Archives for April 7, 2005

If you ask it, they will answer. Thanks to all of the readers who lent their brains for picking yesterday and this morning, taking on my question about fiction containing fictional fiction/poetry–or better, as one correspondent puts it, “writers writing writers’ writing.” This actually goes to what’s only a minor point in the review I’m writing, but the input was helpful in a few different ways. First, I figured out what was the elephant in the room I was overlooking–it’s apparently The World According to Garp, which was cited by a majority of people who wrote and which I haven’t read but soon will have. Second, I have added several other titles to my Read Me! list. I can’t in good conscience write about any of these in my piece, not having read them, but I can happily put them in the queue. Third, there was simply a lot of good food for thought in the (veritable torrent of) email I received. I’m planning a longer follow-up post, to be written after the review.

When the review appears, I’ll certainly link to it here. In the meantime, thanks to everyone who helped. You guys are so much better than ye olde Google.

I really think I blogged enough on Wednesday, don’t you? I checked, and it came to about 3,500 words, the length of one of my Commentary essays. I guess that answers the question of whether or not I’d still write if I didn’t get paid for it….

Anyway, the whole of Thursday will be devoted exclusively to Hotter Than That: A Life of Louis Armstrong, followed by a trip downtown to see a play that I will be viewing in the company of a Blogger to Be Named Later.

See you Friday.

I’ve been stockpiling cool links for the past couple of months (some of which I poached long ago from other bloggers whose names I’ve forgotten–please forgive me in advance!). Now that I finally have a free evening, I’ll empty the bulging bag. Enjoy.

– Sarah mulls over a question with which I, too, have been much preoccupied of late:

Persona can be a very, very tricky thing. In my own case I tend to present different sides of myself to different people so who knows how many different versions of “me” actually exist. But I remember when I first met Jennifer Weiner last fall, and she has a very open public manner–the kind that makes people believe they could instantly be her friend. And I definitely felt that, but also wondered how easy it could be for people to misinterpret that vibe and try to get “too close” and possibly overstep boundaries….

It’s a good question, and it begs others: how “real” are the public faces of public figures? And how real ought they to be? When you create a second self for public consumption, does it tend over time to swallow up the private self? Or can a bright line be drawn between the two?

– Here’s another good question: should autobiographers tell the truth? Brenda Coulter thinks so:

Years ago, my husband was a huge James Herriot fan. He read every one of Herriot’s books and he lived for the weekly installment of PBS’s All Creatures Great and Small. So when I, thinking of Arthurian legend and a Wagnerian opera, suggested that we name our first child Tristan, my husband eagerly assented because he admired the irrepressible Tristan Farnon he’d read about in the Herriot books.

I, too, thought Herriot’s stories were warm and funny. But I quickly lost interest in the author when I learned he had been writing novels rather than memoirs….

Give me the truth or give me a made-up story. Just don’t mix the two and leave me to wonder which I’m reading.

– My Stupid Dog on Branson:

In Branson, the lion’s share of “music shows” consist of people who can no longer sing, performing to people who can no longer hear….

Yikes!

– Here’s the funniest spoof I’ve seen in ages…

– …and here’s the best map.

– Unsnobbish wisdom From the Floor:

Tourists don’t really go to the Louvre to look at the Mona Lisa. They go so that when they return home they can tell friends that they saw the painting.

Those of us who spend time looking at and writing about art tend to be condescending toward the masses that gather in front of da Vinci’s painting–looking, as they do, to the work to provide validation for their trip to Paris.

Unfortunately, though, many of us do the same. Reading through top ten list after top ten list this month in both the print media and around the blogosphere has made me realize that too many art writers neglect seeing exhibitions in their haste to prepare for saying that they have seen them….

– Speaking of lists, I love this one.

– Cinetrix answers a trivia question that’s been on my mind ever since L.A. Confidential was released…

– …while Kulturblog unlocks the secrets of Technicolor. The teaser: “I’ll bet you all didn’t know that Technicolor films were shot on black and white film.” (Correct.)

– Department of Really Beautiful Soundbites: Listen to the singing of Roland Hayes here. (If you don’t know who he was, click on the link and find out.)

– Speaking of singers, “Heather,” a California pianist who blogs (and very thoughtfully, too) at in the wings, meditates on the eternal mysteries:

They always wore the most flattering shades of lipstick and the sexiest, must-have-been-bought-abroad shoes. Their necks never without a prettily patterned scarf, they talked of where to go for perfectly plucked eyebrows, fresh lemon wedges and curative cups of tea. The men carried their ribcages high, but effortlessly, mindlessly; I always envied that ability to preen so easily. Singers. So bee-yoo-ti-ful, but not without a bad rap: can’t count, can’t read music, and completely paranoid about the “health” of their instrument. Accompanying my way through their (also enviable) art song repertoire, I developed a quick “like it” or “don’t” response to vocal quality, to the tone of individual voices, but I found it more difficult to qualify the actual mechanical skills of singing and what, exactly, made one singer so musically convincing and another one just kind of fumbling to the end of the song….

– Lileks is no Luddite:

Sometimes I think you have to be middle aged to realize how cool things are. You grow up with MP3s and iPods, as my daughter will, and it’s the way things are. If you remember the KUNK-KUNK of an 8-track tape, having a featherweight gumpack that holds a billion bits of music is really quite remarkable….And then there’s the cellphones and the tiny cameras and the widescreen TVs and home computers that sing to each other silently across the world; wonders, all. This really is the future I wanted. Although I expected longer battery life.

– Finally, Alex Ross answers all your questions.

“‘My dear Father,’ he said, ‘I am afraid that there are very few unprejudiced persons in the world. People generally try to make facts fit philosophies rather than to make philosophies fit facts.'”

Bruce Marshall, Father Malachy’s Miracle

…and now it’s here, courtesy of Bookish Gardener:

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451. Which book do you want to be? Boswell’s Life of Johnson.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character? Matilda Wilson, in Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time.

The last book you bought was…? New Orleans UnMasqued, by S. Frederick Starr (thank you, Alicublog).

The last book you read was…? A Distant Prospect, by Lord Berners.

What are you currently reading? W.H. Auden, Prose, Volume II: 1939-1948.

Five books you would take to a desert island… Boswell’s Life, The Brothers Karamazov (or maybe Demons), the Library of America Flannery O’Connor, The Portrait of a Lady, and A la recherche. (We’ll assume for the sake of argument that the guest hut on the island in question contains a King James Bible and a complete set of Shakespeare, just as all such quizzes about music really ought to take Mozart for granted.)

Who are you passing this stick on to and why? Duh, who else? Go get ’em, Girl.

(And yes, I cheated. I’ll get back to Louis this afternoon.)