Archives for February 2007

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Who was Lincoln Kirstein? The co-founder of New York City Ballet is now mainly remembered by aging dance buffs, few of whom know anything about him save that he brought George Balanchine to America. Yet Kirstein was one of the most important figures in the history of American modernism between the wars, and his other achievements (which will be chronicled in Martin Duberman’s forthcoming biography) deserve to be remembered and celebrated.

To find out who Kirstein was and why it matters, pick up a copy of tomorrow

“For the first time in my life I know what getting old is. It’s wanting to be able to call for a time-out.”

Richard Stark, Butcher’s Moon

I love fictional lists, so I thought I’d pass on a particularly good one. It’s from Richard Stark’s The Jugger:

Parker went through his pockets. Nothing in the jacket at all but that lavender handkerchief, which turned out to be scented. In the pocket of the orange shirt was an unopened five-pack of plastic-tipped little cigars. In the right-hand trouser pocket was a Zippo lighter inscribed FROM DW TO SF, neither set of initials having any connection with Tiftus. In the left-hand trouser pocket were fifty-seven cents in change, his hotel room key, and a rabbit’s foot. In his hip pocket was his wallet, and in the wallet were a Social Security card made out to Adolph Tiftus, a Nevada driver’s license, four black-and-white photographs of horses, a photo of Tiftus himself from a coin-operated photo booth, sixty-four dollars in bills, a clipping from a Daily Telegraph column that mentioned his name as present at the opening of Freehold Raceway one prewar season, a small torn-off piece of adding-machine paper with two telephone numbers written on it in pencil, and an obscene photograph in color of a Chinese couple standing up.

I especially like the lighter.

Here

“Things I’ve seen make me doubt if anyone but an old man can really put himself in an old man’s place. Values seem to be different

“If all hearts were open, all desires known; and if no secrets were hid

So you