Italics are mine

More NYRB readings

Here are some more articles from the NYRB that I've enjoyed reading. From the May 23 issue: a review of the French movie Non-Fiction directed by Olivier Assayas (because of the connection to Paris in general and the Parisian world of publishing in general) and of the 1978 Spanish novel Valley of the Fallen by Carlos Rojas now translated by Edith Grossman (because of my own interest in the Spanish Civil War, although the book doesn't specifically cover that period and instead focuses on the early nineteenth century where Rojas portrays the relationship between acclaimed painter Francisco de Goya and the despot King Fernando VII, and the final years of Generalissimo Franco’s dictatorship in the 1970s). 

I like many articles in the NYRB but I only save a few of them and another one I saved is a review of the biography of modern artist Sophie Taueber-Arp, 1889-1943 (reviewed by Jed Perl, the author of one of my favorite books, New Art City, about art and culture in New York City around the middle of the century), that one from the March 7 issue. Taeuber-Arp is widely considered as one of the most important artists of the first half of the twentieth century. Dallas' Nasher Sculpture Center has a wonderful half-hour YouTube video about her collaboration with her husband Jean Arp, which you can watch below.  

But the NYRB isn't only the biweekly print edition - it is also a remarkable blog where some of the posts rival or exceed contributions in the print magazine. I am thinking for instance about Jhumpa Lahiri's piece on the novel Beyond Babylon by Igiaba Scego (Lahiri now writes in Italian and was on leave from her creative writing position at Princeton for 2018-19, a year she spent living in Rome) and a memoir-like essay by Anastasia Edel about her mother's life as a piano teacher at the Institute of Culture in the agricultural city of Krasnodar, back in the days of the Soviet Union, with all the party intrigues one can imagine - and to think that her mother passed up a chance to study at the Moscow Conservatory under Dmitry Shostakovich, a friend of the family, to marry a man she divorced only a few years later and end up in that city. (Given my interest in Russia and the former Soviet Union, I always read everything connected to Russia from start to finish.) I

Another great piece by Anastasia Edel is about my favorite composer, Dmitry Shostakovich, and an episode where he composed music for a ceremony in Novossibirsk to commemorate the city's liberation from the Germans in September 1943. City officials wanted to add sounds to the Flame of Eternal Glory and thus petitioned the Composers' Union. The petition, which landed on Shostakovich's desk, was signed by the author's grandfather, and Edel makes those months of 1943 come vividly alive. (Shostakovich reused the opening of his entry for the USSR anthem competition, which he had lost.) The author's mother, discussed in the other essay, also makes an appearance, in particular when she wants to make Shostakovich's Babi Yar her thesis project, a matter Shostakovich advised her to drop because of the controversy surrounding the symphony in the Soviet Union, and the author also shares her own admiration at her grandfather and the famous musician who was a friend of the family, through two photographs her mother kept in the apartment. "What I did gain from Shostakovich’s invisible presence in the cramped khrushchevka apartment in which I grew up was the sense of tantalizing proximity to genius and history and to the men who made it—one with music, another with the monument that enshrined it. Both still awe me." One can only hope she is going to put all of her memories into a book some day soon. 

 

NYRB's June 6 issue

I always love the New York Review of Books, but the June 6 issue was particularly good, bringing together so many great writers I adore, publishing reviews about books I've just bought and telling me about movies and artists I can't wait to discover more about.

I'd noticed on the cover the names of Alma Guillermoprieto and Anne Applebaum so I knew from the start I was going to spend a lot of time reading this issue. Applebaum in particular belongs to my pantheon of my favorite female writers, right up there with Jane Mayer. She always writes compellingly about difficult topics, from the Gulag to the crushing of Eastern Europe after World War II to the famine in Ukraine under Stalin. Her essay discusses a recent book by Ian Kershaw on Europe from 1950 to 2017. The main point she makes is that for the most part the book covers much similar material to Tony Judt's Postwar, except for the fact that it extends about a decade after the end of Judt's book, and that extra decade is key in witnessing critical changes about the perception of Europe and even the likelihood of its survival as an institution. 

I've also read Guillermoprieto's prose many times in The New Yorker and the NYRB, as well as her books on dancing for Cuba and dispatches from Latin America. Her essay was the transcript of the Robert B. Silvers lecture she gave at the New York Public Library back in December. It is a haunting account of her early days as a reporter in Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America, and of the misery that Richard Nixon's war on drugs has brought to the region.

I picked up the biography of diplomat Richard Holbrooke by George Packer (who wrote the National Book Award winner The Unwinding a few years back) at the bookstore the other day so I was thrilled to see it was the object of a review in the NYRB. Those reviews are always so informative and help me focus on the most important part of the book. Here, what stuck with me was the revelation that, on a fateful day in Sarajevo, 3 U.S. diplomats died because Holbrooke liked speed and the car he was in was going too fast down a treacherous, windy road (well-known to be treacherous). The heavier vehicle behind it that the 3 U.S. aides were in was trying to catch up with Holbrooke's car and went off the road. Such a waste because someone liked speed too much. (The book review is aptly named The Fog of Ambition, in an allusion to Robert McNamara.) After I read that I was glad that Packer's verdict on Holbrooke was "almost great" (emphasis on almost), the story of a man who wanted to do a lot more and fell short. We don't need people like that to achieve greatness, thank you very much. Oblivion will do just fine. 

Two other gems in this issue of the NYRB were the article about jazz musician Don Cherry (I was almost at the end of the article before I realized his children were pop star Neneh Cherry and singer Eagle-Eye Cherry, whom I remember listening to when I was much younger) and the review of the prize-winning movie - at the Cannes Festival - Capernaum. I also enjoyed reading the review of the book Churchill: Walking with Destiny, of the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of art and identity in the ancient Middle East and of the exhibition that stopped by Houston last year on the royal arts of Jodhpur. I didn't care for the book of stories by Karen Russell but other than that I liked just about everything in this issue.

The Commencement Speeches That Were Not

It was announced last week that I.M.F. Chief Christine Lagarde had withdrawn from giving the Commencement speech at Smith College, a few days after former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice backed out from giving the Commencement speech at Rutgers University. Some Rutgers students had protested the invitation extended to Rice because they view her as a war criminal due to her role in the Iraq war, while the I.M.F. has come under heat for its loan practices toward developing economies. Commentators have generally expressed various degrees of dismay at this outcome, and I strongly believe that both Condoleezza Rice and Christine Lagarde would have had valuable insights to share with their respective audiences of graduates, but what has surprised me the most in the news coverage is how little attention has been given to the fact that these two accomplished women apparently chose to cave in to pressure, whether from the students or from administrators who didn't want to officially rescind the invitation.

I don't understand why they couldn't handle the heat - especially Lagarde, who is currently holding an important post where she has to make tough decisions. I could imagine Rice deciding that she's done with public service and doesn't have to put up with people protesting her invitation, but from Lagarde it just comes across as weak. So students would have protested at Commencement - what is the big deal? (Unless they were worried for their safety, which would obviously be a very big deal, but which I haven't seen anyone suggest so far.) Both Rice and Lagarde could still have read their remarks, and they could - and probably should - have donated the speaking fee to a non-controversial cause such as the Special Olympics, and perhaps they could also have met the student protesters outside Commencement to discuss their and the students' views. I don't agree with the minority who protested, but it seems to me that they had the right to do so. The Commencement speakers chose to back down, or agreed to give the appearance of backing down. I hope that at the very least, they will publish the speeches they would have given, whether controversial or not, although it is hard to believe that they would have used college graduation exercises to stir up controversy. Having one's voice silenced is never a good outcome.

"Hey! Hey! LBJ!"

(Picture credit: LBJ Presidential Library, Public Domain.) The title of today's post happens to be the title of a recent Lexington column in the Economist, echoing both the chants of Vietnam protesters ("Hey! Hey! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today!") and what the columnist calls the "current fascination for Lyndon Johnson", which he uses to discuss what it means for "Barack Obama's America".

The column resonated with me because I do find myself much more interested by LBJ than by JFK (another topic of current fascination due to the upcoming 50th anniversary of his death) - I've read Volume 1 of LBJ's biography by Robert Caro, skipped ahead to listen the entirety of Volume 4 as an audiobook during my drives (I plan to get Volumes 2 and 3 as audiobooks too), bought the abridged version of LBJ's biography, Portrait of a President, by Robert Dallek in the the meantime (because sometimes I just want to know the main facts without having to read 2,000 pages about someone), enjoyed the description of his leadership regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in Ronald Heifetz's Leadership without easy answers, and generally speaking find LBJ someone of enormous complexity, with his moments of grace (the Great Society) and unforgivable failings (Vietnam) - the sort of multidimensional character that interests me a lot more than young pseudo-stars that, in the end, don't know how to make things happen and so don't achieve much. 

The Lexington columnist has the following words for JFK: "like Mr Obama an aloof and cerebral global celebrity who rushed through a stint in the Senate, then promised more change than he could deliver into law." The article comes at a time when journalists are beginning to write about Hillary Clinton's possible presidential run, and one can't help but draw possible parallels between the "cerebral global celebrity" JFK/Obama and the experienced politician who knew how to use the system LBJ/Clinton (although this is more true of Bill Clinton than of his wife).

The Economist article was also about a play, "All the Way", by Robert Schenkkan, which recently finished a sold-out run at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA and will move to Broadway later this season, in spite of a lukewarm New York Times review ("Mr Schenkkan comes down firmly on the side of complexity, which may be the honorable path but not necessarily the most rewarding one for the audience") counterbalanced by glowing words by WBUR, Boston's NPR station (" 'All the Way' is a sensational night of theater"). The Cambridge run supposedly sold out before opening night. The play focuses on LBJ's first year in the Oval Office and is said to show the contradictions of the man who is about to pass landmark civil right legislation as well as become enmired in the Vietnam war. Needless to say, I'll be buying my ticket for the Broadway run as soon as the dates are announced.