Today, I bid an inconclusive farewell to Seamus Heaney’s District and Circle. I also contemplate reading the rest of Blogging Heroes in one go, and being done with the blasted thing.

As for the Decameron, I find myself wondering how this book might be taught. Reading a story a day seems just right, and I expect that it was only the very odd medieval reader who went through it any faster. Most people, like the companions in the Decameron itself, heard the stories, at least until the printing presses got going. Here’s what I’d do if I were teaching the book: I’d have students read it over the summer! Starting in tenth grade.

Now, there’s a thought. Anyone who was exposed to Boccaccio in high school, raise your hand. I didn’t think so. The one classic that would appeal to adolescent audiences, scrupulously kept from them.  What waters of Lethe do teachers drink, anyway?

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¶ Matins: I’ll be at Carnegie Hall this evening, where Thomas Meglioranza, whose wonderful voice I haven’t heard in well over a year, will be singing at the Weill.

¶ Nones: Who knew there was an Uncyclopedia? Why didn’t you tell me?

¶ Vespers: You ought to want to go to the movies. Here’s why…

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Today, we have a dirty picture! I had to photograph it, because the scanner, while perfectly fuctional, won’t hook up with the computer at the moment. Yes, there’s another scanner (the very same model) in the bedroom, but to use it I’d have to boot up the laptop, and then cope with the Wi-Fi signal, which might or might not be registering… I am very anti-tech at the moment.

But even if you don’t ordinarily follow this feature, be sure not to miss the salacious woodcut from a Venetian Decameron of 1492.

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The windows are open today! Even though it’s still February, spring is undeniably in the air. No doubt my cold will get even worse.  

¶ Tierce: Josh Marshall wins the Polk; TPM ineligible for the Pulitzer.

¶ Sext: Another reason for taking an interest in the Oscars this year: reading Mark Harris’s Pictures at a Revolution.

¶ Nones: Books on Monday: Breakable You, a third and, for the time being, final, novel by Brian Morton.

¶ Vespers: What to do with Swimming in a Sea of Death, by David Rieff?

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Although I cannot wait to be done with Blogging Heroes, there’s no doubt that it has prodded me to “purpose” The Daily Blague. What is my blog about, in one sentence or less? I’ve been squirming for more than a month now, trying to answer this question. Last week, I began to understand. The Daily Blague is a blog about being a reader. Not “about reading,” but “about being a reader.” There’s a difference. And one thing that The Daily Blague most emphatically is not: “a blog about books.”

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The tears are streaming down my cheeks. Vive le pays de Marion!

A bearded Paul Newman having the time of his life, playing a mad, pretentious artist, in What a Way to Go! Shirley MacLaine assists.

Reading Mark Harris’s amazing Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, I’ve been struck by more than a few ideas — and I’m only in the seventh chapter. What strikes me most acutely is that film history is as complex and arresting as military history, with the relative advantage of (a) few to no casualties and (b) plenty of beautiful women. The hugely collaborative filmmaking process is so bewilderingly vulnerable to contingency that it is astonishing that any movie is actually completed.

Pictures at a Revolution tells the story behind the making of the five Best Picture nominees of 1968. The narrative begins in 1963 — with, among other details, Warren Beatty thinking about producing and starring in an adaptation of Charles Webb’s new novel, The Graduate. Yes, you read that correctly.

At the same time, producer Arthur P Jacobs was struggling to secure the rights to the Dr Doolittle books. When I read that his most recent production at that time, What a Way to Go!, featured Margaret Dumont — still at work in 1963! — I picked up the phone and had the video sent round at once. I expect that I’ll be seeing a number of pictures in this spontaneous manner as my reading continues.

¶ What a Way to Go!

Plaza Mayor, Salamanca/Wikipedia 

To paraphrase Dr Johnson, he who is bored by Vantage Point is bored by both life and the cinema. As befits a movie that begins with explosions, this excellent little film about a big subject has no settled center of gravity. Gravity, in fact, is precisely what’s blown up. We watch, fascinated, as it reasserts itself over the course of the story.

¶ Vantage Point.

¶ Matins: Vantage Point at ten-twenty, at the Orpheum. In the evening, a MMArtists in Residence recital at Grace Rainey Rogers.

¶ Tierce: Perhaps I want to reconsider the movie? Nah, I always disagree with Manohla Dargis.

¶ Sext: The Manohla-meter worked! I had a super time. In fact, I watched the last fifteen minutes standing up. Ack-shunnn!

¶ Vespers: I’ve decided to stay home. I wouldn’t want to be looking for a slip-and-fall attorney.

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Swanky New York townhouse? Not a bit of it. It’s Joe.My.God‘s post office.

When I was in law school — I turned thirty during first year — Louis Auchincloss was my model. A successful Wall Street attorney, he cranked out novels that were taken seriously, however grudgingly, by the literary establishment. In the event, I would not become a successful lawyer, and I would not crank out novels. But he remained my model just the same.

¶ Larissa MacFarquhar on Louis Auchincloss, in The New Yorker.

High tide or low? Only the wind ripples the surface of the East River.

¶ Matins: Lunch with Nom de Plume!

¶ Tierce. The threat of Alzheimer’s is on the wane, according to a paragraph in the Times. “Older Americans are having less trouble with their memories,” and it’s all tied to schooling.

¶ Nones. Happy to be in for the day. Just before I went out, I came across some cool names for Ollie Kottke’s dinosaur.

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Today’s excerpt from Clives James’s Cultural Amnesia is about Edward Said. I’ve tried to read On Late Style several times since it was given to me, but I haven’t made much headway; the writing is clear and elegant enough but the thoughts are rebarbative. And I can’t help snorting at the idea of Mozart’s “Late Style” — as if the composer had the sense of an approaching end that so clearly inspired Beethoven (and Said’s book). By the unhappiest of accidents, Mozart happened to be fulfilling a commission to write a Requiem Mass when he died. But as this was composed for a knucklehead aristocrat who had the habit of passing off such purchases as his own work, the Requiem is not what we would call a personal project. Mozart was far more engaged with the professional projects that, in my opinion, cost him his health and then his life: two opera premieres, in the far from neighboring towns of Vienna and Prague, within the space of three weeks, and on the cusp of classically eighteen-month-long depression.   Read the rest of this entry »

¶ Matins: Due at Westphalia at eleven.

¶ Lauds. Unable to sleep, I read most of what’s left of Breakable You. Lights out who knows when.

¶ Tierce. In the Times, Letters to the Editor grapple with the meaning of The Great Gatsby.

¶ Sext. Mission accomplished at Westphalia, despite heavy traffic.

¶ Nones. Gotham ugliness is not confined to Queens.

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This could easily be one of those blog entries that are all about how the writer has nothing to say, &c.

An update on “What I’m Reading” used to occupy this space. Books and reading have so extensively pervaded The Daily Blague that it seems fatuous to devote an entry to what turns out, week after week, to be a list of books that I am not reading. I want to read them, I mean to read them — but I’m not reading them. I’m reading lots of other things, things which, for one reason or another, don’t seem to fall under the rubric “What I’m Reading.” All the books on the Morning Read list, for example. And all those magazines!

And now, there’s the Daily Office. This new variety of entry is still very much in the beta stage, so I’m not calling attention to it — I’m just writing it and seeing what happens. The Daily Office is a journal that I plan to spruce up with lots of links, something that The Daily Blague has been short of lately. These weekday journal entries can hold up to eight sub-entries, each one tagged with the name of a “Canonical Hour” — more about which some other time.  Because the meat of each entry lies below the jump, it ought to be very easy to see at a glance if the entry has been updated since one’s last visit to the site.

Meanwhile, our look at this week’s Book Review:

¶ Of Crime and the River.

Red or What?

¶ Matins: Tomorrow’s dates: 11:15: Rue des Médecins. Six to eight in the evening: the Poussin preview at the Museum. (Details below the jump.)

¶ Tierce. Kathleen rejects proposal to move to the Boat Basin.

¶ Nones. It’s getting colder out there — at least for shrinks.

¶ Compline. Et in Arcadia ego [!]

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A bit truncated, today’s report. I did all the reading, but I’m dashing off to the Rue des Médecins, where I’ll undoubtedly be late.
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The recently-closed restaurant branch of one of my favorite food shops. I’m sorry that they didn’t make a go of it, but I never gave it a try, either. I’d say that it was in the wrong part of town. It would have been heaven in or near the theatre district. Or perhaps in Grand Central Terminal.

The weather today suits my indoorsy, stock-taking frame of mind. Without the slightest intention of cutting back on my posting, I’m considering changes. Metamorphoses, perhaps. It’s as though the sheer weight of the blog’s verbiage were altering the site’s nature, its composition.

Ordinarily, I don’t like to write about blogging — I’d rather just do it. But lately I’ve felt the need for some public throat-clearing. The fundamental nature of the enterprise hasn’t changed; The Daily Blague is still a combination diary and notice board, pointing on occasion to longer, less dated essays at Portico. If I’ve offering very few links to the rest of the Blogosphere, that’s because I haven’t really been visiting very much of it beyond the sites listed on the Blog Roster.

But the whole point of the blog seems about to tilt in some new direction. Literally — think of it as the vanishing point, the dot in the distance where all the sight lines converge. I’ve been looking for a new pole star. I haven’t found it yet, but of course I don’t have to, since I’ll be inventing it along with everything else.

This may surprise you, but assisting spring fever as a catalyst are the Diaries of Monty Python veteran Michael Palin, which I’m listening to on my daily walks (as read by the author). I can’t tell you how much I should like to shake this gentleman’s hand! Creator of many of my favorite Python routines (together with Terry Jones, whom I hadn’t properly appreciated), Mr Palin comes off as a charming but thoroughly decent man, with his feet on the ground, his heart in the right place, and his head stocked to bursting with articulate expression. It would be an exaggeration to say that the Diaries take one into his workroom, but they do give off the most invigorating fizz. Read the rest of this entry »

¶ As this is no more than a reader’s diary, I’m allowed to make mistakes, I suppose — as long as I catch them quickly. The story of the two Guillaumes the other day (Decameron, IV, ix) was told not by Dioneo but by Filostrato. Dioneo, the cutup, tells naughty stories at the end of each day. So: today’s story about the doctor’s wife and Ruggiero, who drinks an anaesthetic by mistake and wakes up in a chest, placed there by his lady love, the doctor’s wife, who can’t think what else to do with his apparently dead body. Sounds awful, but it’s played for farce. Trying to turn over inside the chest, Ruggiero causes it to fall somehow; it breaks open and he is free. Free for a moment, that is; with his bad reputation, Ruggiero is naturally arrested as a burglar. The commedia dell’arte conclusion involves the lady’s maid singing a pretty song to the magistrate.

The judge saw that she was a tasty-looking dish, and thought he would have just one nibble before listening to what she had to say. Knowing that she would obtain a better hearing, the girl did not object in the slightest, and when the snack was finished, she picked herself up and said:…

Cheeky! I cannot make out the Italian euphemism for the “snack,” but it seems to involve a hook and religious reference. Of course. And on to the Fifth Day!

¶ In the Aeneid, Aeneas finally tracks down the shade of his father, whose ghost prompted him to visit the Underworld in the first place. The river Lethe is explained to him.

¶ District and Circle: Oh, dear, I hadn’t turned the page! I thought that the first sonnet was all there was to the title poem. But no, it goes on. I keep turning the pages. “To George Seferis in the Underworld.” The Internet is a great help. It not only tells me about Seferis, a Greek poet and diplomat whose death in 1971 occurred almost immediately after the setting of this poem, but to the biography that inspired Heaney. I wind up in Liddell & Scott, but don’t learn very much. According to Heaney, aspalathoi are reeds sharp enough to serve as scourges. According to the dictionary, aspalathos is “a sweet-scented shrub.” I also come across an article in the Telegraph that scoffs at Heaney’s professed reference for Gaelic, but I don’t really read it.

¶ Today’s Blogging Hero: Kristin Darguzas, of ParentDish. I feel not unlike Aeneas in the Underworld myself. Parenting blogs! What a universe that must be! I can only wonder what it would have been like to be at home with Megan when she was an infant, only instead of watching soap operas while I took care of her and did the housework (I worked at night, when Megan’s mother came home), I’d had the Internet to check into.

I was explaining the other day to a very doubtful forty-something that car seats had just been invented when Megan was born. They were very simple affairs: plastic baskets, really, given a seat shape and held up with a collapsible wire bracket. Really quite exactly like one of today’s two-handled deli baskets, but shaped a little differently. No upholstery. No straps or safety belts. No rules against using the things in the front seat. And just the day before yesterday, there had been nothing at all. Babies were ferried in a passenger’s arms.

¶ Clive James, nominally on Virginio Rognoni, the Italian minister of the interior who tamed the Red Brigades without resorting to counterterrorism. James’s real subject is the efficacy of terrorism, most notably in the creation of the State of Israel. Italy, he argues, was a functioning democracy when the Brigades began their attack. “But it isn’t hard to name countries, calling themselves democracies, in which injustice, to the idealistic young, seemed so deeply institutionalized that terrorism occurred to them as the only workable response.” Very sobering.

The Famille Verte was bothered last evening by two questions: (a) how to convince friends and relations to plow through George Meredith’s fabulous but unreadable novel, The Egoist, which really, really needs to be turned into a movie; and (b) if Mozart didn’t write K 297(b), who did? Stand up, man; take a bow! Let’s hear it for the greatest forger in music history.

And that, my friends, is what comes of Giving Up Television: one loses touch entirely. But we do have a very jolly time.

Later that night….

Listening to Berlioz (Les nuits d’été — Régine Crespin). Is it really possible to be this old?

I notice lately that, when I twist my arm a bit, the skin folds like rope, torquing from wrist to elbow. It’s not awful looking, but it is awful. Sixty!

My youth was so completely (and obviously) wasted on me that I resolved not to wail about it when I grew up/old. So I won’t. But to be sixty is truly arresting. To say that I don’t feel sixty is a very bad joke, especially as I did feel fifty-five, -six, -seven, &c more or less uninterruptedly. Sixty! How breathtakingly pénible!

Because I’ve never been a bigger flirt than I am now. It’s not that I expect my flirting to lead to anything – Dieu m’en garde! But I don’t want my flirting to be ridiculous, now that I know, finally, why one would flirt.

Sixty! Que mon sort est amer!

Connaissez-vous la blanche tombe? Good — meet me there at six for a drink.

In the past, I’ve made a point of not reading novels by the same writer in succession. A pair of reasons as stoutly interconnected as Scylla and Charybdis warn me against it. First, one wants to avoid the risk of burnout. Most writers, like most people, have little characteristics that, while they may be heartening to re-connect with after a spell of absence, may also become taxing and tiresome with prolonged exposure. The second reason is the opposite of the first: one wants to space out the goodies. If an author doesn’t cloy, he or she is much too rare a catch to squander all at once.

But I’m sailing through these perils at the moment, already embarked on Brian Morton’s most recent novel, Breakable You. Two weeks ago, I read Starting Out in the Evening. Last week, it was A Window Across the River. Although they share the writer’s scrupulously understated prose, lightly seasoned with very dry wit, the novels are tonally quite different, and far from having too much of a good thing, I was so curious to see what the latest novel was like that I don’t think I could have concentrated on anything else. (Mr Morton’s first novel, The Dylanist, is out of print. Copies are available through Alibris, but I’m holding out, at least for the moment, for a conforming reissue by Harvest Books.)

In any case A Window Across the River is one novel that all modern-day fiction writers and their readers really must read, because it addresses, squarely and intelligently, the problem of authorial appropriation: whose life is this, anyway?

¶ A Window Across the River.