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I did make it to the Cleveland Museum of Art for its big impressionist show. It was pretty incredible. Some images and musings here: http://erics-hangout.blogspot.ca/2015/12/monet-exhibit-in-cleveland.html Unfortunately, tickets are sold out for the rest of the run (one more week). I think even if you are a member of the museum, it is too late to get in now. I've gone a couple of times to the Turner show at the AGO. It is good, though many of the best paintings didn't leave the Tate. Still worth seeing of course. I'll probably go one more time. It isn't guaranteed, but it looks like they will be republishing the Archibald Motley catalog, which had gone OOP, so I've put in an order on Amazon. While I was browsing, they recommended a new Norman Lewis catalog called Procession. I like Normal Lewis, so I think I'll order that as well. This led me to look into the related exhibit, which is running at PAFA (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts). More information here: https://www.pafa.org/normanlewis While I would love to visit Philadelphia, I doubt very much I can get there before the summer, by which time the exhibit will be in Ft. Worth. I'm a bit bummed out that the touring schedule isn't flipped, since I will be going to Chicago in the summer, but I suppose I can find an excuse to travel to Chicago in the late fall next year. I'm sure my wife would appreciate it if we went around Thanksgiving -- or even the week before or after just to save a bit on airline tickets. (It is worth noting this is a big exhibit -- 90 paintings -- and while the upper floor of the Chicago Cultural Center can hold a lot of art -- they still might have to trim it back a bit. Nonetheless, I just can't see making it to Phily this spring.)

I would actually disagree with that. Just as with Rashomon, there is no absolute truth in these kinds of matters, since Cosby probably did feel justified in his actions. Anyway, it doesn't help that the jury is being asked to decide about things over 10 years ago. That said, one can certainly say there is a pattern of behavior, and a reasonable person would conclude that Bill is a sexual predator. Nonetheless, this will be a difficult case to prosecute, since if the judge does allow in all these "extraneous" witnesses, it will probably be appealed forever. It is also pretty clear that this is a "political" prosecution, since the new DA actually ran on a platform of charging Cosby on the stand. No matter what you think about this case, it just feels sleazy and unjust to have criminal case proceedings dependent upon the outcome of an election -- and points to the general abuses that arise from having these positions being elected ones.

I'm with you Bill. I have finally crossed the finish line of Middlemarch. It wasn't worth it. I started out with at least a passable interest in and sympathy with many if not most of the characters. By the end, I thoroughly disliked all of them except Rev. Farebrother and perhaps Celia. I found Silas Marner mawkish and a bit stupid (if at least short) and strongly disliked The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch. I'm clearly allergic to George Eliot. At one point, I had seriously considered reading Daniel Deronda, but I shan't torment myself a third time.

I think it is worth reading for sure, but it is probably the lesser trilogy, in the sense that he was a better novelist by the end (Deptford and Cornish trilogy follow the Salterton Trilogy).

I still have some wrapping to do, but generally things are under control. Merry Christmas to all.

Compared to the whole of humanity, artists and novelists occupy an extremely narrow and precocious position. I don't see that as particularly controversial. Most film-makers are really in a dialog with other film-makers, and I see the same thing happening with most literary novelists.

There is a lot to be said for that, but it also means our window onto the past is skewed in very specific ways. If history is primarily written by the victors, novels are primarily written by a very narrow group of middle-class strivers (perhaps more in the past than today when there are more voices to be heard, even if the financial rewards are lower). If one was going to write a cultural history of 2016 -- and all blogs and twitter feeds and Facebook postings were erased in the Great Magnetic Solar Flare of 2025 -- and we had to rely on Jonathan Franzen or more likely still J.K. Rowling and George Martin, would we really feel they captured the essence of the age?

I know that Eliot is making all kinds of various cutting remarks about society in general and certain characters in particular, but I just don't think she has any subtlety compared to Austen, for instance who is much slyer and more rewarding (to me). I wouldn't say Dickens is subtle either. I've enjoyed the Trollope I have read (and will start going through his novels again in a few years) and he might be a shade subtler. I realize that's not the only characteristic that matters,* but I so prefer novelists who don't hit me over the head with what I should be paying attention to in a scene or, worse, what I should be feeling. I thought Mill on the Floss much worse in that regard, however. Eliot is worth reading once, but I am sometimes glad to find out that I haven't been missing much by getting around to an author relatively late in life. * For instance, many here find Muriel Spark kind of sly and I can't warm up to her either.

I thought I would have gotten further this weekend, but I only got through Book 3 (of 8) in Eliot's Middlemarch. I find I just don't have a lot of patience for her particular omniscient narrative voice. Is it really that different from Dickens or Trollope? Probably not, but I do grow weary of her explaining everything to me all the time. I don't think the book really knows whether it is a novel or a sociological tract...

This is so over-the-top that now I am a bit sorry I mentioned Roth (since Hofmann is the major promoter of Roth and seems to mostly take this opportunity to run down Zweig and elevate Roth).

You might like Joseph Roth a bit better, particularly his Berlin reportage, mostly in What I Saw. Roth was more of a man of the people, though he didn't fit in with society that well either, and drank himself to death to Paris in 1939 (despite having opportunities to move to the US).

I will finally wrap up Nabokov's The Gift today. I found Chapter 4 really dragged, and Chapter 5, while shorter, isn't much better. Well, I'm not really that surprised, Nabokov is just not a writer I enjoy reading, so I think I'll postpone reading any further novels by him indefinitely. I will be rereading Kafka's The Trial after that and hope to wrap it up by Friday. If all goes as planned, I will be tackling Middlemarch by the weekend. I should also mention that there is a new collection/translation of Joseph Roth's non-fiction pieces called The Hotel Years. I managed to check it out from the library. So far, pretty interesting.

PM on the Ormandy.

I enjoyed Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which is sort of a mystery novel and also a bit of alternative history fiction (along the same lines as PKD's The Man in the High Castle).

Working my way through Nabokov's The Gift. It seems a bit uncharacteristic of most of his novels, but that's a positive for me, as I generally don't care for them. But I am enjoying The Gift so far.

It doesn't look like it, sorry. And the National Gallery is in DC, so it is an East Coast only show. I suspect there will be a catalog attached to the show, but it definitely isn't the same as being there.

I actually did that on a visit to Vienna. Very nice. Anyway, I just saw the Turner exhibit at the AGO (in Toronto), but I'll need to go back. It was still far too crowded to really get to see the pieces. The crowds should die down in another month. As it happens, I probably have seen all or virtually all of these pieces, since they are almost entirely drawn from the Tate Britain's Turner Wing, but it is still nice to see them again. Just as a head's up, there will be a Stuart Davis exhibit at the Whitney this summer, and it goes to the National Gallery in the late fall/early winter. http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/StuartDavis I've basically decided I will travel to see it (Davis is in my top 10 and I don't think I've ever seen an exhibit solely decided to him), so I just need to work out some details a bit closer to the time.

Thanks! I'm going to have to be honest that I was at a performance of King Lear on Sun. and I didn't even check the score until I got home. But I hear it was quite a game!

Glad to hear you enjoyed it. I have been meaning to read this for the longest time, but at my current pace, it will probably be late 2016. This December I am going to tackle Middlemarch for the first time. Before I get there, however, I need to get through Molly Keane's Time After Time (which I am enjoying so far) and Nabokov's The Gift.

I really do not like this novel, which serves up a mushy magic realist setting to basically recount story after story of women who were mistreated by men (their fathers, husbands, pimps or johns) with one woman also abused by her alcoholic mother, just to provide a bit of variety. It's pure Oprah-bait, and I think at this point I will just skim the rest to get to that one "uplifting" story that is supposed to help redeem the book (sort of like the Precious movie).

How exciting! Thanks for running the contest each year!

I got a bit distracted by other matters, but I recently finished Narayan's Mr. Sampath. It was one of those books that I went back and forth on whether I had read it before, but eventually decided I had read it before. I don't reread a lot of books, but I will be going back to Mahfouz's Midaq Alley soon, as well as Kafka's The Trial. Currently starting into Gloria Naylor's Bailey's Cafe. The beginning section about the Negro leagues is very boring. I hear that it goes wide and incorporates a whole bunch of characters, most of them with terrible, tragic lives. I wouldn't say I am really looking forward to this, but it's a fairly short novel.

Hmmm. Definitely too bad. I didn't realize that I did have so much of the contents in U.S. releases, though I suspected I had the Lester Young. It's a shame, since the package is pretty nice with cool covers and all. Anyway, I guess it is time that this site helped me save money for once...

This does look like it is focusing on earlier Vogue material, but I don't think I have all that much of it, aside from the Getz, Mulligan, Baker and the Lester Young. I had no idea that Brubeck or Ellington/Strayhorn had cut Vogue albums. For me, this is actually an easier choice than the original box, which I eventually broke down and bought. Anyway, from a different site (http://www.francemusique.fr/agenda/sortie-cd-jazz-america-disques-vogue-40-chefs-d-oeuvre-du-jazz-en-20-edition-limitee ), here are the album names: LE PROGRAMME : 1.Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn / New Stars - New Sounds Vol. 2 (+ Serge Chaloff) 2.Stan Getz Quartet / The Stan Getz Quintette - Jazz At Storyville 3.Art Tatum From Gene Norman's Just Jazz / Gene Norman's Just Jazz Vol. 3 / Frank Bull And Gene Norman's Blues Jubilee 4.Charlie Christian At Minton's / Charlie Christian - Dizzy Gillespie At Minton's 5.Dixieland Jubilee Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 (Lu Watters - Kid Ory / Albert Nicholas) 6.Charlie Parker Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 7.Originators Of Modern Jazz / A Date With… Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 (Dizzy Gillespie - Charlie Parker - Fats Navarro - Red Norvo - Hank Jones - Howard McGhee - James Moody - Buck Clayton - Hot Lips Page) 8.Erroll Garner Trio Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 9.Kings of Boogie Woogie (Albert Ammons - Meade Lux Lewis - Blind John Davis) 10.Mahalia Jackson Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 11.The Spirit Of Memphis Quartet (+ John Lee Hooker) 12.Wynonie Mr Blues Harris / Earl Bostic His Alto Sax And His Orchestra 13.Jelly Roll Morton - Piano Solos 14.Dave Brubeck Quartet Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 15.Miles Davis - Young Man With a Horn Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 16.Red Norvo - Men at Work Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 / George Shearing Quintet 17.Gerry Mulligan Quartet Vol. 2 / Vol. 3 / Vol. 4 18.Chet Baker Quartet Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 19.Sidney Bechet And His Blue Note Jazzmen Vol. 3 / Vol. 4 20.Lester Young Les Chefs-d'œuvre de Lester Young Vol. 1 / Vol. 2

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