Reading, Twitter, and The Relevance of Great Writing--Saturday Journal #1

A while ago, our College initiated a campaign to encourage students, staff---everybody, really--to read more.  Volunteers were asked to pose for a photograph in the library, holding their favorite book.  I read a lot of many different types of books, and to that point, my all-time favorite was "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole.  In a later post, I will share my thoughts on this remarkable comic epic, and the story of its author, and the bittersweet way it was published, received, and ultimately won a Pulitzer Prize. 

(The photo, I think, leaves something to be desired...I looked as tired as I most likely was that day....and I have since re-invented myself into a somewhat more compact frame!)

When I heard that  The Library of Congress entered into an agreement withTwitter to archive every public "tweet" ever written, it was well-received by some historians as a boon to studying modern culture.  Even though I lamented the dearth of letters as a first-hand source for historical research, I was more skeptical about Twitter's usefulness for in-depth study.

From a story in Reuters:

The Library of Congress’s blogger Matt Raymond says there’s research gold to be found in the archive:
“I’m no Ph.D. but it boggles my mind to think what we might be able to learn about ourselves and the world around us from this wealth of data. And I’m certain we’ll learn things that none of us now can even possibly conceive.”

Hmm.....I think we'll be surprised how little depth we, as a culture, do have. I suppose everything that will be worth knowing about ourselves, by future generations, will have been well-covered by people of intelligence and foresight.
Twitter, as a tool for historical research is, I think, a fad, a joke, though many want to convince us it's important.
While millions are "tweeting", people and animals are neglected, published works of remarkable power are not being read, the world spins past us, and those who know better are taking full advantage of our distraction.....

A friend remarked to me that "published works of remarkable power" may no longer be relevant to current culture, and are not worthy of our collective contemplation.

I would respond this way:
Powerful works come from great poets...Shakespeare...all the old masters... Even contemporary thinkers, and dreamers. Those that have the ability to read these works, but will not, are no better than those who cannot read at all.


Great writings are as worthy of our contemplation as great paintings, or opera, or any art form that, amazingly, still speaks to us after centuries, or decades... They deserve to be preserved, and enjoyed again and mined for relevance. It's there.


Yet, we can no longer be bothered to make the effort to participate in this most exciting yet demanding form of communication, preferring instead to have our eye dazzled, our ear pounded, our adrenaline boosted, and then off to another sensual experience.


Reading, like anything else, can be taken to unfortunate extremes. Good readers know how to pick the right material for themselves, and how to use the ideas therein.


Like anything else, time can increase the appreciation of the work, and not just in the marketplace, LOL. Some are too hasty to dismiss great work, or herald bad work, with no underpinnings of learning, or thinking.
 
So much for my rant....Soon I will post an item about the "death" of professional critics, the rise of "amateur" criticism, and the dismaying opinion among a new generation of filmgoers that "Citizen Kane is overrated....

"La Traviata" and Family Recollections--Saturday Journal #2

Chicago's Classical Music Station, WFMT, carries live opera broadcasts every Saturday at noon.  Today we got a treat from New York's Metropolitan Opera, Verdi's "La Traviata".

This lush and popular opera, one of Verdi's greatest, tells of the tragic romance between Violetta, the "traviata" (wayward woman) of the title, and the young Alfredo, who loves her.


"La Traviata"s combination of typically romantic and melodramatic elements, familiar arias and tunes, and a lavish score that is beautifully sung and plausibly emotional, has pleased generations of operagoers, even those not familiar or not predisposed to enjoy opera. 

Even those who don't know opera are surely familiar with the Drinking Song "Libiamo" ("we drink"), which as been used countless times in popular media.   Here's a clip from Franco Zeffirelli's gorgeous 1983 film version of the opera (the English translation of the lyrics appear at the end of this post):



My maternal grandparents, Sam and Lucy, were not grand aficionados of opera.  However, Sam's father, Joseph, was a consummate fan of opera.  He listened to the Met every Saturday on his little radio.  When my mother and her sister, as girls, made too much noise (my mother lived with her parents and grandparents) he would grumble and take his radio to the attic bedroom to listen in peace.  He memorized the greatest operas, and knew them so well, that if one word was missed, or one note was played incorrectly, he would exclaim, in his most idiomatic Sicilian, "They ruined it!" and would stomp off after turning off his radio in disgust.

When my mother was 18 years old, Joseph took my mother, his granddaughter, to the Lyric Opera in Chicago as her high school graduation present. He saved money for months to afford the tickets.  They saw "La Traviata".  She always describes the experience, and how romantic and sad it made her feel.

Today I called her to remind her to listen to the Met broadcast.  She still loves the music, even though she has forgotten most of the tragic story.  My father, tall, taciturn, and cultured, listened to Classical music all during my childhood.  I believe that my mother's love for this opera was one of the things that drew this unlikely pair together in their youth.  I wonder if they listened to it  again, together, today?  I wonder if the lively and haunting music sparked memories of emotions long ago spent, and reminded them of their youthful passion, and what bonded them 50-plus years ago? 



Lyrics to "Libiamo", from "La Traviata"

ALFREDO
Let's drink from the joyous chalice
Where beauty flowers ...
Let the fleeting hour
To pleasure's intoxication yield.
Let's drink
To love's sweet tremors -
To those eyes
That pierce the heart.
Let's drink to love - to wine
That warms our kisses.

ALL
Ah! Let's drink to love ‑ to wine
That warms our kisses.

VIOLETTA
(rising)
With you I would share
My days of happiness;
Everything is folly in this world
That does not give us pleasure.
Let us enjoy life,
For the pleasures of love are swift and fleeting
As a flower that lives and dies
And can be enjoyed no more.
Let's take our pleasure!
While its ardent,
Brilliant summons lures us on.


ALL
Let's take our pleasure
Of wine and
Singing and mirth
Till the new day
Dawns on us in paradise.


VIOLETTA
(to Alfredo)
Life is just pleasure.


ALFREDO
(to Violetta)
But if one still waits for love ...


VIOLETTA
(to Alfredo)
I know nothing of that ‑ don't tell me ...


ALFREDO
(to Violetta)
But there lies my fate.


ALL
Let's take our pleasure
Of wine and
Singing and mirth,
Till the new day
Dawns on this paradise of ours.

Matisse...And Re-Working One's Art

(On Friday, A Re-Working, Errors Corrected)

The Chicago Art Institute is showcasing a very special exhibit on Henri Matisse titled

"Radical Invention 1913-1917".   I had the good fortune to sample the exhibit yestarday, on a brilliant, rare warm and mild Chicago afternoon.

Matisse is known for his use of color and simple lines, leaving a viewer with an emotional response to the deceptively simple images, rather than filling in details for us.

The exhibit uses a series of sculptures, drawings, paintings and prints to demonstrate how the artist's work evolved, so that an etherial composition like The Dance finally becomes, after years of reworking and experimentation and simplifying, the masterpiece Bathers by a River, both variations on the female nude in a pastoral setting.

Matisse's "rough drafts",
the sculptures and paintings
that were his "studies",
have been
studied and collected as
fine works of art in themselves.
He referred to these as his
"Methods of Modern Construction." 
Re-framing of  images, scraping of pigment, diluting paint or laying it heavily, re-considering color, and a disciplined simplifying of the subject, came together and has remained influential.

It made me wonder what insights we might have gathered if publishing-houses also published the early notes, notebooks, and rough drafts of famous novels. Oh, how I wish I could have some of these for study!  Sometimes a novel or short story is printed along with its film screenplay, which allows one to analyze the choices a screenwriter has made to craft a novel or story cinematically.  (Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain", for example, translates wonderfully into Diana Ossana's and Larry Mc Murty's screenplay, and stands as a how-to of successful adaptation.)

I felt calm in the presence of Matisse and his work.  He said at one point that painting for him was like an armchair.   (This was before he became discouraged from the medium and turned to sculpture, and printing).  Another great quote: "Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking".

I was also comforted by the fact that Matisse gained great fame with his struggle, and experimentation, and that even what he considered his imperfect works were appreciated even after he reconsidered them, and created greater ones....

Perhaps when my dream of achieving world renown as a novelist is realized, I can also share my doodles and rough writing, as a way to enlighten, and encourage, others.

Click on this link for a video clip with some terific information on Matisse and his works.

I leave you with my personal favorite,  Interior With Goldfish, also in the Art Institute Exhibit.  The way light is reflected from an unknown source, and rendered in shades of color, holds me in thrall...

Pulitzer Prizes Announced...The Award Season Continues!

The announcement of the Pulitzer Prize Winners is one of my favorite days of the year. Both winners and finalists are announced together, so there are no "nominees", no prognosticating, no false suspense. This year, the winner and two finalists in the Fiction category are unfamiliar to me yet. 


The big prize today went  to " 'Tinkers,' by Paul Harding (Bellevue Literary Press), a powerful celebration of life in which a New England father and son, through suffering and joy, transcend their imprisoning lives and offer new ways of perceiving the world and mortality."  Harding earned $10,000 prize money.


For the second year, the prize has gone to a story about characters in rural New England.  Last year, "Olive Kitteridge" intoduced us to a feisty yet vulnerable character who faced aging and death. Her story was told in one of my  favorite forms, a "novel in short stories".  "Tinkers", a short yet supposedly powerful debut novel, would seem to have a lot in common with Marilynne Robinson's 2005 Pulitzer winner "Gilead" with its stark narrative from an austere environment told from the point of view of a dying man.

One of the finalists actually is a novel told in connected stories, and involves the relationship of animals to humans.  "Love in Infant Monkeys," by Lydia Millet (Soft Skull Press), is "an imaginative collection of linked stories, often describing a memorable encounter between a famous person and an animal, underscoring the human folly of longing for significance while chasing trifles".  Along with "Tinkers", I am highly anticipating this read.

The third and last finalist, "In Other Rooms, Other Wonders,” by Daniyal Mueenuddin (W.W. Norton & Company), is "a collection of beautifully crafted stories that exposes the Western reader to the hopes, dreams and dramas of an array of characters in feudal Pakistan, resulting in both an aesthetic and cultural achievement."  In form and theme, it reminds me of Jhumpa Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies" or Robert Olin Butler's "A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain", both previous Pulitzer winners. I am interested by the inclusion of this work, because the Pulitzer generally seeks works that observe aspects of American life.  Lahiri's characters and Butler's, too, were ethnic groups transplanted into American culture.


In an upcoming post I will talk more about some of my favorite novels that came from the ranks of the Pulitzer winners. A special nod to my friend at The Oscar Completist, who takes these literary Awards as seriously as the Academy Awards.  Kudos!

A Writer's Quiet Fears, Just After Midnight, in The Wee Hours of Sunday Morning

I don't talk much here about my fiction.  It is a fragile topic....ideas for fiction are as delicate as unfinished silk webs, and any early disruptions are likely to destroy them.

My motivation often comes from creating expectations for myself.  In the case of writing fiction, I am anxious about what i expect will be the final opinion of my readers: I want them to like the story, but also to be moved, transformed...changed for good.  But, like an actor on the stage, I feed off applause, an artist's ultimate creative climax at the end of the work.  By sharing bits and pieces early, I risk changing my original vision, and losing the incentive, the promise of acclaimed recognition of my effort, before giving myself a chance to complete something I know is original and exciting. Worse, a lukewarm reception to the unfinished masterpiece leads to discouragement, again no incentive to finish the work.

Sometimes by dwelling too much on readers' reactions, I paralyze myself against moving in a new direction, trusting my instincts.  I tend to want to get it just so, and perfection is like an asymptote---you can get infinitely closer to it without ever touching it.

Tomorrow I have decided to take the plunge and write for a contest offered by National Public Radio: a "three-minute short-story contest", of only 600 words, and 4 specific given words must fit somewhere in the story.

600 words.  Not a word can be wasted.  I have to meet a tight deadline.  And I have to be brief as well as expressive.

As if in a dream, the ideas stirred in the cauldron of my imagination, the ingredients of which came in pinches and shakes from my own experience.....  And so I will craft a story of a dog, a shelter, Opera, a concerned owner, the Italian language.....and hope to move people in a concentrated way.  Lady, shown to the left, was an inspiration...

After the contest ends, I'll submit my story for your review.....Wish me luck!