irish Arts Center, as well as through the Bloomsday celebration I go to every year (I was at its inaugural in 2004 – the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday – and Frank McCourt was there as a special guest, who opened the ceremony). _A Dream of Passion: The Development of the Method_,
by Lee Strasberg
Required reading, really, for any actor. I wish he had written more. What’s interesting about this is the portrait he gives of life on the Lower East Side as a child, and the productions he saw at the famous Yiddish Theatre, and the incredible actors he witnessed – actors who showed him what was possible. His memories of the great stage performances he saw – and what made them so mind-blowing – from Eleanora Duse to Paul Muni – are the real take-aways of this beautiful little book. _Shelley Also Known As Shirley_,
by Shelley Winters
One of my favorite actress memoirs. Gossipy, funny, honest. There’s a Volume 2 too. One of the good things about these kinds of books for someone like me is not the gossip part of it – but the insights into their process as actors, the way they problem solve, their approaches, their growth spurts, etc. Winters was a very conscious actress and much of what she did required an act of WILL. _Memoirs of a Revolutionary_,
by Victor Serge
One of the very few people who understood Stalin’s nature, and the dangers of Stalin, in the 20s. Everyone saw it in the 30s (well, not everyone: there were “useful idiots” like the Webbs and others, with Pete Seeger to follow) … but people who understood what was going on saw Stalin for who he was in the 30s. But almost no one saw the future in the 20s. Victor Serge did. He realized that what Stalin was doing was gathering all of the power into his hands, and that terror would be the result. He was almost eerily prescient. He had a front row seat. He was an insider. He had moved back to the USSR post-Revolution to lend his hand to the new government. He was a True Believer. This is why his insights are so valuable. _Lucking Out: My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in the Seventies_,
by James Wolcott
I have been happy to become acquainted with Wolcott in the last 10 years, and gathering for twice-a-year cocktails at the Algonquin Hotel, with friends Farran and Tom. Wolcott was the first big-wig to link to my Elvis writing. He said that I was writing posts with a “sacral” tone and he really captured what I was trying to do. I so appreciated it. He’s written a couple of books, and this one is great, because he was at the center of so much in the 70s: CBGBs, the Village Voice, the people he knew and interviewed, his colleagues – I mean, Lester Bangs, come on! _Send Yourself Roses: Thoughts on My Life, Love, and Leading Roles_,
by Kathleen Turner
Another actress memoir I recommend. I read it shortly after I had seen her on Broadway as Martha in _Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?_ – to this day one of the greatest performances I have ever seen in the theatre – so I ate up her insights into the character, and loved to read that as a young actress, she always had Martha in her sights. “Someday I will be old enough to play Martha …” _Elvis: My Best Man: Radio Days, Rock ‘n’ Roll Nights, and My Lifelong Friendship with Elvis Presley_,
by George Klein
Another great “I knew Elvis” book (there are so many bad ones). Klein, who just died, knew Elvis from high school, but they re-connected in 1955, maybe even 1954, when Elvis was starting to put out records, and Klein was a budding DJ. Once again, Klein was never on Elvis’ payroll, and so the relationship remained pure. Elvis was Klein’s Best Man at his wedding. The story I remember most though is Klein sleeping over Elvis’ house – the one on Audobon Drive – so this had to be 1955, 1956 – and waking up and seeing Elvis sleepwalking and Klein having to deal with it. It’s such a touchingstory.
_The Story of My Life – Recollections and Reflections_,
by Ellen Terry
An endlessly fascinating woman, one of the biggest stars of the theatre in the Victorian era. I have written a lot about her here . None of her performances can be seen now, of course. They were theatre. It was the 1880s, 90s. But we can at least imagine it. Oscar Wilde was obsessed with her. So was George Bernard Shaw. _The Autobiography of Maud Gonne: A Servant of the Queen_,
by Maud Gonne
How can one person have so much happen in one life? Well, because Maud Gonne was at the center, she meant business, she walked the walk. She married one of the martyrs of the Easter Rising, and wore widow’s weeds for the rest of her life. She was married, in reality, to the idea of a free Ireland. A fascinating figure. People get irritated when you mention Yeats’s obsession with her, and all the poems he wrote about her and for her. As though her being one of the most important muses of the 20th century is … not worthy of her, and not a huge PART of her story and the effect she had on people. Give it a rest. Maybe YOU don’t care about how she inspired others, how she was seen by Yeats, his love for her … maybe YOU haven’t loved and lost like Yeats did – all I can say is: You’re lucky. Of course, the most important part of the impact she had on the world was in her ferocious activism. But why she is remembered? Come on. Let’s get real. Having read her letters (she wrote letters all. day. long – you can’t believe she could keep up with it – didn’t her hand get cramped?) … you recognize the tone here in the autobiography. Fierce, certain, and filled with purpose. I am endlessly fascinated by this woman. Have been since I was a kid, since my dad has this book – as well as the biography of her – and could tell you anything you wanted to know about her._Ginger: My Story
_,
by Ginger Rogers
Tell it like it is, Ginger! _Accidentally On Purpose: Reflections on Life, Acting and the Nine Natural Laws of Creativity_,
by John Strasberg
I took a workshop with him which remains one of the greatest moments I ever had as an actress. Life-changing. Ready for a read? Get a cup of coffee . This is a beautiful book and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about acting process. It’s a memoir, with some amazing cameos, of course – he and Marilyn Monroe had a very special relationship – but how he thinks about acting – which I experienced working with him in that workshop – is also intoxicating. I TOOK to it. _Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?_,
by Jeanette Winterson She has been one of my favorite contemporary writers ever since I read _Sexing the Cherry_, at random. I was so into her, I went on to read _The Passion_ (for me, it’s her best), and everything else. She went off the rails, and I’m not as huge a fan of _Writing on the Body_ as many many MANY others are – for me, it’s all about _Sexing the Cherry_ and _The Passion_ – those were the hooks – at any rate, it’s been practically a whole lifetime now of reading her work, waiting breathlessly to see what she would come out with next. Her very first book, _Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit_ is basically a memoir – about her crazy childhood, growing up adopted – she was basically adopted by lunatics – and how she survived, as a little girl who wasn’t going to be like other little girls. This memoir, about her search for her birth mother, about coming to terms with having been adopted, about her whole journey, was enormously moving. By the end, there were passages where I felt like my heart was going to explode. I adore this book. I love her._By Myself
_,
by Lauren Bacall
A classic. Her journey is just so insane. Plucked from obscurity, plopped into _To Have and Have Not_ (if you read any piece about “Greatest Film Debuts” and her performance in _To Have and Have Not_ is not on the list, throw out the list. It’s no good). And falling in love with the much older and married Bogart. The kind of fame she got – overnight – rarely happens to any actor. Not to the degree it happened for her, when there weren’t other distractions, when everyone wasn’t compartmentalized into little cultural groups. She was top news across the land. This is a good book._Life
_,
by Keith Richards
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: If you are feeling introverted, if you are feeling lonely for conversation and human contact, no matter with who, read this book in public. People will come up to you when they see what you’re reading and have to talk about it. I read it when I was having a prolonged and almost hallucinatory manic episode in Memphis, where I alternately felt like I was in a transcendent state of truth OR like I was a ghost … I went for days without speaking to anyone and shit got spooky. I read Richards’ book at the bar at the Peabody Hotel – and a guy down the bar struck up a conversation and we ended up talking for 45 minutes. I realized I still knew how to talk to people. It happened again at a diner in Memphis where I was having breakfast. The 20something waitress had to talk to me about it. She had just read it. So. Take this tip, go forth, and have interesting conversations withstrangers!
_Elia Kazan: A Life
_,
by Elia Kazan
One of my favorite memoirs ever written. It was hugely important for me. I read it in high school, after my revelatory viewing of _East of Eden_, which changed my whole world. I drank in Kazan’s words, his stories. I have read it again and again and again. He is not trustworthy. Of course. But he tells you that right up front. I am a liar. I will do whatever it takes to survive. This book has been a neverending source of insights, examples, thoughts, scaffolding on which to hang this or that point I want to make. You may remain seated, refusing to clap, when he gets his Lifetime Achievement Oscar. I’ll be standing up with Meryl Streep. The fact that I finally got to meet the man who had had such a huge impact on my life – at the Actors Studio – at a production of Awake and Sing – by his old friend Clifford Odets – initially put on by the Group Theatre, which he was a member of – and I was a “his Girl Friday” with that production – just like Kazan was a “his boy Friday” with the Group – was too much for me. I shorted out.
_The World of Yesterday_,
by Stefan Zweig
Such a melancholy memoir. Zweig would commit suicide just a couple years later after fleeing the Nazis and ending up in Argentina. In this, Zweig evokes “the world of yesterday”: the Austria he knew and loved as a child and a young man, the “haven” for Jews, the place where they felt safe, where they could identify as Austrians, and not just visitors, or “tolerated.” Of course, this was all an illusion, and the shattering of that illusion would shatter Stefan Zweig. He would never recover. There may be rose-hued glasses here, but with a writer like Stefan Zweig, any colored glasses would be fine: you just want to read his writing, hear his insights, live his memories with him. This is such a mournful book._Then Again
_,
by Diane Keaton
I haven’t read her follow-up but this is terrific. It’s really all about her mother, and as I said upthread, often it’s these personal insights – not so much about the “business” – that makes these books what they are. These well-known figures often can write – and Keaton can write. I have always ‘related’ to her, and she, for me, is a role model into how to grow old. There are very few role models – in women anyway – who show us it can be as wild as youth and maybe even more interesting. _Me and a Guy Named Elvis: My Lifelong Friendship with Elvis Presley_,
by Jerry Schilling
What a wonderful and loving book by one of Elvis’ best friends. Jerry Schilling was a friend from way back, and – unlike other members of the “Memphis Mafia” – was never on Elvis’ payroll. He was just a trusted friend. Elvis, of course, helped him out financially – bought Jerry the house he still lives in! – but Jerry was not a dependent. This left the relationship pure. Jerry Schilling is a very loving man (his commentary track for _Love Me Tender_ is affectionate and informative), and some of the pictures of Elvis provided in this book are so touching! _Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life_,
by Steve Martin
I found this memoir surprisingly touching. He’s intelligent but also emotional, tender almost. It shows how carefully he thought about what he was doing as a comic in the 70s, which … I mean, I guess you had to be there. And I was too young to be there, but his fame trickled down even to me. There was this guy roller-skating across the stage on Carson, with an arrow through his head. I remember we had a talent show in 6th grade and one kid did a re-creation of Martin’s “King Tut.” So he had filtered down into all levels of the culture, even the grade-school set. I loved listening to how all of his different obsessions – magic, banjo – were all “of use” to him in crafting his weird persona in the 70s. And why the white suit? Everything he did was calculated, carefully chosen. Everything had a reason. I love this memoir. _Me: Stories of My Life_,
by Katharine Hepburn The title is so perfect. ME. Now of course she doesn’t tell the whole truth about herself. I consider that to be her right. But what she DOES share is fascinating, and her way of writing sounds like how she talks – short phrases, incomplete sentences, but fragments building in power. The way she wrote about John Wayne! I treasure it, I quote all the time. And the Howard Hughes section. They really did escape fame together, two weirdos. _Goldie: A Lotus Grows in the Mud_,
by Goldie Hawn
If you haven’t read this, all I can say is: _do yourself a favor_ and pick it up. NOW. It’s so special!! _It Would Be So Nice If You Weren’t Here: My Journey Through ShowBusiness
_,
by Charles Grodin
While his stories are great, I would also recommend this to young actors just starting out in the business. I read it when I was just out of college, and his attitude – his practicality – his humor – also the struggles – like, how hard it was to get anything going for real – was inspiring, helped adjust my head to the right attitude to continue._The Salad Days
_,
by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. What a charming and amusing memoir. Another lovely writer. Very touching memories of Joan Crawford, but also he’s able to write where you get a real sense of his gentlemanly personality. _The Kid Stays in the Picture: A Notorious Life_,
by Robert Evans
A stone-cold classic._Born to Run
_,
by Bruce Springsteen I read this last year. It was as good as everyone says. You know what I love? His ego. It’s not small. And it makes you understand why he is who he is. Early on, he knew: I’m the head of this band. It’s about me. You could judge him for that, but that would just be asking him to not be Bruce. You don’t get to be Bruce through having a small ego. Sorry. You just don’t. You don’t glide into fame like he has without pushing. His is an improbable journey. A bar band from the Jersey Shore … I mean, what are the odds? Superstars? Stadium superstars with a career reaching almost 50 years at this point? WRF? It was through Bruce’s sheer force of WILL that what happened endedup happening.
_Lana: The Lady, the Legend, the Truth_,
by Lana Turner
I have compared this book to George Eliot , and I stand by my statement. In the lexicon of actress memoirs, this is NUMERO UNO NO CONTEST. _Dear God, Have You Ever Gone Hungry?_,
by Joseph Bau
This is one of the most harrowing memoirs I have ever read. Joseph Bau was one of “Oskar Schindler’s Jews”. Member the short scene of the couple getting married at Plaszow concentration camp in Poland? That was Joseph and his wife Rebecca. It was Rebecca who got him onto Schindler’s list. Rebecca was a manicurist for Amon Goeth, which is how she got wind of “the list.” The Baus were eventually separated – think of this woman, who got her husband on the list, while she wasn’t on the list herself – think of that – She was sent to Auschwitz. She was marked for the gas chambers three times, by Joseph Mengele himself – and ended up escaping (once, literally: she snuck out of line and joined the other line, just for “examinations”). At any rate, she made it through the war – and husband and wife were reunited- by sheer chance – in a refugee camp. ANYWAY. What makes this book so haunting, besides the terrible story, is Bau’s illustrations. They are burned into my brain. They are living nightmares. Here is the cover: And there’s more where that came from. Bau is a brilliant artist. The book at times is almost literally unbearable. But you never everforget it.
Posted in Actors , Books, Directors
, Music
, writers
| Tagged African Queen, Angela's Ashes
, Anjelica Huston
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, Baby Doll
, Benjamin Franklin
, Born Standing
Up , Bruce
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Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Elia Kazan
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, Elvis Presley
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, Ginger Rogers
, Goldie Hawn
, Group Theatre
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, Jeanette Winterson, John
Strasberg ,
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Turner , Lana
Turner , Lauren Bacall, Lee Strasberg
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, Memoirs
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, Rosalind Russell
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, Shelley Winters
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, Stefan Zweig
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Victor Serge , WWII
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“HEARING FOR THE FIRST TIME WAS LIKE BUSTING OUT OF JAIL.”– BOB DYLAN
Posted on May 24, 2020 bysheila
For Bob Dylan’s birthday “When I first heard Elvis Presley’s voice I just knew that I wasn’t going to work for anybody and nobody was going to be my boss. Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail.” –Bob Dylan
“Nobody was going to be my boss” is one of my favorite comments from a fellow musician on the impact Elvis had. There’s also this from Keith Richards’ great memoir . My favorite comment about Elvis very well may be George Harrison’s response to the question from an interviewer about his musical roots. Harrison, surprisingly, said he didn’t have any musical roots. The only “root” he could think of was from when he was a kid in Liverpool, hearing “Heartbreak Hotel” playing through an open window. But Dylan: hearing a song, hearing a singer, on the radio, and suddenly knowing that “nobody was going to be my boss”? _Bob Dylan considering Elvis_ Elvis recorded Dylan’s song “Tomorrow is a Long Time” in 1966. Dylan had written it, and recorded a demo of it in the early 60s. He played it in his concerts, and others started recording it. (Everyone recorded it, including Odetta, which is how Elvis heard it.) No matter. Elvis’ cover was buried on the soundtrack album for the movie _Spinout_, and it didn’t make a splash of any kind (and it should have, it’s a high point of his 60s recordings, and different from anything else he ever did, before or since.) Elvis sang a couple of other Dylan songs during his live shows in the 70s, “Don’t Think Twice,” and “I Shall Be Released” – and he liked “Blowin in the Wind”, and would sing it around the piano with his buddies (there’s a tape recording of this), even though it seems like Elvis and Dylan would have had nothing in common, especially socially/politically. But “Tomorrow is Such a Long Time” is the best of all of these. It’s haunting, eerie, James Burton showing his genius with his Telecaster. Dylan officially released the song in 1971, I believe, after a decade of performing it live, and a decade where everyone and their grandmother had recorded it. It was one of_those_ songs.
Bob Dylan: “The highlight of my career? That’s easy, Elvis recording one of my songs.” CODA: I wrote about Martin Scorsese’s film _Rolling Thunder Revue_ for my _Film Comment_ column. Posted in Music , On This Day| Tagged Bob Dylan
, Elvis Presley
| 23 Comments
NEXT WEEK ON ESPN: LANCE ARMSTRONG Posted on May 22, 2020 bysheila
I’m really looking forward to ESPN’s two-part documentary _Lance_, airing in two parts next week. I’ve always been fascinated by this guy. Brian Tallerico’s review at Eberthas me even
more intrigued. I wish I wasn’t in quarantine so Allison and I could watch it together. Maybe we can stream it together via Zoom orsomething.
Cycling fans: what have been the repercussions in the sport ever since this debacle? Have things changed? Where do things stand now in professional cycling? Posted in Movies | Tagged documentary , sportsmovies | Leave a
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REVIEW: _AKA JANE ROE_ (2020) Posted on May 22, 2020 bysheila
I reviewed the new Hulu doc _AKA Jane Roe_,
where “Jane Roe” (aka Norma McCorvey) makes her “death bed confession”, which I’m sure you’ve all heard about by now: it’s made international headlines, obviously since advance press screeners went out this week – the news exploded around the world. I walked away from this mostly blown away by the interview with Rev. Schenck. I treasure honesty like he shows. It’s rare in today’s black-and-white no-forgiveness-no-mercy world. This will be a minority opinion. But he is rocked to the CORE by what he was a part of, and he is willing to say he was wrong, and to do what he can do to repent and make it right. He came off devastated, as far as I’m concerned. I am also haunted by Connie, Norma’s life-partner, whom she was forced to relinquish once she got all tangled up with those Christian right bozos. Haunted by the whole thing. Posted in Movies | Tagged documentary | Leave acomment
“WHEN I AIM AT PRAISE, THEY SAY I BITE.” — ALEXANDER POPE Posted on May 21, 2020 bysheila
How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! -— Alexander Pope, from “Eloisa to Abelard” Alexander Pope was born on this day in 1688. He was so huge in his day, so talked-about, so hated and feared by some writers – and so loved by other writers – that his lapse into total obscurity for over a century – until he was rediscovered in the 20th century, is one of those fascinating phenomena that happens in literature. People are “in style” and then they aren’t, and someone as huge as Pope was destined to be a huge target. Writers reacted _against_ him – and the whole Neoclassical period – for 100 years. Following Pope and his generation was the Romantics, and Romanticism swept Europe, and in many ways, we have never gone back. The Romantics changed everything. The 18th century Enlightenment yielded to subjective Romanticism which morphed into late 19th century curlicues, which was then demolished by Modernism. As Ezra Pound commanded: “Make it new!” But let’s get back to Pope. I came across a fact about him, and I cannot confirm this, but it would not surprise me if it were true: He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, coming after Shakespeare and Tennyson. Wow. Tennyson’s probably in there for “nature is red in tooth and claw” alone, followed closely by ““Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” (speak for yourself, pallie.) And Pope, I imagine, could be in there for the sheer popularity of “To err is human. To forgive, divine.” It’s in our lexicon to the degree that people quote it without knowing who wrote it. It doesn’t seem to have been “written” at all. He was so well-known that in 1771, a century after Pope was born, Robert Skipwith wrote to his pal Thomas Jefferson, asking for a list of books to make up “a gentleman’s library.” Under the FINE ARTS section were included:> Pope’s Iliad.
> Pope’s works. by Warburton. It was kind of exciting when one of my favorite movies of the last 30 years stole its title from a poem by Pope. It’s in the quote at the top of this post. And it was funny to see a very stoned Kirsten Dunst in the movie quote him … and then refer to him as “Pope Alexander”, because clearly she was just quoting what she read in some Quotations book where he was listed as “Pope, Alexander.” Pope lived during that weird era of upheaval in England in the aftermath of the Commonwealth/Restoration. He was born into a Catholic family, in a time when Catholics were barred from institutions/education. Pope was, as they say, home-schooled, and then went to a secret Roman Catholic school in London. As a child, his voice was so beautiful and flowing his nickname was “Little Nightingale.” Little would be prophetic. He developed a disease when he was 10, which stunted his growth and warped his body. It would be a lifelong affliction. He only grew to be four feet and change tall, and his back was hunched. One wonders if this had something to do with his aggression in print, as well as ambition – which manifested early. He put himself on display in print, and was only 23 years old when he published his first works, (_Pastorals_ and _Essay on Criticism_). He wanted to be a “playah.” He succeeded. He became famous almostimmediately.
Pope did not “play well with others” or “suffer fools.” One of his favorite words was “duncery.” He pointed fingers at Dunces and published a whole epic poem, with a title echoing _The Iliad_ called _The Dunciad_. He named names. He also lambasted “dullness”, writing a whole poem about it: > Born a Goddess, Dullness never dies. _Portrait of Alexander Pope. Studio of Godfrey Kneller, 1716_ Pope’s form was the “heroic couplet”, the perfect form for his particular brand of cleverness and/or bitchery. If you’re good, you can destroy someone in a couplet. Michael Schmidt, author of _Lives of the Poets_, wrote that Pope “perfected the precise couplet that clicks shut like a latch.” No escape. Especially for those Pope “went after.” And boy, he went after everyone. This comparison may seem crazy, but you read about Pope’s “beefs” with other writers of his day, all his contemporaries, is reminiscent of Eminem, whose beefs are legendary. (Just look up “Eminem Ja-Rule” or “Eminem Machine Gun Kelly” – just two examples – to see the LIBRARIES of commentary from hip-hop fans.) Just like Eminem, other writers crossed Pope at their peril. Pope slaughtered other poets in print to such a degree their reputations never recovered. Eminem has done the same thing to everyone who “crossed” him, including an entire magazine which sank into obscurity after he went after them. And let’s remember: we’re talking about fighting with WORDS. There were some poets Pope went after whose names would be buried in obscurity _if he hadn’t gone after them_, and made them legends in his own work. It may not be a comfortable way to live – in a sense of agitation and resentment – but it would be even WORSE if you didn’t have facility withlanguage.
Pope’s BFFs were John Gay (author of _The Beggar’s Opera_) and Jonathan Swift (a TITAN), and this is an important thing to remember. Pope invoked hatred and scorn in many. If his merits were debated for centuries afterwards, if his contemporaries despised/feared him, he was also capable of having deep lifelong friendships. So here are some examples of how Pope worked. He had educated himself mostly, immersing himself in the classics. He came out with translations of “The Iliad,” highly praised in some quarters, despised in others. He translated the whole thing into couplets, which undercut the heroism, mocked it even (there’s a reason it’s called “mock-heroic”). Couplets made the story pithy and artificial. He did the same thing with “The Odyssey.” He also came out with his own edited version of the works of Shakespeare, where he “cleaned up” Shakespeare’s lines, “correcting” the meter if it felt “off” to him, and also cut thousands of lines because he personally didn’t like them. !!! Another interesting thing about him: Pope was practically the inventor of Patreon. He was way out ahead of things. He ran his writing as a business, in an entrepreneurial “gotta get myself out there” way, in an era when that was just _not done_. He was one of the first poets who “went it alone” – without a sponsor, without a patron from the aristocracy/monarchy. Pope figured out a way to get his work out there, and still maintain his independence in print: He set up a subscription service for his works (i.e. a Patreon). And people paid, treating what he wrote like breaking-news dispatches. This tells you something about who he was and his stature. He released his translation of _The Iliad_ this way: people paid _in advance_, and then when it came out they all received inscribed editions. Okay this is long enough, and we haven’t even gotten to the quotes below this post. For me, compiling the quotes – from books I own, from poetry anthologies, from poetry sites – is the fun of it. It appeals to my archiving-indexing-obsessive soul! And I just toss them in there willy-nilly. No organizing principle. Two final things before I go. In 1712, Pope published “The Rape of the Lock.” It was based on a real-life incident, a ridiculous tempest in a teapot: A guy named Lord Petre was courting a dame named Arabella Fermor. One day, he cut off a lock of her hair without her permission. This caused an uproar between the two families. So Pope decided to write the story of “the rape of the lock” as THOUGH it was a heroic epic, a la _The Odyssey_. The whole thing is in heroic couplets, and written in a breathless sense of drama, as though clipping off a woman’s hair is akin to Helen of Troy being kidnapped. This was Pope’s style, his outlook. It’s also why sometimes his work doesn’t “travel.” If you don’t get the lampoon of it, if you don’t get the irony and satire (satire, since it deals with current events, often doesn’t travel), then you won’t get “The Rape of the Lock” at all. Pope was used to ruffling feathers with his writing. Feather-ruffling was why he was so popular and so feared. In 1728 came _The Dunciad_, which went after all of the “dunces” in England, and, by extension, England itself that keeps producing such dunces. _The Dunciad_ is full of such great quotes it’s almost overwhelming. “Lo! the dread empire, CHAOS! is restored; Light dies before the uncreating word: Thy hand, great anarch! lets the curtain fall, And universal darkness buries all.” “There’s nothing blackens like the ink of fools.” “Mad Mathesis alone was unconfined, Too mad for mere material chains to bind, Now to pure space lifts her ecstatic stare, Now running round the circle, finds it square.” “Joy to great Chaos! let Division reign: Chromatic tortures soon shall drive them hence, Break all their nerves, and fritter all their sense: One trill shall harmonize joy, grief, and rage, Wake the dull Church, and lull the ranting stage; To the same notes thy sons shall hum, or snore, And all thy yawning daughters cry, _encore_.”OUCH.
I’ll end by going back to the beginning: One of the first poems Pope wrote, when he was just a teenager, was “Ode on Solitude.” It is dazzlingly confident.ODE ON SOLITUDE
Happy the man, whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air,In his own ground.
Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, Whose flocks supply him with attire, Whose trees in summer yield him shade,In winter fire.
Blest, who can unconcernedly find Hours, days, and years slide soft away, In health of body, peace of mind,Quiet by day,
Sound sleep by night; study and ease, Together mixed; sweet recreation; And innocence, which most does please,With meditation.
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown; Thus unlamented let me die; Steal from the world, and not a stoneTell where I lie.
QUOTES:
JONATHAN SWIFT, “VERSES ON THE DEATH OF DR. SWIFT” (1731) In Pope, I cannot read a line, But with a sigh, I wish it mine: When he can in one couplet fix More sense than I can do in six: It gives me such a jealous fit, I cry, Pox take him, and his wit. MICHAEL SCHMIDT, _LIVES OF THE POETS_: > Does something happen to the English imagination in the latter part > of the seventeenth century, something radical and irreversible? T.S. > Eliot thinks so and calls it a “dissociation of sensibility.” It > is plausible to locate it in the complex historical events that led > to the Commonwealth and the Restoration: a break with cultural and > spiritual continuities and political certainties; a wave of > influence from the Continent, especially France, from where a king > returned; a new spirit of skepticism, new codes of decorum and > politeness, that Enlightenment which cast such murky darkness on the > world of instinct, intuition and spontaneity. Something happens to > the English mind to create the immense gap between Donne and Pope, > between poets who feel thought and poets who think. ALEXANDER POPE, _ESSAY ON CRITICISM_: > The _Sound_ must seem an _Eccho_ to the _Sense_.SAMUEL JOHNSON:
> His effusions were always voluntary. HAROLD BLOOM, _THE BEST POEMS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE_: > At his rhetorical best, Pope is not quite the embattled defender of > Enlightened England he declared himself to be. His fear of universal > madness, of the return of a nihilistic abyss, is more than a > personal pathology or ideology. ALEXANDER POPE, SCORNING THE MANY POETS OF CHARLES II’S COURT: > A mob of gentlemen who wrote verses. T.S. ELIOT, FROM “ANDREW MARVELL”, 1921: > Pope, the great master of hatred. MICHAEL SCHMIDT, _LIVES OF THE POETS_: > The most brilliant poet of the eighteenth century would have been a > composite figure made up of the three poet-friends, Swift, Pope and > John Gay. Swift’s savagery rooted in a concern for common people, > Pope’s verve and imaginative profligacy, and Gay’s gentle good > cheer might, taken together, have given us a writer of > Shakespearean–or at least Chaucerian–proportions. Genius was > parceled out, not combined, in the eighteenth century. HAROLD BLOOM, _THE BEST POEMS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE_: > perfect pitch.THOMAS DE QUINCEY:
> His grammar is, indeed, vicious; preterites and participles he > constantly confounds, and registers this class of blunders for ever > by the cast-iron index of rhymes that never _can_ mend. But worse > than this mode of his viciousness is his syntax, which is so bad as > to darken his meaning at times, and at other times to defeat it. But > these were errors cleaving to his times; and it would be unfair to > exact from Pope a better quality of diction than belonged to his > contemporaries. Still it is indisputable that a better model of > diction and grammar prevailed a century before Pope. In Spenser, in > Shakespeare, in the Bible of King James’s reign, and in Milton, > there are very few grammatical errors. But Pope’s defect in > language was almost peculiar to himself. It lay in an inability, > nursed doubtless by indolence, to carry out and perfect the > expression of the thought he wishes to communicate. The language > does not realize the idea: it simply suggests or hints it. ALEXANDER POPE ON GEORGE CHAPMAN, WHOSE TRANSLATION OF HOMER WAS LATER IMMORTALIZED BY JOHN KEATS: > …a daring fiery spirit that animates his translation, which is > something like what one might imagine Homer himself to have writ > before he arrived at years of discretion.MR. POPE (1928)
BY ALLEN TATE
When Alexander Pope strolled in the city Strict was the glint of pearl and ”old sedans. Ladies leaned out more out of fear than pity For Pope’s tight back was rather a goat’s than man’s Often one thinks the urn should have more bones Than skeletons provide for speedy dust, The urn gets hollow, cobwebs brittle as stones Weave to the funeral shell a frivolous rust. And he who dribbled couplets like a snake Coiled to a lithe precision in the sun Is missing. The jar is empty; you may break It only to find that Mr. Pope is gone. What requisitions of a verity Prompted the wit and rage between his teeth One cannot say. Around a crooked tree A moral climbs whose name should be a wreath. ROBERT LOWELL, LETTER TO ELIZABETH BISHOP, FEBRUARY 25, 1948: > I have been reading masses of Pope and Faulkner–a wonderful pair > to have together.SAMUEL JOHNSON:
> Never was penury of knowledge and vulgarity of sentiment so happily> disguised.
HOWARD D. WEINBROT:
> Eclectic, hostile, and both sublime and vulgar. ALEXANDER POPE ON JOHN GAY: > treated with more fondness than respect…He was a natural > man, without design, who spoke what he thought and just as he> thought it.
MR. POPE’S WELCOME FROM GREECEBY JOHN GAY
Long hast thou, friend, been absent from thy soil, Like patient Ithacus at siege of Troy; I have been witness of thy six years’ toil, Thy daily labours and thy night’s annoy, Lost to thy native land with great turmoil, On the wide sea, oft threat’ning to destroy: Methinks with thee I’ve trod Sigaean ground, And heard the shores of Hellespont resound. Did I not see thee when thou first sett’st sail To seek adventures fair in Homer’s land? Did I not see thy sinking spirits fail And wish thy bark had never left the strand? Ev’n in mid ocean didst thou quail And oft lift up thy holy eye and hand, Praying the Virgin dear and saintly choir, Back to the port to bring thy bark entire.(full poem her
e Those 18th
century guys did go on.) HAROLD BLOOM, _THE BEST POEMS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE_: > How do you refine John Milton? Pope and Dr. Johnson alike handle > Milton in their own poetry in ways very different from Pope’s > refinement of Dryden or Johnson’s reliance upon Pope. The > exquisite parodies of Milton in _The Rape of the Lock_, and the > wonderfully grotesque Miltonic mock-sublimities of _The Dunciad_, > are remarkable examples of the Nietzschean, daemonic dance of > influence-as-parody, much more than they are mimetic or mercantile > refinements. Milton and nature are hardly everywhere the same, and > Paradise Lost is a difficult native resource to convert into trade.THOMAS DE QUINCEY:
> The Satires were so far of external origin. They were not prompted > by the “satiric heart,” but by the prevailing fashion of the > Walpolian era, the fashion of unrestrained invective. Pope was > conscious of a talent for caustic effects, conscious that he could > do better than any one what every one else was doing–sting with> epigram.
SAMUEL JOHNSON:
> He wrote in such a manner as might expose him to few hazards. He > used almost always the same fabric of verse; and, indeed, by those > few essays which he made of any other, he did not enlarge his > reputation…By perpetual practice, language had, in his mind, a > systematic arrangement; having always the same use for words, he had > words so selected and combined as to be ready at his call. WILLIAM BROOME, WHO COLLABORATED WITH POPE, ON THE REACTION TO POPE’S _THE DUNCIAD_: > “I wonder he is not thrashed, but his littleness is his > protection; no man shoots a wren.”WILLIAM BLAKE:
> I do not condemn Pope or Dryden because they did not understand > imagination, but because they did not understand verse. MICHAEL SCHMIDT, _LIVES OF THE POETS_, ON “RAPE OF THE LOCK”: > Pope is at home in the world he describes, half seduced by its > opulence, and if not willing to forgive, reluctant to chastise > excesses, which he pushes in his poem to further excess. Yet at the > fringes of his poem a cruel social world peeps in. THOMAS DE QUINCEY ON POPE’S “ESSAY ON MAN”: > sins chiefly by want of central principle, and by want thereof > of all coherency amongst the separate thoughts.FORD MADOX FORD:
> It has well been said of Pope that his work divides itself into > three periods which correspond to the three reigns under which he > wrote. Under Queen Anne he was a personal pastoral English poet; > under George I he was a translator and ‘made much money by > satisfying the French-classical taste of his day with versions of > the Iliad and the Odyssey and with bitter-sweet poems of the bag-wig > and sword-knot type’…The heavy materialism and gross agnostic > alchoholism settled on the country that had driven out the Stuarts > and forgotten the piety and music of Herbert and Donne; so Pope > turned his mind to the problems of his age. And in a series of poems > that were ‘serious’ and censorious enough he made his muse sing> his day.
HAROLD BLOOM, _THE BEST POEMS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE_: > , the gorgeous Belinda, universal flirt, is > aptly portrayed as a sunrise, warm to all but partial to none in > particular. The Popean wit, Mozartean in its classical playfulness, > achieves apotheosis in a couplet that commends itself to everyone:>
>> On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore, >> Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore. MICHAEL SCHMIDT, _LIVES OF THE POETS_: > He was able in the _Essay on Man_ to change the description of > nature as a “mighty maze, and all without a plan” to a “mighty > maze but not without a plan” when it was suggested that his vision > was too negative. So radical a change, casually made, reveals the > shallow current of his thought. JONATHAN SWIFT, LETTER TO POPE, 1725: > I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all > my love is toward individuals: for instance, I hate the tribe of > lawyers, but I love Counsellor Such-a-one and Judge Such-a-one: so > with physicians – I will not speak of my own trade – soldiers, > English, Scotch, French, and the rest. But principally I hate and > detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, > Thomas, and so forth. This is the system upon which I have governed > myself many years, but do not tell, and so I shall go on till I have > done with them. I have got materials toward a treatise, proving the > falsity of that definition animal rationale, and to show it would be > only rationis capax. Upon this great foundation of misanthropy, > though not in Timon’s manner, the whole building of my Travels is > erected; and I never will have peace of mind till all honest men are > of my opinion. By consequence you are to embrace it immediately, and > procure that all who deserve my esteem may do so too. The matter is > so clear that it will admit of no dispute; nay, I will hold a > hundred pounds that you and I agree in the point. REUBEN BROWER ON “THE RAPE OF THE LOCK”: > By inventing the sylphs Pope solved the almost impossible problems > that the theorists set for the heroic poet. He is almost certainly > the only modern poet to create a company of believable deities which > are not simply the ancient classical divinities in modern dress, and > which are not offensive to a Christian audience. ALEXANDER POPE, _PREFACE TO THE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE_ (1725): > It is ever the nature of parties to be in extremes; and nothing is > so probable, as that because Ben Jonson had much the more learning, > it was said on the other hand that Shakespeare had none at all; and > because Shakespeare had much the most wit and fancy, it was retorted > on the other, that Jonson wanted both. Because Shakespeare borrowed > nothing, it was said that Ben Jonson borrowed everything. HAROLD BLOOM, _THE BEST POEMS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE_, ON “THE RAPEOF THE LOCK”:
> One of the most poised and artful poems in Western literature.DAVID B. MORRIS:
> There is no more profound kinship between Pope and Dryden than the > belief that poetry advances by refining the achievements of the> past.
MICHAEL SCHMIDT, _LIVES OF THE POETS_: > His best writing depends on the elusive way he makes solid an > abstract or moralizing passage by combining unexpected words, and by > rhyme that seals the “conjunction disjunctive” (Coleridge’s > phrase) of the couplets … Pope’s contain at their > best a paradox, an irresolution, which compels us to read on.DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON:
> Pope searches the pages o Dryden for happy combinations of Delphick > diction, but it will not be denied that he added much to what he > found. He cultivated our language with so much diligence and art, > that he has left in his _Homer_ a treasure of poetical elegances to > posterity. His version may be said to have tuned the English tongue; > for since its appearance no writer, however deficient in other > powers, has wanted melody. Such a series of lines so elaborately > corrected, and so sweetly modulated, took possession of the publick > ear; the vulgar was enamoured of the poem, and the learned wondered > at the translation. ALLEN GINSBERG TO STUDENTS IN A “BASIC POETICS,” CLASS, ON CHRISTOPHER SMART, MAY 26, 1980: > “Kerouac’s long line comes somewhat out of Christopher Smart > also. Smart is smarter than anybody else around. His language is > smarter than Pope or Dryden. Their’s is very stiff, compared to > the liquidity and intelligence and humor (of Smart), as well as > classical scholarship involved, as well as a pure vernacular > improvisation and contemporary quotidian reverence.” HAROLD BLOOM, _THE BEST POEMS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE_: > The line from Jonson to Johnson may be called the > Neoclassic, a version of literary history that has its most > influential manifesto in Pope’s early Essay on Criticism, regarded > by Johnson as sufficient in itself to “have placed him among the > first criticks and the first poets,” another uncharacteristic of > Johnsonian hyperbole, doubtless traceable to ideological exuberance. MICHAEL SCHMIDT, _LIVES OF THE POETS_: > Pope…thinks in shapes and forms, exploits reversals, contains his > meanings in the figures themselves but works as it were with > atomized forms and metaphors, divorced from the expected context and > releasing new meanings in an original context. His poetry tends to > fragment into brilliant shards. WILLIAM BLAKE ON POPE’S TRANSLATION OF THE _ILIAD_: Thus Hayley on his Toilette seeing the sope Cries Homer is very much improved by Pope. ALEXANDER POPE, LETTER TO JOHN GAY (16 OCTOBER 1727): > I have many years magnify’d in my own mind, and repeated to you a > ninth Beatitude, added to the eight in the Scripture: Blessed is he > who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.H.L. MENCKEN:
> The more the facts are studied, the more they bear it out. In those > fields of art, at all events, which concern themselves with ideas as > well as with sensations it is almost impossible to find any trace of > an artist who was not actively hostile to his environment, and thus > an indifferent patriot. From Dante to Tolstoy and from Shakespeare > to Mark Twain the story is ever the same. Names suggest themselves > instantly: Goethe, Heine, Shelley, Byron, Thackeray, Balzac, > Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift, Dostoevsky, Carlyle, Moliere, Pope – > all bitter critics of their time and nation, most of them piously > hated by the contemporary 100 per centers, some of them actually > fugitives from rage and reprisal. MARTIN PRICE ON “THE RAPE OF THE LOCK”: > The heroic-turned-artful. JAMES BOSWELL, _THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON_: > I mentioned the vulgar saying, that Pope’s Homer was not a good > representation of the original. Johnson. “Sir, it is the greatest > work of the kind that has ever been produced.” HAROLD BLOOM, _THE BEST POEMS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE_, ON “THE RAPEOF THE LOCK”:
> Pope is neither like Donne nor his modernist followers, who give us > a sense that baroque elaboration of metaphor is almost infinitely > possible, nor is Pope like Milton and his Romantic followers, > including such twentieth-century Romantics as W.B. Yeats and Wallace > Stevens, who so station their allusions as to make further > figuration almost redundant. In his own mode of refinement, Pope > lightly but strongly intimates that more turnings of allusion always > are possible, while charmingly insinuating that the elegance and > justice of his tropes will constitute a proper haven for the amiable> reader.
MICHAEL SCHMIDT, _LIVES OF THE POETS_: > He writes with assurance and authority which set at nothing the > animosity his character arouses. He wrote even his letters for > publication; in his privacies (there are few _intimacies_) he felt > himself to be on show, accountable to his idea of himself. DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON ON “THE DUNCIAD”: > Pope’s irascibility prevailed … Pope confessed his own pain by > his anger; but he gave no pain to those who had provoked him. GEORGE GILFILLAN, 1856, ON POPE’S TALENT: > “…a rose peering into the summer air, fine, rather than> powerful.”
LORD BYRON, LETTER, 1821: > I look upon a proper appreciation of Pope as a touchstone of taste. HAROLD BLOOM, _THE BEST POEMS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE_: > In Dryden and Pope, refining the tradition meant extending the realm > of Enlightenment, by continuing to dispel the empire of Enthusiasm. > Theodicy without enthusiasm might be described as the project of > Pope’s _Essay on Man_, an admirable project doubtless, but perhaps > not suited to the Muse.ALEXANDER POPE:
> The most positive men are the most credulous. MICHAEL SCHMIDT, _LIVES OF THE POETS_, ON POPE’S USE OF SATIRE: > For Pope the ideal order is no longer tangibly embodied, there is no > “right” party, no legitimate order: his satiric exaggerations do > not always suggest a norm, his distortions contain more malice than > instructive justness. LYTTON STRACHEY, 1925: > The verses, when they were written, resemble nothing so much as > spoonfuls of boiling oil, ladled out by a fiendish monkey at an > upstairs window upon such passers-by whom the wretch had a grudge> against.
VOLTAIRE:
> He is in my opinion the most elegant, the most correct poet; and at > the same time the most harmonious that England ever gave birth to. MAYNARD MACK ON “THE DUNCIAD”: > In many ways the greatest act of folly in Pope’s life. > one of the most challenging and distinctive works > in the history of English poetry, it bore bitter fruit. It > brought the poet in his own time the hostility of its victims and > their sympathizers, who pursued him implacably from then on with a > few damaging truths and a host of slanders and lies. MICHAEL SCHMIDT, _LIVES OF THE POETS_, ON POPE’S “ODE ONSOLITUDE”:
> Like the voice of an inmate of Gray’s churchyard, its resignation > (a literary stance) is credible because the form is so astonishingly > achieved, phrases building precisely, now gathering evidence, now > deploying it, so that the conclusion is not only just but > inevitable. The second stanza anticipates the future poet: fields > yield bread and sheep clothing, the images translated into a market > value: it matters less what they are than what they provide. HAROLD BLOOM, _THE BEST POEMS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE_: > “When I aim at praise, they say I bite,” Pope protests, and we > recognize that no satirist since in the language, from Byron to > Waugh, is Pope’s peer. But if that were the limit of Pope’s > satirical art, we would not be obliged to admit him among the > strongest poets in the language. What makes him so formidable, a > Milton among satirists, is The Dunciad, certainly the poetic > masterpiece of its century.ALEXANDER POPE:
> I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another’s > misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.OSCAR WILDE:
> There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, > the other is to read Pope. JOHN DENNIS, _REFLECTIONS CRITICAL AND SATYRICAL, UPON A LATE RHAPSODY, CALL’D, AN ESSAY UPON CRITICISM_ (1711): > A young, squab, short gentleman, whose outward form, though it > should be that of downright monkey, would not differ so much from > human shape as his unthinking immaterial part does from human > understanding. … As there is no creature in nature so venomous, > there is nothing so stupid and so impotent as a hunch-back’d toad. > … This little author may extol the ancients as much and as long as > he pleases, but he has reason to thank the good gods that he was > born a modern. For had he been born of Grecian parents, and his > father by consequence had by law the absolute disposal of him, his > life had been no longer than that of one of his poems,—the life of> half a day.
HAROLD BLOOM, _THE BEST POEMS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE_, ON “THEDUNCIAD”:
> Clearly, Johnson strongly misread _The Dunciad_, since he refused to > believe that the poem’s design was moral. He found in it > “petulance and malignity enough,” granted it some beauties, and > condemned “the grossness of its images,” which he rightly found > Swiftian. Certainly a comparison of the savagery of _The Dunciad_ > with the compassion of _The Vanity of Human Wishes_ will convince us > that Johnson had a profounder moral intellect than Pope, and was > much the better man, but _The Dunciad_ is immensely the finer poem, > beautifully eloquent and humane as _The Vanity of Human Wishes_> remains.
WILLIAM COWPER, “CRITICAL REMARKS ON POPE’S HOMER”, 1785: > _The Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_, in his hands, have no more the air of > antiquity than if he had himself invented them.ALEXANDER POPE:
> It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow necked bottles: the > less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring it out. JOHN DENNIS, _REMARKS UPON MR. POPE’S TRANSLATION OF HOMER_ (1717): > The little gentleman … with a most comical and unparalleled > assurance, has undertaken to translate Homer from Greek, of which he > does not know one word, into English, which he understands almost as> little.
MAGDALEN RACKETT, POPE’S SISTER, ON ALL THE THREATS HE RECEIVEDPOST-“DUNCIAD”:
> “My brother does not seem to know what fear is.”ALEXANDER POPE:
> True politeness consists in the being easy one-self, and making > every body about one as easy as we can. HAROLD BLOOM, _THE BEST POEMS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE_, ON “THE RAPEOF THE LOCK”:
> The greatness of _The Rape of the Lock_ is that it may be the only > poem that seems to demand Mozartean comparisons, because it too is > infinitely nuanced, absolutely controlled, and yet finally poignant > in the highest degree.WILLIAM WORDSWORTH:
> As far as Pope goes, he succeeds; but his Homer is not Homer, but> Pope.
ALEXANDER POPE:
> He who tells a lie, is not sensible how great a task he undertakes; > for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one. HAROLD BLOOM, _THE BEST POEMS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE_, ON “THEDUNCIAD”:
> The trouble at the core of Milton is also Pope’s, whose relation > to Milton was very unlike his relation to Dryden. Whatever the force > of the poetic past was to Pope, that part of it he felt emanating > from Milton was beyond refinement. “Darkness visible,” the > Miltonic legacy after all, returned as the inevitable trope for > Pope’s sense of what lay always beyond the possibilities of the> Enlightenment.
ALEXANDER POPE’S FINAL WORDS ON HIS DEATHBED IN 1774: > “Here am I, dying of a hundred good symptoms.” Posted in On This Day , writers | Tagged Alexander Pope, Christopher Smart
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100 YEARS AGO TODAY: OSCAR MICHEAUX’S _WITHIN OUR GATES_ Posted on May 20, 2020 bysheila
There’s this really cool site/project called NYC 1920 – a day by day archive of events in NYC exactly 100 years ago. It’s created and edited by a friend of mine, author/scholar/literature professor Jonathan Goldman, whom I met through the boisterous James-Joyce-fans/scholars-and-Modernists-fans-in-general community here in New York. Most entries in NYC 1920 are by Jonathan but he asked me to contribute. So I wrote about African-American filmmaking pioneer Oscar Micheaux’s second film _Within Our Gates_, which began its 5 day run at the Lincoln Theatre in Harlem on this day. If you don’t know about Oscar Micheaux, just know that anyone who claims Tyler Perry is the first African-American to own his own studio and production company – and there are many who claim this – is erasing Oscar Micheaux’s monumental contributions. He had his own studio, he produced over 40 films, which he also wrote and directed. He was in charge of his own output. Admitting this does not lessen Tyler Perry’s achievements. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. Here’s my post on NYC 1920 about Micheaux’s _Within Our Gates_. Definitely bookmark the site! It’s a pit stop I make every day since it’s laid out in calendar format, and Jonathan digs up the coolest stuff by scouring old newspaper clippings. Posted in Directors , Movies, On This Day
| Tagged drama
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_DANCE, GIRL, DANCE_ (1940): CRITERION RELEASE TODAY 5/19 Posted on May 19, 2020 bysheila
My second Criterion booklet essay to come out in one month. Taking a moment to be proud of this. First came _The Great Escape_ (my essayhere
),
and now my essay for the long-awaited release of Dorothy Arzner’s _Dance, Girl, Dance_. It was her penultimate film. She was the only female director under contract during the Studio era: her career ranged from the silents until her final film in 1943. She lived many more years, eventually teaching at UCLA, where one of her young students, Francis Ford Coppola, remembered her fondly. _Dance, Girl, Dance_ stars Maureen O’Hara and Lucille Ball – plus Ralph Bellamy and Maria Ouspenskaya!. Here’s Arzner directing the film, chatting with Maureen O’Hara: This film is well-known among serious cinephiles, particularly those who love pre-Codes, as well as feminist film scholars, and Lucille Ball/Maureen O’Hara fans. But it’s not as well-known to the general public, and so it’s really exciting that more people will be able to see it now, AND it’s an honor to be part of this release. So! You can purchase the film here, and if you
want to learn more about it, I researched my damn tutu off for the essay which is here: _Dance, Girl, Dance_: Gotta Dance.
Posted in Movies | Tagged dance , Dorothy Arzner, Lucille Ball
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MUSIC MONDAY: CLUB BABY HEAD, PT. 2: AU REVOIR, BUFFALO TOM!, BYBRENDAN O’MALLEY
Posted on May 18, 2020 bysheila
_My talented brother Brendan O’Malley is an amazing writer and actor. He’s wonderful in the recent _You & Me_, directed by Alexander Baack. (I interviewed Baack about the film here .) His most recent gig was story editor/writer on the hit series _Survivor’s Remorse_. Brendan hasn’t blogged in years, but the “content” (dreaded word) is so good I asked if I could import some of it to my blog. I just wrapped up posting his 50 Best Albums. But I figured
I’d keep “Music Monday” going with more of the stuff Bren wroteabout music._
_ _
_Bren’s writing is part music-critique, part memoir, part cultural snapshot. Many of these pieces were written a decade ago, so I am happy to share it with you!_ CLUB BABY HEAD, PT. 2: AU REVOIR, BUFFALO TOM! I was off to France. It had been quite a summer. In many ways I was already finished with college. I started working at a group home for adults with developmental disabilities. I spent time out in the woods cutting down trees with these new strange co-workers and got Lyme’s Disease. And all along I prepared to leave the United States. The Lyme’s Disease put a big crimp in my work/social schedule. Mostly I sat around and watched movies. Two movies to be more specific. _Crimes and Misdemeanors_ and _Goodfellas_. Seen back to back, their dual nihilism and dark-hearted joy matched my innardsperfectly.
I’d made many new friends through the group home, including a family from Westerly. John was a big good-hearted environmentalist and artist. His brothers and sisters were all interesting folks with eclectic pursuits. We bonded over music and illegal drugs. I attended many parties connected to this new crowd. I remember being surprised that I’d made new friends in Rhode Island. Just as I was leaving the country a whole new scene opened up for me, a scene I would revisit upon my return in a year. I remember a sprawling lawn at their Westerly compound swarming with inebriates. Pockets of people stood around acoustic guitars. The statues that John had been making out of scrap iron stood like sentinels. Fires blazed in garbage cans. John’s sister was down from Boston. We struck up a conversation which almost immediately centered around my leaving for France. She had a young baby which was asleep in the upstairs bedroom of the house. In what seems to be a pattern (see earlier post “Just Before Sonic Youth” ), she wanted me to see her baby. Her marriage was troubled. She was at acrossroads.
Somehow my newness to the circle combined with the fact that I was so shortly leaving created an immediate sense of intimacy. We stood in the darkness and looked down at the sleeping beauty. Why she needed me to witness this I couldn’t say. There wasn’t anything illicit or sensual about it but it went far beyond simple parental pride. The rest of the summer was a blur. Every event I attended became a farewell. My leaving leant intensity to gatherings. Old flirtations were revived and admitted. Once again cousin Liam comes into play. He’d given me a copy of Buffalo Tom’s eponymous debut album. I love this album. I almost wore it out that summer. So when Club Baby Head announced their August schedule and Buffalo Tom was on it, I knew I wanted to tie it in to my farewell party. All of my disparate crowds met in Providence that night to see Buffalo Tom. Some like the John/group home crowd were indie music aficionados and knew all about BT. Others, like my theater crew, had never even heard of Club Baby Head, let alone Buffalo Tom. If you’ve never seen Buffalo Tom live, the main thing to keep in mind is passion. They are never less than fully engaged. You always have the sense that they are playing as hard as they can. They sweat, they laugh, they egg each other on. I’ve come to know them over the years. Bill Janowitz wrote music for a play my cousin Mike wrote that I acted in, he wrote a new theme song for _Yes, Dear_ at Mike’s insistence, Buffalo Tom actually reunited to play Mike’s wedding,for pete’s sake!
But at this point they were not known to me personally. Their emotional commitment gave me and all of my fellow revelers the permission to go whole hog with sentimentality over my impendingex-patriation.
Who showed up? Johnny’s sister. She’d heard about it through John and driven down from Boston to say goodbye. I’d only met her once before! She gave me her address and asked that I write to her from France. It would let her know that the world was larger than her particular set of problems. I agreed and we did wind up writing a few letters back and forth. In one of them I recounted to her how I’d gone to London to visit an ex-girlfriend/old friend. We’d gone out on the town and taken in a concert. Buffalo Tom! In London! I don’t know if her marriage survived. I know that the family has faced some difficult times of late. I’ve heard this through the grapevine 73 times removed. How strange that Bill Janowitz knows my name and hugs me when we meet and the family from Westerly have receded into my past. Like Woody Allen sitting with Martin Landau discussing murder, like Ray Liotta in slippers on his Arizona doorstep, I stand in disbelief at how far I’ve come.PART OF A SERIES
Club Baby Head, Pt. 1: The Enduring Mystery of the Opening ActADDITIONAL
My cousin Mike wrote the liner notes for Buffalo Tom’s 8th album, which he kindly allowed me to share here.
Posted in Music | Tagged family , Music Monday| Leave a comment
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