Michael Chabon
A review of Manhood for Amatuers that makes me think perhaps I ought to take it up again--perhaps my initial queasiness at TMI was a mood-driven alienation.
How we feel Is an illusion we choose
Popular posts from this blog
Angel Time--Anne Rice
Review copy received 11/04/09 From the time of its announcement, I had been looking forward to this new book by Anne Rice. As I say in every review, I am not a die-hard Anne Rice fan. I found Interview with a Vampire interesting and intriguing, but in hindsight, must lay much of the responsibility of the current vampire as victim and love-object obsession at its feet. After that, I had no patience with her writing until Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. In that book I observed a kind of control and authorial voice that I had not seen in any of the books I had sampled since Interview . So too with Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana. Perhaps because of the subject matter, perhaps for other reasons, these two books seemed to witness a level of control of language and story that the other books did not. Gone were messy florid passages that lavished two, three, four paragraphs on the description of the lace and flounce of a jabot. These new books were sp...
Another Queen of Night
I post this because whenever I recommend to anyone the Queen of Night, I always recommend it in the Lucia Popp rendition. It's a matter of personal taste, but what I love about this is that it is somewhat slower than the other versions and as a result, it would seem to me somewhat more difficult to perform and sustain--those high notes in which the Queen's voice becomes the Magic Flute itself are rounded, full, and deep while remaining light and airy. I have read some rather severe criticism of this ritardando; and while it may or may not reflect Mozart's intent, it is certainly within the options for staging. It creates a real vocal showpiece from what is already a magnificent example of same. It really is an amazing example of a virtuoso composition sung by a virtuoso voice. All of which should not be taken to mean that I do not truly appreciate the version posted earlier by Diana Damrau, it's just nice to see what a difference tempo can make. I think we can take...
I read it recently, and I'm not sure you need to go out of your way. The most enlightening thing about it to me was that some of the essays read like a really good blog post, and it sort of de-mythologized the author-god impression I had of Chabon and gave him back his person-status.
ReplyDeleteAs far as his reflections on manhood go...not so impressed. I'm put off by his affection for comic books; his appeal to the nostalgia of 70s and 80s era objects and attitudes feels a little stale; and his moral positions are mostly incompatible with a Catholic sensibility.
...but it's fun reading nonetheless.