ejp626

The Alex Colville exhibit at the AGO just opened up. I intentionally went for a short visit and will soak more in another time. However, my overall impression is meh. Edward Hopper did it a lot better. I don't really understand why some critics are claiming Colville is one of the most significant Canadian artists of the second half of the 20th Century. I would say Mary Pratt actually has a better eye for composition, just keeping this to Canadian artists. Well, next year the AGO has a Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition, and that will be a bit more exciting and to my taste. And I guess I will be bussing it to Buffalo in the last fall for a Helen Frankenthaler exhibit. So a few things to look forward to.

That is quite interesting. I really did not like The Good Terrorist for a variety of reasons, but probably boiling down to the idea that almost all urban dwellers of a liberal bent might get swept up into a radical position if the chips were down. Maybe that wasn't the main thrust but it is what I remembered and reacted quite badly to. But I did like The Golden Notebook, which others didn't (many preferring the Martha Quest books). It is sort of the same thing, multi-layered with a female protagonist struggling to "keep it together." I only read one of Lessing's SF books, and I didn't think it was all that great. She was working in the same general territory as Ursula LeGuin, but not as satisfactorily. Still, I am pretty sure I will get to the Martha Quest books one of these days. I'm back making slow but steady progress on Demons and enjoying it. I think I am about to get introduced to a bunch of additional radical characters. I might have to read at a faster pace to not lose track of them all. The politics of "The Good Terrorist" didn't bother me; it comes with the title. I don't know for sure, but I suspect Lessing's politics were Left, or at least anti-authoritarian, probably a by-product of her colonial upbringing in Rhodesia. In any event, right or left, she is fearless in scrutinizing the people who make up the various camps. I like that about her. It struck me as a very authentic look into radicalism, in the tradition of Conrad's "The Secret Agent." I thought the ending of the book was quite powerful. I too would like to read the middle books of the "Children of Violence" series, particularly for its depiction of life in the colony. Martha's transformation from an intemperate, lost young person in the first book to her translation into an esteemed figure in the last is interesting too. I haven't read "The Golden Notebook," which I think got her the Nobel Prize. I read that Lessing got a bit sick of (or professed to be sick of) all the praise for the book, especially it being labeled a "feminist" book. Lessing claimed that "The Four-Gated City" was a better book. Don't know if that was pique or her considered view but I thought it was interesting. I believe I heard that too -- that she preferred The Four-Gated City, so I will try to make sure to get around to it, but I have a hard time reading books out of sequence, so I have to wait until I have time for all the book in the series. Anyway, I nearly asked her a question at a reading about The Golden Notebook. Glad I held my tongue. BTW, The Diaries of Jane Somers are quite good (two books in one). It was this interesting experiment where she sent them to a publisher under a pseudonym. They were published but vanished without a trace until it was revealed that she had written them. I thought they were somewhat Pym-like, but it has been a long time since I read them.

That is quite interesting. I really did not like The Good Terrorist for a variety of reasons, but probably boiling down to the idea that almost all urban dwellers of a liberal bent might get swept up into a radical position if the chips were down. Maybe that wasn't the main thrust but it is what I remembered and reacted quite badly to. But I did like The Golden Notebook, which others didn't (many preferring the Martha Quest books). It is sort of the same thing, multi-layered with a female protagonist struggling to "keep it together." I only read one of Lessing's SF books, and I didn't think it was all that great. She was working in the same general territory as Ursula LeGuin, but not as satisfactorily. Still, I am pretty sure I will get to the Martha Quest books one of these days. I'm back making slow but steady progress on Demons and enjoying it. I think I am about to get introduced to a bunch of additional radical characters. I might have to read at a faster pace to not lose track of them all.

I thought briefly about it, but I am going to have to clear the shelves soon, and I just know this isn't going to get any play. I have a 5 CD Original Albums box of Boulez conducting and it basically is just gathering dust. Of course, you could say that about a lot of my collection.

Due to work getting really intense, I am suspending the heavy reading for a week or so. I'm midway into What Entropy Means to Me. I have to say, I wasn't digging it at all. It is sort of a fairly tedious meta-fictional riff on Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. At the halfway mark the book apparently shifts into something closer to a dark, dystopian world, somewhat akin to Brunner's The Sheep Look Up. Not quite sure where it is going, but I haven't been blown away so far. I also recently acquired a remaindered copy of Sarah Vowell's The Wordy Shipmates. Now I had been pre-warned that Vowell is an acquired taste -- she mixes serious research with a pop sensibility. I found a few pages in that it wasn't for me. It was this exact sentence: "Of course there's a catch, Spider-Man." in the context of a discussion of one of Rev. John Cotton's sermons. I can't get with that. It is clear, I am not her audience. I skipped around a few more places in the book and found it was all of a piece. So this will get donated to the library this weekend. It would be best all the way around if work goes back to a manageable pace (and I can get back to Demons), but if not, after I wrap up Entropy, I will read one of the shorter NYRB books I've picked up lately, probably Mr. Fortune by Sylvia Warner.

Unbelievable. I spent a bit of time researching it and there was a fairly cool video/DVD store called The Film Buff East not too far from me (definitely bikable), and they are closing their doors Sept 2. Killed off mostly by Netflix (and they point out the irony of being forced out of business by a company that doesn't even do physical DVD rentals). Now there are a number of other places to go (including the Film Buff West) but nothing remotely near my house. Fuck. I may try to make it down to their massive closing sale over the next couple of weeks, but my heart's not really in it. Damn it all. Even Zip.ca is closing down at the end of August. I guess they just are asking for folks north of the border to turn pirate. I think we won't even recognize the media landscape in another 20 years, and it may well be next to impossible to get physical copies of any of the things we currently enjoy. Frankly, I'm not really looking forward to it.

To date I've only read Fathers and Children, though I have read A Month in the Country (a play) as well.

I generally didn't think Netflix streaming service was worth it, much preferring the DVDs. I also liked LoveFilm when I was in the UK, and there I only had physical DVDs. Here in Canada we basically get hosed. Netflix is streaming only, and has even less selection than the US streaming version. (You can't get Hulu unless you jump through a lot of hoops to try to prove you are actually an American. No clue if Hulu will ever make it up here legitimately.) There is some Netflix-like service called Zip.ca that does mail out the DVDs but the reviews are pretty negative. So I guess things are always relative, and both the US and the UK have it better than Canada. I guess on the positive side, Toronto still has a fair number of specialty DVD rental stores (yes, you can go into a store and rent DVDs still), and I'll investigate that soon. Perhaps there will be one on my commuting path, so I can stop off on the way home.

This is an art installation that somehow manages to mix Kafka (think In the Penal Colony) and a trip to the dentist. It is pretty unsettling toward the end. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak6Ldat9yto

how's that for hubris? if he wants to make fun of jazz writing, he should make fun of jazz writing and those that produce it, using a musician isn't the soundest of ways to achieve that - but then no one would ever read a piece making fun of jazz writing, so ... lame ass stuff. Yeah, he's definitely a conceited d-bag. Stop digging, son...

Only about 100 pages into Dostoevsky's Demons but am enjoying it quite a bit. I was worried since I was so disappointed with The Idiot, and I wasn't sure if I had changed or this was just very uncharacteristic Dostoevsky (I think the latter). It kind of helps that I was really immersed in the world of Russian nihilists and anarchists when watching Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia. What's particularly intriguing is that Dostoevsky knew this crowd but fell out with them fairly early on, and apparently had a difficult relationship with Turgenev, which was mostly a negative one. Turgenev shows up as a risible character in Demons, despite the fact that some of the plot points in the first 100 pages are lifted from Turgenev's A Month in the Country. At any rate, Turgenev and a bunch of the other Russian intellectuals show up in The Coast of Utopia, but not Dostoevsky. He's kind of conspicuously absent. I've decided to somewhat reorient my reading list and to go ahead and read Berlin's Russian Thinkers and I guess Herzen's My Past and Thoughts (the 2 vol. abridged version). I think that will allow me to get this out of my system and most on to the Rezzori and some other literary topics.

I wrapped up The Man Who Cried I Am. In the end, a very strange book. About halfway through it switches over to sort of a Forrest Gump approach -- Black writer with nationalist leanings gets to meet and mingle with elites in New York and Washington D.C. He even becomes a speech writer for Kennedy for a few months. The final quarter morphs into this paranoid mode somewhat reminiscent of Chester Himes' Plan B. I didn't think this mixing of styles worked well. I thought the first half of the book was the strongest. I'm just getting started on Dostoevsky's The Demons. After that it will be (or should be) Von Rezzori's An Ermine in Czernopol.

Now that's interesting, as I know Seva has a restaurant in Ann Arbor (and I would guess it is the mother restaurant). I had no idea they operated in Detroit as well. I also just learned that Seva moved from downtown to the west side, which I will have to keep in mind if I ever make it back to Ann Arbor.

A month ago I was thinking very seriously of going, but my last two experiences have made me completely swear off trying to drive to the States over a holiday weekend. I literally was stuck at the border for 3.5 and 7 hours. I'm never doing that again, and the price to fly to Detroit that weekend is just ridiculous. So sadly I don't think I'll ever make it.

I read that the real doctor that inspired the Patch Adams movie thought Williams was too restrained in the role.

It makes far more sense to publish the satire in the New Yorker, where a least a considerable number of the readers will be up on jazz (though probably more will be classical aficionados). It doesn't make any kind of sense to go in the Washington Post. I think what slays me is just how lame it is to say "This isn't a satire," and then later on to admit that it is. Unbelievably lame. It's so disappointing watching mainstream media becoming addicted to click-bait type articles. I just don't see how anyone can avoid the fact that news (and popular culture) is coarsening and is worse than 15-20 years ago.

Oddly enough I somehow avoided a lot of his hits and saw his less successful (at least commercially) movies. The crazy thing is I just can't remember whether I saw What Dreams May Come or not. I suspect that my favorite part is actually the genie in Aladdin, simply because it seemed the only role where his quicksilver changes made much sense. As for his dramatic roles, I think my favorite is Moscow on the Hudson. I am very sorry he couldn't hang on for a while longer, but depression is a real beast...

Shoot -- just the other day I accidentally hit some combination of keys and the whole computer shut down. Wasn't too happy about that.

It looks like some but less than you might think. Amazon UK has more but still incomplete details: CONTENTS CD 1-2 BACH - BRAHMS -TCHAIKOVSKY Violin Concertos Oistrakh CD 3-4 BACH Cello Suites Fournier CD 5 BEETHOVEN Symphonies 5 & 7 Kleiber CD 6 BEETHOVEN Symphony 6 SCHUBERT Symphony 5 Böhm CD 7 BEETHOVEN Symphony 9 Karajan CD 8 BEETHOVEN Piano Concertos 4 & 5 Kempff CD 9 BEETHOVEN Sonatas 8, 14, 21 & 23 Kempff CD 10 BRAHMS Symphony 4 Kleiber CD 11-12 BRAHMS Piano Concertos Gilels CD 13 BRAHMS Cello Sonatas Rostropovich CD 14 CHOPIN Piano Concerto 1 CD LISZT Piano Concerto 1 Argerich CD 15 CHOPIN Études opp. 10 & 25 Pollini CD 16 CHOPIN Polonaises Pollini CD 17 DEBUSSY La Mer RAVEL Boléro CD MUSSORGSKY Pictures at an Exhibition Karajan CD 18 DVOŘÁK Symphonies 8 & 9 Kubelik CD 19 DVOŘÁK Slavonic Dances Kubelik CD 20 DVOŘÁK Cello Concerto Rostropovich CD 21 GRIEG Lyric Pieces Gilels CD 22 MAHLER Symphony 1 Kubelik CD 23 MAHLER Symphony 5 Karajan CD 24 MENDELSSOHN Symphonies 3 & 4 Karajan CD 25 MENDELSSOHN - BRUCH Concertos Mutter CD 26-27 MOZART Symphonies 35, 36, 38-41 Böhm CD 28 MOZART Piano Concertos 6, 17 & 21 Anda CD 29 MOZART Violin Concertos 3 & 5 Mutter CD 30 MOZART Wind Concertos Prinz - Tripp - Zeman CD 31-32 MOZART Die Zauberflöte Böhm CD 33 ORFF Carmina Burana Jochum CD 34 PROKOFIEV Piano Concerto 3 RAVEL Piano Concerto in G Argerich CD 35 PROKOFIEV Scythian Suite - Lieutenant Kijé Abbado CD 36 RACHMANINOV Piano Concerto 2 TCHAIKOVSKY Piano Concerto 1 Richter CD 37 SCHUBERT Symphonies 3 & 8 Kleiber CD 38 SCHUBERT “Death and the Maiden“ Quartet “The Trout” Quintet Gilels - Amadeus CD 39 SCHUBERT Die schöne Müllerin Wunderlich CD 40 SCHUBERT Winterreise Fischer-Dieskau CD 41 R. STRAUSS Zarathustra - Till Eulenspiegel Don Juan Karajan CD 42 R. STRAUSS Four Last Songs Tod und Verklärung Janowitz - Karajan CD 43-44 TCHAIKOVSKY Symphonies 4-6 Mravinsky CD 45 TCHAIKOVSKY Ballet Suites Rostropovich CD 46 VERDI Messa da Requiem Fricsay CD 47-49 WAGNER Tristan und Isolde Böhm CD 50 Martha Argerich Debut Recital LISZT CHOPIN - BRAHMS - PROKOFIEV - RAVEL

I guess this is right on the edge of being a bargain: http://www.amazon.com/Luciano-Pavarotti-Edition-First-Decade/dp/B00G5WUIP4/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t Pavarotti - the First Decade (Decca). 28 CDs and a small vinyl bonus disc for roughly $100. Almost everything remastered well apparently. I think this is one of those sets where price will drop, then skyrocket when it goes OOP. I don't enjoy opera enough (or at all) for this to tempt me.

It was written in the mid to late 60s when the legal landscape was a bit different. I'm honestly not sure if it is supposed to be a pure roman a clef or if the characters are composites. I'd have to do more research to find this out, and I'm not up to it at the moment. But it's a pretty good read so far.

I believe it is a bit of a grey area, but definitely unenforced either way. My general understanding is that trade commissioners and others have found that an individual can import one copy for personal use without bringing down the copyright cops upon their head. But as with many things it is probably better left a bit ambiguous.

Speaking of Spark, has anyone looked into her collection of non-fiction The Informed Air? There was a relatively positive review in the Toronto Star over the weekend, though the few Amazon reviews have been fairly negative, saying that these are largely short, inconsequential pieces that don't merit the title of essay. I'd be curious to hear what Spark had to say about the Brontes (a whole section devoted to this), but it definitely sounds like something to check out of the library rather than purchase. The Man Who Cried I Am is pretty good on the whole, but I am tired of trying to guess which character corresponds to which Black author. The introduction spells out who is Richard Wright and who is James Baldwin, but then doesn't say who is Ralph Ellison. I'm guessing Chester Himes is represented as well, but am not sure. Rudolph Fisher (The Conjure Man Dies) is probably too obscure (I really ought to reread this one of these days). I haven't run across any poets in the narrative yet, so it looks like Langston Hughes and Jean Toomer were left out. Carl van Vechten makes an appearance, but I am not sure who his Jewish counterpart was supposed to be.

This thread and several others basically bring me to the conclusion that jazz is finally dead and there are a bunch of moldy old figs fighting over the carcass. It's so reminiscent of the dig at academics that the passions runs so deep because the stakes are so inconsequential. It's depressing how little life there is on any of the music threads (indeed I pretty much only post in the classical threads or to discuss books). Well, as Samuel "Skeeter" Johnson once said, "When a man is bored with jazz, he is ready to live life again to its fullest (out of the basement)."

There's nothing worse than someone insisting that they have a perfectly good sense of humor, but that X or Y just isn't all that funny. At the moment, I do seem to be reading works that are Important and Serious and have little lightness at all (to borrow from the Calvino essays), and that seems to be the rut I want to stick in for a while. So Lessing is a better fit to say nothing of Dostoevsky. The humor I can stomach at the moment is of the wry variety. Or black humor may be ok (there is some of that in The Man Who Cried I Am, which seems to be the book that I had hoped City of Light would be). I imagine this will pass, and I will be more open to books that have a bit more generosity of spirit about them... (At that point, I am considering reading some Montaigne...)