Archives for 2004

The Great Task continues to go smoothly. Posting will be light this week, but there will be intermittent spells of bloggery, as was the case on Sunday morning (and if you didn’t read all those posts, do so now!). OGIC should be back in the saddle shortly, too.

Wish me luck. I’ll really be happy to wrap this book up.

Which classic novel do I belong in?

In my not so humble opinion, you, of course, belong in the Picture of Dorian Gray, and do not try to deny it. You belong in the fashionable circles of Victorian London where exotic tastes, a double life, decadence, wit and a hypocritical belief in moral betterment make you a home. You belong where the witty apothegms of Lords, the silly moralities of matrons, the blinding high of opium, and the beauty of visual arts mingle to form one convoluted world.

But enough about me–what about you? Go here to find out.

(Et tu, OGIC?)

“She lived a life of heroism in small things. Maybe stories of heroic goodness without glamor tend to sound sentimental and tawdry, and that is why people don’t like to read stories about saints.”

Karl Stern, The Pillar of Fire

Say what you will about me, I’ve finally learned to keep up with the incoming e-mail! Except that I occasionally move especially interesting letters to a separate mailbox so that I can either respond to them at length or post them, and sometimes…I forget. Which is why some of you haven’t heard back from me, for which I apologize most humbly. I’ll try to work my way through that box once the book is done.

In the nonce, here are two recent pieces of mail that I especially liked:

– “My Paul Desmond
story: although I had been listening to jazz on the radio and to my father’s big band 78s since childhood, it was hearing Paul Desmond with Brubeck on the old Steve Allen show one night in 1954 or 55 that told me three things: I would love jazz forever, that the alto saxophone was the most beautiful sounding instrument of all, and that Paul Desmond had a tone worth emulating. My very first experience of jazz in person was seeing the Brubeck Quartet when they played a Sunday evening concert at the Glen Island Casino, about one mile from my home when I was 14. The Casino had fallen on hard times–the big band era was definitely over and Elvis was on the horizon–and was attempting to find new formats to get people to visit. So I got in my Sunday-best suit, and trudged to the show. A very big snowstorm had begun, so I was one of only a handful of people in attendance, so I am sure no one made much money, including my very professional waiter, who served me cokes–15% of the price of a 1955 coke was not much to take home, even with the usual nightclub markup. I was dazzled, enthralled, overwhelmed that men could do this. I had wanted to get everyone’s autograph, but was too shy to approach the bandstand. Walking home in the snow past my ankles, I hardly noticed the effort–I was transported. A year later, I committed my first act of semi-adult unfaithfulness–I bought a Shorty Rogers record and transfered my allegiance to Art Pepper. Ah well, they are both up there in the great alto sax section in the sky with Bird, Carter and Hodges.”

– “I read your review of A Midsummer Night’s Dream
in the WSJ, and as a result
saw it this afternoon. In the past several years there has been only one
other show where, at intermission, I wanted to call all my friends and tell
them to see it at once (the other was Wonderful Town, last fall). Of course
I couldn’t make the calls today because of the intermission concert, which
was almost as wonderful as the show. Thank you for telling me about it. I came to your blog in order to
thank you, and started reading, and started following links, and now I’ve
ordered Goodbye, Babylon. I hope it’s as wonderful as it sounds.
I’ve always enjoyed your WSJ pieces, and now I’ll keep in touch with your blog.”

Thanks very much to you both. Letters like these are among the very biggest reasons why OGIC and I keep on blogging, come what may.

This story from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution almost slipped past me, but the Cranky Professor steered me straight:

“Et tu, Brute?”

Not anymore.

“And you too, Brutus?” is what students read in a new genre of study guides that modernize the Elizabethan English found in “Julius Caesar” and other plays by William Shakespeare.

These guides move beyond the plot summaries found in other study aides by providing line-by-line translations in modern-day English.

Once barred from school, the new translations now are being used in classes across metro Atlanta.

But not everyone thinks they belong there. Some educators say the beauty of Shakespeare rests in the writer’s eloquence and poetry — something missing in the translations.

“Shakespeare without language is like a movie without sound,” said Paul Voss, who teaches Shakespeare at Georgia State University.

The translated study guides can be found in a class for struggling readers at one Fayette County high school. Henry County teachers also assigned it to students with lower reading skills. And some DeKalb County high school teachers use it as a supplement.

Shakespeare can intimidate students because of unfamiliar syntax and strange character names. Modernized versions give students the confidence to tackle the work, said Connie Kollias, who had her sophomores at Sandy Creek High in Fayette read a translated “Julius Caesar” aloud in class.

“We’re not dumbing down lessons for these students,” Kollias said. “We are giving them tools that allow them to do the same work as everyone else.”

“Tut, I am in their bosoms, and I know wherefore they do it.” — Act 5, Scene 1.

“I know how they think, and I understand why they’re doing this.” — Same scene, “No Fear Shakespeare” translation….

Read the whole thing here.

This isn’t an open-and-shut case. As I’ve told any number of people whom I took to see their very first Shakespeare plays, the Bard is harder to read than he is to watch. (Which is why the teachers quoted in this piece ought to be showing a Shakespeare film or two–or three–to their kids.) I’m not necessarily opposed to the judicious use of “translations” in a classroom setting. It depends on the circumstances.

What made my hair stand on end were these two words: “Some educators…” Are there really English teachers in Atlanta who don’t think “the beauty of Shakespeare rests in the writer’s eloquence and poetry”? Has it come to this?

Don’t answer that. In the immortal words of me, all slopes are slippery.

I almost forgot to post some of the great mail I’ve been getting in response to what I wrote the other day
about Charlie Chaplin:

– “For the most part, I think your criticism of all kinds is dead-on. In
fact, I have once or twice
asked myself whether you are me when I grow up. But your recent
dismissal of Chaplin
made me very sad. I agree that

Today’s postings are merely an aberration. I wrote until…when? Midnight? Two in the morning? I forget. But I got a whole lot of work done on the Balanchine book yesterday, and I mean to get still more done today. Only I have a guest coming at one o’clock, followed by a matinee at two, and the idea of trying to write between now and then is, shall we say, repellent. Repugnant. Revolting. Maybe even rebarbative. So I decided to post a few quick items instead, knowing that you’ve all been missing me.

Nothing more will be forthcoming today, except for (I hope) the rest of Chapter Four. And yes, I may post a snippet or two of the book, but not while it’s still piping hot. It needs to cool down a bit, and so do I.

(The very next thing I’ll be writing, incidentally, is a character sketch of Jerome Robbins. That ought to be fun.)

Anyway, it’s time for peanut butter and jelly, after which I’ll take a shower and prepare to give my guest a tour of the Teachout Museum. Then we’ll go hear Barbara Cook at Lincoln Center. Then it’s back to work.

See you Monday.

Lileks fisked, of all things, Adam Gopnik’s New Yorker piece
about Times Square:

“It’s not filled by media images that supplant the experience of real things.”

Neither is my back yard or toilet bowl or left kidney; lots of things are not filled by media images that supplant the experience of real things. Folks, let me tell you: when you reach a certain level in an organization, you can write things like that, and the copy desk shrugs and says “whatever.” Because it’s Opinion, it’s Creative, it’s the Star Writer on a tear, and you don’t step in to point out the emperor is not only buck-fargin’ naked, he’s wearing white before Memorial Day….

Bang. Crunch. Thump. Oooh!

Read the whole thing here.