Busy week, somehow. And excessively cold! My lungs are ready for spring.
I enjoyed many of the pieces in MFA vs. NYC, but Alexander Chee's essay was by far my favorite. Leslie Jamison's account of the book is good (via Chloe S.) - I have a review of Jamison's forthcoming essay collection in the next Bookforum, the book's a must-read if you are interested in the contemporary essay or the question of pain, female or otherwise.
Other light reading around the edges: two absolutely delightful young-adult fantasy novels by Sarah Rees Brennan, Unspoken and Untold. These books are perfectly to my taste (they would make a very good television series also) - only I have to wait until September for the next installment!
Stage Kiss at Playwrights Horizons is one of the funniest plays I have seen for a long time - especially in the first half, I was actually laughing uncontrollably out loud. (It was a matinee, so no outright feasting afterwards, but we did have a piece of pie at the diner next door - cherry for me, apple for G.) Between that and Antony and Cleopatra, it was a good weekend for theatergoing. Seeing No Exit tonight at the Pearl; 7pm curtain + short play = more realistic than serious mid-evening theatergoing for a school night.
Closing tabs:
Andrew Solomon on having the demons of depression exorcised - literally.
The inimitable Cintra Wilson watches the Oscars.
Excited about blurbs accumulating for my style book - official publication date is June, but I should have some copies by the end of May.
Last but not least, trilobite! (Time to reread Richard Fortey's book, I think.)
Showing posts with label awards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label awards. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 04, 2014
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Closing tabs
The next three weeks are daunting; however, I trust I will get through....
Superb review at the Guardian for Jane Yeh's The Ninjas! (Courtesy of Ed Park.)
Tim Parks on the artist he grew up with.
Finally, courtesy of B., definitely the week's best job description (scroll down)! More related material here and here.
Superb review at the Guardian for Jane Yeh's The Ninjas! (Courtesy of Ed Park.)
Tim Parks on the artist he grew up with.
Finally, courtesy of B., definitely the week's best job description (scroll down)! More related material here and here.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
"What's opera, Doc?"
This must be my earliest acquaintance with Wagner....
Really I have no commentary in particular on the Ring at the Met - I did enjoy it, and I'm very glad to have seen the whole thing in one bash, but it confirmed my sense that it's not really suited to my sensibilities. The music is very easy and compelling to listen to, and the purest and most intense pleasure for me in the whole thing was probably just the lavish beauty of the writing for woodwinds, my favorite family of orchestral instruments. The clarinets were especially lovely, but of course also English horn, and at various moments my mind drifted to an alternate universe where I am perhaps a professional bassoonist with a sideline in oboe and English horn - really it wouldn't have come to pass, but one has time in that context to sit and ponder such things!
The 'machine' came into its own in Siegfried, as a surface on which light is projected; in other respects, it seemed cumbersome though not unduly so. There is a sense in which the lighter moments, especially in Siegfried, are actually familiar anachronistically by way of this vintage of Disney film; in fact, the whole thing was much more Disney than I had possibly imagined, as I had some vague and largely misleading association of the cycle with the most avant-garde wing of twentieth-century Bayreuth productions (why did I somehow imagine that more of this music would sound more like Webern?!?), and of course this is not at all the style in which a house like the Met is going to approach the thing. It is not an original observation if I say that really the Disney theme park is the most fully realized twentieth-century sequel to Wagner's fantasy of the total work of art. The music must have sounded electrifyingly strange and original when it was first heard, but has been largely naturalized by way of a century plus of over-the-top movie music; in fact, that was probably my other most startling realization, that the idiom for a certain kind of movie music continues to be borrowed almost literally from Wagner's orchestration, how strange that this should be so!
It was not an electrifying production, in short, but I am very glad to have heard the music all the way through and gain a much clearer sense of what it is really like and how it works. My one regret is that Eric Owens wasn't singing Alberich in any of the performances I saw; I will have to make sure to go and hear him in something else before too long.
I have no substantive complaints for this week, and in fact I have been busy with some very pleasant things: a party at the NYPL in bestowal of the Young Lions Fiction Award; congratulating our graduating senior English majors and handing out awards in the humanities to other CC students, including one or two of my own, on a day so rainy that it made even me, a die-hard umbrella-despiser, contemplate the utility of such things; a beautiful long run this morning and a very good subsequent meeting on a student's dissertation prospectus. However I cannot shake my end-of-year malaise: I suppose it is the usual consequence of overwork.
I have an overdue essay that I should be writing, but I really can't face any work for another day or so; all I want to do is exercise, which puts me in a good mood while I am doing it and for a few hours thereafter, then results in a total mood crash so persistent that even the unexpected arrival in the mail this afternoon of a thousand-dollar check that I wasn't at all expecting didn't cause any appreciable lift! I think I just have to be patient and wait for the cloud to go away (only I really do need to write that essay!).
Closing tabs:
Nico has a good long post that touches on many matters of interest, but especially wombat gait!
Also: body language....
Really I have no commentary in particular on the Ring at the Met - I did enjoy it, and I'm very glad to have seen the whole thing in one bash, but it confirmed my sense that it's not really suited to my sensibilities. The music is very easy and compelling to listen to, and the purest and most intense pleasure for me in the whole thing was probably just the lavish beauty of the writing for woodwinds, my favorite family of orchestral instruments. The clarinets were especially lovely, but of course also English horn, and at various moments my mind drifted to an alternate universe where I am perhaps a professional bassoonist with a sideline in oboe and English horn - really it wouldn't have come to pass, but one has time in that context to sit and ponder such things!
The 'machine' came into its own in Siegfried, as a surface on which light is projected; in other respects, it seemed cumbersome though not unduly so. There is a sense in which the lighter moments, especially in Siegfried, are actually familiar anachronistically by way of this vintage of Disney film; in fact, the whole thing was much more Disney than I had possibly imagined, as I had some vague and largely misleading association of the cycle with the most avant-garde wing of twentieth-century Bayreuth productions (why did I somehow imagine that more of this music would sound more like Webern?!?), and of course this is not at all the style in which a house like the Met is going to approach the thing. It is not an original observation if I say that really the Disney theme park is the most fully realized twentieth-century sequel to Wagner's fantasy of the total work of art. The music must have sounded electrifyingly strange and original when it was first heard, but has been largely naturalized by way of a century plus of over-the-top movie music; in fact, that was probably my other most startling realization, that the idiom for a certain kind of movie music continues to be borrowed almost literally from Wagner's orchestration, how strange that this should be so!
It was not an electrifying production, in short, but I am very glad to have heard the music all the way through and gain a much clearer sense of what it is really like and how it works. My one regret is that Eric Owens wasn't singing Alberich in any of the performances I saw; I will have to make sure to go and hear him in something else before too long.
I have no substantive complaints for this week, and in fact I have been busy with some very pleasant things: a party at the NYPL in bestowal of the Young Lions Fiction Award; congratulating our graduating senior English majors and handing out awards in the humanities to other CC students, including one or two of my own, on a day so rainy that it made even me, a die-hard umbrella-despiser, contemplate the utility of such things; a beautiful long run this morning and a very good subsequent meeting on a student's dissertation prospectus. However I cannot shake my end-of-year malaise: I suppose it is the usual consequence of overwork.
I have an overdue essay that I should be writing, but I really can't face any work for another day or so; all I want to do is exercise, which puts me in a good mood while I am doing it and for a few hours thereafter, then results in a total mood crash so persistent that even the unexpected arrival in the mail this afternoon of a thousand-dollar check that I wasn't at all expecting didn't cause any appreciable lift! I think I just have to be patient and wait for the cloud to go away (only I really do need to write that essay!).
Closing tabs:
Nico has a good long post that touches on many matters of interest, but especially wombat gait!
Also: body language....
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Head back in the game
I was very glum yesterday: I had had such visions of productivity in the way of pages and exercise for my spring break, and in the event it is fully halfway over and I have essentially done no pages and no exercise! Debilitating insomnia on Saturday and Sunday nights, and then on Monday morning it came clear to me that really I wasn't just having the stomach-ache and slight queasiness of insufficient sleep, but really a minor stomach ailment that led to me spending the day in bed. Didn't even feel well enough to read a book, which is saying something. Stomach-ache has finally lifted this morning, fortunately, and I think I will run for an hour later on.
In short: I guess I've just been working too hard, and that my plans for the break (it's only one week) were unrealistic. Just now I am finally about to dig in on the dreaded novel revisions. Need to get my head back in that game! This, unfortunately, is quite literally (only it was on the chair visible in the background - I have just transferred the stack to newly cleared desk) the state in which I left it: I put it aside a month ago when pressures of work became too great. Today will be devoted to figuring out where the hell I left off and trying to reduce the pile of papers I actually need to attend to. It will be good, really....
Some tabs to close:
Access all areas?
Tradecraft for the aspirational publishing reporter.
The virtues of writing a textbook or synthesis at mid-career.
Last but not least, a strong list of finalists for the Young Lions Fiction Award at the New York Public Library!
In short: I guess I've just been working too hard, and that my plans for the break (it's only one week) were unrealistic. Just now I am finally about to dig in on the dreaded novel revisions. Need to get my head back in that game! This, unfortunately, is quite literally (only it was on the chair visible in the background - I have just transferred the stack to newly cleared desk) the state in which I left it: I put it aside a month ago when pressures of work became too great. Today will be devoted to figuring out where the hell I left off and trying to reduce the pile of papers I actually need to attend to. It will be good, really....
Some tabs to close:
Access all areas?
Tradecraft for the aspirational publishing reporter.
The virtues of writing a textbook or synthesis at mid-career.
Last but not least, a strong list of finalists for the Young Lions Fiction Award at the New York Public Library!
Friday, February 10, 2012
Unusual tongues
At the FT, Daniel Cohen interviews Brian Stowell, author of the only full-length novel written in Manx (site registration required):
Slightly annoyed with myself due to belated recognition that I have rather been letting Facebook cannibalize amusing but non-literary links that come my way. Resolved for future not to waste stuff over there: Light Reading is a better archive if I want to find anything later on! A couple of the best ones I did double up on here also (i.e. black cat auditions), but I hereby offer up the following handful of recapitulations: wings and more wings, presidential aspirations in the youthful professoriat, a day in the grinding room, mattress flip.
Radium-age re-releases!
Light reading around the edges: Carol O'Connell's latest Mallory novel, The Chalk Girl. I thoroughly enjoyed it (it's better than the last few have been); I find O'Connell an intriguing case, as she basically ignores pretty much all the rules of good writing and yet produces these books that are strangely mesmerizing despite their evident shortcomings in the matter of narration, characterization, plausibility, etc. The books for the Young Lions award seem to me very good this year, and there are certainly a couple I'll blog about at a later stage once confidentiality isn't an issue.
Nice glimpses here of my little nephew as well as of my sister-in-law's very lovely Austin store. I am trying to figure out when I might get down to Austin: I'd love to go for the 70.3 in late October, though I fancy that even in late October Austin might feel rather warm to me. I am going to San Antonio for the big eighteenth-century studies conference in March, but teaching obligations on either side mean that there is no way to extend that trip with an Austin leg.
In 2006, I published a novel in Manx, The Vampire Murders, satirising life on the Isle of Man. It was serialised in one of the papers here and now bits of it are being used for the Manx equivalent to an A-level. It’s the first full-length novel in Manx. The potential readership is very low indeed – only about 200 people can read it without much difficulty. You could rationalise why I went ahead by saying, “oh, it will be used for studying Manx.” But I never had that in mind at all. I just thought it’d be a great laugh to write a novel in Manx. Now there are a few other people writing original material.About to be fairly fiendishly busy for the next three or so weeks. Had a good visit for some days this week from cousin George and her boyfriend Jeremy, although I am slightly ashamed that I didn't make it to either of his gigs (inertia and fatigue were very strong, and Williamsburg and the Lower East Side far away...); Olympia, WA looks like it was fun....
Slightly annoyed with myself due to belated recognition that I have rather been letting Facebook cannibalize amusing but non-literary links that come my way. Resolved for future not to waste stuff over there: Light Reading is a better archive if I want to find anything later on! A couple of the best ones I did double up on here also (i.e. black cat auditions), but I hereby offer up the following handful of recapitulations: wings and more wings, presidential aspirations in the youthful professoriat, a day in the grinding room, mattress flip.
Radium-age re-releases!
Light reading around the edges: Carol O'Connell's latest Mallory novel, The Chalk Girl. I thoroughly enjoyed it (it's better than the last few have been); I find O'Connell an intriguing case, as she basically ignores pretty much all the rules of good writing and yet produces these books that are strangely mesmerizing despite their evident shortcomings in the matter of narration, characterization, plausibility, etc. The books for the Young Lions award seem to me very good this year, and there are certainly a couple I'll blog about at a later stage once confidentiality isn't an issue.
Nice glimpses here of my little nephew as well as of my sister-in-law's very lovely Austin store. I am trying to figure out when I might get down to Austin: I'd love to go for the 70.3 in late October, though I fancy that even in late October Austin might feel rather warm to me. I am going to San Antonio for the big eighteenth-century studies conference in March, but teaching obligations on either side mean that there is no way to extend that trip with an Austin leg.
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