I just heard that the College P & T committee has approved my promotion to (full) professor. Why they have to do this on New Year's Eve I don't know. Actually, the letter was there on the 29th, but the Chair of my Dept. was at the MLA until now, so I couldn't find out the results till she got back, looked at the letter, and gave me a call.
This now goes to the University P & T committee, so I'll know something even more officially by April.
31 dic 2008
30 dic 2008
(89)
Billie Holiday. First Issue: The Great American Songbook.
This is a collection produced to commemorate a postage stamp with Billie Holiday on it. The idea is to put together her renditions of some great songs by Ellington, Cole Porter, etc... It's a pretty good place to start if you don't know Billie Holiday--or only have heard "Strange Fruit" and "The Man I Love" and "God Bless the Child."
Billie Holiday. First Issue: The Great American Songbook.
This is a collection produced to commemorate a postage stamp with Billie Holiday on it. The idea is to put together her renditions of some great songs by Ellington, Cole Porter, etc... It's a pretty good place to start if you don't know Billie Holiday--or only have heard "Strange Fruit" and "The Man I Love" and "God Bless the Child."
(196)
*Elizabeth Bishop. Questions of Travel. 1965. 95 pp.
What a good writer she was. Many fragments of poems were preserved in grammar book, as examples. I imagine a similar use for Bishop's poetry, to be used in schools to learn how to write, as grammatical and rhetorical models. The poem called "Sestina" is in fact a sestina, and one of the best in the English language.
Yet somehow I don't really *heart* Elizabeth Bishop, as a whole. I like her for certain things, when I squint just right, but after a little while I see her once again simply as a very competent academic poet of mid-century.
*Elizabeth Bishop. Questions of Travel. 1965. 95 pp.
What a good writer she was. Many fragments of poems were preserved in grammar book, as examples. I imagine a similar use for Bishop's poetry, to be used in schools to learn how to write, as grammatical and rhetorical models. The poem called "Sestina" is in fact a sestina, and one of the best in the English language.
Yet somehow I don't really *heart* Elizabeth Bishop, as a whole. I like her for certain things, when I squint just right, but after a little while I see her once again simply as a very competent academic poet of mid-century.
29 dic 2008
(194)
*The Burning Mystery of Anna in 1951. 1979. 81 pp.
I still have the hard-bound first edition I bought when the book came out or shortly after. I was about to embark on a career as a literary critic. It strikes me now how ill prepared any academic training was to read something like this. Not because it was difficult reading--though "Reflections on Morocco" was puzzling on many levels--but because there wasn't a clear thing to "do" to such a text. He isn't interested in difficulty, ambiguity, or hidden meanings. How radical is that? It's not something that you could apply the literary methods of the day to. Deconstruction? I don't think so. I did try to find an adequate way of talking about this kind of poetry. Gilbert Sorrentino was probably the only professor at Stanford then who thought it was even possible to write about Kenneth Koch. I did in fact write a paper using some material from "Reflections on Morocco," in particular, for Sorrentino.
I still love the jacket design by Larry Rivers, and "The Boiling Water" and "The Problem of Anxiety." Some of the shorter poems in the book are not quite as memorable. The title poem and "For Marina" have stuck with me, and another poem about Kenneth returning from Europe and trying unsuccessfully to communicate his sense of excitement to his other friends, like Frank O'Hara, who seem to view him in a slightly condescending light. It's kind of a follow up to the mode of The "The Circus" in his previous collection, The Art of Love.
***
I'm trying to get a ways through the third percent before the year is out. 9 books is a tenth of a percent of the total, so if I geet close to 198 I'll be on the road to 270.
*The Burning Mystery of Anna in 1951. 1979. 81 pp.
I still have the hard-bound first edition I bought when the book came out or shortly after. I was about to embark on a career as a literary critic. It strikes me now how ill prepared any academic training was to read something like this. Not because it was difficult reading--though "Reflections on Morocco" was puzzling on many levels--but because there wasn't a clear thing to "do" to such a text. He isn't interested in difficulty, ambiguity, or hidden meanings. How radical is that? It's not something that you could apply the literary methods of the day to. Deconstruction? I don't think so. I did try to find an adequate way of talking about this kind of poetry. Gilbert Sorrentino was probably the only professor at Stanford then who thought it was even possible to write about Kenneth Koch. I did in fact write a paper using some material from "Reflections on Morocco," in particular, for Sorrentino.
I still love the jacket design by Larry Rivers, and "The Boiling Water" and "The Problem of Anxiety." Some of the shorter poems in the book are not quite as memorable. The title poem and "For Marina" have stuck with me, and another poem about Kenneth returning from Europe and trying unsuccessfully to communicate his sense of excitement to his other friends, like Frank O'Hara, who seem to view him in a slightly condescending light. It's kind of a follow up to the mode of The "The Circus" in his previous collection, The Art of Love.
***
I'm trying to get a ways through the third percent before the year is out. 9 books is a tenth of a percent of the total, so if I geet close to 198 I'll be on the road to 270.
Freddie Hubbard has just died. I was just thinking about him today, of how great he was on Empyrean Isles and Maiden Voyage. I think his sound is my platonic idea of what a trumpet should sound like. Warm and full-throated, not constricted at all. He is on Ornette's Free Jazz and on numerous hard bop and fusion records. He had a very long and illustrious career.
28 dic 2008
(87)
Sarah Vaughan. After Hours.
This is a recent find. Bob mentioned it in a comment to another post in this series, and I checked it out. The song selection is superb here, with mostly classic songs like Sophisticated Lady and In a Sentimental Mood and My Favorite Things. Sarah is in full voice, with the vocal mannerisms present but under control. The accompaniment is just bass and guitar.
Sarah Vaughan. After Hours.
This is a recent find. Bob mentioned it in a comment to another post in this series, and I checked it out. The song selection is superb here, with mostly classic songs like Sophisticated Lady and In a Sentimental Mood and My Favorite Things. Sarah is in full voice, with the vocal mannerisms present but under control. The accompaniment is just bass and guitar.
(86)
Ornette. Sound Grammar
This was the live recording for which recently Ornette won the Nobel prize for general all-around genius. He has two bass players, a drummer (Denardo Coleman, his son), and himself on alto sax, trumpet, and violin. (Well, at least a Grammy and a Pulitzer). I've listened to it many times: an hour's worth of very worthwhile music.
The first tune is Jordan, a fast number where Ornette on sax plays a very assertive improvisation to begin. Then the basses do their thing. Ornette comes in again at the end.
Sleep Talking is a slow, haunting melody, kind of like Ornette's previous "Lonely Woman." I love this song. The middle is a little bit rambling. You know the joke? A couple is brought into a marriage counselor. They won't talk to each other. Finally the counselor brings in a bass player, because "everyone talks during the bass solo." When two basses are soloing at once, that can be even worse.
Turnaround comes next. A blues with a very simple melody, played medium slow. Ornette is a very bluesy player.
Then Matador, with a Latin feel. A tune similar to Ornette's "Latin Genetics" in some way, though not quite as bouncy.
I recently saw Ornette dissed in Downbeat by Benny Golson, who did not mention him by name but called him bogus. Ornette told Golson he was using the tenor clef to write music. Golson makes the comment to the interviewer that there is no such thing as the tenor clef! Well, I hate to say it, but actually there is such a thing.
Waiting for You is another Ornettian ballad, with a melody not quite so distinctive. I kind of wish he would stick to sax, and leave the violin and trumpet alone.
Call to Duty is a rousing appeal to action, at a rousing tempo. Once Only is slower again. The album concludes with Song X, which reminds me that I saw Ornette on the Song X tour with Pat Matheny, Jack DeJohnette, Charlie Haden, and Denardo, back in the 1980s, in Ithaca, New York. Bob Basil drove down from Buffalo to go to the concert with me and a Cuban friend of mine, Jorge Hernández, who was a grad student at Cornell in Spanish.
Ornette. Sound Grammar
This was the live recording for which recently Ornette won the Nobel prize for general all-around genius. He has two bass players, a drummer (Denardo Coleman, his son), and himself on alto sax, trumpet, and violin. (Well, at least a Grammy and a Pulitzer). I've listened to it many times: an hour's worth of very worthwhile music.
The first tune is Jordan, a fast number where Ornette on sax plays a very assertive improvisation to begin. Then the basses do their thing. Ornette comes in again at the end.
Sleep Talking is a slow, haunting melody, kind of like Ornette's previous "Lonely Woman." I love this song. The middle is a little bit rambling. You know the joke? A couple is brought into a marriage counselor. They won't talk to each other. Finally the counselor brings in a bass player, because "everyone talks during the bass solo." When two basses are soloing at once, that can be even worse.
Turnaround comes next. A blues with a very simple melody, played medium slow. Ornette is a very bluesy player.
Then Matador, with a Latin feel. A tune similar to Ornette's "Latin Genetics" in some way, though not quite as bouncy.
I recently saw Ornette dissed in Downbeat by Benny Golson, who did not mention him by name but called him bogus. Ornette told Golson he was using the tenor clef to write music. Golson makes the comment to the interviewer that there is no such thing as the tenor clef! Well, I hate to say it, but actually there is such a thing.
Waiting for You is another Ornettian ballad, with a melody not quite so distinctive. I kind of wish he would stick to sax, and leave the violin and trumpet alone.
Call to Duty is a rousing appeal to action, at a rousing tempo. Once Only is slower again. The album concludes with Song X, which reminds me that I saw Ornette on the Song X tour with Pat Matheny, Jack DeJohnette, Charlie Haden, and Denardo, back in the 1980s, in Ithaca, New York. Bob Basil drove down from Buffalo to go to the concert with me and a Cuban friend of mine, Jorge Hernández, who was a grad student at Cornell in Spanish.
27 dic 2008
(85)
Miles. In a Silent Way.
Miles with Wayne Shorter (soprano sax not tenor), Tony Williams, Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, Dave Holland, etc... in his first fusion album. The idea that Miles should have stopped in his development at some point, and not gone there, here, is ridiculous. It's not facile, repetitive fusion of the Chuck Magione type. I don't think you can see it as a sell-out either.
Miles. In a Silent Way.
Miles with Wayne Shorter (soprano sax not tenor), Tony Williams, Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, Dave Holland, etc... in his first fusion album. The idea that Miles should have stopped in his development at some point, and not gone there, here, is ridiculous. It's not facile, repetitive fusion of the Chuck Magione type. I don't think you can see it as a sell-out either.
(34)
*Bolaño. Nocturno de Chile. 2000. 150 pp.
I'm a little embarrassed about not having read much Bolaño, since he is all the rage now. I read 3/4 of this in the public library today. I don't like joining bandwagons but this is the one Latin American writer who has hit it big with the English speaking audience in the last little while, so it's kind of bad if people ask me about him and I am completely ignorant.
Anyway, the narrator is a priest who is a member of the Opus Dei, a literary critic, and a kind of idiot, ultimately. The kind of idiot that is not incompatible with being an intellectual. Toward the beginning, he meets Neruda. (Bolaño likes the trick of placing real characters in a fictional context.) He goes to Europe to discover techniques for preserving old churches against pigeon dung: it turns out the priests there use falcons to hunt the pigeons! There is another long digression about a shoemaker in the Austrio-Hungarian empire who wants to build a monument to heroes of said empire. Bolaño has a gift of invention, for sure. Quasi-probable episodes involving real historical figures are his speciality here. The book is written in one long continuous paragraph, and structured around a series of discrete episodes--some of which seem digressive.
It hasn't been explained yet how the priest can be in the Opus yet also be the most liberal possible member of the Opus, how he can be learned and yet so idiotic, etc...
After Pinochet's coup takes place, our narrator is enlisted (by the same mysterious import / export guys that sent him to Europe to study the dove-shit problem), to give a mini-course to Pinochet and the other generals of the junta on Marxism. He dutifully prepares and give his course, going through all the major texts of Marx and ending with Castro and Mao. At the end, he asks Pinochet whether he's done a good job and the general reassures him. When the library closed, Pinochet was explaining to the narrative that Allende was not really an intellectual, just a guy who read magazines and had other people tell him what to think.
I've given up on the Calvino novel about real-estate development. I just don't care what happens with this particular building project. I have another one by Calvino about the resistance that looks a bit more promising.
[Update: a chilling scene provides the conclusion to Bolaño's novel. At a literary soirée a drunken guest gets lost in huge house and finds, behind a door in a basement, a man chained to a bed and gagged. Returning to the party, he says nothing. It turns out that the husband of the hostess, "Jimmy," is CIA and uses the house as a place to interrogate and torture. The narrator/priest seems somewhat shocked--but this is the same guy who obsequiously taught Marxism to Pinochet with no qualms. Who does he think ordered the torture?]
*Bolaño. Nocturno de Chile. 2000. 150 pp.
I'm a little embarrassed about not having read much Bolaño, since he is all the rage now. I read 3/4 of this in the public library today. I don't like joining bandwagons but this is the one Latin American writer who has hit it big with the English speaking audience in the last little while, so it's kind of bad if people ask me about him and I am completely ignorant.
Anyway, the narrator is a priest who is a member of the Opus Dei, a literary critic, and a kind of idiot, ultimately. The kind of idiot that is not incompatible with being an intellectual. Toward the beginning, he meets Neruda. (Bolaño likes the trick of placing real characters in a fictional context.) He goes to Europe to discover techniques for preserving old churches against pigeon dung: it turns out the priests there use falcons to hunt the pigeons! There is another long digression about a shoemaker in the Austrio-Hungarian empire who wants to build a monument to heroes of said empire. Bolaño has a gift of invention, for sure. Quasi-probable episodes involving real historical figures are his speciality here. The book is written in one long continuous paragraph, and structured around a series of discrete episodes--some of which seem digressive.
It hasn't been explained yet how the priest can be in the Opus yet also be the most liberal possible member of the Opus, how he can be learned and yet so idiotic, etc...
After Pinochet's coup takes place, our narrator is enlisted (by the same mysterious import / export guys that sent him to Europe to study the dove-shit problem), to give a mini-course to Pinochet and the other generals of the junta on Marxism. He dutifully prepares and give his course, going through all the major texts of Marx and ending with Castro and Mao. At the end, he asks Pinochet whether he's done a good job and the general reassures him. When the library closed, Pinochet was explaining to the narrative that Allende was not really an intellectual, just a guy who read magazines and had other people tell him what to think.
I've given up on the Calvino novel about real-estate development. I just don't care what happens with this particular building project. I have another one by Calvino about the resistance that looks a bit more promising.
[Update: a chilling scene provides the conclusion to Bolaño's novel. At a literary soirée a drunken guest gets lost in huge house and finds, behind a door in a basement, a man chained to a bed and gagged. Returning to the party, he says nothing. It turns out that the husband of the hostess, "Jimmy," is CIA and uses the house as a place to interrogate and torture. The narrator/priest seems somewhat shocked--but this is the same guy who obsequiously taught Marxism to Pinochet with no qualms. Who does he think ordered the torture?]
26 dic 2008
(84)
Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers
This 1954 date finds Horace Silver leading the jazz messengers--before it was Art Blakey's jazz messengers, with Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, and Blakey on drums, of course. The set really grooves hard if you like hard bop of this period. Check out Creepin' In and The Preacher.
Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers
This 1954 date finds Horace Silver leading the jazz messengers--before it was Art Blakey's jazz messengers, with Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, and Blakey on drums, of course. The set really grooves hard if you like hard bop of this period. Check out Creepin' In and The Preacher.
25 dic 2008
(33)
*Harry Mathews. Cigarettes. 1987
This is an intricately plotted novel that I have read many times. One of the pleasures of rereading it is in having forgotten many details large and small. Each chapter is based on a dyad of two characters. The focus shifts from one set of characters to another, but the last chapters bring you back to the starting point once again. The novel is written on Oulipean principles, but these are invisible. You feel there is a hidden, inexorable structure, but you cannot reconstruct it from the novel itself.
One of my favorite novels. I've always preferred the Sorrentino / Mathews branch of novelistic posmodernism to the Gaddis/Pynchon branch.
*Harry Mathews. Cigarettes. 1987
This is an intricately plotted novel that I have read many times. One of the pleasures of rereading it is in having forgotten many details large and small. Each chapter is based on a dyad of two characters. The focus shifts from one set of characters to another, but the last chapters bring you back to the starting point once again. The novel is written on Oulipean principles, but these are invisible. You feel there is a hidden, inexorable structure, but you cannot reconstruct it from the novel itself.
One of my favorite novels. I've always preferred the Sorrentino / Mathews branch of novelistic posmodernism to the Gaddis/Pynchon branch.
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