Falling in Love Again...with THE BLUE ANGEL

It's been almost 30 years since I last saw Josef von Sternberg's Blue Angel (1930).  Based on Heinrich Mann's novel, Professor Unrat, At the time it was all about Marlene Dietrich--famous as the film's Lola, singing "Falling in Love Again" with that husky contralto.  Lola is beautiful, marmoreal and heartless, and the only thing more foolish than falling for her would be...well, not falling.

Enter Emil Jannings as Professor Unrat, a middle-aged, dumpy lecturer at the local university (I know, the possibilities for my identification with the character seem endless, right?). His surname is actually 'Rath', but he is called 'Unrat' (German for 'filth' or 'garbage') by his students, who range between deferential (standing when he enters the classroom--something I'd never expect) and shouting names at him in public (something that hasn't happened to me...yet). The film is his story--his enamored, obsessive pursuit of the lovely and much younger Lola, which ends up in his humiliation and death.  The film, or so I have read, speaks to the Weimar Republic's contempt for its intellectual class, but of course the professor is the embodiment of the bourgeois intellectual, a figure adored by the complacent middle class of the times and held in contempt by the artists, the bohemians, and (in a strange wedding of hatreds) the rising far Right in Germany at the time.

In short, Professor Unrat gets what he deserves, though we are sorry he does.   Through it all, I am struck by Emil Jannings, who made his name as a silent film star (The Last Laugh, Waxworks, Tartuffe, Faust), usually in a comic, fleshy, leering role--his generation's Sydney Greenstreet or Victor Buono, but with the chops to carry a lead actor's role.  And here he is in the talkies, wandering streets in which Dr. Caligari meets Antoni Gaudi, speaking in a strange but fitting tenor voice, running the gamut of gesture and facial expression from endearing to ridiculous to the genuinely tragic.  The Blue Angel is his film, and his performance is what I carried away--disturbing me, moving me, making me think of the passing years.

Back for the Duration

 After a long absence, I'm returning to give blogging a try.

I've always felt that this was a kind of working overtime, a spinning of wheels that took up energies and focus better used in my fiction, because I am easily distracted, drawn away from more pressing pursuits by tunneling thoughts, by issues over which I have neither control nor power, ideas for books that deflect me from remembering that damn it, I'm already writing another/  Even a song or a bright color can be enough to derail me.

So the blog will center on its new title--an idea large and broad enough to take in ramblings and distractions.And here's one:

I've been going to a lot of conventions lately.  Sitting on a number of panels, or present in the room when panels transpired.  What I'm getting is an odd shift in the focus of some writers--perhaps a reflection of the much-touted "change in the publishing industry", but ultimately, something I may be too old to buy into.  Because it seems that a lot of us are becoming marketers first, writers second.  I have even seen some writers--people I like, don't get me wrong--proclaiming that "if you think of your writing as art, think again" (yes, a direct quote!).

Well, I'm sorry, but I do.  Maybe it's not great art.  Maybe not even good.  But if I were in this for the business, I'd be trying to make money on the enterprise.  I'd be in hedge funds or derivatives, which I understand is where the money is.

Actually, I just like saying "hedge funds" and "derivatives," having no earthly idea what such things are. 

What I do know is that there is a specific craft to the kind of thing writers do and that sometimes, out of diligence and chance or grace, that craft can rise to what has been traditionally called art. Yes, I attend conventions and try to make sales, but I'll let you in on a secret: my first novel sold a million copies worldwide, and I still get small royalty surprises in the mail, but it is not my most satisfying work or experience as a novelist.  I still like Weasel's Luck and think it's a good book, but I have done work since that pleases me more and is a greater source of pride.  If I had to choose between Weasel's Luck's sales and what I believe I did in books like Arcady or Trajan's Arch or Vine, I'd rest content with the lesser profit.  Because of these priorities I must keep a day job, but I'm happy with the day job as well.  Telling stories is serious business, even if you're paid in other stories.

Writers I Recommend: A Baker's Dozen. Part 3

And so the last 4. Joyce Carol Oates, John Gardner, Robert Graves, and Gene Wolfe did not make my list because, although none of them are read nearly enough, they get more attention than the writers who have made my list. Now, on toward my conclusion...

10. Francine Prose
Like my choice of Halberstam, this is based on one book I really loved. Prose has done some superb writing over a 40 year career, but her Marie Laveau is one hell of an engaging novel. A New Orleans that does Anne Rice one better, or so I think. Haven't read it in 20 years, but I still think about it and its excellence.

11. Peter Straub
Most famous for Ghost Story and for his collaborations with Stephen King. It's too bad, because his mysteries are even better than his more preternatural stuff. I'd recommend Mystery, Koko, and The Throat. They are long, complicated, densely plotted and written. Straub is now becoming acknowledged more in the academy, and it's damn well time: I'd love to do a class on him someday.

12. Nathanael West
Oh, such a good American Modernist! Funny, dark, almost an exact contemporary of Fitzgerald, strikingly different, and (I think) better. Savage take on American society that does not take prisoners. Good to see American Library picking up his stuff: better to see a bunch of y'all reading him. Miss Lonelyhearts, Day of the Locust, A Cool Million and The Dream Life of Balso Snell. That's it, and all worth reading.

13. Garry Wills
Conservative writer, though slightly less conservative than he was 20 years ago. Read John Wayne's America, The Kennedy Imprisonment, Reagan's America, his work on St. Augustine and a brief book called What Jesus Meant. That I don't always agree with him, either politically or as a Catholic, makes him that much more good and provocative.

Well, there you have it. These names may come up again as the blog unfolds. I hope so, and hope to hear that you've read some of these writers. And even more, I'd love to hear about writers you think I should read. Let me know.

Writers I Recommend: A Baker's Dozen. Part 2

5. Barry Hannah
Mentor, role model, pedal-to-the-metal writer. Best prose style of any American fiction writer I know. He was at his most exhilarating and spectacular in short stories: might I recommend the volume Airships? I guarantee you will be left breathless.

6. James Hillman
Radical Jungian whose way of seeing the world makes radical sense. Dense writing, but thinking that is heavy and true. Take a look at Healing Fiction for starters, but also Revisioning Psychology and Dream and the Underworld. Has helped me understand things in a way that incorporates reason, imagination, and experience.

7. Clarice Lispector
First-rate dying-young Brazilian writer. If you like Angela Carter with less of a polemical edge, you might enjoy Lispector. The Passion According to G.H. is the book; an amazing short story that could serve as an introduction is "The Smallest Woman in the World".

8. Patrick McGinley
Irish mystery writer who is a superb, compelling story-teller. Suspense, yes, and creepy, but also funny as hell. Trick of the Ga Bolga is excellent, as are Foggage and Bogmail.

9. Stephen Mitchell
Yes, the translator. Read his introductions, especially to his translations of Job and Genesis. Also of Rilke and Tao Te Ching. It's what happens when you bring your own poetry and knowledge to bear on the imagination and sensibility of someone else--how brilliant you can be when you step outside yourself.

Writers I Recommend: A Baker's Dozen, Part 1.

I'm not saying you haven't read them, but odds are you haven't. Most certainly aren't best-sellers, and some of them are overlooked by the academy as well (at least as far as I know). Most are fiction writers (since that's my area and all); some I recommend on the virtue of one book, others on a body of work. Here, then, in alphabetical order:



1. Isabel Allende

Two books come to mind: House of the Spirits and Eva Luna. Allende's commingling of Latin American history and magical realism, coupled with a sure sense of story pacing, has earned her a justifiably strong reputation, but I find few people read her since the newness of El Boom has worn off in the Northern Hemisphere. By all means, read her.



2. Frances Burney

Jane Austen devotees may know of Fanny Burney, as there is a long-standing dispute between the readers of both novelists as to who's better. Can't we all just get along? but that being said, if forced to choose, I would set aside Austen (whom I like with reservations) for the more raucous, expansive (and I think funnier) Burney. Evelina is where to start.



3. John Crowley

Best contemporary American writer nobody's heard of. I recommend the short stories, Aegypt, and the masterful Little, Big, which is one of the best novels of the last 30 years. Started as a fantasist, which is why he is only now getting street cred in a highly biased American academia.



4. David Halberstam

Excellent journalist and historian of American culture. His work on Robert Kennedy is worth a read, but it was October 1964 that drew me. One of the most engaging books I have ever read, exploring the two World Series teams and the simultaneous events of the Civil Rights Movement.

Frost and Country Day

In 2003 Rhonda and I were in London, and took a day trip out to Bath to see the Roman ruins. While there, we met a couple from home, and if you've been in Louisville for any amount of time, you know the first question they asked us.

Louisvillians think it's charming, this "where did you go to high school?" business. But for those of you who are here from out of town, here's the scoop: it's the question that people 40 and up ask around here to determine the social class of someone they've just met. Trinity and St. X, Sacred Heart, Eastern and Ballard--those are the correct answers if you want to be listened to at any time during the rest of the encounter. If the President had gone to Fairdale, Shawnee, Valley or Doss, nobody in Louisville would attend the inauguration.

Class prejudice is a nasty American practice, primarily because we're supposed to be this melting pot where this kind of bias doesn't happen. Disturbingly, it crosses ideological lines as well: not just the Republicans are guilty, but Democrats and university leftists. And it's particularly endemic in Louisville.

So out-of-towners (and all of you long-time Louisvillians with a sense of mischief and chaos): next time someone here asks the poisonously charming question, try answering with "middle school at Frost, high school at Country Day". It'll send their heads spinning, and they'll emerge from rotation assuming your family won the lottery when you were 14. Because in Louisville, as in the rest of the USA, class = money = class, and until we move past this obvious situation, we cannot approach the goodness and egalitarianism for which we praise ourselves.

Theoretically Banjaxed

So I've been preparing the fall class on interdisciplinary arts and critical theory, which means I have to dive in to the theory part this week. Each time I do this, my distaste grows. And here are just a few reasons why this is so:

1. Any good reader/listener/observer already "does theory" like any good writer already "does composition". Somewhere along the line, the means to the end should become less your focus than the end itself. If it doesn't, you're in the wrong line of work.
2. Theory encourages cursory approaches to artwork. Why read Mann or attend Rigoletto when you already know that all the artists were doing was contradicting themselves, supporting a particularly vicious brand of capitalism, or finding an inventive way to oppress people? It's a given that culture involves oppression, but for god's sake, Heart of Darkness is not the same thing as a frickin' gulag, despite its racialist elements (and yes, observing these elements, which is what every theorist comes away with having read H. of. D, has become, in my opinion, kind of too obvious to mention, especially at the exclusion of anything else about the work). I've seen some of my best students transformed into jargon-spouting bores like werewolves under a bad moon.
3. We're in bad shape when the only things above suspicion are Marx, tenure, and other theorists. Suspect them, too.
4. Speaking of Marx, academic Marxism is a pitiful thing. 'Fess up. You want to be a Marxist, get out and help our beleaguered unions, goddamnit, instead of pontificating from the safety of the classroom where your audience is grade-obligated not to disagree. The university is a game preserve for any ideas left of center because you've sat on your asses and allowed the country to tumble into its natural state of right-wing extremism. Do something about the larger loony bin by venturing outside of school.

OK, I broke my 250-less rule mid-rant. Next time something amiable.