tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37524573333830901372024-03-18T02:47:56.761-07:00Uncensored John SimonJohn Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.comBlogger175125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-25831129876333399932019-10-27T05:43:00.003-07:002019-10-27T05:43:59.683-07:00 Critics and the (Un)criticized
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></div>
One person’s critic is another person’s crackpot. That they
are not united in their opinions is ascribable to the Latin saying: quot
homines, tot sententiae. I myself prefer being considered a creep, but that is
what you get for having what Vladimir Nabokov called “Strong Opinions.” It is
odd that in a country so wallowing in negativity, starting with mass shootings
and climaxing with Trump, such an unim-portant matter as theater criticism
should generate so much hostility. The only target patently more important is
lead in the drinking water.
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<br /></div>
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Anything about theater reviews must start with The New York
Times as the only place that can make a difference at the box office between a
hit and a flop. Which brings me to a dinner my wife and I had with Elaine May
and her partner Stanley Donen, both lovely people, and both execrating the
theater reviews in the Times, at that time by Ben Brantley and Charles
Isherwood, though it could have been just as easily anyone else. The argument
was that these reviewers couldn’t write, which I disputed.</div>
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<br /></div>
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My point was that they could write as far as style and
perhaps wit were concerned, but there remained the matter of content, the
matter of taste. They were chosen for how they wrote rather than what they
wrote, something the editors could see without seeing the shows. They saw
clever writing, but most of them had not seen the shows. Hence writing that
could as easily overestimate as underestimate. The reviewers were expected to
be a few times positive, even if their material was consistently undeserving.
My question was why reviewers approve of, even extol, manifestly terrible:shows
such a Adam Rapp’s dependably dreadful “The Sound Inside,” which Jesse Green of
the Times labeled sublime, and similar things were said in other publications.
This even for a thing <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that struck
me as preposterously pretentious, illogical and even ludicrous. But who am I to
contradict the Times?</div>
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<br /></div>
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The problem in the greater circulation dailies, though not
exclusively there, is incapability of justly stern judgment, sometimes indeed stinking
to please.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are several
possible reasons (though not so much at the Times), the most obvious being that
nobody reads reviews at this time when many reviewers<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of all disciplines are being dumped as unnecessary. But a
favorable review, deserved or not, echoes propitiously at the box office. An
unfavorable review might alienate readers, to say nothing of producers,
nowadays required in large numbers to foot the cost for even a modest show.</div>
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<br /></div>
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More profoundly, Americans like to “accentuate the
positive.” There is in them a basic goodwill that tends to meet forgivingly even
the expensiveness of today’s tickets by those who can still afford them. Make
them feel that is, never mind think. I have seldom before heard so much
laughter, so much ready applause, or seen so much indiscriminate standing and
ovating, as I encounter nowadays. Part of it is that if someone spent that much
money, he or she will persuade themselves to have had a good time come hell or
high water. But much of it also is benightedness, to use a milder term for
stupidity. It also reflects the reviewer’s captatio benevolentiae aimed at the
employer and the frequently reiterated need to sell the paper, starting with
the all-important advertisers. This is especially the case at some very shaky
publications.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Important, too, are so-called drama queens, who expect published
confirmation for their lightly earned personal enthusiasm. The great critic
Kenneth Tynan spoke of two kinds of prevalent wit—and presumably two kinds of
theatergoers--Jewish and homosexual. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Some things don’t change. Trash like “Slave Play” and “The
Sound Inside” caters to known influenceability. By the way, what does the
latter title have to do with the content? The script repeats that title in
block capitals at one point twelve times, without having to do with anything—not
even specifying the speaker. For even such plays, American hits automatically
generate European productions I can’t tell with how much success. I wonder
whether it was always so. But European hits tend almost invariably to come to
Broadway, usually from England or Ireland, e.g., “The Ferryman” and “Betrayal,”
and make it on Broadway. There are now, however, for whatever reason, few
translated imports from France.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The itinerary has reversed. It used to be from stage to
screen, now it is mostly from screen to stage, often as a musical. Two of our
best musicals, “The Band’s Visit” and “Tootsie,” are stage versions of
cinematic hits, the one from an Israeli movie, the other from long ago
Hollywood. The Broadway version of “Visit” closed already after a goodly run, at
first Off Broadway. It starred Katrina Lenk, one of the most attractive and
talented actresses of our time.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I will list here, with one exception, only the still running
shows I have really liked, starting with the aforementioned ”Tootsie.“ Ain’t
Too Proud,” a tribute to The Temptations” is good when singing and dancing,
paltry when attempting a story. “Bella Bella,” Harvey Fierstein’s very funny solo
tribute to Bella Abzug and himself. ”Betrayal,” Harold Pinter at his infrequent
best, starring the wonderful Zawe Ashton. The bilngual “Fiddler on the Roof, in
Hebrew and English. “Linda Vista,” a serious comedy by Tracy Letts, unfortunately
closing soon. “To Kill a Mockingbird,” despite a devastating review by Kyle
Smith in the September New Criterion. “The Prom,” a delightful musical that
flopped in spite of an epochal performance by Brooks Ashmanskas. There are also
a couple of shows to come, which I haven’t yet seen.</div>
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<br /></div>
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As usual, the season will have had a couple of deserved and
a few more undeserved winners, par for the course. More amazing perhaps is the
success of such trash as “Slave Show” and “The Sound Inside,” whose worthlessness
I cannot often enough proclaim. About some coming shows, I will most likely write
in a future blog entry.</div>
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Until then, let’s have a pleasant autumn nontheatrical calendar
season, the best time of year New York has to offer.</div>
John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com53tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-11645783926419473432019-09-15T19:09:00.006-07:002019-09-15T19:09:44.582-07:00Betrayal<div class="MsoNormal">
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We have here Robert, a publisher; his best friend, Jerry, a
literary agent; Emma, Robert’s sassy wife, a gallerist, for seven years Jerry’s
clandestine mistress, but no longer so for two years. Unseen but talked about:
Jerry’s wife, Judith, a nurse; each couple’s two children; Casey and Spinks,
two novelists, the former perhaps about to become Emma’s next lover.
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<br /></div>
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In a typical Harold Pinter play, characters, even if friends
or kin, are involved in a power play. The dialogue, even if seemingly amicable,
is double-bottomed, competitive and even threatening.. Running through it are,
every few minutes, pauses—the famous Pinter pause—and often even longer
silences.. The power shifts sometimes, back and forth, and can be as funny as
it is malicious.</div>
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<br /></div>
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“Betrayal” is the rare Pinter work that does no conform to
the formula, and is his most performed play. A few years ago we had a
production of it with the gifted married couple Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz,
good, but the current one is even better. It features very imaginative
direction by Jamie Lloyd, was a sold out hit in London, and has transferred to
Broadway intact.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Lloyd has rejected specified locations, and has, designed by
the talented Soutra Gilmour, a surround of tan flats, with what changes somewhat
is the slowly and ominously revolving stage. Also, of course, incisive lighting
by Jon Clark, and canny sound design and composition by Ben and Max Ringham. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Against all the neutral color, Gilmour’s costumes stand out
darkly:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>both men in almost interchangeably
as well as suggestively navy outfits. Between them is Emma, in equally dark
trousers, but with a light blue blouse.</div>
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<br /></div>
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For seven years, Emma, escaped from the gallery in the
afternoons, for an apartment in a distant, unchic area, which she has nicely
furnished for the affair with Jerry. The play proceeds backward in time in
two-year installments. We follow its mostly happy increments and may wonder, as
Jerry does, that there has been no gossip about the lovers.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Lloyd has added a clever device. During the mostly
two-person scenes with whichever man<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>or sometimes the woman, the third member of the trio is seen upstage or
to the side, usually immobile, a personification of their thoughts and
sometimes guilt. Different, though, is the opening scene, two years after the
affair has ended. On a whim, she herself cannot quite understand, Emma has
summoned Jerry by phone to meet her at a pub they both know. She says, “Well,
it’s sometimes nice to think back, isn’t it?” But she also says, “Listen. I
didn’t want to see you for nostalgia. I mean what’s the point? I just wanted to
see how you were. Truly. How are you?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When a “Darling” escapes him, she recoils. And they drink quite a bit:
she glasses of wine, he pints of bitters.</div>
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<br /></div>
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It does emerge that Emma and Robert have spent the night in
revelations, She tells about Jerry, he about flings he has been having all
along. Now they may separate. She has been seeing a bit of Casey.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Three things come up quite a bit<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>from time to time. One is literary talk: about whom Robert
is publishing or not, and about what Emma thinks about books she is reading.
The other thing is various places in Italy, Venice, Torcello, etc. and the
novels of Casey and Spinks, and their lives. In particular. Thirdly, Robert
envies the Italians<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and their
“laughing Mediterranean ways.”</div>
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<br /></div>
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There is also much talk about shared lunches, one even see
in a London Italian restaurant, with Robert and Jerry, best friends; after all,
hasn’t Jerry been the best man at Robert and Emma’s wedding? And there is much
talk about playing squash and not having played in quite a while, which takes
up some of this fascinating scene, complete with amusing Italian waiter.</div>
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<br /></div>
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This is quite symbolic, as was a scene long ago, when with
Robert, Emma, Judith and the children watching, Jerry was tossing up and
catching Emma’s little daughter, Charlotte, who is now thirteen and talked
about lunching with Casey. But that playing with little Charlotte, was it in
Emma’s or in Jerry’s kitchen, they can’t agree. Not even some cherished memories
can be trusted. And at times, even a spouse can be quite cruel. as when Robert
remarks to Emma, “I always liked Jerry. To be honest, I liked him more than
I’ve liked you. Maybe I should have had an affair with him myself.”</div>
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<br /></div>
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As usual in “Betrayal”, the acting is excellent. Himself an
actor, Pinter writes stuff that actors can have confident fun with. As Robert,
Tom Hiddleston is handsome in such a very English way, as if even his face were
made to comfortable bespoke measure. He is all tallness and fairness—who would
want to betray him? Jerry, with dark beard and dark hair, could pass for an
Italian lover providing a touch of romance that Charlie Cox supplies admirably.</div>
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<br /></div>
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But truly sensational is the Emma of Zawe Ashton, a
devastating charmer of mixed British and Tunisian descent. She has both the
darkness of her pants and the lightness of her shirt, and without being
classically beautiful, manages to exude a sexiness rarely matched on stage.
Even her elegant feet, which she keeps bare, have a kind of eloquence,
contributing to the sensual slinkiness of the woman--or feline-- who sports
them. The voice, the demeanor, the essence the actress </div>
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exudes, everything<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>adds up to the spell she can easily cast on a husband or lover or
novelist or two. (In real life Ms. Ashton is also a poet, playwright and
novelist.)</div>
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<br /></div>
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The cast, in other words, down to the Italian waiter of
Eddie Arnold, is flawless. Catch this show if you possibly can—the engagement
is limited.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-67876809493836539112019-08-29T06:07:00.000-07:002019-08-29T06:07:10.022-07:00<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: large;">MUSICALS ENDANGERED<br />
<br />
What Is happening to America's greatest contribution to the theater,
musical comedy? Why so many jukebox musicals? Why so many paltry shows?
Why haven't you even tried to hum a song from a show as you were
leaving it? The answers tend to be forbidding. Can it be that
possibilities are exhausted? There has not even been a brand new
Sondheim show for some time now, and the recent "Road Show," is merely a
third version and even so not a real success. Is there nothing new
under the limelight? Is every new note really an old note? No use
pointing to new operas, few of them hits and having, as a genre, options
that the Broadway musical doesn't have and the off Broadway musical
doesn't afford. Some of the new or newish Broadway musicals smell to me
of desperation. Take "Hadestown," which, to my nose, is redolent of that
desperation, holding no other real interest than Andre de Shields's
marvelous performance. But can a single safety belt save a shipload of
drowners? The plot is part exhausted myth and part farfetched
claptrap.That this elicits ovations reminds me of the German saying "In
compulsion, the Devil will eat flies." That is what keeps a mediocre
show like "Frozen" going, that children love it and their parents can
at least bear it. Only two recent musicals have earned my approbation, with
"The Prom," despite a sensational performance by Brooks Ashmanskas,
already closed, and '"Tootsie," based on a popular movie that offers
an adroit actor a timely genderbending role.<br />
<br />
Still, with the excellent exception of "The Band's Visit" gone after a
respectable run, shows like "Waitress" and "Mean Girls" offer
audience-flattering elements that differ from real quality. Such shows
depend largely, if not quite exclusively, on the hunger and gullibility
of audiences willing to stand, and stand up for rather meager fare.
Most often these are cult favorites, like "Beetlejuice," aimed at and
cherished by specific minorities. Another, "ain't too proud," caters to
nostalgia for "the life and times of The Temptations," and has at least decent
choreography by Sergio Trujillo well executed by an able cast. However,
some shows boggle the mind. I am thinking of such nonmusical dramas or
comedies as the double bill of "Sea Wall" and "A Life," whose two
British authors seem to have gone out of their way to make things
needlessly complicated and barely comprehensible as tokens of presumed
profundity. In the former, by Simon Stephens, you never know why a hardly mentioned, submerged wall of sea shore should have become
titular; in the latter, by Nick Payne, we never know whether we are
dealing with a stepfather's dying or a wife's birthing, the two
becoming somehow scrambled.<br />
<br />
But to return to musicals, what are we to make of "Bat Out of Hell,"
with book, music and lyrics by the songwriter Jim Steinman?
He is known for stuff written for, or performed by, the likes of Celine
Dion, Barbra Streisand, Bonnie Tyler, and Andrew Lloyd Webber, and a
whole trilogy performed by Meat Loaf. But basing an entire show on
preexisting numbers is almost like finding a button in the street and
having a suit made to go with it. It does not make much sense. Its young
hero, Strat, is lover to both Raven and her mother, Sloane, on a rather
unbecoming set by Jon Bausor which, not only hard to decipher, does not
follow locations called for by the script. The chorus that provides
most of the backup is labeled the Lost, though we never find out what they have lost and how. The presumed villain, Falco, is just as vague as
the rest, provenance and relationships remaining obscure. The title song
does not emerge until the end, and does not explain much of anything.<br />
<br />
The show's young hero, Strat, gets little help from having to say or sing
things like "Though it's cold and lonely in the deep dark night,/ I can
see paradise by the dashboard light." A car and motor bike do indeed
figure prominently. The latter "explodes apart/ and his heart explodes
out of his chest." "He is drenched in blood" as the Ensemble goes on repeating without respite oohs and ahs, and we wonder "if life
is just a highway. and the soul is just a car" and our hero "seems dead
or near dead" in an ambiguity rather hard to enact. Oddly named characters such
as Tink and Zahara sprout out of nowhere, the former to have his name comedically mangled, and finally "disappear in a cloud of feathers,"
which the costume designer, again Jon Bausor, does not quite manage to pull off. And
what are we to make of characters named Ledoux, Valkyrie, Kwaidan and
Jagwire, among others, who may emerge from the chorus without much conviction or function?<br /><br />One
question haunts the mysterious proceedings: "On a hot summer night/
Would you offer your throat to the wolf with red roses?" As it is worded, I could not even
tell whether the red roses come from the unseen wolf or from your throat. After
two and a half hours, we get several iterations of a "bat out of hell,"
when all we want is for the whole damn thing to be over already instead of
coming up with ever more quasi endings. Why doesn't it just go to hell or Hadestown and let us go home? There we can at least play our recordings of
true musicals past.</span><br />
</span>John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-84011784211374440792019-08-12T04:41:00.001-07:002019-08-12T04:41:23.032-07:00Moulin Rouge!
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If you like splash, “Moulin Rouge!” is the show for you.
Even more than the Baz Luhrmann movie, on which the musical is loosely based,
it can hold your wonderment without abate from start to finish. Let us begin
with the enchanting lighting design.</div>
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<br /></div>
This superabundance of lights basks in everything from
several chandeliers to hundreds or seeming thousands of colored bulbs all over
the stage and parts of the auditorium. Also neon lights, chamelioning it up
from color to rich color. Justin Townsend outlines the stage in concentric
heart-shaped frames of differently colored light, simultaneous or successive,
to our irresistibly dazzled delight.
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<br /></div>
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Then take the costumes by veteran Catherine Zuber. They can
be seriously beautiful or slaphappily comic, but always helping the wearer to
the desiderated character. Like the men in top hats and evening garb, smoking
cigars, in various parts of he stage, mostly balconies; or, in diverse
configurations, the group of cancan dancers, performing or just oolalaing to
heart’s content.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Much of the music that Justin Levine has culled, arranged
and orchestrated derives from very smart jukeboxes melodious to begin with.
Eight experts assisted Levine in their various capacities, all to good effect.</div>
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<br /></div>
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But what about the book by John Logan, primarily the tragic
story of the young, innocent composer, Christian (here an American), in love
with Satine, experienced<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>headliner at the Moulin Rouge and courtesan of a certain age? It is
clearly influenced by Alexandre Dumas fils’s truth-inspired drama, “La Dame aux
Camelias,” and by what Francesco Maria Piave’s libretto for Verdi’s “La Traviata”
made of it.</div>
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<br /></div>
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There are thus also the wealthy Duke of Monroth, Christian’s
rival for Satine’s body if not heart, and Harold Zidler. a historic figure,
compere for both the show and the nascent show within the show for which
Christian is providing the music, and which features the secondary, comic
couple of Nini, a dancer,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and
Santiago, a Hispanic performer, known as the King of the Tango. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Interwoven throughout is the bevy of girl dancers, largely
governed by Toulouse-Lautrec, a patron of the Moulin, painter and cripple,
enacted by the gifted Sahr Nigaujah.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Satine marks the return to the stage after a long absence by
the wonderful Karen Olivo, who looks never a day older or a bit less convincing
than of yore. She manages the role with its inherent self-contradiction with
exemplary professionalism and compelling charm. She also carries consummately
the choreography of Sonya Tayeh, which is consistently evocative.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As Christian, the youthful Aaron Tveit manages the not all
that easy task of making innocence interesting in a penetrating role, and there
is steady support<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>from Danny
Burstein as Zidler, Robyn Hurder as Nini, Ricky Rojas as Santiago, and Tam Mutu
as an almost too appealing Duke.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The show profits greatly from the long-active designer Derek
McLane, whose scenery does admirably by conjuring the Paris of 1899 and the
particular ambiance of the Moulin Rouge, keeping the versatile sets from
succumbing to sprawl. This is a show to make the young feel mature, and the old
blissfully young again.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-61636053138442318292019-08-12T04:38:00.003-07:002019-08-12T04:38:55.397-07:00Road Show
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
It was clever of Encores! to revive Stephen Sondheim and
John Weidman’s musical “Road Show,” a musical with some gorgeous music both
for individuals and choral. The orchestra under James Moore performed, as is
the custom at Encores! admirably, and the chaste scenic design by Donyale Werle
like the sober costumes by Clint Ramos were all to the good. So too were Will Davis’s
direction and choreography, proving that indeed less can be more.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is a road show in the sense the that its main characters,
the fabled Mizner brothers, Wilson and Addison, moved all over the place along
what seems like very divergent roads to what ends up as a shared one. Here is
how Sondheim puts it in his book “Look, I Made a Hat,” concerning a show that
exists in three different versions:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Wise Guys,” a1998 reading,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Bounce” of 2003, my favorite, and “Road Show.” (2008), the final one,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The storied brothers started out in the small California
town of Benicia, and headed from the 1880s for the world and their end in the
1930s. Here is how Sondheim puts it; “Wilson was a conman, entrepreneur and.
wit, Addison was chiefly an architect. Their personalities were polar
opposites, but their relationship was intense and complicated. The show charts their
lives from Benicia California through their adventures in the Klondike gold
fields of the 1890s to the extremes of New York City society in the early 1900s
and into the Florida real estate boom and bust of the 1920s, for which they
were largely responsible,” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The difference was that Wilson was a “brilliant and shifty
fellow who through a colorful life was at times a goldminer, a saloon keeper, a
prize fighter, a cardsharp, a conman , manager of a hotel for criminals as well
as the manager of the world’s welterweight champion, a celebrated Broadway
playwright, the husband of one of the richest women in America,, a raconteur
known for his wit, an entrepreneur majorly [sic] responsible for the Florida
real estate boom and bust of the 1920s, a drunk, a cocaine addict, a notorious
womanizer, and finally a Hollywood hack and a successful one..” Conversely, the
younger brother, Addison, was a closeted homosexual, a gifted If somewhat
bizarre architect, think Boca Raton. Of all this you would need more than a
clever musical, perhaps a television series.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even so, Sondheim and Weidman have come up with quite a
musical of some 19 winning numbers, among which my favorite is ‘The Best Thing
That Ever Has Happened,” as fine a number as anything in the Sondheim catalog.
It is sung in “Bounce” to a woman, but here to a man.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The show needs two splendid actors in the principal roles,
and here it gets them in Raul Esparza (Wilson) and Brandon Uranowitz (Addison),
both terrific in their different ways, both excellent singers. Esparza is one
of America’s best actors tragically undervalued<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and underemployed. His Wilson moves idiosyncratically and nervously yet also gracefully with the agility of a
dancer, along with crystal - clear delivery of dialogue, and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>his disputes with his younger brother
are part of a uniquely blended natural and theatrical charm. Uranowitz, in
turn, puts to good use his talent for comedy plus a childlike innocence
combining jovially with adult smartness.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What both Mizners are in this version is ever so fond of
their mother, beautifully played by Mary Beth Peil. Whenever either son is in
trouble, he comes back home to her to be affectionately chided and straightened
out. The admonitory father, earlier deceased, is nicely handled by Chuck Cooper
of the commanding baritone.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The final scene is a moving effusion of brotherly love and a
reminder of the show’s leitmotif, and its contrasting traversals. Wilson points
ahead: “Addie,, you know what that is? It’s the road to opportunity!” To which
Addison: “It’s the road to eternity. ” And Wilson sum up, “The greatest
opportunity of all. Sooner or later we’re bound to get it right.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As Will Davis directs, they’re close together, moving
upstage, away from the audience as the final darkness falls. Too bad that this
excellent production for Encores! as always plays only a few performances.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
..</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
”</div>
John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-88189606886288461032019-07-28T14:08:00.004-07:002019-07-28T14:10:57.657-07:00In Praise of Slow<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Americans are almost always in a hurry, though rush is all
too often rash. Even cars are often sold on speed disallowed by law, and so
essentially useless. Emblematic is horse racing, , with a winner (think
Secretariat) enshrined in historic memory, less speedy losers deservedly
forgotten. In just about all sports speed is of the essence, and what Americans
are indifferent to sports? Only in sex, for which, significantly, “sport” was
once a synonym, is slowness desirable and premature orgasm a failing.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Accordingly, by proverbs and adages, speed is viewed as
positive. However jokingly, we tend to get “run like a bunny” or “speedy
Gonzales,” or yet “fastest gun in the West,” to say nothing of disapproval for
“slow pokes” and “dawdling,” with “dragging your feet” or “Fools rush in where
wise men fear to tread” especially notorious. There is, exceptionally, a song,
“On top of Old Smoky/ All covered in snow,/ I lost my true lover/ For loving
too slow,” in which slowness is not reprehended, though probably not referring
to the duration of the sexual act itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But even in an affirmative sense, too much of a good thing
may be undesirable. Take<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the
charming poem “The Lost Race,” by the poet priest Canon Andrew Young, which I
reproduce in its entirety.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I followed each detour</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of the slow meadow-winding
Stour.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That looked on cloud, tree,
hill,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And mostly flowed by standing
still.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fearing to go too quick</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I stopped at times to
throw a stick</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or see how in the copse</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The last snow was the
first snowdrops.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The river also tarried</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So much of sky and earth
it carried;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or even changed its mind</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To flow back with a flaw
of wind.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And when we
reached the weir</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That combed the
water’s silver hair,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I knew I lost the
race—</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could not keep
so slow a pace.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are a few places where signs demand that cars go slow—in
the vicinity of schools, hospitals, and perhaps churches; otherwise the car
corresponds to the equine lower body of a centaur, usually in an especially
speedy gallop, as in, say, stretches of Texas, where slow is not even dreamed
of.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But the greatest purveyor of mostly unwelcome speed is
television, whose racing images outstrip the most excited heartbeat. How many
times have I hoped to linger with something worth a moment or two more before
the next thing of equal or possibly lesser interest had supplanted it, but
there is no stopping the TV it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To be sure, slowness can be problematic, as when my
fast-walking wife is halted by </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
stops to allow catching up by me, reduced by age to
sauntering. On the other hand (or foot), that slow saunter is the only way to
get to know a city you want to know and fully enjoy. This may not work for,
say, Detroit, but does very much so for, say, Paris. There, on my all too brief
visits, except once on a Fulbright, I have reveled in places and people to see.
Much has been made of the beauty of the Paris sky, even though a sky depends on
what it frames: buildings, monuments, parks, vantage points, persons passing by
or lolling on benches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sitting outdoors at a café, taking in the surroundings, one
may well be struck by the slowness of so many passing Parisians. That is how I
spotted the American ballet dancer performing in Paris who became my girlfriend
for a very pleasant while.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And what about the pleasure of learning from what one reads
unhurriedly? It is said that if you read slowly, you get more out of it by
remembering more. I have always been a slow reader, and occasional attempts to
read faster have dependably failed, quite possibly profitably unbeknown to me.
I have until fairly recently, had a pretty good memory, although I cannot tell
whether more so than faster readers. But let’s face it, there is both good and
bad learning from books, and not all good is slow, just as not all fast is bad.
But definitely, some good stuff has to be read slowly; I can’t imagine racing
through a page of Proust, or even of Henry James, and so much of modern
poetry—need I name names?—has to be read slowly or, even more slowly, reread. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which
brings me to the praise of what is considered to be difficult reading that
postulates<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>slowness, and thus to
the praise of slowness itself. That is, when and where “slow “ works, where it
isn’t merely the writer<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>wallowing
in obscurity to make him or her seem more profound.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finally, in music, it is more often than not in a sonata or
symphony that the slow movement is by far the most beautiful. It is the adagio
or lento that carries<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the
lyricism, the melody, best. If you don’t believe me, ask Faure, ask Debussy.</div>
John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-37985414275647228292019-07-28T14:05:00.002-07:002019-07-28T14:06:53.193-07:00Broadway’s Rising Stars<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Every year we get a “Broadway’s Rising Stars” show produced by Scott Siegel at Town
Hall, a revue of songs performed by recent college graduates aspiring to
careers in musical theater other than opera. Some in this thirteenth version
already have a bit of a career, having performed with certain orchestras. But
all are clearly candidates for Broadway shows and every one of them display genuine talent.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What they do is sing a number from a Broadway show, some
with a bit of dancing, or an independent solo number by some established
composer, which suits their particular talent, and the evening on July 24 was a
pleasure from start to finish. The show’s finale was the contribution of Ali
Stroker, now costarring in a revival of “Oklahoma” as Ado Annie, to general
acclaim. Here she sang enthusiastically “Be a Lion,” the song from “The Wiz”
with which she appeared ten years ago in “Broadway’s Rising Stars.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here go the following appreciations. Gabrielle Baker for “If
You Knew My Story,” charmingly from “Bright Star.” Jack Brinsmaid, firm in
“Corner of the Sky.” Christopher Brian earning an A for “Museums.” John W.
Dicaro for a glowing “Once in a Lifetime.” The double delight for twin brothers
John and Matthew Drinkwater for “Agony” in the show’s first half, and equally
so for “For Good “ in the second. Mara Friedman warm with “Electricity” from
“Billy Elliot.” Brian J. Gabriel persuasive in “Make Me a Song” by William Finn.
Adan V. Gallegos ably navigating the challenging “I’ll Imagine You a
Song.” Esmeralda Garza, apt with “You There in the Back Row from“13 Days From
Broadway.” Jonathan Heller’s splendid contribution to the group’s joint “Make
Our Garden Grow.” Victoria Kemp justly moving with “Climb Ev’ry Mountain.” Bettina
Lobo, eloquent in “This Is Me.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Tyler McCall for a lively “Defying Gravity,” Albert Nelthropp digging
deep into “At the Fountain.” Cameron Nies for a fine rendition of a prophetic
“On Broadway.” Luana Psaros for a soulful “I’m the Greatest Star” from “Funny
Girl. “Jacob Roberts-Miller with a forceful “Taking the Wheel.” Didi Romero
smart in “My Simple Christmas Wish.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am looking forward to these talented kids appearing in
sundry prominent shows, with their names gracing the Who Is Who listed in the respective
programs. Meanwhile I can tell you that, as far as I am concerned, these gifted
youngsters are not merely rising, but already risen stars.</div>
<span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span>
John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-29992547444890271442019-07-06T21:22:00.000-07:002019-07-06T21:22:23.241-07:00Betty Buckley & Donald Margulies
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are two ways to be an actor—either to disappear into
the role, or to let the role come to you. In other words, to be a modest
interpreter or an overwhelming personality. In still other words, be like
Laurence Olivier and Meryl Streep, or like Cary Grant and Carol Channing.
Either way can work in the right hands.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the recent revival of “Hello, Dolly!” on Broadway, one
could get Bette Midler, Donna Murphy or Bernadette Peters, and I leave it to
you to decide which of them was what I shall call Mode A, and which Mode B.
There have been exceptions and surprises: George C. Scott could actually play a
character based on Noel Coward, a case of a Mode B actor doing well at Mode A.
Good looks are helpful in either mode, but funny looks could be just as good,
think Zero Mostel and, yes, Barbra Streisand.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now we come to the Dolly of Betty Buckley, whom she has been
playing since September 2018 in the National Tour. Ms. Buckley is that rare
performer who somehow manages both modes simultaneously. But please don’t make
the mistake of assuming that my admiration for her is based on friendship; if
anything, it is the other way round, with my friendship based on admiration.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So here we were at the Kennedy Center, my wife and I, sitting
very close to the stage. But I kept wondering: Who is this woman playing Dolly
Levi? Sometimes it was indeed someone I knew, but at other times it was someone
whom I had never met before. A wig can look like a fedora on a mule; Betty wore
hers as if they had been cohabiting since early childhood.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Notable is a scene in which Dolly is esuriently stuffing
herself at the expense of the rich man she secretly intends to marry. The way
Midler played it, it was something, from the domain of Marx Brother farce. Here
it had humanity along with the humor. It was not so much greedy as well-earned.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And something else. Any actor will tell you that the hardest
thing to convey is thought, to look like someone who is cogently thinking. The
screen can do it with close-ups and lighting, on the stage there is no such
recourse: you have to act it. Buckley did it subtly with swiftly modulating expressions.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One minute she is very much the cozy woman I know, merely
somewhat disguised; the next minute, I cannot believe that this person only a
few feet away is really Betty Buckley: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mode A and Mode B are triumphantly merged. She is not just the
actress who can also sing or the singer who can also act; she is the complete performer
about whom such questions do not even arise.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now for another matter altogether: Donald Margulies’s
current Broadway play, “Long Lost.” This Manhattan Theatre Club production is
not quite up to the playwright’s best, Margulies marvels such as “Sight Unseen”
and “Dinner With Friends,” but it is still as good as, or better than, most of
what is now playing..</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What is the problem? Well, in a fully successful play you
want to identify with one or another character, may even feel compelled to do
so. But in “Long Lost,” an older brother, Billy, who has become some sort of
hobo (it is not specified just what kind), gone for a good many years, shows up
uninvited at younger brother David’s successful businessman office. Equally
undesired, he follows David even into the latter’s grand, Park Avenue style
apartment, for what may be an unwelcome and undetermined guest-room stay.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
David’s wife, Molly, is the head of an important charity
operation she initiated, but had, it emerges, a drunken one-night stand with Billy
on the eve of her wedding to David. They now have a charming collegiate son,
Jeremy, a sporadic student at the distinguished Brown University, who takes to
Billy perhaps a little too much. It further emerges that, given a troubled
marriage, David has for long had a clandestine mistress on the side. Billy’s meddlesome
presence causes revelations difficult for all concerned.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A problem with all this is that none of the adults comes off
as a particularly winning personality, except perhaps Jeremy, but he is hardly
a grown-up. Despite mostly apt dialogue, none of it is all that compelling, and
we get an uneasy mixture of comedy and drama. There are no surprises to speak
of either.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To be sure, there is convincing stage design by the
dependable John Lee Beatty and assured costuming by Toni-Leslie James, as well
as savvy lighting by Kenneth Posner. Daniel Sullivan has directed with his
customary expertise, but somehow I expected more. This despite solid
performances from Kelly Aucoin (David), Annie Parisse (Molly), Lee Tergesen
(Billy) and Alex Wolfe (Jeremy). This quartet also benefits from none of them
being too histrionic or excessively familiar,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
but making a virtue of ordinariness is not the simplest
thing in the theater or indeed in the world. In the end, one counted on being
moved at least when Billy and a visiting Jeremy have a nice scene together in a
retirement facility, but even that leaves one, if not exactly cold, only lukewarm.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-88946043829777493462019-06-17T06:12:00.001-07:002019-06-19T14:43:30.389-07:00Gozzoli, Etc.<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve always been fond of tiny triumphs that seem to come out
of nowhere to score surprise effects. Let me evoke three such incidents.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One long ago day some of us were cruising the labyrinthine
Metropolitan Museum, when a modest-sized painting loomed by itself ahead of us,
whereupon I suddenly exclaimed “That is a Benazzo Gozzoli!” That proved right,
which amazed my companions, and me even more.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First, at that time, I knew nothing about Gozzoli, as I more
or less still don’t. Second, I had never even had a college Renaissance art
course. Third, Renaissance paintings have much in common, and there was no way
in which that minor effort by a minor painter stood out in the least. Fourth, I
made that identification from some distance, and, fifth, on the run, which
tends to blur things. Sixth, there was no earthly reason for my making that or
any unsolicited call in the first place. My friends, in any case, were duly
impressed by my accurately attributing a lesser work, and must have thought I
knew quite a lot about Renaissance painting. Even now, I only wish I did.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This does, however, bring to memory a much later event, when
the Times’s chief art critic,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>John
Canaday, who liked me and published some of my stuff about art and movies,
wanted to take me on permanently. This, however, required the approval of the
hated and dreaded powerful Sunday editor, Lester<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Markel, who had allegedly caused the suicide of one or two
subordinates. Wanting to check up on my qualifications, he pointed to an art
work on his wall and asked me to identify it. Heaven only knows out of what
dark substratum I summoned “Early Raphael sanguine, Portrait of a Man,” and, hang
it, I somehow managed to hit it right. But that job I never got, as a phone
call from the monster’s secretary, a couple of weeks later, informed me. I
guess that was because, in our conversation, the monster asked me what I could
tell him about the rivalry between the Met and MoMA, as to which could snatch
up some available modern art works, a subject about which I had scant knowledge
and less interest. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And then there was that dinner party with friends where the
conversation turned to the then very popular movie, Akira Kurosawa’s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Rashomon.” I volunteered that the film
was based on a fiction by the prematurely deceased, highly gifted Ryunosuke
Akutagawa, which I hadn’t read yet. What impressed the person who spoke<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Japanese was not so much that I
knew the movie’s provenance, but that in pronouncing Akutagawa I almost elided
the U, as, apparently, Japanese speakers do. But this had nothing to do with my
knowledge of anything, only with the unstressed U making pronunciation of the
long name easier.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However, let not the foregoing be viewed as intended
self-praise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, I admit to
being on occasion mulishly impervious to justifiable correction. Let me cite a
prize example of it, going back many years, when my Polish American friend
Stanislas<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wellisz and I used to
converse in French so as to avoid forgetting it. At that time,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
my French was less good than that of Stash, my not yet
having assimilated<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the wit of
Sacha Guitry and Jean Renoir on film, and, in literature, such giants as Jules
Renard and Guillaume A[pollinaire for charm, Alphonse Allais and Georges
Feydeau for wit, and Jean Giraudoux and Anatole France for elegance. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thus I foolishly insisted on rendering “It rains” as “Ça
pleut,” and Stash exasperatedly correcting me
with “Il pleut.” I don’t recall how many times I resisted his correction,
driving him up the wall, until I finally complied. To this day, I may be prone
to similar obstinacy without the benefit of a like tutor. Absolutely nobody
could lessen my admiration for Jacques Prévert in
the unlikely case it were needed by that wonderful artist. There are cases
where obstinacy is justified.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-50355645194434992542019-05-20T07:35:00.001-07:002019-05-20T07:35:33.390-07:00Name Fudging<div class="MsoNormal">
I can’t help it but I am an entrenched traditionalist—or, if
you prefer, conventional soul—about names. I have no serious quarrel with those
who invent names for themselves, but if you want a name hallowed by history, I
say, “Stick to the tradition and don’t meddle or muddle with spelling or
pronunciation.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let’s start with the name of the Countess of Essex, married
to Prince Harry. She should be Megan, not Meghan, as she has it. Before an A,
O, or U, the G is automatically hard, as in garden, government, and gutter, and
as such does not require hardening by an extra H. Before an E or I, things can
go either way: getting or gender, gibbon or gist. With Megan, an H after the G,
is no option.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Meghan” is manifestly de trop and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>illiterate. So much for the former Meghan Markle. You might
try to excuse this fault by blaming the parents who perpetrated it. But an
intelligent bearer, in this age of openness, could easily have corrected it,
either legally or simply by usage.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yet what can you expect from a couple that after prolonged
pondering names their son Archie ? That is not even a full-fledged name, merely
a diminutive for someone called Archibald. It derives from the Teutonic
Ercanbald, meaning nobly bold.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course, you might argue that President Clinton, for
example, would go by Bill, even if he was christened William Jeffferson
Clinton. When it comes to preference, however, he might as easily have called
himself Habakuk or Marmaduke if he chose to; the aura of William would cling to
him anyway. Other politicos too have used<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>nicknames for their first names, presumably making them more friendly and
eligible.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now take the case of that obnoxious female chef on TV,
Rachael Ray. Rachael for Rachel is absurd. That second A is clearly derived by
faulty analogy from Michael, but serves no purpose (e.g, different
pronunciation) except to look pretentious. The fact is that both Michael and
Rachel come from the Hebrew, the one meaning “who is like to God,” the other “a
ewe,” “emblematic of gentleness,” as the great linguist, Eric Partridge, on
whose book, “Name This Child,” all my wisdom is based.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Although English names come from all over, some even from
old English, Scottish or Welsh sources, the ones that I would most consider
affected<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>are a number of women’s
names ending in “ah,” where the problem is that they are, for the most part
too historic. Too snobbishly faithful to their origins. The terminal H is
particularly useless, given that, in English, it could
easily be dropped.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Take Deborah, a bee in Hebrew, which to my eye would look
better as Debora. Or take now Sara and Sarah, equally popular, though the first
is all that’s really required. It derives from the Hebrew “Sarai, meaning
quarrelsome, which in time became Sarah, meaning “princess,” influenced no
doubt by “Sar,” a prince. Nora, or Norah, is largely from the Irish. Writes Partridge:
“earlier Onora, a Hibernicism for
‘Honora’ or ‘Honoria.’” That final H seems to me the very acme of
meddlesomeness, as in Norah O’Donnell, the new anchor for “CBS Evening News.
The classic Nora, perhaps under the influence of Ibsen, strikes me as much the
finer.” Hannah, according to Partridge is “a doublet of Anne,” whatever that
exactly means, and seems to me, who have never encountered it, truly fudging
the obvious and quite sufficient Hanna. Ann and Anne seem to me equally
unsullied .</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
rather like Anna, “the original form of Anne,” according to my master
Partridge; not because of Tolstoy’s masterpiece, which I shamefully admit to
never having read, but because of any personal associations--Nordic, Teutonic
or Slavic--that I may have gleaned from readings or acquaintances. Thus the
heroine of Lanford Wilson’s play “Burn This” is called Anna. Eugene O’Neill
even gives us an Anna Christie. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a tennis
fan, let me conclude with two instances from the tennis world. Nick Kyrgios,
the Australian ace of clearly Greek origin, has himself and the world
pronouncing the name as Kyrios, the middle G unsounded. Why? It’s no tongue
twister in its written form, so what has that poor G done to be avoided?
Perhaps the danger of being an undesired mispronunciation in English as
Kyrdgios.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
More curious yet is the case of the African American Tiafoe
(his parents immigrated from Africa), who calls himself Frances Tiafoe. He has
been duly warned that Frances is a woman’s name, but that he had its masculine
version, Francis, at his ready disposal. No, he insisted, Frances it must be.
This though he doesn’t sport the least feminine trait, looking rather like a
very butch male person. Francis, extremelyMy popular among Elizabethans,
“derives from Old German, Franco, a free lord.” But isn’t there something a
trifle too free about such gender-bending?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Readers, if you can shed light on either of these instances,
kindly do so. My own full name John Ivan Simon, had that redundant middle name
(Ivan is just another form of John) added by my father to make me sound, in his
view, more American, what with the popularity hereabouts of middle names. To
me, it seems more Russianizing than Americanizing, and I have been avoiding it
whenever possible.</div>
John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-47150818396560964662019-04-16T14:14:00.005-07:002019-04-16T14:14:52.845-07:00Old<div class="MsoNormal">
The British novelist L. P. Hartley is remembered chiefly for
the novel and movie version of “The Go-Between,” beginning with “The past is a foreign
country: they do things differently there.” True enough, as we old-timers gaze
back into our memories. We may dimly recognize ourselves in them, but tend to
be surprised by what we discover, either pleasantly or unpleasantly, most
likely as in a foreign country.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So we can view retrospect either nostalgically or
shamefacedly, perhaps recalling Jonathan Swift’s comment upon viewing some of
his early works: “What genius I had then!” We may never have had genius, but
surely greater mobility, flexibility, enterprise, and relationships. In short,
what did “old” mean in contemplation of it, and what does it in experience of
it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was, as a boy, enormously fond of the novels of the German
author Karl May, and owned a good many of his numerous volumes in the original
German. The stories took place either in the American Wild West or in the no
less wild Arab North Africa. A prison term for some kind of fraud clouded May’s
name, with the work, however, remaining irresistible to young adult readers,
though, more damaging yet, his books were favorites of Adolf Hitler, who even
instituted an outdoor theater for dramatizations of it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The plots attested to remarkable imagination, what with
tremendous seeming authenticity coming from one who did not leave Germany. The
characters, mostly trappers or hunters we assume, are called things like Old
Firehand, Old Surehand, and, greatest of all, Old Shatterhand (which I, having
little English at the time, blithely mispronounced). Shatterhand, May’s alter
ego, was of course really German, and blood brother to the noblest of Indians,
the Apache chief Winetu (to be pronounced Win-Net-Too). Together, they
civilized the West.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The last-named principals owned fabulous horses and superb
shotguns, all in the service of justice. I tried to emulate them, owning a
great, German-fabricated realistic toy handgun, called the MG, as well as
lesser weapons to proudly brandish. This earned me the sobriquet “the boy with
the pistols,” from Sinka Nikich, Crown Prince Peter’s beautiful and polyglot
girlfriend, particularly amused to hear me refer to myself in English as a
“poetist,” and none of it making me, as I hoped, look or be older.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The ages of May’s characters were not specified, but they
surely weren’t old, the term being one of affection and admiration. Admiration
because old imputed wisdom gleaned from long and varied experience and staying
power, as in the phrase “good old so and so,” a kind of verbal smile of
approbation. Renaissance images of philosophers invariably showed them as
bearded and thus old, and the rare depictions of God always featured a full and
well tended white beard on a seemingly ageless being, old if you like.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then, too, things like wine and manuscripts do indeed profit
from extended survival, so that old easily became some sort of honorific, like
gallant or noble. Triumphant warriors, too, were often portrayed bearded, but
that managed to look like suggesting rather than having endured old age, a good
kind of oldness. The very word, however, may nowadays be shunned. Thus TV
commentators on tennis almost never refer to a player as so many years old, but
always “of age,” as in, say, ““thirty-seven years of age,” apparently meant to
extend their youthfulness<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>by
avoiding the word “old.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Old,” the term, has many uses, so let us consider them.
Historicity (Old English) geography (Old Lyme, Old Dominion), religion (Old
Testament), sociology (old families), familiarity (old friends), old masters
(art), publishing (old type), charm (old English sheepdogs), natural wonders
(Old Faithful), commercialism (old, tried products), legends (myths of various
civilizations). experience (old hands), fashion (old costumes), patriotism (Old
Glory, Old Ironside) and literature, selectively (Old Mortality, Old Wives’
Tale, Old Fortunatus, Old Man and the Sea, Old Curiosity Shop, Old Familiar
Faces, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats), etc. etc. Sometimes also in
putdowns: Old Hat, Old Crow, Old Jokes, Old Fool, Old Stories, etc.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But never mind the nomenclature; what does being old these
days really entail? Or, specifically, how am I doing as I approach my 94<sup>th</sup>
year? As I have mentioned already often, the one nearly surefire positive thing
is that, seeing my cane, many bus or subway riders yield me their seat, women
more often than men. Still, getting around with the help of a cane isn’t
wonderful—I would have preferred an Abel (or able, please note the pun).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then the obvious disadvantages. Long walks can be painful,
and even short ones are essentially slower than a rapid walker such as my wife
appreciates. There are problems with blurred sight at a distance, and decreased
hearing at, say, the theater, a problem for a drama critic. Even assisted
hearing devices are ultimately unhelpful, as they merely increase volume but
not comprehensibility. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One is supposed to have a good long-term memory, but not so
much of a short-term one. Let me enlighten you: one forgets old things too. The
short range obliviousness may be more troubling, as one forgets why one has
gone into the next room, or even what is or isn’t in the fridge. It is both
frustrating and humiliating how much one struggles with forgotten things, some
of which one eventually recalls, others not at all. In rereading my published
doctoral thesis. I came across an impressive-sounding word whose meaning I
could not puzzle out. (If you ask me what it was, I’m afraid I can’t remember.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Recently I could not come up with the formerly cherished
word for a thousand-year span; I had to call my linguist friend Bryan Garner,
who promptly supplied “chiliad.” This relieved me from a prolonged agitation
and sleeplessness. I can find little quite as exhausting as fruitless
cogitation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Still, I am thankful for being basically in good health,
suffering from none of the lethal ailments I read about in the Times
obituaries, nowadays part of my regular matutinal perusal. Interesting how many
of the deceased made it to the advanced nineties, and some even into the
hundreds, leaving me to wonder how much I have yet coming to me, and if so,
whether without pain. That is one of the worst things about growing old: one’s
provision of hope becomes daily more sparse, my mnemonics faultier, and some of
these blog spots perhaps less reliable. But I carry on, faithfully, I hope, to
the end.</div>
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John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-77205435175238670432019-03-02T12:40:00.005-08:002019-03-02T12:40:55.007-08:00Fashion<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fashion matters. Consider haute couture designer Karl
Lagerfeld’s recent obituaries, extensive enough to be worthy of a prince or
president. To be sure, Lagerfeld was, in uniqueness and influence, ahead of
most contemporary designers, but that such status was achievable in his field
is the very proof of fashion’s importance.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Also the importance of what is near-synonymous with fashion,
though insufficiently remarked upon, change. Since the overwhelming number of
existences is monotonous and boring, change or fashion assumes global
importance. At its lowest<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>level,
it is the seductress’s request to her target, “Wait till I change into
something more comfortable.” Mere erotic maneuver, to be sure, but also part of
the great change issue, so much so that it can become a problem how to
marginalize it or exploit it. The latter often in some preposterous designs
making runway models seem to come straight from Mars or<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bedlam, and earning for the designer
recognition even without everyday relevance.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But there are homelier aspects of change, as in the problem
of marriage, which may require<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>fidelity and variety in need of conciliation. Thus I have heard about a
married couple where the wife regularly wore a different wig to bed, allowing
the husband innocuous fantasies of polygamy. But what change is there for the
single man or woman? Either painlessly, through serial affairs or, perhaps painfully,
through resigned abstinence?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In comes the socially acceptable fashion of changing
outerwear, which introduces harmless change for both the wearer and the viewer.
In other words, fashion. This is made easier for women, who can achieve relief
through unlimited freedom of design. Not so much for men, whose suits have
remained basically conservative, although lately male models have begun
appearing on fashion runways in outfits equally diversified as those for women.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These odd new male fashions may prove especially pleasing to
homosexuals, at any rate to those favoring dress-up, not to mention drag. There
is another type of gay man who strives to be indistinguishable as such by
becoming ultraconservative. But for the unattached and possibly cruising type
of gay men, clothes, or more accurately costume, becomes a useful appurtenance.
(Need I mention that I write all of this without pointing a moralizing finger
at any of it?)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But for the typical middle-class male, single or married,
there has been very little apparel change available. For a very long time until
recently, the area where it was <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>applicable was the necktie. So what happened to the necktie?
It became practically obsolete, beginning like most fashions in France. Shirts,
still essentially unchanged, were being worn unbuttoned at the neck, even on
some formal occasions.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lately though, further change eventuated in a shirt designed
to be worn untucked, impossible to do with the traditional kind. But that kind achieved
some fashionable diversity through changes of color, pattern, or material. And there
remained the T-shirt, which moved from underwear to outerwear, from gymnastics
and leisure to more general use. Further, fashion moved downward to varied
hemline length and to footwear, fashionable shoes and boots of all sorts, some
of them knee-high, made from diverse kinds of leather or more unusual
materials.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In more northerly climates, there are coats for fashion to
have freedom of indulgence. Here hemlines traffic in changes of length, perhaps
even more so than they do in skirts; but in both skirts and coats, longitude
matters to the woman bent on being fashionable.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Importantly, then, fashion, which is to say the language of
major designers, takes on significant characteristics, whereby a trained eye
can distinguish a Dior from an early Balenciaga (before the master’s death), a
Saint Laurent from a Givenchy, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lanvin from a Valentino, and so on and on, with Italy and
Spain, Britain and America snapping at the heels of France. For men especially, there
are Armani and Versace, Brioni and Zegna, Hermes and Ferre right at the
forefront of the very best, and still others, again so on and on. I leave it to
greater experts to trace the relationship between fashion and culture, or between
fashion and history.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Unsurprisingly, some concept of fashion has made it into the
arts, even if not necessarily associated with clothing. Thus we have Dryden’s comedy
“Marriage a la Mode,” Etherege’s “The Man of Fashion, or Sir Fopling Flutter”
as early as 1676, and Ernest Dowson’s immortal verse “I have been faithful to
you, Cynara, in my fashion” with its reference to sexual behavior. In American
theater we had “Fashion; or Life in New York” by Anna Cora Mowatt as early as
1845. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And, of course, in the movies. There we had “Paris Frills”
(Falbalas) by Jacques Becker in 1945, and Robert Altman’s “Ready to Wear” and
P. T. Anderson’s “Fatal Threads” more recently. The figure of the powerful
fashion designer, as Raymond Rouleau incarnated him in “Falbalas” as an elegant
womanizer, exerts irresistible romantic appeal even when the figure is a
dominant woman, like Coco Chanel (offstage and on in the musical “Coco”).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Being a fashion prince may, like all nobility, be precarious;
note Alexander McQueen, Lagerfeld’s most serious rival, a suicide at forty,
with no satisfactory explanation provided. Other designers, to be sure, have enjoyed
a much sought after social prominence, such as even that of Vogue’s omnipresent, mildly
obnoxious editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
But to get to my own involvement with fashion--from my
younger, more loosely pecunious days—there remains in my possession a single
Lagerfeld item. It is a pair of light-weight pants, darkish tan with an almost
invisible, thin vertical stripe, and around the inside rim a white encircling
band inscribed sixteen times with “Karl Lagerfeld Paris.” The material is
enviably soft, but retains its enduring shape,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>reaffirming for me the hegemony of fashion.</div>
John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-60778928426377601122019-02-17T15:46:00.001-08:002019-02-17T15:46:15.106-08:00Great Performances<div class="MsoNormal">
What exactly is a great performance by an actor or actress
on stage or screen? Or if not exactly, because it involves something words seem
unable to express fully, at least approximately.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It predicates a paradox or oxymoron, because it is both
unique and universal, something we can identify with without even having
imagined. Over decades of theater and movie going, I have<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>witnessed it not all that rarely, but
not all that often either. What one gets frequently enough is good or even very
good acting, but short of the prodigious, the unforgettable, the great. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As I look back, I encounter what may be the most often
lauded performance by an American actress in all time, Laurette Taylor’s as
Amanda Wingfield in “The Glass Menagerie” (1944). As it happens, I saw it and
liked it, but was perhaps too young to sufficiently appreciate it, or able to
recall it now. The role certainly boasts writing good enough to attract fine
actresses, but none other has achieved comparable glory in it, adulation even
on hearsay from persons who weren’t there. And let us not forget that Julie
Haydon, as daughter Laura, was pretty great too, but is not half so often
cited.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Haydon, incidentally, was of a fragile loveliness seldom
equaled in Hecht and MacArthur’s movie, “The Scoundrel,” opposite a likewise
remarkable Noel Coward.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Why that film is not rereleased remains a mystery to me. But
let me for the moment consider whom I view as the two greatest American male
actors of stage and screen, Fredric March and George C. Scott. This despite my
appreciation of James Robards, Paul Muni, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, William
Holden, Paul Robeson, Sidney Poitier, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, John Garfield
and certain others, all of whom could occasionally be great.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But, of course, greatness does come more often in great
roles, like Scott onstage as Clarence Darrow in “Inherit the Wind.” On film, he
was great in “Hospital” (with help from Paddy Chayefsky’s script) as early as
1972, and as late as1986 in “The Last Days of Patton.” He specialized in
fanatics whom one could have hated even in good causes, but he knew how to make
fanaticism admirable even in poor ones But then, onstage in Coward’s “Present
Laughter,” he proved himself just as good in light comedy and British wit.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In Fredric March, too, the genius lay in the man, regardless
of the part. He was incredibly handsome in diverse roles; let’s single out “The
Best Years of Our Lives,” “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” “Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde” and “Death Takes a Holiday.” As diverse as the quality of their writing
were the roles from light to heavy, whether based on Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, Mark
Twain or whoever.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thinking about both Scott and March, I conclude that their
greatness lies not so much in individual performances as in their whole
careers, in the aura of masterliness adhering to their mere starry presence. Versatility
certainly, but personality even more.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Interestingly, more performances by British actors of stage
and screen come to mind than do those by American ones, by which I mean born in
the U.S. I would guess that this stems from more rigorous training and more
frequent exposure to Shakespeare and other classics. Consider the legendary
quality of Laurence Olivier’s performances, not only in “Henry the Fifth” and
“Richard the Third,” but also in such modern roles as in “Rebecca” and “The
Entertainer.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or think of John Gielgud, to whom being great in various
roles came as easily as a suit of different clothes to a dandy. Hard to pick
any one gem from such a treasure trove. but let me settle for the butler in
“Arthur,” for which he deservedly got an Oscar. Gielgud was often praised
merely for his extremely musical voice , but he could hold is own below that as
well.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And what of my perhaps favorite British actor, Ralph
Richardson, who had a quality that repeatedly dazzled me. It consisted of
endowing a more or less ordinary man</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
with a core of nobility that transcended looks or
mannerisms, as for instance in another butler in “The Fallen Idol,” or the
surgeon in “The Elephant Man,” and on and on, even in such an awkward film
version as “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” Great innumerably too on stage, for example in “John Gabriel
Borkman” or “Home.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let me cite merely performances I have seen from a variety
of great British actors. Michael Redgrave (“The Captive Heart”), Albert Finney
(“Tom Jones,” “Gumshoe,” “Erin Brockovich”), Michael Caine (“Alfie), Peter
O’Toole (“Lawrence of Arabia”), Robert Donat (“Goodbye, Mr. Chips”), Paul
Scofield (A Man for All Seasons”). Peter Finch (“Network”), Donald Sinden
(“London Assurance”). Robert Morley (“Oscar Wilde,” “Beat the Devil”), Ian
McKellen (“Richard III”), Kenneth Branagh {“Much Ado About Nothing,” and
“Conspiracy”),<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>etc.etc.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And what of my beloved Trevor Howard in an undeservedly
forgotten film, one of my favorites, “Outcast of the Islands,” and in
everyone’s beloved “Brief Encounter.” Also, while we are on Noel Coward,
himself as actor in “In Which We Serve,” and Harold Pinter as actor, before he
turned, less felicitously in my view, into a playwright.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But enough of men. Let me turn now to American actresses, at
least those who weren’t deformed by the Actors’ Studio or really British, as,
for example, Vivien Leigh and Gertrude Lawrence. This would include exceptional
achievements even by, as I see it, undesirables such as the later Judy Garland,
except very fine in the seemingly forgotten, underrated “The Clock,” and also
an early version of the continually reinvented “A Star Is Born.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Also, of course, Mary Martin, especially in “South Pacific,”
Claire Trevor (“Key Largo,” “Murder, My Sweet”), Gloria Grahame (“Man on a
Tightrope,” “The Big Heat”). Uma Thurman (“Henry & June”), Sono Osato in
anything she touched, Julia Roberts (“Pretty Woman” and “Erin Brockovich,”)
also in an abundance of parts too numerous to catalogue, the wonderful Jan
Maxwell (“House and Garden”), Lauren Bacall, Elaine Stritch, Julie Harris,
Evelyn Keyes, Geraldine Page, Kim Stanley, Meryl Streep, Patricia Neal,
Katharine Hepburn, Janice Rule, Ina Claire, Elizabeth Ashley, Lynn Fontanne,
Donna McKechnie, Dee Hoty, Marian Seldes, Dorothy Dandridge, Halle Berry, Lena
Horne, and a good many others of whom I cannot think at the moment. But there
are two ladies I want to particularise here, namely Alexis Smith and Lee
Remick, two incomparable stars, both of whom played one of the leads on
different occasions in “Follies.” I quote from “John Simon on Theater”: “Were
there ever two more maturely beautiful women on our stages, more ladylike and
sexy, more aglitter yet accessible, more totally theatrical and not the least
bit stagy? Where are you now, Alexis and Lee, you two marvelous Phylisses of
the 1971 premiere and the 1985 concert revival? You are built into the accruing
glory that is “Follies,” as surely as Daphne lives in the olive tree, as
Andromeda lights up in the night sky.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I will not even try here to go into great performances by
men beyond those by two actors’ already mentioned. Rather let me try to develop
my notions what constitutes greatness in theater and cinema.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let’s turn to John Howard Wilson’s book “All the King’s
Ladies: Actresses of the Restoration” for the pages about the magnificent Anne
Bracegirdle, who lived from presumably 1663 to 1748 and played in more shows
than any dozen current actresses rolled together. It takes Wilson 3 ½ pages
just to list them. Included is this description by Anthony Acton:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She was of a lovely height, with dark-brown Hair and
Eye-brows, black sparkling Eyes, and a fresh blushy Complexion; and, whenever
she exerted herself, had an involuntary Flushing in her Breast, Neck and Face,
having continually a cheerful Aspect, and a fine set of even white Teeth; never
making an Exit, but that she left the Audience in an Imitation of her pleasant
Countenance.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That essentially translates as good looks, felicitous stage
presence and natural charm, producing delight in her audience even after she
has made her exit. This may be the place for my tribute to Jane Fonda in
“Klute.” “As irresistible as a surfy beach in July, her performance washes over
you like a tartly cooling, drolly buffeting liquid benediction, bringing wave
after wave of unpredictable, exhilarating delight. There is a perfect blend
here of shrewdness, acerbity, toughness, anxiety, and vulnerability. A
quintessential femininity is caught in transition between a badly dented
girlishness and a nascent womanliness as innocent of its past as a butterfly of
its larva. Note the play of Miss Fonda’s febrile hands when she is sweating it
out with her therapist, the dartings and hesitancies of her voice, with its
sudden leaps and falls of temperature, the faint seismic tremors of her facial
play, indicating turbulences valiantly repressed.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now compare this with what I wrote about a German actress,
Ingrid Ernest, in Hauptmann’s “Before Sundown,” as reprinted in “Acid Test.”
“She gave herself in every form of giving: a girl’s, shyly proud; a woman’s,
quietly eager; a tomboy’s, a small child’s, a spoiled princess’, an unknown
somebody’s—unknown even to herself; astonished, frightened, and very, very
sure. We were confronted with a reality so overwhelming that life would have
found a way of diluting it, just so as to get us over it and beyond. But in the
theater it was there, pure and immutable and ours.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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From both of the above, we conclude that great performance
consists of layers, contradictions reconciled or not, emotions and actions that
intensify reality recognized or not, components we realize as ours, but not
ordinarily proffered in such abundance. Make of it all great performance.
Sadly, we lost track of Ms. Ernest, but Ms. Fonda, still active, still radiant,
is with us still. </div>
John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com46tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-2054351879547709442019-02-05T08:26:00.001-08:002019-02-05T08:28:30.752-08:00Curse Words<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Persons of extreme sensitivity or puritanical leanings might
as well stop reading right here; others might find, as I do, each language ‘s
choice of curse words and
purported profanities as revealing national characteristics of its
users.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Anglo-Americans favor mostly innocuous or childish CW <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(to initialize curse words henceforward)
by way of a potty mouth, itself a bit of a euphemism. A big favorite in America
is ”Your mother wears army boots,” about as housebroken as CW can come. I am
going to focus on Hungarian and Serbian ones, both rich in gusto, compensatory
for belonging too small or too highly regimented nations.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Thus the Croats, constrained by both Austro-Hungarian
Imperial and </span><span style="font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif;">Roman Catholic restraints, have come up with ludicrous terms
for parts of the body, based mostly on the German Scham meaning both shame and
the vagina, i.e., “stidljivost,” shamefulness, a chickenfeed CW compared to
Hungarian and Serbian popular parlance. Which Croatian ones are the subject for
laughter out loud by Serbs and Hungarians, going in for far saltier things.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Take, for instance, walking in the streets of Belgrade, the
Serbian capital, or in the so-called korzo, the favored universal promenade, where
the prolific, loud expletives<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>are “jebi
ga,” fuck it, or “jebesh mu” fuck his (something or someone), expressions with
which the parlance of even many educated speakers is laced raising almost no
eyebrows. Rather more problematic is the Serbian “idi u pichku materinu,” or
the Hungarian version, “menj az anyad pichajaba,” go into your mother’s cunt. ”
Serbian even has a popular alternative for that organ, “pizda.” Neither form
has any truck with something as infantile as pussy.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Moreover, elaboration thrives, as for example in “I fuck your
mother’s black whorish cunt,” in either Serbian or Hungarian, still fairly
routine stuff. But I must confess to a certain abstemiousness myself, not using
any of the above, but contenting myself with much milder utterances, such as
“Go to hell” or “Go to he devil,” even though I am aware that neither hell nor
devil exists. This restraint despite the fact that even the highly civilized
French has the tougher “va te faire foutre,” coming from that neither small nor
a powerless nation. But consider that even in literature, such wildly
unhampered practitioners as Rimbaud and Lautreamont made no use of expletives. Yet,
as always, there are exceptions. The poet Apollinaire’s celebrated
comic-pornographic work, “Les cent mille Verges” which is S&M, but turns
into Vierges (rods into virgins), which is comedic sacrilege. think of Saint
Ursula and her retinue.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">To my eternal regret, I don’t know or read Italian, so I
can’t say what obtains in that language<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>beyond the rather ungracious “porca Madonna,” and the totally anodyne
“porco di Baccho.” For Spanish, I depend entirely on Hemingway, from whom I get
“cojones,” pricks. I would be particularly interested in what gives in
Scandinavian languages, as well as in other Slavic ones, of which I am
ignorant. However, there is a Russian fiction by Mikhail Arcybashev, in a
translated scene from which a man pays a poor young woman quite handsomely to
let him whip her naked buttocks a specified<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>number of blows.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Most
writers even in, say, Hungarian, make no use of CW, not even, such as the
wonderful Frigyes Karinthy or the less wonderful Peter Esterhazy. To be sure, I
have neither read nor heard very recent performances in foreign languages, and
cannot speak conclusively to anything but English.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Even
there, I have avoided such writers as Hubert Selby (“Last Exit to Brooklyn”)
and note that even in most of them, as in Henry Miller and Norman Mailer, there
is little or no CW. There are others, so-called Beats, typified by William
Burroughs with his “Naked Lunch,” and the once ubiquitous Charles Bukowski.,
neither of whom I have read at all. In speech, my friends and I have remained
essentially chaste. The same goes for most recent British writers.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">But not so, strange to say, for the theater, as wallowingly spearheaded
(if that is the word for it) by David Mamet, with any number of contemporary
playwrights having made use—some more, others less—of his CW. What I find
interesting is that the verb for sex and the four-letter version of excrement
are profusely employed<span style="color: #262626;">, but the grant almost never includes the sexual
organs, I don’t quite know why. It may be out of some last-ditch effort at respectability
that cannot be sloughed off, like the verb, which, through frequency of use has
come to pass as practically inconspicuous.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #262626;">Things used to be different in Restoration
England, as for example in the writings of that remarkable rake and poet, Lord
Rochester. In his only once performed play “Sodom,” he apostrophized the female
organ brilliantly as “This is the warehouse of the world’s chief trade,/ On
this soft anvil all mankind was made.” In the play, Rochester’s patron and
butt, King Charles II, is satirized as saying (using the contemporary pintle
for penis)</span> “And with my pintle I shall rule the land.” More rowdily we
get dear “Industrious cunt shall never pintle want,/ She shall be mistress to
the elephant.” (Was that about poor dear Nell Gwynn?) </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">To this day, few publications are allowed to print anything
like that, although The New Yorker does permit the verb for sex. I myself do
not advocate unrestrained use of CW, lest it, too, lose its sting. Nudity in
the theater is permitted, more often of men than of women, make of it what you
will. There has also been simulated intercourse, though not the actual thing as
in “Sodom.” In Germany, there was something called “Nacktballet,” from a
leading female dancer-choreographer, Marie Wigman. it never crossed boundaries,
although I for one wouldn’t have found it unwelcome anywhere.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And what about the future of CW? Having no crystal ball, I
cannot predict it. I am , however, all for it as long as it is used judiciously
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and not indiscriminately. As for
my own limited, personal future, there is no telling what can prevail. I daresay
that neither angels nor devils espouse nudity and uncalled-for CW.<span style="color: #262626;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-20735570445573602362019-01-23T20:26:00.000-08:002019-01-23T20:26:10.956-08:00Apologia<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Through more than thirty years of writing and behavior,
Simon has shown us how easy it is to be a snake.” So ends an attack on me of a
good many years ago on Salon by Charles Taylor, showing how easy it is to misjudge
me from a widely held but unexaminedly researched, lazily hostile point of
view.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
People who have unprejudicedly read my criticism in
magazines, or collected in book form, must know how mistaken dear Mr. Taylor
is. “Dear” because he has, however belatedly and unintentionally, given me this
occasion to set things to right.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let me begin with the most commonplace attacks on me as an alleged
disburser of gratuitous vitriol, a view of which a little more honesty and
effort would have revealed me, on the contrary, as a good praiser frequently as
well. In fact, one would probably find a positive review for every four or five
negative ones, which seems perfectly justified when you consider how much trash
is being offered on stage and screen, and only a little less so in literature.
But that would not be viewed as<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a
legitimate proportion by the typical reviewers, who find it more profitable to
gush than to discriminate, of which, in any case, they are rarely capable.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So let me start with the serpentine view of me, most
conveniently promulgated on the basis of my satirical remarks about something
which the poor actors could not control. But are not performers in shows and movies
supposed to be appealing,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
indeed exemplars of something all of us strive for, or do we
go to the theater and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>cinema to
look at unsightliness? Except, of course, where the latter is predicated, or do
we want the witches in “Macbeth” played by or acted as gorgeous women?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The old Hollywood dedicated to glamour knew what it was
doing all right, even if its notion of beauty wasn’t always of the subtlest
kind. This has changed, with populism insisting that it would rather look
democratically at a homely Zoe Kazan or Jessica Hecht than romantically at a
Laura Osnes, Laura Denanti, or Katrina Lesk. And yes, if we desire sets and
costumes—again with meaningful exceptions—to be beautiful, </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
why not the faces and figures of performers? Are they not
part of the spectacle? Or do young women aiming for stage or screen careers
grow up yearning to be Barbra Streisands? Heaven help us, maybe they do. Still,
I would like to think that, however unavowedly, they would rather be a Jane
Fonda or a Sharon Stone.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Note that this does not mean that acting talent does not
come first, only that aesthetics should not lag too far behind. Yet does not
some of my wit at their expense hurt the actors’ feelings? No doubt it does,
but that is the consequence of being a public figure and of lack of
self-criticism. The early Maggie Smith and the greatly gifted Judi Dench would
not have gone out for parts that required beauty queens, or else would have
used their talents to make us believe that they could. Suffice it to say that I
have never praised an actress for nothing but looks alone, take for example
this from an early review of “Les Enfants du Paradis”:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Maria Casares as the desperate wife. Who else could have
made nagging, choking, marathon jealousy look so touching, lovable, even
heroic? How that plain face of hers can become transfigured with the humblest
happiness; how, in the agonies of rejection and anger, its ugliness remains profoundly
human.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Next comes the accusation of my alleged enjoying
curmudgeonliness overmuch. There is no denying that writing a well-turned,
well-deserved slam is fun, but so is a convincing rave. The only rather less
enjoyable thing is writing a mixed review, chiefly neither praise nor
disparagement. But even that should be readable as a specimen of justness, of
the agility in sorting out the good and the not good in the mediocre. One must
make the merely tolerable resonate as well as the enthusiastic, albeit with a lesser
clangor.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What I would ask from any reader—and I admit it is no small
thing—is to have checked out one of my critical collections in a library or
bookstore, without necessary purchase, but enough to elicit either approbation
or censure. As an example of a truly positive review, consider in “John Simon on
Theater” the notice of “Private Lives” on pages 810-11, or that of “Barrymore”
on pages 667-68, or yet that of “Comic Potential” on pages 782-84. Only someone
who truly enjoys to accord praise could have written any one of those. Even
some of what can be read standing up in a bookstore will dismiss the notion of
me as an attack dog.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you try to decide whether not to boggle at my negative
reviews, try those of two other productions of “Private Lives,” pages 36-38 or
284-87. The latter takes apart Elizabeth Taylor’s Amanda, but should provide
good enough reasons for doing so. As for my alleged homophobia, consider the
praise lavished on some known homosexual playwrights or performers, of which
you can find plentiful examples. I believe I acknowledged their talents quite
irrespective of their, yes, private lives. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
None of the foregoing, however, is intended as an elaborate
justification of my criticism or me as an individual. I am sure that disagreement
with my critiques is not excluded. Certainly perfection eludes me as much as it
does the next person, though perhaps a little bit less than it does other
reviewers, especially those in the dailies. If you want to use this very blog entry
as inducement to proclaim disagreement, by all means do so. I am all for
private or public debate as one of the best sources of discoveries. I only wish
I had a better outlet for reviews than afforded by my blog entries and occasional
magazine publication, especially now that The Weekly Standard has bitten the
dust. The one thing I am perfectly confident about is that my views are
thoroughly clear, unlike, say, those of French and American structuralists and
semioticists. Also devoid of talking (or writing) from both corners of my
mouth.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-71411163139303202062019-01-04T10:36:00.002-08:002019-01-15T15:01:34.073-08:00Of Love and Food<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In a recent blog post I enumerated poems or parts of poems
that have been amiably haunting me all my life. Yet there is one of them that,
though frequently recurrent, I did not mention. It runs “Ce lourd secret que tu
quemandes”—this heavy secret that you beg for.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It comes from a sequence of quatrains by Guillaume
Apollinaire entitled “Vitam Impendere Amori’ (to overhang life with love,) an
allusion to Rousseau’s “Vitam Impendere Vero,” to overhang life with truth.
Apollinaire’s sequence was written about a troubled love affair with one of his
several inamoratas, and its penultimate quatrain begins “Tu n’a pas surpris mon
secret”—you did not apprehend my secret.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The entire concluding quatrain reads “La rose flotte au fil
de l’eau/ Les masques ont passés par bandes/ Il tremble en moi comme un grelot/
Ce lourd secret que tu quemandes.” The rose floats along the water’s flow/ The
masks have gone by in bands/ There trembles in me like sleigh bells/ This heavy
secret that you beg for.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I take this to mean that the romance of love is over, as are
its disguises; what resonates inside the lover, is a deep-seated tremor, like
unspoken sleighbells, which the beloved is reduced to seeking, probably in
vain. I have no idea why that last single, solitary, out of context verse
should so keep affecting me, perhaps because women could not find in me what
they were craving, something very private that remained, however intense,
uncommunicated. But perhaps it is just a verse that hangs on through sheer euphony,
a musically modulated sound sequence.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So much for this matter; now for something entirely
different. What about the presumptive birth places of various comestibles that
they truthfully or falsely proclaim in their names, thus adding to their
desirability? Take, for example, the so-called Belgian endives. Do they really
all come from Belgium, and can they not take root for whatever reason
elsewhere, say in our own USA? Is there something about the Belgian soil,
climate, or cultivators that is so inimitably unique? Or is it just the
exotic aura of foreignness?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or what about Parma prosciutto? I am aware that in some
markets it is available in a cheaper domestic version. But the imported kind
from Italy, though quite a bit more expensive, is also tastier, At some
outlets, in fact, there are numerous costlier versions, rising stepwise to real
luxuries my kind cannot, and does not need to, afford. At the market where I
shop, I have seen Prosciutto di Parma convincingly packaged and labeled in
giant hunks. Wouldn’t it be nice to shlepp the whole thing home with me? And
eating it, think affectionately of Parma’s favorite son in red and black? Similarly, I doubt if most Genoa salame has ever had a birthplace in Genoa. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now what about the balsamic Modena vinegar, different even
in its opulently dark hue from the colorless domestic kind? I trust that it
really does come from Modena,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But couldn’t it be replicated here—or is that already done?
I don’t think so, as I see the name Modena proudly displayed on all its
varieties, as ladies and gentlemen prefer brunettes to blondes. I truly believe
that it does come from Modena, and not just because that sounds so pretty or
that Modena suggests a la mode.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And how about ham? Here we run into a plethora of
possibilities. Though not so denominated, much of it comes from Poland—either
because it really does or because one thinks of wild Polish woods propitious to
savory porkers. But one also thinks of Black Forest Ham (Schwarzwalder
Schinken), even though most of the real Black Forest, subject to commercial
deforestation, is practically gone by now, and is alive only in swine.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In France, there is a delicious ham, called if I remember
correctly, jambon de Bayonne (but I may have it wrong, confused by tapestries
from Bayeux). This brings me to obviously fictitious origins, such as the tasty
Virginia ham, which, I would bet, does not necessarily come from Virginia. I
also used to buy a lot of Danish ham, which I think was authentic, though I
have a hard time envisaging<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>something Nordic as not made from reindeer.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or think of Swiss cheese, Surely it originated, and still
often does come, as Switzerland’s cheese, as if it had just skied down from an
Alp. But it is a generic moniker and I have eaten Finnish Swiss cheese, just as
good as any. And even in America. . . but let us not go there. I have also eaten
Swedish meatballs in the heart of Manhattan.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now what about salmon? Is it genuinely Scotch or Norwegian,
or is it even, as honestly labeled, Scotch or Norwegian style? I would hate to
think, though, that it might come from the Hudson or East River.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am also puzzled by Turkish delight, which the musical
“Kismet” correctly identifies as Rahat lokum. It is something that I would
think can be persuasively fabricated (or whatever the word) nearer to us than
Turkey. But, as I say, some of these titular attributes are fake. Have they
even heard of hamburgers in Hamburg? Or in Moscow of a Moscow mule?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ah, well, with potables there are as many nominally
inauthentic as authentic ones. Burgundy, to be sure, comes from Burgundy, even
as champaign (which the Times always capitalizes) comes from Champaign. Then
again, most German and Austrian wines come with geographic names, like my
current favorite, the Gruener Veltliner, where the green seems like a
redundancy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
And now back to love, with which we began. Is music really,
as Shakespeare’s Orlando would have it, “the food of love,” then what kind of
food and what kind of love was he thinking of? If real food, no wonder opera
divas, ostentatiously in love with themselves, are understandably of Wagnerian
girth. Though, happily, recently not so much. And lovers of chocolate, Swiss or
Belgian, should we not have to untighten our belts? By what miracle can I
squeeze into 38 inch underwear and weigh usually something between 70 pounds
and less? Luckily, though I am part Hungarian, I don’t drink Tokay, and though
part Yugoslav, do not eat srpski sir, i.e., Serbian cheese. So it has become
late, and I can go to bed lovingly thinking<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of two favorite cheeses, Humboldt Fog, which I can sometimes
afford, and Vacherin Liegois, which I really can’t.</div>
John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-24828602872544011232018-12-11T06:28:00.002-08:002018-12-11T06:28:58.882-08:00Death<div class="MsoNormal">
Herewith a number of lyric verse quotations about death or
dying from books in my collection. Where the source is formal, rhyming verse, I
tend to include the original; where it is prose or free verse, I tend to limit
myself to a mere English translation. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Except in a couple of cases, I provide the entire poem. I do
not believe that these lyrics seriously facilitate our demise, but they may
offer old-timers some sense of what is ahead. I will also try to assess the
value of individual quotations.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the foreword to a collection of Robert Graves’s poems,
which I no longer own, Graves asserted that there were mainly (or only--I quote
from imperfect memory) two subjects, love and death, fully appropriate for
verse, though, needless to say, he touched on other subjects much of the time.
I start with what I consider two of his best poems on the subject.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Suicide in the Copse</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The suicide, far from content,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Stared down at his own shattered skull.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Was this what he meant?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Had not his purpose been</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To liberate himself from duns and dolts</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By a change of scene?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
From somewhere came a roll of laughter.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He had looked so on his wedding-day,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And the day after.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There was nowhere at all to go,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And no diversion now but to peruse</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What literature the winds might blow</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Into the copse where his body lay:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A year-old sheet of sporting news,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A crumpled schoolboy essay.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And now a poem for a more universal form of demise.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Villagers and Death</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Rector’s pallid neighbour at The Firs,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Death, did not flurry the parishioners.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yet from a weight of superstitious fears,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Each tried to lengthen his term of years;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He was congratulated who combined</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Toughness of flesh with weakness of the mind</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In consequential rosiness of face.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The dull and not ill-mannered populace</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Pulled off their caps to Death, as they slouched by,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But rumoured him both atheist and spy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All vowed to outlast him (though none ever did)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And hear the earth drum on his coffin-lid.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Their groans and whispers down the village street</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Soon soured his nature, which was never sweet.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Clearly Graves did not have use for suicide and presumably
scorned the general fear and reprehension of death, though this by no means
meant atheism as the only solution.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now let us start our survey of death poetry through the ages
as I can find it on my bookshelves. We begin at the Renaissance in Italy with
Gaspara Stampa</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(1523-54), a wonderful scholar and poet who lived mostly in
Venice. She was the member of at least one academy, a student of Greek and
Latin, and corresponded with most of the eminent men of her time. Her sonnets
are the record of an unhappy love affair; herewith one of them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Cui mi dara socorso a l’ora estrema.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Che
verra<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>morte trarmi fuor di vita</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tosto
dopo, l’acerba dispartita</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Onde fin
d’ora il cor paventa e trema?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Madre e sorella no; perche la tema</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Questa e quella a dolersi meco invita;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>E poi per prova omaicla loro aita</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Non giova a questa doglia alta
e suprema.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
E le vostre fidate amiche scorte’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Che di giovarmi avriano sole
il come,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Saran lontane in quell’
altera corte.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dunque io porro queste terrene some</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Senza conforto alcun, se non
di morte</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sospirando e chiamando il
vostro nome.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As Richard Aldington translates: “Who shall succour me in my
extremest hour/ when death is tearing me from life, ah!/ bitter parting!!
whereat the heart doth trmble and fear,/ Mother and sister, no; because fear
urges both/ to grieve with me; and at that time to accept their help does not
avail this last and lofty woe./ And then your faithful, kindly guidance that
alone knew how to help me/ will be far away in that so lofty Court. / So I
shall lay aside these earthly burdens/ with naught to comfort me except at
death/ the sighing and the calling on your name!”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Next
we skip to 1950, when the poet and fiction writer Cesare Pavese, unhappily in
love with the American actress Constance Dowling (sister of the more famous
Doris), committed suicide. A sequence of ten poems, eight in Italian and two in
English, were found in a folder upon his death. Most famously the following, in
short, unrhyming verses, beginning “Death will come and will have your eyes,”
and ending with “For each man Death has a look he knows./ Death will come and
will have your eyes./ It will be like giving up a vice,/ like seeing in a
glass/ a dead face reappearing/ like listening to closed lips./ Dumb we shall
descend into the abyss.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We move now to French, speclfically<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to a poem by the Belgian
quasi-surrealist Henri Michaux, who lived from 1899 to 1984, and often changed
allegiances and styles. I don’t know from what date the poem translated by
Anthony Hartley is, but here goes. “Nausea or Is It Death Coming On”. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Surrender, my heart. We have struggled enough. And let my
life stop. We have not been cowards, we have done what we could.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Oh! my soul, you go or you stay; you must decide. Do not
finger my organs in that way, sometimes attentively, sometimes distractedly.
You go or stay, you must decide. I myself can bear it no longer.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lords of death, I have never blasphemed against you nor
applauded you. Have pity on me, already the traveler of so many journeys,
without a suitcase, without a master either. Without wealth, and the fame went
elsewhere; you are powerful assuredly and comical above all, have pity on the
crazy man who already shouts his name to you before crossing the barrier; catch
him on the wing, let him accustom himself, if it can be done, to your
temperaments and your habits, and if it please you to help him, help him, help
him, I beg you.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or take this poem by the Uruguay-born French poet and prose
writer Jules Supervielle (1884-1960), irregularly rhymed but printed as verse,
and entitled “For a Dead Poet.” I translate:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Quickly give him an ant</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And however little it may be,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But let it well be his!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One must not cheat on a dead man.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Give it to him, or the beak of a swallow,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A bit of grass, a bit of Paris, </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He has no more than a great void to himself</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And still understands only poorly his fate.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To choose from</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All this, he gives you in exchange </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Darker presents that the hand cannot grasp:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A reflection lying under the snow,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or the reverse of the highest of clouds,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The silence in the middle of the din,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or the star that nothing protects.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All this he names and bestows,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He who is without a dog or anyone.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t know the exact date of the poem, but it must be from
his rejected surrealist period.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let us now move to Germany, where we </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
start with a poem by Detlev von Liliencron (1844-1909) whose
name alone is almost a poem. The piece is “Tod auf Aehren” (Death in the Corn).
Note that lacking <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>diaresis,I use the
alternate added E after a vowel.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Im Weizenfeld, in Korn und Mohn,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Liegt ein Soldat unaufgefunden.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Zwei Tage schon,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>zwei Naechte schon.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mit schweren Wunden, unverbunden.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Durst ueberquaelt und fieberwild.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Im Todeskampf den Kopf erhoben.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ein letzter Traum, ein letztes Bild,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sein brechend Auge schlaegt nach oben.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Die Sense sirrt im Aehrenfeld,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Er sieht sein Dorf im Arbeitsfrieden.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ade, ade du Heimatswelt—</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Und beugt das Haupt und ist verschieden.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the wheatfield, in corn and poppies,/ Lies a soldier
undiscovered./ Two days already, two nights already./ With heavy wounds
unbandaged.// Overtortured by thirst and wild with fever,/ With lifted head in
death struggle./ A final dream, a final image/ His breaking eye projects upward.
// The scythe hisses in the wheat field,/ He sees his village in the Sunday
rest./ Farewell, farewell, my home world--/ And bows his head and has departed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now for a poem by the wonderful poet and prose writer
Theodor Storm (1817-88), I believe about his deceased wife, “Einer Toten” (To a
Dead Lady):</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Das aber kann ich nicht ertragen,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dass so wie sonst die Sonne lacht;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dass wie in deinen Lebenstagen</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Die Uhren gehn, die Glocken schlagen,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Einfoerming wechseln Tag und Nacht;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dass wenn des Tages Lichter schwanden,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Wie sonst der Abend uns vereint;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Und dass, wo sonst dein Stuhl gestanden,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Schon andre ihre Plaetze fanden,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Und nichts dich zu vermissen scheint;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Indessen von den Gitterstaeben</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Die Mondesstreifen schmal und karg</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In deine Gruft hinunterweben,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Und mit gespenstig truebem Leben</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hinwandeln ueber deinen Sarg.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That, however, I cannot bear/ That the sun laughs as usual./
That as in your living days,/ The clocks go and the bells ring/ Unchangedly
alternating day and night;// That when the lights of day vaned,/ Evening as
usual <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>united us;/ And that where
as usual your chair stood,/ Others already found their places,/ And nothing
seemed to be missing you;// Meanwhile between the fence staves, narrow and
stingy,/ The moon stripes weave their way down/ With ghostly and murky life
into your vault,/ To<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>wander on
across your coffin. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here the translation cannot render German’s ability to turn
words like moon and stripes into compounds, which somehow objectifies them.
Still the deep melancholy prevails.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And now we come to the somewhat longer section of Anglophone
poetry. I skip the most obvious, Dylan Thomas’s villanelle for his dying
father, as too well known, but I include this almost as well-known poem by
Walter Savage Landor, “Rose Aylmer.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ah what avails the sceptred race!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ah what
the form divine!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What every virtue, every grace!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rose Aylmer,
all were thine.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>May weep, but never see,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A night of memories and sighs</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I consecrate to thee.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And herewith a more modern kind of dirge by<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Edna St. Vincent Millay.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If I should learn in some quite casual way</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That you were gone, not to return again—</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Read from the back page of some paper, say,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Held by a neighbor in a subway train,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How at the corner of this avenue</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And such a street (so are the papers filled)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A hurrying man who happened to be you,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At noon today had happened to be killed—</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I should not cry aloud—I could not cry</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place—</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I should but watch the station lights rush by</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With a more careful interest on my face; </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or raise my eyes and read with greater care </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Where to store furs or how to treat the hair.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And now this, “Here Lies a Lady,” from John Crowe Ransom,
more explicit and detailed than most.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here lies a lady of beauty and high degree,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of chills and fever she died, of fever and chills</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The delight of her husband,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>her aunts, an infant of three,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And of medicos marvelling sweetly on her ills.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For either she burned, and her confident eyes would blaze,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And her fingers fly in a manner to puzzle their heads—</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What was she making? Why, nothing, she sat in a maze</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of old scraps of laces, snipped into curious shreds—</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or this would pass, and the light of her fire decline</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Till she lay discouraged and cold as a thin stalk white and
blown,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And would not open her eyes to kisses, to wine;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The sixth of these states was her last; the cold settled
down.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sweet ladies, long may ye bloom, and toughly I hope ye may
thole,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But was she not lucky? In flowers and lace and mourning,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In love and great honour we bade God rest her soul;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After six little spaces of chill. And six of burning.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Why, you may wonder, the archaisms and Britishisms? This, I
suppose, is Ransom’s way of making the poem more universal and timeless. Also a
good way to end a mini survey.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What are we to conclude? That dying affects, in poetry,
women more pathetically than men, who make mourning , however, as touching as
women do? That there can be a kind of death in life, as in the Michaux poem? Or
that death can be dealt best with fasntasies about it? Notice that none of the
poets believes in an afterlife. That both some men and some women can endure a
loved one’s demise with a certain amount of restraint, of stoicism?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That many more poems are needed for
more than very tentative conclusions? That unlike by the moribund, too absorbed
with dying, the poems—obviously--are written by the surviving bereaved? That,
although I offer no samples of it, true Christian believers, however
misguidedly, find dying easiest?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<!--EndFragment--><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I do not know the answers to these questions. Reader, do
you?</div>
John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-57315147803390393432018-11-10T17:23:00.002-08:002018-11-10T17:23:38.348-08:00Favorite Quotations<div class="MsoNormal">
Some of what follows may be repetition, but a good thing
bears repeating, especially in an age when so much bad stuff is prevailing. So
what I am discussing and explicating are touchstones and consolations, as far
as anything can console and encourage.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Though I consider Guillaume Apollinaire and Jacques Prevert
much greater poets, it is one stanza by Louis Aragon that travels with me, and
I quote it here, perhaps not entirely correctly, from memory—I am not a very
good memorizer.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mon amour, j’etais dans tes bras.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Au dehors quelqun murmura</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Une vieille chanson de France.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mon mal enfin s’est reconnu</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Et son refrain, comme d’un pied nu,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Troubla l’eau verte du silence.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This was written during the Occupation, when people tried to
inure themselves<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>against terrible
times, as presumably did the very leftist and quasi-surrealist Aragon, when
what this poem says presumably occurred. I translate:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My love, I was in your arms,/ When outside someone murmured/
An old song of France./ My hurt at last recognized itself,/ And its refrain, as
with a bare foot,/ Troubled the green water of silence. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What, I wonder, was that old song that had such a great,
shaming and redeeming impact on the surrounding silence? The recognition it
provokes—that one cannot accept even unspoken Collaboration with the
Nazis—stirs up dormant patriotism and Resistance. The allusion, I take it, is
to kids on the border of a lake dangling their feet in the water in carefree
leisure. But what is that “green” doing there? I assume that it refers to the
treasonous allure of resignation. Green can be the peaceable color of standing
water, eliciting inaction, however seductive.</div>
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But, this being poetry, there is also the matter of sound.
In the last line, the ou<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a and au are dark sounds, with er and
e<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>transitioning to the brightness
of u, i. en. and mute e forming a lure toward connivance. That last line is
sheer seduction, wrought by alluring music.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Speaking of music, English poetry offers magisterial means
for it. This is largely, but by no means solely, so because the poet has such
opportunities provided by there being so often a choice between a romance and
an anglo-saxon word, on the order of friendly and amicable, lengthy and long,
peaceful and pacific, happy and felicitous, murderer and assassin, verity and
truth, endanger and imperil, and so on and on. In my book “Paradigms Lost,” I
have a whole chapter on that subject, entitled “Sibling Rivalry.”</div>
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<br /></div>
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Even though my favorite poets in English are Robert Graves
and Richard Wilbur, let me reach back to a stanza by the melodious (or tuneful)
Swinburne. One concluding (or ending) quatrain of his runs, “And the best and
the worst of this is/ That neither is most to blame,/ If you have forgotten my
kisses/ And I have forgotten your name.”</div>
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<br /></div>
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This I find sublime. Take the wonderful rhyme “this is” and
“kisses.” That is a feminine. i.e., bisyllabic rhyme, in pleasing alternation
with the masculine, i.e., monosyllabic one, “blame” and “name.” It is good that
both sets use rather commonplace words, which still manage to be surprising in
context, without having to reach for less plain, more recherché, words to
create rhyme. This is what makes the artful device of rhyme come across as
perfectly natural.</div>
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<br /></div>
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And then we have the powerful idea of something being both
best and worst, both good and bad. That is no ordinary insight. Haven’t we all
gotten over lost loves, and yet this calming oblivion (or forgetfulness) makes
something basically sad livable with. It not only neutralizes our suffering, it
also exculpates the one who caused it. We are both equally guilty and innocent
in a world where there is no black and white, but rather a merciful (forgiving
or at least extenuating) gray. And how the words sing!</div>
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<br /></div>
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In German, one favorite bit of poetry comes from an obscure
poem written for Marthe Hennebert, a weeping young working-class girl whom
Rilke encountered in the street and proceeded to console by making her his
girlfriend. A final stanza runs like this:</div>
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Befriedigungen ungezaehlter Jahre</div>
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sind in der Luft, voll Blumen liegt dein Hut</div>
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und ein Geruch aus deinem reinen Haare</div>
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mischt sich mit Welt als waere alles gut.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Appeasements of innumerable years</div>
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are in the air, your hat lies full of flowers</div>
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and a smell from your pure hair</div>
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mingles with world as if all were well.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The scene is as in Seurat’s immortal painting, a Sunday
afternoon<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>on the shore of the
Seine, with the poet and his new young mistress enjoying a respite, regardless
of other people with the same idea. It is all very idyllic, the flowers obviously
purchased as a rich bouquet, and laid on top of the divested hat, yet the scent
is coming not from them, but from the beloved’s pure hair. Somehow that
wonderfully clean and presumably opulent hair exudes an odor di femina (as
Italians would have it), something not shop-bought but, dare one say, naturally
erotic.</div>
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<br /></div>
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A terrific effect is achieved by that inner rhyme, “deinem
reinen”; not only does it intensify the purity of her hair and so flatter the
new mistress, it also speeds up the movement to that terrifying ending despite
all these wonders still unable to make the world better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That “as if” is quietly devastating.
But what about “the “appeasement of incalculable years”? A tribute, I suppose,
to la Grande Jatte,” that playground for so many folk to indulge themselves as
Sunday compensation for<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>working-class stiffs--no need to evoke the Sondheim musical.</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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By
locating te appeasement “in the air,” Rilke makes its charm truly ubiquitous,
as universal as can be, and yet ultimately not enough. Particularly poignant is
calling the world, which in German should be “die Welt,” merely “Welt,” something
more mysteriously permeating, as “World” is more cosmically overpowering than
an ordinary, known, cozy, everyday “the world.” And yet, with all these
inducements to happiness, to a dejeuner sur l’herbe almost, it is still only
that hapless quasi-world or threatening superworld, too little or too much. Or
“ the best and the worst”—and, as it were, no real picnic.</div>
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<br /></div>
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That is one of the great attributes of poetry, the ability
to say so much in so little, to which the apt rhyme-scheme also contributes:
the effective alternation of feminine and masculine rhymes, concluding with
that strong yet deceptive closer, “gut.” </div>
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<br /></div>
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All of this leads me to a powerful, to me saddening, proof
of the impossibility, or near so, of translating<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>lyrical poetry, where so much depends on sound. A marvelous
poem by Hungary’s Baudelaire, the fountainhead of its modern poetry, Endre Ady,
has a great ending in “Testamentumot, szornyet, irni/ Es sirni, sirni, sirni,
sirni.” (Imagine accent marks on the second o and on the capital E, making
them, respectively, an English<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>er
and an a as in lake). I have tried in vain to translate the poem into rhyming
verse; in prose, that ending translates “To write a testament, a dreadful
one,/And weep, weep, weep, weep.” The prime reason for the untranslatability of
this crushing distich is those four “sirni”s, comparable to Lear’s heartrending
four “never”s. In English, weep and cry are monosyllables, and those do not
resonate as horribly as a quadruple bisyllable, pronounced more or less like
“sheerni.” Four “weep”s, like four “cry”s, just don’t do the trick.</div>
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<br /></div>
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To be sure, sometimes a not so great poem can be effectively
translated; I have, if I dare say so, published a Serbian verse translation of
Kilmer’s “Trees” that works as well as the original.</div>
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<br /></div>
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In English, there are single lines of poetry that do the job
for me, notably Cummings’s “Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands”
that affects me even without the assist of Tennessee Williams’s famous
appropriation of it. And then there is, horribile dictu, Poe’s horrendous
“Quoth the raven Nevermore,” the latter owing its immortality through
persiflage. Note that the repeated vowel--e in Poe’s raven and Lear’s outcry,
like the i in Ady’s sob--add to the quotability, another poetic device that defies
translation. Observe the poetic iteration in device and defies. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Still and all, I tend to wonder why these particular
quotations come to me the way equally fine verses do not. Add that fact to the
mysteries of poetry. As is the force<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>of compression, say, in that great early English lyric (circa 1530),
which<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>runs: “O Western wind, when
wilt thou blow,/ That the small rain down can rain?/ Christ that my love were
in my arms/ And I in my bed again?” Or, perhaps even earlier, the Scot William
Dunbar’s “Timor mortis conturbat me,” i.e., “The fear of death unsettles me.”</div>
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<br /></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
The penultimate and last quotation are less frequent
visitors. The former, because it does not apply to my condition; the latter,
because it applies all too much. But even as, in the mystery play, Good Deeds
accompanies Everyman to his demise, so do these quotations companion me through
life. They do not cure, but they do facilitate.</div>
John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-37646081450133935652018-10-28T20:04:00.000-07:002018-10-30T14:49:23.143-07:00Foot Fetishism<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-family: "times";">A
fetish is, according to one definition, an object or body part that elicits
adoration or sexual arousal, and may in extreme cases be necessary for complete
sexual gratification. It involves usually a man’s idea of what is beautiful or
sexy about a woman’s foot, foot fetishism by far outnumbering other kind of
fetishes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Most
desirable are medium-sized feet. On a large one, toes look like ridiculous, petty
appendages; on a small one, they appear ready to devour the entire foot. The
main types are the Egyptian foot, with toes of decreasing length from big to
little toe; the Roman foot, with the first three toes of more or less the same
length, the other two decreasingly smaller; and the Greek or model foot, wit
the toes from big to small forming a sort of semicircle. But what constitutes
the basic prettiness of a foot?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">It
is the narrowness, the arch, the coloring and the pliability, what might be
covered by the term grace. It constitutes a fine, worthy pedestal for the legs,
and so for the entire woman. And it has to belong to a beautiful woman; on an
unsightly one, it is merely wasted. Becoming sexualized, it does not transmit
social diseases, and does not impregnate, even as it takes over much of the
role of the penis under manual stimulation. This is especially useful at a time
when social diseases like AIDS are rampant.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Ultimately,
the preferred foot constitutes something delicate and well-proportioned, but
definitely not brittle and frangible. And there is also the mystery, that
unlike, say, the hand, it is not permanently exposed. What is it like then,
hidden under a long skirt or encased in a shoe or boot? How exciting is its
revelation when it does become bared. What does induce its being kissed, its
toes licked or sucked? Or even, as Freud has emphasized, how attracting by its
smell? Moreover, it may be indulged without incurring the onus of profligacy,
adultery, or mere unchastity, let alone undesired impregnation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">But
finally, it is a special tribute that may signify accepted submission, i.e.,
satisfy a masochistic trend in the male and a corresponding ascendance of the
dominant female. Or, damn it, is it just a tribute to sheer beauty? Otherwise
would it be there in so many paintings, particularly in the Renaissance, when
beauty was truly appreciated? And beauty does depend on the sensibility of the
beholder. Otherwise there would not have been qua ideal the Junoesque, as in
Rubens, or the corpulent, as in the Hottentot Venus. Is today’s obeisance to a
beautiful foot based on more recent Western aesthetics?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Like
it or not, slenderness is a large part of shapeliness, and the foot is where it
originates. It is also the locus of ticklishness, which, practiced in moderation,
can be aphrodisiac. This is where the reaction of the idol may become relevant.
Does the owner of the worshipped foot enjoy it, or merely accept it, or even
dislike it? As for the performer, it is what elicits complete though perverse
sexual gratification, even if it cannot be rationally explained. But then, can
any perversion?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">For
the performer toying with, or expressing obeisance to, the toes, those five minipenises
can guarantee kinky sexual satisfaction. But the woman may enjoy it too as
possessor of an additional, adstititious sexual<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">attractiveness.
Let us not forget the more passive, platonic form of sexual fetishism,
consisting merely of pleasurable looking at bare female feet. Speaking for
myself, I remember sitting next to one of my most beautiful girlfriends as she
was driving us to a summer Long Island lease. She was barefoot, and the black
pedal provided her very white foot with an enhancing frame. I commented on the
beauty of her foot and she was both surprised and, dare I say, tickled pink.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Other
girlfriends did not particularly like their feet, and did not especially care
about any involvement with them. I may have played with their toes, but
certainly went no further with that sort of thing. And I definitely did not
share Francois Villon’s seeming attraction to, among other beauties melted away
like yesteryear’s snows, “Berte au grant pié,” i.e., Berta Bigfoot. Which
brings me to actual or possible foot fetishism in literature.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Let’s
start with Sir Thomas Wyatt (1603-1642), Anne Boleyn’s lover, and his most
famous quasi-sonnet, beginning “They flee from me that sometime did me seek/ With
naked foot stalking in my chamber.” In the plural where the singular would be
expected, suggests frequent and casual sex, reinforced by that “stalking.” Is
it not interesting that these amorous women are described not by, say, their
bared breasts, but by their naked feet, where “naked” is clearly sexier than
“bare.” Whatever else this may indicate, it suggests the sexualized feet,
otherwise why point to them, “stalking” yet, on plural occasions?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">On
now a couple of centuries, to Oscar Wilde’s play “Salome.” Later turned into
Richard Strauss’s celebrated opera. Wilde wrote the play in French, which his
lover, Alfred Douglas, translated into English. We read of Herod, lecherously
doting on his stepdaughter Salome,about to dance for him. He exclaims, “Ah,
thou art to dance with naked feet. ‘Tis well! ‘Tis well. Thy little feet will
be like little white doves. They will be like little white flowers that dance
upon the trees . . .” This, coming from the randy tetrarch, surely indicates sexualization
of the feet. Not too much can be made of the “naked,” since the French must
have “pieds nus,” there being no other word for bare. But still . . .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Let
us skip now to 1894 and Gerald du Maurier’s celebrated novel “Trilby.” The
eponymous heroine is a young Irish artist’s model in Paris, Trilby O’ Ferrall,
introduced wearing a petticoat, “beneath which were visible her bare white
ankles and insteps, and slim, straight, rosy heals, clean cut and smooth as the
back of a razor; her toes lost in a huge pair of male slippers. She poses in
the altogether . . . “head, hands and feet—everything—especially feet. As she
kicks off her heavy masculine slipper, she proclaims, “That’s my foot . . . the
handsomest foot in all Paris. There is only one in all Paris to mach it, and
here it is.” Whereupon “she laughed heartily . . .<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and stuck out the other.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Du
Maurier continues. “And in truth they were astonishingly beautiful feet, such
as one only sees in pictures and statues—a true inspiration of shape and color,
all made up of delicate lengths and subtly-modulated curves and noble straightnesses
and happy little dimpled arrangements in innocent young pink and white.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The
hero of the novel, Little Billee, is “quite bewildered to find that a real,
bare, live human foot could be such a charming object to look at, and felt that
such a base or pedestal lent quite an antique and Olympian dignity to a figure”
etc. Further: “The shape of those lovely slender feet (that were neither large
nor small) facsimiled in dusty pale plaster of Paris, survives on the shelves
and walls of many a studio throughout the world, and many a sculptor yet unborn
has yet to marvel at their strange perfection, in studious despair.” And still
further, being covered in leather footwear, the foot “is hidden away in
disgrace. A thing to be thrust out of sight and forgotten. It can sometimes be
very ugly indeed—the ugliest thing there is, even in the fairest and highest
and most gifted of her sex, and then it is of an ugliness to chill and kill
romance, and scatter love’s young dream and almost break the heart.” I had that
feeling when I saw backstage the bared ungainly foot of one of my favorite
British actresses.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">“Conversely,
when Mother Nature has taken extra pains in the building of [the foot], and
proper care and happy chance have kept it free of lamentable deformations,
indurations, and discolorations—all those gruesome, boot-begotten abominations
which have made it so generally unpopular—the sudden sight of it, uncovered,
comes as a very rare and singularly pleasing surprise to the eye that has
learned how to see!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Nothing
else that Mother Nature has to show, not even the human face divine, has more
power to suggest high physical distinction, happy evolution, and supreme
development, the lordship of man over beast, the lordship of man over man, the
lordship of woman over all!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Trilby
had respected Mother Nature’s special gift to herself—had never worn a leather
boot or shoe, had always taken as much care of her feet as many a fine lady
takes of her hands.” To be sure, du Maurier does not write about actual
fetishist sex play, nothing about fingering, licking, smelling, and whatever
that can be very disturbing to the nonfetishist. It should decidedly pose no
problem in a world that has accepted as normal much of what had previously been
considered otherwise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">I
myself have never become a true foot fetishist, beyond enjoying a beautiful
female foot when I see one. This may have originated when I was a boy in
Belgrade, gazing at the way maidservants there cleaned floors. They would use a
brush attached by a metallic strap to their bare foot and rub away. I had no
sense that my interested gaze was somehow sexual, still less that it would
generate an adult proclivity. But there, with due restraint, it is. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Above
all, there is nothing destructive about foot fetishism; no one is hurt by it, which
is more than one can say for some other kinks. As for me, I watch “Dancing with
the Stars” on TV, and especially enjoy it when a woman dances barefoot. I never
even call it naked feet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-26655415528320447142018-10-01T19:23:00.004-07:002018-10-30T14:47:41.702-07:00Irony<div class="MsoNormal">
The text today is irony, from the Greek for dissimulation,
as I learn from J. R. Cuddon’s marvelous book (more about that anon), from
which I quote the following, enough for an initial definition. “For the Roman
theoreticians (in particular Cicero and Quintilian) ‘ironic’ denoted a
rhetorical figure and a manner of discourse in which . . . the meaning was
contrary to the words, the double-edgedness appearing to be a diachronic
feature of irony.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Please don’t ask me to explain “diachronic,” which would
lead me to one of my bêtes noires, the Swiss pundit Ferdinand de Saussure,
father of semiology. What was good enough for Cicero and Quintilian will be
sufficient for me for the nonce. To recapitulate, saying one thing and meaning
its opposite is a sophisticated device unknown to or uncomprehended by hoi
polloi. Let me cite as example the beginning of a note from the subtle and
sophisticated novelist James Salter, in response to a communication from me:
“Dear John, What beautiful handwriting. If I didn’t know you, I would say it
shows an orderly mind of great intelligence.” Here the irony was as it were
announced by that “If I didn’t know you.” Ordinarily, no such warning that an
irony is intended is deemed necessary.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course irony should, more or less discreetly, reveal
itself as such, as if, for instance, we were to say or write “As the great
Stephen King would have it.” To be sure, it may be missed by unsophisticated
Americans, the ones whom Hermann Hesse qualified as “blithe and easily
satisfied half human.” It can be inferred also by such a remark as Oscar
Wilde’s, “Anybody can write a three-volumed novel. It merely requires complete
ignorance of both life and literature.” Or, by way of a more salient example,
take the following from Fran Leibowitz: ”Your responsibility as a parent is not
as great as you might imagine. You need not supply the world with the next
conqueror of disease or major motion picture star. If your child simply grows
up to be someone who does not use the word ‘collectible’ as a noun, you may
consider yourself an unqualified success.” Collectible as a substantive may not
be your paradigmatic lapse, like, say, “Greetings from my wife and I,” but it
will do. The subtle irony is clear enough.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or how about this from the great aphorist Georg C.
Lichtenberg: “Sometimes men come by the name of genius in the same way that
certain insects come by the name of centipede—not because they have a hundred
feet, but because most people can’t count above fourteen.” What a wonderfully
ironic way of saying that most people are stupid. I would go so far as to claim
that certain people invite irony by their very look or name. Take an article in
the Times of September 5: “National Chief for Gymnastics Is Forced Out After
Turmoil.” The chief in question, whose accompanying picture makes her look like
a dimwitted blond kewpie doll, is named<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Kerry Perry, which a right-minded daughter would have legally changed.
Perry was forced out for championing the nefarious doctor Larry Nasser. She had
succeeded a gymnastic president named Steve Penny, close enough, though I would
have preferred Benny Penny, but you can’t have everything. Still, the article
reads like ironic sympathy for Perry.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>myself have practiced conspicuous
irony, describing Liza Minnelli as a potential winner of a beauty contest--for
beagles. At least I picked the seemingly right canine breed: not too pretty,
like Afghan or Briard, nor too homely, like bulldog or chihuahua. I regret even
more a remark about Diana Rigg in profile in a play’s nude scene as “a basilica
with inadequate flying buttresses.” This is always misquoted, even by Ms. Rigg,
as a mausoleum etc. The building in question cannot be faulted, as basilicas do
not have flying buttresses, any more than do mausoleums, which in this context
would have downright sinister implications. At least a basilica is holy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>inclined
not to regret my reply to someone’s question about what good things I thought
of Adrienne Rich after a poetry reading. I answered that to do justice to it
one would need the attributes of a Homer and a Beethoven, namely blindness and
deafness. This is a classic irony, as, without requiring elucidation, where
what augurs well really disparages.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of my favorite ironies stems from the wonderful critic
Kenneth Tynan. In a review of “Titus Andronicus,”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>he referred to Vivien Leigh as a Lavinia who “received the
news that she is about to be ravished on the corpse of her husband as one who
would have preferred foam rubber.” Thus in the American version; in the
British, Tynan used the name of a popular rubber bed brand, which is even
funnier, but would not have traction in America.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another favorite irony is Hilaire Belloc’s epigram about a
British lord: “I heard today Godolphin say/ He never gave himself away./ Come,
come, Godolphin, scion of kings,/ Be generous in little things.” This is
perfect in its switch from evoked nobility to actual mockery without any
warning.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now how about the great Viennese writer and wit Peter
Altenberg , a consummate lover of women (especially girls), who allowed:
“Coquetry is the immense decency of a desirable woman, thereby, for the moment
at least, to hold off the disappointment she is bound to bring you.” This irony
is permitted Altenberg (1859-1919), who wrote some of the most affectionate and
lyrical prose in praise of women as well as sarcasm. Be it recalled, however,
that this often eloquent advocate was, unfortunately for him, a homely man.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let me point out some obvious everyday ironies. “What a wonderful
day” we exclaim as we look out on another gray morning. “How clever you are,”
we comment on a dear one’s folly. “We will always be together” we tell a lover
whom we no longer love. “I will never do that again” we say after a clumsiness
we damn well know we’ll commit again. And so on.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But the really great ironies are in literature as in Swift’s
essay “A Modest Proposal,” about the poor selling their unwanted babies to
England for food. Even the full title is redolent of irony: “A Modest Proposal
for preventing the Children of Poor People from being a Burthen to their
Parents, or the Country, and for making them Beneficial to the Publick.” This
piece of a few pages may be the greatest example of irony in the English
language; altogether some of irony’s most distinguished practitioners lived in
the eighteenth century. It is there also in “Gulliver’s Travels,” and much of
the verse and prose of Alexander Pope. Take only this from one of Pope’s
letters: “I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another’s
misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.” This manages to make fun of people in
general as well as Christians in particular.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
J. A. Cuddon’s magnificent “Dictionary of Literary Terms and
Literary Theory,” is most easily available in America in the Penguin version of
its fourth edition, edited by C. E. Preston. It covers six pages with its entry
on irony. Delightful to readers and indispensable to writers, it contains, for
example, the earliest reference to irony in English, dated 1502: “yronie . . .
of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>grammare, by the whiche a man
sayth one & gyveth to understande the contrary. “ I am amused by the
reference to a “splendid essay” on irony<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>of 1970 by one D. C. Muecke, the name in German meaning mosquito, and
being perfect for the subject. Of the many ironists Cuddon cites, from
Aeschylus to Iris Murdoch, his favorites are Voltaire, Gibbon, Swift, Henry
James and Thomas Mann. He is an expert in writings in the obscurest languages
the world over.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are various forms of irony, including the situational,
whereby, for instance, Lear endows his hypocritical, worthless daughters but
excoriates and expels his truly worthy, loving one. Similarly, Othello trusts
the villain Iago, but rejects and eventually strangles the virtuous Desdemona.
Dissimulation, i.e., irony, thrives as dramatic irony, whereby the audience
knows things the characters don’t.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In conclusion, I would suggest, utopian as my plea may be,
that teachers instruct their students in irony, perhaps even offer a course in
it. It would provide an emotional outlet vastly preferable to guns and knives.</div>
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John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-24001283586735121362018-09-01T12:06:00.007-07:002018-09-01T12:06:52.060-07:00Questions<div class="MsoNormal">
Some questions may be hard to answer, yet they must be
asked. And answering is not enough: they must , when answered, also be acted
upon. They are like potholes on the roads, so numerous that it would take a lot
of effort to correct them, but we must at least try. This may be quixotic, but
then isn’t Don Quixote a lovable figure? Isn’t his maladroit meliorism as
touching as it is misguided?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So here are some of my urgent questions—urgent seeming at
least to me--yet highly unlikely to be acted upon, given the effort that would
require. But let it not be said of me that I never asked.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How many more intolerables are we to tolerate from Donald
Trump before we take some kind of punitive action? As my friend Kevin Filipski
remarked, just one of them from Obama would have landed him in serious trouble;
from Trump, they may not go unimpugned, but they clearly remain unacted upon.
Why?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The answer is: because the Republicans, even when they
disapprove--rarely enough—have nobody better to put forward as a surefire
replacement. There are some perfectly good Republicans, but they lack the kind
of following to surely beat the Democrats with. (Please note the split
infinitive, which, like the sentence-ending preposition, is perfectly all
right, yet constantly put forward as pedantry by ignorant foes unaware of what
linguists are really about.) In this case, too, as in so many others, it is the
ignoramuses who prevail in society,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What could make an intellectual candidate succeed? Better education,
i.e., better schools.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But how are we going to get those? It would require more
respect and better salaries for teachers on all levels. Teachers, even most
professors, are unlikely beneficiaries. Why is that?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are several reasons. There is, first of all envy:
because teachers get longer vacations than most, teaching is assumed to be a
cushy job, being its own reward. Teaching the numerous dunderheads, however, is no easy job;
rather one demanding indefatigable effort and the patience of saints.
Qualifiers for all that may well have a preference for easier, better paid and
more prestigious jobs, such as writing potboilers for television or hugging
microphones as singers or rappers.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Which is not to say that most pop singers and rappers are
really slumming talents.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To be sure, there are sufficient millionaires and
billionaires who could spend some of their munificence on education, but, as
far as I can tell, that is not a favorite endowment, though, granted, not quite
the least favored either. But the problem is that, let us say, if this or that
college or university gets a grant, it is more likely to be put to uses other
than better teaching. And, sure enough, money for cancer research or victorious
football teams, even with pedophile coaches, have to be prioritized.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This said, it must be reckoned with that the United States
is a country in which intellectuals are less respected than in many others.
Minorities may be favored, as are radicals. Just think who gets to be a
MacArthur fellow. In the arts, anyway, it is radicals first. Now I have nothing
against women, blacks or lesbians, especially all three together, getting their
fair share, but need they be so obviously preferred? George Soros may be more
evenhanded, but of how many others can this be even suspected?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Now, however, to a different, major question. Why are here so few female
tennis champions? Actually, more than one, Serena Williams? In male singles,
there are a major four—just as there used to be in Chinese politics, a very
different field.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In male singles, it was a possible for Djokovic, Federer and
Nadal, and somewhat less even Andy Murray, to be steadily, unswervingly at the
top of the game. You could count on one of them to win and be for a good while
number one in the world. The others might not even bother to compete—they might
as well not be there, although very occasionally an anomalous Cilic, Wawrinka,
Kyrgios, or Del Potro could horn in.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You may ask what’s so good about that, why shouldn’t some
others get a fair chance? The Zwerews, Thiems, Dimitrovs, or Fogninis? Well,
because for us spectators it was very comforting to be rooting for a winner, to
have our boy be a champion. There was enough variety among those four, and a
relaxing sense that even if one of them lost, there was a good chance he might
recoup the next time. Only on clay was there a monotony of Rafa Nadal winning
over and over again, a real surfeit. If none of them won, one was at a loss
about whom to vote for, even if a Raonic or Goffin might be a temporary winner.
The Americans especially were a disappointing lot.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But now look at the women: almost every other month there
was a different number one. That is when Serena chose to be a devoted mother to
a newborn, and perhaps not even then. There was no getting around the fact that
Serena could beat them all without being especially likable. Likable? What does
that have to do with it? Quite a bit. Without wishing to take away from his
glory, a Federer owes at least some of his successes to his charm, to the love
of his numerous international supporters. All the more remarkable that the
egregiously charmless Nadal should still so consistently excel. To be sure, he
too has the most devoted fans in Hispanics, of whom there seems to be no end
whenever and wherever he is playing. Let us look at him for a moment.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nadal seems to be the only crazy champion. Whenever he serves
and almost equally when he receives, he exhibits traits that are at best
extremely eccentric, if not totally non compos menti. He performs a serving and
also receiving ritual that consists<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>of touching—or tweaking—one ear, then the nose, then the other ear and
back again and sometimes even, unsavorily, the back of his pants, which elicits
curious interpretations from his ill wishers, of whom there are not a few. Even
the containers of the liquids he consumes have to be lined up in a certain
order, and he is inclined to take more time than allowed between points. He
also has an unappealingly cutthroat look when playing, as if he liked nothing
better than cut his opponents’ throats. On the other hand, he seems to be
reasonably normal the rest of the time, and is said to be quite charming.
Indeed he has a nice smile and a bald patch on the back of his head that
humanize him.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Federer, Djokovic and Murray come across perfectly normal,
and even at what is in tennis an advanced age, steadily at or near the top.
There are, however, newcomers who occasionally win out. But with women players,
it is otherwise: there is a new number one every few months, and with the
exception of Serena Williams, no steady champion. In a typical match, the
temporary favorite will win one set rather easily, then lose the next set just
as easily. The third set then becomes the real battle, and can sometimes be
very long. This is what makes women’s tennis so frustrating: you really don’t
know whom to root for, and even Serena Williams, the only longtime number one,
can be dramatically off her game. Her powerful serve can sometimes be missing,
which is how a lesser player can—rarely—beat her.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I myself like women players whom I find both talented and
attractive, like Julia Goerges<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and
Garbine Muguruza, and dislike the unsightly ones, like Svetlana Kuznetsova,
Carla Suarez Navarro, Ashleigh Barty, Naomi Osaka and a few others in both
categories. Many women players have an innate elegance that makes watching them
a kind of balletic experience. Among the men, only Federer has that quality,
though Djokovic dazzles us with the ability to retrieve seemingly unanswerable
shots, turning defense into offence. Also his sense of humor.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I spend many hours watching tennis on TV. My question is
will I ever get bored with it? I hope not, even if among the upcoming players
there seems to be no one as interesting as the elite four. Along with reading
and classical music, it is one of my chief pleasures. I only wish I could share
it with my good wife, who, however, does not care for sports.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">P.S.: I realize full well that matches are not won on looks, but that
does not prevent a fan from watching with greater pleasure a point won by the
appealing Camila Giorgi than by the unappealing Madison Keys. However, if I
were an umpire or referee (whatever the difference is), I would not allow
myself to be swayed by looks.</span><!--EndFragment-->John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-15993519437923850812018-08-20T08:22:00.003-07:002018-08-23T14:41:03.149-07:00Lapses<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="MsoNormal">
Under the rubric “Lapses,” let me start with two
flagrantly poor specimens of usage, which I find particularly painful. Both are
exemplars of redundancy: excess verbiage that can and should be jettisoned. It
comes in two forms: both as pleonasm, which involves two adjacent, duplicating
words of which abuse television is particularly fond, though it crops up
everywhere, as in “old crone” (as if there were such a thing as a young crone),
and more extendedly<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>as in a couple
of tautologies I will cite.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Consider the abject “the reason is because,” where a simple
“because” would do, although “the reason is (that)” is also possible. Take “if
young men stutter confronted with a gorgeous woman, the reason is that they
can’t control their libido” or “it is because they can’t control their libido,”
but not, redundantly, both, as in “the reason is because they can’t” etc. Yet
you get this obvious tautology surrounding you like the Cheyennes George
Custer.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now take an even more common and equally egregious tautology
of which television is especially culpable, though you get it all over the
place, spoken and written by perhaps even you (Et tu Brute): “cannot help but.”
Thus “I cannot help but think otherwise” etc. or “we cannot help but commit the
sins of our fathers.” Correct would be “I cannot but think” or “I cannot help
thinking,” but not both. Yet even in the most prestigious publications you will
find this solecism pullulating.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now you may say, “What does it matter? People will
understand you either way.” But it does matter. People will understand it if
after a meal of beans you should fart in public—perhaps even overlook it—but
that does not make it all right. Correct speech, like correct dress, may be a
dying nicety, but people of taste will cling to it and reward you with their
esteem if you practice it. Correct speech is an integral part of correct
behavior.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However, people nowadays (please not “in this day and age”)
can’t help it: they don’t know any better; our education, if it exists at all,
has failed them, as even their parents, already undereducated, failed them. I
have taught in some very good—well, pretty good—institutions and encountered
consistent ignorance. I wonder what goes on at my alma mater, Harvard, these
days: are they upholding the standards even there? But just try to correct
people, however gently and uncondescendingly, as I suggested in my book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Paradigms Lost</i>, and see how they would
resent it. As well might you suggest that they use deodorant or zip up their
flies. And heaven help you if the person you ever so politely corrected is
black or Latino—the most indignant opprobrium would fall upon you with the dead
weight of political correctness, which rather outweighs the proverbial ton of
bricks.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But hardly anyone would even think of correcting your “old
crone” or the horribly pleonastic “free gift,” with which any number of
businesses try to lure you into their clutches. It never occurs to them that
“gift” is quite enough, yet, sad to say, they may have a point: “free” is a
magic word, hard to resist. And as far as upbringing goes, do not expect to see
many mouths covered during a yawn. There are inconsistencies, though: “old
geezer“ appears to be less frequent than “old crone.” This has to do with
geezer being a less well known word than crone, less often heard (partly
because it lacks that seductive assonance) and thus considered less guilty of
pleonasm.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Which brings me to euphony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A good deal of redundancy has to do with the appeal of the
sound. I wonder whether the pleonastic “telltale evidence” would have escaped,
aside from legalistic bombast, without those alliterative Ts. As English is a
rather monosyllabic language, a polysyllable has its converse charm. So
“today’s youth,” as it were a single word, rolls off the tongue more sonorously
than mere “youth” to the listening ear. And then there is repetition, such as
“When, oh when?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
which sounds too good for objection. Ditto “Live and let
live!” despite its triple alliteration. Rhetoric and oratory thrive on all kinds
of redundancy. At other times, redundancy is based on simple ignorance. Thus
“from whence” thrives because speakers are not sufficiently familiar with
“whence” to realize that it is a synonym for “from where.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ignorance can be gross and inexcusable as in the ubiquitous
“parameters,” which sprouts everywhere like the weed it is. It is a term in
computer science or mathematics, where it makes an esoteric sense unknown to
most of us. But having a prestigious scientific aura, it comes across as
sophisticated or learned, and thrives however inappropriate. “Limits,”
“boundaries,” or “guidelines,” as Bryan Garner points out, would obviate it
very nicely. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Vogue words,” is the term for a fashionable word or phrase,
which might be all right in moderation, but grates through often mindless
repetition. These words may fade out of existence, but not before their overuse
has become offensive. Take, today, “resonate.” This has a certain
euphoniousness but a very few years ago things like<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“sounds persuasive” or “are widely credited or credible,” or
“elicit consent” did the job. Now the air redounds with “resonate” and
“resonant” in suffocating proliferation. Or so it would seem. The end is a
catchphrase or cliché. To be sure there is no way of measuring quantity of
usage or determining exactly when much is overmuch. But a consensus among the
intelligentsia may tacitly exist. Aren’t you tired of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“gamechanging” and “lifechanging” experiences, when in fact
nothing changes very much?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let me point out a couple of useful books, as well as anything
by Bryan Garner, notably <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Garner’s Modern
English Usage</i>. They are a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dictionary
of Cliches</i> by Nigel Rees and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Dictionary of Catch Phrases</i> by Eric
Partridge. To our shame, both authors are British, even though the latter book
was published in America. The former comprises some thousand entries, the
latter some three thousand. Let me adduce one of the shorter ones from each.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
From Rees: “Happy couple. General use, referring to a pair
about to be or just joined in matrimony. Known by 1753. A cliché by 1900.’There
were cards and good luck messages for the happy couple’ said the insider. But
now they don’t look so good, we’re getting phone calls blaming Des for
everything again. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Daily Mirror</i> (14
January 1995} About 40 friends and family joined the happy couple at the
church. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Daily Record</i> (28 January
1995). Similarly, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Happy Pair</i>. The
phrase was known by 1633. And in the specifically marital sense by 1697. Also
cliche by 1900.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 46.5pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
From Partridge: “ ‘at this moment in time’ was being used to
a nauseating extent in 1974—as indeed it is still—and Verner Noble, writing on
11 September 1974, remarks<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘As you
know, it’s become a cliché. But I now find that its use is considered so
ridiculous by the more sensitive kind of people that it is coming into their
conversation sarcastically as a catch phrase. It is one of those American
importations that had a use for emphasis but has outstayed its welcome. John W.
Clark has noted that the cliché ‘at that point in time’ was very frequently
used during the Watergate hearings.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So there you have it. I would like to think that if you are
not already one of “the more sensitive kind of people,” this blog post might
help induce you to endeavor to become one. I would very much like to welcome
you into the club.</div>
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John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-84064808488688928212018-07-16T13:15:00.000-07:002018-07-27T12:36:57.638-07:00Cultured Person<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is about what qualifies an individual as a cultured
person. It is perforce so from my particular point of view; from someone
else’s, it may well differ. According to Bryan Garner’s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>important “Garner’s Modern English
Usage,” a cultured person has a “cultivated mind, well trained and highly
developed.” But just who is that? Here are my views and touchstones, to borrow
Matthew Arnold’s term.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To begin with, we must recognize that “cultured” is not
quite synonymous with “civilized.” A civilized person spits not on the sidewalk
but in the gutter, and lets a lady off the elevator ahead of himself. But he
may very well not know who Pasteur or LaRochefoucauld was. I have my own,
highly subjective criteria of what makes a cultured person, one who avoids the
common mistakes I am about to discuss. It constitutes my notion of someone well-educated,
well-spoken, and presumably also well-behaved, except where wit or irony is
called for.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Take the illiterate pronunciation of “groceries” as
“grosheries,” which some unfortunates consider genteel rather than crassly
ignorant. It displays ignorant spelling, if the ignoramus were spelling at all,
as of “glacier,” with a “ci” rather than a simple “c” as in “groceries” which
is without an “i” after the “c.” You hear it all over television, and just
about anywhere else.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or take the problem of “lie” and “lay,” with the former
ineptly dropped from the majority of people’s vocabularies. Few persons now
understand that “lay” means movement, as in “I lay the book on the table” or “I
lay me down to sleep.” Yet no such locomotion is involved in “the book is lying
or lies on the table.” At <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a leading
hospital, I heard all the nurses and even some younger doctors say “Now lay on
your side” or “You should lay asleep by now.” It turns my stomach to hear this
from anyone, but especially from someone who should know better. But “lie”—possibly
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>as an unfortunate homophone for
mendacity—has pretty much gone the way of the dodo and the hoop-skirt.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What now about the difference between number and quantity, a
frequent pitfall? One should say I now have fewer bad dreams, or its better to
have fewer than three children. Where a number of separable items is concerned,
it is fewer, as in fewer wrong answers on a quiz. But when measuring is
inappropriate or impossible, as in the grains of sand on a beach or in how much
you care about a vote in Turkey, it is a matter of less rather than fewer. But
the ignorant tendency favors “less” incorrectly, as in less theatergoers on
Mondays, or there should be less stations on this train. So it is also less
hair on my head, but the fewer hairs in the soup, the better. The former is
still not readily measurable, hence less (amount); whereas the number of
spoonfuls of a medicine at bedtime is fewer than in the morning. “More” is an
exception that goes either way; hence more cups of coffee with more sugar in it.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now for a business that affects me more than it does others:
the name of the great writer Bernard Shaw. He dropped the George, and made
amply clear that he did not want to be George Bernard Shaw, as all
semiliterates, have it to this day. But the scholars and fans who know his
explicit wishes, know that every responsible text of his, such as the
seven-volume “Definitive Edition of the Collected Plays with their Prefaces” is
by Bernard Shaw, not George Bernard Shaw. Thus it is that the astute Germans,
who loved and steadily translated, published, and performed him,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>referred to him, without exception, as
Bernard Shaw. But show me a printed reference, especially in America, that does
not saddle him with a hypertrophic frontal George, to say nothing about this
aberrant form even from literati who should know better,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While we are on improper usage, how about wanting to “have
one’s cake and eat it too.” This, though Bryan Garner in the aforementioned
work accepts it on the basis of current frequency, is absurd. What you cannot
achieve is eating your cake and having it too, as Garner admits that earlier
writers and speakers (less benighted than the current crop), did invariably get
it right. Just think (as most people don’t): you can both jolly well have your
cake on Monday, and eat it too on Saturday. But if you have eaten it, no magic
or fridge or emetic will have it thereafter. So clearly,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
both having and eating does not compute. But all it takes is
the one unfortunate who says grosheries or errs about that cake, and before
long the lemmings will follow. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What people say—wrongly—is, alas, catching. This is
particularly blatant in matters of pronunciation. It used to be always that
something was <i>ex</i>quisite; slowly but surely it has become accepted also as
ex<i>quiz</i>ite, as the dictionaries, rightly or wrongly have it, going by the vox
populi. My perhaps oversensitive stomach turns each time I hear it, which is
often enough to make my stomach emulate a whirling dervish.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Next we have what the great linguist H.W. Fowler called
genteelism. It occurs when the ignorant speaker says “Between you and I,” or
“Thank you for inviting my wife and I,” thinking that “I” is more refined than
“me,” “less soiled by the lips of the common herd,” as Fowler puts it.
Contributing to this misuse is that English is a noninflected language, a trap
no German with his declensions distinguishing between an objective and a
nominative case would fall into.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Equally repulsive are verbal trends, choices of words and
phrases that have become popular in a given period, from whose constant hearing
no discriminating speaker is immune. It comes in large measure as one of many
blessings showered upon us by television. For some time now the chief offender
has been “amazing,” which, leach-like, attaches itself to just about anyone and
everything. One gathers that verbally deprived persons are amazed by people and
things right and left, whereas one amazing, about human crassness, would quite
suffice. This has grated on my well being, which brings me to something
similarly appalling if done to the word “well.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It used to be that if someone asked how you are, and you
were, or thought you were, all right (always two words, please), you said “I am
well, thank you.” Now you hear from just about everyone “I am good.” But this
is nonsense, unless you were trying to say you were a good person, which most
people have the sense to avoid. Who knows what would justify calling oneself
good, but this much is certain: if you were manifestly good, you would avoid
the need and boastfulness of proclaiming it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another trendy word these days is “conversation.” Formerly
it had one specific meaning: talk between two or among more persons. Nowadays,
however, a seemingly endless number of things, some not in the least positive,
is called conversation, most of which having nothing to do with exchanged
utterances. If you believed what you heard or read, you would think you were
living in a world of ceaseless dialogue—which, come to think, as chatter and you
actually and regrettably are.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A deplorable loss is that of the sweet, harmless word “as,”
which has been pretty much devoured by the omnivorous “like.” No one anymore
says “as I think”; it is always “like I think,” even if you don’t particularly
practice or like thinking. And I am not even thinking of that other<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“like,” which now infests, like a
horrible disease, almost every conversation. This may stem from insecurity: if
things are introduced with a “like,” it may not be considered as committing, as
binding, as they would be without it. It is making a dreadful virtue out of
imprecision, and out of evasion of responsibility.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I will not go into the problem of “who” and “whom," to which
Garner devotes a goodly amount of print, but I do want to register my
displeasure <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>with one mistake that
occurs fairly often in my morning New York Times, and which may also qualify as
a genteelism. It is what I would call the mistaken predicate, and it goes like
this, to make up an example: “He is one of those poets who is better read aloud.”
What is wrong with this? The subject here is not “He,” which would take a
singular “is,” but “poets,” which requires a plural “are.” Hence the correct
form is “He is one of those poets who are better read aloud.” Tell that to some
reasonably cultured but errant writers one reads.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let me conclude with two ubiquitous mistakes so common in
past, present, and doubtless future times. They are the nauseating “I mean” and
“you know,” scattered all over speech and hopelessly redundant and useless.
Presumably you mean what you are saying, so there is no need to affirm it. And
if you have reasonable doubt that some knowledge is needed in your hearer; you
simply have to acknowledge that a hopeful “you know” will not generate
understanding; you simply have to be clearer to begin with. Peppering your talk
with those clichés, however, will only annoy a cultured hearer. But if he or
she is uncultured, why bother in the first place?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
The trouble with being a cultured person in today’s America
is that you end up underpaid if not unemployed. It helps enormously to be
practical rather than cultured. In my own experience, I was practical only once
in my lifetime, shortly after World War Two in the Air Force, for which I was
useless, having neither the inner ear for flying nor the gift for a grease
monkey. So I ended up in tasks like KP (kitchen police), in this instance chopping
onions for a huge soldiery. As I and my fellow choppers started shedding tears,
I came up with a grand idea: Why in hell were we issued gas masks if we don’t use them? Well, they were perfect for chopping onions, and forthwith there were no more
tears for me and my fellow choppers. We must have been some sight, but, by
golly, it worked: we were as dry-eyed as at those 40s comedies we saw at the
movies.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></div>
John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-5241904434010017232018-06-24T17:20:00.005-07:002018-06-24T17:20:57.457-07:00Abortion<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This little essay was composed before the wonderful news
from Roman Catholic Ireland: a thunderous yes to legitimizing abortion. Now if
only other Catholic countries would share the pluck of the Irish.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Because if only the alt right were against abortion, as well
as only the NRA were against gun control, such a piece as follows were not
needed. But unfortunately abortion is opposed even by less extremist persons,
so here goes. Because only a woman’s body, a woman’s safety, is involved in
abortion, it is she and not a man who should have the last word about it. But
when is something actually so merely because ideally it would be?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It seems to me that when a woman wants an abortion it is
because she sees herself unable or unwilling to cope with parenting. Surely a
lot of persons make for bad parents, often because they themselves have had bad
ones, or simply because of the difficulty of the task.. It is just barely
possible that a would-have-been aborter falls in love with her baby, but that
would seem to be too good to count on. How good a driver would a person
suffering from carsickness make? How good a couturier would a nudist make? Many
people think that where there is already a heartbeat, it is too late in the
game for abortion. Maybe so, but it is hard to determine what is absolute life
or absolute death. What about a corpse still growing hair and fingernails? Does
that make it alive? Even leaving a an unwanted newborn on the doorstep of a
hospital or police station is poor guarantee for its prospects.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Assuming that an unwilling mother is pregnant in a country
where abortion is illegal, what else can the woman do? If she has enough money,
she can travel to another country where abortion is legal. If not, all sorts of
horrors await. There is abortion by some quack or other, which can have serious
consequences, or, worse yet, there is the notorious attempt by a woman at
self-administered abortion, most often with knitting needles, from which no
good can come.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Suppose, however, that an illegitimate birth succeeds, and
the infant grows up into manhood or womanhood, is there not often enough
whispered hostility in many a community against so-called bastards? This also
because of the problems in an unenlightened society of fighting off the onus of
being different in any way. There the effort can cause much misery for the
guiltless bastard. Granted the existence of the popular euphemism “love child,”
and some people’s belief that such children grow up more passionate, there is
the opposite belief that they will remain forever outsiders. Famously, Edmund,
the villain in “King Lear,” invokes the gods to stand up for bastards, but, at
least as far as that great play goes, they don’t. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Te most obvious example of the argument against illegitimate
motherhood is in the child murders in Klinger’s and Goethe’s dramas, even if
the deed is viewed with deep compassion. It is always the story of an innocent
maiden being beguiled by a ruthless male, and then being severely punished for
something she cannot help. But for such infanticide to be taken as a serious
consequence of illegitimacy by the broad audience is like hoping that, because
bees sting, we should give up on apiculpture altogether and miss out on honey.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is interesting to note the comment of the famous lawyer,
Florynce Kennedy that “if men would get pregnant, abortion would be a
sacrament.” Well, abortion will never be a sacrament, but neither should it be
a crime. It is, rather like euthanasia, also considered criminal by many, even
if in the case of intense, incurable suffering it is rather a blessing. And
what about a teenager becoming pregnant? From such a one successful parenting
is, I repeat , unlikely, and could have been avoided with a little bit of
prophylaxis. How much space in your wallet or pocket does a condom require? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yet from people not capable of such minimal precaution, how
can we expect the intelligence required for making good parents--not the
easiest thing in the world.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let
us consider for a moment how in Roman times the equivalent of abortion was
handled. If a newborn proved defective in any way, the baby was allegedly tossed
off Mount Taigetus for riddance. This may be merely a legend, but it sounds
disquietingly convincing enough.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As for my opinion on the matter, as this blog entry I hope
makes clear, I am very much in favor of abortion. And I can name quite a few
people whom the world would be a better off without, had they been
aborted--starting with persons very high up. In such cases, one yearns for
more, much more abortion. It is conceivable, however, that even with only as
much abortion as there is, things are at least that much better than would have
been the case without it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3752457333383090137.post-31207577039115831802018-05-25T11:27:00.002-07:002018-05-25T11:27:34.663-07:00Titles<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Titles do matter, at the very least in garnering desirable
tables in restaurants, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. By this I mean
titles both of people and of literary works, among other things. Neither kind
makes the average person more purblind than a resonant title, hence even such
fictional titles of import as muck-a-muck and Pooh Bah. Hence also the
obsession of classless Americans with their British “cousins,” whether
aristocrats or royals, to say nothing if it all devolves on a biracial American
divorcee marrying into the Windsors.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here my concern is with fictional or nonfictional works of
literature on the marketplace, and by the interest generated by their titles.
Still, I am not saying that Margaret Mitchell’s best seller would not have
enjoyed its popularity had it been called, say, “Gone with the Old South” or
“The Greys and the Blues.” But surely “Gone with the Wind,” deriving its title
from a famous British poem, is a titular success. Most of us have had to fight
off a literal or symbolic headwind, and lost precious things or loved persons
to a windswept past.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I can think of any number of fictions and memoirs<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that sold themselves to me on their
titles, whether or not I went as far as to actually read them. Take “As I
Lay<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dying.” “A Diamond as Big as
the Ritz.” “How Green Was My Valley,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Breakfast at
Tiffany’s,” “The Man With the Golden Arm,” “The Sun Also Rises,” and so on and
on. Even “Paradise Lost,” may profit from not being “Paradise Regained.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We lose our Paradises far more often
than we regain them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Europeans may even be better at this title thing. Think, for
example, of a French jazzman’s “I’ll Go Spit on Your Graves,” about a
young<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>black’s vengeance on
Southern whites. Or the German Hans Fallada’ s “Wer einmal aus dem Blechnapf
frisst,” hard to translate but approximated by “Who Once Chows Down on the Tin
Bowl,” about a man released from, but forced back into, prison.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even more effective is the title of the
Great German poet–playwright Carl Zuckmayer’s memoir, “Als waer’s ein Stueck von
mir,” with a pun on “Stueck,” which is German for both piece and play, and thus
can be both “As if it were a piece of me “ or “a play of mine.” Guillaume
Apollinaire has a comic-pornographic novel entitled both “The 10,000</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Virgins” (vierges) and “The 10,000 Rods” or Penises
(verges), with something for both lechers and pedophiles. The great Hungarian
satirist, Frigyes Karinthy, has parodies entitled “Igy irtok ti,” which sounds
better than “That’s How You Write.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I myself often have fun coming up with titles of works I’ll
never write. Thus “The Angel of Accidence,” would play on the curiosity of
readers not knowing the difference between accidence and accidents. But why
this section of grammar should have an angel at all only Tony Kushner might
know.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I might also have edited an anthology of modern poetry,
emphasizing four of my favorites: Cummings, Ransom, MacNeice and Graves, whose
poems I have recited in public, and which might make wholly new readers for poetry.
At the very least I might have published a study of my beloved Robert Graves,
who at a street corner meeting asked me whether I was a Welsh or a Jewish
Simon, there being no other kind, what with Graves not allowing for converts. I
wonder how many fans even know “Horses,” his charming children’s play about a
three-legged horse that beats out an arrogant champion. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I remain a champion of memoirs, even of such little-known
figures as the English poets John Pudney, Humbert Wolfe, and A.S. J. Tessimond.
I love memoirs with bizarre titles; thus I might call mine “Learning to Suffer
Fools More Gladly,” or “Pencil Sharpeners”—explanation follows.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At one point in New York I decided to try for a low-level
job at the United Nations, that of tourist guide. It required only a few
foreign languages, but featured an elaborate questionnaire I found absurd.
Under “Office Machinery,” for example, it questioned one’s use with office
tools, such as typewriter or memo pad. Also “Others,” under which I listed pencil
sharpener. When I reentered the room in which the examiner had scrutinized my
submission, I could see from afar an entry furiously encicrcled in heavy blue
pencil. It was, of course, pencil sharpener. My rejection came along with a
homily on why I should refrain from such cheekiness in future if I ever wanted
a job.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or take the time when I applied for a teaching job at the
University of Chicago. The professor interviewing me at the elegant Palm Court
of New York’s Plaza Hotel, asked what I had learned from my previous teaching
jobs. I replied, with reference to colleagues, “to suffer fools more gladly.”
Whether or not he felt personally affected, I could smell No in the air. Why do
such interviewers feel obliged to be humorless, I wonder.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But now for a real favorite title. It comes from <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a scion of an ancient aristocracy,
Countess Franziska zu Reventlow (1871-1913), who escaped to Munich’s bohemian
quarter of Schwabing for her craved liberty, consisting largely of merrily
sleeping around. As she tells it in a chapter of her autobiographical novel
“Ellen Olestjerne” (1903), there was a period when all her lovers were called
Paul, Das Zeitalter der Paeule” (The Era of Pauls). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Apropos Countesses, I wonder about the famous romance
between the troubadour Jaufre Rudel and the Countess of Tripoli. He is said to
have seen a portrait of her with which he fell in love, finally making the
arduous and perilous journey to Tripoli, only to die in her loving arms. It is
about this that the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho wrote her opera “L’Amour de
loin” (Love from Afar, recently at the Met), and I wrote a long story for
Robert Hillier’s advanced Harvard writing course in which a class mate was
Norman Mailer. There is also a play about it by Edmond Rostand, the author of
“Cyrano,” who upgraded the Countess to “La Princesse lointaine,” but downgraded
the play to one of Sarah Bernhardt’s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>mere personal successes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I myself was never involved with a titled lady, although one
girlfriend complained to me about how having been involved with a British duke
meant that she had to do most of the erotic work in bed. Though it may also be
that compared to their Titanias, most men between the sheets are Bottom the
Weavers.</div>
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John Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00876490457067235124noreply@blogger.com21