Leeway

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Did anyone happen to see this sales girl there? Goes by the name Anna.

I love live theatre, especially Shakespeare productions, as well as plays like The Revenger's Tragedy and The Dutchess of Malfi. In fact, saw a production of the latter during the 2014 Fringe Festival, which is an avant theatre festival held in DC every year. Another play from the Festival which impressed me was based on a story by Kafka, "Report to an Academy." As the playbill describes it, "An ape, Red Peter, evolves to behave like a human and presents the vile details of his captivity to a scientific academy." Sounds odd, and it is, but it turned out to be an enormously affecting work of theater. Over the last couple of years, have also seen plays by Stoppard and Pirandello, and a Bradbury adaptation. So yes, very much enjoy stage.

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I haven't read this one, but from Elizabethan times on, Italy was portrayed as the land of plots and perfidy. It was said, "An Englishman Italianate is the Devil Incarnate" to decry the adoption of Italian styles and morals by traveling Englishmen. It's a theme in many English and American novels. Spark's "The Takeover" is one such. But closer examination usually finds that both traveling Englishmen and native Italians are morally equivalent. "Innocence" and guilt become problematic constructs.

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I like the young lady and her (if it is her) blog, and I like AK. I'll go one step further and say the young lady is using AK style po-faced, expectation-bending comedy/satire/role-play. In a male-dominated world of record-collecting, she is making her case for inter-gender collecting champ. I think some folks are frustrated with her blog, because one doesn't know whether to take her seriously, and/or to laugh, and/or to respond to the cheesecake pics. Very AK.

Best of luck with Clarissa. One of my daughters is named Clarissa, though I've only read extracts from the novel. I was once on a badly planned course on the 18th century novel in which students were given a week to read Clarissa. Needless to say, no one succeeded. Fielding's Tom Jones, half the length of Clarissa, was more within my grasp and I've read it twice. My wife staggered through volume after volume of Proust in English translation, but still didn't reach the end. At university I got through a big chunk of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The prose style was magnificent. It took me many months to read Boswell's Life of Johnson, although it's not a particularly long book. I kept by my bedside and it was a great sleep inducer. A paragraph acted like a blow to the head with a blunt instrument :-) It's funny how we are all playing in the same sandbox, but with different pails and shovels . For my part, I've been a big Sam Johnson fan for a long time. AT one point, it was quite intense, as I gave my son the middle name of "Samuel." Lesson: literary infatuations are for a while, names are permanent. I still find SJ and JB quite entertaining, although I wouldn't attempt to read the "Life" straight through. I still have a hope of following in SJ's footsteps on a tour of the Hebrides. OTOH, whenever I have trouble sleeping, my wife suggests I take down my volume of Gibbon. I doubt I made more than 10 pages before falling blissfully asleep. I do like the prosody, and the intellect, but it works like a narcotic on me. I'm screwing up my courage for "Clarissa"! I have got through DosPassos' trilogy; it has a kind of early jazzy feel to it, with what were then some leading edge experimentalism, which now has faded. I've read some Mahfouz and liked it. Musil I got nowhere with; I couldn't develop a gram of care for the characters. It was readable though.

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Very amusing. Plus some good lessons on how to, and not to, approach musicians. As a general rule, if you really like some musician's music, it's better to avoid attempting a personal discussion. A bad encounter can sour one for a long time on the music itself. I like Vinny for shrugging off PM's reactions.

Love both of those guys, but the few times I've seen Butcher live, he favored the tenor sax. I wonder if that is generally true now? I think Butcher is often a match for Evan Parker when it comes to tenor. One can still discern some Parkerisms in Butcher's playing, but for the most part, it is quite individual and strongly inventive. You mean soprano, right? Parker's tenor plying is quite jazzy, Butcher has eschewed all jazz references from his playing (whether on soprano or tenor) by now, although I did see him do a mock free-jazz blow-hard on tenor once - but this was just a few seconds. I don't hear much similarity. On soprano Butcher's vocabulary is much broader than Parker's IMO. There is a recent Parker / Leimgruber duo, will check it out. No, I did mean tenor in your highlighted text. I like what Butcher does on the tenor, I like that he does eschew familiar reference points, whether generic or personal, to explore the range of the tenor and explore a wide variety of ideas. I like what EP does on tenor, but it is typically marked with a host of familiar reference points; one almost always knows what's coming. Enjoyable at that, but rarely startling, rarely the shock of the new. As for soprano, I haven't heard Butcher match Parker yet, and when I've seen Butcher in concert, he has relied on the tenor. Maybe that's an anomaly, just wondering if in his England or Euro appearances, he has gone in significantly for the soprano recently, or stuck with the tenor. I like the Parker/Leimgruber disc ("Twine" I think). In my view, Leimgruber scores more points, but Parker has the heavier blows (boxing analogy). I put Leimgruber right up there with Butcher and Parker.

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Love both of those guys, but the few times I've seen Butcher live, he favored the tenor sax. I wonder if that is generally true now? I think Butcher is often a match for Evan Parker when it comes to tenor. One can still discern some Parkerisms in Butcher's playing, but for the most part, it is quite individual and strongly inventive.

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BIG BOOKS AND RESOLUTIONS It's that time for New Year resolutions, and I was wondering if anyone had any New Year book resolutions or was planning to assay a "Big Book"? For some reason or another, I've resolved to attempt more "Big Books," which is difficult for me since I like serendipity in my reading. Nevertheless, I'm feeling the need to --finally- read Clarissa." I'm not sure if I will just immerse myself in it, and not emerge until done, or if I should read a smaller work(s) alongside it, like one of those remoras that hang on sharks, or the horses that accompany race horses to the gate, just to provide some variety. Another biggie I've got my eye on is Gaddis' The Recognitions. Very highly acclaimed, I suspect little read. I expect to try it. As always, towering in the distance is Proust. I've never got through it all, not sure if this is the year. Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time I have got through, but it would seem a pleasant past-time to go around again. Any big books in 2015 for you? Any book resolutions?

Hunter - Surprised me, but then again I am always on the lookout for rare LPs, CDs, books and great pizza. Not so much for things like bears, wolves, and deer though!

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I would agree with that last statement, both from recordings and live. I may prefer to hear Evan on soprano in a live setting - it is such a full striking force of sound experienced in a typical setting that one would see him play live. Being a few feet away when he does what he does on that horn is a mind blowing experience. Along with one other saxophonist, he is my favorite living tenor saxophonist - I think he comes across very strong on record on the tenor. So on record, since I hear the tenor range better, I prefer to hear his tenor playing on recordings. I especially like formats like trios with drums and bass or drums and piano. I like to hear him improvise at length on tenor - My comment giving the nod to EP's soprano playing is based on my perception that Parker is much more instinctive on soprano, has greater speed and alacrity, and can match up well with other instruments. Even though I love his tenor playing too, and rate it pretty damn high, it just strikes me that he is more deliberate on tenor, a battleship that needs some time to change course, to bring its full power into play. But one does get that power. I was actually thinking of "Monoceros" when I posted my comment; what he does there, those marvelous fireworks, is I think unparalleled on tenor. Of course, that was then, this is now. But I think the edge still holds.