April 17

There is a film writer over whom I have spilled some ink, because we all need a bete noire, who recently exited an Internet party he had started, leaving confusion in his wake. He also stopped posting at his blog, which, in fidgety spirit, he had frequently re-named. He migrated instead to Twitter, which takes his long-noted tendency toward compression to new heights; the inevitable next step will not be writing anything at all. The medium also reinforces his and others' habit of writing in a kind of code that only those "in the know" can decipher, and in this case, I don't mean "in the know" about cinema, I mean "in the know" about the inner workings of his head. Twitter itself may become passe now that they are trafficking in "sponsored tweets" (advertising): that party might move on too. I remain anti-Twitter and anti-Facebook myself. Blogging, my chosen Internet medium, is quickly becoming an "old fogies" style of communication, which suits me just fine.

Here is one user's break-up note to Twitter (which doesn't even mention the advertising):

http://thefastertimes.com/politicalhumor/2010/04/16/title-top-10-reasons-im-breaking-up-with-you-an-open-letter-in-more-than-140-characters/

Forbes enumerates "11 Career-Ending Facebook Faux Pas." I do a perfectly fine job at wrecking career opportunities without assistance!

http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/13/how-facebook-ruined-my-career-entrepreneurs-human-resources-facebook_slide.html

Christopher Lydon at Open Source did a superb interview with Michael Lewis, whose new state-of-the-economy book The Big Short is coming in for the the sort of praise that has rightly followed Lewis throughout his career:

http://www.radioopensource.org/michael-lewis-big-short-and-our-appetite-for-apocalypse/

The Times Literary Supplement looks at five novels of the financial crisis:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article7082533.ece

Noel Murray and Leonard Pierce of The Onion amply demonstrate that Warren Zevon had one of the most character-based, literary sensibilities of any songwriter. (Hat tip to Robert Kennedy.)

http://www.avclub.com/articles/talkin-about-the-man-18-real-and-fictional-charact,39988/

The Korean poet Ko Un, often mentioned as a Nobel Prize candidate, has completed a monumental epic:

Poet Ko Un has finally completed ``Maninbo'' (Ten Thousand Lives), a 30-volume epic poem series, 25 years after he first began publishing the monumental work in 1986. The 77-year-old initiated the landmark epic poem series when he was imprisoned in 1980 on false accusations of treason during a military coup. He decided to describe every person he had ever met in his life in the project....``Maninbo'' consists of 4,001 poems describing 5,600 people who witnessed and shared moments in Korea's modern history....American poet Robert Hass hailed "Maninbo" as ``one of the most extraordinary projects in world literature.''

http://www.complete-review.com/saloon/archive/201004b.htm#rn9

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/art/2010/04/135_64320.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ko_Un

Phil Baker at the Times Literary Supplement looks at a new book about the forgotten author Thomas Burke (1886-1945), whose short stories about London's Chinese district combine melodrama, miscegenation, "Orientalism," and pedophilia in an odd stew:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article7090223.ece

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Burke_%28author%29

One of Burke's stories, with the way politically incorrect title of "The Chink and the Child," became the basis of D.W. Griffith's film Broken Blossoms. Burke extended his interest in the urban demimonde with such offbeat offerings as For Your Convenience, a guide to London's public urinals! If you are imagining a certain audience which might have found knowledge of these locations to be particularly "convenient," your filthy mind is undoubtedly right on the mark; Burke's works are extensively discussed in Matt Houlbrook's study Queer London.

Nikil Saval at n+1 defends Brian Ferneyhough's and Charles Bernstein's demanding opera about Walter Benjamin, Shadowtime:

http://www.nplusonemag.com/benjamin-extremis

The cosmos must have gotten my memo about unplayed plays, because all of a sudden, neglected classics seem to be showing up everywhere (either that, or I'm subscribing to more theater blogs and becoming more aware of what's out there). Max Frisch's 1958 play Biedermann and the Firebugs has been revived in Los Angeles in a new translation/adaptation by Alistair Beaton entitled The Arsonists:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/04/theater-review-the-arsonists-at-koan-at-the-odyssey-theatre.html

Anne Elisabeth Dillon at The Daily Mirror shares her nostalgic appreciation of William Castle's marvelous film 13 Ghosts (1960), which is also a great favorite of mine. I love the charming depiction of the family life of an "absent-minded professor," which goes to show that growing up in an intellectual environment can in fact be a lot of fun! If you have kids of your own, this is a terrific movie to watch with them.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2010/04/from-the-vaults-13-ghosts-1960.html

As an enthusiast for all things Scottish, I note with sadness the passing of tenor Kenneth McKellar, who in addition to classical and operatic repertory, specialized in traditional Scots songs such as "The Song of the Clyde."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article7099833.ece



Among notables born on this date are fiction writers Cynthia Ozick, Nick Hornby, and Isak Dinesen, poets Henry Vaughan and Brendan Kennelly, playwrights John Ford and Thornton Wilder, film directors Lindsay Anderson and Theo Angelopoulos, pianist Artur Schnabel, cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, soprano Anja Silja, broadcaster Harry Reasoner, financier J.P. Morgan, cowboy film star Art Acord, and actor William Holden. I love this quotation by Artur Schnabel, whose Beethoven playing was legendary: "The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes -- ah, that is where the art resides."