Chekhov's Mistress

Ashbery Beckett Ginsberg Kronos Quartet Dorothy Parker

by Bud Parr

The Cruelest Month has coverage of the John Ashbery fest:


“In all, as I say, a good homage. Leaving, I felt, as one hopes to feel—under the influence, in on what Star Black called ”John’s philosophy,“ and part of the celebration.”


Open Source Radio is warming up a program on Beckett:


“…we are beginning again with Beckett: the grimly prolific minimalist, the generous recluse, the gaunt ex-athlete (a 7-handicap golfer in his youth), the Protestant Dubliner who moved to Paris and preferred to write his major works in French and recreate them in English; the pianist who loved to play Haydn, Beethoven and Mozart (not Bach) and worshipped Schubert, most especially for his late song cycle, Die Winterreise, the ”Winter Passage“ of a lonely traveler toward a very Beckettian madness and death.”


Not sure if the Times is thinking of themselves bringing up Dale Peck again when they say “tiresome” or the “Howl” tribute:


“This gets tiresome. Sven Birkerts, bidding fair to replace Rick Moody as Dale Peck’s ‘worst writer of his generation,’ offers an unbearable template: ‘Can I possibly convey how those words’ — the first lines of ‘Howl’ — ‘moved in me, how that cadence undid in a minute’s time whatever prior cadences had been voice-tracking my life?’ No, he can’t. He wanders on, into ‘the moment of Shakespearean ripeness.’ ‘Ripeness’ would do the job, but you get the feeling it’s important to Birkerts to remind us he knows Shakespeare — or maybe to equate his reading ‘Howl’ with Edgar’s revelation in ‘King Lear.’”


The New Yorker’s Alex Ross on the Kronos Quartet (I’m a fan, but he’s right):


“Anyone who likes Kronos has probably been exasperated with them at one time or another. Their recordings for the Nonesuch label are as inconsistent as Bob Dylan’s post-1966 catalogue, though equally worth sifting through. When they venture too far afield, as in their politely grungy cover of Hendrix’s ”Purple Haze,“ they look foolish; and some of their globalist ventures, such as the 1992 compilation ”Pieces of Africa,“ are pale echoes of the real thing, world music with training wheels.”


A thoroughly fun article on Dorothy Parker in Bookforum:

“The saga of Dottie and Lilly may be sad, but it’s almost comical, too. Probably the first to smile about it would be Parker herself. She always imagined the hereafter as paradise, a sort of luxury hotel with hot and cold running dogs. Little did she imagine that settling permanently would require a Homeric journey of twenty-one years.”
posted April 10, 2006

comments

To her immense credit, Joan Jeanrenaud has done a lot of truly adventurous projects since leaving Kronos. I especially like the Maybe Monday trio, but it’s odd to think that the quartet may now be a more commercial straitjacket for some very individual performers.

Also see Rohan de Saram of the Ardittis.

    – Mr. Waggish (04/13  at  12:26 PM)


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