A Sunday special...
Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
I'll try to put a meander up each Sunday (or Saturday night).
ReplyDeleteMeander where you may, as Teddy would say.....
Cool Pic.It appears you can even see old riverbed towards the upper left.
ReplyDeleteGlad you like it John. This will be my challenge -- to find a meander each week to encourage discussion.
ReplyDeleteUntil then, I'm thinking of cracking into Deadwood this weekend to get a better understanding of the Old West -- or what people today think of when they think of the Old West.
I was sort of confident that this was a good investment until I watched another m/elba highly recommended film (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and promptly went about rewriting it in my head to make it a highly recommended film. I think I may be getting too old for internet recommendations. Or it may just be a guy thing.
That, plus my daughter gave me the ultimate warning about Deadwood -- Dad really liked it. But I have it now so I'm going to give it a try......
And for a little bit of trivia tied to today in history -- somewhere in my garage I have a portion of the Roebling silverware. I think it's 1/5 a set -- but enough pieces to set any table for any party I would ever have. (A friend is a great granddaughter and got tired of packing it around).
ReplyDeleteI meandered away from "War & Peace" last night. Y'all know how I feel about animals and I'm not quite up for the wolf-hunting scene just now.
ReplyDeleteSo I picked up "Balzac's Horse" by Gert Hofmann. I am so wild about Hofmann's "Lichtenberg and the Little Flower Girl" that I am thinking about writing about the experience of reading that book. Not a critique of the book, mind you, but a record of the sights, sounds and smells connected in my mind with the absorption of Hofmann's crisp prose.
While in Paris, I saw Doris Kearns Goodwin on the Bill Maher show. She was laugh-out-loud funny. I had never suspected her of being so witty.
ReplyDeleteBut Goodwin told Maher, anent Obama, that all good presidents enjoy the job they are doing. "Did Lincoln enjoy his time in the White House?" asked Maher. This simple question brought Goodwin to a halt and she had to rethink her statement.
Acck! I just saw Bill Maher on a program my husband is watching. Now I realize it was Jon Stewart who was hosting Doris.
ReplyDeleteGood morning, Chartres. I hope you will start writing -- and let us all know where we can read it. Maybe you should start a Chartres book blog. I'd be a regular there!
ReplyDeleteAs for Bill Maher et al., I never could keep the three of them straight, preferring to get my news commentary from Matthews and Olbermann.
For a long time I thought Colbert was Maher when he did the brilliant send up of Bush:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSE_saVX_2A
This still makes me laugh.
Now that I've seen Religulous, I watch Maher from time to time, but while I like his politics, he tends to be too sexist and homophobic for my taste -- ironic since he recently had a great interview with Gore Vidal.
Well, that link is only part of Colbert's talk.
ReplyDeleteYou all have probably seen this, but just in case hopefully this will work (part 1, 2, and 3):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa-4E8ZDj9s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOYZF3It848
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAvFM4TYQKU
I've seen Goodwin a couple of times on The Daily Show. She really opens up to having a good time when she is there.
ReplyDeleteWell, I've given the March about 50 some pages today and I'm not convinced. He's got some great ideas going -- two rebel soldiers disguised as Union men captured by the Union army, a "white Negro" young girl disguised as a white drummer boy but ... it all seems to be sort of sketched in so far. I think I'm going to have to go back to Goodwin.
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth, both Michiko Kakutani and John Updike had much praise for The March.
ReplyDeleteA reminder that I've been working on my blog, http://rick-wordswordswords.blogspot.com/, and I'm finding it almost addicting. It seems almost too easy. I'm also working on a separate blog for my English department.
You know, Rick, I just don't get it. There's definitely a marching forward quality to the narrative but by now the characters should be "real" somehow and so far they seem more like ideas or caricatures. Same problem I had with Ragtime. I may try again but I'm not sure I want to waste anymore time on it. We'll see.
ReplyDeleteI think for the most part Kakutani's recommendation is the kiss of death for a book with me -- although her reviews always seem well reasoned.
Congrats on the blog. It looks great.
Now that I've written that about Doctorow I wonder if that's the difference between best selling fiction and "literary" fiction -- for lack of a better distinction. One is plot driven and the other character driven?
ReplyDeleteStill waiting on ToR, so I picked up a copy of Jonathan Raban's Old Glory in which he takes a journey on the Mississippi River. I read his Passage to Juneau sometime back, which I enjoyed very much.
ReplyDeleteAnd I now have a copy of Nixonland. Never thought in a million years I'd be looking at a book with Nixon on the cover but have to admit this does look good.
ReplyDeleteBut about that @#$%$#^%$&*^% show Deadwood..... what was I thinking? Nice visuals though.
ReplyDeleteI also bought the first two seasons of Deadwood. Fortunately, they were on sale through amazon.co.uk, as I've had a hard time getting into it as well.
ReplyDeleteI bought the entire thing, also at a discount. I'm going to stick with it for awhile but not sure it will be an easy commitment to make particularly since the last series I've been watching was Forty Something with Hugh Laurie -- which is more my speed.
ReplyDeleteI like Wild Bill, though. And interesting close-up cinematography which is very effective. And loved one of the opening scenes where they show the wagon trains trailing up the hill (from the interstate). If that wasn't the road to Deadwood, they sure found a spot that looked exactly like it.
Interesting though that this is the contemporary idea of "The West." From what I've read, it was nothing at all like that. In comparison, McCabe and Mrs. Miller is probably a lot closer. Or even Paint your Wagon, where they filmed entirely in the rain.
ReplyDeleteI figure now that I made my way through Lost, Deadwood won't be so hard to do. If nothing else I can enjoy Ian McShane. I have to wonder how much of it, if any, is based on Pete Dexter's book beyond the characters.
ReplyDeleteWhich one is Ian McShane? I must admit, they are all pretty good at what they are doing although the stroking of the mustaches and the sulking of the prostitutes might get old after awhile. Just wish they had a few more words to work with.
ReplyDeleteBut yes, after the smoke monster (one of the few things I know about Lost) someone who massacres a family on the road to Spearfish and makes it appear to be the work of the Sioux seems pretty mundane.