Friday Links
June 28, 2024
Dana Gioia: A Tale of Two Composers
Haley Stewart: The Case for Not Sanitizing Fairy Tales
The Dumb Ox & the Good Samaritan: A Double Review from Joshua Hren
Tara Isabella Burton: Lockdown Nostalgia
Restoring Mayberry: A blog from Brian Kaller
Dana Gioia: A Tale of Two Composers
Should opera composers write their own libretti? The advantages and disadvantages of single authorship are illustrated in the careers of two mid-twentieth-century American composers—Gian Carlo Menotti and Carlisle Floyd. The Italian-born Menotti and South Carolinian Floyd make an unlikely pair, but they share several unusual qualities. Both men wrote all of their own libretti. Both composed tonal music that ignored Modernist trends. Both achieved exceptional early success. They even shared longevity. Both men died at 95 after long, fortunate, and—this will be my subject—artistically disappointing lives.
Also I would be remiss if I did not recommend this season’s final episode of the Sacred and Profane podcast with Dana Gioia and Jenn Frey discussing Seneca, and in particular, his tragedy The Madness of Hercules.
Haley Stewart: The Case for Not Sanitizing Fairy Tales
Fairy tales take both evil and goodness quite seriously. In other words, they are truthful. As Madeleine L’Engle claimed, “The world of fairy tale, fantasy, myth, is inimical to the secular world, and in total opposition to it, for it is interested not in limited laboratory proofs, but in truth.” And in their embrace of truth, fairy tales wrestle with darkness and end in triumph. But are we willing to tell children the truth by reading them fairy tales, as Flannery O’Connor did to her playmates? It seems that these days we are more comfortable if we alter them either by softening the darkness in the story or, as we see in much young adult literature, rejecting the possibility of happily ever after.
The Dumb Ox & the Good Samaritan: A Double Review from Joshua Hren
If reading good books well is a condition, not a cause, of potential good acts, these volumes by O’Rourke and Russell contain so much of the embodied soulfulness that so drove Joyce that it is hard to imagine anyone exiting their pages without having experienced this double effect: through Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas, the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry is not just jocosely mended; through James Joyce and Samaritan Hospitality, the summons to “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37) demands, along with radical xenia, that we eschew and, finally, transcend one of humanity’s common enemies: sentimentality.
Tara Isabella Burton: Lockdown Nostalgia
Tara Isabella Burton writes on how she experienced the covid lockdowns. She offers an interesting perspective and certainly her concerns and experiences were not those of many, maybe even most, of us. Still, she’s onto something when she says we had a chance for a “reset” - some of us did heed the call to permanently change our lives and some of us didn’t. Of course, as long as you’re alive, there’s still time:
We made it work. We let time set its own rhythms. We listened at the window to the nightly celebration of health care workers, which functioned, alongside New York’s hospital sirens, as the metropolitan equivalent of cathedral bells. Everywhere I needed to go I walked, or biked. Most of my life was lived in the open area, regardless of season. I learned about Smartwool. I wore a Snuggie outdoors. Nearly all of my time and effort, beyond the immediate requirements of my work, was devoted to making the best of life. I would have said, then, that I was making life as normal as possible, but in normal times I’d never tried so hard.
Restoring Mayberry: a blog from Brian Kaller
American writer Brian Kaller moved to rural Ireland over 20 years ago, when his daughter was just a baby. Though he didn’t have many connections there, he and his family eventually become friends with many of the farmers, craftsmen, and other locals in the surrounding area. As a reporter, Kaller knew good stories when they popped up and so he started interviewing and recording his neighbors. In the process, he chronicled a way of life that is almost gone, and yet, still appeals to many of us. At Restoring Mayberry, he shares these stories, as well as more about the skills and crafts he’s learned while living in a place that continues to honor a well-made thing.