• The NYTimes Reading Room “blog” is discussing Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson next. Seriously, whoever’s picking the books over there has impeccable taste. They’ve already done War and Peace and The Moviegoer this year, among others.
• Small Cool Apartments, one of the more inspirational ideas for those of us who live in places the size of most people’s living room (and love it), has been on for a while at ApartmentTherapy.
• If you’re in New York, or even if you’re not, you can still catch Patrick Stewart in Macbeth, because it’s moving to Broadway! We saw it at BAM and it was astounding.
• The New York Philharmonic is playing a free concert on Governor’s Island this summer, and by george, I’d be there, but I just checked the calendar and we’re supposed to be seeing Les Liaisons Dangereuse, starring Laura Linney, that night. Hmm. Also, how cool is it that everyone will have to take a ferry?
• Poets.org says to celebrate Poetry Month by bringing a piece of poetry to your place of worship.
• And lastly, join about 6,000 other people and go watch The Cult of Sincerity. You’ll be glad you did.
My review of Youth Without Youth, Francis Ford Coppola’s latest, is up at WORLD.
I never mentioned how Monday’s program at the 92nd Street Y was. Robert Alter read from his new translation of the Psalms (quite a stunning one, too), as did Marilynne Robinson, who was there as a theologian and writer. There were a few musical settings of his translations as well as two of the Psalms in Hebrew. Between readings, Alter and Robinson commented on them, both as translations, as poetry, and as prayer. Alter sought to recapture the sound and alliteration of the Hebrew Psalms in a greater way than previous English translations such as the KJV have. To me, it sounded a lot like a combination of the raw, personal voice of Peterson’s paraphrase, The Message, but not as a paraphrase, and with a stronger emphasis on poetry. As he pointed out, this book is, in literary terms, an anthology of ancient Hebrew poetry.
Marilynne Robinson is phenomenally articulate - she speaks as she writes - and their observations on the nature of the Psalms both as sacred texts and as ancient poetry were valuable - particularly as Robinson commented on the difference between the polytheistic view of the individual and God’s/the gods’ interest in the individual and that of the Hebrews. (For instance, in most ancient religions, many natural phenomena such as wind, fire, and flood was attributed to disputes between the gods - but in the Psalms, it’s clear that this is something God himself produces, and while it’s fearsome, it’s celebrated.) I hope a recording was made of the talk. I know it was telecast to two Jewish congregations, one in New Jersey and one in Wichita, Kansas. (The 92nd Street Y, if you’re unaware, is actually a YMHA - Young Men’s Hillel Association - so though much of their programming is not overtly religious in nature, there’s a strong Jewish undercurrent.)
Tonight is my office Christmas party (all I can think about are Christmas parties from The Office), and then we’re heading to a screening of 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, which I’m fabulously excited about: it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2007, it’s Romanian, and it’s about illegal abortion at the end of the communist regime in Romania. Review forthcoming.
Also, we are seeing Sweeney Todd at midnight tomorrow night, because we are apparently nutty fans of slasher musicals and possibly only a little less insane than Sweeney himself. If I am awake at all on Friday, I’ll get my butt in gear and write a review as well.
Last night I carted two very heavy bags of Christmas presents that have been piling up in my office as the mail comes in, and locked myself in our tiny bathroom to wrap Tom’s presents. It was kind of acrobatic, and I very nearly had to stand on my head a few times to maneuver the paper properly, but it’s all good and now we have bags of wrapped gifts to bring to Albany.
I did make Tom open one of his presents early because it weighed about forty pounds. It was - what else? - the new Pevear/Volokhonsky translation of War and Peace, which is lovely to look at. But I’m glad we don’t have to cart it up on the train.
Speaking of the train, we leave mid-morning on Saturday for Albany, to celebrate with my mom, my brother, a handful of aunts, uncles, and cousins, grandparents, and a healthy helping of Albany-based friends. We haven’t been home to visit since Sean graduated from high school in June, so this is very exciting. Also, they have snow. A white Christmas for the first time in a while.
The Poetry Society of America is going through some rough times, stemming from an award given to a poet who has previously made comments that some of the Poetry Society’s board members found racially-charged.
Other board members said they felt that such comments were not characteristic of Mr. Hollander’s views or had been misinterpreted. Mr. Louis-Dreyfus said that even if the comments were representative, they were irrelevant criteria for judging the Frost Medal, just as he would argue that Ezra Pound’s anti-Semitism should not detract from the literary appreciation of his work.In some ways the questions about Mr. Hollander’s remarks reflect a broader debate over whether the evaluation of artistic merit should be affected by the sometimes unsavory opinions or actions of the artist. Last year, for example, Germany was stunned when Günter Grass, the Nobel Prize winner, confessed that he had joined the Waffen SS, the military branch of the Nazis, when he was 17. At the time, some people argued that he should renounce his Nobel.
I go back and forth on this very issue. On the one hand, rewarding people of questionable morals seems morally repugnant; on the other hand, everyone has their own skeletons in the closet, and I really tend to think that art (and all work) should be judged on its own merits and not the lifestyle of its maker.
What do you think?
When you’re at work, or you’re at home, and you’re sort of just . . . daydreaming . . . what do you most wish you were doing, or could do?
Short-term, long-term, I want to know.
For me, it goes back and forth, but these days I have two main daydreams; one is that I’m a full-time writer who actually can make a living at it, and therefore I’m justified in doing it, and the other is that we run a very artsy but kind of L’Abri-style place out of a brownstone or two in the West Village, and I get to do all the fun stuff like curating the library and booking the speakers and running a cafe and maybe a theater.
What’s yours?
I can wonder, tongue in cheek,
(By living a life that I actually sort of like),
Will I add, (so to speak),
Five days to each week?
- From Second Hand Smoke, by Linford Detweiler