Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Saturday, September 5, 2009

What I'm Watching

Howl's Moving Castle
What is it about the Japanese imagination? I'm thinking not only about Hayao Miyazaki but also about Haruki Murakami, whose stories have that same random brilliance, that ability to take the story in unforeseen directions. Americans fret about coherence and continuity, about setting up gags and delivering the payoff, but there's something more free and unfettered about Miyazaki's narrative and visualizations. And the characters -- Howl, the Witch of the Waste, even Sophie -- have an unpredictability about them, an ambiguity in their motives and attitudes that would have been edited out of them in an American story conference.

How Google Screwed Up Book Search

Geoff Nunberg on how Google fumbled its grand project:

Google has taken a group of the world's great research collections and returned them in the form of a suburban-mall bookstore.

Friday, September 4, 2009

What I'm Watching

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
This is what I call a "stunt film." It gets so caught up in its tricks that it forgets to be about anything. Granted, the tricks are good ones -- i.e., the aging/de-aging of Brad Pitt, and so on. But the premise of the film is merely a sterile conceit, and one that negates the emotions that it should have worked harder to elicit.

One of These Things Is Not Like the Others

I don't know why I was reading Tim Goodman's column in the Chron today about new shows on the CW, which I never watch and am not even sure how to find on my DirecTV feed. But I came across this sentence in its account of the new revival of "Melrose Place":

But L.A. still corrupts: Someone dies in the pilot; a med student has to essentially become a hooker; there are drugs, mean publicists, bisexuality, infidelity and the world's least believable art thief.

I was reminded of the old "Sesame Street" bit, "One of These Things Is Not Like the Others." That is, death, prostitution, drug abuse, "mean publicists," infidelity and art theft can all more or less legitimately be considered "corrupt." But in this day and age, and especially in San Francisco, isn't bisexuality just another orientation?

Old prejudices die hard, I guess.

Straight to the Point

Straight talk from John Cole and John Harwood:

Someone not named Taibbi went on television and told the truth. I’m kind of shocked:

This can not be stated enough, and we now have Tapper and Harwood on record that this is nonsense. The rest of the media is still in he-said/she-said mode.

For a while, I’ve been trying to come up with three questions that you could ask anyone and determine if they were a wingnut. Up until now, the list was:

1.) Did we find WMD in Iraq?
2.) How old is the earth?
3.) Was Obama born in the United States?

I may have to add “Is it a bad thing if the President tells school kids to study hard?”

Steve Benen puts it well, too:

Conservatives don't want school kids to hear a message from their president. Those who claim superiority on American patriotism have decided to throw yet another tantrum over the idea that the president of the United States might encourage young people to do well in schools.
This is what American politics has come to in 2009.

I Think I've Found a New Hero

Al Franken -- calm, cool, collected, and informed.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Rachel and Ridge

If you missed Rachel Maddow's interview with Tom Ridge tonight, you should go watch it all. But here's the highlight: her stern riposte to Ridge's claim that invading Iraq was the right thing to do. The whole interview is remarkable for her politeness and good humor in the face of some pretty unconscionable double-talk on Ridge's part, but also for doing one thing that TV journalists too seldom do: sticking to her guns and speaking truth to power.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

What I'm Listening To

Benjamin Britten, Billy Budd. Philip Langridge (Vere); Simon Keenlyside (Billy Budd); John Tomlinson (Claggart). London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Richard Hickox.

I've never seen Billy Budd onstage, but I'm told it can make a powerful impact. This recording, however, seems dramatically slack. Langridge, Tomlinson and especially Keenlyside make solid efforts to bring the characters to life. But Langridge is handicapped by one of those high, thin, grainy English tenor voices that make you wonder why Vere is held in such awe by his crew, and Claggart's menace is undermined by the wobble in Tomlinson's voice. This is also one of those opera recordings that are stingy on the dynamics, so that the quiet opening is almost lost unless you bump the volume up.

That said, the recording is almost worth it for the power and nuance of Keenlyside's singing and acting. His version of "Look, through the port comes the moonshine astray" is heartbreaking. Keenlyside's Budd doesn't seem to be available on YouTube, but here's a fine version of "Look, through the port" by Dwayne Croft from the 1997 Met production. In the second part, the Dansker is Paul Plishka.

What I'm Reading

The long assignment drought has ended: I have three reviews in the works. So for the time being I will spare you my thoughts on what's next on my leisure-time reading list, namely Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

Monday, August 31, 2009

"The Gift of Obviousness"

Rachel Maddow and Sen. Bernie Sanders do a bang-up job of explaining why health care reform is urgent and how it might be achieved.