Archives for March 10, 2009

Last week I got a copy of the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus, and I’ve been having an entertaining time leafing through it. The allure of the book, even if you already have a good thesaurus, comes from the contributing notes by David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, Bryan Garner, Francine Prose and others.
These “word notes” are scattered throughout the text and marked by the contributors’ initials. They’re a mixed bag; some are useful and interesting, while others seem overly cute or casual, and I wish this latter group had been juried out or made to O.E.D.-up. After a while I found myself gravitating to certain contributors’ initials and skipping others as reliably irritating. (In that way it’s like scanning the table of contents of a new New Yorker to choose which articles you’ll read.)
But there are amusements and entertainments. Here is Michael Dirda’s note on “limn”:

This is the phoniest word in the critic’s vocabulary, aside from luminous to describe a writer’s prose (and usually rather gushy prose at that). People are unsure of limn‘s pronunciation, uncertain of its actual meaning, and generally pretentious when they use it. Most of the time journalists resort to limn because they want something fancier than describe. Yet while describe slips smoothly by without calling much attention to itself, limn jumps off the page to strut about and show off. It’s one of those words that want to be urbane and debonair but are somehow really ugly, pushy, and nouveau riche. But maybe I’m going out on a limb by saying that. So let’s just call limn fundamentally, almost viscerally, rebarbative.

I don’t agree with parts of it — “limn” is a great word for getting at a particular thing that “describe” doesn’t — but it’s always bracing to come across a good rant in one’s reference materials. I hope journalists listen.
RELATED:
For a contrary take on “limn” and a defense of one notable critic’s use of it, see here.

The sound quality isn’t the best, but if you’re a fan of Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood’s version of “Summer Wine,” this clip is pretty wonderful. I’ve watched it about a dozen times over the last month, and I do not grow tired of Hazlewood’s bassetty gaze at the camera nor his delivery of the last line of the first lyric as “whoa-whoa, summer wine.” (On the album Nancy & Lee, this line is more like, “Oh-oh-oh, summer wine.” Who knew he was holding back?) Anyway, despite the title, a good (and cautionary!) song for that hectic yet languorous spring feeling.

Over every operatic collaboration an occasional hush must fall. Work is proceeding apace on The Letter, but Paul Moravec and I don’t have anything to do with it. The Santa Fe Opera is busily planning the July 25 premiere of The Letter, which goes into rehearsal on June 29. Meanwhile, Paul and I are working on various publicity-related activities that will take place between now and then. I’ll be flying to Santa Fe on July 13 to attend the last two weeks of rehearsals and make any last-minute changes that might prove necessary. For all intents and purposes, though, my work is done. From here on out, the responsibility for getting The Letter on stage belongs to the cast and the production team, not the librettist or composer. It’s up to Jonathan Kent, the director of The Letter, to figure out how best to bring my words to life, in the same way that it was up to Hildegard Bechtler, the designer, to create a suitable setting for them.
Even if I were in a position to stick my nose into Jonathan’s business, I wouldn’t do so. I’m a writer, not a director, and it’s his task, not mine, to move The Letter from the page to the stage. Of course I have strong opinions about how The Letter ought to be staged, but they’re fully embodied in my libretto, which Jonathan shows every sign of taking seriously. He discussed the opera with Paul and me last November, and we soon discovered that the three of us were all on the same page: The Letter is a melodrama, and that’s how it ought to be played.
When Jonathan directed Angela Gheorghiu in Tosca at London’s Royal Opera House in 1996, he gave an interview to the BBC in which he talked about the opera’s dramaturgy:

What I admire about it, quite apart from the thrilling music, is its theatre craft. It’s a taut, sinewy melodrama, exquisitely put together. There isn’t an ounce of flesh on it. Puccini stripped the play down until it was an unstoppable arrow. That’s what interested me: to find a way within that hurtling narrative to examine the relationships and its themes of sex, power and death.

Those words were music to my ears.
The only suggestion that I offered to Jonathan was that I thought the first production of The Letter ought to be played relatively straight. “I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to superimpose any kind of high directorial concept on a brand-new opera,” I told him. “It’s not like we’re doing a piece like Carmen that everybody already knows. I imagine the production as being fairly naturalistic–but in a heightened, poetic way.” He agreed, and that was that.
Do I expect to be surprised by what I’ll see for the first time on July 13? You bet. The whole point of working with a director like Jonathan is to let him surprise you instead of trying to second-guess him at every twist and turn. Just as I couldn’t begin to imagine what Hildegard’s set would look like before I saw the scale model, so am I incapable of envisioning how Jonathan will set the cast of The Letter in motion and help them develop their characterizations. That’s his job. Of course I’ll put in my two cents’ worth if invited to do so, but I wouldn’t dream of meddling, any more than I’d give unsolicited interpretative advice to Patricia Racette, the star of The Letter. To be sure, Pat has questioned me in the closest possible detail about the role of Leslie Crosbie, and I’ve told her what I think about why Leslie does what she does. In the end, though, it’s her job, not mine, to turn Leslie into a living, breathing creature whose onstage behavior makes dramatic sense, and I haven’t the slightest doubt of her ability to do so.
All of which means that after two years of intense and unremitting creative activity, I’ve dropped the reins and stepped back from The Letter. Now I’m simply going to let it happen–and I can’t wait to see what it becomes.

I spent Monday night going over the typographical design of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong with the finest of fine-tooth combs. Unlike most authors, I take a passionate interest in the interior design of my books. I believe that the typeface in which a book is set is the accent in which a writer speaks to his readers, and I want every page of Pops to be both easy to read and unobtrusively pleasing to the eye. I’ll show you the fruits of my labors as soon as we’ve locked in the final design, but I can already promise you that Pops is going to be an exceedingly good-looking book.

“For Beethoven, as for the greatest literary artists, above all his beloved Shakespeare, comedy is not a lesser form than tragedy but is its true counterpart, the celebration of the human in all things.”
Lewis Lockwood, Beethoven: The Music and the Life