The legacy of Grace Kelly

From The New Yorker:

"If you want to see Hollywood at the last gasp of its otherworldliness, before the old glory gave way, consult the photograph of Kelly and her fellow-presenter, Audrey Hepburn, backstage at the Academy Awards in 1956. (Kelly had returned to present an award.) Both are in profile, gazing in expectation, and both wear white gloves. They could be at their first Communion."

I read every piece on Old Hollywood—especially when said piece involves a consideration (or reconsideration) of a star—but, aside from a few choice phrases and a couple of worthy insights (the above my favorite, if only because it is the truest), the profile is so boring and not particularly true. To people in the know, perhaps, her sexuality is an open question, but to anyone else? I somehow doubt it.

Ragtime's Closing

From The Boston Globe:

The Broadway revival of “Ragtime,’’ which opened Nov. 15 at New York City’s Neil Simon Theatre, will close this weekend because of slow ticket sales. That’s sad news for Boston, because the show was the first big break for Boston Conservatory grad Stephanie Umoh, who has played the role of Sarah. Umoh also played Sarah in a New Repertory Theatre production of “Ragtime’’ in 2006. She had told the Globe, of stepping up for the Broadway gig, “I walk down the street and think, ‘This is what it feels like to be happy.’ And I’m not ashamed to admit it.’’"

David Remnick remembers Natalia Estemirova

From The New Yorker:

"A couple of years ago, at a memorial service for the great Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya put together by PEN, I had the honor of interviewing onstage one of Politkovskaya’s friends, the human-rights activist Natalia Estemirova. Politkovskaya, who was murdered at her home in Moscow in 2006 (as Michael Specter and Keith Gessen have written in The New Yorker), did her best and bravest work in Chechnya for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, one of the few remaining outlets with the audacity to continue publishing the truth about Russia in the Age of Putin. In Chechnya, one of her closest friends and sources of information was Natalia."

Another friend of Anna's died. When this story broke, months ago now, I remember reading several accounts of Ms. Estemirova for each and every scrap of information—and the detail that devastated me the most was that she was probably kidnapped and murdered just after she sent her teenage daughter off to school. I asked once on this blog, imagine if your mother was Ingrid Bergman in Autumn Sonata. I ask it again, here with more force: what if your mother was Natalia Estemirova?

Anna Politkovskaya's lawyer Stanislav Markelov shot dead in Moscow

From Times of London:

"A campaigning Russian lawyer was shot dead in central Moscow today after giving a press conference to draw attention to the early release of an army colonel convicted of the murder of a young woman during the war in Chechnya.

Officials said that Stanislav Markelov, who also represented the slain journalist Anna Politkovskaya, was shot dead in the street by an unknown gunman moments after speaking out about the case of Yuri Budanov.

A young female journalist accompanying Mr Markelov later died in hospital after being seriously injured when she tried to intervene.

Anastasia Barburova was reported to be working freelance for Novaya Gazeta, the opposition newspaper which also employed Politkovskaya."

Something like a dozen journalists have died since Putin came to power in 2000 and no one has ever been convicted of these murders. Now, it seems, the dragnet has widened to include even their associates and human rights activists more generally. Stanislav's onetime client, Anna Politkovskaya , was not only one of the most famous—second after Paul Klebnikov, the editor of the Russian Forbes—but also the one whose death meant the most to me—and to a free press in Russia. (I once wrote a poem about the day of her death, ironically, but surely not coincidentally, Putin's birthday and I think it is probably one of my best.) Her book Putin's Russia is absolutely beautiful. I still look forward to reading the dispatches on the Second Chechen War that won her the enmity of the Kremlin and the accolades of the Western press collected in A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya and The Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya.

I don't know how the original Russian of her reportage reads, but even in the translation, one can feel the pulse and throb and swing of each sentence as it unfolds with the moral urgency of a derailing locomotive. And the outrage. The outrage, above all else. I remember that Anne Applebaum, in a generally eulogistic obituary for Slate, had the gall to fault her for being overly pessimistic, but in a world where outrage has all but disappeared, especially the kind of outrage steeped in such fervid eloquence, she cannot be pessimistic enough.

Steinway gift inspires teen pianist

From CBC News:

"An accomplished teenage pianist has received an early Christmas gift from a Calgary businesswoman — a Steinway concert grand.

Jan Lisiecki, 14, has performed in concert halls internationally and has won several major music competitions.

He recently returned from winning a competition in Montreal to find a nine-foot Steinway in his living room. Valued at $138,000, it was a gift from Irene Besse, a piano dealer and music instructor."

This is the meaning of Christmas. And she took out a loan to pay for it—and put the piano in the pianist's name. It is his, and the music is ours. But the glory is hers.

Adaptation: On Literary Darwinism

From the Nation

Fantastic piece on a new trend in literary criticism. The whole thing bears careful reading. I remember encountering a cri de coeur from Gotschall (I believe) in the Globe (again, not sure) several months ago enough to be intrigued and I am at least passingly familiar with Dutton's Art Instinct, having read a few reviews when it came out. I have respected the pieces I have read by Dutton—not to mention the fact I admire his indispensable resource Arts & Letters Daily—so I am a little skeptical of the criticism leveled by Deresiewicz that he is not a serious thinker, but again, I have not read the book and, judging by the links gathered on ALDaily, I like his taste. Whatever the merits of Dutton's thought more generally or the book in particular, I am inclined to agree with the merits of Literary Darwinism. I admire its ambition, to be sure, and its insistence we move away from Theory, but this isn't—or can't be—the next big thing. The graf, for me, is here:

Again and again, Darwinian criticism sets out to say something specific, only to end up telling us something general. An essay that purports to explain Shakespeare's preeminence as a playwright argues instead that drama appeals to us because it portrays the social dynamics of small human groups (as evidenced by the fact that Shakespeare's casts range from eighteen to forty-seven characters). Boyd devotes a hundred pages to the Odyssey without saying anything he couldn't have said with Anna Karenina or Middlemarch or Proust. The discussion is nothing more than an illustration of Darwinian ideas, not an explication of Homeric meanings. Indeed, it's an illustration of largely one idea, that before an artist can even worry about meanings, he needs to figure out how to hold his audience's attention. If the point sounds banal, that is squarely within the emerging disciplinary tradition. I have read any number of Darwinian essays about Pride and Prejudice (one critic calls it their "fruit fly"), but I have yet to read one that told me anything interesting. The idea that the novel is about mate selection does not count as an original contribution.

Literary Darwinism's reductive tendencies enforce an impoverished view of both literature and life. Because it deals only with fiction and drama, the narrative modes, the field ignores one of the three major branches of literature, lyric poetry, altogether. Then there is the sensitivity with which it handles the things it does address. "Genre," Carroll says, "is largely a matter of feeling--tragedy is sad, and comedy happy." First of all, genre is not largely a matter of feeling; it is largely a matter of form. Second, Carroll's scheme leaves no room for mixed cases like dark comedy or tragicomedy. Third, Oedipus Rex or King Lear may leave us feeling many things--stunned, emptied, exhilarated, exalted; Aristotle's catharsis of pity and terror will probably never be improved upon as a description of that unique state--but "sad" is not one of them. Another study cracks the conundrum of Hamlet. It turns out the play is about choosing between personal self-interest (taking over the kingdom by killing your uncle) and genetic self-interest (letting Mummy provide you with a few siblings, who would carry a share of your genes). Aside from being completely daft, and missing everything important about the play, this reading ignores the fact that, with a 30-year-old son, Gertrude is not going to be having any more babies anytime soon.

And the heart, appropriately, is at the end, the review broadening out to address the same crisis in the humanities Literary Darwinism addresses, ideological in the widest possible sense:

"There is much talk among the literary Darwinists and their allies about not wanting to go back to the days of 'old-boy humanism,' with its 'impressionistic' reading and 'belletristic' writing. (Only in English departments could good writing be considered a bad thing.) But no matter the age or gender of the practitioner, any really worthwhile criticism will share the expressive qualities of literature itself. It will be personal, because art is personal. It will not be definitive; it will not be universally valid. It will be a product of its times, though it will see beyond those times. It will not satisfy the dean's desire for accumulable knowledge, the parent's desire for a marketable skill or the Congressman's desire for a generation of technologists. All it will do is help us understand who we are, where we came from and where we're going. Until the literary academy is willing to stand up in public and defend that mission without apology, it will never find its way out of the maze."

Postcards from the Edge - Tocqueville’s Letters Home

From NYT:

"Ostensibly, Tocqueville and his friend and traveling companion, Gustave de Beaumont, were here to study the American prison system for the French government, and on their return they dutifully filed a lengthy report — a book so forbidding that, though he owns a copy, Mr. Brown has so far avoided reading it.

But almost from the start of his trip Tocqueville, at least, seems to have imagined another kind of book, a study of Americans themselves, and he turned every encounter with them into a reporting mission. “No one is better set up for the study of the American people than we are,” he wrote to Edouard. “Our mission and our letters open all doors; we rub shoulders with all classes.”"

Having read the selections that the article mentions, I can confirm they are indeed delightful. (His first letter, like that of any good son, was to his mother.) Tocqueville himself was a delight, at least as far as I remember him from reading Democracy in America in college, even at his most prosaic. I would have loved to have a glass of wine with him, especially given that, with his pedigree, he probably had an amazing cellar. The kind of wine you should drink like water.

Interview with Madeleine Peyroux

From The Telegraph:

"Bare Bones finds Peyroux exploring ways of processing her grief over her father's death and embracing a life in the moment. 'It deals with loss, transition, discovery,' she says. And it opens with a jaunty gipsy jazz number on the bright theme of 'Instead of feeling low/Get high on everything you love'.

'I looked for ideas in literature,' she says, 'I checked out a few writers that I hadn't been able to grasp: Lorca, Neruda. I even tried Dante's Inferno because I wanted to look at the Christian idea of salvation in another poetic light outside the Bible.'"

I like Peyroux and her idiosyncratic, boho biography. I don't even mind the Billie Holliday comparisons, technically warranted, perhaps, but not at all accurate, as Billie was contingent on so much that was extra-vocal, and not merely biography. Such is the fate of icons from iconic times. There really will never be another Billie. To return to Peyroux: I haven't listened to this album too much, but her others—when I was going into contemporary jazz singers in a major way—I am more familiar with, and I recall being particularly impressed with her rendition of Piaf's signature song, "La Vie En Rose" (the recent biopic made an especially deft touch in speculating Piaf liked Holiday's music; they would have had much to talk about, I think) and that song belongs to her almost as much as "Strange Fruit" belongs to Billie, so the achievement is no mean one.

What made me bookmark this interview, at least in part, though, was the idea of looking for consolation in poetry, and those poets in particular. And, later in the article, the real graf:

The album ends with Somethin' Grand written in support of Barack Obama. "I recorded vocals on election day," she says, "without any planning ahead, and came back to the house to see that he had landed in a landslide. That night, I watched his speech in tears, as we all did."

Peyroux dedicated another song, I Must Be Saved to the singer Odetta, who died last year. The artist and civil rights activist "changed everything" for Peyroux.

"I was lucky enough to meet her while I was recording a Bessie Smith song in 2004. I looked up and she was conducting me from the vocal booth, not just with her hands but with every emotion running across her face.

"Without being less humble than I should be, I felt I had an understanding with her. I felt we recognised that the blues are a part of our heritage, too. That women are not only doing and experiencing the same things as men, but also that we can see what men are going through."

The Odetta anecdote is worth the entire interview, but in light of the Obama song, it acquires an added force, for Odetta was supposed to sing at the inauguration but died days before. Aretha did a creditable job, to be sure, but Odetta! I will never forget what Rosa Parks replied when asked about what music she liked best: "All the songs Odetta sings."

Byatt on Forster

From The Times of London:

A. S. Byatt, novelist, on Howard’s End

When I was a student, I regarded Howard’s End as the moral epitome of goodness. One used to think: 'This is wonderful, here is a novelist who says we must connect the businessman with the world of the arts,' then you slowly realise that E. M. Forster actually can’t do it. His businessman is not an adequate businessman to carry the weight Forster wants him to carry, he’s simply unpleasant. Forster is too parochial and he holds inside himself the snobberies that he thinks he is castigating. The Schlegel sisters [in the novel] feel they’re very superior, but Forster also sort of feels they’re superior. I particularly dislike his treatment of Leonard Bast — Forster is really mocking him. Just think what D. H. Lawrence would have done with it.'

And Forster cannot do sex between a man and a woman. When Helen Schlegel and Leonard Bast make love, it is simply Forster the author saying: 'My plot requires these two people to make love to each other.' He cannot really imagine it happening. He can’t really imagine the world he is trying to call into being.'

Though tending toward overstatement, many of these have a point, several of which I am in sympathy with, but it is the anti-Forster selection from Byatt—whose work I actually admire, unlike James Wood (see his eviscerating takedown from the LRB here, complete with spirited riposte from Isobel Armstrong; I much preferred his takedown of Paul Auster in the New Yorker here)—that has given me the most pause. For I admire Howard's End, too, and Forster more generally, but she's right about Bast and I suspect there's a germ of truth in the rest of it. That said, I wonder how much I am being swayed by this recent piece in the New Criterion on Forster (by way of Kermode lectures under consideration), faulting him for the same snobberies but praising him in the main.

Ancient Sites Discovered

• Odyssey's End?: The Search for Ancient Ithaca | People & Places | Smithsonian Magazine
  
  
• Scientists uncover lost Venetian city - USATODAY.com

Kid Sister

• Turn It Up: Kid Sister: A rising pop star with a blue-collar attitude

Kid Sister is awesome. I absolutely love her record. I dance to it almost every day, compulsively, frenetically, with an indecent abandon and a willful disregard for the rhythm only Elaine Benes could appreciate. A dance record in hip-hop clothing; I can't say anything intelligible about it, let alone intelligent. Lily Allen's sophomore effort, It's Not Me, It's You; Florence & The Machine's Lungs; Alphabeat's The Spell; Frankmusik's Complete Me; and now, Kid Sister's Ultraviolet—these are the best pop records of the year, hands down. Did I mention she's beautiful, has an excellent sense of style, and a cute dog? Every song has monster hit written all over it, but my favorite is probably "Daydreaming." If further proof was needed, the phrase "suki, suki now" shows up in a song ("Life on TV," I think). Come on: anyone who channels "Groove Me" deserves massive respect.

A life story worthy of the movies

From The Boston Globe

Leslie Caron says she got rid of the “dead wood’’ writing her autobiography, “Thank Heaven.’’

The candid, lyrically written tome of the French actress’s storied life chronicles her childhood in Paris, her suffering through World War II, her teenage years as a ballet dancer with Roland Petit’s acclaimed company where she was discovered by Gene Kelly, her career at MGM starring in such classics as “An American in Paris’’ and “Gigi,’’ her two Oscar nominations, her three failed marriages and high-profile love affair with Warren Beatty, her mother’s suicide, and her own battles with depression and alcohol.

I remember being elated, if slightly puzzled, to see her guest-star on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit a couple of years back, especially as her presence meant French was spoken on the show. The article is very pedestrian and uninteresting, as the headline gives some indication, but it has alerted me to her autobiography, which I will try to pick up at some point. It has been far too long since I have seen either An American in Paris or Gigi, two of my absolute favorite films, the condensed essence (and alas the twilight) of the Golden Age movie musical. God, I remember never seeing so much color in my life, even setting aside the famous Impressionist set piece of the former. And despite all this James Cameron dry-humping, count me unimpressed by Avatar. Those movies had a palette. And, not to mention, human beings. We would all do well to remember that. Even that overdetermined behemoth, Gone With the Wind—which just celebrated its 60th (I think) anniversary—had more drama in its melodrama than the most earnest "prestige" pictures.

8 Questions for Isabella Rossellini

From the NYT Magazine:

How often do you think of your parents, Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini, who were not exactly obscure movie people? Every day.

When did you last watch “Casablanca”? I think it was 2003, the 60th anniversary of “Casablanca.” They had a screening at Lincoln Center. It’s not so hard to watch “Casablanca,” because I wasn’t even born. But it’s very difficult to see “Autumn Sonata” because that is the mother that I remember.

... I loved modeling. I absolutely loved it. I was so happy to get the cover of Vogue — 23 times. I keep each copy. I made more money as a model than as an actress or as a filmmaker. In monetary terms, beauty pays more than anything.

If Isabella Rossellini can’t find a date, what woman can?

I don't think I've ever "got" Isabella Rossellini—maybe Blue Velvet traumatized me in ways I am still recovering from?—and I've always wanted to, if only because of her mother. It's not that I dislike her at all (she's certainly talented), but I am simply unable to connect with her persona. I'm not even sure what it is. Maybe that's simply because her career has been so sporadic and idiosyncratic. We are talking about a woman who, with Lena Olin, had a recurring role on Alias, and guest-starred as Jack's wife on 30 Rock.

But I like this interview. Unlike most "8 Questions" from the Times Magazine, there's real spontaneity and humor here, or at least a serviceable illusion of them, a fact made all the more remarkable given the tonal shift from something like the devastating eloquence of the first two quotations. "That is the mother I remember." Imagine that prospect, for a moment: what if the mother you remembered was the mother of Autumn Sonata? Heresy or not, I don't care for Bergman at all, but even I have to admit that move is amazing (Woody's September helped me see), and even if I persisted in my dislike of the movie, she is nothing less than lacerating, as an actress and certainly as a character. Last year's Oscar baiting Rachel Getting Married was only mediocre (sorry, Anne), but it was worth watching if only to see Debra Winger do her best Ingrid Bergman.

Debra Winger! What an actress. Whatever happened to her? Forget Paris is one of the most underrated rom-coms ever.

Of Mom, Bonnie Raitt and 'Carousel'

From the Chicago Tribune:

So, I asked, if you were to write a letter to Bonnie Raitt, what would you say?

"I'd say, before it got too late I wanted to tell her ..." She paused. "I wanted to tell her that every time I see her on TV I think about her when she was a baby and I saw her onstage with her father. I think she would like to know somebody was alive who remembered."

The columnist is a little tone deaf (strange, considering she's talking about her own mother) but even in her flat-footed telling, I find the anecdote dignified in its touching simplicity, presuming that connection is a good in its own right, and a great one, and I believe Bonnie Raitt—who I love beyond expression—would appreciate the gesture very, very much. (The author gets at least that much right.) Moreover, the context of the woman's encounter with baby Bonnie—John Raitt's scene in Carousel—may clarify, in a way, Ms. Raitt's entire aesthetic. God, "I Can't Make You Love Me" is a song of rare and undiminished power. It is perfect, perfect pathos. So perfect, in fact, not a thousand karaoke performances can dim it, nor worse still, the occasional American Idol rendition. Some other favorites: "Circle Dance," "Let's Hear it For the Boy," "Have a Heart," "One Belief Away," "Hear Me Lord," "My Opening Farewell," "Wounded Heart." I have heard her do a mean cover of "Find My Way Home," too. Every time I listen to her music—probably, if I could, just the sound of her voice—I remark to myself, utterly undone: that is life. For the same reason, and perhaps in the same tone, Emily Dickinson once described poetry in the way that she did.

MBTA officer stops man’s suicide attempt

From The Boston Globe

An MBTA Transit Police sergeant talked a suicidal man away from the electrified third rail and out of a Back Bay Station train pit Wednesday night. “He came within 2 inches of sitting down on the third rail,’’ Sergeant Brian Carey said of a 50-year-old Burlington man who threatened to electrocute himself. “I told him nothing’s worth dying for,’’ Carey, 47, said. When Carey arrived, he found the man on the Orange Line tracks and more than 50 people watching. Carey engaged the man in conversation, trying to distract him while MBTA workers shut off power to the tracks.

I love this brief notice. It reminds me of Wesley Autrey, the "Subway Superman" from a couple of years ago, an ordinary New Yorker who jumped down on a subway track and restrained a man suffering from an epileptic fit as a train was passing by, leaving his two daughters with a passerby. Before he leapt—and this is the detail that killed me, inspiring a rather disappointingly middling poem—he remarked to the passerby entrusted with his children: "Tell my daughters Daddy will be OK." I seem to remember Donald Trump giving him a check for a $1,000 (or $10,000?) and Bloomberg a medal. A few weeks ago, Law & Order, a little late to the party, crossed Autrey with a quasi-Bernie Goetz in the form of a white accountant in Harlem who killed two young black assailants ostensibly robbing his office. Elliot Gould, I hadn't seen him in anything in ages! I was beginning to think he had died.

But I digress: though lacking the same dramatic flair, not to mention the public recognition, this one will probably inspire a poem, too. I like understatement, after all—not to mention the promise of persuasive rhetoric. I wonder what he said exactly.

Lloyd Gaines, A Quiet Hero of Civil Rights History, Vanished in 1939

From NYT:

"Lloyd Gaines disappeared at 28, three months after he triumphed in one of the biggest Supreme Court cases in decades."

Another possible Obama Effect: reviving forgotten civil rights figures. (See also: the proto-Rosa Parks who attracted some attention not long ago. I feel awful, but I just can't remember her name. The effect, perhaps, has its limits.)

Boola Boola, Boola Boola - Yale Says Yes, 4 Times

From NYT:

"For the first time in anyone’s memory, Yale offered admission to quadruplets, but whether any one of the siblings winds up there remains an open question.

Part of a trend I call the Obama Effect—stories of black uplift, especially concerning young people of mixed race. Coined after the Boston Globe's six part series, "The Education of Stephanie Umoh." Speaking of Miss Umoh, her run on Ragtime—despite some solid reviews, from the Times and elsewhere, as well as a larger profile of the show by the Times—seems to be nearing a premature end. Not unlike the original production, a starmaking turn for one Audra McDonald, it's simply not earning the cost of its lavish production. Even worse: as the show's rumored to close just after New Year's, it doesn't look like I'll get a chance to see it. Drats!

As for the story itself, at the risk of sounding too cynical, every time I read anything about undergraduate admissions—especially when it concerns Yale—I am reminded of a pithy remark made by a Yale admissions officer (I think), which I am paraphrasing from memory: "college tuition is like buying a BMW every year and driving it off a cliff."

A woman in Chanel's image - Audrey Tautou

From The Times of London:

"There’s something unsettling about seeing Audrey Tautou, because she looks uncannily like the designer Coco Chanel."

Though not without its pathos, "Coco Before Chanel" was a peculiar film. I was never certain what, if anything, it was trying to illustrate about either Chanel or the period, but Tautou was, of course, perfect. Whatever the resemblance to Chanel herself, her face always seems sufficient to master three quarters of any performance. But that remaining quarter! What a treat it is to watch an intelligent face! What a difference it makes. I must try to remember to track down the biography the writer is releasing (note to self: Justine Picardo). I must also, for an entirely different take, listen to my recording of Hepburn's "Coco"—a Lerner and Lowe musical more or less forgotten. I can't imagine her singing anything, let alone singing in a musical devoted to the life of Chanel, but we are talking about Katharine Hepburn. To borrow a phrase from one of her late, great films, a Lion in Winter.

Isabelle Huppert talks to Angelique Chrisafis about being head of the Cannes film jury

From The Guardian:

"'Even in the good times, cinema's defining characteristic has always been to fall somewhere between prosperity and a relentless struggle.'"

For the life of me, I can't remember who took home the Palme d'Or, but I don't really care that much about Cannes or film festivals in general. I simply love Isabelle Huppert—she once formed part of a series of poems I wrote on French actresses entitled, "The Immortals." I have only seen maybe three of her films—I keep meaning to check out "The Comedy of Power" from a few years back, her latest Chabrol collaboration—and if I make any resolution for the New Year, it will be to rectify that horror, even if that means suffering through some turgid New Wave. This remark may be somewhat gratuitous, but rereading this profile reminds me how much I hate some of the overheated Guardian prose. That said, the summary quote supplied (for me, too, the graf) is just about worth the dross.