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Leeway

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Everything posted by Leeway

  1. Dave Rempis Trio, "Gunwale" (apparently pronounced "gunnell") at Rhizome, Takoma, Maryland. Some very hot and intense playing from this trio.
  2. This book was influential for me when I was young. I still admire it, but I fear the emotional resonance is gone.
  3. My least favorite of the Forster novels I have read. I found the tone problematic, and the story unpersuasive. Forster's habit of coincidence and killing off characters is to the fore here. I do like the image of Cambridge he presents, and the character of Ansell. I understand this was Forster's favorite among his works, which goes to show artists don't always get it right either. I suspect it was because of the Maurice-like themes that percolate beneath the surface, as well as the more poetic aspects of the narrative.
  4. Much in the same vein as Quartet. This book could justly be titled, Down and Out in Paris and London." Although the female protagonist exhibits the limits of pathos, she remains curiously unsympathetic for the most part. Definitely in the school of hard knocks.
  5. Relentlessly downbeat depiction of the life of the Parisian demimonde and the pathetic female protagonist. As Rhys puts it in the story, "The drably terrible life of the under-dog." The story is based to some extent on Rhys' affair with Ford Madox Ford and FMF's female partner.
  6. Perhaps Forster's best novel; I think it just has the edge on Howards End, although I could certainly see the other side of that question. Passage is even more impressive when viewed through the prism of Indian Independence and Partition, and the subsequent rise of a more militant Islam. Although I think there is always a question when Westerners write about colonial subjects, I think Forster pulls it off in a very credible way.
  7. Another Italianate novel from Forster. Quite readable.
  8. Howards End - E.M. Forster Moving ahead with more Forster. This is a more substantial and ambitious novel than Where Angels Fear to Tread. It has many virtues but I'm not quite in sympathy with Forster's project of uniting Imperialism with Humanism (I'm simplifying drastically here). "Only connect" says Forster. It should be so simple.
  9. No rule here, but I typically have in mind English characters acting in an Italian setting, among themselves, or with Italians. Knowing Fitzgerald, though, I'm confident there are interesting variations being made.
  10. Yeah, those look very tasty. There's also a Barry Guy 4 CD box coming out on Not Two that looks very interesting
  11. Yes, but it's been a while now and probably due for a re-read. Good example.
  12. Wanted to add that I find Italo-English novels, like this one, as well as Muriel Spark's The Takeover and Shirley Hazard's The Bay of Naples, to name a few examples, interesting creatures. Someone should (and probably already has) do a study of them. Italy has long been a part of English imaginative life. I''m reminded of the expression, "An Englishman Italianate is the Devil incarnate." Modern novels seem to play off that notion.
  13. Saw Ken Vandermark last night in Takoma Park, MD. Solo set by KV, then a set by The Few, a Chicago-based string trio (guitar, bass, violin), then a combined set with KV and The Few. He played clarinet in that last set, and tenor and bari in the first set. Vandermark was hot in the first set, and it was a treat to hear KV "with strings."
  14. A story beautifully poised between comedy and tragedy.
  15. WIDE SARGASSO SEA - Jean Rhys A sort of prequel to the early life and relationship of Rochester and his wife (the madwoman in the attic of Jane Eyre) Bertha/Antoinettte, and an alternative history to that presented in Charlotte Bronte's novel. It's become somewhat harder to read Bronte's novel without wanting to read this as well. This work has sparked an interest on my part in the quartet of novels that Rhys wrote in the 1920 snd 30s.
  16. SIEGFRIED - Harry Mulisch What if Hitler and Eva Braun had a son? This novel explores a version of what might have happened. Mulisch's philosophical investigation is intriguing. I've read Mulish's THE ASSAULT, which I also found quite compelling. I haven't yet read his opus, THE DISCOVERY OF HEAVEN.
  17. Consisting of THE GHOST WRITER, ZUCKERMAN UNBOUND, and THE ANATOMY LESSON, and the epilogue, THE PRAGUE ORGY. I enjoyed the first and last of these (novellas) more than their longer companions, which while interesting seem to miss their mark. Roth's narrative voice is vibrant and compelling throughout, one is inevitably pulled in, his intelligence is undoubted, but the obsessive qualities of the narrative can be too much at times.
  18. FOREIGN BODIES - Cynthia Ozick Ozick's book is loosely based on Henry James's The Ambassadors. Ozick is a fan of James, but she is also a fan of Saul Bellow, and I detected a rather strong Bellovian influence in the novel. It makes for an interesting mixture.
  19. Wonderful album, reflective of Threadgill's restless and varied creativity. An album of many hues and lines. Of the tracks that Threadgill is not on, I'm particularly impressed with "Over the River Club," which has Myra Melford on piano, giving an impressive performance.
  20. Finished my re-reading of the novels of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, and came away with a new appreciation off their work, which I suspect is rather unfashionable these days. For me, they more than stood up.
  21. F. Scott Fitzgerald's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, for the jazz age and the post-WWI generation. Touches of brilliance but rather uneven too.
  22. One senses much posturing, or at least performing, in this work, but what a performance it is! The ending is eerie in that it presages the author's own end. It's been interesting to revisit these Lost Generation classics.
  23. Leeway

    RVG - RIP

    A life well lived, it seems to me.
  24. Continuing my survey of F. Scott Fitzgerald novels, this is my 3rd or 4th time around with Gatsby, and I still find it a rewarding read.
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