The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on April 15, 2021, 01:14:41 pm ---I wouldn't have been any more interested in him than I am in Hemingway--which is not at all. I remember I read The Great Gatsby once, and I couldn't tell you a thing about it.
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What? A well educated man such as yourself?? :o I read This Side of Paradise for fun before I read The Great Gatsby, so probably junior high. Gatsby is genuinely great, so to speak -- I loved studying it in school and learning that, for example, when Nick Carroway leans against a mantle and tips a clock it means something about time (I can't remember more details about that particular symbol, but that kind of thing did prepare me for practicing Brokology). I read a couple of others of his, but the only one that stands out now is The Last Tycoon, half finished and published posthumously, based on Irving Thalberg. That's actually what got me interested in old films. He also wrote some good short stories and a classic first-person essay, The Crackup, about his own.
Hemingway was interested in bullfighting, war, fishing -- stereotypically "manly" topics that don't interest me. ("Hills Like White Elephants" is great, though.) Fitzgerald wrote about class, partying, alcoholism -- topics closer to my areas of interest. I also like Fitzgerald's writing style much better. The point the reviewer I read made was that Hemingway's style was fresh and evolutionary at the time but has since become familiar. I prefer Raymond Carver (well, his style is credited to his editor, Gordon Lish, but still).
--- Quote ---Maybe those women in the Civil War are on the sidelines because male historians put them there. I did watch the whole country music documentary, and my memory is that women have been pretty important. The Carters were practically a dynasty--three generations of women in country music. (Well, maybe that third generation only partly qualifies as part of a dynasty, but still.)
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Yeah, I know, my bad. I didn't watch the whole series but I shouldn't have included it on the list. Even as I was writing it, I knew it was sketchy and only included it to support my point. Not just the Carters but Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynett, the Judds and of course Dolly Parton.
As for the Civil War, though, I think he made a decent effort to include women but fighting battles is probably always going to be a little more high-profile than nursing or running the farm
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on April 15, 2021, 02:21:40 pm ---What? A well educated man such as yourself?? :o I read This Side of Paradise for fun before I read The Great Gatsby, so probably junior high.
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I know I didn't read Gatsby in school. I have this weird memory that my mother gave me a copy of it. I'm not even sure I finished it. But here's the thing. I think of a book like Gatsby as "literary fiction," and I just don't read literary fiction, other than the occasional short story in TNY. I do believe I've read a Hemingway and a Fitzgerald story in TNY.
I have another memory of my mother giving me a copy of The Old Man and the Sea, and not caring for that, either.
--- Quote ---Yeah, I know, my bad. I didn't watch the whole series but I shouldn't have included it on the list. Even as I was writing it, I knew it was sketchy and only included it to support my point. Not just the Carters but Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynett, the Judds and of course Dolly Parton.
--- End quote ---
I don't think it was your bad. I thought of all those women, but for some reason I thought you meant the "rise" of Country Music, so I just mentioned the Carters because I had the impression that Mother Maybelle Carter was really important in the beginnings of the genre.
--- Quote ---As for the Civil War, though, I think he made a decent effort to include women but fighting battles is probably always going to be a little more high-profile than nursing or running the farm
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I guess The Civil War "made" Ken Burns, but I've never seen that, either--because that episode of American history never really interested me much. I would watch it now if PBS ever broadcast it again. I've also not watched his series on baseball because that subject didn't really interest me, either. I can't say why I watched The Roosevelts, but I know I watched Vietnam because I "lived" through it. I remember Kent State, after all.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on April 15, 2021, 03:30:31 pm --- But here's the thing. I think of a book like Gatsby as "literary fiction," and I just don't read literary fiction, other than the occasional short story in TNY. I do believe I've read a Hemingway and a Fitzgerald story in TNY.
--- End quote ---
Literary fiction is the only kind of fiction I like. That said, I don't read much fiction these days.
--- Quote ---I don't think it was your bad. I thought of all those women, but for some reason I thought you meant the "rise" of Country Music, so I just mentioned the Carters because I had the impression that Mother Maybelle Carter was really important in the beginnings of the genre.
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I still take responsibility, but I agree with you about the earliest country music and the Carters. Years ago, I bought a four-disc album in Nashville called The History of Country Music and it contained a creaky old (1928, per Wikipedia) recording of "Keep on the Sunny Side of Life" by the Carter Family.
--- Quote ---I guess The Civil War "made" Ken Burns, but I've never seen that, either--because that episode of American history never really interested me much. I would watch it now if PBS ever broadcast it again. I've also not watched his series on baseball because that subject didn't really interest me, either. I can't say why I watched The Roosevelts, but I know I watched Vietnam because I "lived" through it. I remember Kent State, after all.
--- End quote ---
You weren't interested in the Civil War era? Oh, for some reason I thought you were. Weren't you a reenactor for a while, or am I imagining that? And I guess when I think of reenactors I mainly think of the Civil War.
I was living in NOLA when The Civil War first aired, and it inspired me to write a package of stories about how various groups felt about the war. I interviewed Sons of and Daughters of the Confederacy, Black Civil War buffs, historian Stephen Ambrose (who taught at Tulane) and I can't remember who else. My main memory was of a woman sitting in a dining room under an approximately 4X6 painting of Robert E. Lee (I know I've told this before, but ...), informing me that slaves loved their masters because the masters were nice enough to provide them with room and board.
An editor deleted that part, because she felt it would make the woman "look foolish." Um, yeah, that's pretty much what's wrong with that attitude but nevertheless a lot of people still hold it.
Anyway! I tried to watch it again a couple of years and now I found it too slow. My tastes have changed over 30 years, I guess. I liked Jazz and Baseball, loved The Roosevelts but felt it contained about 20% more information than I needed (he should do two versions of everything -- one for popular viewing and one as historical record). I also loved Vietnam and don't remember considering that one too informative. In fact, I was amazed at how informative it was, considering it was an era I lived through. Those recordings of Nixon gloating to Kissinger about how well he'd lied! :o
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on April 15, 2021, 04:35:09 pm ---You weren't interested in the Civil War era? Oh, for some reason I thought you were. Weren't you a reenactor for a while, or am I imagining that? And I guess when I think of reenactors I mainly think of the Civil War.
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No, for American history the interest is mainly the Colonial period. I tend to lose interest about 1763. ;D The reenacting was SCA, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (for me mostly the Renaissance, or, actually, up to the early 17th Century).
Jeff Wrangler:
The April 19 issue was in my mailbox today. On my way up to my place, I looked at the table of contents, and my eye was immediately caught by the entry "Band of Brothers: A lost monument to doomed lovers," and I kind of went, "Oh. ..."
I wasn't even out of the elevator before I read the short article, and it turned out to be exactly what I thought it would be. It's an article about the discovery of the monument and mass grave of the Sacred Band.
The Sacred Band was an elite military unit of the Ancient Greek city-state of Thebes. It was composed of 150 pairs of male lovers. The unit was undefeated until it was wiped out to a man in a battle with the forces of Philip of Macedon and Philip's son Alexander (the future "the Great").
The article first gave me goosebumps, and then it made me momentarily choke up. It happens that I just finished re-reading The Last of the Wine, one of Mary Renault's novels of Ancient Greece. The novel takes place at the time of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, and the central characters are two young Athenian men who are lovers and warriors.
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