Category: Arts and Letters

Pre-Modern Balladeer.

“What we do understand, if we’re listening, is that we’re three albums into a Dylan renaissance that’s sounding more and more like a period to put beside any in his work. If, beginning with Bringing It All Back Home, Dylan garbed his amphetamine visions in the gloriously grungy clothes of the electric blues and early rock & roll, the musical glories of these three records are grounded in a knowledge of the blues built from the inside out…Dylan offers us nourishment from the root cellar of American cultural life. For an amnesiac society, that’s arguably as mind-expanding an offering as anything in his Sixties work. And with each succeeding record, Dylan’s convergence with his muses grows more effortlessly natural.” In the new Rolling Stone and on the eve of Modern Times (due out this Tuesday), author Jonathan Lethem interviews Bob Dylan. (Via Ed Rants.)

Terry Does Dick | Prison Break.

Speaking of Philip K. Dick, word on the street is the one and only Terry Gilliam will be heading The Owl in Daylight, a biopic of the author set to star Paul Giamatti in the lead. And, speaking of paranoid sci-fi-ish surveillance thrillers, Christopher Nolan looks set to board The Prisoner, as in a film version of the classic BBC series, after he finishes the Dark Knight.

That Giant Sucking Sound.

“Granted, some things require more involved assessments (like, say, James Joyce: I find his early work unparalleled in its style and its evocation of emotion, while his later writing became willfully opaque in a manner that leaves me cold). But other things don’t require this sort of elaboration (like, say, John Grisham: He sucks).” In Slate, my friend Seth Stevenson writes in defense of the word “suck.”

He is Legend.

“When you thought it had to be over, that your nerves couldn’t stand any more, that was when Matheson turned on the afterburners. He wouldn’t quit. He was relentless. The baroque intonations of Lovecraft, the perfervid prose of the pulps, the sexual innuendoes, were all absent. You were faced with so much pure drive that only rereadings showed Matheson’s wit, cleverness, and control.” By way of Ed Rants, Stephen King pays tribute to Richard Matheson’s I am Legend, soon to be a Will Smith/Johnny Depp movie near you.

A Textbook Case.

“Just how similar passages showed up in two books is a tale of how the largely obscure $4 billion a year world of elementary and high school textbook publishing often works, for these passages were not written by the named authors but by one or more uncredited writers.” Using doubled passages on Homeland Security as a newspeg, the NYT delves into the somewhat sordid world of history textbook writing. Hmmm. From my experience, what the Times reports is true, but it’s not true of every book. I’ve done quite a bit of work revising supplementals for various history textbooks during my grad school tenure, and, at least for the ones I’ve worked on, the updates and revisions have come right from the top down, from the author or authors on the book’s cover.

Sylvia Path.

“Fonteyn could not jump the way ABT’s Gillian Murphy did on Monday night…” My sister Gill (recently interviewed here) gets a pair of nice reviews today for her recent turn in ABT’s Sylvia. ‘Gillian Murphy, who danced the title role on Monday, was born to play Sylvia…even early in her career she had a gift for ornamenting bold, bravura dancing with filigree musical phrasing, and that gift serves her well.”

E for Escapist.

“Quick answers (as of this date): Golem: yes. Antarctica: yes. Gay love story: yes. Ruins of World’s Fair: no. Long Island: no. Orson Welles: no. Salvador Dali: yes. Loving reference to Betty and Veronica: no. Stan Lee: no.” Author Michael Chabon blogs in to say, among other things, that Natalie Portman is likely Rosa in the forthcoming film version of Kavalier & Klay, to be directed by Stephen Daldry.