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April 14, 2006
TT: Elsewhere
I may be quiescent, but I'm not altogether inert. Here's some of what I've collected while trolling the blogosphere during the past few weeks:- Further proof that I'm soooo behind the curve: it took an Indianapolis-based art blogger to clue me in to the coming release of Terry Zwigoff's new movie, Art School Confidential, starring John Malkovich. (To view the trailer, go here.)
- In other film-related news, Mr. My Stupid Dog reports on the Criterion Collection DVD of John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln:
The Lincoln of this film seems more a product of the 1930s than the 1830s--and in that respect, more like the sainted Democrat FDR than his own Republican self. In Trotti's script, the rail-splitter has nothing whatsoever to say about race, and the closest he comes to acknowledging the reality of slavery is a not-quite throwaway line: Lincoln states that his family had to leave Kentucky because "with all the slaves comin' in, white folks had a hard time making a living." Except for an occasional servant, African-Americans are completely invisible in Ford's Springfield. Class displaces race in the film's mythic universe--to the point that when the title character, played by a startlingly young Henry Fonda, faces down an angry lynch mob, both participants and intended victims are White. Like Fritz Lang, who famously used lynch mobs as a metaphor for fascism in his film Fury Ford suggests a parallel between thuggish leaders who goad a mob to violence and equally grotesque forces poised to plunge Europe into a second world war. That Lincoln is singlehandedly able to quell the angry mob points to one of the film's deepest contradictions: In Young Mr. Lincoln, democratic society is saved from fascist control through the actions of a single Great Leader. (Lang didn't let America off the hook so easily.)
- Speaking of race, Mr. Something Old, Nothing New has found an online-viewable video of Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs, a miniature masterpiece of animation which is nonetheless banned from TV broadcast on TV because it's jam-packed with racial stereotypes. See for yourself.
- Mr. Think Denk eats a plate of dumplings and reflects on the meaning of the opening bars of Beethoven's "Kreutzer" Sonata:
I have a hard time seeing where the opening of the Kreutzer "comes from." There are no easy sources for its particular beauty. The sort of question I feel it asks is Why Do I Exist? or How Did I Come Into Being? And that is what gives it, for me, a kind of surreal beauty: an oddly certain question, a fragment that is strangely and prematurely complete. The piece is mature beyond its measures....
My favorite recording of this wonderful work, incidentally, is a live performance from 1940 by Joseph Szigeti and Béla Bartók (yes, that Béla Bartók). You can purchase it by going here.
- Mr. Delicious Pundit reminds us of Dwight Eisenhower's rules for political success, formulated not by Eisenhower himself but by Murray Kempton. Here are the first four:
1. Always pretend to be stupid; then when you have to show yourself smart, the display has the addtional effect of surprise.
2. Taking the blame is a function of servants. When the orange is squeezed, throw it away.
3. When a situation is hopeless, never listen to counsels of hope. Fold the enterprise.
4. Do nothing unless you know exactly what you will do if it turns out to have been the wrong thing. Walk not one inch forward onto ground which has not been painfully tested by someone else....
- My favorite blogger offers a defense of pastiche:
Pastiche is not satire. Pastiche is not homage. Pastiche is a matter of preference, a way of making and creating. Pastiche combines elements of like and dislike: by placing my personal tastes, my favourites, with and against material that I might otherwise avoid, I perceive counterpoint and contrast and am often forced to reevaluate. The annoying sometimes becomes likeable while something I love dearly appears boring....
- Am I the last person in the universe to hear about Rory's Book Club?
- Ms. Pratie Place proves that a picture is worth at least a thousand words. (This image reminds me of one of H.L. Mencken's best sayings: "There is always an easy solution to every human problem--neat, plausible and wrong.")
- I can't remember from whom I pinched this link--apologies in advance--but here's a fascinating Bookforum article about how Dorothy Parker left her copyrights to the NAACP, and how Lillian Hellman, her literary executor, did her best to screw up the bequest:
Hellman refused to admit defeat, continuing to slug it out until a court ruled for the NAACP in 1972. In an interview with the New York Times Book Review, Hellman was still lashing out: "It's one thing to have real feeling for black people, but to have the kind of blind sentimentality about the NAACP, a group so conservative that even many blacks now don't have any respect for it, is something else. She must have been drunk when she did it."
What a pig La Hellman was.
- Mr. BuzzMachine, whose heart was out of order for a month, found out what it was like to be a Disabled Person, and filed this report:
I now stood on the right on escalators, rather than rushing up on the left. I now sought out elevators even for short, one-floor hauls. In the PATH station in New York, I stood there with old people, sick people, and mothers with baby carriages, waiting for a lift. I was embarrassed. I wondered whether they looked at me thinking, "What a lazy SOB: he looks fit and healthy and the exercise of a few stairs would be good for him: Get moving and don't take up space on our elevator." Of course, it's New York: Nobody really pays that much attention to anyone else. But I heard that echo in my head....
- Want to waste a little time? Play with this collection of dialect maps. You won't be sorry.
- Great Moments in Jazz on TV, No. 1: Billie Holiday singing Fine and Mellow in 1957, with Lester Young, sick unto death but still a giant, backing her up. (Thank you, Mr. House of Mirth.)
- Great Moments in Jazz on TV, No. 2: Art Tatum playing Yesterdays in 1954. I assume this is a kinescope from the old Tonight show with Steve Allen. Regardless of where it comes, though, it's amazing-and-a-half. (Thank you, Messrs. Do the Math.)
- Finally, just watch this, O.K.?
Posted April 14, 2006 12:00 PM
