MY LIFE AND THOUGHTS

In my capacity as a D-list writer, people sometimes mail me books of poetry.  I don’t always know why this happens.  Usually there is some form of an advance warning, like, “Heads up!  I’m gonna send you the first English translation of the works of the twentieth-century Chuvash national poet!”  On the other hand, I recently received, out of the clear blue sky, with no note or anything, a fiftieth anniversary edition of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Coney Island of the Mind—I am still confused about this, but of course very grateful. 

Well, a couple of months ago I got an email from a certain Preeti Majumdar, suggesting that I might enjoy a book called Kamal: Book One: “a novel in verse of five cantos, in structured, mostly iambic tetrameter or pentameter rhyme, totaling 5,472 lines,” written by a New Zealand poet called Zireaux, and edited by “Bernardo Winson, Ph.D., New York City.”  (You can read an excerpt here.)

The Turkish people have a very wise saying: “Free vinegar is sweeter than honey.”  In fact it is very rare that I say “no” to free anything.  So I sent along my mailing address, and it was a matter of time before I received the volume in question, generously shrink-wrapped in some 300 layers of shrink wrap, which I eventually penetrated in order to reveal an interesting cover illustration, depicting what appears to be some kind of human piano-hammer (right).

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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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After my recent post about Vampire Weekend, I got an email from my friend Sam Frank (a former copyeditor of n+1, a current music reviewer for Dusted, and a future editor of Triple Canopy), forwarding me the links to two reviews of Vampire Weekend—pro- and anti-—in the Village Voice. Reading these pieces, I found myself musing upon the reasons why I don’t like music reviews, which is what I’m going to write about today.

The main reason I don’t like pop music reviews is their increasing bent towards political criticism. Music reviewers have developed a whole lexicon (“precious,” “twee”) to pass off sociopolitical critique as aesthetic critique. It’s true of course that music can be an effective instrument of social change, but it’s not like there aren’t other, more direct instruments out there (teaching in schools, lobbying Congress, etc.). So why has social progressiveness become the privileged benchmark of musical merit?

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Recently I was amazed and delighted to receive an email with the subject line: “Translation of your Moretti-review to the German.” Finally, like Kathy Griffin, I am approaching the level of the D-list “global empire”! The message was from Kevin Vennemann, a novelist and translator upon whose credentials I am unable to comment in any detail since his web page is in German (a language which I am very embarrassed not to know, even though The Confessions of Felix Krull is one of my all-time favorite books). But, see for yourself, he is a good-looking guy.

Kevin Vennemann ©Juliane Henrich	Ein Schritt weiter: Die n+1-Anthologie

“As you might know (I hope so),” Vennemann’s message began, “I am currently working on a translation of several n+1-essays for a n+1-best of-collection to be published with Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt next year.” In fact, this was the first I had heard about a German n+1 anthology. Eager to learn more… (more…)

In October, for reasons discussed in the previous entry, I made a solemn vow not to write any more book reviews. Then what did I do but take on two book reviewing assignments anyway.

The first of these two reviews—about Soul and Other Stories, by the twentieth-century Russian writer Andrei Platonov—is scheduled to run on December 26, in a holiday book section in the New York Sun.

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