Jonathan Franzen: 'I must be near the end of my career – people are starting to approve'

Interview to Ed Pilkington

Guardian
September 25, 2010

Last month, Jonathan Franzen became the first author in a decade to appear on the cover of Time magazine. Over a shot of him looking characteristically serious appeared the words "Great American Novelist".

In his famous Harper's essay of 1996, Franzen had bemoaned the magazine's lack of literary pin-ups as evidence of the declining importance of serious fiction, so you might think he'd be in celebratory mood. Being Franzen, he isn't comfortable with the label. "It paints a big bullseye on the back of my head," he says. "I always hated the expression anyway, mostly because I encountered it in stupid or sneering contexts."

He switches to a high-pitched mocking tone: "Still working on the Great American Novel?" Then adopts the barrel voice of a dunce: "I'm thinking of taking a year off to go to France and write a Great American Novel."

The sneering began after Franzen expressed misgivings over the selection of his last novel, The Corrections, for the Oprah Winfrey book club, in 2001. It sold nearly 3m copies and established Franzen as one of the leading literary voices of his generation, but, thanks to his perceived snub to Winfrey, it also established his reputation as, variously, an "ego-blinded snob" (Boston Globe), a "pompous prick" (Newsweek) and a "spoiled, whiny little brat" (Chicago Tribune).

The fallout set back his writing by more than a year. This time, Franzen has toughened up. "Whatever happens," he says, of his new novel Freedom, "it's not going to get to me. It's just not."

More

Still Loving You - Scorpions with The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (2000)

More and more.

Scorpions

Scorpions will perform at the Peace and Friendship Stadium (Athens, Oct. 6, 2010).

Why I Hate Ordering Wine by the Glass

by Lettie Teague

Wall Street Journal
September 18, 2010

Every wine drinker I know maintains at least one wine-related prejudice or another—whether he admits it or not. One friend, for example, abhors drinking white wine while another eschews all rosés (he has labeled them "Pepto de Provence.") Yet a third disdains Riesling on account of the bottle, which she calls a "needle nose." (She's a former fashion editor—of course.)

I have a wine prejudice of my own: I simply hate wines by the glass. But unlike most prejudices, born of ignorance and fear, my prejudice was acquired through experience.

Foremost among my glass-hating reasons is price. Wines by the glass are almost invariably the worst deal in the house. After all, the conventional rule of thumb calls for the price of the glass to equal the wholesale cost of the bottle, plus, often, a few dollars more. And with five glasses in a bottle (or four, at a more conservative measure) that's a profit margin so large that only the greediest restaurateurs would dare to charge a similar markup on a full bottle. As Michael Madrigale, wine director of New York's Bar Boulud, put it: "The wine-by-the-glass program pays for corked bottles and when wine gets sent back. For most wine directors, it's the profit engine of a wine list."


More

Forget What You Know of Twain, Then Delight in Your Rediscovery

New York Times
September 17, 2010

Mark Twain’s heroes tend to land in unexpected places: caves, locked cabins, long-gone eras, the Czar’s palace, a Tasmanian jungle, Southern drawing rooms. Whether it’s Huck Finn floating on a raft with an escaped slave or Hank Morgan thrust into the court of King Arthur, they are generally good-humored about their quandary and come out in pretty decent condition, tossing off a few wisecracks, learning a few things, maybe even making a fortune.

But puzzling it all out isn’t easy: how do you make sense of an alien or changing world? Can you make judgments based on what you’ve been taught or what you think you already know, whether as prince or pauper? People are different there: what are we to make of them? How are we to act?

Samuel Clemens, of course, must have often felt the same way, his 74-year life arcing from rural poverty to world renown, from the antebellum South to 20th-century industrial New England, from Confederate sympathies to the rationalist skepticism of liberal modernity. He created a persona so familiar to us, so amiably congenial and sardonic, at once so folksy and high-toned with its attempt to cudgel and cajole the sense out of things, that we may think we understand him too. He landed squarely on his feet late in life, a modern man. And 100 years after his death and 175 after his birth, he still comfortably stands in our company. But in this year of dual birth and death commemorations, go to the Morgan Library & Museum, where a major new exhibition, Mark Twain: A Skeptic’s Progress, draws from two great collections of books and manuscripts at the Morgan and the New York Public Library.

Περισσότερα

Guggenheim: Interact

The Scout Report
September 17, 2010

Interacting with the Guggenheim museums' collections is a great experience, and if you can't make it to one of their physical locations, this is the next best thing. The site is replete with creative assemblages of video ("YouTube Play"), blogs ("The Take"), and electronic newsletter options. Visitors shouldn't miss the "Voices from the Archives" area. Here they can listen to recent podcasts and as well as events from the past, including a conversation with Kandinsky scholar Rose-Carol Washton Long from 1964. Perhaps the most interesting part of the site is the "Declarations" section. Here, the Guggenheim has invited a "wide range of artists, scholars, activists, businesspeople, and government leaders to contribute concise remarks on related topical themes." One of the recent queries was "How is the idea of progress part of your practice?", and the responses are quite revealing. Finally, visitors can also make their way through their scrolling Twitter feed, and they are also encouraged to use the social media connections on the site to stay up-to-date.

More

They Had Great Character

by Stephen Tobolowsky

New York Times
September 16, 2010

One evening not long ago, my wife and I were standing in the lobby of a theater when a group of women approached me with “that look.” It’s a look that I have come to know as the “You are either someone in show business or my former chiropractor” look.

The women smiled bashfully and the brave one asked, “Are you who we think you are?” I responded, fearful of litigation, “That all depends on who you think I am.”

She giggled and said, “The actor.” I bowed and replied, “Yes, ma’am.” She brightened: “The one on ‘Lost.’”

I said, “No, no, sorry.”

Undeterred, she followed up with, “No, I meant the movie by the Coen brothers, ‘A Serious Man.’ ”

I was not in that movie either, though I auditioned for it and offered to wash Joel and Ethan’s cars if they would cast me. I suggested to the women that they had seen me in “Groundhog Day” or “Glee,” neither of which they had heard of. At this point I was certain that I had to be talking to visitors from another world or time travelers.

This is an encounter that I have had quite often. I am a character actor: the perfect combination of ubiquity and anonymity. But this particular comedy of errors made me give some serious thought to the strange, occasionally delightful and often humbling path we character actors tread. My thoughts were tinged with the sadness of having recently lost five magnificent companions on that road — Kevin McCarthy, Carl Gordon, Maury Chaykin, James Gammon and Harold Gould.

More

Woody Allen on Faith, Fortune Tellers and New York

by Dave Itzkoff

New York Times
September 14, 2010

Asked on Tuesday morning if it was appropriate to wish him a happy Jewish New Year, Woody Allen made it clear that such formalities were not necessary. “No, no, no,” he said with a chuckle, seated in an office suite at the Loews Regency hotel. “That’s for your people,” he told this reporter. “I don’t follow it. I wish I could get with it. It would be a big help on those dark nights.”

At 74, Mr. Allen, the prolific filmmaker and emblematic New Yorker, has hardly found religion. But the idea of faith informs his latest movie, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, which Sony Pictures Classics is to release next Wednesday. In the film, as the marriage of a London couple (Anthony Hopkins and Gemma Jones) unravels, the wife seeks comfort in the supernatural, which has unforeseen consequences on the marriage of her daughter (Naomi Watts) and her husband (Josh Brolin).

“To me,” Mr. Allen said, “there’s no real difference between a fortune teller or a fortune cookie and any of the organized religions. They’re all equally valid or invalid, really. And equally helpful.”

Mr. Allen spoke with Dave Itzkoff about his new film, how its themes resonate in his life and whether he has made his last movie in New York. These are excerpts from that conversation.

More

‘His Glory and His Curse’

by Charles Baxter

New York Review of Books
September 30, 2010

In his essay “Mr. Difficult,” Jonathan Franzen reports with a certain glum satisfaction that following the publication in 2001 of his third novel, The Corrections, he began to receive large quantities of angry mail. Some of the anger was sociological. “Who is it you are writing for? It surely could not be the average person who just enjoys a good read.” And some of it was just plain personal. One reader accused Franzen of being “a pompous snob, and a real ass-hole.”

Franzen’s novel spent twenty-nine weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and won the 2001 National Book Award. But no general readerly consensus seemed to exist concerning the book’s merits. The novel had hit a nerve, and it polarized its readers into two camps: those who hated it with particular venom, and those who felt it was a fine and beautiful book. (I was among the latter.) The author’s own ambivalence about the mass media didn’t help matters. After saying some indiscreet words about the Oprah Winfrey imprimatur on his novel’s book jacket, Franzen was disinvited from appearing on her show. It was a scandal, for a week or two.

The disagreements haven’t gone away. In his recent Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, David Shields denounces The Corrections without having read it: “I couldn’t read that book if my life depended on it,” he asserts. For him, Franzen’s novel—sight unseen—exemplifies “the big, blockbuster novel by middle-of-the-road writers, the run-of-the-mill four-hundred-page page-turner.” Shields claims that he is amazed that people still want to read such fiction. Oddly, what Shields seems to distrust about Franzen’s work (its mass appeal, its middleness) is exactly what the author’s enraged readers claimed The Corrections lacked. Was it still possible for a mass-audience novel to be artistically refined and thematically important? On this point there was no agreement because there hasn’t been any for decades.

More

French New Wave film director Claude Chabrol dies

AFP/Yahoo News
September 12, 2010

Prolific French film maker Claude Chabrol, who helped start the New Wave movement in the 1950s and went on to create some of the darkest portrayals on the silver screen, died on Sunday aged 80.

Chabrol was "an immense French film director, free, impertinent, political and verbose," Paris deputy mayor Christophe Girard, the city's top culture official, told AFP.

Born in Paris on June 24, 1930, Chabrol became famous for his sombre portrayals of French provincial bourgeois life.

Along with Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, he was an icon of French New Wave cinema, with all three writing for the renowned Cahiers du Cinema.

He authored dozens of films over more than 50 years, from his first work, Le Beau Serge, made in 1958 thanks to his wife's inheritance, to his last film, Bellamy, starring Gerard Depardieu which was released in 2009.

More

The Art of Ancient Greek Theater

The Scout Report
September 10, 2010

The Getty Museum provides this glimpse of Greek theater by utilizing both images and audio. Text at the website informs us that "Colorful characters, elaborate costumes, stage sets, music, and above all masks" were characteristic of Greek drama. Examples of images available to view on the site include sculpture and relief depicting actors. Many of these images feature actors wearing masks, such as Statue of an Actor as Papposilenos, dating from A.D. 100-199. In Greek myth, Papposilenos is the father of the band of satyrs that raised Dionysos. There are also over a dozen vessels to view; these vessels were used for various purposes including cooling wine, storage jars, and mixing vessels. The vessels are painted with scenes from the theater, and several are accompanied by audio of curators explaining the iconography. One of the featured items in the collection is a papyrus fragment from 175-200 A.D. with a few lines from a play by Sophocles. The exhibition closes with a reading, in ancient Greek, of an excerpt from this play, entitled The Trackers; a scene in which satyrs also appear, hearing music played on the then-newly invented lyre.


More

Helen Vendler's new commentary on Emily Dickinson

by Helen Vendler

Washington Post
September 9, 2010

Any good bookstore is likely to offer a half-dozen different editions of Emily Dickinson's poetry. But the reason to consider buying Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries lies, of course, in the commentator, Helen Vendler.

Vendler -- A. Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard -- is widely regarded as our finest living critic and champion of contemporary poetry. Many would say of poetry, period, since she has produced important studies of half the Western canon, from Shakespeare's sonnets and George Herbert's metaphysical verse to the work of Keats, Whitman, Yeats, Stevens, Plath, Heaney and Ashbery. Vendler's sheer appetite for poetry and her explicatory power are phenomenal.

She is, however, a thoroughly serious, academic critic. Now, some professors are fun to read: Think of the cool Olympian clarity of Northrop Frye, the astonishing encyclopedism of Hugh Kenner, the delicious precisions of Guy Davenport, the Empsonian dash and brilliance of Christopher Ricks. Vendler's strength, meanwhile, lies in clearly, patiently explaining what's happening in a poem. But -- and it's a big but -- you really do need to pay attention. As Vendler writes in her introduction to Dickinson, hers isn't so much a book to read through as "a book to be browsed in, as the reader becomes interested in one or another of the poems commented on here."

More

The Neuroscience of Jazz

by Stuart Isacoff

Wall Street Journal
September 4, 2010

Among the young lions of jazz piano, Indian- American artist Vijay Iyer is a standout. He is perpetually on "best of" lists, most recently as the recipient of the Jazz Journalists Association 2010 award for Musician of the Year (an honor previously given to Herbie Hancock, Ornette Coleman and Wayne Shorter). His 2009 recording, "Historicity," was chosen as the No. 1 jazz album by myriad critics in the U.S. and in Europe. And his newest effort, "Solo," released last week, is already garnering raves. He'll be celebrating with a performance at (Le) Poisson Rouge, New York's Greenwich Village music club, on Sept. 10.

But that's only the most visible part of his career. During the '90s, while Mr. Iyer was cultivating his artistic voice at late-night gigs, his daylight hours were spent working as a physics major at the University of California at Berkeley, where he produced a doctoral thesis that focused on "the role of the body in music perception and cognition"—that is, the part played by bodily experience in the comprehension of music. The two spheres may seem worlds apart. Yet, speaking of his two lives, the pianist reveals that in some ways, each was made possible by the other.

For example, his individuality at the keyboard has much to do with the sheer physicality of his approach, which he traces to a major influence, Thelonious Monk. That late pianist's assertive style, filled with quirky dissonances, craggy rhythms, and oddly tangible moments of silence (it was once described by Monk's wife, Nellie, as "melodious thunk"), brings to mind what avant-garde improviser Cecil Taylor said of another jazz performer, Horace Silver. Mr. Taylor admired Mr. Silver's playing, he said, because of "the filth of it," the "movement in the attack."

"When I first started checking recordings out of my local library," remembers Mr. Iyer, "and I heard Monk, I found something there that I could really relate to. His perspective was very physical and intuitive, but also logical and rigorous—and insistent in its rigor. I've always been inspired by the percussive school of pianism—to artists like [Duke] Ellington and Monk, who exhibit ferocity, sparseness and elegance. Then the documentary film about Monk, 'Straight, No Chaser,' came out. And seeing him in action made me understand—it's been said before—that you haven't heard Monk until you've seen him. The full impact of his art hit me like a lightning bolt. It was so vivid and intense."

More

Laurindo Almeida with The Modern Jazz Quartet

The Modern Jazz Quartet with classical guitarist Laurindo Almeida playing Jobim’s One Note Samba.

More

thanks to Orin Kerr

Time Marches ... Backward!

by Neil Genzlinger

New York Times
September 2, 2010

I’ve learned to shrug off some fairly ignominious baggage associated with being a resident of New Jersey: the Burr-Hamilton duel, the Hindenburg disaster, “Jersey Shore,” the Nets’ 2009-10 season. But the news that my state was once part of the Third Reich — that was an unsettling surprise.

It’s one of the odd bits of trivia that emerge from the fresh look being taken at The March of Time, a series of short films created from 1935 to 1951, an era when people expected more than just previews and a feature when they settled into their movie theater seats. The Museum of Modern Art is in the midst of a week and a half of screenings of these illuminating curiosities, and on Sunday night TCM (in conjunction with HBO Archives) is showing a four-hour marathon of them, introduced by the film historian Robert Osborne.

It’s hard to know today even what to call these films. (Raymond Fielding, a retired college educator who wrote a book about the series, told me that roughly 290 were made.) “Newsreels” seems inadequate; they are longer, more detailed and much more opinionated than the standard-issue newsreels that preceded them. “Documentaries” is closer, but the blaring orchestrations and outlandish voice-overs sound nothing like a modern documentary.

More