Relevant Literature in the Age of Coronavirus

I usually at least glance through my daily e-mail from Literary Hub and today noticed an item entitled "Italy's answer to the coronavirus is a classic published almost 200 years ago."  The book in question is "The Betrothed" by Alessandro Manzoni, a story that takes place when the plague has hit Italy.

The book ranks very high in the Italian literary canon and as the author of the LitHub article, Alessio Perrone, notes, has long been a subject for study in Italian schools.

Even if you don't intend to rush out and purchase a copy of the book, I recommend you read Perrone's excellent article about it and how the story relates to prevailing circumstances.  To read it, click on the phrase "excellent article" in the preceding sentence.

Quote of the Day: from "Winesburg, Ohio"

"Like a thousand other strong men who have come into the world here in America in these later times, Jesse was but half strong. He could master others, but he could not master himself."

That's from the story "Godliness" in Sherwood Anderson's landmark collection of interrelated short stories entitled  "Winesburg, Ohio."  While the book was first published in 1919, the story was set in about 1885, or 20 years after the end of the American Civil War when northern Ohio was emerging from what Anderson described as pioneer life into an age of much higher agricultural output based on the advent of an array of new labor-saving farm machinery.

The "Jesse" in question refers to a farmer who knew how to capitalize on that trend, but failed in his personal life.

These days, of course, it makes one think of men like Harvey Weinstein who once strode atop of the U.S. film industry, but was just sentenced to 23 years in prison as a result of sexual misconduct.

Eschewing Stories, Ballet Often Struggles for Purpose

Reading the New York Times today (March 12, 2020), I glanced through a review of a performance by Scottish Ballet at the Joyce theater in Manhattan, a mecca of dance.

The program, entitled "This Is My Body …" and consisting of two contemporary pieces, was labeled "unispiring" by Siobhan Burke, an NYT dance critic. The first of the two pieces, she said, showed off the dancers' "stunning technique and muscular physiques, but little else."

Hume's "Rigoletto" as an Appology

What I'm about to discuss in this post is a theme to which I will return: opera and ballet companies trying to make older works relevant to contemporary life because they just don't have anything comparable with which to replace them.

Opera companies regularly try new works and subscribers dutifully attend, but most are not particularly successful.  The "hits" are for the most part tried and true operas from the past even if many of the story lines were somewhat problematic when first performed and a lot more so now.

Charlie Parker's Yardbird

I recently attended a performance of the contemporary opera "Charlie Parker's Yardbird," which, among other things, left me thinking about the age-old question of whether an individual's artistic or intellectual accomplishments stand on their own, or whether they are forever linked to the life of the person who created them and should be evaluated in that context.

For example, as a New York Times article of November 2019 asked: "Is it time to stop looking at Gaugin altogether?"  That would be because the French artist apparently repeatedly had sex with young girls during the years he lived in Tahiti and fathered children with one or more of them.

"West Side Story:" Hijacked and Raped

The 2020 version of "West Side Story" opens on Broadway today (Feb. 20, 2020) and before the reviews are published tomorrow, I thought I would put forth my impressions, having seen the show just over a week ago near the end of its exceptionally long run of "previews."

My headline to this post pretty much says it all, but let me start out on a high note:  Shereen Pimentel, who plays Maria has a lovely voice and, thankfully, she isn't over-miked as the singers in many Broadway musicals are.  She doesn't, however, look much like the innocent girl we expect of Maria based on past productions and that may well be one reason why one of her signature song's from the past, "I Feel Pretty," is missing from this show.

Awaiting Ferrante: Femininity Toxic and Nourishing

Followers of fiction are probably already well aware that the English-language translation of Elena Ferrante's latest novel, "The Lying Life of Adults," will be released in the U.S. in June.

It has already been published as "La Vita Bugiarda Degli Adulti" in Italy and is apparently enjoying considerable success in that market.

I was reminded of this when reading a profile of Edie Falco, probably best known as the wife of the mob boss in "The Sopranos," in the Sunday New York Times of Jan. 9, 2020. The profile consisted largely of a list of 10 things Falco said she could not live without and third on the list was "Elena Ferrante's Books."

"She really seemed to get all the complexities of relationships with girls that are fraught and deep and toxic and nourishing. I'd never seen it depicted in a way that I recognized quite as accurately," Falco is quoted saying.

The new novel is again set in Naples, but this time the chief protagonist, an adolescent girl named Giovanna, is from a family that is well off economically. According to an article in The Washington Post, the new book will largely satisfy Ferrante fans with fraught friendships, heady descriptions of Naples, and "wow-she-went-there" ways of depicting family.

One can ague that Ferrante has an exceptionally dark view of human nature as I do here. (Please click on the word "here" at the end of that sentence.)