Author Archives
Scott Seward Smith
Janet Malcolm’s Second Chance: Or How To Be a New Yorker New Yorker
The article, in the September 24 edition of The New York Review of Books, clangs like a false note. I read it once and wondered what its point was? I read it again and wondered what its hook was? The article by long-time New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm begins with her recollection of visits in the spring of 1994 to a speech coach at his apartment on Manhattan’s Lower West Side. So far so King’s Speech. But Malcolm is different from her speech coach’s typical client: an actor cast to play “Prospero, say, or Creon, so that they did not sound as if they came from the Bronx or Akron, Ohio.” She was there to rehearse her part as a witness in a court case.
Deaf Composers, Silenced Writers, Fragile Violins, and the Late Quartets of our Times
Because he was deaf when he wrote them, Beethoven never heard his “late quartets”. This is a remarkable anecdote; an inhuman feat of human creativity. I was reminded of a resonant anecdote while reading in the Spectator US of a meeting between British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his wife and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle—bear with me. The article described that the Laborite couple later sent the laborious couple a book of poems by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a 17th century Mexican nun and poet. The Spectator describes her as “a poet known for her proto-feminism and early criticism of the Spanish empire.” She is also well known for having stopped writing her risqué poetry on the orders of the Church hierarchy. This is an interesting symmetry: Beethoven writing music for us that he would never hear; Sor Juana composing poems in her head that we would never read.
The View from Kennedy’s Inaugural Podium and from the Bottom of Baltimore Harbor
An Homage to Robert Frost
Last week I wrote of poetry as a unique consolation in troubled times. I did not have the space to address another use: poetry in praise of the state. I had in mind Robert Frost’s “Dedication” written for Kennedy’s inauguration. It began…
Come Back Poetry, We Need You
For several decades subway riders in New York have been confronted with random slabs of verse entitled “Poetry in Motion”, whose main effect, whatever its purpose, is to confirm the onward sterility of modern poetry. More is the pity. Times of existential uncertainty summon the need for poetry, or at least good poetry. It provides a unique consolation.
A West Side Story
Willy, our retired super and part-time Bachata musician, told us that the street used to be a major avenue for drug dealing until Giuliani cleaned it up. He said that one of the local drug dealers once told him, after Willie refused to take money to not report the dealing, “the only reason I haven’t killed you is because you’re a nice guy.”
Midnight Diner: Where Everybody Knows Your Ramen
Which brings me to the other night, a frustrating roam through Netflix trying to find something worth watching. An evening laziness that sought something distracting but not annoying. A night of tourist entertainment. Even with that low bar I couldn’t find anything. I tolerated a few shows or movies and had to switch them off. Reluctantly I clicked on “Midnight Diner,” a Japanese show now streaming on Netflix. I wasn’t looking for subtitles or something foreign, but I was out of options. And I was delighted from the beginning.
That Only America Could Have Produced: Chambers, Schlesinger, Nixon, and Hiss
Among the multitudes that America used to contain were Whittaker Chambers and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. A few months ago I happened to reread both Chambers’ autobiography Witness and Schlesinger’s Journals 1952-2000 one after the other. These two men are of different generations: Chambers lived from 1901 to 1961 and Schlesinger 1917 to 2007. They are of completely different temperaments, milieus, politics, and tastes. But there are some fascinating overlaps that have some bearing on the difficult passage we are traversing today as a nation. Both were superb writers.
Revealing ‘The Great Amputation’ of Postmodernism’s Triumph
I Wanna Get Anagogical
The most important piece of writing of the past decade to me is an article written last year in Modern Age by Ewa Thompson, “The Great Amputation: Language in a Postmodern Era.” It is important because it identifies the key to our modern stupidity.
This stupidity is increasingly irksome in the way that it has seeped into political decisions that affect our lives. Thompson’s discovery is even more profound, however. She explains one of my great frustrations: when we have literally at our fingertips the entire record of the greatest thoughts of human history, why do we not use them to help solve our problems, understand each other better, or merely delight in the play of genius? Why, furthermore, do we in general not contribute to them? Why are we becoming sub-literate? As Thompson writes: “words are losing their power to convince, console, and elicit joy.” As someone who takes literally Faulkner’s injunction that man is immortal because he alone among animals has an inexhaustible voice, the disempowering of the word is a matter of grave significance.
Discovering Luis Miguel, Mexico’s Biggest Star Musician
When I was 21, in 1991, I fell in love with a Mexican girl. It was the week of our college graduation and she was the childhood friend of a classmate. I visited my classmate in Mexico City that summer in order to see her again. The hit album at the time was “21 años” by Luis Miguel. Luis Miguel, named for the bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguín memorialized by Hemingway in The Dangerous Summer, was, and still is, the biggest star in Mexico.
Lana Del Rey’s Blues
In the many skirmishes in today’s culture wars I often find it easy to take a side or, in most recent cases, wish that both sides lose. This is mostly because these skirmishes involve celebrities and other cultural avatars who are two dimensional, predictable, boring. The last eccentrics died long ago or have been pummeled into submission.
Recently I stumbled across a controversy involving a young woman singer, Lana Del Rey and, of course, an internet post, that has left me on the fence. Apparently Del Rey has been accused of glorifying or romanticizing sexual violence in her songs. On Instagram she wrote…
