John Ashbery & Marcel Duchamp (& Me) by Tosh Berman

 

"John Ashbery & Marcel Duchamp (& Me) by Tosh Berman. Read it here: 

John Ashbery & Marcel Duchamp (& Me)

Tosh Berman's Sunday, April 4, 2021

 

Sunday, April 4, 2021 by Tosh Berman. Read it here:

Tosh's Sunday, April 4, 2021

"Night Music: Essays on Music 1928-1962 by Theodor W. Adorno (Seagull Books)

ISBN: 978-0857424501 Seagull Books

What I know of classical music is what I hear on record/vinyl/cd.   Beyond that, almost nothing.  My reaction to Classical it totally musical, and the occasional liner note on the back cover of the album.  With curiosity, I picked up Theodor W. Adorno's "Night Music," in the hopes of learning more about this form of music as well as dipping into the brain of Adorno, one of the leading 'thinkers' of the Frankfurt School of critical theory.  Adorno was also a composer, and what is interesting about "Night Music" is that it was written from the late 1920s to 1962.  The essays are not organized in chronicle order, but in a manner that is very readable.  The book consists of two collections of texts "Moments musicaux" and "Theory of New Music."  When Adorno speaks of new music, he's not talking about Cage (who does get a brief mention in a later essay) but composers of his generation and time, for instance, Schönberg, who is the main figure in these series of writings, along with Berg, Webern, and Ravel.  There is also the commentary on Beethoven, Wagner, and Bach, but the heart of the book is on the Second Viennese School of music.  For one, it's interesting to read these essays knowing that they were written during a time when Schönberg and Ravel were active and doing music.  One is not looking back, but at the present when these essays were written.   The writing for me is readable, but also difficult due to its density and Adorno's knowledge of music.  People who are either serious fans of Classical (especially 20th-century) or musicians will jump on this book with no problem, but for the guy or gal, it's a serious journey into the rabbit hole that is music.   Seagull Books who published "Night Music" should get special notice for the design of the book, and their great taste in titles.  Also, Wieland Hoban did a fantastic job in doing the translation from German to English.

"Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews" by Geoff Dyer

ISBN: 978-1-55597-579-1 Graywolf Press

I'm a fan of a book of essays by particular writers. Not for the purpose of learning something new, but to be able to spend time with an author and his thoughts. If I don't like the author, I tend not to like the essays. I like Geoff Dyer. Therefore I like his book of essays "Otherwise Known as the Human Condition." What I like about him and his writings is that he has a great deal of interest in the world around him.

Besides being a literary critic, he also writes about photography, travel, and jazz. He's a writer who loves jazz. Boris Vian was a musician who wrote about jazz and was passionate about the subject, but far as I know, Dyer is not a musician. He has incredible insight into the music and is an excellent observer in what makes a jazz recording works or not work. The other great thing about his work is his brief memoirs that are towards the end of this volume. Personal, and very enticing invitation to his social world, and how he places himself in that landscape. There are also signs of his sexuality, not only to his attraction to women but apparently his attention to porn. He wrote a brief essay in this book regarding the hotel room, and how sexy such a room is to a gentleman. He also wrote about porn viewing in the hotel chambers. The fact that a hotel room is so clean (hopefully) makes it even more erotic. Nice observation on the nature of hotels.  

The book is large, and usually, I read a book of essays off and on. I tend to read three essays in a row, and put it down, and pick it up a month later. This book, I read from the first to the last page. As I mention, one of his great interests is in photography. And like his love for jazz, he is a viewer of photographs, without being a photographer. He has no interest in taking photos but enjoys writing on the subject. The distance between him and a passionate object is a right approach. At least for him. Nevertheless, Dyer is a fantastic writer. I enjoy dipping into his cosmos.  

- Tosh Berman

"On The Natural History of Destruction" by W.G. Sebald (Notting Hill Editions)

ISBN: 978-1-907903-55-7 Notting Hill Editions

As a writer, W.G. Sebald is a guy with a bow and arrow and can take on a difficult subject, and hit a bullseye every time. He had the talent to look at his subject matter apparently, like a surgeon going into the operation room to do a complicated procedure, but he always comes through in the end. Normally Sebald is a fictional writer but through the eyes of a subjective journalist. It's his skill in laying out the landscape in his novels, and especially in these two essays, one on the bombings of various German cities, and the other on a controversial German writer, Alfred Andersch.

The brilliance of his essay (speech) on the bombings in different German cities is that he doesn't play the victim's card. He looks at them for what they are. A destruction that killed and disrupted many lives, but in the shadow of Hitler's horrible vision of the world. Through Sebald's descriptive writing, one can almost taste the misery and the essence of the hopelessness of it all. Hitler's goal was to bomb London. He would go into detail about how the flames would eat up the English capital in horror overtures. The irony is that it happened to his own country. The vision he brought to the world, didn't exactly worked out for him (or Germany).

The Alfred Andersch essay is fascinating, due to how Sebald, a fellow German, see this individual within the Nazi/World War II environment. Andersch is a writer I know nothing of, till I read Sebald's piece. It seems in certain circles and through his writing, he was the good moral German during the Nazi years. Sebald feels differently. In a critical and almost cold-like manner, he cuts into the Andersch myth of the good Nazi. Reading it, I'm struck by how the individual deals with the issue of morality and identity in a landscape that is both dangerous and quite evil. I think we at this moment and time, feel the same regarding a certain individual in the White House. It's hard not to read this book and not think of the destruction in Palestine, Libya, and other parts of the world.

The Notting Hill Edition of "On The Natural History of Destruction" is a beautifully designed and elegant book. Which makes the book even more compelling in how this devastating text is placed in such a seductive packaging.

"The Undiscoverable Reading" an essay by Tony Duvert

ISBN 978-1-58435-135-1 Semiotext[e]

"The Undiscoverable Reading" an essay by Tony Duvert (Translated by Bruce Benderson) with drawings by  Eli Langer (Semiotext[e])

Tony Duvert is a very hard sale. Due to the fact that he has an interest in pedophilia and criticized modern child-rearing. In the 70s, due to the sexual moral times of that era, he could get his work published, but since the 1980s he was pretty much ignored by the mainstream press and even from the Underground.  Which is a shame, because Duvert is a very interesting writer and thinker.  Semiotext[e] the brilliant press are the only one's that are publishing his work, and the booklet I have just read, "The Undisoverable Reading" is hard-to-find.  It's a 40 page chapbook, with no bind, but I read it twice, because I found it to be difficult and enticing at the same time.   In this essay, Duvert writes about the nature of literature and how reader's perceive literature - both as someone who may write books, as well as its readers.  The reader in a sense, meets the author.  He starts off writing about an ad selling classic literature to a normal family, and gives a funny picture of that type of ad- and then he goes into the advertisement of a company selling a service in 'how to write,' and gives a picture there of a young girl about to start her novel or some sort of creative writing.  From there, he digs into the deeper world of why people read, but also the nature of avant-garde literature when it mixes with the mainstream world of books.   The writing is very dense and one has to concentrate - but as I said, I was compelled to read it twice in a row - and each read was enjoyable experience.   This work was part of the Semiotext[e] box set that was sold at the Whitney.  I think the whole collection is sold out, but I think for sure, worth the trouble to locate this box of chapbooks.   As a brand, you can pretty much trust the Semiotext[e] publishing house to always, or at the very least, put out interesting titles.  

- Tosh Berman

"Humiliation" by Wayne Koestenbaum

ISBN: 978-0-312-42922-5 A Picador Paperback Original

“Humiliation” by Wayne Koestenbaum (A Picador Paperback)

 I don’t have many, but the few humiliations that I went through in my life I have totally erased them, except I do remember, but it’s so deep into my consciousness, it’s like a ghost thought.  On the other hand, Wayne Koestenbaum faces up to his humiliations as well as pointing out other artists and public figures who experienced the terribleness of being exposed to the most fearful humiliation possible.  I’m a fan of Koestenbaum’s writing, which is everywhere on the map of literature.  His shot Penguin biography on Andy Warhol, is one of the best books on that subject matter, and I also enjoyed his essays focusing on the 1980s.   “Humiliation” maybe his best book, because it is something that we all can share with - that feeling or point of time, when the unmentionable happens and how we deal with it. 

WIth the subject matter of Humiliation, Koestenbaum finds the perfect personalities to accompany that pain. Michael Jackson (great take on him), Jean Genet, Liza Minnelli, Alec Baldwin, and of course, himself.  As I read this book, I feel a tinge of pain.  That, comes with the territory.  Superb book. 

- Tosh Berman