Q and A

A question and a wonderful answer:

Q. You had a large handbag with you at the [Yankees World Series] game. What was in it?

A. A Hermes address book with an extensible very thin silver pencil; and two other pencils--a black ball-point (my name stamped in gold), retractable, made by a veteran who is paralyzed below the chest, who makes and sells a variety of eye-catchers as a living--Hal McColl, 101 West Club Boulevard, Durham, North Carolina. I occasionally order a pen set of him since it doesn't scratch or exude spiders. In case it gave out, I had a Dixon Ticonderoga with brass cap; had a Standard ring-topped notebook and a little thing of fifteen pages with a glazed white cover, souvenir of Unz & Co., Stationers, 24 Beaver Street, New York City--given me for a trip but saved for a single special event. Then I had a miniature pair of black plastic binoculars weighing an ounce and three-quarters--bought by mail to watch a bluejay that for two or three years had preempted a catalpa tree in a backyard adjacent to my back windows. I like to startle it by imitating it, so that it gives a sharp look round and answers uncertainly. It stays all winter.

Question by man of letters George Plimpton, answer by poet Marianne Moore, from "Ten Answers: Letters from an October Afternoon, Part II," Harper’s (November 1964).

[Moore's "spiders" seems to refer to the way fountain-pen ink will sometimes spread out on highly porous paper.]

Grammy anger management

I watched the entire Grammy broadcast this year, hoping to see Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks in the audience. Alas, the three categories in which their masterpiece SMiLE was nominated weren't even part of the broadcast. Brian Wilson did make an appearance in a ramshackle "all-star" version of "Across the Universe," which was immediately offered for sale across the universe in the form of an iTunes file.

As music lovers both younger and older know, the Grammys are about product and units sold and the handful of cds that all listeners are supposed to fall in line to buy. So I'm not really disappointed by this year's Grammys. But I am angered by several elements of this broadcast:

One: The dreadful singing evident in so many of the live performances--faux-gospel melisma and faulty pitch. "Across the Universe" is just one example. The ghastly Southern-rock medley is another. What does it mean that we have a pop culture in which many singers cannot really sing? Presumably, that their listeners don't know enough to hear the difference. (Quite scary, because some young singers--e.g., Usher--can really sing.)

Two: The lip-service paid to dead musicians (such as Jelly Roll Morton) and living musicians (such as Pinetop Perkins) whose work will never be a part of the show.

Three: The marginalization of other musicians through specious categorization. On what basis, for instance, is Wilco relegated to the "Alternative" category? (Number of units sold, I suspect.)

Four: The virtual disappearance of whole areas of music. Classical music and jazz were never more than peripheral in the past, but now winners in those areas (and many others) aren't even announced from the stage. Instead, their names flash at the bottom of the screen, so unobtrusive that they're almost invisible.

Overlooked

Two albums were, to my mind, sadly overlooked at the Grammys. In 2004 Brian Wilson released a newly-sequenced and newly-recorded SMiLE, the epic of American innocence and experience that was to have been the followup to The Beach Boys' 1966 Pet Sounds. SMiLE never happened back then, ending up as an abandoned, unreleased Beach Boys album and the greatest "lost" recording in pop music. For BW and lyricist Van Dyke Parks to have brought SMiLE to completion 38 years later makes for a human interest story that's hard to match. And in its music and lyrics, SMiLE is extraordinary. It's received rave reviews and has sold a respectable 300,000 or so copies (maybe more by now).

I really was hoping (always the optimist) that the Grammys would recognize that 2004 was, among other things, the year of SMiLE. That would have been a sweet finish to an amazing chapter in The Brian Wilson Story. But SMiLE won only a single Grammy, for best rock instrumental ("Mrs. O'Leary's Cow"). For many listeners, though, SMiLE was the album of the year, 38 years later.

My other album of the year is Nellie McKay's Get Away from Me, a debut "double-album" (18 songs on two cds) by an inspired songwriter-singer-pianist. McKay (pronounced "mc KYE") has been compared to Eminem and Doris Day, but such comparisons are hype rather than accurate description. McKay is in truth a writer of funny, sharp, poignant lyrics, a composer of very memorable tunes, an accomplished pianist, and a singer of great flexibility who's well acquainted with pop, rock, hip-hop, and jazz idioms. (And she sings on pitch!) She is, as her album title suggests, something of an anti-Norah Jones, a performer whose energy and quirkiness could never work as bookstore background-music.

You can find links for Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks, and Nellie McKay to your right on the sidebar.

Problems

From "Reflections on the "Problem Novel," by Barbara Feinberg:

It is easy to spot Alex’s assigned reading books among his real books. His real books are worn, and cling to a driving force, namely Comedy. These books are stacked and bulging in his shelves, all the novels by Louis Sachar, Daniel Pinkwater, Barbara Park. And then thicker books—the biographies of Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Larry Gelbart; all the scripts from Our Show of Shows; the script of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum; a book called 170 Years of Show Business. But mostly his library serves to illuminate and honor Mel Brooks, his hero.

Among these worn texts, the school-issued books seem sleek and untouched in comparison. They are paperbacks moderate in length, and on their covers are drawings of slim, attractive teenagers. They look cool, defiant; they manage to look at me but not seem exposed. I never read any of these books in my own childhood (nothing in this pile was published before 1972). Who are these bold teenage protagonists? Do these books constitute a new kind of book, represent a new sensibility with regard to children? What is the nature of their grimness?

Anyone interested in what passes for lit in schools today (i.e, the "problem novel") will want to read the entire essay, which you can find by clicking here.

Patriarchy and property

From an article in today's New York Times, "AIDS and Custom Leave African Families Nothing":

Many tribes are patrilineal, meaning children are considered the father's descendants and men are seen as the sole property owners in the family. If her husband dies, the wife may be allowed to stay in the couple's house--but, sometimes, only on condition that she marry one of her husband's relatives. If she wants to move, perhaps back to her own family, she typically leaves with nothing but the clothes on her back.

Or she may simply be driven out altogether. Increasingly, in-laws cite the possibility that a widow is infected with the AIDS virus as reason to confiscate her home.

You can read the article by clicking here.

[To read the Times, use mediajunkie as your name and password. For more names and passwords to enter free sites that require registration, go to bugmenot.com.]

How to improve writing (no. 6 in a series)

From a written statement by a school-board candidate withdrawing from an election (as reported in the local paper):

I am looking to make a sacrifice for the benefit of the April 5, 2005 election and understanding that I will be retaining the right for me and my qualified supporters to circulate future petitions so that I can pursue a future election in approximately two years or any election thereafter, to a position as a member of the [Name] Community Unit School District so long as I am a resident of that school district and otherwise qualified.

Note the unnecessary legalisms: "retaining the right," "qualified supporters," "any election thereafter."

Translation: Now is not the best time for me to run, but I might run again in a few years.

Link » Other How to improve writing posts, via Pinboard

Sinks

3703 students: Here are three links to photographs of sinks that more or less resemble what we saw in "To My Wash-stand." It's difficult to tell whether these are really old or only faux-old. I found them by typing old bathroom sink in Google. Here they are: the first, the second, and the third. Notice the old-style tile floors in the second and third photos.

Yet another word from the Greek

From the wordsmith.org word-a-day service:

misandry (MIS-an-dree) noun
Hatred of men.
[From mis-, from miso- (hate) + -andry (male).]

The feminine counterpart of this term is misogyny, and hatred of humankind is known as misanthropy.

"Television advertising, for example, is deeply infected by misandry. In adverts for everything from jeans to yogurt, men are portrayed as idiots."
John Waters; A Hate That Dares Us to Breathe Its Name; Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland); Nov 25, 1997.

Overheard

In What's Cookin':

"Shall we build with jelly packets?"

Overheard

Near Booth Library:

"I can feel his head in the back of my head."