Wednesday, January 10, 2007
I picked up "Best American Essays 2006" in NoHo when we dropped EGA off, just in time for some airplane reading. Lauren Slater guest edited this year's edition, and once again I am struck by two things: the impressive quality of the work assembled; and the number of essays collected that I'd already read. I hadn't read Laurie Abraham's "Kinsey and Me", which leads off the collection, and was lulled into the pleasing thought that the set might contain some interesting writing about sex, but Ms. Slater's actual topic turned out to be mortality. Lots of people die in "Best American Essays" this year-- people's parents, Sam Pickering's dog, Adam Gopnik's daughter's pet fish, Susan Sontag, Saul Bellow-- but the saddest of the lot is Marjorie Williams, whose first person account about dying of cancer damn near made me cry when I read it for the first time last year, and almost did it again this afternoon. Ms. Williams wrote about her own death with such clear-eyed grace that I felt like gasping at almost every paragraph. It is almost a shame that her husband's little piece on affinity bracelets isn't included as a coda. Writing in Slate, Tim Noah said, "With so much to be aware of, awareness bracelets have reverted to signifying nothing more than color itself. Idealism has devolved into fashion. That helps explain why my dear wife, who died of liver cancer two weeks ago, and whom I miss almost more than I can bear—and certainly more than any colored wristband could possibly express—held the awareness-bracelet movement in undisguised contempt." That paragraph belongs in this collection.
There is a larger point here though. From Gopnik's essay about his daughter's goldfish: "Everybody had had a dead-pet problem. Goldfish had floated to the tops of bowls; hamsters had been found dead in their gages, their furry feet upward; and more guruesome inter-pet homicides had taken place, too. Each family had a different tack, and a different theory. There were those who had gone the full 'Vertigo' route and regretted it; those who had gone the tell-it-to-'em straight route and regretted that. In fact, about all one could say, and not for the first time as a parent, is that whatever one did, one regretted it afterward."
Gopnik is onto something there, but he doesn't quite go the whole way, and Williams, with death a daily companion, probably gets a little closer to the weird sadness of being a parent. Driving home from our Saturday run a few weeks ago Jim was talking about how his children mispronounce some words. "Aminals" was one, I think, and there was another that escapes me. "I don't correct them," he said, because I'm not in a hurry for them to stop being kids." His children are much younger than mine, and what I should have told him is that they don't, stop, really. They get older, and become Logicians or divas or level-headed beautiful young women, but it is impossible to look at your children without realizing how crazy lucky you are, and how precarious it all is. My heart breaks every day, every time I look at them.
Williams got it. "But from almost the first instant, my terror and grief were tinged with an odd relief. I was so lucky, I thought, that this was happening to me as late as forty-three, not in my thirties or in my twenties. If I died soon, there would be some things I'd regret not having done, and I would feel fathomless anguish at leaving my children so young. But I had a powerful sense that, for my own part, I had had every chance to flourish. I had a loving marriage. I'd known the sweet, rock-breaking, irreplaceable labor of parenthood, and would leave two marvelous beings in my place. I had known rapture, and adventure, and rest. I knew what it was to love my work. I had deep, hard-won friendships, and diverse, widespread fredships of less intensity.
"I was surrounded by love.
"All this knowledge brought a certain calm. I knew intuitively that I would have felt more paniced, more frantic, in the years when I was still growing into my adulthood. For I had had the chance to become the person it was in me to be. Nor did I waste any time wondering why. Why me? It was obvious that this was no more or less than a piece of horrible bad luck. Until then my life had been, in the big ways, one long run of good luck. Only a moral idiot could feel entitled, in the midst of such a life, to a complete exception from bad fortune."
I read that and I am reminded that I should be less churlish about my good luck.
There is a larger point here though. From Gopnik's essay about his daughter's goldfish: "Everybody had had a dead-pet problem. Goldfish had floated to the tops of bowls; hamsters had been found dead in their gages, their furry feet upward; and more guruesome inter-pet homicides had taken place, too. Each family had a different tack, and a different theory. There were those who had gone the full 'Vertigo' route and regretted it; those who had gone the tell-it-to-'em straight route and regretted that. In fact, about all one could say, and not for the first time as a parent, is that whatever one did, one regretted it afterward."
Gopnik is onto something there, but he doesn't quite go the whole way, and Williams, with death a daily companion, probably gets a little closer to the weird sadness of being a parent. Driving home from our Saturday run a few weeks ago Jim was talking about how his children mispronounce some words. "Aminals" was one, I think, and there was another that escapes me. "I don't correct them," he said, because I'm not in a hurry for them to stop being kids." His children are much younger than mine, and what I should have told him is that they don't, stop, really. They get older, and become Logicians or divas or level-headed beautiful young women, but it is impossible to look at your children without realizing how crazy lucky you are, and how precarious it all is. My heart breaks every day, every time I look at them.
Williams got it. "But from almost the first instant, my terror and grief were tinged with an odd relief. I was so lucky, I thought, that this was happening to me as late as forty-three, not in my thirties or in my twenties. If I died soon, there would be some things I'd regret not having done, and I would feel fathomless anguish at leaving my children so young. But I had a powerful sense that, for my own part, I had had every chance to flourish. I had a loving marriage. I'd known the sweet, rock-breaking, irreplaceable labor of parenthood, and would leave two marvelous beings in my place. I had known rapture, and adventure, and rest. I knew what it was to love my work. I had deep, hard-won friendships, and diverse, widespread fredships of less intensity.
"I was surrounded by love.
"All this knowledge brought a certain calm. I knew intuitively that I would have felt more paniced, more frantic, in the years when I was still growing into my adulthood. For I had had the chance to become the person it was in me to be. Nor did I waste any time wondering why. Why me? It was obvious that this was no more or less than a piece of horrible bad luck. Until then my life had been, in the big ways, one long run of good luck. Only a moral idiot could feel entitled, in the midst of such a life, to a complete exception from bad fortune."
I read that and I am reminded that I should be less churlish about my good luck.
Wednesday, December 31, 2003
I've been a fan of the Best American Essays series for a long time-- it used to be the book I'd pick up to sustain me on my Thanksgiving holiday travels, but now I'm too pressed for time, and I find that I am obliged to read it by dipping into it from time to time when I have time. It'll probably sustain me thus through February this year, which is probably also the better way to read it. For a long time I would do the Best American Short Stories as well, and I think our protocol was that my brother would buy one, and I'd buy the other, and we'd trade. This would account for why I do not have a complete run of either-- the ones I am missing are, presumably, lost to the Antipodes. In any event, the advantage to reading either collection in that giant killing stride way is that the individual essays are still fresh enough to discuss with the reader who gets the book next. This year's Essays, guest edited by Anne Fadiman is as good as any I can recall, and I would love to be able to share them-- different essays with different people, not everyone I know would like all of the ones I've read so far, but everyone I care about would like some aspect of some of them. Is it true, I wonder, that the closest Gaelic comes to the word "yes" is "it is"?
Saturday, December 18, 2004
Checking the flyleaf, I see that they've been putting out "Best American Essays" since 1986, so I guess I've been reading this collection every year since the Reagan Administration. I used to read the "Best American Stories" collection, too, but back then I rode the subway and had more time. The essays collection has been one of the little treats in my life for 18 years, which means I've been reading them since EGA was born, I guess.
Most years I have read three or four already-- in "The New Yorker", or "The New York Review of Books" g-d help me, or "The Atlantic", or "Harpers" mostly, but sometimes I pick up something more esoteric, and when I find it in the anthology I'm always pleased-- even in my Collyer Brothers existence, magazine articles that I like disappear, and I'm glad to have them in a form that I can put on a shelf and revisit.
Some years are a tougher read than others-- Susan Sontang's year as guest editor was
rough, I remember. Always it is a collection that is filled with things I'd like to share, essays about stuff that I know everyone I like to talk to would enjoy. Unfortunately, not everyone I like to talk to is quite as omnivorous as I am. I could pass it around, but the way I like to read it is to bomb straight through-- not the way most people read collections like this, I think, even people who read collections like this. Part of it with me is that it is a perfect book for a plane or a train-- I spend a lot of time in between places, and a collection of writing about a lot of different stuff is just what I'm looking for this time of year, when the light gets short, and I am in between no place much, and no place at all.
This year's collection, guest edited by Louis Menand, is as good as it's been in a while. It kicks off with a terrific James Agee piece, recently discovered, about casual racism, and wishing to stand up to it better. Written in 1943, it is as true today as it was then, maybe truer, and is as good an example of the sort of pure, luminescent quality that Agee's writing possessed as I have ever read. Kathryn Chetkovich contributes a piece from "Granta" called "Envy" which discusses the corrosive effect the emotion on her relationship with a lover that knocked me out-- it made me want to teach a course on the Seven Deadly Sins just so I could include it. I'd read Adam Gopnik's piece on the "Matrix" trilogy before, but it is good to have it here, for future reference. Anne Fadiman, who I assume is Clifton Fadiman's daughter, was last year's editor, and has an essay here about Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the Arctic explorer that is simply terrific. Jonathan Franzen's high school reminiscence was in "The New Yorker"-- after being just frustrated with "The Corrections" I was glad to read it. Laura Hillenbrand may only ever write two things, but "Seabiscut" and the essay here about her struggle with chronic fatigue syndrome are both so amazing that I'd have to say she is in a class by herself. Rick Moody contributes a piece called "Against Cool" that I wish I'd written. I take issue with some of his interpretations, but it is a nice piece of scholarship all the same. Similarly, Alex Ross' "Rock 101"-- perhaps a bit too infused with the arch quality that editors for "The New Yorker" must strive to help their writers overcome, but still a piece of work that mines material I want to work, and shows me how the pros do it.
In fact, let's dwell a bit on the Ross piece. It opens with Ross describing an interview with Duke Ellington from "The New Yorker" in 1944. Duke is asked whether he ever felt an affinity for the music of Bach. "[B]efore answering, he made a show of unwrapping a pork chop that he had stowed in his pocket. 'Bach and myself,' he said, taking a bite from the chop, 'both write with individual performers in mind.'" Ross uses this story to make a larger point, but I've been thinking about this for the last two days, and I think that the pork chop story is made up. I cannot imagine Duke Ellington carrying a pork chop in his pocket, even though the words are pure Duke. The rest of the essay is about attending a conference on pop music, and about the dichotomy between taking pop music seriously and enjoying it at the same time. The piece fits well with Moody's article about cool, but I spotted errors in both, and Ross's use of the pork chop anecdote as his lede made me suspicious of a lot of what he had to say.
And so it goes with this collection-- I will come away from the book this year having
learned a little about Yiddish that I didn't know, thanks to the late Leonard Michaels, and a little about taxidermy (a newer thing than I'd thought-- really a Victorian invention), and something about knitting (the only piece I broke my rule about- I suspended reading and gave it to A. for her enjoyment). And I will also have something to gnaw on. I want to know about that pork chop, and I will, I expect, find out sooner or later.
Most years I have read three or four already-- in "The New Yorker", or "The New York Review of Books" g-d help me, or "The Atlantic", or "Harpers" mostly, but sometimes I pick up something more esoteric, and when I find it in the anthology I'm always pleased-- even in my Collyer Brothers existence, magazine articles that I like disappear, and I'm glad to have them in a form that I can put on a shelf and revisit.
Some years are a tougher read than others-- Susan Sontang's year as guest editor was
rough, I remember. Always it is a collection that is filled with things I'd like to share, essays about stuff that I know everyone I like to talk to would enjoy. Unfortunately, not everyone I like to talk to is quite as omnivorous as I am. I could pass it around, but the way I like to read it is to bomb straight through-- not the way most people read collections like this, I think, even people who read collections like this. Part of it with me is that it is a perfect book for a plane or a train-- I spend a lot of time in between places, and a collection of writing about a lot of different stuff is just what I'm looking for this time of year, when the light gets short, and I am in between no place much, and no place at all.
This year's collection, guest edited by Louis Menand, is as good as it's been in a while. It kicks off with a terrific James Agee piece, recently discovered, about casual racism, and wishing to stand up to it better. Written in 1943, it is as true today as it was then, maybe truer, and is as good an example of the sort of pure, luminescent quality that Agee's writing possessed as I have ever read. Kathryn Chetkovich contributes a piece from "Granta" called "Envy" which discusses the corrosive effect the emotion on her relationship with a lover that knocked me out-- it made me want to teach a course on the Seven Deadly Sins just so I could include it. I'd read Adam Gopnik's piece on the "Matrix" trilogy before, but it is good to have it here, for future reference. Anne Fadiman, who I assume is Clifton Fadiman's daughter, was last year's editor, and has an essay here about Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the Arctic explorer that is simply terrific. Jonathan Franzen's high school reminiscence was in "The New Yorker"-- after being just frustrated with "The Corrections" I was glad to read it. Laura Hillenbrand may only ever write two things, but "Seabiscut" and the essay here about her struggle with chronic fatigue syndrome are both so amazing that I'd have to say she is in a class by herself. Rick Moody contributes a piece called "Against Cool" that I wish I'd written. I take issue with some of his interpretations, but it is a nice piece of scholarship all the same. Similarly, Alex Ross' "Rock 101"-- perhaps a bit too infused with the arch quality that editors for "The New Yorker" must strive to help their writers overcome, but still a piece of work that mines material I want to work, and shows me how the pros do it.
In fact, let's dwell a bit on the Ross piece. It opens with Ross describing an interview with Duke Ellington from "The New Yorker" in 1944. Duke is asked whether he ever felt an affinity for the music of Bach. "[B]efore answering, he made a show of unwrapping a pork chop that he had stowed in his pocket. 'Bach and myself,' he said, taking a bite from the chop, 'both write with individual performers in mind.'" Ross uses this story to make a larger point, but I've been thinking about this for the last two days, and I think that the pork chop story is made up. I cannot imagine Duke Ellington carrying a pork chop in his pocket, even though the words are pure Duke. The rest of the essay is about attending a conference on pop music, and about the dichotomy between taking pop music seriously and enjoying it at the same time. The piece fits well with Moody's article about cool, but I spotted errors in both, and Ross's use of the pork chop anecdote as his lede made me suspicious of a lot of what he had to say.
And so it goes with this collection-- I will come away from the book this year having
learned a little about Yiddish that I didn't know, thanks to the late Leonard Michaels, and a little about taxidermy (a newer thing than I'd thought-- really a Victorian invention), and something about knitting (the only piece I broke my rule about- I suspended reading and gave it to A. for her enjoyment). And I will also have something to gnaw on. I want to know about that pork chop, and I will, I expect, find out sooner or later.
Checking the flyleaf, I see that they've been putting out "Best American Essays" since 1986, so I guess I've been reading this collection every year since the Reagan Administration. I used to read the "Best American Stories" collection, too, but back then I rode the subway and had more time. The essays collection has been one of the little treats in my life for 18 years, which means I've been reading them since EGA was born, I guess.
Most years I have read three or four already-- in "The New Yorker", or "The New York Review of Books" g-d help me, or "The Atlantic", or "Harpers" mostly, but sometimes I pick up something more esoteric, and when I find it in the anthology I'm always pleased-- even in my Collyer Brothers existence, magazine articles that I like disapear, and I'm glad to have them in a form that I can put on a shelf and revisit.
Some years are a tougher read than others-- Susan Sontang's year as guest editor was
rough, I remember. Always it is a collection that is filled with things I'd like to share, essays about stuff that I know everyone I like to talk to would enjoy. Unfortunately, not everyone I like to talk to is quite as omnivorous as I am. I could pass it around, but the way I like to read it is to bomb straight through-- not the way most people read collections like this, I think, even people who read collections like this. Part of it with me is that it is a perfect book for a plane or a train-- I spend a lot of time in between places, and a collection of writing about a lot of diferet stuff is just what I'm looking for this time of year, when the light gets short, and I am in between no place much, and no place at all.
This year's collection, guest edited by Louis Menand, is as good as it's been in a while. It kicks off with a terrific James Agee piece, recently discovered, about casual racism, and wishing to stand up to it better. Writen in 1943, it is as true today as it was then, maybe truer, and is as good an example of the sort of pure, luminescent quality that Agee's writing possesed as I have ever read. Kathryn Chetkovich contributes a piece from "Granta" called "Envy" which discusses the corrosive effect the emotion on her relationship with a lover that knocked me out-- it made me want to teach a course on the Seven Deadly Sins just so I could include it. I'd read Adam Gopnik's piece on the "Matrix" trilogy before, but it is good to have it here, for future reference. Anne Fadiman, who I assume is Clifton
Fadiman's daughter, was last year's editor, and has an essay here about Vilhjalmur
Stefansson, the Artic explorer that is simply terrific. Jonathan Franzen's high school reminesence was in "The New Yorker"-- after being just frustrated with "The Corrections" I was glad to read it. Laura Hillenbrand may only ever write two things, but "Seabiscut" and her essay about her struggle with chronic fatigue syndrome are both so amazing that I'd have to say she is in a class by herself. Rick Moody contributes a piece called "Against Cool" that I wish I'd written. I take issue with some of his interpritations, but it is a nice piece of scholarship all the same. Similarly, Alex Ross' "Rock 101"-- perhaps a bit too infused with the arch quality that editors for "The New Yorker" must strive to help their writers overcome, but still a piece of work that mines matirial I want to work, and shows me how the pros do it.
In fact, let's dwell a bit on the Ross piece. It opens with Ross describing an interview with Duke Ellington from "The New Yorker" in 1944. Duke is asked whether he ever felt an affinity for the music of Bach. "[B]efore answering, he made a show of unwrapping a pork chop that he had stowed in his pocket. 'Bach and myself,' he said, taking a bite from the chop, 'both write with individual performers in mind.'" Ross uses this story to make a larger point, but I've been thinking about this for the last two days, and I think that the pork chop story is made up. I cannot imagine Duke Ellington carrying a pork chop in his pocket, even though the words are pure Duke. The rest of the essay is about attending a conference on pop music, and about the dichotomy between taking pop music seriously and enjoying it at the same time. The piece fits well with Moody's article about cool, but I spotted errors in both, and Ross's use of the pork chop anectode as his lede made me suspicious of a lot of what he had to say.
And so it goes with this collection-- I will come away from the book this year having
learned a little about Yiddish that I didn't know, thanks to the late Leonard Michaels, and a little about taxidermy (a newer thing than I'd thought-- really a Victorian invention), and something about knitting (the only piece I broke my rule about- I suspended reading and gave it to A. for her enjoyment). And I will also have something to gnaw on. I want to know about that pork chop, and I will, I expect, find out sooner or later.
Most years I have read three or four already-- in "The New Yorker", or "The New York Review of Books" g-d help me, or "The Atlantic", or "Harpers" mostly, but sometimes I pick up something more esoteric, and when I find it in the anthology I'm always pleased-- even in my Collyer Brothers existence, magazine articles that I like disapear, and I'm glad to have them in a form that I can put on a shelf and revisit.
Some years are a tougher read than others-- Susan Sontang's year as guest editor was
rough, I remember. Always it is a collection that is filled with things I'd like to share, essays about stuff that I know everyone I like to talk to would enjoy. Unfortunately, not everyone I like to talk to is quite as omnivorous as I am. I could pass it around, but the way I like to read it is to bomb straight through-- not the way most people read collections like this, I think, even people who read collections like this. Part of it with me is that it is a perfect book for a plane or a train-- I spend a lot of time in between places, and a collection of writing about a lot of diferet stuff is just what I'm looking for this time of year, when the light gets short, and I am in between no place much, and no place at all.
This year's collection, guest edited by Louis Menand, is as good as it's been in a while. It kicks off with a terrific James Agee piece, recently discovered, about casual racism, and wishing to stand up to it better. Writen in 1943, it is as true today as it was then, maybe truer, and is as good an example of the sort of pure, luminescent quality that Agee's writing possesed as I have ever read. Kathryn Chetkovich contributes a piece from "Granta" called "Envy" which discusses the corrosive effect the emotion on her relationship with a lover that knocked me out-- it made me want to teach a course on the Seven Deadly Sins just so I could include it. I'd read Adam Gopnik's piece on the "Matrix" trilogy before, but it is good to have it here, for future reference. Anne Fadiman, who I assume is Clifton
Fadiman's daughter, was last year's editor, and has an essay here about Vilhjalmur
Stefansson, the Artic explorer that is simply terrific. Jonathan Franzen's high school reminesence was in "The New Yorker"-- after being just frustrated with "The Corrections" I was glad to read it. Laura Hillenbrand may only ever write two things, but "Seabiscut" and her essay about her struggle with chronic fatigue syndrome are both so amazing that I'd have to say she is in a class by herself. Rick Moody contributes a piece called "Against Cool" that I wish I'd written. I take issue with some of his interpritations, but it is a nice piece of scholarship all the same. Similarly, Alex Ross' "Rock 101"-- perhaps a bit too infused with the arch quality that editors for "The New Yorker" must strive to help their writers overcome, but still a piece of work that mines matirial I want to work, and shows me how the pros do it.
In fact, let's dwell a bit on the Ross piece. It opens with Ross describing an interview with Duke Ellington from "The New Yorker" in 1944. Duke is asked whether he ever felt an affinity for the music of Bach. "[B]efore answering, he made a show of unwrapping a pork chop that he had stowed in his pocket. 'Bach and myself,' he said, taking a bite from the chop, 'both write with individual performers in mind.'" Ross uses this story to make a larger point, but I've been thinking about this for the last two days, and I think that the pork chop story is made up. I cannot imagine Duke Ellington carrying a pork chop in his pocket, even though the words are pure Duke. The rest of the essay is about attending a conference on pop music, and about the dichotomy between taking pop music seriously and enjoying it at the same time. The piece fits well with Moody's article about cool, but I spotted errors in both, and Ross's use of the pork chop anectode as his lede made me suspicious of a lot of what he had to say.
And so it goes with this collection-- I will come away from the book this year having
learned a little about Yiddish that I didn't know, thanks to the late Leonard Michaels, and a little about taxidermy (a newer thing than I'd thought-- really a Victorian invention), and something about knitting (the only piece I broke my rule about- I suspended reading and gave it to A. for her enjoyment). And I will also have something to gnaw on. I want to know about that pork chop, and I will, I expect, find out sooner or later.
Monday, November 15, 2010
There are a lot of little markers of celebrity which I have fantasized about: back in the 80's I wanted to model for one of those black and white Gap tee shirt advertisements, for example. Being asked to guest edit the Best American Essays collection would be another. My travel schedule was such that I got to 2010 collection a bit early this year, a dependably worthwhile volume suitable for reading on any form of transportation not involving horses. Christopher Hitchens is the guest editor, this yeara writer that I don't feel I get most of the time. Is the point that he's English? Is it that English people probably think he's American? I'm surprised that I've read as much of his output as I have, and I guess it's because he is chiefly an essayist, and because he shows up in publications that I follow. The job of guest editor seems like pleasant work: the series editor, Robert Atwan, culls through the submissions for the year, then hands a stack over to the guest editor who picks the finalists and writes an introduction. The introduction can be tricky, because it should comment on the form, (at this point I award a mental bonus to writers who avoid mentioning Montaigne), and it should define the theme of the collection. I think the essay that will stay with me from this set will be Elif Batuman's account of attending a Tolstoy conference. Batuman's trip to the conference, held on Tolstoy's estate, included a long flight, so she dressed in sweatpants, a tee shirt and flip flops,so that she could could sleep comfortably on the plane. Naturally her luggage is lost, so she spends the first few days at the conference in this get-up. The other attendees assume that she dressed this way because she was emulating the eccentric Tolstoyans, who dressed simply and wore sandals year-round. Tolstoy is the alpha and omega of this collection, evoked again in the final essay, James Woods' piece on George Orwell, a Hitchens favorite.
Monday, December 13, 2021
I’m
a bit late getting to this year's edition of Best American Essays. When the series started it was what I read
on the bus to wherever we were having Thanksgiving that year. The
experiences and thoughts of the essayists about 2020 are a strange
feeling reminder of a year that somehow seems a blank, even though it
featured national civil rights protests, a global pandemic, a near
coup….
Looking back over the entries I made here at Outside Counsel for 2020 I am struck by how little I wrote, and by my nearly complete failure to document the peculiar sense of alienation that was the defining emotional state of the pandemic. In the early going I re-read The Plague, and thought it had a worthwhile message: do your work. The isolation that many experienced was, perhaps less profound for me than for many others because I was going into my office to work. On the other hand a lot of the interpersonal interaction that I did experience was characterized by anger and frustration. The most notable example was the screaming argument with one of the principals of the Body Bar, a sort of gym in my building, over masking, but the anger I experienced whenever I saw someone unmasked at the supermarket or somewhere, and even the slightly milder sense of irritation I experienced whenever I saw someone with a mask that didn't cover their nose was near constant.
And, of course, there was the November into December 2019 spent attending to my parents as my father recovered from his broken hip. Because his injury occurred before full lockdown he was able to spend the time needed in the hospital, which was fortunate, but we were still in a sort of twilight time which required Covid testing, and Covid caution. We didn't really know how the virus spread at that point, and everyone's hands were chapped from constant applications of disinfectant. I was in North Carolina then, and the post-election crazy was building, but I could have never imagined how crazy it was going to get.
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Just before Christmas A. was listing to something on CBC in the car when the host mentioned that he had a tattoo of Burl Ives on his arm. It seems that he was very close to Ives-- like a father to him, he said, and when Ives died(in 1995),he got the tat as a memorial. At least, I assume he got it after Ives died-- I can't think of too many things that would be creepier than meeting an old friend and finding a likeness of my face-- the size of a man's fist, he said it was-- on his arm.
I mention it because I just finished John Rockwell's essay on Ives and "The Foggy, Foggy Dew" in Greil Marcus and Sean Wilentz' collection, "The Rose and The Briar: Death Love and Liberty in the American Ballad". You could drive a truck about what I don't know about Ives-- folk song popularizer, kiddie record artist, and the snowman from Rankin-Bass' "Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer" was probably the extent of it (and wouldn't that snowman make a peculiar tattoo, now that I think of it?). Turns out there is a lot mere to Ives, and "The Foggy, Foggy Dew", than I knew-- he named names back in the '50s, for one thing, blowing in Pete Seeger. He spent a night in jail somewhere in Utah because "The Foggy, Foggy Dew" was considered salacious by the Mormons he was performing in front of. Interesting stuff, and the sort of thing I love in collections like this. (Rockwell gives out with the filth, which is tame by any reasonable standard. Apparently the narrator and his girl friend have sex, but "Roll Me Over In The Clover" it ain't.)
One of the treats about this sort of book is that the pieces I don't have any expectations for can turn out to be the essays that I like best. I had high hopes for Sarah Vowell on "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", but it has a somewhat tossed off feel. I am, g-d knows, neither a musicologist nor a folklorist, but I knew the history of that particular song, and it I was disappointed, a little, in her account of it. If I know it, it must be pretty widely known, and she could have spent her time developing something less commonplace. Vowell also has a tendency to be cute for the cheap laugh, and this trait shows up here as well. On the other hand, her conclusion is stunning: "When we sing "The Battle Hymn-- and I say "we" because that is how the song is traditionally performed at public events, as a sing-along in which a group of citizens become a choir- we sing about taking action, about marching on, about doing something. And-- this is the best part about singing "The Battle Hymn"-- you are not standing there alone doing something. You're a part of something. The song starts off with "mine eyes" and "I have seen," and by the end it's "you and me" and "let us die," or "let us live"-- whatever, "us" being the point. We're all in this together. If only for the length of the song."
Wendy Lesser gets a lot right in her piece on "Lilly, Rosemary and The Jack of Hearts," but it is not exemplary Dylanology in the end-- Wendy, if you want to hear the ommitted verse, Joan Baez sings it on "From Every Stage"-- one of only two covers of the somg that I am aware of. It scans, but it doesn't add much.
On the other hand, I had no expections about Luc Sante on "Buddy Bolden's Blues", but it is a hilarious and meticulously reseached historical piece on a song about a fart.
Elsewhere there are discussions about the effect of technology on the folk song tradition, and scholarly inquiries into the historical basis for songs that had become worn smooth like stones and now seem fresh to me again. There are a couple of short stories somewhat in the manner of Lester Bangs' great story about "Maggie May", including one by Joyce Carol Oates that's as good as anything I've read of hers. I'd say that it was parsimonious of W.W. Norton and Sony Music to package book and CD separately, because of course you'd want them both-- there is some overlap inevitable in anyone's music collection, but there are also songs discussed, or versions of songs, that were unfamiliar to me.
I mention it because I just finished John Rockwell's essay on Ives and "The Foggy, Foggy Dew" in Greil Marcus and Sean Wilentz' collection, "The Rose and The Briar: Death Love and Liberty in the American Ballad". You could drive a truck about what I don't know about Ives-- folk song popularizer, kiddie record artist, and the snowman from Rankin-Bass' "Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer" was probably the extent of it (and wouldn't that snowman make a peculiar tattoo, now that I think of it?). Turns out there is a lot mere to Ives, and "The Foggy, Foggy Dew", than I knew-- he named names back in the '50s, for one thing, blowing in Pete Seeger. He spent a night in jail somewhere in Utah because "The Foggy, Foggy Dew" was considered salacious by the Mormons he was performing in front of. Interesting stuff, and the sort of thing I love in collections like this. (Rockwell gives out with the filth, which is tame by any reasonable standard. Apparently the narrator and his girl friend have sex, but "Roll Me Over In The Clover" it ain't.)
One of the treats about this sort of book is that the pieces I don't have any expectations for can turn out to be the essays that I like best. I had high hopes for Sarah Vowell on "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", but it has a somewhat tossed off feel. I am, g-d knows, neither a musicologist nor a folklorist, but I knew the history of that particular song, and it I was disappointed, a little, in her account of it. If I know it, it must be pretty widely known, and she could have spent her time developing something less commonplace. Vowell also has a tendency to be cute for the cheap laugh, and this trait shows up here as well. On the other hand, her conclusion is stunning: "When we sing "The Battle Hymn-- and I say "we" because that is how the song is traditionally performed at public events, as a sing-along in which a group of citizens become a choir- we sing about taking action, about marching on, about doing something. And-- this is the best part about singing "The Battle Hymn"-- you are not standing there alone doing something. You're a part of something. The song starts off with "mine eyes" and "I have seen," and by the end it's "you and me" and "let us die," or "let us live"-- whatever, "us" being the point. We're all in this together. If only for the length of the song."
Wendy Lesser gets a lot right in her piece on "Lilly, Rosemary and The Jack of Hearts," but it is not exemplary Dylanology in the end-- Wendy, if you want to hear the ommitted verse, Joan Baez sings it on "From Every Stage"-- one of only two covers of the somg that I am aware of. It scans, but it doesn't add much.
On the other hand, I had no expections about Luc Sante on "Buddy Bolden's Blues", but it is a hilarious and meticulously reseached historical piece on a song about a fart.
Elsewhere there are discussions about the effect of technology on the folk song tradition, and scholarly inquiries into the historical basis for songs that had become worn smooth like stones and now seem fresh to me again. There are a couple of short stories somewhat in the manner of Lester Bangs' great story about "Maggie May", including one by Joyce Carol Oates that's as good as anything I've read of hers. I'd say that it was parsimonious of W.W. Norton and Sony Music to package book and CD separately, because of course you'd want them both-- there is some overlap inevitable in anyone's music collection, but there are also songs discussed, or versions of songs, that were unfamiliar to me.
