…or maybe not – of course not; not this day! For this one gifted to us nearly a century ago, and more recently to have become a quiet but special celebration of literary reflection.
This year the weather plays its part as written (by Virginia Woolf, and today – in Germany anyway) and though bad tidings continue to whirl (wars and pandemics; in the here and now as once they haunted the streets of 1922 London), there is always some time to give to a Dalloway Day. At the Royal Society of Literature there are some links for this year and previous years, but the embedded clip below is something lighter and bit different.
This Lit Hub video is a good-humored discussion; presenting some transatlantic perspective through the person of Elif Batuman in conversation with the young, Black and British writer Yomi Adegoki. Though they divert quickly from talking specifically about Virginia Woolf, it was not before Batuman set the tone of the discussion by relating the peculiar atmosphere of unresolved grief, personal and societal, that pervades Mrs. Dalloway to her own method of working in these uncertain times. Specifically, the hazards of moving between writing as a journalist, concerned often with matters of the real world, and those of the novelist which can’t help but reach into an interior life for inspiration. Such so-called ‘life writing’ brings with it responsibilities – to one’s own self and to others. These were, of course, concerns that Virginia Woolf was aware of and attended to in her own way; this to be discerned in an informed reading of Mrs. Dalloway.
In the process of posting at the end of last year on the film Passing, I considered Imani Perry’s review of that film, and in glancing Perry’s Wikipedia profile I was alerted to her role in a recent interesting art transaction; from which arose questions to do with ownership of art and the responsibilities that come with that – to the artist and to the public arena.
As reported here at Artnet, Perry was in fact the owner of the Amy Sherold painting Welfare Queen (2012), which was sold at auction for a sum way beyond the estimate. Controversy ensued on a number of fronts. Firstly, Sherold’s own dissatisfaction that this work which she herself sold to the fledgling collector Perry, for the first time and under generous circumstances, a decade ago, should now be auctioned; destination unknown. (Sherold articulates her disquiet on the matter in a statement to Culture Type.) And this leads, of course, and as the Artnet piece considers, to the matter of re-sale equity conditions. Mostly one would think in “royalties” (no pun intended!) but equally so in terms of due “care”, and I think it is this latter that grates so at the artist. Perhaps not all, not even most, artists have this as an imperative, but it seems for this Black woman artist a transaction has more worth than the almighty dollar; rather is an act of passing on the guardianship of her work, her art, her intent. An honorable intent.
Welfare Queen, oil on canvas, Amy Sherold, 2012.
In her lot essay for Phillips (something else that raised eyebrows; normally the prerogative of a qualified other, not the collector), and the above video, Imani Perry enthusiastically states her highest regard for the artist and the painting, and (in the essay) her wish that the new owner will be similarly disposed. I suppose it is no one else’s concern … well, Amy Sherold may be entitled to a legitimate interest … but one has to wonder, should the painting have meant so much to Perry, why on earth did she unload it at all, let alone let it loose to the highest bidder in the capitalistic playground of the auction house? As I say: not my business! For Ms. Perry: good business, perhaps. As I write, I can’t track the buyer which seems to indicate that it was not purchased by a public gallery and is destined for another private collection. Hopefully, one with an interest in its public display, because, for all the reasons Perry says, it is a powerful work that invites reflection and identification in many ways, and especially in respect to stereotyping – based on race, gender, class – created very often through political expediency and becoming entrenched through language (‘welfare queen’) into societal norms.
Diverting, I also note that in her essay Imani Perry remarks upon the painting being a constant companion and inspiration during the last years and in the course of her own creative endeavors, right up to the writing of her latest book, so I should mention that that book, South to America – A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, was in fact published last month by Harper Collins. There is a sample reading on the publisher’s website, an adapted essay (regarding New Orleans) at The New York Times and also there, a (middling to good) review by Tayari Jones.
Should you be unsure of quite where to place Amy Sherold, you may remember, as I do, her celebrated 2018 portrait of Michelle Obama; now hanging in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. Well, usually! For now I see, through until May this year, it is on a nationwide tour – with its other half so to speak!
some tidings, though not unexpected, when they do come still jolt one to the very core; so it is with the death of one of the United States’ finest writers.
Joan Didion: December 5, 1934 – December 23, 2021
There could be very few who have not been bedazzled by the beauty and coolness – in structure and syntax – of Joan Didion’s prose, the integrity and incisiveness of her investigations into the American culture and society of the last half century – uncompromising, often going there where it is at its very darkest. Who could not have appreciated her intellectual brilliance and the finest sense of irony that she brought to her stories – be they fact or fiction? As I have done, how many others have cried with her and for her – because of injustices done or out of grief crying to be heard; knowing well that all those tears are really for oneself – perhaps as the writer, Didion, would have wished? As a chronicler of, not only her time and her country, but her inner self with all its contradictions and human frailties and failures, Didion has no peer. She will remain present, until she is not.
The New York Times is full of accolades – here is their obituary, and tributes from two generations -a younger represented by Parul Sehgal and, old habits die hard, Kakutani (luck or subscription whichever comes first!). Available, for the moment at least,(edit. Jan 7 2022) Available to subscribers, this very famous 1991 essay written for The New York Review of Books about the trial of the Central Park Five in which Didion deconstructs the prosecution’s arguments, exposing the racial profiling and the political pressures about which they erected their case. Be warned, thirty years ago long form was really that – long! And every word, every page worth it. As prescient as the issues she raises in here essay were then, regrettably they remain the reality to this day.
This afternoon I watched again Griffin Dunne’s 2017 Netflix documentary about his aunt (I had a need to return to her – Christmas or no Christmas!). Not everybody was satisfied if I remember, and it cannot help but be a labour of love, but the warts are there to be found, and I liked it. Here is the trailer on YouTube:
Now the following I haven’t seen; but also available on YouTube is the 1972 film “Play It As It Lays”, for which Didion wrote the screenplay with her husband John Gregory Dunne based on her 1970 novel.
Screenplay by Joan Didion, based on her 1970 novel of the same name.
Didion speaks of this film not very favorably – something like “not what I wrote!”- in the abovementioned documentary, but it’s there asking to be watched! (As a side note, I find myself wondering: whatever happened to Tuesday Weld?)
With Berlin’s International Literature Festival, another cultural event made tentative steps back to normality last month. I read with great interest Leïla Slimani’s opening speech in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung and fortunately it has made its way into the wide world with an English translation in pdf format available here. Also, I suppose in the interest of the “International …” bit, Slimani delivers her address in English so I have embedded the YouTube video (54:00) below. (I have to say, with opening passages that invites her listeners to join her in a thought experiment, Slimini immediately outs herself as a Virginia Woolf acolyte; for such is a technique not dissimilar to that which Woolf often used in her speeches (including those that were to form the basis of “A Room of One’s Own”). Sure enough Woolf is quickly catapulted to center stage; the direct quotes come from a wonderful 931 essay called “Professions for Women” – to be read here, and found in many anthologies of her work.)
Opening 21st International Literature Festival, Berlin, September 2021
A star of the literary scene in Europe and beyond, Leïla Slimani carefully constructs an argument that is concerned with some of the contemporary tendencies; ones that stifle constructive discourse and shy at the complexities of literature. Having encouraged us to (do a Virginia Woolf) and brutally kill off the angels within; she reminds us of the fates of the famous, the notorious, the literary heroines of yore; how little girls are molded to fit an ideal and come of age conditioned to please and in fear of transgression; how our voices are so often curtailed or silenced. And it is here, and with her own experiences, she connects with the fashionable preoccupation of renegotiating the past, of speaking at one’s own peril! For, she maintains, we must speak up, and without trepidation, without fear of reprisal (yes, of being cancelled.) Writers and artists (but we all really) must have the freedom to break down walls and resist categorizations and assumptions – and this can only be achieved when we are in command of our voice. There is more, so whether watched or read or both, Ms. Slimani’s words are well worthy of our time and thought.
Having now done so, and following the recent talk surrounding Slimani’s new book, In the Country of Others, the first of a trilogy and this one set mostly in post-World War II Morocco, and with very much familial biographical elements, I surprise myself by the realization that I have not read any of her work (slender though it is; to date only three novels) – even successfully “not reading” Lullaby (The Perfect Nanny in the US) her controversial, prize-winning and best-selling novel of a children-murdering nanny (well, that’s the short version, presumably there is much more to it than that). Why I deemed this a success on my part I couldn’t say. Subject matter? Aversion to hype? The first would imply an over-sensitivity that I would be quick to deny; the second, an affliction that I have often overcome. Whatever the reason, its status suggested it as an appropriate literary starter. But alas, at least here in Germany, it remains so popular that I must wait my turn at the local library.
However, the German translation of her 2015 first novel Dans le jardin de l’ogres, which was published outside France in 2019 after the success of Lullaby, was available. All das zu verlieren, meaning literally in English “everything to lose” and which was published as Adèle in English, was certainly a difficult introduction to this lauded writer. Normally, perhaps, I would have read the dust-jacket blurb and thought: well, rather not. (I swear I am of an age where I struggle with contemporary twenty-somethings or thirty-somethings with husbands or wives and/or lovers, kids, parents – none of whom understand them – doing what they sincerely believe to be radical!) What could this Adèle, for that is the thirty-something (with husband and child, et cetera) subject’s name, have to say to me?
In the digital magazine, Aeon (very accessible and very much to be recommended) “Great Art Explained” series: the famous Hokusai work, The Great Wave off Kanagawa (circa. 1830) in a short video (also on YouTube and embedded below) explained.
And, exceedingly well explained in my opinion; especially informative is the greater look at the rigid class hierarchy of the Edo period from which ukiyo-e (simplistically put: the traditional Japanese wood block prints of the time) sprung, and evolved – from its folkloric, hedonistic beginnings to a broader range of subjects that, with Hokusai, would find inspiration in the landscape. Mount Fuji would replace the Kabuki actor as the star of the popular print.
The video, then, is not just about one work, nor one artist, but offers a glimpse at an art form rooted in the traditions – cultural and technical – of Japan but, with a nation’s opening up to the world after two centuries of self-imposed isolationism, that was to be influenced from without (for instance; away from the human form as prime subject, Prussian blue ink, perspective techniques), and then, in turn, to make its own mark on movements elsewhere, especially on the impressionist and post-impressionist movements in 19th century western Europe. (This Wikipedia article on ‘Japonisme’ is informative in this respect.) Not dissimilar to the to and fro of waves – both great and small – falling upon shores – near and far- in a continual rhythmic exchange; dislocating silt and sand from one place and depositing it in the next.
This latter observation reminded me of a – to then be sought out again – stunning interactive piece last year from Jason Farago, and still on the NYT website (for those with access). Linked to here and headed A Picture of Change for a World in Constant Motion, Farago investigates another Katsushika Hokusai print, “Ejiri in Suruga Province” from his renowned cycle “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji.”. Without the iconic appeal of “The Great Wave”, Farago does however excavate from this work an awful lot of stuff that feels contemporaneous, and connects our fast and furious times to the frenetic pace of life on the brink of modernity at the turn into the last century; in disparate regions of the world with cultural traditions in opposition only when considered under a purely chauvinistic gaze.
In this tenth print of the series, the wave metaphor has been blown away by the wind – the winds of change perhaps; more than fishing vessels on high seas threatened, their crews bowed, praying in unison, the mighty Mount Fuji made minute, this landscape, while treacherous still and with a winding path difficult to traverse, it is well-peopled by those taking their destiny in their own hands, doggedly facing down the head-winds.
And, if all that was not enough, the master is to feature in an upcoming exhibition at the British Museum; Hokusai: The Great Picture Book of Everything (30 September 2021 – 30 January 2022) – a recently acquired collection of small drawings, rarely before seen. The exhibition website is a wellspring of information, and includes an online look at the entire collection.
As said in the previous post, legendary amongst many, is the Monty Python “parrot” sketch” (sometimes called “The Pet Shop”); this I have always understood to be a parody of the linguistic flights of fancy [sic!] we have taken (at least in the Anglophone world) to avoid speaking plainly on the subject of death. I must admit to being fundamental in this regard, and even the oft used “pass” and its derivatives (-away, -on, -over), though inoffensive, irritate me madly.
When all’s said and done we share the same fate. So, say it out loud, that what needs to be said: be it parrots or people, let dead be dead. Or is it: “bleedin’ demised”?
Introducing John Cleese and Michael Palin and a stuffed “Norwegian Blue” in “The Parrot Sketch”!
There are few works of contemporary fiction that have left their mark as profoundly as Colson Whitehead’s 2016 best-selling, prize-winning novel, The Underground Railroad. A magically realised narrative, a tour de force that takes the reader on an uncompromising journey amongst souls, alive and dead and and in the murky depths in-between; through their suffering and degradation; on a restless search for absolution for sins not committed and some dignified resolution, and to be granted sanctuary; a place to call their own, a place to rest without fear or sacrifice – even when it be the final.
In only three sittings I have brought to a conclusion Barry Jenkins’ brilliant adaptation of the novel. Presented as a ten part series on Amazon Prime, I would have to say that this is a format very well-suited for such an intellectually and viscerally powerful work, and I am not sure it could be easily pared down to feature film length. (I really wasn’t looking to sign up for another streaming service, but the chatter of late had become so intense and the temptation too great.)
Admittedly, some of the opening scenes are discomforting, even threaten to overwhelm with their brutality, but there is this one undeniable reality – the barbarity of slavery – that must be confronted before the layers are stripped back to lay bare the soul of the characters – in whatever world they inhabit and wherever their journeys may lead. The alert viewer will recognise early that Jenkins is operating on multiple planes of narrative filmmaking; not just that of a stark, unadulterated realism, but that which blends tangible human experience with the emotional response and psychological mechanisms without which those experiences could not possibly be endured – memories and dreams; as alive as the cotton boll, as the whip, as the next to be lynched, but holding the promise of a way to freedom.
Another outstanding aspect of the series is the haunting soundtrack from Nicholas Britell that accompanies most every frame; conjuring an extraordinary atmosphere of foreboding, of unrelenting disquietude, of an unresolved tension between the living and the dead. As a taster, a guest essay by Scott Woods – excellent read – in today’s New York Times led me to the following on Vimeo (fifty odd minutes, so give it time); Barry Jenkins visual homage to his extended cast is augmented by Britell’s musical composition. (And, here is a wonderful NYT Magazine piece on Britell, and a close up on his collaborative creative process with Jenkins. )
Starring a cast of many from Barry Jenkin’s “The Underground Railroad, and with score by Nicholas Britell
On the Vimeo site is an informal and insightful text written by Barry Jenkins; describing the circumstances under which the accompanying film evolved during the greater film-making process. An act of seeing, and with the black gaze, a tribute to his players and the histories of all their shared ancestors. A gesture of gratitude, of respect, of love.
[…]we have sought to give embodiment to the souls of our ancestors frozen in the tactful but inadequate descriptor “enslaved,” a phrase that speaks only to what was done to them, not to who they were nor what they did. My ancestors – midwives and blacksmiths, agrarians and healers; builders and spiritualists, yearn’ers and doers – seen here as embodied by this wonderful cast of principal and background actors, did so very much. […]
Jenkins may well think that should he never make another film, he has left some work of substance in his stead – I read this the other day – and, of course, that is so, but after watching and thinking about The Underground Railroad, I await, and with confidence, the realisation of that which is yet to come.
Much has been said and written about Virginia Woolf’s 1931 novel The Waves, and as the 90th anniversary of its publication approaches, BBC Radio 3 featured on Sunday (& perhaps only available for a limited time) a programme focusing on the musical, lyrical attributes of this, perhaps her moodiest, most experimental work.
To begin with, I was intrigued by Woolf’s novel having been the inspiration behind Steve Harley’s “Riding the Waves” from 1978. That was a long time ago, and listening to it now there is a familiarity; whether because of a recognisable turn of phrase or the rhythms of Cockney Rebel I am not sure – a definite Woolf connection I remember absolutely not.
Riding the Waves, Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel
As Harley readily admits, he takes the words out of Woolf’s mouth, or rather from the pages of her novel, but it is a warm tribute to a long dead female writer who quite obviously touched the soul of a young vagabond minstrel in the wayward 70s.
Different is Max Richter’s composition XVI. The Waves: Tuesday (from Three Worlds: Music from Woolf Works, Deutsche Grammophon, 2015) that brought to an end Wayne McGregor’s 2015 ballet “Woolf Works” for The Royal Ballet. A beautiful contemporary piece that fuses elements from the classical with electronic acoustics to capture the essence of the novel – and Virginia Woolf’s life. Listen well; imagine the ebb and flow of tides, the waters lapping and seeping through sand and upon rocks, clouds scuttling across the sky above. Just like the characters in her novel as they traverse time, waves are forever in motion – rising and falling, drawing near and receding into the distance. Becoming but a memory of their former self … only to reassemble and reemerge again. A haunting reminder of time past and the promise of rebirth. Richter’s musical meditation re-imagines the rhythm of nature and life.
XVI. The Waves: Tuesday
And the prologue? Tuesday. Written in her famous hand on the upper right hand corner of that final note; known to touch even the most hardened amongst us. Beautifully spoken by Gillian Anderson, perhaps capturing the sonorous quality of Woolf’s voice that also has its place in legend.
