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Elizabeth Frank: Cheat and Charmer: A Novel
I don't think this book is in heavy rotation on the book-club circuit, but it should be. It's a terribly engrossing tale of Hollywood during the blacklist years, told as a 19th century-style narrative: i.e., a ripping good yarn. (****)- Kay Ryan: Niagara River
Quirky, small poems like jigsaw puzzles. She can write sonnets, but chooses to type instead four words per line, ten lines per poem. Sort of like little cocktails. I'd like to read more of her work and compare these to longer poems, because here I didn't feel like I was getting a full meal. (***) Richard Ford: Independence Day
Hilarious, spot-on riffs about middle-aged white men and the cars they drive, women they love, and children they avoid. Ford manages cynical social commentary without seeming snarky or disaffected. He's so affected he has to expose the stink of our shit. (****)Truman Capote: In Cold Blood
Ground-breaking for the time, time-breaking for our new ground. In other words, Capote's copious imagining of the psychological underpinnings of the killers and victims must have seemed revolutionary, but now just make the pages turn slowly. I'm glad I've read it, though. (***)vivian gornick: fierce attachments
Changed my life. Riveting. Like walking through a castle made of words. Her thoughts are so palpable they feel like stone. Memoir of Ms. Gornick's Bronx upbringing. Meditation on how, as she's written later, she became her mother. Am reading now her other sort-of memoir, "Approching Eye Level." (*****)Anne Kingston: The Meaning of Wife
Jaunty and jargon-free feminist critique that, brilliantly, includes Lifetime Television-grade domestic drama while exposing its fallacies. A must-read. (****)Dinesh D'Souza: Illiberal Education
"What, are you dating a right-wing rock and roll star?" She replies, "I like to hear all sides." As do I. (**)Louis Begley: Wartime Lies
Mesmerizing. Little Maciek and his Aunt Tania go through it all surviving the War. They never entered a camp. Begley seems to withhold a bit. The narrative ends precipitously. He wants to shut some feelings out... (****)
« July 2007 | Main | September 2007 »
Degrees of separation: Clement Greenberg & Kurt Cobain
James writes:
Clement Greenberg and Kurt Cobain. One is the great formalist critic of twentieth-century art. The other is the former front man for the rock band Nirvana. If you don't know who Clement Greenberg was, you can read my review of Alice Goldfarb Marquis's Greenberg biography here (from the Wall Street Journal). If you don't know who Kurt Cobain was, well, you're not a member of my generation (Roger Kimball asked me, "Wasn't he a famous drug addict?").
Now for the connection (I owe it to Dara for making the discovery): Kurt Cobain was married to Courtney Love. Love is the grand-daughter of the writer Paula Fox. Fox is married to the writer and translator Martin Greenberg. Martin is Clem's brother.
It's a small world!
Is Tintoretto the greatest?
James writes:
I just submitted an article for the Wall Street Journal's 'masterpiece' column on the subject of Tintoretto, the sixteenth-century Venetian painter. Here I make the argument that in his monumental "Crucifixion" of 1565, located in Venice's Scuola di San Rocco, Tintoretto may just have painted the single best work of religious art in the Italian Renaissance.
I'll have more to say on this painting when the piece appears, but for now, check out the website maintained by the Scuola confraternity--http://www.scuolagrandesanrocco.it. Click around the website a bit and look for the 'virtual view' of the Scuola Grande. There's no substitute for the real thing, but the 360 view of the "Crucifixion" in the 'albergo' boardroom is worth checking out.
'Self-Portrait as Overbearing Mother in a Hitchcock Film'
THE NEW YORK SUN
By DARA MANDLE
August 1, 2007; Arts Section, Page 17
Given the events in the film world last week--the deaths of directors Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman--I thought it was appropriate that a poem of mine about movies was published.
SELF-PORTRAIT AS OVERBEARING MOTHER IN A HITCHCOCK FILM
A BOY’S BEST FRIEND IS HIS MOTHER.
—Anthony Perkins, Psycho
I don’t take tranquilizers. I endure
Janet Leigh, stunning, soaping: the whore.
Norman cared for me as for the hawks
he stuffed and hung over the hearth.
Ingrid Bergman was like a daughter—
She wouldn’t lock me in the fruit cellar—
In Notorious, a Nordic beauty
For my German son, a Nazi.
He came to me for help, she was a spy.
I knew what to do, he could be so shy.
My cigarettes, please. This is what we tried:
We poisoned her slowly, and she almost died.
Bacony Fish
Dara writes:
I have written about chef David Chang's Momofuku empire before. No surprise, I'm a fan. Just to add to the adulation, I had a chart-topping, show-stopping fish dish there tonight.
As usual, James ordered the house special Momofuku ramen, which is succulent, toothsome noodles in a porky broth with, indeed, two kinds of pork--belly and shredded--and soft-cooked egg, peas, green onion, nori, lotus root, and deliciousness. James always gets it. He's obsessed. But I ordered something new: crispy red snapper. Not usually my fave fish. Slightly funkier than bass or trout. The fish was delish, but it was the sides I died for. What graced the dish? Summer squash. I don't often love squash because it's squishy and meaty in an unpleasant way. Surprisingly, Chang's staff didn't slice the squash extra-thin. But because, like all things Chang, the veg floated in a salty, porky broth, it ruled.
Two things lifted the dish into the stratosphere: the best chunky, pancetta-y bacon ever, and pickled ramps. Now, I saw Chang's recipe for them in New York mag in May, but whatever, not something I'd make at home, so I didn't think more about it. Holy mackerel: I could make a meal of them. Imagine wilted, kim-chee-y onions. Yes please.
I should mention we started with an heirloom tomato salad with Asian vinaigrette and shiso leaf, with soft tofu. And, the kicker, we walked right into the place. Why? Three ideas: August; early; outside it was hot as hell.
Dining at Momofuku is hectic. It's loud and cramped and hot. But you get to see your dinner assembled in front of you by pros. It's like you're on the set of a cooking show. You get to listen to the Stones' Gimme Shelter and remember those violent scenes in Scorsese's Mean Streets and The Departed. And you get to have an ass-kicking, fresh fish dish for $16. Worth it.
