Archives for October 2007

• Crooked House gets all Shelby Foote on the Fairy Tale War of the ’20s and ’30s, a period when librarians went mano y mano in a heated debate over whether kids’ lit should go mimetic or stay magical. A dark yet heady time: Warhorses ranged on one side of the battlefield, centaurs and unicorns on the other; the fierce yet oddly hushed clash of battle …
If you’re interested, Natalie Reif Ziarnik’s From School and Public Libraries: Developing the Natural Alliance provides more background on the debate (see pages 10-14). If you’re not interested, then I recommend pegging back to Crooked House for a discussion of “The Road as parenting book.”
• “The Wild Swans” by Hans Christian Andersen.

“We should be careful never to imagine, that the wedding-day is the burial of love, but that in reality love then begins its best life; and if we set out upon that principle, and are mindful to keep it up, and give due attention and aid to the progress of love thus brought into the well ordered well sheltered garden, we may enjoy I believe as much happiness as is consistent with the imperfection of our present state of being.”
James Boswell, The Hypochondriack, No. XLIII

• When I’m at loose ends at the library or a used bookstore I’ll look through the stacks for the green spines that mark a Virago paperback; even if I’ve never heard of the author I know I’ll go home with an interesting book. In a tribute to the series, Jonathan Coe makes some trenchant observations on the critical dismissal of female authors, then and now.
• The new issue of Virginia Quarterly Review is devoted to “South America in the 21st Century.” Among the online offerings: A piece on the effects of ecotourism on the Galápagos and an excerpt from Roberto Ubiquibolaño’s Nazi Literature in the Americas.

Love and marriage, love and marriage

Go together like a horse and carriage

Dad was told by mother

You can’t have one without the other.

Sammy Cahn, “Love and Marriage” (from Our Town, music by Jimmy Van Heusen)

In case you were wondering, the wedding came off without a hitch, except that the bride and I came down with bronchitis four days before the ceremony, and had to croak I do at one another in voices not greatly different from that of Charles McGraw at his grittiest. Otherwise, all was and is bliss.
You’ll hear more about it in due course, but not today–I have to file Friday’s Wall Street Journal drama column before departing on a much-needed honeymoon tomorrow morning. I’ll be back in New York next week for a couple of days, and I’ll check in with you then.
UPDATE: My voice has now failed completely. Somebody at the wedding brunch this morning said that I sounded like Satchmo on helium….

Last Friday, in the midst of frenzied preparations for the big day, I was messengered a DVD of the trailer for Tim Burton’s upcoming film version of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, a musical for which I have the utmost admiration. The film, which stars Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Alan Rickman, has already been much discussed in theatrical circles, and it would be an understatement to say that I’ve been curious to see what Burton would make of Sondheim’s greatest musical.
A two-and-a-half-minute trailer is by definition nothing more than a hint, but judging by what I saw on Friday, I’m now more than a little bit concerned about what I’ll be seeing come December 21. To begin with, the trailer is edited in such a way as to suggest that Sweeney Todd is not a musical. Only two or three lines in the trailer are sung–the rest of what you hear is spoken dialogue. In addition, Depp looks far too young to be credible as Sweeney, and the cinematography is alarmingly reminiscent of Moulin Rouge.
Needless to say, none of this necesssarily means that the film will be bad. The cast is wonderful, and Tim Burton certainly has the imagination necessary to translate Sondheim’s show into specifically cinematic terms. But I don’t much like the fact that the creators of the trailer clearly feel the need to apologize for the fact that Sweeney Todd is a musical. It is, in point of fact, an opera, and anybody who goes to the film expecting it to be something else is in for the shock of a lifetime.
I’ve got my fingers crossed.
To view the trailer, go here.

What a day,

Fortune smiled and came my way,

Bringing love I never thought I’d see,

I’m so lucky to be me.

I’m so proud

You chose me from all the crowd,

There’s no other guy I’d rather be,

I could laugh out loud,

I’m so lucky to be me.

Betty Comden and Adolph Green, “Lucky to Be Me” (from On the Town, music by Leonard Bernstein)

• “World’s Bliss,” “Clinical Thermometer Set With Moonstone, “II–The Person That You Were Will Be Replaced,” three poems by Alice Notley whose collection Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems 1970-2005 was just awarded the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize by the Academy of American Poets.
• The infamous Blackwood’s review that dashed Keats.
• Cheer up, poet! Star Wars and superhero dog costumes will banish ennui. The Yoda and Princess Leia slave dog outfits merit particular scrutiny.