Music, old and new

I’ve gone to two concerts in as many days, and here, as they say, is the thing:

The recent music that I heard — not so-called “new music” but music just a handful of years old — had nothing interesting about it. It was banal, relentlessly diatonic, with every effect a special one, a gimmick. It was the older music, by Maurice Ravel and a handful of pre-Baroque composers, that sounded utterly new, with nothing stale or contrived about it. I intend no generalization here: there’s much recent music of all sorts that I love, and orchestral warhorses often leave me cold. My point is that what’s good stays good, and, in some way, new. I’ll quote Emerson: “perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in any work of art.”

From the local news

In a feature about aging, the anchor exclaimed, “Man, there are a lot of people getting older!” And: they’re not just Baby Boomers. Imagine that. Thank you, local news.

Also from the local news, an unnecessary clarification.

Ashbery at criticism

In the latest Poetry Project Newsletter (no. 236), John Ashbery writes about a new book from Robert Elstein, Helen Arms (Green Zone Editions, 2013). Ashbery zooms in on a line from an earlier poem, “Hermes Holding an Orange”: “I’d shake hands, but I left my mittens in the cafeteria”:

The ambiguities are multifarious. Why would forgetting mittens preclude a handshake? Surely, it would be rude to shake someone’s hand with a scratchy mitten on yours. And why were they left in the cafeteria? It sounds like they were left on purpose, but if so, what could that be? Is it part of some anarchist plot or meant, perhaps, to ease things for the next customer? But one mustn’t break butterflies on wheels. The butterflies will do just fine for themselves.

That’s lovely, and it’s a reminder that the line between literary criticism and parody can be a fine one, very fine, the kind drawn with a 0.38 mm Uni-ball Signo gel pen, or an erasable ballpoint.

And if you’re wondering, Ashbery writes as an admirer: “I’ve been waiting six years for a sequel to Robert Elstein’s slim volume, The Hollandaise, whose manic vocabulary knocked me out of my chair the first time I read it.”

Related reading
All John Ashbery posts (Pinboard)
The Poetry Project

The worst sentences in Salinger so far

From David Shields and Shane Salerno’s Salinger, “the official book of the acclaimed documentary film.” These sentences, from Salerno, appear on page 244:

This narrative — Salinger’s only novel — is told in the first-person voice of Holden Caulfield. That voice is Salinger, direct and unfiltered by the artifice of third-person camouflage. It’s his life, his thoughts, his feelings, his rage, his big beautiful middle finger to the phonies of the world.

Ten years of agony to get it all down on paper.

Oh, the drama. This passage sounds to me like very bad student writing. And its misunderstanding of the ways in which fiction works — no matter what Salinger said about “being” Holden Caulfield — suggests a failure of imagination. Salinger knows more than his character, just as Twain knows more than Huck Finn, Joyce more than Stephen Dedalus. It’s called irony.

Related reading
The worst sentence in Salinger so far
All J. D. Salinger posts (Pinboard)

Domestic comedy

“Her voice is instantly recognizable, even without looking at the screen.”

“Whose voice?”

Related reading
All domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[Whose voice? Elizabeth Ashley’s.]

Words I can live without

I could not have expressed it half so well.

Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey
Through France and Italy (1768)

Two words I can live without, when they fall together: expressed that , where that introduces a subordinate clause. I am surprised to see that Garner’s Modern American Usage makes no mention of expressed that , an awkward construction that turns up again and again in the context of “school.” Try a Google search for the likely phrasing. Or consider these sentences from an imaginary board meeting:

Ms. Krabappel expressed that she has concerns about the textbook. Principal Skinner expressed that he caught Bart Simpson cheating.

In each sentence, said that would do the job. But for speakers and writers of educationese, expressed that has a clear advantage: more letters, more syllables. (Yes, Latinate v. Germanic.) Perhaps expressed also serves to invest whatever was said with a claim to sincerity and truth: she didn’t just say that she was concerned; she expressed that , &c.

One might express approval, bewilderment, concern, doubt, eagerness, fear, glee — in each case, an it, a plain old direct object, follows the verb, with the speaker or writer representing a feeling or point of view in words. The oddness of express that becomes more obvious when one uses it in the present tense:

Ms. Krabappel expresses that she has concerns about the textbook. Principal Skinner expresses that he caught Bart Simpson cheating.

Google search returns far fewer results for the present-tense construction. Hmm.

For say that to replace express that in the world of education would require a larger rethinking of what to value in speaking and writing. If it’s to be plainness and clarity, say that wins.

The evil twin of expressed that : It is felt that , which erases human agency. By whom? By whom?

More words I can live without
Bluesy , craft , &c.
Delve , -flecked , &c.
Pedagogy
That said
Three words never to use in a poem

Dear House Republicans

Dear House Republicans:

A pox on you and all your ancestors.

Sincerely,

Me

[This curse courtesy of Edward L. Norton. As famously uttered in “The Bensonhurst Bomber,” The Honeymooners, September 8, 1956.]

Trail and Rhodes

[Mark Trail, October 1, 2013.]

Dusty Rhodes! I too am meeting this gentleman for the first time. Who will show up next? Lois Lane? Della Street? Hi Way?

Related reading
All Mark Trail posts (Pinboard)

Apropos of yesterday

[As seen in a parking lot. Photograph by Michael Leddy.]

Yes, apropos of yesterday.

E-mailing professors

The New York Times reports on college students’ reluctance to use their school e-mail accounts. Says University of Iowa student Brittney Carver,

“I never know what to say in the subject line and how to address the person. Is it mister or professor and comma and return, and do I have to capitalize and use full sentences? By the time I do all that I could have an answer by text if I could text them.”

But you can’t, at least not for the most part.

You can, however, read the guidelines that all the cool kids are reading: How to e-mail a professor. They will answer all your questions. By they I mean the guidelines. The cool kids are too busy to answer any questions.

Thanks to Matt Thomas’s Submitted for Your Perusal, which again and again points me to Times articles I would otherwise miss.