Basswoods books and music part 2

SnakClub Read 2015

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Basswoods books and music part 2

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1baswood
Redigeret: mar 22, 2015, 7:45 pm

Sixteenth Century


Doris Lessing


Literary Centennials


Science Fiction

2baswood
Redigeret: mar 22, 2015, 7:46 pm

In pursuit of the English by Doris Lessing
“That’s right. We should all be kind to each other. If we was all kind to each other all over the world it would be different. Wouldn’t it now.” said Flo perhaps the unkindest person in a cast of characters that seem to go out of their way to inflict as much misery onto each other as they can get away with.

In pursuit of the English is a slice of life that took place in London in 1950, when an embattled lower working class were attempting to pull themselves up by their bootstraps in a society that was still suffering from the devastation after world war II. There is a huge patch and repair job being carried out piecemeal, in an attempt to save the housing stock, bomb sights are scattered around neighbourhoods and so finding somewhere to live for a newcomer to London is not an easy task. Doris Lessing had only a small amount of savings and a two year old son when she started looking in South West London shortly after arriving by boat from Africa and the book is an autobiographical account of those first months spent trying to establish herself in London. It reads like a documentary; a sort of fly on the wall report on a household in bedsit land with Lessing the foreigner, as an ever present observer of the people with whom she lived. She soon became resigned to the intrigues of those people trying to get ahead while maintaining some sympathy for their victims.

Lessing recalls whole conversations and writes them down in the vernacular style in which they were spoken; she has a very good ear and her characters come alive through their phrasing and colloquialisms. I would like to think that this world full of prejudices and ignorance no longer exists, but I am sure it still does, but what I can vouch for is the accuracy of Lessing’s account of the way people behaved back then. I grew up in South West London in a working class suburb in the 1950’s where many people seemed to live on their wits. Many were of course racist, sexist and class conscious to an extraordinary degree and life; with rationing still prevalent and conscription still in force, was a struggle for those not prepared to take advantage of others weaknesses. Children suffered corporal punishment as a matter of course and for the most part escaped from their parents to play in the street, women who went out to work were treated with suspicion and more often than not were in fear of domestic violence. Men solved many of their issues with their fists.

The autobiography starts in Africa, with the author describing a short period in Cape Town where she was waiting for the next boat to England and is able to squeeze in a few of her African vignettes, but the meat of the book deals with her struggle to live and work in London. The flat that she eventually finds is a typical bed sitting room in a large house. It is owned by Dan and Flo who live in the basement and their only concern is to make money and to get ahead. Bobby Brent a typical business/con man rents rooms in the house for his mistress. There is also Rose who becomes Doris’s friend, but who is so full of anxieties, fears and prejudices that depression seems to be the natural order of things. There is also the Skeffingtons a married couple going through a difficult time and somewhere on the first floor a geriatric old couple, who live in appalling conditions and are being targeted by Dan and Flo for eviction.

A house full of squabbling adults and neglected children and Doris with a certain amount of naivety picks her way among them, perhaps knowing that for her, this kind of existence is only temporary. She was a published author at that time, but her main struggle was to find somewhere in the house where she can work. We learn little about Doris as her focus is on the people around her, and the overwhelming picture is of people living together who have an almost complete lack of empathy for one another. There are acts of kindness but they are random at best and Rose is able to reminisce at great length on how people were so much happier during the blitz of the war years. Doris says to Bobby Brent:

“I’ll tell you I said. I think you are a psychopath and a sadist, but luckily for you, in this society it won’t even be noticed. The sky’s the limit as far as I can see.”

Lessing published this book in 1960 and is careful not to give away the location of the household and no doubt she has changed the names of her characters. Cheekily she includes a little scam that Bobby Brent is keen to put to her; where a libellous article is published in the newspapers and the author is sued, but as the insurance will pay the costs, there is money to be made if agreement can be secured in advance to share the proceeds.

Lessing in her early career based many of her novels and some short stories on her own life and experiences, which is no bad thing. Martha Quest, A Proper Marriage and A Ripple from the Storm are semi autobiographical with Martha (the subject of all three novels) and is based on Lessing’s life in Zimbabwe. Going Home is a report on her return to Zimbabwe after a period of time in England and her first novel The Grass is Singing is a story based around events that she witnessed or heard about. It is no surprise that In pursuit of the English is again autobiographical but later in her career she would revisit her early life in Zimbabwe to set the record straight with an official autobiography of those years. She was well versed in writing about herself and probably had a wary eye on being sued for libel.

Although autobiographical we learn little about Lessing, but we do get a fascinating account of life in London among the lower working class in 1950. I soon became interested in the characters and wanted to follow their stories, They can be funny and at times ridiculous, but they are also very human and so laughing at them feels a little condescending. Lessing herself avoids falling into this trap by keeping her opinions to herself and letting the reader make his/her own judgments. The book was first published in 1960 some ten years after the events described and although it is not rated among her finest achievements, it still packs a punch and is well worth exploring: 4 stars

3AnnieMod
mar 23, 2015, 4:51 pm

>2 baswood: Wonderful review :)

4kidzdoc
mar 25, 2015, 4:19 am

Fabulous review of In Pursuit of the English, Barry! I'll definitely read that book soon.

5Linda92007
mar 25, 2015, 8:50 am

Excellent review, Barry. The Grass Is Singing is high on the list of books I have loved. I want to read more by Lessing, but I think I am more interested in her years in Africa.

6Poquette
mar 25, 2015, 2:22 pm

>2 baswood: a fascinating account of life in London among the lower working class in 1950

That would be fascinating! Enjoyed your review.

7baswood
mar 25, 2015, 5:58 pm

Thanks everybody

8labfs39
mar 25, 2015, 10:40 pm

Quick, before your thread gets too intimidating, I'll nip in and say hello. I have not read any Lessing, but I did read Jennifer Worth's The Midwife trilogy (with Shadows of the Workhouse and Farewell to the East End), which is a gritty look at London's East End in the 1950s. I should add In Pursuit of the English to my TBR, but I'm trying to maintain a moratorium on additions at the moment. Hold the line! I tell myself to no avail...

9StevenTX
mar 27, 2015, 11:34 am

Great review of In Pursuit of the English. I had not heard of this one. I'm sure it had extra meaning for you that you were able to connect with the time and place.

10baswood
Redigeret: mar 31, 2015, 6:55 pm

Steven has reminded me that I have started a new thread.

11dchaikin
mar 31, 2015, 9:41 pm

That was nice of him. Terrific review of Lessing.

12tonikat
apr 11, 2015, 10:10 am

A very interesting review of In pursuit of the English. I wonder if she ever felt she found them, or should it be caught them. I've only read a few of her books, but loved London Observed, much later in her career but also vivid and to me, then, very recognisable.

13AlisonY
apr 13, 2015, 4:41 pm

>2 baswood: enjoyed your review. Lessing is on my list of author's to get to this year for the first time.

14baswood
apr 13, 2015, 7:04 pm



Island by Aldous Huxley
Island although dressed up as a novel is more like Huxley’s vision of a Utopia and as such shares many characteristics with earlier attempts by authors to paint their picture of a perfect world. The usual scenario is a voyage to a distant land or distant planet where a society exists beyond the knowledge of the other human beings, where they have developed a civilisation that has eradicated all of the perceived evils of the current world. In Huxley’s Island; published in 1962, Will Farnaby an oil company representative is shipwrecked and washed up on the Island of Pala: a place forbidden to journalists, but not of course unknown to the rest of the world. It is however, only too well known to Colonel Dipa on the mainland who is plotting to take over the Island.

Will Farnaby is allowed to stay on the Island while he receives medical attention and he soon discovers that the Island is governed in such a way that sets it at odds with the consumer societies with which he is familiar. The Island people shun consumerism and industrialisation; they are guided by reason and ecological concern. They have no time for religious dogmas, but strive for a higher awareness of earthly life and the life of the senses. They search for improvements in medical techniques and are constantly in search of knowledge that will help them lead better lives, they spend much of their resources on the education of their children, believing that this is the key to their future. There are no secrets on the Island; it is an open society and Will becomes entranced by the Islanders way of life and much of the book describes his growing awareness of the possibilities for a new way of living. However Will does get involved with representatives of Colonel Dipa and does not forget that he is employed by an oil company and Pala has plenty of oil. Will’s crisis of conscience is one of the few devices that Huxley uses in making his book appear as a novel but it takes a back seat to his real purpose which is to present to his readers his idea of Utopia.

Huxley’s enthusiasm for his Utopia is infectious and some very fine writing opens up the possibilities for a more fruitful and sensual life. I found reading this book an uplifting experience, which is curious because one of it’s major themes is death. Huxley wrote this book towards the end of his life when he was thinking very much about his own mortality. Will Farnaby we learn feels responsible for the death of his wife. Susila who becomes Will”s mentor is grieving for the recent death of her husband and in the process of providing care and support for her mother who is slowly and painfully dying of cancer. In the background, like an undercurrent there is the inevitable death of the Islands civilisation, but Huxley imbues all these deaths with an irresistible force for the joy of living.

Pala does sound wonderful; a real Utopia compared with the dystopia of Huxley’s Brave New World written some thirty years earlier. But wait a minute! Many of those ideas in the original dystopia appear again in Huxley’s Island Utopia. Eugenics much vaunted in the 1930’s appears in Island, where they are working on methods of selective breeding. Drugs were used to keep the working population acquiescent in Brave New World and are used in Island, but this time administered to children as well as adults. In Island; hypnotism is an accepted tool for pain relief and for other disorders and the indoctrination of children takes place at an early age. Suddenly Huxley’s Utopia does not seem quite so wonderful and the line between Utopia and dystopia gets a little blurred.

I could not recommend this book as a novel, but its depiction of an alternative way of life and its celebration of the joy of living makes this book for me an essential read. It made me think about my place in the world and my own mortality and for brief moments opened up the possibility of seeing the world differently. I don’t think you can ask too much more of a book and so four stars.

15tonikat
apr 14, 2015, 6:57 am

I liked Island very much, Attention! But it's good you remind me of its sides that I would not like, I thought of it as his utopia in some ways.

16StevenTX
apr 14, 2015, 10:58 am

I read Island when I was in college, but unfortunately don't remember any of it, so I'll put it on the "re-read" list along with Brave New World.

What you say about the attributes of Huxley's dystopia and utopia being so similar is intriguing. It's not a case of the tools like eugenics, drugs, and even public education being inherently good or evil, but the intentions of those who use them. Can any authority, given the power to remake a society along ideological lines, be trusted to use it wisely, or are all planned societies doomed to become totalitarian dystopias. Clearly Huxley thought there was room for hope.

17rebeccanyc
apr 15, 2015, 8:10 am

I had never heard of Island, only Brave New World, which I read decades ago; thanks for your review.

18baswood
apr 15, 2015, 6:57 pm

>16 StevenTX: Hope is about as far as it goes, because the Island of Pala was over run by Colonel Dipa at the end of the book. This was no surprise and was almost an accepted fact of life by the Islanders themselves. The society on the Island of Pala showed no signs of turning into a totalitarian dystopia, but Huxley realised it could not remain in existence.

19baswood
apr 16, 2015, 9:27 am

>16 StevenTX: Something else that is similar in Both Island and Brave New World is free love. A breakdown of the nuclear family. Contraception is readily available in both societies and people are encouraged to indulge in sexual activity for the pleasure that it can bring them, however in Island more responsibility for ones actions is the watchword.

20kidzdoc
apr 16, 2015, 6:18 pm

Fabulous review of Island, Barry. I'll read it after I get through Brave New World.

21baswood
apr 17, 2015, 8:29 am



Van Halen - 1984 Full album on youtube https://youtu.be/omg9Zv8ihKQ
Van Halen - 5150 Full album on youtube https://youtu.be/uDVukiNw-qI

!984 was released in 1984 and was the swan song for Van Halen’s original lineup which featured Dave Lee Roth on vocals. Sammy Hagar had replaced Roth when 5150 was released two years later and the band had undergone quite a change although on the surface everything sounded the same. Lets be clear these are two very good heavy metal albums from a group that continued to produce quality music in their given genre. Van Halen’s guitar style was quite unique when the band debuted back in 1978. Technically precocious and always ready to solo in a style that came to be much copied, but rarely bettered. He had the ability to mix notes and chords in new and striking combinations, sometimes at an ultra fast speed, but never losing the essence of playing great rock guitar music. On both these albums his inventiveness and solo work is as striking as ever, but things were changing and that seems mainly due to a change in the personality of the vocalist.

On 1984 Dave Lee Roth once again demonstrates what a good rock singer he is, but on this album his voice is a little far down in the mix and he seems to be struggling to be heard. Sammy Hagar by contrast on 5150 sits comfortably on top of the music, never doubting that his voice will be heard and what a great voice it is; pitched a little higher than Roth’s but with a greater range and an ability to sound incredibly tuneful without losing the richness and excitement that a heavy metal vocalist needs. His ability to belt out a good tune is not lost on the groups compositions and the songs on 5150 are more melodic with an easily recognisable structure. It is as though the songs have grown up from previous efforts; for example “Hot for Teacher” on 1984 sound like smutty schoolboys kicking out, but on 5150 with “Inside” they have become fully fledged consumers, however I think I prefer the smutty schoolboys. When a heavy metal band puts melody first then they can lose their edge and despite Hagars amazing vocals that is just what happens on 5150. Some of the songs are just too radio friendly despite Van Halen’s guitar pyrotechnics. The quality of the songs are better on 5150 and the vocals are outstanding, but I prefer the more uneven song structures and personality of the band fronted by David Lee Roth. I rate 1984 as 4.5 stars and 5150 as 4 stars.



Van Halen - Van Halen 1978
The first release from the band comes fully formed. Excellently recorded guitar based rock music with Dave Lee Roth stamping his flair as a rock singer all over these songs. As often happens with a groups first release there is a wealth of good material to choose from and this selection from Van Halen has never been bettered. Van Halen’s guitar sound is both exciting and technically much in advance of anything else in the world of rock music in 1978, when this was released. The punks were in the ascendency and the supergroups of the mid seventies were sounding a little tired and so Van Halen’s debut was a shot in the arm for heavy metal music lovers. I listened to a remastered version of this CD and the sound nearly blew my speakers away. A five star record

Full album on youtube https://youtu.be/_ZTOskJha8c

22Poquette
apr 17, 2015, 12:51 pm

Belatedly, I enjoyed your review of Island. One of these days perhaps I'll get to it.

23DieFledermaus
apr 18, 2015, 7:23 pm

Island sound like an interesting contrast to Brave New World. Also enjoyed the Van Halen analysis.

24OscarWilde87
apr 19, 2015, 7:30 am

>14 baswood: Great review. Although you say you wouldn't recommend it as a novel, the part about how it made you think about your place in the world sounds intriguing. I love that in a book' Island just made it to my wislist.

25reva8
apr 19, 2015, 10:32 am

>2 baswood: I enjoyed your thoughtful reviews of both, In Pursuit of the English and Island. I particularly liked how you described Huxley's approach to life and death, and his "irresistible force for the joy of living"

26Polaris-
apr 27, 2015, 1:29 pm

Man! Have I had fun catching up with your first thread and now here! Too many to list here, but I've loved your reviews. Only in your thread could I go from reading a first class appraisal of one of the very greatest soul artists Isaac Hayes, in one post to a book about late renaissance Petrarchism!

I'm so glad you liked Isaac Hayes. Apart from his incredible vocals, and great skill on the piano, his talent for arranging was second to none. I think he was a Baroque composer in another life or something, because he would really go about his arrangements in ways that few other contemporaries would dream of at that time. It's like the difference that the Beatles had over the others by the time they reached the 'Rubber Soul'/'Revolver' period circa 1965 compared with the Stones, or any of the other best 'guitar/vocal harmony groups'.

I think that the late great Barry White (with his Love Unlimited Orchestra in particular) and the late great Marvin Gaye (from What's Going On/Let's Get it On onwards) both must have absorbed a lot of what Hayes was doing with string arrangements accompanying brass, woodwind, wah-wah guitar, his own soaring passion vocals and the backing singers' harmonies as well... etc. So I was thrilled to read what you wrote. Coming as it does, near the end of the 60s, 'Hot Buttered Soul' must be considered as one of the greatest records of the entire decade. EVEN with the very long intro rap (and it is VERY long) - his take on "By the Time I Get to Phoenix..." is spellbinding. The other 3 tracks are all top-knotch as well. The later stuff gets patchier but there are many gems in his later work as you highlighted. I have the 'Tough Guys' soundtrack (together with 'Truck Turner' as a double-release) and you can hear him re-working some of the best ideas from the earlier 'Shaft'. I was lucky enough to see the great man with his band in an outdoor concert in Tel Aviv in '98, and he did an amazing performance of Sting's "Fragile" that you liked from 'Branded'. I don't care for Sting much, at all, but Hayes makes his song a masterpiece.

27Polaris-
apr 27, 2015, 1:59 pm

Sorry for the thread hijack! I fall behind so easily on LT (trying to follow too many great Club Reads!) - forgive me.

Loved the reviews of John Steinbeck of course. I re-read Of Mice and Men a year or two back and was blown away by the simple effectiveness of his writing. I don't know why he isn't taught more in British schools at high school level because I'd never heard of him until arriving at him via other American writers I read in my 20s.

Thank you also for the excellent Ahmad Jamal review. Another underrated but terrific musician. (His version of Autumn Leaves, from 1958 at the Spotlite club is my joint favourite of that song (I love Cannonball Adderley's take on 'Somethin' Else with Miles as well). That link you posted of his recent piece 'Saturday Morning' is beautiful (listening to it grooving along nicely now as I write), thanks for sharing. All the reviews have been a pleasure to read.

(>26 Polaris-: Should have said of course that the Beatles and Brian Wilson were spurring each other on muscially.)

28valkyrdeath
apr 27, 2015, 5:52 pm

>27 Polaris-: We did study Of Mice and Men at school. I don't know if that was common in Britain in general for the time I was at school or not. It was one of the rare books that everyone seemed to enjoy despite being made to study it. I haven't read it in the 17 or so years since but I still remember it quite clearly.

29baswood
Redigeret: apr 27, 2015, 6:53 pm

The Blazing World and Other Writings by Margaret Cavendish
Flamboyant, theatrical and ambitious Margaret Cavendish; Duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673) might have been, but her writing for the most part is sleep inducing. Unless you have an interest in proto science fiction or early female romance writing then there is no reason to subject yourself to this collection. I did find some things of interest; after all it is claimed to be the earliest utopian fantasy by a female writer and there is precious little else that survives from a woman’s hand in the early 17th century.

The Blazing World and other writings is published in the Penguin Classics series and has an introduction by Kate Lilley who says toward the end of her essay that Margaret Cavendish:

“She emerges as an ironically self designated hermaphrodite spectacle and as the self-proclaimed producer of hybrid creations and inimitable discourses”

Yes, well, this is all a little desperate I think and smacks of trying to read a little too much into Cavendish’s literature. The first two pieces “The Contract” and “Assaulted and Pursued Chastity” are basic romance stories in which the heroine will go to any lengths to preserve her chastity to ensure that she makes a good marriage. The Contract is pure mush, but Cavendish does display some wit especially in her praise of older men. Assaulted and Pursued Chastity seems to go on forever as the heroine suffers shipwrecks, captivity, and a Prince as the ultimate stalker. She disguises herself as a man to escape her situation and becomes the leader of an army, there is also a sort of rehearsal for ‘The Blazing World’ as she lands in a strange country where there are, bird-men, wolf-men, bear-men, worm-men and any other animal men that she can think of.

There is an introduction by Margaret Cavendish to her work of fiction ‘The Blazing World” in which she says:

“it is a description of a new world, not such as Lucian’s, or the French-mans world in the moon, but a world of my own creating, which I call The Blazing World: The first part whereof is romancical, the second philosophical, and the third is merely fancy or (as I may call it) fantastical, which if it add any satisfaction to you, I shall count myself a happy creatoress”

Any narrative is quickly gotten out of the way in the first few pages when a lady is abducted onto a boat that is blown by a tempest to the North Pole. All the men of the crew freeze to death but the lady survives because of her chastity (yes, because of her chastity) and is saved by wolf-men and bear-men and bird-men. She is taken to the emperor of the new world who recognises a lady of impeccable breeding and immediately makes her an Empress. A long section then follows where the Empress asks questions about the new world of her new subjects. She covers politics, religion, but mainly scientific issues and the interest here is in how much Margaret Cavendish would know as a well read woman of the mid 17th century. (I must confess whenever these basic scientific questions are explored I find myself googling to check that my 21st century understanding is the right one). The last part of the story involves some nonsense about the transportation of souls and Margaret Cavendish herself makes an appearance in the book.

I suppose the reader should not be too hard on Margaret Cavendish’s fiction especially when we consider that Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe would not be published for another 50 years in 1719. For it’s historical interest I would rate this as 3.5 stars, but as an enjoyable reading experience then it would be down to two stars.

30baswood
Redigeret: apr 29, 2015, 11:47 am

Les Antiquités de Rome by Joachim du Bellay
A collection of 32 sonnets published by Joachim du Bellay probably written in 1554. The poet had travelled to Rome as one of the secretaries of Cardinal Du Bellay and these verses were inspired by his thoughts on seeing the ruins of ancient Rome that were spread around the Renaissance city. He wrote in French having previously published Défense et Illustration de la langue française in which he admitted that the French language at the time was too poor to write higher forms of poetry but he envisaged an enrichment of the language and I presume he wrote in French rather than Latin to aid this process. I have to confess I read a modern English translation as well as a translation by Edmund Spenser published in 1591.

The sonnets are vivid and imaginative and in some respects look towards the Romantic poetry of the nineteenth century. The sequence opens with the poet standing on the ruins and imagining he is shouting down to the people that inhabited ancient Rome; he wants to tell them of the devotion he has for their civilisation, but is also wary of the fury he might evoke. This sets the tone for the sequence because the poet wishes to celebrate the greatness of Rome, but he also fully aware of how that civilisation tore itself to pieces. Themes of time passing, of a society that became addicted to leisure, one that even threatened the gods themselves are played out in some wonderful imagery. It is quite pagan in feel and devoid of any Christian censure and in one of the sonnets there is more than a hint that Peter’s successor (the pope) took away the power of the people's consuls to the cities detriment.

An example from the modern translation:

If that blind fury that engenders wars,
Fails to rouse the creatures of a kind,
Whether swift bird aloft or fleeting hind,
Whether equipped with scales or sharpened claws,
What ardent Fury in her pincers’ jaws
Gripped your hearts, so poisoned the mind,
That intent on mutual cruelty, we find,
Into your own entrails your own blade bores?
Was this, Romans, your harsh destiny,
Or some old sin, with discordant mutiny,
Working on you its eternal vengeance?
The gods denying, in just indignation,
Your walls, bloodied by that ancient instance
Of fraternal strife, a sure foundation.


And here is The same verse as translated by Edmund Spenser

If the blinde Furie, which warres breedeth oft,

Wonts not t’ enrage the hearts of equall beasts,

Whether they fare on foote, or flie aloft,

Or armed be with clawes, or scalie creasts,

What fell Erynnis, with hot burning tongs,

Did grype your hearts, with noysome rage imbew’d,

That, each to other working cruell wrongs,

Your blades in your owne bowels you embrew’d?

Was this, ye Romanes, your hard destinie?

Or some old sinne, whose unappeased guilt

Powr’d vengeance forth on you eternallie?

Or brothers blood, the which at first was spilt

Upon your walls, that God might not endure

Upon the same to set foundation sure?



On a technical note it will be noticed that the rhyming scheme differs between the two translations. The Modern translation by A S Kline recreates the Petrachan scheme that was used by Du Bellay, Spenser however used his own scheme ending each sonnet with a rhyming couplet.

Du Bellay cannot help sounding his own trumpet in the final sonnet claiming he is the first to write in praise of Rome in the french language and Spenser tacks on an extra sonnet to his translation: titled L’Envoy, in which he adds his own admiration for the poems and Du Bellay. I think I would add my voice in favour of these splendid sonnets which I thoroughly enjoyed. A four star read.

31baswood
maj 4, 2015, 2:26 pm

Get a life; not a vegetable patch.

Throughout March and April I ruminate on whether I will dig over the vegetable patch for another year. Fortunately it is enclosed behind hedges and so I can't see it from the house. I know that one year I will think it is all too much work and will abandon it ....... but, not this year and so for the last couple of weeks during a fine spell of weather I have been working outside putting in eight hour days. I do everything by hand and so digging over the plot is time consuming and tiring. It leaves precious little time for reading and so my rate of progress through books turns to a crawl (I seem to have been reading The ragged trousered Philanthropist for about a month and I am not even half way through).

I will catch up with you all when I have planted out my tomatoes.

32Poquette
maj 4, 2015, 5:09 pm

>31 baswood: Get a life; not a vegetable patch.

So now you've turned all philosopher on us! Candide had nothing on you!

I for one am missing your presence here. Looking forward to your return to action — or would it be inaction?

33labfs39
maj 5, 2015, 12:32 pm

You are an inspiration, Barry. I have been letting my garden languish in bare solitude. I have no excuse--the soil has already been turned a bit! Time for me to get my act together, add my compost, and plant.

34reva8
maj 5, 2015, 4:01 pm

>30 baswood: I liked your review of du Bellay, and thank you for the compared translations (I am not surprised that Spenser chose his sonnet format over the original). I'm going to see if I can hunt up a translation.

35VivienneR
maj 5, 2015, 7:51 pm

>31 baswood: Get a life; not a vegetable patch.

But a vegetable patch is so rewarding: exercise, contemplation, nourishment for mind and body.

Excellent review of Huxley's Island. I've only read Brave New World but recently acquired Doors of Perception. Not sure if I will enjoy that one.

36DieFledermaus
maj 7, 2015, 11:04 pm

Too bad about the Cavendish – I’d be interested in “17th c. utopian fantasy written by a woman” but…..

the lady survives because of her chastity (yes, because of her chastity)

Huhhhhh????

Good review and thanks for the warning.

37dchaikin
maj 8, 2015, 9:57 pm

Spenser had a way with words...even apparently if it's someone else's words. Enjoy your patch, and TRTP.

38baswood
maj 9, 2015, 4:29 am


Archie Shepp John Coltrane 1964




Archie Shepp some years later


Kulu Se Mama - John Coltrane
Voodoo Sense - Joachim Kuhn Trio invite Archie Shepp.


Kulu Se Mama was released in 1967 and was John Coltrane’s last Lp issued during his life time, he died later that year. It had been recorded in June 1965 at a time when Coltrane was exploring all kinds of music at such a pace it was as though he knew he did not have much time left. The track featured his classic quartet of McCoy Tyner on Piano, Jimmy Garrison on Bass and Elvin Jones on drums, but they were augmented with Juno Lewis vocals and Percussion, Frank Butler on drums and Pharaoh Sanders on tenor sax and Donald Garrett on bass and bass clarinet. The composition was set to a poem by Juno Lewis who was at the time setting up an Afro-American arts centre and he played on the recording; water drums, the Doom Dahka, bells and conch shells. The track starts with Lewis’s vocals and his African percussion sounds, it is slow and passionate and then Coltrane and Sanders come in with the theme played out of time with each other in huge surging lines, while Garrett makes sounds on the bass clarinet. Lewis continues with his vocals and some fierce hitting on his drums spark the saxophones into higher registers meanwhile the remaining musicians come in to set up a more recognisable jazz rhythm, but it remains at a slow tempo. Coltrane’s saxophone is really singing by the time the vocals stop and Sanders overblows with some primeval sounds. The churning rhythm remains and Lewis adds more African percussion to the mix as the saxophonists take off into free jazz blowing. It calms down to allow McCoy Tyner to produce a lyrical solo on piano with some characteristic low note chords with his left hand. There is a depth and a stately feel to the music as well as the passion from the percussion. Just before the music closes with more vocals from Lewis, there is an atmospheric passage from Garrett on the bass clarinet using the full range of the instrument. It is a wonderful piece of music and has been a favourite of mine since I got the original LP back in the late 1960’s.

I was surprised to see that Voodoo Sense recorded in 2013 features a version of Kulu Se Mama. It is only slightly longer than the original at nearly 20 minutes, but features African musicians in addition to the trio and Archie Shepp on saxophone. Archie Shepp is an interesting choice being a contemporary of John Coltrane and still playing magnificently in his seventies. He has the job of holding down the saxophone parts single handedly and produces some wonderful music reaching back to his free blowing days. He is lyrical when playing behind the vocals of Majid Bekkas and exciting when duetting with Khun on piano. The musicians sensibly do not attempt to recreate the same depth of sound as the Coltrane version, but increase the tempos to whip up the excitement and Khun's piano features throughout. It is a version that stands well against the original, something that I did not think possible. The rest of Khun’s CD is equally good. Two more tracks feature Archie Shepp, one a gorgeous ballad, while on other tracks the African musicians are featured and develop further the sounds that Coltrane was exploring back in the 1960’s. The CD finishes with a powerhouse track called Firehorse, that really rocks.

John Coltrane’s original LP and Joachim Kuhn’s recent CD are both five star recordings.

Coltrane's Kulu se Mama on youtube (after the advert) https://youtu.be/ryMLO7Ed4d8

39kidzdoc
maj 9, 2015, 7:52 am

Great review of Kulu Sé Mama, Barry. That's one of the few Coltrane albums that I don't own, so I'll listen to it on Spotify this weekend.

40Polaris-
maj 10, 2015, 7:11 am

Really nice review of the Coltrane LP Barry. I'm enjoying listening to it while I float around LT this morning. I'll check out the Archie Shepp/Joachin Kuhn album a bit later - sounds good.

41SassyLassy
maj 13, 2015, 11:08 am

>31 baswood: Get a life, not a vegetable patch.

Following up on Poquette, "Il nous faut cultiver le jardin" (my slight variation on the actual quote). Get those tomatoes in and keep listening to Coltrane and you will have both the literal and metaphysical aspects covered!

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists does bog down a bit part way through, but then it really picks up again.

42rebeccanyc
maj 16, 2015, 12:40 pm

>41 SassyLassy: I've been meaning to read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists ever since you reviewed it, Sassy.

43baswood
Redigeret: maj 21, 2015, 7:56 pm

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner A raunchy novel set in America's deep South? Some people will be disappointed, but for those who savour such things; it really is raunchy.

44baswood
Redigeret: maj 22, 2015, 2:00 pm

The Sound and the Fury - William faulkner
This book was chosen for our latest bookclub read and I can see it putting a large nail in the coffin of the club. We have a system of members taking turns in choosing the books to read next and I thought something might be up when the member said he would email us with his selection. Difficult books can put people off, but I was fortunate in having read The Sound and the Fury previously and had been so fascinated by the style that I had re-read sections and had done a little research on it’s themes and ideas. My advice would be; don’t read this book without help. You will need a safety net to get through the first part and will be in danger of becoming entangled in that net during the second part. It is only when you get to part three that the narrative begins to make any sense, but for many people this will be far too late. The final part which eschews the stream of consciousness technique completely and is told in a more understandable authorial omniscience may be the one that a reader new to the book may wish to read first.

So why does this novel seem tantalisingly beyond comprehension on a first reading? It is not the vocabulary that is the problem, the reader understands the words well enough, (although they are more difficult for readers not familiar with language used in the Southern States of America). One feels that the way they are used within the sentences is obscuring the meaning, sometimes the reader feels he is on the verge of getting a grip on events, but like much of real life it just seems to slip through ones fingers. This is most evident in the the first section which takes the point of view of a 33 year old member of the Compson family, however Benji is mentally sub normal to the extent that he has not been able to learn to talk and has to be constantly supervised. He feels, sees, senses and for the most part hears things but they are scrambled in his mind, he has no sense of time and so his narrative is disjointed. Faulkner flits between a first person narrative as though Benji could reiterate his thoughts and accurate recordings of other characters speech and actions. Having no narrative to hold on to, the reader is left scratching for clues as to what is happening. It is a tour de force of of the stream of consciousness method, but can only be really appreciated when the narrative begins to make sense.

The second part is told in the first person by Quentin: one of Benjamin’s brothers, and while he is intelligent, (a student at university) he is going through his own personal crisis on a day that will end in his suicide. His thoughts are sometimes irrational, often jumbled and hopelessly obsessive.
While there are narrative events in this section of the book for example Quentins meeting with the young boys fishing from the bridge and his sojourn with the little girl who refuses to speak, his obsessive behaviour and his social ineptness in dealing with adult people make his section of the book almost as difficult as the first part. Faulkner adds to the confusion by writing some of this section without any punctuation. There are more clues in Quentin’s section and there are bits that are recognisably a narrative, but the reader is periodically thrown off the scent of the real story and is left once again with a visceral effect of being inside the head of a man suffering from an obsessive disorder.

The third part of the book is told from the perspective of the third brother Jason and he is totally self obsessed. He sees the dissolution of the once great Compson family firsthand and feels cheated by their failings; his inheritance is to work in a store (land was sold to fund Quentin’s education, but there is none left for Jason). He is mean spirited and unforgiving and resorts to cheating his niece out of her inheritance with no sense of shame or guilt. Parts of the story now come together, but there is much that is unexplained and while the narrative drive of this section can be followed easily enough, it only sheds a partial light on what has gone before.

The final section describes a day in the life of the family when Jason’s story reaches its conclusion and features the negro servant Dilsey who is the only recognisable “good” person in the novel. She works hard at keeping the family together despite suffering the racial abuse that is a matter of course for people in her position. There is no light-bulb moment at the conclusion to the novel, but there is enough to make this reader want to read parts of it again. Many readers will feel that they have missed much and the only way to piece it together is to backtrack; it becomes easier the second time around.

What stood out for me this time around was the obsessive nature of so many of the characters. Benjy is obsessive in a way similar to people suffering from an extreme compulsive obsessive disorder. Two of the female characters are obsessed by sex and promiscuity and Quentin’s and Jason’s obsessions have already been noted. It is though Faulkner is using the family to point out the dangers of a closed society and the inbreeding that can be the result; The Confederate South of America maybe?

I would have thought that many American readers would have studied The Sound and the Fury at school or college and so would have formed their opinions of it’s readability and been familiar with it’s themes. For new readers, take it from me, you need spoilers, as many spoilers as you can find.
I enjoyed my re-read of this classic five star novel, but I am wondering how many of my fellow book club members got through the first section.

45AlisonY
maj 21, 2015, 8:15 pm

Great review. I've only read As I Lay Dying - I'm interested to know if you've read that, as I wonder how The Sound and the Fury compares in terms of easy of reading. I found I had to read As I Lay Dying with notes to make sure I didn't drift off on the completely wrong track, but at the same time I found Faulkner's writing humorous and very clever.

You've definitely sold this to me as another one I should get to.

46StevenTX
maj 22, 2015, 11:41 am

I enjoyed your comments on The Sound and the Fury. I didn't have much difficulty with the novel when I read it about ten years ago, but then I come from the same cultural background as Faulkner. (My great-great-grandfather and Faulkner's great-grandfather served in the same Mississippi unit in the Confederate Army.) Reading the novel was one of the most powerful emotional experiences I have ever had from literature--so much so that I'm wary of ever reading it again.

Surprisingly, we didn't study Faulkner when I was in school. Maybe his work was considered too mature, too difficult, or too controversial at that time. We actually read more English works than American, but in both cases the majority of our reading was from the 19th century.

47RidgewayGirl
maj 22, 2015, 12:32 pm

Your bookclub sounds much better than the one I joined but am not sure about continuing with. At the meeting I missed, The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club was chosen and I just can't. I might read this if there was nothing else to read and no possibility of getting anything to read (I'd say the same thing about an issue of Guns and Garden magazine), but why would this be a book to think about and discuss? What substance is there to it? Better too much than nothing at all!

48NanaCC
maj 22, 2015, 1:19 pm

>44 baswood: Excellent review of The Sound and the Fury, Barry. I have always wanted to read this one, but I also think that I'm afraid to try. I know that I'd need to be in the right frame of mind, without distractions. That doesn't happen very often for me. Your review makes me want to try.

49baswood
Redigeret: maj 23, 2015, 7:35 am

>45 AlisonY: I have read As I Lay Dying but such a long time ago that I can't remember it very well.

>46 StevenTX: It is a great novel and one that stays with you, if you can stay with it while you are reading it. I found myself dipping back into passages of the book once I had finished and that first section when you are inside the head of Benji could be re-read countless times. However my absolute favourite section is part 2 when Faulkner puts us in the mind of Quentin who is at the time a truly desperate man and where his thoughts and his actions seem to blur in a very unsettling way. I can understand it having a powerful emotional experience for some readers, especially those from the southern states of America, because of the endemic sexism and racism that Faulkner portrays when he was writing in the 1920's, not to mention also the power of the family name the expectation on the children.

>47 RidgewayGirl: The other choice of book for this month is Paradise by Toni Morrison, which I believe is also not an easy read; I am just about to start. I am hosting our meeting this month and I am wondering if anybody will turn up.

>48 NanaCC: Brace yourself Colleen and take the plunge.

50kidzdoc
maj 23, 2015, 10:31 am

Fabulous review of The Sound and the Fury, Barry. I've only read one book by Faulkner, As I Lay Dying, but I hope to get to that one relatively soon.

51rebeccanyc
maj 23, 2015, 12:35 pm

I read The Sound and the Fury when I was in high school, and some other Faulkner, all of which I forget. Excellent review, and I would say it motivates me to read it again, if I didn't have so many other books on the TBR . . .

52Polaris-
maj 23, 2015, 8:36 pm

Great review Barry. I plan on reading more Faulkner - so far I've only really dipped my toe in with his short stories.

53avidmom
maj 24, 2015, 5:37 pm

I've always been intimidated to read Faulkner, but after reading your review I may find the courage to do it. Maybe.

54FlorenceArt
maj 25, 2015, 1:52 pm

>44 baswood: Wow! Great review, and I love the cover. I really really need to read Faulkner now, but I think I'll start with As I lay Dying, it sounds easier.

55dchaikin
maj 26, 2015, 10:09 am

>44 baswood: great review. Hope you club can hack it. Faulkner, or anything near that difficult, never came up in school for me. I remember one short story by Hemmingway.

>46 StevenTX: very interesting Steve.

56Nickelini
maj 28, 2015, 1:12 pm

My book club was going to read the Sound and the Fury a few years ago but we ran out of time (we vote on the books in September but never get around to all the books chosen). I warned them that it was difficult but they didn't believe me, and then it didn't matter. The only Faulkner I've read was a short story for a university class. It didn't make me want to read more, but your review does, and I do own the book. Maybe you've encouraged me to be brave enough . . . and I'll bet I can find it at Shmoop.com

Love the cover too. Is that the edition you have?

57VivienneR
maj 28, 2015, 7:27 pm

Great review of The Sound and the Fury Barry. I don't think I'll be reading it in the near future, even though my knowledge of American literature is abysmal.

I love your cover with the half-crown price tag!

58DieFledermaus
maj 29, 2015, 12:04 am

Excellent review of The Sound and the Fury. I haven't read it (or any Faulkner) but I did already form an opinion as to its readability. I will have to remember that about the lots of spoiling. As I Lay Dying will probably be the first one for me also - it's already on the shelf.

59baswood
maj 29, 2015, 7:30 pm

60baswood
Redigeret: maj 30, 2015, 4:57 pm

Paradise by Toni Morrison.
Paradise weaves a powerful mystery says the blurb on the inside front cover, but I found no mystery, just a muddle, that was alternatively heavy handed mumbo-jumbo and portentous parody. Published in 1998 this was Morrison’s first novel after receiving a noble prize for literature and so would have been an obvious choice for the book-of-the-Month main selection: perhaps someone should have read it first. It is unfortunate because the premise is an interesting one: the book focuses on one of the all black towns of Oklahoma that existed in the previous century and tells of the families that founded the town after suffering persecution from other towns.

The novel starts with a powerful opening sentence “they shoot the white girl first’ and goes downhill from there. A group of nine men from a nearby town have come out to a makeshift refuge for women armed to the teeth and intent on running them off the land or worse. They have come from the all black town of Ruby the title of the first chapter and Morrison fills in a little of the history of the town, while leaving the reader in suspense concerning the attack on the refuge. Subsequent chapters are titled from the names of the women who have lived in the refuge and their stories are told together with their connection to Ruby. The women’s stories are interlaced with the folklore of the town and their names are thinly disguised to keep the reader guessing as to who they are and where their story fits into the larger picture. The time shifts and fragmentary nature of some of the story telling makes it difficult to get a clear idea of events and this would have been interesting if the novel had not at the end of the day been so intent on ramming the themes of the book down the readers throat, backed up with some religious hokum and a desperate attempt to keep the mystery going after we learn of the events of the raid.

Pride, race, religion, misogyny and the dangers of a closed community are lumped in with mysticism, folklore and a revenge tale that struggles to make itself believable and ends up seemingly like some sort of parody. This reader felt little connection with the characters, so many of whom are little more than stock characters. Everything seems to be thrown into the mix and basically we have seen it all before and some fine passages of writing cannot save this unlikely fable. 2 stars.

61dchaikin
maj 30, 2015, 1:08 pm

Bummer. Wasn't this your first Morrison?

I plan to read Paradise, but trying to get into Jazz at the moment. I haven't gotten into flow with it yet. I'm very curious how these compare with the Morrisons I have read so far.

62FlorenceArt
maj 30, 2015, 1:39 pm

Wasn't sure what to say, but "bummer" just about covers it I think. I've been reluctant to read Toni Morrison, not sure why. I did order Beloved from Amazon once, but it turned out it was a huge large print edition, so I returned it. Like Dan, I'd like to know if you read other books by her. From the reviews on Paradise, I get the impression that she is perhaps better with words than with stories. That could be good for me, stories don't matter much to me. Characters do, however.

63baswood
maj 30, 2015, 2:34 pm

Yes Dan. This was my first Morrison and I am not inclined to dash off and read another one just yet. I was very disappointed. It was a book club selection and so I will be interested what the others thought of it.

Strangely enough the front cover of Paradise compares her to William Faulkner, but after reading Paradise straight after The Sound and the Fury. I would not put her in the same league.

64dchaikin
maj 30, 2015, 4:00 pm

This review makes me wonder about my own judgment of her earlier books. I need an expert's take (Jane, you around?)

Flo - in her earlier books, I felt everything was good, the writing, the story, the characters, the underlying themes, the texture of the whole thing. I saw them each an experience.

Bas - although Morrison denies it, most critics feel she was deeply influenced by Faulkner, and she did study him. However, that doesn't mean she writes like him.

65StevenTX
maj 30, 2015, 4:40 pm

>63 baswood: after reading Paradise straight after The Sound and the Fury. I would not put her in the same league.

I was going to ask if this had an influence on your review, which was one your most negative ones as far as I can recall. I will stay away from Paradise.

66ursula
maj 30, 2015, 4:47 pm

I've only ever read one Morrison, The Bluest Eye, which was assigned in a college class. I really hated it and I have avoided reading her ever since. I don't know if that's fair or not, but nothing I've heard about her other books makes me think I'd like them very much.

67dchaikin
maj 30, 2015, 4:57 pm

Funny. I loved The Bluest Eye. Of course, I assigned it to myself.

68valkyrdeath
maj 30, 2015, 5:22 pm

I've avoided Morrison ever since I read an excerpt of Jazz and found it virtually unreadable. The book club I'm in has Beloved coming up for September though so I'll be giving it a go. This doesn't fill me with confidence though.

69dchaikin
maj 30, 2015, 5:40 pm

I loved Beloved too, not that that means anything. Hope you enjoy V, and find it readable.

70ELiz_M
Redigeret: maj 30, 2015, 7:20 pm

I went through a Toni Morrison phase in college, so many years ago that I barely remember the books. I found her writing to be very uneven ranging from almost unreadable to awe-inspiring, sometimes in the space of a few pages. I suspect The Bluest Eye, Beloved , and Song of Solomon and are her best works. I was fascinated by the first two and probably would have more appreciation for the third if I had had ANY familiarity with the bible.

Although I have read both Jazz and Paradise, I have no memory of them whatsoever -- not even a faint jingle while reading your review. So, clearly not good enough to make any kind of impact on an impressionable young adult.

71japaul22
maj 30, 2015, 8:08 pm

I've never read Paradise, but I have read and loved The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Beloved, A Mercy, and Sula. She has a different perspective on the American experience than most American literature portrays, being both African American and a woman. I think she writes an interesting perspective on how women relate to each other, and her writing has a mix of gritty and lyrical that I really appreciate.

72kidzdoc
jun 1, 2015, 10:00 am

Nice review of Paradise, Barry. I still have no great desire to read anything more by Toni Morrison, although I suppose I should to see if she resonates within me. This won't be the book I choose, though.

73baswood
jun 1, 2015, 2:22 pm

Oh well, at the meeting of our book club there was enthusiastic defender of Paradise by Toni Morrison and in fact the group was split down the middle with a for and against lobby.

As an English white male I was asked to consider whether I could understand issues facing an all black female American community at odds with their male counterparts. This was a fair point, however I still did not like the book.

74StevenTX
jun 1, 2015, 2:43 pm

>73 baswood: Isn't it the author's job and goal to make you understand the issues?

75AlisonY
jun 1, 2015, 4:13 pm

>74 StevenTX: I totally agree with you, Steven. Isn't that the whole point of fictional reading - being transported into the minds and circumstances of a vast array of different characters?

76dchaikin
jun 1, 2015, 10:12 pm

>73 baswood: interesting about the split.

I'm going to go on a limb and say, as an English white male, you can understand the issues enough to have an opinion on the book.

77FlorenceArt
jun 2, 2015, 4:28 pm

I would say that if you need to understand the issues to appreciate the book, it can't be a terribly good book.

78baswood
Redigeret: jun 2, 2015, 7:07 pm



John McLaughlin - Thieves and Poets 2006
- Time Remembered 1993


John Mclaughlin is a supreme cross over artist. He made his name as a jazz guitarist plying on the Miles Davis’ ground breaking “Bitches Brew” and then in the 1970’s he led the successful jazz-rock group ‘The Mahavishnu Orchestra. His group Shakti featured Indian musicians as he effortlessly blended his guitar patterns into the most intricate of arrangements that were a feature of the group. He is a master of both the electric and acoustic guitar and it is no surprise to find him crossing over yet again into classical music. Thieves and Poets is perhaps the culmination of his foray into classical music and the CD could just as easily be called John McLaughlin’s Guitar Concerto No. 2 (His Mediterranean Concerto was his first guitar concerto). He wrote the concerto for a large orchestra and the engineers have done a fine job in ensuring that the guitar passages are not swamped by the orchestration. McLaughlin starts by taking us into the world of the Spanish guitar with his guitar runs played over romantic sounding strings, but there is also a military feel from some percussion and then a second theme bursts in from stage right led by McLaughlin’s guitar (slightly overdubbed) this ushers us out of the world of Flamenco and into central Europe; this passage of music features a duet between violin and guitar and while there are eastern influences the gorgeous theme is deliciously romantic. There are tempo changes, but the music never loses its melodic qualities and flutes and clarinets provide further interchanges with the guitar. The second movement is a slow one and ends with a feeling of tension between the guitar and the orchestra and this overspills into the final movement where the writing takes us into the 20th century and the sound world of Stravinsky and Bernstein before closing in a memorable climax. There is so much to enjoy and perhaps my only criticism is that maybe McLaughlin has packed too much into the 26 minutes running time. It is however a superb achievement and wonderful wonderful music. The rest of the CD contains four standard songs arranged for a classical guitar quartet and it is only on “Rodgers and Hart’s “My Romance” that McLaughlin introduces a slightly jazzy feel.

Time Remembered is a curiosity in that it is a tribute to the jazz pianist Bill Evans, but his tunes are arranged for a classical guitar quartet. Again wonderful playing and brilliant arrangements of the tunes with a recording that still manages to exude some atmosphere. The guitars ring out especially in the aptly titled “My Bells” and are sumptuous in the slower “Only Child”. “Waltz for Debbie” is arranged so that the listener never loses sight of the wonderful tune. This is intricately arranged music which still gives McLaughlin some space to indulge in those lightning fast runs, but this music is all about the songs and never strays away from a strictly classical soundstage. This is music for lovers of classical guitar played by a musician of exceptional quality who can transcend musical genres. I rate both these Cd’s at five stars.

Time remembered youtube https://youtu.be/E6nZNdP5sfk

79reva8
jun 5, 2015, 5:49 am

>78 baswood: Really enjoying catching up on your thread, and that was a great review of The Sound and the Fury. Also loved this note on John McLaughlin - I grew up listening to Shakti, but haven't listened to anything by him for a while. Thanks for the link to Time remembered.

80kidzdoc
Redigeret: jun 5, 2015, 6:37 am

Great reviews of the John McLaughlin albums, Barry. I've heard about him, of course, but I haven't listened to any of his work. I liked the first part of Time Remembered, and I'll check out the rest of it this weekend.

81VivienneR
jun 7, 2015, 3:35 am

Your music reviews are excellent. I wonder if you publish them professionally. They are certainly better than most reviews published by wordy reviewers who try too hard to impress.

82baswood
jun 7, 2015, 1:29 pm

Thanks Vivienne. I love writing about music and can't keep myself from posting music reviews on a reading thread.

83VivienneR
jun 7, 2015, 2:50 pm

You'd be surprised at the amount of music I've purchased based on your reviews. I get Listen magazine and sometimes the reviews annoy me more than anything else. It's a treat when you rate a cd highly and I already have it in my collection.

84RidgewayGirl
jun 7, 2015, 2:55 pm

Yes, your music reviews are always interesting and have more than once caused me to spend an afternoon with a specific artist. I do like Spotify.

85baswood
jun 9, 2015, 6:52 pm


Steve Winwood - About Time 4 stars
Sleater-Kinney - Dig Me Out 4.5 stars
Various Artists - Abanian popular music 4 stars
Gary Burton; Chick Corea Crystal Silence 5 stars


I listened to these CD’s last week and there is not much in the way of connections that I can draw from them. Steve Winwood is a British ageing rock star who many would argue had his best moments back in the late 1960’s early 1970’s. Sleater-Kinney are an all girl trio from America playing their distinctive style of punk rock, although it is really post punk as they were big in the 1990’s. The Albanian popular music selection dates from 2006 and features updated traditional sounding music, by updated I mean it has been produced usually with an eye to what is needed in clubs and discos. Gary Burton and Chick Corea’s Crystal Silence is jazz (Piano and vibes duo) recorded by the esoteric ECM label back in 1972 and still selling well today. I suppose the only connection is that all the music is good listening.

Steve Winwood began recording with the spencer Davis Group and in the late 1960’s became part of the super-group; Traffic. In those days it seemed that the way to a sure-fire recording contract was to form a group of named rock stars and Traffic with Chris Wood, Jim Capaldi, Dave Mason and Steve Winwood was a typical example. The group recorded into the mid 1970’s and made some fine music, but perhaps never quite lived up to expectations, they never produced that killer LP that would take them into the realms of Led Zeppelin super stardom. Since the break up of Traffic and a brief sojourn in Blind Faith: Steve Winwood has made his name as a solo artist and has released music on CD with varying degrees of success, some more commercial than others. About Time was released in 2003 and Winwood has peeled away from the more highly produced efforts of the eighties and nineties and gone for a sound that is recognisably more like Traffic. He wrote or co-wrote most of the music and plays hammond organ almost throughout, his vocals have a rougher edge to them and the songs mostly have a distinctly rhythmic feel to them. Traffic in their later years had a conga player and Winwood features both congas and timbales on About Time. In addition there are some exciting guitar solos from Jose Neto and the songs give room for the music to shine. Winwood always threatened to be the king of blue eyed white boy soul and on a couple of these tracks where the hammond organ is prominent you can almost believe it. Perhaps this is the record that Traffic wished they had made. Great stuff.

Why can't we live together
https://youtu.be/GovQnRdYtzQ

Sleater-Kinney have always been the darlings of the rock critics. Perhaps because of the novelty of an all girl trio playing punk rock music that ranks with some of the best of the post punk scene of the nineteen nineties. Dig me Out from 1997 was their third official release and it showed that all that praised lavished on them was well founded. Their music crashes and burns with the best of them, but it is their distinctive sound and an excellent collection of songs that make this CD such a success. Two guitars and drums and no bass gives them a slightly trebly sound, but this is offset by some power chords and so you don’t really miss the bass, it is the vocals of Corin Tucker that really grab the attention, one of the best voices in rock and her fellow vocalist Carrie Brownstein pitched a little lower is a perfect foil. Great riffs and guitar figures backed by a competent drummer and this band can rock. The songs hardly stray out of the two to three minutes, but there is energy, passion and skill in the playing that sets this group apart. The lyrics are always interesting and a marked contrast from many of the all male groups on the scene. A great rock band and this is an excellent CD.

Dig me out - the whole thing on youtube
https://youtu.be/LWLkoN8Zai8

Not being familiar with Albanian popular music (who is unless you come from Albania) I was pleased to discover that many of the songs on this collection from albasoundnet feature snatches of traditional music segued in amongst the disco and more popular sounds. Many of the vocalist have an Arabic/North African sound palate and so there are vocal inflections that make this music sound different. It was interesting to hear echoes of Greek music, North African music and Arabic Music mixed in with some heavy beats, occasional rap and Western sounding pop culture. A glorious melange and some good songs make some of these tunes memorable. Not every track was to my taste, but there was enough here to make me want to listen to some more (I must tune into my local Albanian radio station). Thoroughly enjoyable.

Some of that Albanian music
https://youtu.be/4KbjlLXskss
https://youtu.be/mhqE-HRS2eI
https://youtu.be/LeRtixbpCmo

Gary Burton/Chick Corea duo and Crystal Silence: for me this is just mindblowingly fantastic. It might be chamber music, but it certainly is jazz as these two master improvisors play a collection of tunes that make me wonder how did they do that, how did the interplay between the musicians seem so natural, so inventive and so satisfying. A vibraphone is played by a mallet striking a resonating tube and a piano is played by a hammer striking a taught wire, both instruments have dampening mechanisms and can be made to sound quite similar, but it is the difference in the sound that is a feature of the music on this CD. Beautifully recorded with no hint of buzz or muffling this music is indeed crystal clear, and there is nowhere to hide in a duo setting and so a bad choice of note might spoil everything. No fancy tricks, just those hammers striking out the notes as the two musicians deal with timing, improvisation and complementary playing to make some beautiful music. Chick Corea wrote five of the tunes and the duo play three others written by Steve Swallow. Sophisticated and satisfying.

Dig that Crystal Silence
https://youtu.be/p99xxR_2FdY

86NanaCC
jun 9, 2015, 7:38 pm

Nice review of Steve Winwood. this took me back to another place and time. :)

87kidzdoc
jun 11, 2015, 1:11 am

Thanks for those great album reviews and links, Barry. I'll listen to them later today.

88baswood
Redigeret: jun 11, 2015, 9:03 am

89baswood
Redigeret: jun 12, 2015, 2:08 pm

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist by Robert Tressell is a unique reading experience, but one that I was thankful to finish. The misery and dejection of the working people is graphically described, but however accurate it may be the repetitive nature of much of it means that it can be a slog to read, However dispiriting this may be, it is the underlying message that most of them deserve to be half starved and destitute, for continuing to support the capitalist system that is most depressing. The Ragged Trousered philanthropists are the working men because in undisguised irony Tressell is saying that they are devoting their lives for the most deserving of charities: the rich.

The books final two sentences imagine a socialist utopia:

“The light that will shine upon the world wide Fatherland and illumine the gilded domes and glittering pinnacles of the beautiful cities of the future, where men shall dwell together in true brotherhood and goodwill and joy. The Golden Light that will be diffused throughout all the happy world from the rays of the risen sun of socialism”

But they deny all that has gone before and are really only the delirious dream of Owen the consumptive, socialist working class hero of the novel.

The novel which doubles as a socialist tract follows the working lives of a band of painters and decorators. They are driven and “sweated” to complete jobs in a cut throat competitive environment. Tressell himself was a sign writer and uses his experiences to give a first hand, blow by blow account of their working conditions; he tells of their struggle to clothe and feed themselves and of their desperately poor home life. The story of their continuous struggle to survive is interlaced with the Socialist teaching that could transform their lives. The original teacher is Owen who whenever he can; lectures his workmates on how a socialist system would be to the benefit of all. The reader follows Owen’s explanation of how the Capitalist money trick works, how it robs the workers of the fruits of their labours. Their are diagrams painted on walls, their are impromptu question and answer sessions, but through it all Owen struggles to make any headway, let alone make any converts. Later it is a socialist battle van visiting the town that provides a platform for the socialists and finally George Barrington (an independent man of means) makes an impassioned plea for Socialist change: in effect delivering a socialist manifesto.

The Socialist message is repeated and enhanced throughout the book, but it continually fails to impress the townspeople of Mugsborough. The working men continue to vociferously support the system which serves to enslave them:

“They often said that such things as leisure, culture, pleasure and the benefits of civilisation were never intended for ‘the likes of us’

They refuse to believe that changing the system would benefit anybody and perhaps after all they are right, because Tressells message that men/women do not deserve socialism and will not be ready for it for another 500 years; comes through loud and clear. Tressells book has been taught in schools and universities and was required reading for any would be socialist member of the British parliament, but those days are gone. After the recent Conservative success in the British Election this year, it would appear that either the working class has disappeared completely from the majority of the South and Midlands, or that they still believe that the knobs (rich and powerful) have a divine right to run the country.

Sir Graball d’Encloseland, Mayor Sweater, Councillors Rushton, Didlum and Grinder, along with Mrs Starvem, and Lady Slumrent ably supported by Rev Bosher run the Town of Mugsborough for all that it is worth and in effect take the book into the realms of a fable (although a very long one). In my opinion there is no doubt that the book could do with some serious editing, but as an example of a Socialist novel with a political message then it is in a class of it’s own. I can’t say I really enjoyed the book, but I liked what it said and so 4 stars.

90SassyLassy
jun 11, 2015, 11:55 am

>89 baswood: Great review of one of my favourite books. The refusal to believe that change is not only possible but also necessary was so truly dispiriting (as were the recent election results south of the border) that the aptly named Owen was a true hero for continuing on with his work, despite it all.

I did feel that Tressell managed to inject a bit of humour with his explanation of the Capitalist money trick.

That's a great image in 88 above, but oh so depressingly true.

91rebeccanyc
jun 11, 2015, 5:07 pm

>89 baswood: >90 SassyLassy: I've had The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists on the TBR since you reviewed it, Sassy, and this is an added push to take it off the shelves.

92NanaCC
jun 11, 2015, 8:11 pm

Oh, I have to get to The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Thank you for the extra push. I have it on kindle so I have no excuse.

93StevenTX
jun 12, 2015, 9:09 am

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is one I definitely need to read. Thanks for a great review.

94Poquette
jun 12, 2015, 7:11 pm

Hi Barry, just catching up.

>44 baswood: Your review of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury confirms my prejudice against Faulkner which dates back to school days. I know, I know, he is America's five-star writer, but I just think he is not for me. I enjoyed your review, however, which reveals a lot more about Faulkner's writing than I had previously absorbed. I have concluded that I am not a fan of stream-of-consciousness writing.

>60 baswood: Morrison is another writer who I long ago concluded wasn't for me. Great review, however!

>89 baswood: Fascinating review of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist, which I had never heard of!

95OscarWilde87
jun 20, 2015, 4:10 am

Hi there, just catching up.

Thanks for the advice on Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. I intend to read the book but will probably follow your advice of having a safety net that will help me get through the first two parts.

I haven't read Paradise by Toni Morrison yet. I was kinda surprised when you said you did not really like it because I loved Morrison's writing in The Bluest Eye which I have read several times. Well, there are very few authors who only write perfect books... I probably won't bother to read Paradise.

96baswood
Redigeret: jun 20, 2015, 8:22 pm



Collioure France

97baswood
Redigeret: jun 20, 2015, 8:23 pm

The Search Warrant - Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano
It was not until 1995 that France finally accepted responsibility for their treatment of Jews during the years of Nazi occupation. Patrick Modiano’s Search Warrant - Dora Bruder is a book of meta fiction of novella length, in which he once again picks at the sore that has troubled French consciences since 1945. Historical but not hysterical Modiano takes his readers on a kind of mystery tour, but one where the final destination soon becomes all too apparent - Auschwitz and the gas chambers.

In 1988 the author is reading a 1941 edition of the newspaper Paris Soir and is struck by a small notice that appeals for information concerning Dora Bruder a young girl of 15 years, who is described as missing. Modiano has noticed that the address of Mr and Mrs Bruder is given as 41 Boulevard Ornano, Paris; an area of the city that he knows well: his mother took him to the flea markets there in the 1950’s when he was a child, in 1958 he remembers the area being deserted when a demonstration in connection with the Algerian war had effectively sealed it off and during the years 1965 to 1968 he had a girlfriend there. Modiano is writing his book in 1996 and since reading the missing persons notice in 1988 he has been trying to find out as much as he can about Dora Bruder; we learn that painstaking research is something that Modiano enjoys doing, he has the necessary temperament and aptitude for this kind of work; he tells us:

“It took me four years to discover her exact date of birth: 25 February 1926. and a further two years to find out her place of birth: Paris 12th arrondissement. But I am a patient man. I can wait for hours in the rain.”

Modiano’s research is not only through the scarce paper work, it is also among people who might have known Dora or her family and more significantly for this novel it is about an area of Paris: a neighbourhood. He revisits Boulevard Ornano, makes enquiries about buildings that would have been familiar to Dora as a child and young adult, he tries to build up a picture using his information and his own life experiences and the novel becomes a sort of palimpsest of a Paris neighbourhood, where if one looks hard enough one can almost see features from the past, a palimpsest of his connections with the city and a palimpsest of issues facing Jewish people. It is no surprise to discover that the author is Jewish and that his own father had a lucky escape when he was picked up by the Nazis in 1942.

Modiano succeeds in painting a picture of the short, tragic life of Dora, he can fill in the gaps of the official records, he is able to portray the desperate situation for Jewish people caught in a net that tightened like a noose during the period 1941 to 1943 and without ever having to state the obvious he is able to show the shame of a city that was only too willing to hold the rope. He reflects on his own life; he was born in 1945 and how much safer it was for him growing up in the 1960’s, but the echoes from the past still resonate through the city, they still affect so many lives and Modiano thinks of some of the writers who but for the war might have been his friends. He has an idea of how the past shapes the future and how collectively a group of people can alter the very fabric of their town, the buildings or its culture. It is the echoes from the past that Modiano’s keen senses pick up. I get the feeling he loves the city of Paris, but he and the city are haunted by past events: In 1966 he remembers walking past the Tourelles barracks, where those people who had fallen foul of the nazi laws were taken in the first instance and still affixed to the old building was a sign: MILITARY ZONE, FILMING OR PHOTOGRAPHY PROHIBITED and he says:

“I told myself that nobody remembers anything anymore. A no-man’s-land lay beyond the wall, a zone of emptiness and oblivion. Unlike the convent in the Rue de Picpus, the twin blocks of Tourelles barracks had not been pulled down, but they might as well have been. And yet, from time to time, beneath this thick layer of amnesia, one can certainly sense something, an echo, distant, muted, but of what, precisely, it is impossible to say. Like finding oneself on the edge of a magnetic field and having no pendulum with which to pick up it’s radiations. The sign had been put up out of suspicion and a guilty conscience.”

The use of historical documents throughout the book gives it an authenticity that grounds Modiano’s own thoughts and conjectures about the fate of Jewish people in occupied Paris. None is more painful to read than a letter from a Jewish man, one Robert Tartakovsky who had been picked to go on a transport train to the German camps. Modiano says that he found the letter two years ago on one of the bookstalls along the Seine: today, fifty years late, on Wednesday 29 January 1997, I reproduce his letter.

This is a quiet, softly spoken book that trades on atmosphere and echoes from the past, but the underlying horror of those years is born out by the extracts from documents and by Modiano’s claustrophobic description of desperation for Jews caught up in the Nazi machine. I rate this as 4.5 stars.

Footnote: I read this last week on the beach when I was on holiday in Collioure a small French town on the Mediterranean coast not far from the Spanish border. On page 91 of my English translation I read:

“In July 1942, on her way back from the beach at Collioure, in the Free Zone, his friend Ruth Kronenberg was arrested. She was deported in the transport of 11 September, a week before Dora Bruder “

Those echoes from the past.

98NanaCC
jun 20, 2015, 9:21 pm

Excellent review of The Search Warrant, Barry. Every time I read a book about this time period, fiction or non-fiction, I think of how frightening and unsettling it must have been for those involved.

99RidgewayGirl
jun 21, 2015, 4:26 am

Excellent reviews of The Search Warrant and The Ragged Trouser Philanthropists. I'm going to look for both of these.

100AlisonY
jun 21, 2015, 6:21 am

The Search Warrant sounds great. And what a beautiful picture - I hadn't heard of this French town before, but it looks just gorgeous.

101rebeccanyc
jun 21, 2015, 7:10 am

I know I should read Modiano, but nothing has made me want to do so until your review.

102tonikat
Redigeret: jun 21, 2015, 11:30 am

Yes Bas very interesting reviews of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and the search warrant. So much could be said of both, I've edited out my analysis of where we stand left wing wise and election wise you may be relieved to know - but then its important people do discuss such things, without hatred, given the current dispensation. Jaw Jaw.

I should read Modiano - but first I'd like to read Arendt on Eichmann and also reread partially a book I read a long time ago, Accounting for Genocide by Helen Fein and such reading takes me time.

103baswood
jun 21, 2015, 5:11 pm

>98 NanaCC: Frightening and unsettling yes indeed Colleen. It is useful perhaps to think how one would act in a situation where an occupying power of your country was enforcing laws that were in fact genocide. Would you disobey those laws? I hope I would.

104reva8
jun 23, 2015, 7:05 am

>97 baswood: That's a great review. I was wondering where to begin with Modiano; perhaps here!

105baswood
jun 30, 2015, 5:52 pm



Miles Davis - Tutu 1986

Just what was Miles Davis thinking in 1986 when he released Tutu? Perhaps he looked around at a moribund jazz scene and knew that going backwards was not the answer. In the 1980’s Miles Davis was the greatest living jazz trumpeter, he had led the way in the 1950’s with cool jazz and had made the uncompromising “Kind of Blue” which has become a best selling jazz LP. He had been somewhat sidelined by the short lived avant-garde scene of the late 1960’s, but had once again been at the forefront of the electronic jazz movement of the 1970’s. The 1980’s saw a period of retrenchment as jazz musicians largely stepped back from the abyss of free blowing and electronics to once again prove themselves as serious musicians playing acoustic jazz concentrating on the standards: the charts, the chords were the watchwords on which their improvisations were based. Sure their were plenty of new songs or themes and the flirtation with rock music had not been forgotten, but the essence of the music was getting back to those 1960’s combo sounds. This was not for Miles, his vision of a future for jazz music was quite different and it involved an in depth exploration of the possibilities of a fusion with popular music and Tutu might well be his crowning achievement in this respect.

Miles turned to Marcus Miller whom he knew well from his own group and who had a history of producing as well as playing. Miller was familiar with making music for the more popular club scene and was himself a multi instrumentalist, arranger and a distinctive voice on bass guitar. Miller wrote most of Tutu playing bass clarinet, saxophones, synths as well as bass guitar and presented Miles with a number of tunes to which he could add his trumpet, however this does not feel like a series of backing tracks over which Davis provides a solo voice because he seems to get right inside the arrangements. There is no doubt he feels this music because he provides some brilliant solo work and is at home with beats that can sound pretty rock solid. From the opening synth chords of the first track to the partly vocalised counter melody the music has the feel of something that Prince might have recorded. Scritti Politti are also another group that spring to mind with perhaps a harder edge and a bass guitar that twists and turns to become a feature of much of the music. Miles plays mostly muted trumpet and is the main solo voice on all the tracks, but it is equally Marcus Millers arrangements that grab the attention using many of the sounds from the 1980’s pop and club culture. This music works on many levels and perhaps sounds better today than it did in 1986. It is a five star recording and an iconic album cover with a photo by Irving Penn.

Link to Tutu - https://youtu.be/-EOAGRxOxaI

106reva8
jul 1, 2015, 8:04 am

>105 baswood: Oh, this is a lovely review. I haven't heard Tutu in a while, thanks for the reminder.

107baswood
jul 3, 2015, 11:12 am

108baswood
Redigeret: jul 3, 2015, 11:37 am

The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing
This novel was not a trumpet for Women’s Liberation; claimed Lessing herself in an essay written in 1971, nearly ten years after The Golden Notebook was published and which serves as a preface to the 1993 edition, but I can understand how it might have been interpreted as such back in the early 1960’s. It is like many of her early novels drawn from her own life experiences, so much so that it seems autobiographical in places.

‘“Writing about oneself, one is writing about others, since your problems, pains, pleasures and emotions - and your extraordinary and remarkable ideas - can’t be yours alone”
Doris Lessing - essay1971

The subject of the book is Anna Wulf who is a forty something woman living in Earls Court London with her young daughter, she is living on the royalties of a successful novel. She is divorced. She spent the first thirty years or so of her life in Africa (Zimbabwe or perhaps South Africa) where she was a member of the communist party. She is suffering from writers block and although she might not admit it; the need to find a man with whom she can have a loving relationship. She feels adrift and although she has a number of affairs she is lurching toward a severe depression. Her inability to start a new book has coincided with her rejection of the communist party (CP) which has been her ideological and social base for most of her adult life. In an attempt to break out of the downward spiral she starts to write about her feelings, history, day to day events together with an imaginary novel based on current experiences in four separate notebooks. Lessing uses Anna’s notebooks as the basic structure for her novel, linking them with a narrative story called Free Woman which charts Anna’s progress through this painful period of her life.

The notebooks hold nothing back and if at times this reader thought he was wading through seas of menstrual blood then this is exactly what was important to Anna Wulf at the time. The notebooks present an intimate picture of Anna’s life and as she is a single parent coping with the social culture of the early 1960’s (where women are second class citizens and as such their sexual life is to be used and abused by men who are in a position to take advantage), she is not afraid to write about her own needs, both as a women and as a politically aware person. She goes to bed with men as and when it feels right for her to do so, there is no shame and no recriminations. She does not spare her vitriol on the men who cheat about their emotions, those that use their dominant position in society to get what they want and she meets or hears about quite a few of those, therefore it is not surprising that The Golden Notebook was/is seen as a cause celebre for women’s liberation both by women readers who felt the same way and by male critics who may have felt emasculated. However Lessing was writing a novel about one woman’s feelings at a certain point in her life, the book is very subjective it is not a clarion call for anything and although many of the men appear weak and unworthy much the same could be said for the women in Anna’s life.

Lessing has claimed that her book has been misinterpreted that it’s main subject was the disintegration of Anna Wulf, her descent into near madness at a time when the things that were important to her were also falling apart; for example her inability to get past her writers block, the meltdown inside the British Communist party, her fears for a world under the shadow of the H-bomb and the future of her child as well as her need for love. The disintegration is represented by the four notebooks where the only way that Anna can cope is to compartmentalise her life, but they are not the answer as they lead to more fragmentation as issues and stories from her past appear and reappear in different forms.

This is a book that will speak to many people, because of the rawness of it’s emotional content and Lessing may well be right in saying that when an author writes truthfully about herself then others will see their own lives partly reflected. I think that this is why the book does not quite hold together in the way that Lessing wished at the time, because readers were too busy identifying with the characters and failing to see the bigger picture. This may be still true today as for many people times have not changed all that much, but this is not Lessing’s fault. It is certainly not her fault in the way that the book is structured, because its last fifty or so pages are a passionate account of one person’s mental breakdown. Lessing writes imaginatively, saving some of her best prose to describe Anna’s dreams as they become confused with her reality. This writing prefigures some of her writing in her later science fiction novels. It is very effective here.

The Golden Notebook is the final notebook in which she writes about her affair with Saul Green, a man who's seems to be suffering from a multi personality disorder. Perhaps it is progress for Anna that she now has only one notebook and even more progress because she can give it away, but when Saul leaves as Anna knows he must taking some strength from their relationship, Anna is once again left with her problems. She still has work to do….

A Book that is passionate and powerful and once again mines the authors own life story for much of it’s content. Perhaps it is too powerful for it’s own good, because it does not quite come together for me, but then again that is one of its major themes and so it may be Lessing is being more clever than I think she is. Anyway this is an important book for what it says about a brave and independent woman battling against the culture of her times which threatens her very sanity. Plenty of us will find in those intimate details of Anna’s life much to think about and so 4.5 stars.

109StevenTX
jul 3, 2015, 12:43 pm

Excellent review of The Golden Notebook. I found much to think about in it as well and also gave it 4.5 stars.

110rebeccanyc
jul 4, 2015, 8:07 am

I read The Golden Notebook decades ago. Your review bought it back for me.

111baswood
jul 7, 2015, 9:35 am

112baswood
Redigeret: jul 7, 2015, 12:01 pm

The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry by Walter Pater.
Walter Pater had a passion for the Italian Renaissance, it spoke to him as something like a reassertion of paganism into the world of Christianity. He was able to see the Hellenistic world wherever he looked and he looked deep into Renaissance art to find it. The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry is a collection of essays, originally collected together in 1873 under the title of Studies in the History of the Renaissance but the later edition published in 1888 has in addition his essay on the school of Giorgione, where he delves deeply into a definition for a work of art.

Like many other famous Victorian art critics Pater saw the Renaissance as an uplifting of the spirit from the dark ages of the medieval period. However he was careful to look backwards to the twelfth century and before to find the seeds for growth and his first chapter is on the early influence of France, this is followed by an essay on Pica Della Mirandola in whom Pater discovers in his writing its subject as the dignity of man:

"It helped man onward to that reassertion of himself, that rehabilitation of human nature, the body, the senses, the heart, the intelligence, which the Renaissance fulfils"

It is in his essay on Sandro Botticelli that Pater launches into his ideas on the influence of Pagan images in Renaissance art, but he also does a wonderful job in describing the unique qualities of the paintings. There follows an excellent little essay on Luca Della Robbia before one of the highlights of the book is the essay on the poetry of Michelangelo. The essay title is a bit misleading because Pater talks about the 'sweetness and strength' in Michelangelo's work and it ranges over his painting and his sculpture. The following essay on Leonardo Da Vinci is equally impressive and here Pater talks about his curiosity and his desire for beauty and he tells us what he sees in the celebrated Mona Lisa. His essay on The School of Giorgione has the startling idea at it's heart that music is the most sublime form of all the arts because it unites subject and form and it is the paintings (there are only a handful in existence) of Giorgione that suggest this to him. In his essay on Joachim Du Bellay, Pater has come nearly full circle as he is back with France and the poetry of the Pleiad which takes him into the mid sixteenth century and towards the end of the Renaissance. Pater is not yet finished as two astonishing essays are still to follow the first is on the Germanart critic and archeologist: Johann Joachim Winckelmann. Pater says:

Winklemann -"As it is confessedly the beauty of man which is to be conceived under one general idea, so I have noticed that those who are observant of beauty only in women, and are moved little or not at all by the beauty of men, seldom have an impartial, vital, inborn instinct for beauty in art. To such persons the beauty of Greek art will ever seem wanting, because its supreme beauty is rather male than female. But the beauty of art demands a higher sensibility than the beauty of nature, because the beauty of art, like tears shed at a play, gives no pain, is without life, and must be awakened and repaired by culture. Now, as the spirit of culture is much more ardent in youth than in manhood, the instinct of which I am speaking must be exercised and directed to what is beautiful, before that age is reached, at which one would be afraid to confess that one had no taste for it."

His eulogy on Winckelmann leads Pater to discuss in detail the awakening to the divine forms of antiquity that signifies to him the Renaissance. He puts many of his thoughts together in his conclusion where he celebrates the quest for beauty in the artistry of the Renaissance:

"Only be sure it is passion—that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake."

These essays provide us with a Victorian art critic's view of the Renaissance by selecting key figures on which he can hang his theories and ideas. It is a celebration of the artistic genius that is paramount in these essays and they are written with a passion for the subject. They will serve as an introduction to the Renaissance, but they will be more appreciated by readers that already have some knowledge of the period. Pater is a critic that encourages his readers, by his writing, by his ideas and theories to look again at some of the great works of art, to see for himself just what he might have missed and so his essays are there to be read by all lovers of the period. A four star read.

113Poquette
jul 7, 2015, 5:54 pm

>112 baswood: Thanks, Barry, for your illuminating review of Pater's The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, which I have read but could never have elucidated as well as you have. Bravo!

114baswood
jul 7, 2015, 6:04 pm

Thanks Suzanne.

115baswood
jul 7, 2015, 6:05 pm



Shirley Collins and Davey Graham - Folk Roots, New Routes 1964
Old and In the Way - Old and in the Way 1973


From both sides of the Atlantic but nearly a decade apart young musicians play roots music. Old and in the Way is a group led by Jerry Garcia (Grateful Dead fame) who play bluegrass and Country music while Davey Graham and Shirley Collins delve into the English folk tradition. Both LPs feature talented professional musicians who have a genuine love for the music from the past, though not necessarily from their past and their re-interpretations are imaginative and brilliantly played. Great music but it’s not quite authentic and in both cases there are signs of strain.

Old and in the Way features Jerry Garcia on banjo, David Grisman on mandolin, Vassar Clements on fiddle and Peter Rowan on guitar, the recordings are taken from live shows and the the musicianship is outstanding. They kick off with Pig in a Pen a traditional song and they get close to a traditional sound, however many of the other songs are more modern some written by group members and so what we get are country tunes given a bluegrass treatment. Everybody gets a chance to solo and perhaps some of the solos are too long and stray too far from their traditional roots, however they make some excellent music and there is not a weak track on the album.

Davey Graham and Shirley Collins back in the early 1960’s paved the way for the folk rock groups of the late 1960’s and they did so in very fine style, Graham was an excellent and imaginative acoustic guitarist who could play folk, jazz, blues styles and could tune his guitar to play music with a distinct Asian influence. The LP captures him at his very best. His voice however was not the finest of instruments and so teaming him up with Shirley Collins was a master stroke. Together they make wonderful music giving fine interpretations of some traditional songs: Nottamun Town, Hares on the Mountain, Reynardine and Dearest Dear are all standout performances. The Lp also features a couple of modern jazz instrumentals featuring Graham and a couple of songs written by Collins. There are also some American country music songs and even a gospel tinged tune and on some of these the duo do not get to the roots of the music.

If you are looking for authenticity then neither of these Lps will fit the bill, but if this is not a consideration then just sit back and enjoy some brilliant interpretations of music that finds these musicians playing roots music with verve and flair. Both I would rate at 4.5 stars.

Old and In the Way on youtube https://youtu.be/16EYejUic_0

A couple of tracks from the Davey Graham and Shirley Collins LP:
https://youtu.be/onbejvDZFNo
https://youtu.be/NUEck2Nch80

116StevenTX
jul 9, 2015, 12:06 pm

Great review of Walter Pater. I was especially intrigued by the Winklemann quote about the importance of being able to appreciate male as well as female beauty. It raises some interesting questions about sexuality and artistic talent (e.g. can we say that homophobic cultures consistently produce inferior art?).

117dchaikin
jul 9, 2015, 10:22 pm

Your review on The Search Warrant by Patrick Modiano - that's a wow.

Loved catching up here. I learned a lot about Tressell, Pater, Lessing, and Modiano.

118DieFledermaus
jul 10, 2015, 5:07 am

Excellent reviews as usual!

I'll have to add The Search Warrant to the list - it sounds really powerful and I enjoy metafiction. I wanted to read something by him but wasn't sure where to start; this one sounds like a good one. Your review makes it sound a little like W.G. Sebald's metafictional novels - have you read any of them?

Glad to read another good review of The Golden Notebook - that one is on the pile.

Also enjoyed reading your review of Tutu - good summary of the history and it was fun to read.

119baswood
jul 26, 2015, 10:28 am

Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century Vol I of the Oxford History of Western Music by Richard Taruskin.

Slowly making my way through this weighty tome which fits nicely with my reading from the medieval and renaissance periods.

The Troubadours
The earliest secular repertoires of which we have direct knowledge consist of songs by the poets of courtly love and feudal service. The earliest of these songs come from the Aquitaine area of France and their authors and singers became better known as Troubadours. Although we have the lyrics or poems and some melody lines there is very little else to go on. The language is Langue D"Oc or Occitan. The subject matter of many of the songs was fin d’amors or courtly love and took the form of a poem or a declaration of undying love for a woman (or occasionally a man) who more often than not could only be admired from afar. There were songs celebrating the feudal ideal and other celebrating feats of arms or praise for a worthy Lord and there were even some songs celebrating the consummation of an affair, but more often than not the songs took on a sense of worship, either for the unobtainable lady, the Lord or the feudal system or heroic feats of arms. The Troubadours were active in the 11th and 12th centuries, but the songs were written down retrospectively in the 13th century as the troubadour tradition was an oral one. We do not know how the songs were performed and although we may have some of the melodic content the rhythmic style and metre of the songs remains a mystery. When the material first started to be rediscovered for recoding purposes it was largely left to the musicians to invent rhythms and an overall sound for the songs.

Two Cds one from the 1970's and one more recent featuring the music of the Troubadours. Both Cd's use the lyrics in Langue D'Oc, but they provide quite different interpretations of the music.



Troubadours - Clemencic Consort

Clemencic consort are a group specialising in medieval music up to the baroque period and feature period or historical instruments.
This LP recorded in 1971 is an example of musicians being given a free hand in interpreting the material. The language of South West France: Occitan is adhered to, with over half of the songs consisting of a spoken vocal delivery with musical interjections. These are of little merit from an entertainment perspective, however some of the pieces are performed by classically trained vocalist in the manner of early folk songs with backing music provided by violin, lute and flutes or pipes. There are both male and female vocalists. The penultimate track is a long instrumental piece in which individual musicians are given free reign to set down their own improvisations and although this demonstrates the quality of the musicians it does little to assist the modern listener who wishes to understand how these songs were performed. They might of course all have been subject to free reign improvisations, but I doubt it and when you hear this together with folk song renditions or serious poetry performed to musical accompaniment then this listener did not quite know what to make of it, and although there are some good songs the scatter gun approach makes for an unsatisfying listen and so three stars.

An example https://youtu.be/UX34UsrglA4



Nuits Occitanes: Troubadours' songs - Ensemble Céladon and Paulin Budgen
This is a Cd released last year and the notes that come with it are useful and informative. They come clean straight away by admitting that they do not know what the Troubadours music sounded like:

Today the question must remain open: various attempts at a solution go from rhythmic systems in which the scansion of the text is dominant, these being closer in spirit to Gregorian chant, to more purely rhythmical interpretations that inevitably come to resemble dance music.

The musicians performing are:
ENSEMBLE CÉLADON
Clara Coutouly: soprano
Paulin Bündgen: counter-tenor Nolwenn Le Guern: fiddle & rebab Florent Marie: lute
Gwénaël Bihan: recorders & gemshorn Ludwin Bernaténé: percussion
Paulin Büngden: artistic direction

The first thing to notice is that the vocalists are women and although there were some notable female lyricists from the period it is not thought that they performed as Troubadours. Ensemble Celadon have therefore gone for their own interpretation of the music, but unlike the Clemencic consort it is a consistent one. The music is softer more approachable and although period instruments are used throughout they are not banged and bashed around quite like they are on the Clemencic consort's CD. Some of the music veers towards folk music and at other times it takes on a more ecclesiastic feel, but this should not be too surprising as the music of the Troubadours was most likely a combination of the two. Ensemble Celadon have adapted melodies and borrowed phrasing from church music, but to my ears they have come up with a winning combination. It might be far and away from how the 11th and 12th century Troubadours sounded, but Nuits Occitanes is a four star listen for me; some great tunes and beautifully sung.

Link to the group performing with a male counter tenor https://youtu.be/GJtLj3nmr_Q

120rebeccanyc
jul 26, 2015, 11:40 am

All very interesting, and thanks for the YouTube links. I look forward to your future musical explorations.

121NanaCC
jul 26, 2015, 2:07 pm

I always enjoy your music reviews as much as I enjoy your book reviews. Looking forward to more!

122baswood
Redigeret: jul 26, 2015, 5:48 pm

123baswood
Redigeret: jul 26, 2015, 5:50 pm

Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling by Ross King
I think Ross King has got it just about right. He tells the story of how and why Michelangelo painted the frescoes on the Sistine chapel in the Vatican city and he also tells us why they are a masterpiece of Renaissance art. The book would appeal to the more casual reader, but still holds plenty of interest for readers more widely read on the Italian Renaissance.

The story is told in linear fashion and so we witness the struggles of Michelangelo as he spends four years of his life working and figuring on a scaffold just below the Sistine chapel ceiling. His story is placed in context of a master craftsman working to earn his living in the city states of the IIalian renaissance. For a proven artist as Michelangelo was when Pope Julius II awarded him the contract it was still a risk to undertake such a venture. A work of such magnitude presented it’s own problems and Michelangelo had to solve them as he went along, always aware that competition among the elite artists was fierce and there was no room for failure. Ross KIng manages to bring his characters to life and at the same time sketch in the historical events around them. His view of life in Renaissance Italy has enough substance to make this reader feel like he has created the right atmosphere and explains why the characters acted in ways that might be puzzling to modern readers. For example even an artist as well known as Michelangelo was forced to work and live in cramped and dirty conditions being forced to share his bed with two of his fellow artists.

Ross King is an art historian and so he understands the techniques involved in frescoing a renaissance ceiling, and in this book he is able to make this subject an integral part of the story without sounding dry and over scholarly. As a reader I could appreciate the problems and marvel at the way an artist of the calibre of Michelangelo was able to solve them. Life gets in the way of art and Pope Julius’ war mongering with the French and the Venetians was always likely to derail Michelangelo’s work as were problems within his own family, but Michelangelo was something of a workaholic as well as being proud and stubborn and so although at times tested to his limits we could understand how he succeeded.

While Michelangelo was employed in the Sistine chapel, Raphael another great artist of the period was frescoing the walls of Pope Julius’ Library and Ross King uses these two very different character to point up the differences between them, so much so that the book becomes a story of both of these artists with King able to compare and contrast their different painting style as well as their life styles. Raphael was young, good looking, charming to all those around him. Michelangelo was not. King sums up the differences in their painting styles like this:

” One way to understand the differing styles of the two artists is through a pair of aesthetic categories developed two and a half centuries later by the Irish statesman and writer Edmund Burke……… For Burke those things we call beautiful have the properties of smoothness, delicacy, softness of colour and elegance of movement. The sublime, on the other hand comprehends the vast, the obscure, the powerful, the rugged, the difficult attributes which produce in the spectator a kind of astonished wonder and even terror. For the people of Rome in 1511, Raphael was beautiful but Michelangelo was sublime.

Of course King dispels the popular myths about Michelangelo and the Sistine chapel: he did not paint it single handedly (he had a whole team of painters working with him) and he didn’t paint it lying on his back on the scaffold.

King for the most part uses secondary sources; of which there are many, but he uses the material to bring the story into the reach of many more people. Not an original history or an imaginative historical novel, but a solid piece of writing that will inform and entertain many readers who give it their attention and so for me a four star read.

124FlorenceArt
jul 27, 2015, 4:02 am

Sounds very interesting. I didn't know about this book, and though I'm not sure I will ever get to it, I will add it to my wishlist.

125rebeccanyc
jul 27, 2015, 7:41 am

Sounds like a very interesting book, and I enjoyed your review, which will probably be all I'll read.

126Nickelini
jul 27, 2015, 10:23 pm

>123 baswood: Interesting review. Based on reading the author's Brunelleschi's Dome (which was very good), I'm sure this is a readable, entertaining, and all-round worth-while book. After taking several classes on the Renaissance at university, Michelangelo has slipped down my range of interests, but if I were to get interested in him again, I will look for this. Ross King is one of those writers who can take history and facts and wind them into an educational and entertaining story.

127AnnieMod
jul 27, 2015, 10:50 pm

>108 baswood:
Great review of The Golden Notebook. I've never even heard of that book before but your review makes me want to read it.

(Slowly catching up so probably will be back to read again the rest of the reviews I missed the last few months - this one just caught my eye) :)

128dchaikin
jul 29, 2015, 1:57 pm

I've also read Brunelleschi's Dome, but I don't recall anything about it. Fun stuff on Michelangelo. I didn't realize he used a team. Wonder what that job was like.

129FlorenceArt
jul 29, 2015, 4:10 pm

>128 dchaikin: I never imagined he did it all himself, but I did wonder how they painted on the ceiling and whether they did it laying on their backs. Must have been extremely uncomfortable whichever way.

130kidzdoc
jul 30, 2015, 1:21 pm

Fabulous reviews of The Search Warrant and The Golden Notebook, Barry. Both books will be added to my wish list (although I thought that I already owned the Lessing).

Thanks for reminding me about Tutu! I haven't listened to it for years, but I did buy it back in the mid 80s (yikes, that's almost 30 years ago). I'm listening to the title track on Spotify, and remembering how much I loved that album.

I've heard of Folk Roots, New Routes, but I've never listened to it, to my knowledge. Hopefully Spotify will have it as well.

131baswood
jul 30, 2015, 5:39 pm

> 128 Wonder what the job was like Probably dirty, messy, and hard work and working with Michelangelo was probably no fun at all as he wasn't a barrel of laughs.

132janeajones
aug 4, 2015, 9:34 pm

Ach -- I lost your thread when you went to #2 -- fabulous reviews of really interesting stuff. I will follow more closely now -- I fell absolutely overwhelmed to comment on what you've posted in the last 6 months.

133Jargoneer
aug 5, 2015, 8:02 am

Catching up after a long time away. Always interesting.
It's interesting that you thought The Sound and the Fury would be the book that puts the first nail into your book group because one of your later groups, The Golden Notebook was the one that struck the first nail into the book group I was a member. Out of ten people I was the only one who finished it, most complained it was too long and too convoluted to care about Anna. I know the focus on the novel is on Anna's psychology but I found myself equally fascinated by the in-and-outs of the communist party, caught in the wake of Stalinism and a realisation that their political dreams were never going to amount to much in the UK.

Re Davy Graham - in Rob Young's Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music, essentially a history of English folk music he sees Graham as pivotal in the folk revival as he developed the DADGAD tuning that become the tuning of choice of many acoustic guitarists. (He actually based his tuning on the sound of a oud he heard in Morocco). There were stories of guitarists sitting on the front row at concerts trying to see what he was playing which resulted in him sometimes playing with his back to the audience. It's a pity that his career was effectively derailed by drugs and that he rarely recorded after 1970.

134baswood
aug 6, 2015, 9:40 am

>133 Jargoneer: nice to see you back. The Rob Young book looks interesting. If nothing else it will bring back memories of spending late nights in Cousins in Soho back in the late sixties, perhaps one of the most uncomfortable folk clubs in a genre not noted for its comfort.

The Jazz festival here in Marciac is in full swing at the moment, which leaves me no time for reading. Music all day and all night (well until 2 am). The festival now in its 38th year has gotten bigger and bigger and now stretches to over three weeks. Drinking and eating far too much and suffering from a little sleep deprivation. Still its all in a good cause (supporting the French economy)

135baswood
aug 12, 2015, 5:36 pm

Spent the last couple of weeks at the Marciac jazz Festival and one of the many highlights was seeing Dr John and the Night Trippers. Dr John "Mac Rebennack" is now 75 years old and although he needs a little help to get to the piano once he is there he still has that amazing twangy voice and his blues drenched piano playing still rocks. The second half of the show was George Clinton's Funkadelic Parliament who were great fun and I found myself groovin' with the kids down in front of the stage. I am just about getting my hearing back.

The Last Poets - The Last Poets 1970



The Last Poets was the name of a group of black poets in the late 1960's, closely associated with the Civil Rights movement and later the Black Nationalist movement. However, it is the versions of the group led by Jalaluddin Masur Nuriddin and/or Umar Bin Hassan that have penetrated mass culture to a legendary degree. The Last Poets have been cited as one of the earliest influences on hip-hop music. This CD really is part of a living history and listening to it in 2015 holds some surprises. The first thing that strikes is the continuous use of the word nigger throughout most of these tracks. One would expect that there would be poems concerning the injustices and racism experienced by the black population, but an underlying theme is that unless black people get off their arses then nothing will change: it is almost if it is their own fault for excepting the situation. The longest track "Niggers are scared of Revolution" sums it up well. The only musical accompaniment to these rant like poems are conga drums: they consist of one lead hip-hop like vocal backed up by some sound effects and refrains from backing vocals. The poems are powerfully rendered and apart from revolution covers drugs, prostitution and crime.

"whitey is dying but his ghost is killing us"

Listening to this feels like stepping into another world. A five star LP and the full album is on youtube, well worth a listen.
https://youtu.be/KTQlhXij66g

136Jargoneer
Redigeret: aug 13, 2015, 6:51 am

>135 baswood: - I was listening to Funkadelic's One Nation Under A Groove on the way to work today. The day George Clinton decided to mix James Brown and Jimi Hendrix was a great day for music.

As he inspired this great piece from The Onion - http://www.theonion.com/article/clinton-threatens-to-drop-da-bomb-on-iraq-787

Re The Last Poets. I watched a documentary on James Brown recently and despite being one of the figure-heads of the civil rights movement he was at heart a Republican who believed the black community needed to embrace capitalism to succeed. There was something odd seeing a photo of Brown chatting with Nixon.
I have a Umar Bin Hassan solo album Be Bop or Be Dead where he reworks some of The Last Poets earlier work including "Niggers are scared of Revolution" with a band containing P-Funk veterans like Bootsy Collins & Bernie Worrell.

137baswood
aug 13, 2015, 9:39 am

>136 Jargoneer: There was rumour that Bootsy Collins would make an appearance with George Clinton at Marciac, but it didn't happen.

138SassyLassy
aug 14, 2015, 9:34 am

>135 baswood: Wow... The Doctor. I've been a huge fan for years and then saw him live three years ago at a blues festival. It was amazing.

>119 baswood: Totally off topic from your review, but now every time I scroll down through your thread I hear Van Morrison singing "It's the troubadours coming through town"

Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling looks like a good one. That's a great quote from Burke. I didn't know he wrote about art as well as politics.

139DieFledermaus
aug 16, 2015, 6:13 am

Enjoyed the links in >119 baswood: even though the music is from an earlier period than my usual listens.

>134 baswood: - Drinking, eating, music all day, supporting the French economy - sounds like it was a great time! Hope you got some sleep after.

140kidzdoc
aug 16, 2015, 3:44 pm

Great review of The Last Poets, Barry. I'll start listening to it later today.

141Polaris-
aug 16, 2015, 4:15 pm

I've been bumping along about a month behind your thread for ages, it's good to finally catch up again!

I also think that your music reviews are more enjoyable to read than many 'professional' reviews. Great reviews of John McLaughlin, what an amazing talent he is. Just for his work on Bitches' Brew alone he has to be considered as one of the very best. The Mahavishnu Orchestra made some beautiful music. I used to have this cassette where I had one of their albums on the B-side to Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters. I can't remember what it was called but the whole experience of those two back to back was quite mesmerising.

Great reviews of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and the Patrick Modiano. I have 2 of the latter's work on the wishlist and I like the sound of The Search Warrant as well.

I read the first sentence of your review of Miles' Tutu with relief. I didn't like that album. Miles solo work is as beautiful as ever, but I hated the arrangements and the production. Fantastic cover portrait as you said.

Fascinating review of The Golden Notebook, it sounds like a very powerful read. I'm always keeping an eye out for Lessing when book buying, but don't seem to find them yet.

I had not heard of Old and In the Way before, I like the sound of that LP. Very interesting reading all of your posts as ever Barry. Oh you're so lucky seeing Dr John at the Marciac Festival! I love his music. A real one of a kind. And a double-bill with Parlifunkadelicment?!? That must have been a LOT of fun! Thanks also for the Last Poets review, always worth listening to, but I prefer enjoying Gil Scot-Heron's musicality as well as the way his voice sounds.

>136 Jargoneer: That "Be Bop or Be Dead" album sounds well worth finding.



142baswood
aug 18, 2015, 6:58 pm

Thanks Paul. here is some more music:

Tropicália was an artistic movement in Brazil in the late 1960’s. The musical side of the movement has made the most lasting impression and was spearheaded by Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. Time has been kind to both these men who were 73 this year, so kind in fact that they were able to appear at the 2015 Marciac jazz festival. Two men their acoustic guitars and a wealth of music between them, sat on a stage and entertained the crowd (some 6000 people) with a selection of songs, first one taking the lead vocal and then the other. They both had and still have tremendous voices and although all of the songs were sung in Portuguese, the audience was still able to appreciate the tunes and the quality of the musicianship on show. I only recognised a few of the songs and I think they must have played well over 20 of them. Although it felt a bit like paying homage to two world class singers and songwriters, it was much more than that because they still have what it takes to bring an audience to its feet at the end of an evening of acoustic music.

Coming home from the concert and wanting to hear more I discovered that I had in my collection something entitled the ten best Lps of Brazilian music, most of them dating from the late 1960’s and all of them influenced by the Tropicalia movement. Here are three of them

Novos Baianos - Acabou Chorare 1972 - 4 stars
Chico Buarque - Construção 1971 - 4.5 stars
Os Mutantes - Os Mutantes 1968. - 3 stars




Novos Bainos’ Acabou Chorare is largely acoustic and features a variety of vocalists from the group . The songs are a mix of traditional Brazilian forms, but influenced by Western jazz and rock. There is some excellent songwriting and there is not a weak song on the Lp. A feature of much of the music is the guitar playing of Moraes Moreira. He plays a Portuguese guitar (I think) on many of the tracks.
https://youtu.be/JlmmaqWrUUU

Chico Buarque’s Construçâo from a year earlier is even more impressive. The songs are written or co-written by Buarque and break away from the samba or bossa nova which dominated much of Brazilian popular music. Buarque has a great voice and uses it to dramatic effect on many of the songs which have acoustic guitar and/or orchestral accompaniments.
https://youtu.be/yRpt8Asm9Z0

Os Mutantes comes from 1968 and to my ears is a mess. Bits of psychedelia, bits of brass band, kazoos, vocal effects etc swamp many of these songs for no particular reason that I can see. It is as though the group were straining far too hard to be different. It does however contain the classic “Minha Menina” with its simple but effective guitar riff that sound like it is played on an elastic band.
https://youtu.be/SEpSFOibJho

143Polaris-
aug 19, 2015, 4:03 pm

Excellent music! Love the sound of that Tropicalia gig - you're so lucky having that festival so near - the programme always sounds so varied but such quality!

The Os Mutantes tune sounds like archetypal late 60s fuzzy Brazilidelia....fun though. Novos Bainos’ Acabou Chorare is really beautiful. I love the selection you gave. Chico Buarque's album I'll have to get back to later - but of the first 2 tracks I didn't like the first as much as the 2nd.

Tell me that one of the other top ten LPs was Sergio Mendes Brasil 66?
Anything from Jorge Ben?

144baswood
aug 19, 2015, 7:17 pm

Paul yes of course something from Jorge Ben - samba esquama novos (his first release I think)

There is also:
Cartola - Cartola
Joa Gilberto - Chega de Suadade
Milton Nasciemento and Los Borges - Clube de esquina
Caetano Veloso - Transa
Secos & Molhados - Secos & Molhados

Sergio Mendes Brasil 66 is not included, but I have it anyway.

145baswood
Redigeret: aug 21, 2015, 9:41 am

The Mummy!: A tale of the twenty-second century by Mrs Jane (Webb) Loudon
Published in 1828 this very Victorian novel is now claimed as Proto science fiction along with Mary Shelley’s The last Man published a year earlier. There was of course no such genre as science fiction in those days, but both of these books could lay claim to being part of the genre as we know it today, although in both cases the science fiction element is background to a Romantic Novel.

Rely not on your own strength— seek not to pry into mysteries designed to be concealed from man ; and enjoy the comforts within your reach — for know, that knowledge, above the sphere of man's capacity, produces only wretchedness ; and that to be contented with our station, and to make our selves useful to our fellow-creatures, is the only true path to happiness.”

The final words of wisdom from the Mummy (Cheops) who flits in and out of the novel: stalking around London using his supernatural powers to bend characters to his will. The story is the familiar trope of star crossed lovers at a time in England (the twenty second century) when the population are content once again to live under the rule of an enlightened female monarch. The queen chosen is hereditary, but she must gain the support of the people’s elected representatives. She lives in a palace surrounded by her courtiers who are all members of the aristocracy, because as we all know it is only the aristocrats who are fit to rule (at least according to Jane Loudon) and this theme highlights the odd mixture that makes up this novel. It is as though early Victorian society with all its culture has been transposed to the twenty second century. People still travel by horseback, war is conducted largely on horseback with the use of cannon fire. Victorian values abound and heroes act heroically and ladies faint and swoon at appropriate moments. Science seems to be in the hands of mavericks like Dr Entwerfen who with his galvanising machine brings the Egyptian king Cheops (the Mummy) to life.

Society in the twenty second century seems to be much as it was in Victorian times with a few notable inventions; the delivery of mail by the use of cannons and safety nets, houses that can be packed up and wheeled to different locations, tunnels built under the sea (connecting England to Ireland) and the use of balloons as a method of transport, both private and public. There are other examples, but these have not significantly changed the way people live although all the population have been educated to an incredibly high standard: all fluent in most other languages (otherwise how would they understand Cheops).

The book (free on Google Books) is in three volumes. Volume I sets the scene in England and introduces us to the characters who will feature in the story, it also covers Dr Entwerfen and Edric’s trip to Egypt where they are intent on an experiment to bring back to life one of the ancient kings of Egypt. The journey into the great Pyramid is suitably creepy and atmospheric, but Dr Entwerfen and Edric’s capture and trial by the Egyptian authorities is farcical and when reading this I am not sure whether it is Jane Loudon being satirical/funny or a typical Victorian attitude to a justice system abroad. In Jane Loudon’s defence in Volume III she is equally satirical about the British justice system. Volume I ends with a very British pageant to welcome home Edmund (brother of Edric) who has successfully led the English army in its defeat of the Germans on the continent of Europe: there are so many balloon ships hovering above London and with a suspicion of some sort of insurrection; a spectacular tangle of airships brings many of them tumbling down injuring Queen Claudia in the process. Loudon is at her best in describing the fiasco.

In Volume II we discover that Cheops has escaped to England where he is intent on playing power games with the conspirators who are trying to secure the throne for their favourite Royal daughter. He appears and disappears seemingly at will and the reader is left to wonder just what he is trying to achieve. The majority of Volume II is set in Spain to where Edric and Dr Enterwerfen have managed to escape and describes the Irish king Roderick’s campaign against the Spanish republicans. Loudon is again very good with the action scenes and although her heroes perform superhuman feats in the battles, she also takes time out to describe the horrors of warfare; not only for the combatants but also for the innocent people caught up in the conflict. The last couple of pages of this volume are missing, but the story can easily be picked up at the start of Volume III which describes Roderick's assault on Seville. The scenario switches to England where a diplomatic battle is still going on to secure the throne with Cheops making his timely interventions. Roderick the hero of Spain now crosses over to England in support of the novels favourite candidate for the throne and everything is more or less resolved. The book ends with Cheops revealing his reasons for his actions and presents a satisfying conclusion.

I enjoyed the read and could not help but compare it to Mary Shelly’s The Last Man (her Frankenstein is in a different class ). There is perhaps more science fiction in The Mummy for instance; automatons, galvanisation and tunnels under the sea, but they are peripheral to the action and storyline. Jane Loudon also has a wicked sense of humour and her storytelling is very good, tying up all the loose ends and although there are some amazing coincidences we can forgive these in the interest of the fiction. Science Fiction readers may be disappointed, but it is responsible for starting one of the most abiding tropes in the horror and fantasy world and I liked it well enough to give it 3.5 stars.


146StevenTX
aug 21, 2015, 9:52 am

I skipped over The Mummy: A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century and The Last Man in my speculative fiction reading because it seemed they were tangential to the genre and a large investment in reading time. After reading your review I may make time later to go back for this one. It sounds imaginative and fun to read.

147Jargoneer
Redigeret: aug 21, 2015, 11:28 am

>145 baswood: - she may have failed to predict anything about the future but her mail system is brilliant. It may just be too late but I think implementing this could save the Royal Mail. Who would send an email when you could deliver a message via cannon?

148wandering_star
aug 22, 2015, 6:35 am

The Mummy sounds great fun.

149kidzdoc
aug 22, 2015, 11:57 am

I had hoped to see Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil perform at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam when I was there in June, but the concert was completely sold out.

Thanks for those links and videos for those Brasiian albums. I would also recommend the 1975 album Gil e Jorge by Gilberto Gil and Jorge Ben as well.

Quem Mandou (Pe Na Estrada): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ajNnEjxQrc

Meu Glorioso São Cristovão: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3jrmgDJPec

150janeajones
aug 22, 2015, 10:15 pm

Enjoyed your review of The Mummy -- but I don't think I'm going to go out of myway to find it. ;)

151baswood
Redigeret: aug 23, 2015, 9:03 am

The First Opera?



Adam De La Halle : Le Jeu de Robin et Marion - Ensemble Perceval

Robin and Marion: A play with music performed in 1283 before the King of Naples which is claimed by some to be the first opera. Wikipedia tells me that Opera as part of the Western Classical Tradition started in Italy at the end of the 16th century, three hundred years later than Adam De La Halle’s Robin and Marion. If you go with a definition of Opera as an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score usually in a theatre setting then Robin and Marion could qualify (although the play would not have been performed in a dedicated theatre). A performance back in 1283 would probably have included acting, scenery, costumes and dance. Adam de la Halle’s collected works are readily available in manuscript form and in 1907 there was a particularly successful revival in St Petersburg’s “Antique Theatre”.

Medieval music is open to interpretation and the Ensemble Percival in 1981 chose to set their performance with a fairly large band and eight vocalists taking the part of one of each of the characters in the play. Instruments used are flutes, gemshorn, chalumeau. chalemies, viéle a arc, rebec, arabian and medieval lutes; medieval harp, guitars and percussion. Although Adam de la Halle was one of the earliest composers to use polyphony, most of the tracks on this disc are recorded as monophonic, with only a brief section where Robin and his friends sing together in harmony. I think of medieval music as having two big influences: folk music and church/religious music and here the sound leans heavily towards folk music. I would estimate that at least two thirds of the recording consists of songs while the rest is recitative with some of this having some melody and certainly some sound effects, with a chance for the singers to indulge in some dramatic interpretation.

The story is a simple one: Marion a shepherdess is in love with Robin a shepherd, but she is accosted by Sir Aubert a chevalier out hunting. She resists, wakes up the sleeping Robin, who goes to town to find some friends to help him see off Sir Aubert. While he is away Sir Aubert returns and abducts Marion. Robins friend Gautier warns Robin and he gives chase to Sir Aubert. Marion escapes the lovers reunite and there are celebrations with their friends.

The songs are melodic and the lute accompaniments are imaginative with a sound that reminds me of contemporary English folk music, having a distinctly eastern influence. Solange Boulanger as Marion sings the folk melodies, which tend towards wistfulness and sadness beautifully, as does her compatriot Catherine Schroeder as Peronelle. Alain Serve is good as Robin and Jean-Luc Racodon is suitably robust in the role of the Chevalier who has a particularly good refrain whenever he enters into the scene. The band strike up with gusto at suitable moments and the arrangements by Guy Roberts hold the interest. I have enjoyed listening to some hauntingly beautiful music interspersed with some clattering medieval band sounds and so 4 stars.

Here is the opening scene on Youtube https://youtu.be/35f2Tg3Efoc

152baswood
aug 23, 2015, 9:19 am

>149 kidzdoc: The Jorge Ben e Gilbert Gil tracks are great fun.

153StevenTX
aug 23, 2015, 9:46 am

>151 baswood: Interesting story and beautiful music--thanks for sharing.

154baswood
Redigeret: aug 23, 2015, 12:08 pm

Go set a Watchman Harper Lee.
My definition of redundant - no Boo no book
2 stars

155AlisonY
aug 23, 2015, 2:36 pm

>154 baswood: Aw - I have this on the shelf. Was just saying on someone else's thread there that I can't fully remember TKAMB's plot as it's so long since I read it - maybe that's not a bad thing as I won't be tempted to compare the two.

156avidmom
aug 23, 2015, 10:45 pm

>154 baswood: Aren't we all so fortunate for that one editor who took Lee's "Go Set A Watchman" manuscript and said "No, honey. Try again." If Lee would have published GSAW first..... perish the thought!!!

Loved your review. "No Boo no book." LOL! Agreed.

I would like to know what your book club has to say about it.

157RidgewayGirl
aug 24, 2015, 2:00 am

I don't think that Go Set a Watchman would have been publishable at the time. It's not kind to segregationists at all.

158edwinbcn
aug 30, 2015, 8:45 pm

My plan is to read a lot by Aldous Huxley this year, and Island is one of the novels I am thinking of.

159DieFledermaus
aug 31, 2015, 8:18 pm

Very much enjoyed your review of The Mummy - had never heard of that one before, but it sounds like an entertaining, if bizarre, ride.

Also hadn't heard of Adam De La Halle - thanks for the links.

And very cool that you got to see Gilberto Gil.

160VivienneR
sep 2, 2015, 5:40 pm

>122 baswood: Just catching up after being away for a month. This image looks so familiar - last seen as a very large jigsaw puzzle that was a Christmas gift last year. It required a magnifying glass and 3 months to put together :)

161baswood
sep 6, 2015, 11:42 am

>156 avidmom: The general opinion amongst our book club by those that had read and loved To Kill a Mockingbird was that Go set a watchman should not have been published. Some people found the preaching annoying and one person questioned whether it had been written by Harper Lee in its entirety.

>160 VivienneR: One of the biggest sense of achievements is when finishing a jig-saw puzzle and so after three months it must have felt great.

162baswood
sep 6, 2015, 11:44 am

163baswood
Redigeret: sep 6, 2015, 11:51 am

The Master Colm Tóibín
The Master in question is Henry James and Tóibín has written an historical fiction which blurs the borders with biography. He has attempted to put his readers into the thoughts and feelings of James when he was already a successful author, revered and loved by many. His book starts with James unsuccessful attempts at becoming a playwright in 1895 and takes us through to 1899 when the author was 57 years old and still had what many critics believe to be his major achievements in front of him.

Tóibìn examines in some detail the themes that surround the life of this author; an American exiled in Europe writing about Americans abroad, his seemingly repressed sexuality (homosexuality). his difficulties in becoming intimate with any one human being and his ambiguity about his need for his own space and order in his life. As this is Tóibín writing, expect no sensationalism, but a sympathetic portrait that I think succeeds in getting under the skin of a gentle man who was a little out of step with the society that he portrayed so brilliantly in his novels. Tóibín’s understated prose fits perfectly with the character, who he succeeds in bringing to life in this compelling biography.

Henry James moved in the upper echelons of society, he came from a respected American family and could quickly adapt to living in England and the rest of Europe, he knew how to behave and his manners were impeccable. Towards the end of his book Tóibin has the Baroness von Rabe tell Henry James some home truths and as readers we wince at her accuracy, but it does not jolt our sympathy for him. The scene is at a gathering of American exiles in Rome and the Baroness succeeds in hitting her target when she says to him:

“I remember you when you were young and all the ladies followed you, nay fought with each other to go riding with you. That Mrs Sumner and young Miss Boott and young Miss Lowe. All the young ladies and those not so young. We all liked you and I suppose you liked us as well, but you were too busy gathering material to like anyone too much. You were charming of course, but you were like a young banker collecting our savings. Or a priest listening to our sins. I remember my aunt warning me not to tell you anything”
She leaned towards him conspiratorially.
“and I think that is what you are still doing. I don’t think you have retired. I wish however you would write more clearly and i’m sure the young sculptor, who is watching you, I’m sure he wishes the same.”


We know that this is not the whole story. Tóibín while describing the significant events in the years covered by the book also fills in important details of James’ earlier life, particularly his relationship with his brothers and sister and his family background. For example in the chapter dealing with May 1896; James is finding it difficult to write, he has a sort of repetitive strain injury and this leads him to reminisce about other issues that were important in his life and we learn about his family and their involvement in the American Civil War. This background ‘filling in’ becomes part of the biography and succeeds in presenting to us a full and rounded picture of Henry James. The first chapter headed January 1985 tells us about the opening night of James’ play Guy Domville. It is a disaster and James as a nervous author cannot bear to be in the theatre and takes himself off to a production of Oscar Willde’s The importance of Being Ernest. James does not like the play and significantly cannot understand why the audience finds it so amusing. James himself understands that the life of a playwright is exciting, the social interaction with directors and actors is stimulating, it is something he wishes he could do, but realises he is more suited to the lonely life of a novelist. The comparison with Wilde’s openly gay persona is also a marked contrast with Henry James’ closet homosexuality. It all points to one of the major themes of the book which is James’ inability for intimacy and it is this which Toibin suggests both shapes and defines his art.

Tóibin surmises that James felt intense guilt about his failure to do what was expected by friends who he became particularly close to. Others accuse him of not being there for a couple of his female friends at their time of need, and it is this which pushes Tóibíns book into the realms of conjecture. We cannot know what Henry James felt, but it is the novelists job to make us think that we do and this is what makes this meta biography such an absorbing read. The period detail is lovingly described and we sense Henry James’ pride in his position in the world. It is a biography that goes further than telling a story of a life and so it would appeal to readers who have not read, or even know nothing about Henry James. It is a portrait of a man and his times and for me a four star read.

164dchaikin
sep 6, 2015, 12:00 pm

The book sounds terrific, and one of these days I just might have a go at James and this book might be the perfect intro. But, i have to say, more than that, it's a terrific review. Well done. I enjoyed reading your take.

165StevenTX
sep 6, 2015, 12:44 pm

Excellent review of The Master, a book I enjoyed as well. I read it about eight years ago with a reading group. I remember that I was skeptical about some of the scenes in it until I looked up relevant passages in Henry James's collected letters online and found that everything was exactly as Tóibín had depicted it.

166NanaCC
sep 6, 2015, 1:14 pm

Great review of The Master, Barry. I may get to it some day. Chris has it on her shelf, but I'll have to wait for her to read it first.

167RidgewayGirl
sep 6, 2015, 3:07 pm

You've pushed me closer to reading The Master. Tóibín has a short story about James in The Empty Family that I liked quite a bit and I've never not enjoyed his work.

168Nickelini
sep 6, 2015, 3:32 pm

I really enjoyed The Master too.

>164 dchaikin: - I can't believe you haven't read James, just because I thought you'd read pretty much everything. I suggest you start with one of his earlier works--the later ones get rather dense. Daisy Miller and Washington Square are clean and short.

169SassyLassy
sep 6, 2015, 4:13 pm

Wonderful review of The Master. I read it last fall and it was one of the best reads of the year, one that I still think about. Tóibín's ability to actually sound like James made it all the more remarkable. It made me want to learn more about Constance Fenimore Woolson, about Lamb House and about Burgess Noakes. It also made me want to read more of his novels.

Amazing to think it was in a rented cottage with all the usual suspects on the book shelf in such a situation, a rose among thorns. I will have to get my own copy.

170dchaikin
sep 6, 2015, 5:51 pm

>168 Nickelini: oh, Joyce, i've read nothing. Trying to make up for it now.

171Jargoneer
sep 7, 2015, 5:38 am

There was a small James surge in interest at that time; David Lodge also published a novel about James , Author, Author, and there was a young writer whose novel about James was withdrawn due to the Lodge and Toibin. I think that writers are drawn to James because they there is so much biographical material and yet somehow he remains opaque.

Years ago I read a short story in one of the SF magazines wherein Henry and William James travel west to avenge the death of their relative Jesse James. Unfortunately I can remember neither author or title.

172rebeccanyc
sep 7, 2015, 7:10 am

Amazingly, I've read no Toibin, and almost no James, at least in decades. I should correct that . . .

173AlisonY
sep 7, 2015, 5:13 pm

Have looked at this a few times in the library recently. You have won me over - excellent review.

174baswood
Redigeret: sep 8, 2015, 7:17 am

I am still making my way slowly through Music from the earliest notations to the sixteenth century by Richard Taruskin. Which led me to listen to the following:

Alfonso X “El Sabio” Cantigas de Santa Maria

Alfonso X (1221-1284) was king of castle and Leon. He was a patron of sciences and arts and attracted many musicians to his court, some of whom would have been troubadours. He supervised the collection of over 400 songs which have become known to us as The Cantigas of Santa Maria. The word cantiga is the equivalent of canso: a courtly song in the vernacular (in this case Galician-Portuguese). Alphonsos collection of songs expressed loving devotion to the Virgin Mary and once again blurred the line between the sacred and the secular. The cantigas have come down to us in four splendid manuscripts three of them with musical notation. They are distinguished by the beauty of their miniatures many of which show the king surrounded by musicians and more importantly there are details of the musical instruments such as fiddle, rebec, gittern, manual, lute, psaltery, zither, harp, shawm, flutes, trumpet, horn, bagpipes, portative organ, drums, castanets,cymbals and glockenspiel. The songs are organised into groups of ten consisting of nine strophic narrative songs relating to miracles performed by the virgin followed by a hymn of praise to her in a more exalted style. Most of the narrative cantigas are dance songs with a refrain and are monophonic.

They have of course long been a source of inspiration for anyone interested in medieval and/or early music and I can understand why because there are some lovely tunes. Once again apart from the pictures of the musical instruments we do not know how they were performed and so the songs are open to interpretation. Even more so in this case because Alfonso’s court was open to Moorish and Jewish influences and so they could have been played on instruments associated with Arabic or jewish music, giving them a middle eastern soundstage. All this is conjecture, but it has led to many different interpretations of the songs. I have been listening to three CDs which have different approaches to the music, but they all sound good in their way and that I think points to the quality of the songs.


Alfonso X “El Sabio” Cantigas de Santa Maria - Ensemble Unicorn Vienna
Ensemble Unicorn consist of five musicians playing a variety of medieval instruments and two male vocalists Colin Mason Bass-baritone and Bernhard Landauer Countertenor. The songs all have musical accompaniment and tend to be rhythmic in approach with much use of drums and bagpipes. Of the three discs their music tends to lean more towards folk roots and the group can sound a little rough and even raucous at times, but this suits some of the narrative songs very well. There are a few instrumental numbers dotted around, but the musicians generally do not launch into any long improvisations keeping to the script of the tunes. This is on the Naxos budget label and is excellent value, there are some fine moments on this CD


Alfonso X El Sabio Cantigas de Santa Maria - Jordi Savall Ensemble Hesperion XX and La capella Reial de Catalunya 1993
Jordi Savall is a Catalan conductor viol player and composer and he specialises in early music. generally the musical accompaniment to the songs is more understated and is not always played on medieval instruments: I think there is a mixture of more modern instruments here. The vocals are definitely leaning more towards the classical concert hall approach and the emphasis is more towards the sacred than the secular. There are more than 20 singers in La Capella Reial de Catalunya and so the emphasis here is very much on the vocal delivery and there is some beautiful singing. A more sophisticated approach to the music, but again the quality of the songs shine through and there are some lovely moments.


Alfonso X el Sabio Cantigas de Santa Maria - Camerata Mediterranea Joel Cohen with Abdelkrim Rais Andalusian Orchestra of Fes. 1988
This recording revels in the Arabic influences employing the Rais Andalusian Orchestra of Fes to provide the musical interludes and some of the backing. The musicians take the most liberties with the repertoire, adding their own music as interludes to the cantigas. The vocal soloists all have a tradition in Mediterranean music and are at home with the more exotic microtones provided by the oriental musicians. The music features unaccompanied vocals on some of the cantigas and are some of the highlights of this CD. The beautiful tunes and vocal lines are given excellent interpretations by the singers on this record. Joel Cohen plays lute and where there is musical backing to the vocals it is more often than not lute and fiddle that predominate. Perhaps this group have selected the best tunes from among the 400 in existence, but this is the CD that I go back to more often out of the three that I own. I love the overall sound which suits some of the more passionate hymn like invocations to the Virgin Mary and it has to my ears the best vocal interpretations.

Here are some links:

Ensemble Unicorn
https://youtu.be/goZF4TangWM

Jordi Savall full album
https://youtu.be/nj5Bc8zwwU0

Joel Cohen
https://youtu.be/l7WY8Den644

175rebeccanyc
sep 8, 2015, 7:43 am

Enjoyed the music.

176baswood
Redigeret: sep 11, 2015, 1:01 pm



This might move a few books.

177baswood
Redigeret: sep 11, 2015, 1:02 pm

A Man And Two Women by Doris Lessing
These 19 short stories were originally published in 1963 and form Lessing”s third collection. I do not know the provenance of all of the stories, but their variety, insight and evidence of a mature mind at work make them the best collection that I have read so far. Lessing had lived in London for 15 years since her exile from Southern Rhodesia in 1949 and so the number of African stories are significantly less than in her previous collections, but the five stories on offer here demonstrate a lyricism that speaks volumes for a writer who cannot return home. All of the other stories are set in England or Europe and it is in these stories that Lessing shows her unique insight into the minds of her female (and male) characters, taking advantage of the more relaxed attitudes to sexual freedom and what authors could write about. For example in the first story “One off the Short List” she describes in some detail the sexual encounter between Graham Spence an ageing lothario and theatre critic who uses all his knowledge and position to get into bed with Barbara Coles a director of a London theatre production. Graham does not get it all his own way and it is the subtle game of sexual politics that Lessing knows so well that makes this scene so believable.

It would be a mistake to think that all of these stories are built along the lines of the battle of the sexes, because Lessing has much more to say on issues that were pertinent to the 1960’s and mostly still relevant today. There is a variety and depth to most of these tales that leave a lasting impression and which are of a consistently high standard. One might think that “to Room Nineteen” the longest story (34 pages) and the final one in the collection is the most well rounded and moral story here, exploring issues that Lessing would rehearse again in her novels. In this story Susan marries Mathew, both in their late twenties, mature in outlook and ideally suited according to all their friends, their marriage appears to be successful in every way. Susan has four children, Mathew is a sympathetic husband and they work through any financial worries. Susan appears to have everything, but then she goes quietly insane. There are other stories, though shorter that are just as disturbing: “Each Other” explores the destructive incestuous relationship between a brother and sister which continues when the sister is newly married, and “Dialogue” where a woman full of life visits her ex husband who is ill and lives alone in a tower block; he sucks the life out of her, but she cannot leave him alone, always knowing that she will continue to visit him.

The variety in this collection is of course represented by five poignant little stories from Africa. “The Story of the Two dogs” has in it all the savagery of life in the veldt, but also an understanding of the natural world and human beings instincts for nurture. “A letter from Home” is about a shy, inward looking African poet, who is discovered by a feature journalist to have written some excellent work, but his fear of life leads him to disappear into the heart of Africa. The journalist tracks him down but the poet is now very paranoid, writing in his own secret language and under the influence of a domineering African woman. “Two Potters” describes a woman's dream about a potter in Africa who has a magical connection with his village and points ahead to Lessing’s fine science fiction books still some way in her future. Two African leaders settle their differences outside of the Foreign Ministry in London in “Outside the Ministry” and ‘A New Man” describes a new white farmer beating the odds on a poor farm in Zimbabwe. Back in England and there are some short, short stories that tell of a young girls introduction to the work of Issac Babel and in “A woman on the Roof” a shapely woman sunbathing has a disquieting effect on three male roofers. My favourite story is “Our Friend Judith” which tells about an independent English spinster who comes alive in a small seaside town in Italy.

It would be fair to say that none of these stories standout from the rest in such a way as to focus the reader onto any one of them, but they are all very good in their own way. The thread that seems to bind them together is that we can never really know another person. People have secret lives or at least secrets and they can change the way they seem to others for all sorts of reasons. Hidden depths might be a good summation. Very readable, very intelligent stories, extremely well written and a delight for anyone wanting to read a collection of stories that will entertain. And so four stars.

178edwinbcn
sep 11, 2015, 9:52 pm

Nice review of The Master.

179OscarWilde87
sep 12, 2015, 5:21 pm

I just spent almost an hour catching up on your most interesting thread. I enjoyed your review of The Master most.

180baswood
sep 12, 2015, 5:22 pm

Thanks

181AlisonY
sep 13, 2015, 6:05 am

Sounds like a fascinating Doris Lessing read. I'm not usually a short story lover, but this almost has me tempted.

182dchaikin
sep 14, 2015, 10:31 am

The title of the collection seems to point the reader towards the battle of the sexes. This Lessing has a lot of appeal to me, based on your review. Maybe one to condider trying first, if I get to her.

183StevenTX
sep 14, 2015, 10:42 am

A very nice review of A Man and Two Women.

That's a curious cover picture. It looks like a photographer is about to pose his model for a Renaissance-themed portrait and has stopped to read the instructions.

184tonikat
Redigeret: sep 14, 2015, 11:49 am

Yes, thanks for that lovely review of Doris Lessing, you've given me an urge to try some of her short stories again and maybe Shikasta too, though the latter's denseness and power were why I haven't been reading her.

185janeajones
sep 17, 2015, 11:51 am

Wonderful reviews of The Master and Lessing's stories. I've read most of James's novel, but know little about the man. This sounds fascinating.

186DieFledermaus
sep 20, 2015, 3:38 am

Good review of The Master, and I enjoyed your music reviews at >174 baswood:, especially since I'm not familiar with medieval music. Listening to the Savall album right now.

187baswood
sep 21, 2015, 2:10 pm



I have been away this last week on a wine tasting and walking tour of the Bourgogne (Burgundy) region of France. We had a couple of days of rain and so there was more wine tasting than walking.

188FlorenceArt
sep 21, 2015, 2:33 pm

It's the season of the foires aux vins, and the Beaujolais nouveau is coming...

189janeajones
sep 21, 2015, 11:45 pm

A great way to spend a week in France!

190Jargoneer
sep 22, 2015, 12:18 pm

>187 baswood: - I hope the walking came before the wine, walking after wine is not always so straightforward.

191StevenTX
sep 23, 2015, 3:01 pm

192Nickelini
sep 23, 2015, 3:12 pm

>191 StevenTX: --- Love it.

193rebeccanyc
sep 24, 2015, 11:52 am

194baswood
sep 24, 2015, 2:20 pm

>191 StevenTX: oops! it was a bit more than six glasses. We had a tasting at mid morning, wine with our lunch, a tasting in mid afternoon and wine with our dinner in the evening.

Had to hire a mini-van to get the wine back home.

195janeajones
sep 24, 2015, 2:46 pm

How long do you think it will last ? ;-)

196baswood
sep 26, 2015, 4:50 am

The Buddha's at Bamiyan before and after the Taliban.


197baswood
Redigeret: sep 26, 2015, 2:18 pm



The Places in Between by Rory Stewart
This is a travelogue of Rory Stewart’s walk across the centre of Afghanistan in 2002. I have travelled to some of the places that Stewart walked to, but I didn’t go on foot, or in the middle of winter or when the country was virtually still at war. Stewart’s walk was an epic and dangerous journey in a country that is backward, war torn and intensely tribal and he captures perfectly the hardships, the surprises and the mind numbing confusion in a populace whose hard lives got harder when the Russians invaded and then the Taliban insurgency and fall.

Stewart says that the only brand name in most of the country that he slogged through was Islam. There was no electricity, no T shirts and no coca-cola and people were deeply suspicious and sometimes hostile to strangers. Most villages were a collection of mud huts, a mosque, perhaps an old fort or caravanserai with very few if any cement buildings. Meat was unobtainable in many parts and Stewart had to rely on the Moslem religions edict that travellers should be welcomed as guests for any food and lodging that they might have. The walk turned out to be an endurance test and Stewart was under no illusions when he started. Previous travelling experience had taught him the essentials for survival in such a terrain. He always sought letters of introduction or a name of the headman of the next village, he sought out local knowledge and had the seasoned travellers sense of knowing when he was in danger. He could speak the lingua franca of Dari well enough to make himself understood and knew enough about the culture not to cause too great an offence, without these skills it would have been difficult for him to survive and even with them he needed to be lucky on occasions.

Walking in mountainous country in winter and climbing passes of between 8000-10000ft is very hard going. Snow drifts were up to his chest at times and he was mostly cold and wet. He needed all his will power to keep going especially when he was underfed and ill with dysentery. Sometimes it almost got too much for him, but the freedom of the walking, the sense of achievement, and of being alone in the landscape kept him going. He always had it in mind to get to the next place and as readers we enjoy the thrill of the getting there (from the safety of our armchairs perhaps). Occasionally the frustrations seep through into his writing, but it is not typical of him, here is such a paragraph:

Perhaps because I was sick, I was often irritated by villagers and village hospitality. On the fourteenth day, when I came off the snow plains after five hours walking and turned into a village hoping to get lunch, I was left standing in the snow with my pack on my back for half an hour while the headman decided to speak to me and another villager told me I would never make it to Barra Khana by dark. Finally I shouted “Right, thats it. If there is no welcome here, I’m off to Bara Khana now” and began to walk away. Only then did the headman invite me in and give me some dry bread. After the meal I found a gully, a necessity with Diarrhea, and half the village followed to watch me defecate. Back in the village, the headman’s son asked if he could try my camera and proceeded to finish the roll of film by pointing the lens to the ground and clicking again and again. I now had only one roll to see me to Kabul. I was angry for the rest of the day. That night I dreamed I was buying a plane ticket to Venice.

Although Stewart focuses his journey on the current situation in Afghanistan (there are few history lessons here) he does delight in following in the footsteps of the Emperor Babur who made the journey in the 16th century. Stewart includes extracts from Babur’s diary, which make it sound like little has changed since medieval times, which is probably not far from the truth. This is a fascinating juxtaposition and gives Stewart’s rumination on the current situation an added dimension. Stewart wanted to travel alone, but when he started out from Herat he was forced to accept two of the current warlords (Commandant Haji Mohsin Khan) men who were suspicious of his intentions. These men were often more of a hindrance and Stewart was never in control of their actions, fortunately they were only charged to follow him while he was walking through Khan’s territory. The real problem for Stewart was convincing people that he was just walking through the country, hardly anyone believed him because it was beyond their comprehension, as it may be to many readers of this book. Stewart encountered another problem when one of the village headman presented him with a very large dog (a fighting dog) which caused many villagers to set their own dogs on the pair (stone throwing children were a particular menace), however once Stewart named his dog Babur he forged a bond between them which kept both of them going until the end.

Stewart is critical of the aid agencies and foreign intervention advisers who try and solve problems from the top down, without spending time to understand the culture. Afghanistan is a tribal country, barely out of its feudalistic past and it is a Moslem country and until these two basic facts are understood and worked through, intervention will only make things worse. It was also a country when Stewart was there which had until two months previously been under the yoke of the Taliban and it was never easy to discover where the Taliban still held sway. A wrong word said in ignorance in one of the guest rooms could have been fatal. The Taliban committed atrocities especially in the central eastern area of the Country, which was populated by the Hazara’s and there is an intense feeling of desperation as Stewart walks through burnt out villages and decimated lands.

From my own experience of travelling I can admire the fortitude and honesty in Stewarts account. He tells it like it is and creates an atmosphere that will thrill the most hardened armchair traveller. A four star read.

198ELiz_M
Redigeret: sep 26, 2015, 8:30 am

>197 baswood: Alright, fine. I'll add this to my tbr list! I had heard of this book and was intrigued before, but put off by an idea that it was....a more fool-hardy/personal journey (ala Wild or Eat, Pray, Love). However, your excellent review corrects my misplaced apprehensions.

199RidgewayGirl
sep 26, 2015, 9:01 am

Very interesting, Bas. I'm going to have to find a copy of The Places in Between.

200rebeccanyc
sep 26, 2015, 11:51 am

Echoing that it's very interesting. I probably won't read this but I enjoyed your review.

201Nickelini
sep 26, 2015, 11:54 am

>197 baswood: Interesting story. Why did he do this?

202StevenTX
sep 26, 2015, 1:40 pm

Great review and a fascinating story!

When were you in Afghanistan? Any experiences or observations you can share?

203dchaikin
sep 26, 2015, 5:22 pm

This is on the list of books in the category of why-the-heck-haven't-I-read-this-yet. Excellent review.

204janeajones
sep 26, 2015, 10:47 pm

A terrifying trek --- what's his motivation?

205SassyLassy
sep 27, 2015, 11:57 am

That was a tremendous book and I was struck by the same thing you were: his fortitude. Stewart seemed to me like one of those true pre WWII traveller adventurers along the lines of Peter Fleming or Thesiger, or even the later Peter Hopkirk. The return with the dog was oddly moving.

I have tried reading Stewart's The Prince of the Marshes and am almost finished, but it has been a long slog. I must admit though, that part of that time it has been in storage.

Stewart has had an incredibly privileged life. I thought he might work for change when I read The Places in Between and when he took up his appointment at Harvard, but unfortunately he now seems to be following that well worn Tory path.

206baswood
sep 27, 2015, 7:14 pm

For those people who have wondered why Rory Stewart undertook such an arduous journey there is no easy explanation.

Stewart says in his preface to The Places in Between that I am not good at explaining why I walked across Afghanistan

However he had already walked extensively across Iran, Pakistan, India and Nepal and had previously tried to do something similar in Afghanistan, but his connections with the diplomatic service had resulted in him not being allowed into the country. It was only after the fall of the Taliban that Stewart managed to gain access to Afghanistan and he chose to walk across the middle of the country rather than the usual Herat-kandahar-Kabul route because the Taliban still had some control of those areas.

207baswood
sep 27, 2015, 8:20 pm



>202 StevenTX:

I was in Afghanistan for a month in Mid-Sept to October in 1975 and again for a three week period in April-May 1976. I travelled overland on a motorbike from England to India and back on a tight budget, during an eighteen month period and so spent time in Afghanistan on the way out and on the way back. The route I took was the usual one from Herat down to Kandahar and up to Kabul as this was the only paved road across the country. The route that Stewart took was straight across the middle; Herat Chaghcharan Bamiyan and Kabul. This route has never had a paved road and is usually only attempted by a good vehicle with four wheel drive. I did however ride the unpaved roads to get to Bamiyan and the lakes at Bande e Amir

I kept a fairly extensive diary of my trip and after your question spent an enjoyable evening reading it through. My overall impression was that entering the country was like taking a step backwards in time. Once off the main road then the country seemed almost feudal. In Bamiyan for instance there was no electricity, very few motorised vehicles and although there were some establishments that called themselves hotels these were quite similar to the sort of places that Stewart encountered on his walk, i.e. no running water, charpoys instead of beds etc. Very few people in Western style dress, most women were covered from head to foot in the burqua even in the cities (really no more than big towns) and plenty of guns on show, but when I was there it was old rifles rather than kalashnikovs. It was however peaceful, people were generally friendly and I enjoyed my stay there. The landscape is spectacular; high mountains and deserts crossed by some fertile valleys. It is a good place in which to be and feel alone. The system of bartering that covers many transactions can be frustrating, I once spent a couple of hours in the bazaar trying to buy a couple of litres of motorcycle oil, which involved sharing the owners lunch (dipping bread into a communal tureen of meat and soup) and I really needed that oil. Only good things happened to me in Afghanistan and I would like to recapture those times, although I was ill with dysentery for much of the time.

The country became unstable in 1978 and the Russians invaded in 1979 and I wonder what happened to the people I met there, nothing good I suspect. There were a few Westerners that had no passports for one reason or another and who earn't a living either in a nascent tourist industry or who dealt in drugs.

208Nickelini
sep 27, 2015, 9:40 pm

>207 baswood: Wow, that's just fabulous. The good old days of travelling. Entering my independent travelling years in 1981, I missed the "Europe on $5 a Day" years. The book was publishing "Europe on $25 Dollars a Day" by the time I got old enough to go. I did manage to get to Papua New Guinea before it turned into a hell hole. The world of travel has sadly changed a lot.

209lilisin
sep 28, 2015, 4:10 am

>197 baswood:

What a fantastic review on what sounds like a very interesting journey. Although I probably won't read it myself (avoiding all books involving Taliban, Afghanistan, etc. as I have gotten tired of those words due to the news and current events), I know a few people I would gladly sent this book to.

Have you read The Roads to Sata by Alan Booth? Alan Booth travels the northern side of Japan by foot and we get to follow his quite humorous adventures as he recounts his travels and stories. Highly recommended.

210Jargoneer
sep 28, 2015, 8:05 am

>207 baswood: - sounds like that was a really incredible journey. I wonder how long it will be before a journey like that can be undertaken again. The Russians, the Americans and (some of) the Europeans have made a real mess of the whole area. I think that Stewart makes a good point about the foreigners trying to impose their political systems on the country (and elsewhere). America especially gets obsessed with imposing democracy on countries (although really only want democracies that suit them) and sometimes it just doesn't work. Can a country be dragged from almost feudal point to a workable democracy in a few decades? It's almost impossible to say that a dictatorship is a good thing but occasionally it is the best of the preferable options.

211baswood
sep 28, 2015, 8:22 am

> 208 Ha! My budget was $2 a day for two people.

212janeajones
sep 28, 2015, 9:09 am

What an amazing adventure.

213StevenTX
sep 28, 2015, 9:43 am

>207 baswood: Great story, bas. I had no idea you were such an adventurer. Thanks for sharing.

214Nickelini
sep 28, 2015, 10:21 am

>211 baswood: That's great! What an experience.

215Jargoneer
sep 28, 2015, 4:13 pm

>210 Jargoneer: - Three questions - before Afghanistan I take it you went through Iran. Was that as liberal as it is sometimes portrayed (depending on where you stand either of tolerance or decadence)? How easy was it to get through Eastern Europe or were you able to skirt run most of it? When's the book coming out?

216baswood
Redigeret: sep 28, 2015, 5:45 pm

>210 Jargoneer: I agree with your point of view. I recently met an economist who had spent some of his career advising regional governors in India on how to balance their books. He could not understand why the working models that he proposed did not work. My point to him was that the Indian way of doing things for example paying for projects or getting taxes collected worked on a different principle to what he was used to. He replied that they seem to be working in China and so I concluded it was probably a good example of horses for courses.

>215 Jargoneer: Yes I spent some time in Iran and it was a country of contrasts; Cities like Tehran and Tabriz seemed like coca cola land. Very Westernised plenty of new cars, and motorbikes, women wore European clothes many were unveiled. The only places I could afford to stay were in Youth Hostels. The Shah (Mohammed Reza Pahlavi) was very much in control it seemed. In the smaller towns people were friendly and helpful. However when I got to Mashad in the East the veneer of control was slipping. It is a big city with the Shrine of Imam Reza as its focal point and as non Moslems we were not welcome anywhere near the great mosque. Stones were thrown at us in the bazaar around the mosque and the power of the religious leaders was in evidence. It was certainly a city with a no-go area for us.

We travelled through Yugoslavia which was still under the control of Tito and then went through Bulgaria, which was very much under communist rule. We were not able to spend long in Bulgaria because of the enforced system of money changing on the border. We had to state the number of days we were going to stay in the country and then we were made to change five dollars a day per person. This was way over our budget and so we only spent two days in the country staying in Belovo and Haskovo: two provincial towns. The people were very friendly towards us and I would have like to so have stayed longer, but you can't get a feel for the country in two days.

Ah! the Book. I kept the diary with the vague idea that I might write a travelogue of some kind, but I soon forgot about it when I returned to England (finding a job and somewhere to live took much of my time). I did start to write something about twenty years ago, but abandoned it when I couldn't figure out where I was going with it. So many people have written similar books and so it felt like a waste of time.

217baswood
sep 28, 2015, 5:48 pm

>209 lilisin: Thanks for recommending The Roads to Sata. I have read some reviews of it on LT and I think I would enjoy it.

218rebeccanyc
sep 29, 2015, 8:53 am

>207 baswood: >216 baswood: What an amazing trip. How fortunate that you kept a diary of your travels and could revisit it.

219baswood
Redigeret: sep 29, 2015, 10:23 am

Well big day for me today.

Celebrating 5 years in Librarything

Have become a published author for the first in a book that is now top of the Hot Reviews A fabulous Opera DChaikin and Zenomax also feature but I don't know if they have been published before.

And TimSpalding sent me a badge

220FlorenceArt
sep 29, 2015, 11:02 am

Congratulations! I got my 5-year badge a few days ago, so we are the same LT age :-)

And congrats on the book too, though I don't quite understand what kind of book it is...

221baswood
sep 29, 2015, 11:46 am

>220 FlorenceArt: A Fabulous Opera is a collection of book reviews that have been written by people on LT.

222AlisonY
sep 29, 2015, 12:56 pm

Thoroughly enjoyed your review - sounds an amazing book, and your own travels in the 70s made for a fascinating comparison.

I have nothing but admiration for people who take on mammoth adventures (and that includes long motorbike rides through Europe!). I read Just a Little Run Around the World a couple of years ago, which was Rosie Swale-Pope's account of literally running around the world, and I was amazed at her ability to take on such a hugely physically demanding adventure. The Places In Between will have to go onto my list, as I think I will be left similarly awestruck by Stewart's major undertaking.

223NanaCC
sep 29, 2015, 4:01 pm

>219 baswood:. Congratulations!

And, I enjoyed your travel tale. I wish that I had had the nerve to venture abroad when I was young. If I had, I'm not sure I would have had the money. It is so nice to read about the adventures of others.

224rebeccanyc
sep 29, 2015, 6:10 pm

>219 baswood: >221 baswood: Congratulations! Just curious how they selected the reviews to include when there are so many excellent reviews on LT.

225AlisonY
sep 29, 2015, 6:23 pm

I missed the line about the book - wow! How exciting.

>224 rebeccanyc: is not just that Club Readers post the best reviews? :)

226Poquette
sep 29, 2015, 7:39 pm

Have fallen so far behind, Barry. Especially enjoyed your reviews of The Pope's Ceiling and The Places in Between.

227janeajones
sep 30, 2015, 4:50 am

Congrats on the book--sounds like fun.

228dchaikin
sep 30, 2015, 10:01 pm

What a wonderful experience Bas, and it's real history now. It could be a great experience to keep trying to make a book out of it.

229dchaikin
sep 30, 2015, 10:08 pm

>219 baswood: wait...what? I mean congrats and I'm honored, but...

*off to see what this is about

230dchaikin
sep 30, 2015, 11:03 pm

Had no idea what you were all were up to with A Fabulous Opera.

231baswood
okt 5, 2015, 5:39 pm

>224 rebeccanyc: The book was conceived and made by participants in one of the groups on LT and the selections were made by peers within that group.

In case any of you were wondering what A Fabulous Opera was all about, I have copied the introduction to the book.

Introduction to the Opera
This book you hold in your hand is of a new kind, written by a new breed.
The internet revolution of the last decade has set in motion a paradigm shift, the like of which humanity has not witnessed since the invention of the printing press. Just as half a millennium ago, thanks to unlimited access to information and fast communication, achievements are made possible that were previously impossible, improbable, or even unthinkable.

This book for instance, dear reader, this collection of literary reviews was impossible, improbable and unthinkable just a dozen years ago.

Thought up and created in a virtual meeting place somewhere on that Wide World Web by men and women from all over the globe, from Taiwan to Hawaii, from Slovenia to the USA, from Australia to France, from Belgium even to Canada, this book is something of a modern miracle. Most of the authors have never seen each other, don’t even know each other by their real names and in a few cases can’t even tell the exact whereabouts of their fellow-reviewers. But still the miracle did happen, reviews were written and edited together, an attractive cover was designed, the pages numbered and bound, the books boxed and shipped.
The content, the reviews, are of a special kind too. The social book sites on the internet have made available platforms and context where Passionate Readers could publicly voice their opinions on what they were reading. As such they could claim back their role and responsibility in book reviewing. This prerogative had been hijacked by the Academics and the professional reviewers at the turn of the nineteenth century. Huge barriers of Academia and Commercialism had obstructed the communication between the Amateur Reviewer and his fellow readers.

But these days are over.
The reviews collected in this book are written by Book Lovers who by-pass all conventions. They are free from dogmatic canonical reading, free from vulgar commercialism and free of political opportunism. The books reviewed are books chosen because the Reviewer loved them dearly and who, their eyes still bright after closing the cover of the book, wanted to pass this enthusiasm to their friends.

You will notice that these new kinds of appreciations have engendered new kinds of writing. It is book reviewing brought back to its essence
The reviewers too are of a previously unappreciated species. They are what Forster called “the Aristocracy of the Sensitive, the considerate and the plucky.” With a few exceptions, they are not professional writers let alone reviewers, but they make up for this by their love of books, their freedom to choose their reading, their auto-didactic skills and most of all their enthusiasm. They are eclectic in their book choice but not icono-clastic. They choose their books from the Literary Canon as well from each other’s obscure and forgotten wishlists. They defend both the Great and the Unknown.

The writing is aimed at a high level. The love for certain books have brought out the best in us. When we tried to write down exactly why we liked our books, we did try to write well, to compose well, to do our best. For we wrote not just for ourselves but also for our peers. Their kind appreciation and example motivated us to push ourselves to the best of our capabilities, and when we submitted our efforts to the public eye, it was always with pride mixed with a certain humility.
I leave it up to you, Dear Reader, to judge what we made of it.

Finally and most importantly, this book is a celebration. A celebration of Camaraderie, of friendly interaction, of the fun and the foolishness and the great time we read and wrote together. For the participants in this project, this book is like a pinch in the arm, to confirm that it has not been but an exhilarating dream, a fabulous Opera

Macumbeira

232SassyLassy
okt 5, 2015, 9:27 pm

This sounds like a wonderful idea and congratulations on being part of it. The table of contents promises some great books, and so some great reviews. It's heartening to see things from the net take a step back and enter the world of print.

As an aside, I love that idea of ...even to Canada

233tonikat
Redigeret: okt 6, 2015, 7:20 am

I enjoyed your review of Rory Stewart's book and very much also your account of your own journey, wow it seems to me. Wow also that you came back. (may be betraying my own limited travel experience there.)

I'm looking forward to A Fabulous Opera, it looks fascinating (and fabulous).

234rebeccanyc
okt 6, 2015, 10:28 am

Fascinating.

235baswood
Redigeret: okt 7, 2015, 7:13 am

The life of Michelangelo Buonarroti by John Addington Symonds
"John Addington Symonds (5 October 1840 – 19 April 1893) was an English poet and literary critic. Although he married and had a family, he was an early advocate of male love (homosexuality), which he believed could include pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships. He referred to it as l'amour de l'impossible (love of the impossible). A cultural historian, he was known for his work on the Renaissance, as well as numerous biographies about writers and artists. He also wrote much poetry inspired by his homosexual affairs." from wiki

Who better then, to write a biography of Michelangelo Buonarroti and Symonds does a superb job. His lifetime interest, love and knowledge of the Renaissance combines with his sensitive translations of the Italian used by Michelangelo and his compatriots to provide an intimate portrait of one of the greatest artists of the Italian renaissance. The Woeful Victorian is how Phyllis Grosskurth (biographer) describes John Addington Symonds and assuming that this refers to Symond's melancholia then Symonds finds a like minded subject in Michelangelo.

His biography is exhaustive; following the long life of Michelangelo and dealing equally with his triumphs and failures. Symonds in typical Victorian style can be gushing about Michelangelo's unique talent, but he never loses his critical eye when studying a particular work of art. For example his description of the giant David (now in the reveals issues that surprised me so much that it led me to look again at the statue (the internet is a wonderful thing). It is the sort of commentary that I would like to refer to when next I am in Florence

Symonds punctuates his biography with translations of a selection of Michelangelo's sonnets where they comment on issues raised in the book. There are also extracts from letters written by and to his subject, so that the reader is able to make up his own mind as to the character of the man without having to wade through numerous footnotes. Symonds is a master of integrating relevant material into his text. This can lead to an over embellishment of points made, but this is a biography published in 1893 and so the reader should not be too surprised. Symonds has a style of writing that might not suit every reader, concise he is not, but it suits my temperament and I was happy to follow him through.

Symonds does an excellent job of building in the historical background, his feel for the culture of the Italian renaissance allows him to place Michelangelo firmly in his milieu and so the reader can understand Michelangelo's actions, his panics, his irascibility, his deeply religious mindset that towards the end of his life provided him with much comfort. Michelangelo emerges as a man whose immense talent led him into a life that revolved only around his art, there was little time for anything else. His fame and reputation which he seems not to have considered overmuch himself was a bugbear, as his patrons (a succession of Popes) were instrumental in leading him away from the work that he wanted to do. He became an architect because of his intellectual ability and skill in fashioning objects, which were the requirements that his patrons saw fit to use.

Michelangelo was no iconoclast he worked within the system and culture of his times, but it was his unique vision that set him apart from other artists. His continual obsession with the human form that produced such wonderful art eventually led him down a blind alley and his later works seemed mannered. His solitary disposition and his desire not to share his skills meant that unlike many of his fellow artists he did not become the head of a school or workshop. He was a man who wanted to do things his own way and he was reluctant to share out duties. This meant that many of his projects remained unfinished.

There is little to be said about his private life. He felt no attraction to the opposite sex and although he loved and admired the physicality of well formed young men there is very little evidence that this led to sexual relationships. Symonds thinks that Michelangelo's solitary and at times austere characteristics along with his sincere religious beliefs and his obsession with his art filled his life. I have recently read Ross King's Michelangelo and the Popes ceiling, which provided a good snapshot of the life and times of Michelangelo, but Symonds biography is for those that want to delve deeper and get a fuller picture of a long and productive life.

236janeajones
okt 7, 2015, 5:11 am

Wonderful review of the Symond's bio of Michelangelo.

237FlorenceArt
okt 7, 2015, 6:57 am

Yes, wonderful review! You make me want to read about Michelangelo, though maybe Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling might appeal to me more. I'm not sure about reading a 19th century biography because the way we look at history and art have changed a lot since then.

Just a warning, if you want to see David, you'll have to travel to Florence, not Paris.

238baswood
okt 7, 2015, 7:12 am

>237 FlorenceArt: yes you are absolutely right - I am getting confused in my old age.

239FlorenceArt
okt 7, 2015, 7:21 am

On the other hand, le Louvre has a pair of slaves originally meant for the funeral monument to Pope Julius II and unfinished. The museum's site has an interesting comment on the fact that the statues were unfinished.

240StevenTX
okt 7, 2015, 10:01 am

Great review. I wonder how much additional material on Michelangelo a modern biographer would have access to. On the other hand, few present day writers could likely match Symonds's perception and insight.

241dchaikin
okt 8, 2015, 11:28 pm

>235 baswood: good stuff. I think you captured something of that 19th-century mindset that is unique to that era and can't be replicated or adequately imitated.

242baswood
okt 14, 2015, 9:23 am

Minnelieder were songs composed by Minnesinger - singers of Minne, German for courtly love. The art of the troubadours spread Eastwards into Germany which developed its own lyricists. These writers of Minnelieders borrowed melodies from the folk traditions and turned them into a new art form.



Neidhart: A minnesinger and his ‘vale of Tears’ Songs and Interludes - Ensemble Leones.
Neidhardt von Reuenthal (1185-1240) was a knight and crusader and he specialised in dance songs which became characterised into two subgenres winter songs for dancing indoors and summer songs for dancing out doors. The lyrics would typically feature references to seasons nature and the weather and could depart substantially from the usual narratives of courtly love.
Neidhart’s songs became very popular and were reconjoined back into the folk tradition.

This cd features songs from the Frankfurt Neidhardt-Fragment which has five original songs whose melodies and have been reconfigured by Marc Lewon of the Ensemble Leones. The lyrics themselves were largely intact and where the melodies have disappeared then folk melodies or other Neidhart songs have been adapted to fit. Once again it is pure conjecture as to how they would have sounded back in the 13th century, but they were probably monophonic and that is how they have been treated on this cd. The biggest controversy however is whether they would have been accompanied by musical instruments and so on these recordings we have examples of both. The majority of the songs feature either a soprano vocalist (Els Janssens-Vanmunster) or the male baritone of Marc Lewon accompanied by fiddles and/or lutes. There are in addition musical interludes comprising of fiddles, lutes and bagpipes. A feature however of this Cd is an unaccompanied song sung by Els Janssens Vanmunster (the longest track on the cd) which gives the music a purer sound. Tempos are on the slow side with hints of an Eastern sounding palette. As dance songs go they must have been either very slow or very stately, perhaps both. The tunes are memorable and their slow nature gives them a gravitas that lifts them up from their dance music origins. The singers tread a path between secular folk traditions and more formal religious chants to bring off some beautiful sounding songs. An excellent CD and a 4 stars listen.
Listen on youtube:
https://youtu.be/Y7m0HyACDfU


Knightly Passions: The songs of Oswald Von Wolkenstein - Philip Pickett & New London Consort
Shuffling forward to the fifteenth century and we find that along with the renaissance a more feudal world was still very much in evidence in Germany. The tradition of the Minnesinger was still in place and a crowning example are the songs of Oswald Von Wolkenstein poet and diplomat. His songs come down to us in two music books copied by hand under his direction, but again it is obvious that much of the music was borrowed from earlier folk traditions. What is in evidence however is the variety of songs on offer; there are hunting songs, courtly love songs, religious songs, marching songs and songs of peasant life. He adapted much of the music he borrowed, to fit with his penchant for tongue twisting lyrics and word play and although all the songs are sung in German, non speakers of the language can still appreciate the sounds of the words and their own inbuilt rhyming schemes. There are a variety of performances here; polyphony, monophony; either with or without musical accompaniment and Catherine Bott soprano, Paul Agnew tenor, Michael George baritone and Simon Grant bass make a fine job of bringing these songs to life. It is a far more difficult songbook than those of Neidhart two centuries earlier. A variety of musical instruments are used: vielles, rebec, lutes, gitterns, harp, recorders and organ and a feature of this CD is that many of the songs are divided in two with an instrumental version of the song preceding or following the vocal performance. The cd comes with an excellent information booklet with translations of the songs into modern german, french and english.
Who can resist a CD titled Knightly passions 4.5 stars.

243OscarWilde87
okt 14, 2015, 12:54 pm

Loved to read about your wine tasting and the Afghanistan adventure!

244baswood
Redigeret: okt 14, 2015, 2:27 pm



Japan - Adolescent sex 1978 - 2.5 stars
Japan - Quiet Life 1979 - 4 stars
Japan - Tin Drum 1981 - 5 Stars
Japan - Oil on Canvas 1983 2 stars.


Who would have thought that the glam rockers who recorded Adolescent Sex in 1978 would pare down, define and augment their sound to produce a quality release like Quiet life just one year later and then go on to make a masterpiece such as Tin Drum in 1981. Many rock bands burst almost fully formed onto the scene but there are a few that start with a godawful mess of a sound, but manage to salvage something brilliant from the wreckage; Japan was one of those groups.

Japan - Adolescent Sex.
The signs were not good with this first release. It sounded like the group was desperately throwing everything at their songs to make them into fashionable rock. They also had a vocalist in David Sylvian who was no rock singer; the grit in his vocals sounded unpleasantly strained. Yet they came up with Suburban Love with its lazy and catchy chorus that really did sound different and hinted that there was something more to this group. Listening today to those not very catchy guitar riffs and those keyboard motifs that try and change the sound and those pretty dire rock vocals one gets tired of it all long before the end of the LP. One song after another is spoilt by too many add-ons.

Japan - Quiet Life
A well named Lp because suddenly everything has become quieter. Less is certainly more in this case and David Sylvain has stopped trying to be a rock singer. The grit has gone from his vocals and he uses his voice to suggest deep notes as he feels his way through the songs. He is fast developing a unique vocal style that is evident on the first two songs: Quiet Life and Fall in Love With Me, however it is when he gets to the third track and he pairs his vocals with the deep sound of a bowed cello that his voice resonates with the music. It is a marriage made in heaven and one that he would develop ad infinitum later in his solo career. And Hooray those awful guitar riffs have been shown the door to be replaced by a more bass heavy sound that works much better with the electronic keyboard motifs and fills. The fretless bass guitar work of Mick Karn really starts to make its presence felt on these songs and he works well with Steve Jensens imaginative percussion. The group were really starting to sound distinctive; making sensitive music which was a far cry from the sub standard rock music of their first release.

Youtube links:
https://youtu.be/6xwfc97HwTo

Japan - Tin Drum
It all came together superbly on Tin Drum. Not only were the bass and drums now an integral part of the songs, but the group were also using Asian music and scales (particularly a sort of Westernised Chinese sound) to give added flavour. Sylvain’s vocal phrasing, his use of space fitted with the interesting rhythms created by Karn and Jensen. The use of electronic keyboards enhances the fine play between the bass and percussion. A track like Talking Drum uses electronically enhanced drum sounds that become a part and fibre of the melody. This is music to sit down and listen to and be rewarded by sumptuous sounds that steer well clear of new age or disco beats. The group had written a set of eight songs that seem to hang together perfectly and the titles of some of these: Canton, Visions of China, Cantonese Boy, point towards music that is willing to embrace a different sound scape.

Youtube links:
https://youtu.be/CVPNUygTmRo?list=PL9BE36C6E59C12149

Japan - Oil on Canvas
After the wonderful Tin Drum the group fell apart. It may have been musical differences, but these were not helped by one of the groups girlfriends hooking up with David Sylvain. It would be difficult to see how the group would have defined its sound further after Tin Drum, my guess is that they may well have started to sound mannered. As compensation the record company released an abomination called Oil on Canvas. It was supposed to be live cuts of their best songs and as most of the songs were from Tin Drum this looked an attractive option. However to my ears some of the tracks do not sound like live takes, but more like remixes with audience applause added. The sound quality is also very bad with the intensity of the songs on the LP replaced with a more airy sound, that makes them seem particularly nondescript. Quite an achievement for such a distinctive sounding set of songs.

245avidmom
okt 14, 2015, 4:10 pm

Wow. Congrats on your Thingaversary and on your appearances in A Fabulous Opera!!!!

246baswood
Redigeret: okt 17, 2015, 8:16 pm



The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
American Henry James thought long and hard before putting pen to paper to write The Portrait of a Lady. He was determined to answer his critics by producing a literary masterpiece. He likened his process of writing this novel to the erection of a particularly fine building: a classical building of course. In his preface to the novel James was at pains to point out this process:

“So far I reasoned, and it took nothing less than that technical rigour. I now easily see, to inspire me with the right confidence for erecting on a plot of ground the neat and careful and proportioned pile of bricks that arches over it and that was thus to form, constructionally speaking a literary monument…………That solicitude was to be accordingly expressed in the artful patience with which as I have said I piled brick upon brick. The bricks for the whole counting over - putting for bricks little touches and inventions and enhancements by the way - affect me in truths well nigh innumerable and as ever so scrupulously fitted together and packed in.”

This extraordinary preface prepares the reader for the long haul, but it also confidently claims that the reader will be in the safe hands of a master craftsman and storyteller, one who is blessed with a gift that can reveal aspects of the human condition to the patient reader. Patience is perhaps the supreme virtue for Henry James as the last sentence of this monument of a novel is:

“She walked him away with her, however, as if she had given him now the key to patience.”

Patience is what a modern reader will need for the first three quarters of this novel, but as Henry James says it will have it’s rewards. He moves his readers crablike through the first chapters where he introduces some of the main characters and sets them in a beautiful old Country House in England. His writing is delicate and fine and when we meet his central character: Miss Isabel Archer we are soon lost in admiration for her independence and wit, expressed in some splendid conversation exchanges with her hosts at Gardencourt. Miss Archer is a young American lady of exceptional talent who values her independence above all things and one can’t help feeling that Henry James imbued much of his own character in the portrait of this lady. Fine, splendid, delicate are words that we could use to describe the society that James is portraying here. These are people with independent incomes living in mid nineteenth century England, who have impeccable manners and who can call on titled individuals as their friends. Miss Archer from America can fit into this society through her intelligence and wit and because of her good American breeding. This book is about upstairs people, nobody from downstairs gets a look in.

The story line of the novel follows the career of Miss Archer. She dazzles almost everybody she meets. She has offers of marriage from Lord Warburton a fine Englishman with radical ideas who is forging a career as a diplomat and also from Casper Goodwood a leading American industrialist. She rejects them both in pursuit of something finer for herself. When her protector old Mr Touchett dies, on the advice of his invalid son Ralph he leaves Miss Archer a fortune and so suddenly she is even more attractive on the marriage market. She travels to the Italian home of Mrs Touchett, where under guidance from Madame Merle she meets Gilbert Osmond, the embodiment of fine taste and culture. After a courtship she decides to accept Gilbert Osmond waiving away Lord Warburton and Casper Goodwood who have followed her to Italy. Osmond has been married before and has a young daughter Pansy who has just left the convent to live with him and his new wife. It doesn't work well for Isabel Archer, who after the first year of marriage becomes estranged from her traditionalist husband, but she soon grows to love his young daughter. It is Pansy’s prospects on the marriage market that bring Isabel Archer’s big mistake to a head and the novel’s main theme then becomes how Isabel can come to terms with her future.

The novel was originally serialised in Atlantic Monthly and Macmillan’s magazine before being released as a novel a year later in 1881. The novel gains both power and depth as you read through; the almost painstaking preparatory work in the first sections of the novel reap rewards once the story starts to unfold. It is the quality of James’s writing that kept me reading; his descriptions, conversations and character building are first class and once the story gets rolling the groundwork provides an excellent reference for the characters and their actions. Henry James valued his own independence and so one feels he is speaking from the heart when he is describing Isabel Archers point of view. He never married himself and it is therefore no surprise to learn of Isabel Archer’s mistake once she falls into that trap. There may be some evidence for thinking that the author of The portrait of a lady was a misogynist. For example his heroine for all her intelligence, manners and charm has an inherent character fault: it is her pride that in the end leads her into a miserable existence. Most of the other female characters are shown as manipulative and uncaring or dull and it is only the young virginal Pansy that can claim to be good. By contrast there are plenty of good and upstanding male characters; Lord Warburton, Casper Goodwood, Ralph and old Mr Touchett, although the most evil characterisation is reserved for Gilbert Osmond.

This is a slow moving novel whose storyline can be pretty well predicted, but this is not why we read Henry James. We read him for his characterisation, his brilliant descriptions and his observations on the human condition as well as his skill as a novel writer. There is no evidence of his rather mannered and tortured sentence structures that he favoured in his later novels. An added bonus for readers today is the depiction of life in mid nineteenth century England, even if it is reserved for the top tier of society. Yes James can sound snobbish and a little prissy at times and this in the end makes me think that his excellent novel is not a great novel. 4.5 stars

247SassyLassy
Redigeret: okt 17, 2015, 9:09 pm

Excellent review. Wondering about the subtraction of 1/2 star for James sounding snobbish and a little prissy at times, as that's who he was, and what the society in which he wanted to move was, so that would perhaps reinforce his portrayal of that world. I'm not sure about that, as I hadn't thought of it until I read your review, but I'll have to think about it some more.

After reading The Master last fall, I decided I had to pay more attention to James, whom I had already tentatively started reading. I am torn between this book and The Bostonians for my next James work. The latter would offer a glimpse into the world from which he came, but the former sounds so much more intriguing.

ETA that's a beautiful cover for that particular book

248NanaCC
okt 17, 2015, 9:59 pm

Terrific review of Portrait of a Lady. I haven't tackled James yet, and wondering where to start.

249rebeccanyc
okt 18, 2015, 8:30 am

Lovely review of Portrait of a Lady. I have the idea I read it decades ago (when I didn't appreciate it), but I think James still isn't for me.

250Nickelini
okt 18, 2015, 12:14 pm

>248 NanaCC: I haven't tackled James yet, and wondering where to start.

Definitely his earlier, shorter works. Try Daisy Miller or Washington Square. As he aged he got more experimental and his writing became quite dense. I thought Portrait of a Lady was marvellous, but it is very long.

251StevenTX
okt 18, 2015, 1:30 pm

Great review of The Portrait of a Lady. It was a 5-star book for me, but I also enjoyed James's later novels in his "high Mandarin" style.

252ursula
okt 18, 2015, 1:59 pm

>246 baswood: Glad you felt your patience was rewarded with this one!

253janeajones
okt 18, 2015, 7:26 pm

Great review. It's definitely time to read Portrait of a Lady again -- I think I've read it at least twice, but not for 30-40 years -- I do remember enjoying it, so I should go back to it.

254avidmom
Redigeret: okt 18, 2015, 8:46 pm

Excellent review of Portrait of a Lady. I think I've read bits and pieces of it for English classes here and there, but never the whole thing.

Also, that lady on the cover reminds me of the actress, Melanie Lynskey!

255FlorenceArt
okt 19, 2015, 10:33 am

I'm afraid I missed all the fun, as I gave up after reading about one fifth of Portrait of a Lady. I never felt any connection to the characters.

256AlisonY
okt 19, 2015, 2:35 pm

Excellent review. I kept thinking I've read Portrait of a Lady but actually it was the novella The Aspern Papers. One to get to some day.

257baswood
okt 19, 2015, 7:16 pm

Thanks everybody. I very much enjoyed The Portrait of a Lady, but there is still something about Henry James that makes not want to read his other major works just yet.

258Nickelini
okt 20, 2015, 1:17 am

>257 baswood: Henry James takes more energy to read than most writers. I was reading quite a bit of him a few years ago, but every time I think of picking up one of his books from my TBR I think it's going to be too much work and I pick something else.

259RidgewayGirl
okt 20, 2015, 3:23 am

The Portrait of a Lady is the only James novel I have read, but it left me wanting to read more. Your review was excellent, Bas, and reminded me of how much I had enjoyed it.

260dchaikin
okt 20, 2015, 9:44 pm

Another excellent review Bas.

261OscarWilde87
okt 23, 2015, 12:18 pm

What a great review of The Portrait of a Lady.

262edwinbcn
okt 24, 2015, 7:56 pm

I started reading The Portrait of a Lady at least 10 years ago, but abandoned it after reading about 80 pages into it. On the whole, Henry James interests me a lot, although so far I have mainly read some of his shorter novels. I will go back to The Portrait of a Lady some day, perhaps I should take a different edition. The Bantam classics are not so nice for thick books.

263baswood
okt 29, 2015, 8:58 am

264baswood
Redigeret: okt 29, 2015, 9:04 am

Villette by Charlotte Bronte
It is hard to believe that Villette was published in 1853 and yet its style is so very reminiscent of its era. It reads like a Victorian novel but one with hardly any plot to speak of, there are ghosts, there are love stories, there are strict manners and men rule the world, but we see this through the eyes of Lucy Snowe a very unlikely hero. It is a psychological study first and foremost but one in which the protagonist thinks and acts according to the proscribed values of the world in which she lives. It is the psychological aspect and the unremarkable story line that seems to portend towards modernism, but Bronte’s writing locks it firmly in the world of the Victorian novel.

Lucy Snowe as an unmarried women without any prospects must work for her living. She is not particularly attractive and so without good looks or money she has little to offer on the marriage market, especially at a time when there were far more young women than men in the world. She has just enough money to seek her fortune on the continent and has some luck in finding a place as an assistant in a girls school in the country of Labassecoeur. Labassecour to all intents and purposes is France and I would imagine that Bronte made it an imaginary country because of the anti-French feel of much of her novel. A major theme of the novel is how hard work, diligence and knowing ones place in society is essential for an unmarried woman to survive. Lucy is quiet and undemonstrative on the surface with an iron will that keeps her feelings in check, but inside her head which is where most of the story takes place she is both vulnerable and passionate. She does not allow herself to fall in love and yet her inner feelings are centred on two extraordinary men and we follow her hopes her desires and her confusion as she tries to come to terms with her feelings and her position in society.

It is a novel where we have to rely on other peoples observations of Lucy Snowe to get a more balanced picture. Lucy herself is not so much unreliable as perplexed in her thoughts and as she is telling her story in the first person then the reader must sift the evidence. Bronte’s point in presenting such a character is to demonstrate how difficult it was for a woman to make her way in such a closed (to her) society. How should an intelligent woman come to terms with her situation? Paulina a childhood friend says of Lucy:

“Lucy I wonder if anybody will comprehend you all together”

and:

M Paul to Lucy “You want so much checking, regulating, and keeping down” This idea of keeping down never left M Pauls head; the most habitual subjugation would, in my case, have failed to relieve him of it.

Here is the rub because not only must Lucy keep her vulnerability and passions in check she must also keep her rebellious spirit from surfacing too often. Those people who know her best perceive this in her as do the readers who are privy to her thoughts and her occasional outspoken and prickly comments to others.

Bronte was able to develop other themes through Lucy that were topical at her time of writing. I have already mentioned the anti French feeling, but this is also entwined with an inbuilt anti-catholicism. Lucy is fiercely protestant and finds herself living and working in a catholic school and falling in love with a catholic man. It is no accident that the school in which she works is run a little like a police state with Madame Beck keeping her pupils and teachers under constant surveillance. M Paul also boasts of how he spies on all the pupils and teachers and this is likened to the catholic religion that is seen as one of control and manipulation of peoples souls. Lucy must rebel against this, but she needs to use all her resources so as not to fall foul of the system.

Bronte’s metaphor for a troubled mind is a storm, sometimes a storm at sea and these always precipitate a major event in Lucy’s life. M Paul’s character is perceived as stormy and at the end of the novel it is a storm that represents a slightly ambiguous ending. Bronte’s writing here and in the ghost scenes is most representative of what we have come to know as Victorian gothic. However it is the exploration of the thoughts and feelings of Lucy Snowe that takes this novel out of the general run of novels of it’s time. It is insightful, it is thought provoking, it is not perfect as one imagines a novel should be, but it is one of those books that I look forward to re-reading. 5 stars.

265NanaCC
okt 29, 2015, 9:19 am

Lovely review of Villette. I've added it to my wishlist.

266japaul22
okt 29, 2015, 10:13 am

Nice review of Villette. I read it a few years ago and did not particularly enjoy it, maybe because it just didn't compare to the other Bronte novels I've read. I do think you hit the nail on the head here, though

It is a novel where we have to rely on other peoples observations of Lucy Snowe to get a more balanced picture.

For me, the contrast between Lucy's dramatic inner dialogue and her extremely boring exterior were just too jarring.

267rebeccanyc
okt 29, 2015, 10:19 am

I haven't read Bronte since I read Jane Eyre as a young teenager. Your review makes me think I should rethink that.

268VivienneR
okt 29, 2015, 12:06 pm

Excellent review of Villette. When I was in my twenties I read everything I could find by and about the Bronte family. I always wondered what Lucy Snowe would have been like without the constraints of Victorian society.

269baswood
okt 31, 2015, 8:49 am



We found two kittens in the garden last Saturday, or to be precise one of them found us as it came wobbling out of the undergrowth beneath a tree. We found its brother/sister (not sure which sex yet) a little later. Left them in the garden till 10pm and then took them inside the house (no sign of the mother cat). They are very small perhaps three weeks old and so not yet weaned. We are bottle feeding and so it is the nearest that me and Lynn have ever been to being parents. They are doing well so far.

The feeding rituals and kitten playing time is cutting down on my reading time.

270.Monkey.
okt 31, 2015, 9:30 am

Awwwww such precious little babies! Try to keep an eye out for mama, it's possible she'll still make her way back, if nothing has happened to her.

271avidmom
Redigeret: okt 31, 2015, 2:28 pm

>269 baswood: Uh oh! They sure are cute though.

272AlisonY
okt 31, 2015, 2:53 pm

Aww - so cute! That is the totally adorable stage. Watch out for your furniture, though - we got a kitten in the summer of 2014, and I couldn't believe how much destruction one tiny animal could be responsible for.

Loved your last review - haven't got to this Bronte novel yet, but your review makes it intriguing.

273janemarieprice
okt 31, 2015, 6:15 pm

I really liked Villette I think because of that contrast in inner and outer person. Though the ending kind of gutted me.

Super cute kitties!

274baswood
okt 31, 2015, 6:28 pm

>270 .Monkey.: I saw the mother cat a couple of days later and decided not to give the kittens back. We live out in the country and most of the cats are ferrel or semi-ferrel. When we found the kittens they were alive with fleas and one of them had a tick in his ear. I judged that they would have a much better chance of survival if they stayed with us.

275avidmom
okt 31, 2015, 9:30 pm

>274 baswood: :) Do you have names for your little guys?

276.Monkey.
nov 1, 2015, 4:14 am

Oh no doubt they are, I just figured you may be able to catch mama, and at the least, get her spayed and then released if she's feral and anti-human company.

277baswood
nov 1, 2015, 5:49 am

>275 avidmom: Yes; as we are now going to keep them. They are Charlie and Parker, still not sure what sex they are and so apart from the obvious jazz connection both names would suit either sex.

278avidmom
nov 1, 2015, 12:22 pm

>277 baswood: Those are great names!

279dchaikin
nov 4, 2015, 9:39 pm

Cute kitties. Enjoyed your take on Villette.

280Jargoneer
nov 5, 2015, 7:39 am

>269 baswood: - they may look cute now but soon they will be trying to kill you - How to Tell if Your Cat is plotting to kill you.

>244 baswood: - that's a fair summary of Japan although I have met people who really like the first album. There were also two bridging albums between the three you reviewed - I never really cared for Obscure Alternatives which they released 7 months after the first album, not enough good songs and still struggling for direction; but I do like Gentleman Take Polaroids, the album just before Tin Drum, it contains some great stuff like 'Swing' and 'Methods of Dance'.
The break-up at the height of their success was a success, Karn and Sylvian seemingly are not overly keen on each other, but one of the reasons was that David Sylvian was voted the most beautiful man in the world. Since he wanted to be a 'serious' artist he deliberately drove his career into the ditch - he has produced some excellent in that ditch.

>245 avidmom: - There may be some evidence for thinking that the author of The portrait of a lady was a misogynist. That's an interesting discussion point especially given James predilection for female characters being the lead character in so many of his novels and stories. I think Isobel has to be intelligent and yet foolish in her choice to allow James to analyse her character and the hypocrisy of society, if she is intelligent and wise in her choice it would be have been a lot shorter.

281VivienneR
nov 6, 2015, 12:09 pm

>269 baswood: Beautiful kittens. Love the names!

282SassyLassy
nov 6, 2015, 3:14 pm

Great kittens and great names. My semi educated guess is that the top one is female, as male cats almost never have three colours. The colours on the lower kitten are less clear, but I am leaning toward a three coloured female there too.

You've put Villette on my reread list for next year.

283.Monkey.
nov 6, 2015, 3:19 pm

True, calico genes mean it's very rare for a male to inherit. Too hard to make out kitty #2s colors, though.

284baswood
Redigeret: nov 7, 2015, 6:00 pm

285baswood
Redigeret: nov 7, 2015, 7:37 pm

The sonnets of Michael angelo Buonarroti and Tommaso Campanella; now for the first time translated into rhymed English by John Addington Symonds published 1878.
Why should we read these sonnets now? As historical artefacts they are superb, as a window into two great minds they are incomparable and they are written from the heart. The characters of these two great men shine through and when the mud or the muddle clears then the results can be astonishing.

John Addington Symonds in his excellent introduction points out the similarities in the sonnets of these two men, who both lived and worked at the end of the Italian Renaissance; although their lives were very different and did not overlap. Michelangelo 1475-1564 lived during the high renaissance period and was the leading artist of his time. Tommasso Campanella lived at the fag end of the renaissance from 1568 -1639 and spent 25 years in prison in Naples. Addington says that Michelangelo expressed the aspirations of a solitary life dedicated to the service of art, while Campanella gave utterance to a spirit exiled and isolated, misunderstood by those with whom he lived. Both men did not like what they saw around them and neither were afraid to vent their spleen on the ungodly ways of their fellow men. Both found comfort and solace in their love of God. Michelangelo was more comfortable with the catholic religion, but pursued his own course in Platonising christianity. Campanella constructed his own ideas based on God being immanent in nature. Both stood above their era and in a sense aloof from it.

Michelangelo’s sonnets were not published in his lifetime. He wrote them for his friends and for himself, some were scribbled on drawings or contained in letters and many show signs of being reworked. They were collected together and some 59 years after his death Michelangelo the younger published his ancestors poems, however they were in a bowdlerised form. Michelangelo the younger did not want to court controversy with the church and also attempted to smooth out some of the knotty pieces of prosody that he found. He re-wrote portions, finished lines that were started and tried to make more sense of his ancestors thoughts. The results were a mess and it was not until Cesare Guasti’s edition in 1863 that the world could read the poetry more or less in a manner that Michelangelo had intended. Michelangelo’s sonnets express his personal feelings and certainly in the earlier ones his irascible character is much in evidence. In the later poems of which their is a majority here, one can get a sense of his love of Beauty passing beyond it’s personal and specific manifestations to the Universal and impersonal.

“Thus beauty burns not with consuming rage
For so much only of the heavenly light
Inflames our love as finds a fervent heart”


Love of Beauty, Love of Florence and his love of Christ are the three main themes of his poetry.

Campanella a Dominican friar saw nature as a source of Knowledge combined with the intuitive forces of human reason. His philosophical approach to religion came at a time when the Italian states were dogmatically priest-ridden and under the rule of petty tyrants. They had no ear for Campanella’s vociferous outpourings and he was accused of heresy; tortured, crippled and narrowly escaped being burnt alive. He spent 25 years imprisoned in Naples and spent his time writing and attracting around him a number of converts. His prison was at times more like a open house, but one he could not leave. One of his admirers; a German Tobia Adami undertook to publish much of Campanella’s philosophical writings and his poetry. Addington says that his sonnets might be arranged under four headings: philosophical, political, prophetic and personal and I would say that it is his love of God and his zeal that calls for men to change their ways that is the glue that binds them together.

“Born of God’s Wisdom and Philosophy,
Keen lover of true beauty and true good,
I call the vain self-traitorous multitude
Back to my mother’s milk; for it is she,
Faithful to God her spouse, who nourished me."


As both sonneteers got more advanced in years then death became an important theme. Many of Michelangelo’s sonnets were written after his 60th year and Campanella must have been in fear of his life during his long sojourn in prison. Both poets looked forward to death with both hope and fear; the hope was that they would be rewarded in heaven; Michelangelo:

"This love, this faith, pure joys for us afford.
Lo, all the lovely things we find on earth,
Resemble for the soul that rightly sees,
That source of bliss divine that gave us birth:
Nor have we first fruits or remembrances
Of heaven elsewhere. Thus, loving loyally,
I rise to God and make death sweet by thee.'


And Campanella

"Make then thine inborn lustre beam and shine
With love of goodness; goodness cannot fail
From God alone let praise immense be thine.
My soul is tired of telling o’er the tale
With men: she calls on thine: she bids thee go
Into God’s school with tablets white as snow."


I found some of the sonnets from both of these ‘amateur’ poets obscure at times. The translation is only part of the problem as it is more inherent in the sonnets themselves. Michelangelo’s thought process are not always easy to follow and he was not a skilled writer of sonnets. A number of sonnets have no clear development of theme and often there are purple patches that do not follow through. Campanella is more logical in his thoughts and can be followed more easily, but he has a tendency to throw in a line or two that seems to jar with the rest of what has gone before, however there are some brilliant sonnets from both men and there are few without some interest.

Symonds translation has attempted to keep the original rhyming scheme and sometimes he has admitted that clear meaning has been sacrificed as a result. The sonnets follow the Petrarchan rhyming scheme with a few variations and so they look tidy and neat on the page and read well. Symonds has also taken the liberty of giving the sonnets a title (they had previously just been numbered) and his selections impose their own meaning onto the sonnet. I found this helpful and do not object to a noted scholar like Symonds giving me some guidance.

There is much to admire in theses sonnets as both men are not afraid to show their feelings. There is passion, there are calls to arms, there is some dejection about the world around them, but there is also hope for the future. If you wish to know how these two exceptional men thought and felt about their world then there is much to learn in these sonnets. Untidy, ragged at times and with a religious bent that might be foreign to our ears, they also sing from the heart and there are individual sonnets that hit their targets. A four star read.

286dchaikin
nov 8, 2015, 9:40 pm

Very interesting. What a great window in the mind of Michaelangelo.

287baswood
Redigeret: nov 11, 2015, 2:20 pm

288baswood
Redigeret: nov 11, 2015, 2:21 pm

Far Tortuga by Peter Matthiessen
Read the book and then go back and open it at a random page and you are at once transported into the world of low life caribbean junk sailors at the fag end of the green turtle hunting industry. Locked on a decrepit and bastardised fishing vessel with a crew who speak childishly of the old days and voodoo practises while feeling perfectly at home with casual violence; both spoken and unspoken would not be most peoples idea of a caribbean cruise. The crew of the Lillias Eden litter and spoil all that they see and yet Peter Mathiessen has captured that world with a prose style that combines concrete poetry with inane chatter and pithy descriptions of rugged, dangerous beauty.

The book describes the working voyage of a crew of rough, desperate men chasing the green sea turtles who are fast disappearing from the Caribbean waters. The turtle hunters are a fairly close knit community who are unravelling through the dearth of turtles and the coming of a more modern world in which they are unfit to play a part. They are hampered by having to take on crew members who are foreign to their ways and a captain who is notorious for his mismanagement of his charges. They pass the time by telling stories of the good old days, which were not so good at all and are interwoven with superstition and an increasing unease with one of the new members of the crew who is an “Obeah worker” ( practises folk magic and sorcery). The green turtles prove elusive and a constant stream of ill wind and bad weather and the bad vibrations from the poorly functioning new engines and the petty and not so petty rivalries between crew members make for a book where disaster appears to be on the next stretch of the ocean.

Matthiessen builds the atmosphere in a unique way by spreading his words across the page. Word placement and the spaces around the paragraphs, sentences and phrases give the book a look of modern poetry, but it all works beautifully together to tell an edgy word blown story. Matthiessen uses a localised vernacular of Caribbean speech set out in indented paragraphs which he intersperses with his pithy descriptions of scenery and observations and they combine beautifully to move the story along. The look and feel of the words on the page make this pared down literature reflect the feel of the natural world of the Caribbean seascapes; there is no room for the author to tell us who is speaking and rather like the way Hilary Mantel uses a similar technique in her Tudor Historical novels the reader is soon in tune with what is going on.

Captain Raib says to no one in particular that:

“Blowin my life away, dass what it doin. Dis goddom wind is blowin my life away”

The wind, the bad weather, the bad omens, the modern world encroaching are all destroying these broken men; there are no heroes only more desperation and Matthiessen's sparsely poetic prose captures this brilliantly. This may not be story telling that everyone will enjoy, but it is story telling that has a gritty reality that captures the imagination. My advice is to get hold of a copy of the book, open it at random and see if you can feel the swell and the salt of the open sea in the wind blown prose. You might then think this is a voyage worth taking. I certainly did and so 4.5 stars.

289baswood
Redigeret: nov 17, 2015, 3:06 am

ALADORE - SIR HENRY JOHN NEWBOLT

290sibylline
nov 12, 2015, 7:26 pm

So much to respond to - maybe more than I can. I am a Mattheissen fan - the travel books. Love listening to them best of all.

Kittehs!

Love love love Villette. But I can't help it my name is Lucy. Love the quote! "Lucy I wonder if anybody will comprehend you altogether." I could adopt that as my motto.

Not everyone can bear James, but I am another long time fan, although I admit I was defeated by The Princess Cassimassima.

Rory Stewart's journey across Afghanistan was another howling good read.

Re >202 StevenTX: My cousin and a good friend travelled around Afghanistan for several months and the friend, David Chaffetz wrote a reasonably good book about it. I used to have a copy of it somewhere or other, but I think it got borrowed permanently. Anyway, the impressions were similar to yours. It might have been just a few years later, but it was pretty much around the same time as your travels.

A read a lot of Lessing in the early 80's but I doubt I will revisit. Can't put a finger on it, but sometimes I found her very annoying.

I liked The Master well enough, but I wasn't blown away or anything. The image though of those dresses in the Adriatic. That was good.

I have read a lot of Faulkner but never The Sound and the Fury -- some of the novels are actual rather fun to read. The Sartoris clan is never dull.

A final question - the sf books pictured at the top -- have you read them? I'm not sure what those books are meant to signifiy . . .what you are currently reading? What you hope to read? What you just read? E. Hamilton is not too bad -- married to Leigh Brackett. Interesting to have two sf writers under one roof. I haven't revisited him in decades, though. Some of them don't age well at all, and some of them are still surprisingly fun to read or even relevant.

291baswood
nov 13, 2015, 8:43 am

>290 sibylline: The books at the top of the thread are those that are on my current reading shelf and once I have finished Aladore I will have read two from each row of four. A target is to finish them all by the New Year, but I keep interrupting myself by picking up other books.

292baswood
Redigeret: nov 13, 2015, 2:42 pm

A fabulous Opera by The Tropic of ideas
There are so many great book reviews posted on Librarything that one wonders why somebody has not had the gumption to collect some of them and publish them in a book format. Well if your still wondering if this could be done, well - too late somebody has beaten you to it and that somebody is the Tropic of Ideas. Who! you may ask, who on earth are they, well; you wouldn’t be too surprised to learn that they are the usual bunch of misfits who really don’t fit in anywhere: they have been driven by winds of ill fortune from group to group finally winding up on some tropical island hosted by the mysterious Sputnik-something-or-other. These misfits do however have one thing in common; they are all (apart from one sock puppet and we will get to that later) love books of a literary nature and can write damn fine reviews.

Literary fiction predominates: Les Miserables by Victor Hugo has five reviews, while Moby Dick by Herman Melville and Ulysses by James Joyce attracts three reviews each, but this collection also reflects the nature of the reviews on Librarything which is eclectic to say the least. You will find therefore reviews of books by Doris Lessing, William Golding, E M Forster, Saint Augustine of Hippo, Joan Didion, George Eliot, John Fowles, Clarice Lispector, Chinua Achebe, Roberto Bolano, John Steinbeck …. the list goes on with over 90 authors covered. Included also are reviews of some classic science fiction and some authors that I am willing to bet you have never heard of; for example D.G. Pugh, DVM, MS’s unforgettable Sheep and Goat Medicine or perhaps Sir Edmund Trelawny Blackhouse’s Décadence Mandchoue

You will recognise some of the names of the reviewers as they regular appear in Librarythings hot reviews section, for example my favourite sock puppet names are; MeditationsMartini, tomcatMurr, Macumbeira, ChocolateMuse, PeckoeThecat, EnriqueFreeque, zenomax and blackdogbooks, oh yes and A_Musing. It would of course be amiss to select any one review for discussion as there are so many here that give fresh incites, fresh ideas and thoughts that will get the most tired reader thinking “I must read that book”

Having said that I wouldn’t select any one review I must however select one reviewer for particular comment: basswood: who annoys the hell out of me. How on earth he managed to muscle in on this project is a mystery. For a start lets take his review of Moby Dick (perhaps one of the greatest of literary masterpieces) and this fool says he doesn’t like it because he is not American. He then goes on to claim that Lady Chatterley’s lover is one of the great books of the English language …. well I ask you?: everybody knows that Kate Millets’ book Sexual Politics exposed D H Lawrence as the misogynist he really was. Not content with this he asks us to believe that Olaf Stapledon (little known outside his genre) science fiction writer could hold his own with the other literary giants on display in this book. This sort of rubbish made me want to hurl the book across the room, which would have been a great shame because of all the other wonderful reviews this book contains.

Over 120 reviews covering over 90 books are set out in a beautifully published tome with some gorgeous drawings by Solla Carrock and the odd poem by Rick Harsh and the odd film review by Michael Welch. This book would look great on your coffee table and people might even think that you appreciate great literature. Thank you Solla

293NanaCC
nov 13, 2015, 4:25 pm

>292 baswood: Clever! Even the sock puppet. :)

294rebeccanyc
nov 14, 2015, 11:20 am

>288 baswood: I loved Matthiessen's Shadow Country and so Far Tortuga is going on my wishlist.

295FlorenceArt
nov 15, 2015, 1:58 am

Far Tortuga sounds good but it scares me a little. I can't stand that feeling of dread in a book where you know something horrible and avoidable is going to happen. Maybe I should try Shadow Country instead.

296tonikat
nov 15, 2015, 5:45 am

>285 baswood: - I just caught up on those sonnets, very interesting. Though I'm a bit alarmed at Symonds changing the meaning to fit the rhyme scheme. Does he note such changes and explain what it would have meant? Having read Shakespeare I am interested in other sonnet sequences especially from around that time.

297dchaikin
nov 15, 2015, 12:12 pm

298rebeccanyc
nov 15, 2015, 12:14 pm

>295 FlorenceArt: Shadow Country is a tome because it was Matthiessen's reworking (condensation/concentration) of a previously written trilogy -- just so you know. And the really horrible (or maybe not so horrible) thing happens more or less right away, and then is explored, from various points of view, for the rest of the novel. I loved it so much I bought the three novels that make up the original trilogy, but who knows if I'll ever gtet to them because I have so much on my TBR.

299baswood
Redigeret: nov 16, 2015, 2:00 pm

Aladore by Sir Henry John Newbolt
"Then the hermit came out from within, and when he saw him Ywain kept close to watch what he would do, for he knew not the manner of hermits, nor how they live all their life-days, seeing that they have time before them like new-fallen snow, without fence or foot-mark."

A medieval fantasy novel published in 1914, which has been largely forgotten. I searched in vain to see if it featured in any of the best 100 fantasy novels lists (it probably would not make a list of the best 500 fantasy novels; if one was in existence). There is a wiki page about the book which labels it an allegorical novel and maybe when people see a novel listed as allegorical they run a mile (all that difficult allegory that nobody understands). Well I did not see much allegory and little evidence of the religious connotations that some readers have seen.

It is a novel full of magic and fantasy with some deft touches and some 'feel good" writing. I soon became enchanted by the magical worlds of Aladore and Paladore that our hero Yvain flits between. There is a simple love story and there is nothing here to frighten the children. A world of innocence published at the start of the first world war. It is written in a style of old English prose which makes it sing to its own kind of music. Henry Newbolt was a published poet when this novel appeared and there is some delightful prose that obscures and adds to the fantasy feel that he engenders.

Sir Yvain Lord of Sulney is holding court when the novel starts. A 7 year old boy has been found wearing strange clothes and speaking in an unintelligible language. When Yvain addresses the problem his tired, world weariness slips away and he becomes enchanted by the boy. He renounces his Lordship and follows the boy into the woods and the magic has begun. Yvain is searching for what he desires and the hermit whom he meets in the woods reminds him that "Desire is a child: yet he will take a man by the hand and lead him away."

Short chapters with the story moving along at a brisk pace. The style of writing will put some people off as will a lack of any tension or suspense, but I enjoyed my read and so 3.5 stars

The book is free here on the internet https://archive.org/stream/aladoren00newbuoft#page/n417/mode/2up

300sibylline
nov 16, 2015, 2:01 pm

You got me, I will have to check this out!

301tonikat
nov 16, 2015, 2:12 pm

lol I just read >292 baswood:, it is on my wish list, but nice review.

and just caught up on Matthiessen too, I had heard his name but know nothing, you've tempted me. Though at the moment pink and fluffy would be good.

Aladore I have heard of for some reason, and you make it sound interesting, and free is it, well.

302baswood
Redigeret: nov 29, 2015, 4:44 pm

303baswood
nov 29, 2015, 7:07 pm

Adventures in Time and Space edited by Raymond J Healey and J Francis McComas
33 of the greatest stories novelettes and short novels by the best SF writers of all time: so it says on the cover of my Del Rey edition first published in 1975. You can never trust the blurb on the cover (especially when you discover there are actually 35 stories in the book), which had all appeared previously in American pulp fiction magazines: mostly in Astounding Science Fiction when it was under the editorship of John W Campbell from 1937-1945. This period up to and just beyond the second world war has justly been labelled The Golden Age of Science Fiction and most of these stories fit right into that Golden Age.

Some famous names from the period are represented here; Robert A Heinlein has three stories as does A E Van Vogt, John W Campbell writing under the pseudonym of Don A Stuart has two stories and there are stories by Isaac Asimov, Alfred Bester, Lewis Padgett and L Sprague Du Camp and all of these have some excellent pieces in the collection. There are 24 authors represented and a high percentage of the 35 stories are well worth reading, there are very few duds. I quite happily read the stories from end to end through nearly one thousand pages over a one week period without getting bored or feeling the need to turn to something else.

There are a few classic stories here that still hold the imagination today. “Who Goes there” by Don A Stuart has been filmed a number of times as “The Thing”: an Antartica expedition come across an alien spaceship deep in an ice field; they thaw out the alien pilot and unleash a creature that can imitate any life form with which it comes into contact and can do this with every cell of its body, the original story is well written and packs a massive punch. “The Dark Destroyer” is one of the best things I have read by A E Van Vogt, which moves through the gears from a hunter/stalker scenario to a modern space opera. “Adam and No Eve” is an atmospheric dystopian novella by Alfred Bester and “Nightfall” is a brilliant short story by Isaac Asimov who imagines a planet with six suns whose inhabitants go crazy every 2500 years when there is a total eclipse and there is nightfall. “He who Shrank” by Harry Hasse imagines that there are universes that exist as a succession of tiny particles and when a scientist invents a shrinking formula that reduces a person in size he will shrink down through a succession of universes ad infinitum. There are a few stories that imagine strange things happening in the present time (the 1930’s) and Lewis Padgett’s “The Twonky” and Raymond F Jones’ ‘The Correspondence Course” are two of the best of these. There are a clutch of time travel tales ranging from adventure stories following a step backwards or forwards in time to tales that explore the paradox of time travel.

The best stories from the Golden Age of science fiction contained ideas the stirred the imagination, it was not a time for much hard science fiction although in this collection there is a factual account of the German V2 rocket system. The ideas behind many of these tales were recycled through the comics of the 1960’s: publications like “Journey into Mystery” or “Strange Tales” by Atlas comics; stuff that I avidly collected as a kid and I was amazed that most of these stories originated from a period 20-30 years earlier.

I suppose that you have got to like science fiction to want to read this collection and you have got to remind yourself for whom they were written: mainly male young adults and so in many of the stories it is old fashioned American muscle that solves many of the tricky situations, but this is not always the case: females of course hardly get a look in. There is no great literature here, but many of the stories are well written and thoroughly entertaining if you have a mind to give them a fair hearing. I enjoyed myself and so 4.5 stars.

304valkyrdeath
nov 29, 2015, 7:48 pm

>303 baswood: That sounds like a great collection. Looking at the list of stories, there's a few of my favourites in there but also quite a few I don't know. It's a pity books like that don't generally stay in print.

305dchaikin
dec 1, 2015, 1:02 pm

Sounds like you were enjoying this collection. I didn't know the golden age of science fiction was tied into the WWII era.

306sibylline
dec 7, 2015, 9:30 pm

>303 baswood: So . . . d'you think the V-2 rocket story is what inspired Pynchon? I'm pretty sure I remember that Asimov story and maybe also reading the shrinking one, it sounds very familiar.

307baswood
dec 8, 2015, 6:30 am



The Very Best of World Duets - Various Artists
Gerry Mulligan and Thelonius Monk - Mulligan meets Monk
Juana Molina - Segundo


A duet is a performance between two singers, dancers or instrumentalists and so The Very Best of World duets is something of a misnomer. Collaborations would have been a more apt word and one that could be used to describe all three of the CDs that I have been listening to recently. Collaboration has two quite different meanings: it can be the action of working with someone to produce something or it can mean traitorous cooperation with the enemy. Perhaps then duets is a safer option.

The Very Best of World Duets is a compilation of tracks mainly from the 1990’s and early naughties and in the strict sense of the word there is not a single duet in all of the 24 tracks of this double CD. They are in fact collaborations between various artists/groups and most of the tracks will have received much airplay on popular music radio stations. There are some famous and very good performances here for example; Astrud Gilberto & Stan Getz, Ismael Lo and Marianne Faithfull, Ry Cooder & Buena Vista Social Club and reaching back into the 1970’s Mick Jagger and Peter Tosh. Other world music stars are also featured; Youssou N’Dour with Wycliffe Jean, Baaba Maal with Luciano, Tony Allen with Damon Albarn and Nitin Sawhney with Terry Callier. There are a couple of remixes and a few of the songs are aimed squarely at the dance floor, but other than that this is a good selection of world music hits and well worth picking up in the bargain bins.

Mulligan meets Monk comes from 1957 and as a one time collaboration between these two great jazz artists has now reached classic status. The original LP contained six tracks and weighed in at 40 minutes. My CD is a re-re-re- release from 2009 and clocks in at over 74 minutes. Alternative tracks from the original session have been included and they are all worth hearing (in fact the second alternative take of “I Mean You” is as good or better than the original released version) There is also a live recording from 1955 from the Newport jazz festival which also features Miles Davis and Zoot Sims, but the sound quality makes this only of interest for those who want to get an impression of the music.

The meeting off these two giants of jazz was not universally acclaimed back in 1957: Gerry Mulligan was one of the leading players of the “cool’ school of Jazz while Monk was the leading light of the ‘Bop’ school and aficionados of either faction may have been disappointed and seen the session as a traitorous cooperation with the enemy. The LP does give the impression of Gerry Mulligan walking into a Thelonious Monk recording session: Monk is supported by his usual rhythm section at the time and five of the six tunes are Monk originals or songs in Monks repertoire. Getting all this history out of the way and listening now to these tracks; the jazz music recorded is of the highest quality. Surprisingly enough it is Mulligan on his baritone saxophone that seams most at ease as he reals of a bunch of solos that are inventive and capture the feel of the Monk tunes. Monk himself sounds at times to be trying too hard and his percussive piano playing can sometimes sound a bit thin, but this is quibbling, as for most of the time his playing is as surprising and arresting as ever. The CD is worth the price of admission for just the opening track: ‘Round Midnight, because this is the best version of this classic Monk tune that I have ever heard. Mulligans phrasing on the tune is a joy to listen to and I am still trying to capture it on my tenor saxophone. This is a five star CD.

'Round Midnight:
https://youtu.be/0UStPssgymA

Juana Molina is an Argentinian artist whose breathy Latin American singing style seems more akin to folk music, but her flat toned delivery has a Latin American swing that combines well with some good acoustic guitar. On this her second album she combines this music with some electronic sounds and keyboards that lift most of her original songs to another level. She plays all of the instruments, but it is her collaboration of two distinct styles of music that makes this whole CD sound so interesting. There are some very good songs that develop into original material as she introduces slabs of electronica or light dance beats into her mix. The Cd was voted best World Music CD of 2003 by Entertainment Weekly and it is deserving of its accolades. Another five star listen.

Quiero from Segundo:
https://youtu.be/LRLjuT9vatk

308khanPrasad123
dec 8, 2015, 6:41 am

Denne bruger er blevet fjernet som værende spam.

309baswood
Redigeret: dec 8, 2015, 9:48 am

The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance by John Hale
Civilization curiously spelt with a z by this very British historian is an overview of Europe in what John Hale refers to as the long sixteenth century (he qualifies this as 1450-1620). It is not a story of the Renaissance although that period and its influence is very well covered in a large section of the book; Hale was concerned more with just how civilised the period was in comparison with today and other periods of history. Hale explains his title thus:

“I hope it will not be thought presumptuous that my title adapts that of a book of really seminal importance, Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy of 1860. I have carried it for so long in my mental baggage as a talisman at once protective and provocative that this was not a journey I could undertake without it”

Burckhardt’s view of the Renaissance set the tone for Victorian historians and he saw that period in Italy as a rebirth. A discovery of the civilised world of the ancient Greeks and Romans whose culture and art led the renaissance Italians to soar to great heights. Hale puts this into perspective: while not denying that the rediscovery of antiquity and its resulting humanism was a key concept in the long sixteenth century, he concerns himself with an overview of `Europe and the progress towards a more civilised society.

The book has three parts. In part one Hale looks at our concept of Europe and how the men and women of Europe saw themselves. He analyses almost country by country the development from feudalism to a more city based culture. He searches for an overall pattern, but it emerges that there really isn’t one, because one city state after another sought to gain advantage over the others. England as an Island state seems to have much the same connection with Europe then as now, intrinsically part of it and yet holding itself somewhat aloof. Most of Europeans were ruled by monarchs and their warlike/aggressive culture ensured there was no lasting peace. War was the sport of kings say Hale and the evidence is there to fully support this view. A chapter on the Divisions of Europe also covers the split in the Christian religion resulting in the reformation and later in the counter-reformation.

Part two covers the renaissance and walks through the history of the Italian renaissance and how the pagan cultures of antiquity had been adapted and encompassed within a Christian culture. Hale then looks at how the rediscovery of antiquity led to a later renaissance in other European states. These took different forms; for example drama and the theatre in England, Poetry and literature in France, religious music in Germany and realism in art in the low countries. Hale identifies some key pan Europe influences/references that helped shape the culture of the times. The writing and learning of Erasmus and the Book of the Courtier by Baldassarre Castiglione are two examples and perhaps a criticism of of Hale’s book is an over reliance on these. This section does however provides an excellent overview of how we see the renaissance today.

Part three is for me the real meat of the book and it is where Hale gets to analyse the civilisation of the long sixteenth century. He manages to give a picture of just what it was like to be alive in this period, whether it was in the cities or the countryside. He talks of civility - City based values: sound education, polite manners, the discriminating use of money and a social standing which enabled its owners to play a part in public affairs. He discusses how the rising commercial world had its impact on all sections of society and in a chapter headed Civility in Danger he talks about the volatility of human nature as it moved towards greater civility and discusses crime and punishment with examples that may make your hair stand on end. A chapter headed the Control of Man talks about censorship, about the influence of the printing press, how people had access to more information. He discusses attitudes to sex and the attempt to control prostitution and of course there is the rhetoric from the clerics themselves struggling with the reformation. The final chapter The Taming of Nature takes the reader through cultivation, the making of gardens, the state of medicine, the idea of the cosmos, mechanical inventions, hesitant moves towards science and discovery. In all these things the people of the sixteenth century not only had to struggle with the unknown, but they also had to cope with the wisdom of antiquity and where necessary prove that wisdom unfounded.

The final chapter is headed our age and imagines people looking backwards from their point in time. How much progress was in evidence for them; was it the worst of ages or the best of ages: Erasmus seemed to swing between both tenants, had they managed to escape the shackles of the learning of the past and was life better now than ever before. Hale writes well, his ideas are clear and he makes plenty of reference to documents and literature from the sixteenth century. There are notes and a Bibliography and index at the back of the book. Although it is the work of a Scholar, Hale’s book could be enjoyed by the more general reader. If you wanted to read a book about culture and politics in sixteenth century Europe you would be in safe hands with Mr Hale. A 4.5 star read.

310SassyLassy
dec 8, 2015, 10:13 am

>309 baswood: Wonderful quote from Hale about Burckhardt's book. Being somewhat stuck in the Victorian view for some reason, possibly the fiction I read, Hale's book sounds like a much needed update for me at least.

As to the Z, do you have an American edition? This is one I always have difficulty with, having learnt it with an S, but having Canadian spell check (and a few teachers) correct me every time I use that S. That same spell check allows me to use "our" in humour and neighbour though, showing that it is as mid Atlantic as anyone else hereabouts.

311baswood
dec 8, 2015, 11:03 am

>310 SassyLassy: The Civilization (and I have to battle with my spell checker every time I type it) of Europe in the Renaissance was published by HarperCollins of 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London.

312baswood
dec 11, 2015, 12:51 pm

313baswood
dec 11, 2015, 12:53 pm

Landlocked by Doris Lessing
This is the fourth book in Lessing’s children of Violence series. The children of violence are those people who had all of their idealism knocked out of them by the horror and waste of World War II and this includes Lessing herself because this series is semi-autobiographical and tells the story of one young woman’s journey through life in a British African Colony, thinly disguised as Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). This book picks up Martha Quests’s story a couple of years after her Marriage to Anton and the war is coming to an end. There was no fighting in the Southern part of Africa, but local men were called up and a large Royal Air force (RAF) base was established just outside the capital city. The government were mainly concerned with the war effort and this allowed revolutionary groups to exist hovering just above their radar. Anton was the leader of the communist group who were trying to forge a relationship with the undereducated and largely servile black majority. They were optimistic that a Russian victory in the war (they were allies) would give an opportunity for a communist/socialist revolution.

Martha was heavily involved with the group not only as Anton’s wife but as an educator and organiser. The war years however had largely extinguished any optimism and she realised that her marriage to Anton was still a marriage of convenience and they would divorce and go their separate ways after the war had ended. Many of the members of the communist group had come from the RAF base and they were being killed or posted elsewhere as the war progressed. Anton had lost his enthusiasm and was concentrating his efforts on getting back to Germany once the war was over. Martha was set on going to England and so their lives were in Limbo. She embarked on a series of affairs at a time when everybody seemed to be waiting for the world to change (the end of the war).

The book introduces us to the scattered remnants of the communist group, all at sea in a town that they were desperate to get away from. A Greek contingent anxious to get back home to fight in the war against the Nationalists (although this was a war that they knew they would not survive). Thomas a Polish Jew who has a love affair with Martha, but the destruction of his homeland has left him shell shocked. Anton of course wanting to go back to East Germany to continue the ideological struggle and Johnny Lindsay, the fierce trade unionist wasting away with disease. The men in the group seem to be resigned to and waiting for death while the women are taking what comfort they can from a transitory existence. Martha keeps busy, falls in love, manages other peoples problems, which covers the gap in her life left by the disintegration of the communist group.

Lessing writes powerfully about her own experiences during this time; for large sections of the novel she is Martha Quest. There is a brilliant description of her group going to the cinema and sitting through a newsreel; describing the probable defeat of the Germans. They are of course cheered by the victory but horrified by the allied bombing, while at the same time the Nazi’s extermination programmes are filtering out and they as outsiders cannot comprehend the deaths of over 44 million people. Martha avoids the victory parade.

“Every fibre of Martha’s body everything she thought, every movement she made, everything she was, was because she had been born at the end of one world war, and had spent all her adolescence in the atmosphere of preparations for another, which had lasted five years and had inflicted such wounds on the human race that no one had any idea what the results should be.
Martha did not believe in Violence.
Martha was the essence of violence She had been conceived bred, fed and reared on violence.
Martha argued with Thomas: What use is it, Thomas, what use is violence.”


Martha’s relationship with her mother and the guilt she feels over the desertion of her daughter closes in on her, she is indeed Landlocked, fervently wishing to escape and start again. The book ends with a black workers strike that is based on the Black railway workers strike of 1945 (Southern Rhodesia) and significantly the old communist group are completely sidelined. They do not even know the names of the leaders of the strike. History has passed them by, their hard work has been futile and they can only watch as a younger generation meet to form a new group.

As before Lessing”s personal history/experience combines with the history of a Southern African state and the power of her writing lies in her ability to place the reader in that time and place. Martha Quest is a figure in this landscape that sucks up the feelings of a liberal minded young woman desperate to leave. She does not hide her faults, but displays her feelings with a gusto - here I am; this is what I did. Another excellent novel in this personal historical novel series. 4 stars.

314janeajones
dec 11, 2015, 4:41 pm

Great review. I remember reading this one years ago.

315FlorenceArt
dec 12, 2015, 1:35 am

I should really read Doris Lessing!

316AlisonY
dec 12, 2015, 4:21 am

>313 baswood: excellent review. Totally sold on that one. Was supposed to read a Doris Lessing this year as part of the 50 novels I set myself at the beginning of 2015, but will have to carry it over into 2016.

317dchaikin
dec 14, 2015, 9:57 pm

>313 baswood: you really make Lessing sound like something. A very fine review.

Enjoyed learning about Hale's book too.

318baswood
Redigeret: dec 15, 2015, 4:10 am

319baswood
Redigeret: dec 15, 2015, 6:12 am

Angel Island by Inez Haynes Gilmore
It was the morning after the shipwreck. The five men lay where they had slept. The first couple of sentences plunges the reader immediately into Inez Haynes Gillmore’s extraordinary fantasy tale that lays the ground for a pitched battle of the sexes on a desert island in the middle of the Pacific. It is extraordinary because of the limpid prose that entrances from the very start and locked this reader into the mysteries of the angel women who fly enticingly over the island. There are five angels (beautiful women with wings) for the five men and in the first part of the book we see them through the men’s eyes. They appear in their dreams and then fleeting glimpses before a grand seduction gets under way. They stay tantalisingly out of reach at times just hovering above them and the men are affected collectively and individually.

The five men are stock characters, gentlemen to a fault but all of a certain type and this is how Gillmore describes some of them:

Ralph Adlington the least popular in the group was a man of wide experience, a careful and intelligent observer both of men and things, but he was a man scrupulously honourable in regard to his own sex and absolutely codeless in regard to the other................ Frank Merrill was a professor at a small university a typical academic product: on his moral side he was a typical reformer, a man of impeccable private character, solitary and a little austere, he had never married; he had never sought the company of women..................... Honey Smith possessed not a trace of genius, he had no mind to speak of and was an average person, but for one thing ‘personality’ The whole world of creatures felt its charm: as for women - his appearance among them was a signal for a noiseless social cataclysm: they slipped and slid in his direction as helplessly as if an inclined plane had opened under their feet.

Gilmore matches the angel women to the men and an allegory emerges that develops enticingly through the story.

Who are the women? where do they come from? What business do they have with the men apart from an obvious sexual attraction, but the first question to be resolved is; should the men attempt to capture them. They decide to do so and from then on the book changes direction and concerns itself with relationships between the two groups. The women's wings are clipped, they lose their freedom and settle down to a domestic life, children are born and the men go off to work on the island, ever more engrossed in building bigger and better facilities. Gilmore still manages to keep elements of mystery and suspense as we learn more about the women and the book subtly changes to their point of view.

Honey Smith’s thoughts on women; They’re amateurs at life. They’re a failure as a sex and an outworn convention. Billy Fairfax says: Our duty is to cherish and protect them. They’re females says Ralph Adlington “Our duty is to tame, subjugate, infatuate and control them.

The angel women have a mountain to climb to win back their freedom, but the thought of their children and their own independence stirs them to take action.

Inez Haynes Gillmore wrote over 40 books and was active in the suffragist movement in the early 1900’s. Angel Island was published in 1914 and it’s charm and fantasy elements make palatable a political and social message that ranks alongside H G Wells best achievements. A wonderfully satisfying read, I loved it and so 4 stars.

320FlorenceArt
dec 15, 2015, 7:35 am

Very intriguing! I had never heard of this author.

321SassyLassy
dec 15, 2015, 9:25 am

>313 baswood: This books doesn't sound familiar, so it's good to know that there is one more Martha Quest out there to be read. Lessing as a political observer is always superb.

>319 baswood: How did you stumble upon this book?

322janeajones
dec 15, 2015, 9:31 am

Angel Island sounds intriguing, though I hate that cover. Have you read Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland? It has a similar premise of a group of men crashing a plane into a remote area totally inhabited by women who self-procreate.

323baswood
dec 15, 2015, 2:45 pm

>321 SassyLassy: I set myself a target in 2014 to read all the best books published in 1914 as part of my Literary centennials reading and I still have quite a few to go:

The emperor of Portugallia - Selma Lagerlof Gutenberg

The Flying Inn - Gk Chesterton Internet archive

The Gray Cloth - Paul Scheerbart Abe books

Innocent: Her fancy and his fact - Marie Corelli Gutenberg

Kazan - James Oliver Curwood Gutenburg

The Mutiny of the Elsinore - Jack London Gutenberg

our Mr Wren - Sinclair Lewis Gutenberg

Sinister Street - Compton Mackenzie Gutenberg

Tik Tok of Oz - L Frank Baum

The wife of Sir Isaac harman - H G Wells

Beasts and super beasts - Saki

Dracula’s guest and other weird stories - Bram Stoker

Incredible adventure - Algernon Blackwood

The man Upstairs - P G Wodehouse

Once a week - A A Milne

The good thing is that many of them are free on Project Gutenberg and so far I have found some gems. The best being:

Angel Island Inez Haynes Gillmore
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist by Robert Tressel
Kokoro by Netsuke Soseki
The Golem Gustav Meyrink
Des Imagists: An Anthology Ezra Pound

324baswood
dec 15, 2015, 2:49 pm

>322 janeajones: I agree; perhaps this is better:

325janeajones
dec 15, 2015, 2:51 pm

;-0 Much! I just downloaded it on my Kindle.

326dchaikin
dec 17, 2015, 10:08 pm

Entertaining about Angel Island. And that is a unique collection of books - the 1914 list. Several familiar authors but not many familiar titles.

327baswood
Redigeret: dec 23, 2015, 6:27 pm

328baswood
Redigeret: dec 24, 2015, 5:56 am

The lives of the Artists (penguin classics;no 1164) by Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574)
Vasari: the founder of The History of Art. His book on Lives of the artists of the Italian Renaissance (full title: The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, written by Giorgio Vasari, Painter and Architect of Arezzo) set a template for art history books that lasted for over 400 years and his grading or ranking of those artists has largely stood the test of time. His original publication stretched through three volumes but I read the penguin classics translation that selected some of the best mini biographies from each of the three periods covered in the original. Giotto, Brunelleschi, Piero della Francesca, Masaccio, Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Titian are names that will be familiar to many people who have a passing knowledge of Renaissance art and they are all included here.

Vasari was a successful artist himself, a pupil and later a friend of Michelangelo and so we have the advantage of an insiders knowledge, especially those artists of the third period that Vasari would have met either first or second hand. He would have been able to call on the memories of people who knew artists from the second period and would have read commentaries on artists from the first period. He would have been able to see the frescoes, paintings, sculptures and buildings that proliferated in his native Florence and those at Rome, he also boasts of a collection of drawings by many of the artists that he would have had easy access to, because of his position as head of his own workshop. Perfectly placed then to write a history of art, with the added bonus that his free flowing writing style translates well enough for the modern reader.

Having said that I do not think this is a book for the general reader, whose eyes may glaze over at descriptions of works that have little meaning for us today. It is however an amazing read for anyone interested in primary sources, Italian Renaissance or the history of art. The biographies are not of equal length, some are only a few pages while the longest on Michelangelo is over 100 pages. Vasari is primarily interested in the works of art which he is able to describe; sometimes in detail, but this can result in a list of works that will have little meaning to those people without prior knowledge of them or of the history of art. He does however give readers his views on their success as works of art and he describes their style and any advances on previous efforts. There are some biographical details, but rarely any context of political or social history, however there are some amusing anecdotes and Vasari is not adverse to putting the world too rights with his own comments.

The most fascinating aspect of ‘The Lives’ is Vasari’s own propaganda for the idea of the artist as a person of importance, even of genius; he wanted to enhance the reputation of the artist not only for the people who would read his work in the 16th century, but also for future generations and in this respect he has been enormously successful. He saw the Italian Renaissance as a rebirth from the medievalism of previous history. The rediscovery of antiquity (in sculpture, literature and architecture) helped to fuel the renaissance movement first made prominent by 13th and 14th century artists such as Cimabue and Giotto. This was further developed in the second period and reached its zenith in Vasari’s own time with Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael. His views were largely accepted by influential Victorian critics/historians such as Jacob Burckhardt and John Addington Symonds and it is only more recently that Vasari’s motives have been examined in more detail. For example Italian painters of the first and second period were seen largely as craftsmen, on a par with goldsmiths and cabinet makers and as such would be guided in subject matter and interpretation by the patrons who commissioned their work. Vasari was at pains to give the impression that it was the artists themselves who were the guiding lights.

Vasari’s ‘Lives’ gives the reader his view (the artist) on what makes good art: it is a connoisseurs view. He spells it out in his introduction to each volume: correct underdrawing, thorough knowledge of perspective, use of colours, knowledge of works from antiquity and most importantly a true representation of nature. He laid down the basic tenants for the Academies of Arts that flourished right up to modernism of the 20th century. His most high ranking artists were those that demonstrated these techniques, culminating in Michelangelo who achieved a perfection over nature itself.

In Vasari’s own words:
“I have endeavoured not only to record what the artist has done, but also to distinguish between the good the better and the best, and to note with some care the methods, manners, styles, behaviour and ideas of the painters and sculptures…… to understand the sources and origins of various styles and the reasons for improvement or decline…..”

Vasari had a good eye and an excellent knowledge of art and although the writing is somewhat old fashioned it is still a delight to be led by the hand through one of the greatest periods of art history and for those of us confused by the listed works of art there is always the internet to magic up an image. His insiders knowledge cannot fail to give readers a unique flavour of the times and his anecdotes, his snatches of remembered conversation and extracts from letters and documents make this a fascinating read. His biography of Michelangelo although something of a panegyric is worth the price of admission. The penguin classics edition has a useful introduction and an end piece that comments on Vasari’s text artist by artist, therefore we are told of works that are still in existence and those where we think Vasari may have been misinformed. A fascinating aspect is reading about works of art that Vasari did see and which have now been lost. For me this was a five star read.

329rebeccanyc
dec 24, 2015, 10:31 am

I've had the Vasari on my TBR since i was in Florence in the mid-80s! Maybe I'll actually get to it after reading your review.

330dchaikin
dec 24, 2015, 11:57 am

Fun review...and reading Vasari sounds like a fun project, if also some work.

331baswood
dec 26, 2015, 6:56 am


Notre Dame de Paris
Paris cathedral music from the 12th and 13th centuries. At that time Paris was (perhaps still is) the cultural centre of Europe and from surviving musical documents (three service books compiled in Paris): it has been possible to piece together some of the repertoire. Contained in these books are the general (catholic) liturgy, the great yearly feasts and the largest, musically most elaborate liturgical items. The books consisted mainly of settings of the Great Responsories for matins and the highly melismatic “lesson chants” of the Mass arranged in the order of the church calendar.

The early repertories had consisted mainly of two part settings that paired the original chant tenor with one added voice, this was expanded at times to a texture of three or even four voices. These early repertoires had favoured two styles: a note against note style called discant, and a somewhat more florid style called organum, with the tenor sustained against short melismatic flights in the added voice. A typical Notre Dame composition alternated both styles and took them to extremes. The Notre Dame chant settings were as ambitious as the cathedral for which they were composed and vastly outstripped their predecessors in every dimension - length, range, number of voices and became the first flowering of “Western Art Music”

The music is purely choral, not a musical instrument to be heard, but of course it has been used in many films for atmosphere or for providing a sense of time and place and so many of us are familiar with how it sounds. I sampled three CDs that encompassed the repertoire of The Notre Dame de Paris.



Magister Leoninus: Sacred Music from 12th century Paris by Red Byrd & Capella Amsterdam
We have only second hand information that these chants were composed by a certain Master Leonin, but our need to attribute musical pieces to a composer has resulted in them being designated to him. There are nine pieces of music that reflect the catholic musical calendar; for example there is a “Mass on ascension Sunday” “Matins on Sunday at Pentecost” “Mass on Christmas Day etc. The music is from the earlier period of Notre Dame and consists of two part polyphony (organum and discant) interleaved with some plaincant. Red Byrd are two singers John Potter tenor and Richard Wistreich bass and they are augmented when needed by other artists to give a more choral sound especially to the plainchant sections. The pieces all feature Potter’s tenor voice chant/singing short phrases above the bass tones and lower notes of the rest of the group. His voice sometimes soars above the drone like backing and at other times is set against Wistrechts own vocal variations. The music is sung at mainly slow tempos and has weight and quality to make it sound impressive. The CD was recorded in the Grot Kerk at Naarden (Netherlands} and the sound has a lovely depth to it, while avoiding the echoes that are sometimes inflicted on this sacred music. Recorded in 1996 it was one of the top selections by the BBC the following year. It sounds gorgeous and I was entranced. It seemed appropriate to listen to it while cooking the Christmas dinner, so different to all those jolly carols. Five stars.

Short example but not by red byrd - https://youtu.be/Gq5B3M4jRtQ

Perotin: Hilliard Ensemble.
Perotin also comes to us second hand from the same source that gave us Magister Leoninus, The compositions attributed to him take the liturgy one step further by adding three part and sometimes four part polyphony. It takes a fine male voice choir to do this music justice and the Hilliard Ensemble are just that. This music has a power and grace that is fully realised by this choir and there are some great moments in these pieces. The opening track Viderunt Omnes sets the standard for the rest of the CD, glorious full sounding organum. Later tracks feature more complicated arrangements and the counter tenor voice comes into its own on some of these. A sumptuous recording and with the addition of a couple of anonymous compositions like Isaias Cecinit featuring a monophonic piece with lovely harmony, makes this of a more varied set of choral liturgy. 4 Stars.

Viderunt Omnes - https://youtu.be/NnWhThoW8N0

Leonin : Perotin Sacred Music from Notre Dame Cathedral by Tonus Peregrines.
This music is not in the same class as the two previous. More liberties are taken with the music, especially with the introduction of a two part choir: male and female. The CD starts impressively enough with a solo female soprano singing Perotin’s Beata Viscera. which is followed by a male choir singing Viderunt Omnes in Plainchant. From then on the pieces alternate between the two choirs giving an unlikely rendition of how the music would have sounded. The recording has far too much echo for me and never flows through a performance. The pieces are chopped up into short tracks and while this may assist in homing into a particular piece of music it sounded unnecessary to me. Three stars

Beata Viscera - https://youtu.be/J0KX_Wr_kAo

332sibylline
dec 26, 2015, 8:31 am

The Gilmore went flying onto the WL! Lovely review!

333janeajones
dec 26, 2015, 12:51 pm

Great review of the Vasari -- I should read it.

334FlorenceArt
dec 26, 2015, 4:07 pm

I discovered Perotin some time ago and was fascinated. And he was an inspiration for Steve Reich, whose music I have been listening to recently. Repetitive music has a weird effect on me. It makes me want to scream and yet I keep coming back to it. I can't find anything by Léonin in the catalog of my streaming music provider, although I have found an album by the Hillier ensemble which may or may not include some. I will give it a try.

335rebeccanyc
dec 26, 2015, 4:36 pm

>331 baswood: Lovely music and discussion.

336janemarieprice
dec 29, 2015, 2:42 pm

>328 baswood: The Lives has been on my list for some time, and your review makes me want to pick it up. Do you think it could work as something to dip into bio by bio rather than read straight through?

337baswood
dec 29, 2015, 5:05 pm

>336 janemarieprice: Yes indeed. And if you read only one then make sure it is the Michelangelo Bio.

338janemarieprice
dec 31, 2015, 8:35 am

>337 baswood: Definitely. He's one of my top 5 favorite architects. One of my most prized possessions are 3 reproductions of some of his window drawings: