April 30

Fiddler extraordinaire Mark O'Connor reaches across genres in a way that I thoroughly respect:

http://www.wbgo.org/thecheckout/?p=2258

Did you know that the world's first animated feature film -- El Apostol, 1917 -- was made by the Argentine film-maker Quirino Cristiani? Did you know that the world's first animated feature film with sound -- Peludopolis, 1931 -- was also made by Cristiani? Me neither:

http://www.awn.com/mag/issue1.4/articles/bendazzi1.4.html

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

Cristiani made another silent animated feature -- Leaving No Trace, 1918 -- and a number of shorts between 1916 and 1943, but only one of the shorts survives, El Mono Relojero (The Monkey Watchmaker) from 1938:



This animal fable is in some ways quite uncharacteristic of Cristiani; all three of the features were political satires, emphatically not children's films.

Waggish briefly comments on an excerpt from a Jenny Diski essay on the sociologist Erving Goffman that discusses several other writers' views on Goffman, putting some cross-talk possibilities in play that perhaps deserved more exposition by the blogger himself. Goffman (1922-1982) is a fascinating thinker; well do I remember reading his challenging Frame Analysis as a freshman at Yale -- in my Theater Studies class, of all places, where Goffman's analyses of the "frames" in which we perform everyday actions were shown to be utterly pertinent to the theatrical enterprise by our innovative professor Bart Teush.

http://www.waggish.org/2010/04/26/jenny-diski-on-erving-goffman 

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

Camille Paglia's comment that "You read major figures not because everything they say is the gospel truth but because they expand your imagination, they expand your I.Q.,....they open up brain cells you didn't even know you have" is utterly apt to Goffman.

The Mookse and the Gripes takes on J.G. Farrell's "long, dense" novel about 1919 Ireland, Troubles, which is one of the nominees for the "Lost Booker" prize for novels from the year 1970:

http://mookseandgripes.com/reviews/2010/04/27/j-g-farrell-troubles/

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

Anne Carson's long-standing interest in mixing genres and forms continues in her newest book, Nox, which is a sort of scrapbook in an accordion-fold:

http://conversationalreading.com/new-book-nox-by-anne-carson-or-sebaldian-book-box-object

http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Reviews-Essays/Nox/ba-p/2498

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/28/AR2010042804631.html

Scott Esposito at Conversational Reading noticed a 2007 list from the Colombian magazine Semana of the best Spanish language novels of the 1982-2006 period. This is exactly the sort of material I get very excited by when the Internet brings it my way:

http://conversationalreading.com/100-best-spanish-language-novels-of-the-last-25-years

http://splalit.blogspot.com/2007/03/100-best-novels-written-in-spanish-in.html

What the heck is going on in Arizona? Now the legislature is trying to ban the study of ethnic groups:

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/new_az_law_to_ban_ethnic_studies_20100430/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/30/arizona-ethnic-studies-cl_n_558731.html

The History Blog and The Infrastructurist mourn the loss of 17 great railroad stations:

http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/5638

http://www.infrastructurist.com/2009/06/22/11-beautiful-train-stations-that-fell-to-the-wrecking-ball/

http://www.infrastructurist.com/2009/06/25/6-more-great-train-stations-lost-to-the-wrecking-ball/

If there hadn't been a concerted effort by preservationists -- including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis -- during the Sixties and Seventies, New York's Grand Central Terminal and its majestic Main Concourse would have been on this list.

Among notables born on this date are novelists Hugh Hood (Canada) and Jaroslav Hasek (Czech Republic), poets John Crowe Ransom, Winfield Townley Scott, and Juhan Liiv (Estonia), memoirist Annie Dillard, literary spouse Alice B. Toklas, science fiction novelist Larry Niven, Founding Father Roger Sherman, country singer Willie Nelson, composer Franz Lehar, architect Hans Poelzig, philosopher Felix Guattari, film directors Jane Campion, Lars von Trier, and Jacques Audiard, and actors Cloris Leachman, Eve Arden, Jill Clayburgh, Kirsten Dunst, Adrian Pasdar, and Paul Gross. The fine Canadian actor/director Paul Gross, well-known for playing a Mountie in the series Due South, was one of the original ensemble for the great 1993 mini-series Tales of the City, which I still think is one of the best television productions I've ever seen. Unfortunately, when it finally became possible to film Armistead Maupin's sequels More Tales of the City and Further Tales of the City a few years later, Gross was not available to reprise the role of the womanizing Brian. Marcus D'Amico, Chloe Webb, Cynda Williams, and Donald Moffat were not on hand anymore either; OK, Moffat's character had died, but the recasting of the other key parts was injurious to the two subsequent series, despite the welcome returns of Laura Linney, Olympia Dukakis, Barbara Garrick, and others. There was an even worse acting loss, however: In the original series, San Francisco played itself, brilliantly; in the two follow-ups, Montreal played San Francisco, badly.