Vignettes: An English Girl in Hong Kong, 1970

Well, Tim, here i am flat on my back. No, i don't mean i've succumbed to the pleasures Wanchai. It's just that i've been laid low with food poisoning. Quite infuriating it is as there's a super party on tonight and I'm just going to have to miss it. Also it is Chinese New Year's day, so gong hei fat choy! Thus commences the year of the dog, a very bad year for marriage, so you might as well leave it another year before you think of sending me one of your telegrams!

"Conduction" by Ta-Nehisi Coates As Political Allegory

Ever since I read "Conduction" by Ta-Nehisi Coates in The New Yorker of June 10 & 17 of 2019, I've been wondering if it should be viewed as political allegory, in this case a story set in the age of slavery illuminating current circumstances.

Allegory involves the representation of abstract ideas by a specific narrative.  In this instance, the idea in question is where should blacks look for betterment?

Some Ideas About The Use of Sex in Fiction

Probably one of the first things writers learn, or get told, is sex sells. But if one incorporates it in a story simply for that reason, problems often arise.

How can one depict it, or impart it with significance, in a manner that is not derivative?  All too often, the answer seems to be: make it even more transgressive than has previously been the case.  Contemporary fiction is riddled with that sort of thing -- and one has to grudgingly admire the imagination or enterprise of some authors.

But I ran across another option when reading a review of Julian Barnes latest book, "The Man in Red Coat."  Therein, the reviewer, Parul Sehgal, says that in Barnes case, "Desire -- sexual jealously -- lies at the core of much of his work, not just as dramatic engine, but as a spur to moral thinking." He then goes on to quote Barnes as having said: "Sex is the area where moral decisions, moral questions, most clearly express themselves. It's only in sexual relationships that you come up against immediate questions of what's right and wrong."

Well, that may be overstating the case, but you get the point. And in Barnes' case, his own experience may be one place in which he ran up against the issues in question.  According to Seghgal, the author's life has been characterized in part by "his attachment to a charismatic and congenitally unfaithful woman."

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.