LIT SERVICE

posted by James Reel

I admit it: I have friends and acquaintances in literature studies (English, German and French), and I myself have a lit-oriented bachelor’s degree (French). But I have long complained that, especially at the graduate level, lit studies have been so consumed by competing critical theories that the programs are now concerned almost exclusively with theory, not literature. What a relief to discover that mine is not a voice in the wilderness; or, at least, there’s another wolf howling in the distance. Here’s part of what Bruce Fleming, a professor of English at the U.S. Naval Academy, writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

The major victory of professors of literature in the last half-century — the Great March from the New Criticism through structuralism, deconstruction, Foucauldianism, and multiculturalism — has been the invention and codification of a professionalized study of literature. We've made ourselves into a priestly caste: To understand literature, we tell students, you have to come to us. Yet professionalization is a pyrrhic victory: We've won the battle but lost the war. We've turned revelation into drudgery, shut ourselves in airless rooms, and covered over the windows. … We're not teaching literature, we're teaching the professional study of literature: What we do is its own subject. Nowadays the academic study of literature has almost nothing to do with the living, breathing world outside. The further along you go in the degree ladder, and the more rarified a college you attend, the less literary studies relates to the world of the reader. The academic study of literature nowadays isn't, by and large, about how literature can help students come to terms with love, and life, and death, and mistakes, and victories, and pettiness, and nobility of spirit, and the million other things that make us human and fill our lives. It's, well, academic, about syllabi and hiring decisions, how works relate to each other, and how the author is oppressing whomever through the work. The literary critic Gerald Graff famously told us to "teach the conflicts": We and our squabbles are what it's all about. That's how we made a discipline, after all.

The full article is here.

LOCKED AWAY

posted by James Reel

A wine blogger I follow is saddened by the notion that a remarkable French collector of 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century wines wants to place his 20,000 bottles in a museum. That means 20,000 corks that will never be popped (not that all that wine is drinkable anymore, anyway); thousands of fantastic wines, now difficult to obtain, will never be tasted.

I can sympathize with blogger Alder’s position. Imagine a vast library of books and recordings that can never be touched. Actually, such libraries have effectively existed for a very long time, because their access privileges are so restrictive. At the British Library, for example, even certified scholars have had to go through all sorts of credential contortions to get their grubby hands on certain items. But at least a select few have gotten to the books; what if nobody could? What would be the point of such a library, or museum? Why not just rely on a catalog of titles, and not waste space with the objects themselves? Forgetting about wine for the moment, does a medium of communication—a book or recording or painting—have any value at all if its line of communication is cut off? Well, yes, it may have value as a rare physical specimen, but it ceases to exist as a conveyor of information. In that sense, a museum or library may not really fulfill its mission of preservation.

GUNS, HIPPIES, PANINI

posted by James Reel

Talk about the Christmas rush … forget shopping; it’s the almost last-minute reviewing that’s kept me busy. Here’s what I have in the latest Tucson Weekly. First, a review of a surprisingly good musical at Invisible Theatre:

I know what you're thinking, because I thought the same thing--and we're both wrong. Invisible Theatre is putting on _Gunmetal Blues_, a musical inspired by the gritty 1930s-'40s private-detective stories of writers like Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler. It rattles off lines like, "The rain on my face was a washrag full of straight pins." You can't really take that seriously unless it's coming straight from Hammet or Chandler. And this is a musical, remember, in which two of the stars are longtime regulars at Gaslight Theatre. You're thinking: This is just another silly, fluffy spoof. But you're as wrong as stilettos on a choirboy. Sure, _Gunmetal Blues_ starts off as a send-up of more noir clichés than you can list on a corpse's toe tag, but the writers, actors and director take their characters' emotions seriously. They're using some well-worn conventions to tell us a story about people worth caring about, not laughing at.

The full review awaits you here. Then there’s a very good production of a not good show:

_Hair_ is tremendously important in the history of American musical theater. Opening on Broadway in 1968, it was one of the first real rock musicals; it brought nudity and profanity to the stage; and it left in its wake a series of court decisions that liberalized American censorship laws. Unfortunately, _Hair_ is not a very good show. It features three or four enduring songs, but its first act is an irremediable mess; its characters have less depth than an R. Crumb cartoon; and its plot, such as it is, boils down to a simple question: Should Claude burn his draft card and continue to frolic with his hippie friends, or not? _Hair_ is not effective as an anti-war protest or a pro-love rally, yet it will soon be revived on Broadway after a Central Park run this past summer, and Arizona Theatre Company has mounted its own version of the show. However limp _Hair_ may seem now, ATC has done a terrific job of giving it new life and body.

The rest of the review can be found here. I hope you haven’t lost your appetite, because I also contribute a Chow review this week:

I avoid chain eateries as much as possible, but sometimes in the line of duty, I must review such establishments. Sertinos Café (it lacks an apostrophe, but the corporate office does like the proper accent on the "e") is a franchise outfit based in Portland, Ore. It's part Starbucks-style high-end coffee shop, part deli sandwich shop, part ice cream parlor. The newish location at Tanque Verde and Bear Canyon roads is partly ordinary, and partly very nice--which is better than the franchise/chain average.

The full review is here.

TIME CAPSULE UNCAPPED

posted by James Reel

Have you read about those acoustical recordings, mostly vocal, buried in a time capsule at the Paris Opera a century ago, recently unearthed and being prepared for issue on an EMI CD? They document the work of Enrico Caruso, Nellie Melba, a prime Parisian wind band and other performers. It isn’t as though the recordings have been missing for a hundred years; most were commercially available at the time. But the sound quality of these unworn copies is much better than you’ll find on other surviving versions (although there’s a great deal of hiss). If you’d like to sample the recordings before the CD comes out, visit this French EMI site and click on the images. The performers and compositions will be identified in French on a little bar above the graphics as you roll your cursor over them.

Listening to old recordings like these, you can realize how free and personal interpretations were back then, compared to today’s nose-glued-to-the-score practice; but you can also hear how technical standards of performance have improved in the interim. Some of the professional singing on the old recordings sounds amateurish compared to what you can hear today in any music school or conservatory.

DESERT VOICES

posted by James Reel

Is it Thursday already? I’ve lost track of time, what with all the deadlines I’ve had to meet (I know, losing track of time is not a good thing to do as deadlines approach … and recede). Yesterday alone, I cranked out three scripts for the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music radio series and a little 450-word magazine news item. Today all I really have to do is write a restaurant review, so I can surely find the time to direct you to my latest contribution to the Tucson Weekly:

Is it a sign of gay-rights progress that Arizona and California voters have denied homosexuals the right to marry? It's progress if you consider that 20 years ago, the issue would not even have been placed on a statewide ballot. Now, it's an inescapable question, because--whether social conservatives like it or not--gays and lesbians are part of the American mainstream. They're so mainstream, in fact, that they're integrating their institutions: You no longer have to be gay to sing in a gay chorus. Desert Voices is celebrating its 20th anniversary this season. It started out as a social activity for uncloseted Tucson gays and lesbians who didn't have many options beyond the bar scene. Today, it's a serious chorus that includes gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender members, and is even about 30 percent straight.

Read the rest of my Desert Voices story here.

CHRISTMAS STORIES

posted by James Reel

Last Thursday I never got around to posting a link to my Tucson Weekly contribution, it being Thanksgiving and all, and since then I’ve just been too busy to blog, what with a whole lot of December 1 magazine deadlines hitting me, as well as a 400-page manuscript for a lizard field guide that I had to proofread for a publisher. Anyway, now that that long sentence is over, back to business as usual. This time, it’s a two-in-one review of holiday Christmas plays:

The first two holiday theatrical productions to hit the boards this year couldn't be more dissimilar: an affectionate, family-friendly comedy from Gaslight Theatre, and a subversive, dark comedy from the new Unlikely Theatre. Take the kids to Gaslight, but don't let them anywhere near the other show; don't even let them read the review, because it contains naughty words that nobody wants to believe Santa and his reindeer could utter.

Learn the awful truth here.