About Last Night

I’m reading a new biography of Glenn Gould, Kevin Bazzana’s Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould, which will be published in the U.S. this April by Oxford (it’s already out in Canada). Two passages caught my eye. The first is a list of Gould’s favorite books and writers:

He read classics of every denomination, from Plato to Thoreau, with a particular fondness for the Russians–Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in particular, but also Gogol, Goncharov, Turgenev. He was widely read in modern literature. His professed favourites included T.S. Eliot, Christopher Fry, and Franz Kafka, though he gave time to Borges, Camus, Capek, Gide, Hesse, Ionesco, Joyce, Malraux, Mishima, Santayana, Soseki, Strindberg, and much else….And at the head of the pack was Thomas Mann, especially Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain, Doctor Faustus, and the early story “Tonio Kr

“These hinterlands are frequently, even compulsively, crossed at one time or another by almost all who practise the arts, usually in the need to earn a living; but the arts themselves, so it appeared to me as I considered the matter, by their ultimately sensual essence, are, in the long run, inimical to those who pursue power for its own sake. Conversely, the artist who traffics in power does so, if not necessarily disastrously, at least at considerable risk.”

Anthony Powell, A Buyer’s Market

No, this isn’t a political commentary: I just posted a new Top Five entry about “The Artist’s Eye: Wolf Kahn as Curator,” which went up at the National Academy of Design last Friday (my birthday!) for a two-month run. I’ll sound off at greater length about this show at a later date, but for the moment, take a peek at the right-hand column, click the link for more information, then go. Soon.

I made it through the whole weekend without posting anything (except for two almanac entries and a couple of links, which hardly counts). And yes, I definitely had a happy birthday. Among other things, three beautiful women sang “Happy Birthday” to me at Caf

Courtesy of Byzantium’s Shores, a complete guide to taking (and faking) the Rorschach Test, including line reproductions of the actual inkblots used in the test.

What I want to know is how Mr. TMFTML interprets Plate VI.

More Lileks envy, this time inspired by his description of the slow movement of the Gershwin Concerto in F:

It’s the sort of music that used to say “New York” to people in Peoria. It has that “Chorine on the A train at 3 AM” feel – tired of being sophisticated, tired of the pose, tired of living up to its own dreams and expectations. But when the piano comes in it’s like Gershwin himself in a white suit entering an Automat painted by Edward Hopper – he pops the cigar out of his mouth and says why the long faces? This is New York, pal. Let’s go stand on the corner and watch it ramble past. Whaddya say? There’s no other city in America that can inspire these aural evocations – it’s not like anyone listens to Boston’s debut album and thinks I am so walking around Nob Hill right now. San Francisco to me is tied to the “Vertigo” score, but that’s a trick of fiction. Chicago has one song: one. It informs us that State Street is a Great Street, and we go along with the assertion because it rhymes. But all of Gershwin’s work is saturated with New York, and you know it. It’s the love that doesn’t have to say its name….

Read the whole thing here.

I’m having lunch with Cinetrix and Old Hag at a secure undisclosed location on the Upper West Side this Friday. We may sell tickets.

Sue Russell, biographer of serial killer Aileen Wuornos, writes about the inconvenient facts that got left out of Monster, the Wuornos biopic, in today’s Washington Post:

With “Monster’s” sympathetic take, Hollywood has put its boot print on a piece of history. And as Aileen’s biographer, I find the movie’s distortions disturbing. The filmmakers acknowledge upfront that “Monster” is fictionalized, that it is only “based upon” a true story. But will anyone notice this disclaimer, let alone pay attention to it? Already, most people seem not to. Reviewer upon reviewer has referred to Aileen’s saga as depicted in the movie as true.

To be sure, the hitchhiking prostitute who confessed to killing seven men in Florida in 1989-90 and was executed in 2002 was no JFK or Malcolm X, two other real-life figures whose stories were altered for the big screen. But by retooling her into a victim who began killing to fend off a rapist, “Monster” conveniently transforms her into something we can stomach far more easily than we can a woman who’s a ruthless robber and murderer. It perpetuates the comforting yet erroneous belief that women only kill when provoked by abuse. But women kill for other reasons, too, as Aileen’s real life amply demonstrated….

She was severely damaged goods and mentally flawed. Yet many have endured far worse than she. Ultimately, she was irredeemably dangerous. She killed in cold blood, cutting down men who had lives and wives and families. That’s a truth not even Hollywood should pretty up.

Read the whole thing here.