My Life and Thoughts

There was only one disappointment for me in Leipzig, which is that I didn’t see any Bach impersonators at all! Not even one!  After my Continental travels, however, I spent a few days in London, where I unexpectedly got my fix of weird impersonators in powdered wigs, at Dr. Johnson’s House, whose exhibits include a continuously running DVD documentary in which a Samuel Johnson impersonator talks about his furniture, and also soliloquizes before a painting of his beloved black servant, Francis (”Frank”) Barber.

So that is already great… but here is another great thing about London: their Review of Books, which has just published an essay I wrote about “graphic novels” (issue of April 10).

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Patient readers! Since I got back to San Francisco last week I have been going about my business, waiting for the moment when a beautiful beaming woman would come up to me and exclaim: “Du hast einen Blog geschrieben!” But, contrary to cultural stereotype, she is not very punctual, this beautiful German woman, so today I take matters into my own hands.

My recent travels began in New York where I was, as always, delighted to see all the sad young literary men. On March 7, I visited Keith Gessen and Marco Roth at n+1’s new offices in Dumbo. Gessen, whose new book, All the Sad Young Literary Men, comes out in two weeks (it is really good!)…

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Truly New York is the city of constant drama.   I had been in this magical city for scarcely 12 hours (8 of which I had spent asleep), when my mother’s iPhone was stolen while she was on the elliptical trainer; then we somehow both ended up getting haircuts. 

So, this will not be a long post—but I did want to share with you a piece of wonderful news for Bach impersonators (brought to my attention by the promising young Germanist, Na’ama Rokem).  Finally, twenty-first-century computer modeling techniques have been put to the task of producing a historically accurate three-dimensional reconstruction of the head of Johann Sebastian Bach.  Not a moment too soon, gentlemen!

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In the continuing story of my beautiful friendship with German literary culture, I am happy and honored to report my participation in the 2008 Krautgarden literary series, comprising two sets of readings by young German and American writers, on March 7 at the “Krautgarden Loft” in Chinatown (New York), and on March 14 at Leipzig’s Baumwollspinnerei, former site of the Continent’s largest cotton mill.

Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei

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