Comment Archives: Stories: Arts and Culture: Books
Re: “Robert K. Massie's biography shows the human side of Catherine the Great, Russia's brilliant 18th century monarch”
Massie's latest book proves his incompetence as a researcher and writer. He's lost his marbles t 82!
The book is full of jejune errors and stupidities. He cant even read Russian, so his research is sophmoric! One os the worst books ever foisted on an unsuspecting udience.
and this is the gret
american expert on
russia! Puleze!! The fulsome praise of silly reviewers is just nauseating!!
Re: “Music City's non-country scene gets a four-decade chronicle in the Rev. Keith A. Gordon's The Other Side of Nashville”
It was a joy and an honor to be a part of this book. He has been a good friend for most of my life. Keith has worked very, very hard for several years on this, and it's a must for anyone interested in the rock scene in Nashville the past 40 years. Thank you for this wonderful article!
Re: “Music City's non-country scene gets a four-decade chronicle in the Rev. Keith A. Gordon's The Other Side of Nashville”
Spectacular book and well worth your time and money. Much gratitude to Rev. Keith for this monumental document.
Re: “A talk with Ben Sandmel, who chronicles the rise, fall and redemption of New Orleans legend Ernie K-Doe”
Great. I have a cassette tape of some of K-Doe's old New Orleans radio shows. He'd play a James Brown tune, and ten seconds into it, he'd start screaming, "Naugahyde-the!" and so forth. It's amazing. K-Doe is underrated--the 1970 Allen Toussaint-produced album that was originally released as self-titled, now called "Here Come the Girls!," is fantastic, one of the essential New Orleans r&b records.
Re: “Why Nathan Bedford Forrest and Ulysses Grant stand out in Jack Hurst's survey of Civil War leaders”
Grant was nothing more than a drunk! Even Mary Todd lincoln called him a killer of men!
Re: “Framed for murder and left to languish in a Nicaraguan prison, Eric Volz tells his story”
Troubling fact is that while Eric is trying to his public image. A photograph has surface online, that he himself took, the picture is of himself and a woman from Seattle, together in a sexual position. Imprint on photograph is 2010-08-21 at 22:19
Re: “Andrea Wulf captures the danger and daring of an 18th century scientific quest”
This was an awesome talk. Wulf made us get a feel for what it was like to go exploring back in the day. She did a lot of work to create this book and it shows. I hope to finish it round about the day of the Transit of Venus (June 5). C U at Adventure Science Center 5pm.
Re: “In The One, R.J. Smith advances James Brown, Godfather of Soul, as the musician of the century”
Please sign this petition for MSNBC to fire Al Sharpton. Please pass it on.
http://www.change.org/petitions/msnbc-fire…
Re: “William Gay's admirers celebrate the genius of the late Tennessee author”
My son just forwarded this obit to me. I'm still reeling from the news. My wife and I are traveling in our motor home, now in Florida. We were planning to come up the Trace on the way back to Michigan, via Nashville and stop in Hohenwald to visit William, as we had done last year.
I'm not shocked he's gone, though. William took care of everybody but himself. I used to bring bottles of multivitamins to him & make him promise to take them. I enlisted the aid of his son, Chris, who lived with him, but William would not take them consistently & he continued to smoke heavily. He consumed copious quantities of coffee, and ,
never tired of beer, either, until recently.
He was generous to a fault. Once, he told me matter-of-factly, "Marc, I don't think I'm ever gonna have a lot of money." This, because, notwithstanding the advances he received from publishers, he gave away most of his money to his children. His ex-wife was a thorn in his side for years, but he never expressed bitterness at her claim to his writing proceeds--just frustration.
William and I first met about 13 or 14 years ago, when I tracked him down to a ramshackle trailer in Hohenwald. I had a 12-pack of beer with me, and he invited me in. He was reading a book by Larry McMurtry & we found common ground in our admiration for his writing and in our mutual favorite writer, Cormac McCarthy. William said McCarthy had encouraged him early on. William eventually read some of my writing and offered to introduce me to his agent whenever I felt I was ready. That day never came. But that's OK. I really didn't want anything from him other than his friendship. I played guitar and he was please to know that I played years ago in San Francisco with one of his favorites, John Lee Hooker. He knew an amazing amount about music and wrote a column for the "Oxford American". William was reclusive and a bit of a curmudgeon. He didn't want anything to do with e-mail, wouldn't answer the phone and once even had it disconnected for months. His editor at the American once asked me if I was planning to visit William. If I was, she said, would I please encourage him to finish his column and submit it to her? He was about to pass the deadline.
My wife and I were thrilled when his second novel, "Provinces of Night", was made into a movie, "Bloodworth", with Kris Kristofferson. I visited him the day movie was to preview in Nashville. I encouraged him to come back with me to see the preview that evening, but William said he was convinced they'd made a mess of his work and didn't care to see it.
He did eventually see the film, but as of last year at this time he said he hadn't yet been paid for the film rights. It wasn't his style to retain an attorney, nor, most likely, could he have afforded one.
William was an exceptional human being. Kind, absolutely genuine, completely devoid of pretense, brilliant, articulate and, as my wife, Patricia reminds me, possessed of a natural, intuitive insight into the complexities of human nature. He also exhibited a finely-honed sense of moral ambiguity.
It was rare privilege to have been his friend.
Marc-David Freed
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Re: “Ruta Sepetys' harrowing debut Between Shades of Gray chronicles Stalin's murder of millions”
We need to be more concerned about the Slavic and former Soviet block countries. Never hear much about them in most media. I wish them all well as they struggle with democracy and new economies. My ancestors are from that region too.
Re: “Robert K. Massie's biography shows the human side of Catherine the Great, Russia's brilliant 18th century monarch”
I got this for Christmas, and I read it halfway through in one sitting. The detail is just astonishing: Massie can tell me not only what happened on a day the nine-year-old Peter III had lunch with his father, he knows who else was there and what the topic of conversation was. (Boy, I see why I've never read any biographies of Peter. If anything, his portrayal in Josef von Sternberg's THE SCARLET EMPRESS as a leering idiot manchild was flattering.)
Also, it's cool to see the closing thank-yous to Judges Gilbert Merritt and George Paine. Would love to hear the story behind those.
Re: “So Small, and Right on the Street”
Thank God for you,Mr. McGuire. I listened as a kid, to them final performances on the airwaves of WSM. I remember having an issue of Country Music Magazine, with a drawn picture of Roy Acuff, throwing a wrecking ball at the Ryman. I'm sure he'd have a change of heart,if he c'd seen the rebirth of it. A Picture,is worth a Thousand words.
Re: “The female artists in Jewly Hight's new study of Americana music are making music their way — even if their record labels aren't always thrilled”
Great book, it really is an exciting time for music, so many of the best songs coming out today are by these fantastic female artists that so often get overlooked!
My favorite thing about Americana Music is that it is a genre that embraces established artists like Emmylou Harris, Loretta Lynn, Lucinda Williams, Kasey Chambers, Rosie Flores, and Kelly Willis; while at the same time opening the doors for new and talented singers and songwriters like Elizabeth Cook, Neko Case, Zoe Muth, Tara Nevins, Caitlin Rose, Renee Wahl, Gillian Welch, Sarah Borges, Laura Cantrell, Amy Levere, Eilen Jewell, Carrie Rodriguez and even poppier singers like Jenny Lewis, Tift Merritt and Allison Moorer.
It is easy to find really good music, you just have to be smart enough to go look for it!
Re: “Parnassus Books is opening this weekend in Nashville, and Chapter 16 has the inside story”
As a local author, I couldn't be more excited about today! Parnassus is going to become a mainstay of the community, I just know it.
http://erinetocknell.wordpress.com/2011/11…
Re: “Parnassus Books is opening this weekend in Nashville, and Chapter 16 has the inside story”
I heard this story on NPR. Will be there for DC on 12/4. Very exciting!
Re: “Framed for murder and left to languish in a Nicaraguan prison, Eric Volz tells his story”
Thank goodness you were freed.
To check on other inmates go to http://www.theinmatelookup.com
Re: “Billy Collins takes his appeal for accessible poetry to the Fugitives' citadel”
You're welcome, JP Grasser's crazy stalker ex!
Re: “Billy Collins takes his appeal for accessible poetry to the Fugitives' citadel”
And thank you, aunt of JP Grasser, you "collins fan, actually." First: Ernest Hilbert isn't bashing Poetry 180 (a careful reading reveals that he actually is bashing Collins himself by throwing him in with laughingly bad "poets" like Rod McKuen, but Hilbert liked the Poetry 180 project). But who is Ernest Hilbert? Obviously someone who doesn't understand that poetry can be popular and still be good poetry; his lumping Collins with McKuen shows his basic lack of logic in his arguments. But thanks, auntie-whomever. I'm sure you're very proud of JP-- and you posted the link properly and everything.
Re: “Billy Collins takes his appeal for accessible poetry to the Fugitives' citadel”
From Contemporary Poetry Review:
Collins’s practical achievement as laureate was the creation of the Poetry 180 website and anthologies, which offer an easy, introductory contemporary poem for each day of the high school year, intended particularly for students to hear in English class or while held captive during the dreaded morning announcements. Teachers are urged to avoid discussing the poems or building any kind of assignment around them. The core of this attitude is a good one. Poetry could do with being unmoored from academic settings and put back into the world beyond the lagoons of academe. Although a respectable enterprise, it highlights what might be considered the central shortcoming of Collins as a poet. He writes in the introduction to Poetry 180 that he wanted poems that “any listener could basically ‘get’ on first hearing—poems whose injection of pleasure is immediate.” This is ideal for his purposes (or it may be that these purposes are fitted perfectly to his ideal). The poems he likes best, the ones he included on the website and in the book, are suited to the adolescent “wish to accelerate, to get from zero to sixty in a heartbeat or in a speed-shop Honda.”
All practicality aside, the one thing genuinely accomplished by such an editorial gesture is that it solves the headache of distinguishing “between legitimate difficulty and obscurity for its own sake” by simply eradicating all difficult poems from the reader’s ken right from the start. Collins asks rhetorically “if there is no room in poetry for difficulty, where is difficulty to go?” His answer? He does not really have one, except to say that even simple poems are difficult when we “experience” them. He goes on to denounce complexity in literary art as an unnecessary roadblock. According to Collins, the difficulty that reigned as a criterion of greatness among the modernists also caused readers to “flee in droves into the waiting arms of novelists, where they could relax in the familiar surroundings of social realism.” Let us forget for one moment that modernism also produced exceptionally ambitious and complex novels. Collins refuses to give difficulty in poetry a hearing at all. Instead, he claims “clarity is the real risk in poetry. To be clear means opening yourself up to judgment.” This is not entirely true. Artistic complexity yields itself up to a different grade and degree of judgment.
http://www.cprw.com/Hilbert/collins2.htm
Re: “Robert K. Massie's biography shows the human side of Catherine the Great, Russia's brilliant 18th century monarch”
To each his own. Me, I find that the unsubstantiated quibbles of illiterate crackpots are just amusing.