My Own RE:public – Page 24 – … of life, of literature … & MORE

A stitch in time

Elsewhere I have waxed lyrical about the working of thread into fine material as a most appropriate metaphor for the creative process. A finely crafted tapestry may be the outcome. Fifty years ago another tapestry was stitched, one of word and music; fine threads with names like “Will you love me tomorrow”, “It’s too late”, “I feel the earth move”, “You’ve got a friend”; all brought together to produce a work of beauty – Carol King’s “Tapestry”. Reluctantly I give away my years, when I say how much this album meant to me as a young thing. May I say very young! And to mitigate more, perhaps my recollections are from a time just a little after its first release.

In the above linked tribute in The Guardian, beyond the artistry of the music and lyrics, Rickie Lee Jones mentions the cover (here’s a Wiki link, as the copyright on the artwork seems unclear), and I too have it etched upon my brain – barefooted, jeans clad, long locks, the direct gaze that seems to say politely but firmly “I have to get back to my work!”. A window seat seemed to me one of the higher forms of luxury. Looking at it again, the vinyl of days gone by replaced with a CD picked up along the way, I see my memory deceived just a little because for some reason I remember a guitar and not a cat. King’s cat was named Telemachus. Penelope it was who weaved and weaved as she awaited Odysseus’ return, defending with her wits and industry the honour of her son and family.

Carole King – It’s Too Late (BBC In Concert, February 10, 1971)

Carole King’s work is on Spotify and most every other platform, and here is her official website with, amongst other things, announcements around and about the anniversary – which includes the release on YouTube of videos (see above) from the BBC studio concert given shortly after “Tapestry” came out.

A life being lived

“Tom Stoppard – A Life” by Hermione Lee, pub. Knopf, 2021

I would not necessarily seek out a biography of Tom Stoppard, renowned as he may be and as interesting as his life has been and is (and tragically more so than even he realised for a long time); but when the biographer is Hermione Lee one’s curiosity must be piqued, and for reasons as noted in this very good piece in The New York Times in anticipation of the forthcoming release of Tom Stoppard – A Life in the United States. Firstly, while she has previously brought her craft only to women and secondly, only to the dead; Stoppard doesn’t fit the bill on either of those counts. It should also be said Stoppard pointedly sought out Lee, and not just because she is the best, but because he wanted it to be read – which sort of suggests he may have been thinking of a reader like me.

The NYT piece is about the Stoppard work to be sure, but more generally it is also very enlightening about Hermione Lee’s way of telling a life – ways (pl.) really, because for each she works at adopting a voice particular to that of her subject. The book has actually been out for some time in the UK, and this review in The Guardian is well worth a read.

Virginia & Vita

A pre-publication extract in The Guardian drawn from Alison Bechdel’s introduction, alerts me to Love Letters: Vita and Virginia by Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, published by Vintage (Penguin) on 4 February.

“Love Letters: Vita and Virginia”,
Vintage Classics, 2021

As things will have it, I am deep in Volume Three of Woolf’s diary, and therefore in the period when Virginia’s first tentative interest in Vita is beginning to evolve into something more. And though I have read some of these letters in the past in other collections, brought together and standing alone, this very affordable little tome is a must have!

The sum of their parts

“The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett.

Be its beginning in a matter of daring or of jest, by mistake or with deliberation, the act of passing, and in respect to racial identity, is not unique to the United States. But, with a relatively young history so defined by slavery and migration, it is the place that has long provided the most fertile ground from which to spring complex narratives of personhood – and to feed a hungry national imagination. And it is within this context, that Brit Bennett’s best-selling novel of last year The Vanishing Half finds its place.

“The Vanishing Half” pub. Random House (2020)

The title hints at where this novel may take the reader. Brit Bennett’s protagonists are the Vigne twins, Desiree and Stella. Twins are oft sought subjects in many branches of scientific research; for reasons that are as obvious as they are many. And most especially so should they be separated at birth; growing up under disparate socio-economic conditions, a nature versus nurture debate would be the consequence. However, as a fictional narrative device, twins with all their particular character attributes have been surprisingly neglected.

Bennett gifts us such a literary pair. Desiree and Stella, are not separated early in their lives, and so not the best fit for scientific experiment; in fact, they grow up together in small town Louisiana of the 1940s and 50s, intimately bound in one another’s shadow and shared experience, both bearing the trauma of witnessing as children the lynching of their father, wanting only to escape the cruel hand dealt to their mother. And, what a peculiar small town this Mallard is! Populated, and most deliberately so, by “coloured” folk determined to get less so as generations pass, and the home-town twins a shining example of do-it-yourself social engineering. A different sort of experiment. (I can’t help but wonder whether such a place as Mallard ever really existed, but it could be an imagined “coloured” – and uppity – version of Zora Neale Hurston’s Florida town of Eatonville in Their Eyes Were Watching God, which was inhabited and governed by Black people, and based on the real Eatonville that was the childhood home of Hurston. To digress: Now that is a novel I love, and must say something about sometime soon!)

Still together as teenagers, and on not much more than a whim, the girls flee their suffocating nest to the city of New Orleans. And, in search of what? Freedom, perhaps. Perhaps, not explicitly that for which their forbears had yearned for and fought for, but some how akin. As alike these light skinned pair physically, so different are they in temperament, but circumstances and chance then determine their fate – and that they will not share, for their ways now part. For the serious, reticent Stella it will mean leaving behind her very self; choosing instead a path paved with deceit, and for Desiree, in youth the so much more adventurous of the two, there will be only some years of adventure – ending badly, and back in Mallard. But both will bring forth a new generation; daughters who must make their own choices, but each burdened with those made by their mothers.

Every day is a day to remember…

…but maybe some more than others, and at least provides for an opportunity to link to a really nice and informative site dedicated to today’s birthday girl. Though, she seemed not to enjoy her birthday very much (with the exception of funny little gifts from Leonard) – too much did it remind of the passing years – and may not appreciate this reminder from her distant future – or on the other hand, perhaps delighted at being remembered still!

Happy 139th birthday, Virginia Woolf!

Blogging Woolf.org

And then there was light …

Amidst all the dark tidings from the world’s metropoles, some light at the end of the tunnel came with the New Year opening of the Moynihan Train Hall annexe to Penn Station in NYC.

Moynihan Train Hall, Opening Day 1st January 2021, by Garrett Ziegler, CC BY-SA 2.0

And this gives me the opportunity to speak to Michael Kimmelman’s verdict at The New York Times. (Kimmelman, their architecture critic whose opinions – for instance, on the perversion of “the classical” that I linked to from this post – and multi-media projects, like last year’s virtual walking tours of NYC, are always impressive.)

Firstly, Kimmelman lauds the very fact that, in these extraordinarily stressed times, such an immense public works project could be fulfilled – and within schedule and budget! And with plaudits for all those concerned – from the architects, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and construction engineers, Schlaich Bergermann to Gov. Cuomo and all those in-between. Placed in the historical context of its original function as a general post office and mail sorting facility (later named the James A. Farley Building, and from the same firm of architects, McKim Mead and White, responsible for the old Pennsylvania Station opened a couple of years previously and demolished in 1963), beautifully described (and pictured) are the sky lights and trusses as ” […]aerial feats of sculptural engineering and parametric design.” And recognised are the tributes paid to the original Penn and Charles McKim in the arched windows inspired by the Baths of Caracella and the geometric, hanging clock, designed by Peter Pennoyer.

Original Pennsylvania Station 1910 (demolished 1963)

As a with all contemporary public projects, the realist Kimmelman acknowledges the role of commercial and retail influence, but is satisfied that, for the moment at least, these haven’t intruded excessively into the public space, and that the main hall has been designed with utilitarian motives and not capitalist; passenger service as the imperative. And that the space has been magnificently served by art installations courtesy of the Public Art Fund.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Barnes!

“Der Mann in roten Rock” [Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2021]

As the years proceed, birthday greetings – given and received – become almost perfunctory, and especially so when they are between peoples unknown; a ritualistic give and take encouraged by the echo of an omnipresent media. But, an interview with Julian Barnes in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (on the publication in German of The Man in the Red Coat), alerted me to his approaching seventy-fifth birthday; and that it falls on this 19th January day. Much more than just an admired romancier and essayiste; a very favourite person who had the right words to share with me when I most needed them. So, here, I simply remember that; and to no-one in particular, I say: Happy Birthday, Mr. Barnes!

Caste awry

Adam Shatz talks with Hazel Carby, January 12th 2021

This podcast is an accompanying conversation to Hazel Carby’s essay in the current London Review of Books (Vol. 43 No. 2 · 21 January 2021) on Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents; published to acclaim last year. Carby’s argument, like all those that go against the grain, is provocative. Interesting, is that the critique comes from a wider, global perspective of race and the historical complexities of the greater Black diaspora; and ironic, in that it is precisely with this broader brush that Wilkerson claims to make her case in her comparisons with the Indian caste system and Nazi Germany. But, Carby argues, Wilkerson is in fact bound by, and limited by, national constraints (be they inherited or learned), and constructs her “origin” story accordingly; one that depends on a (United States of) American exceptionalism.
Carby does make at least one very persuasive argument; in that I am persuaded to add Wilkerson’s book to my reading list! Beyond that, only a reading will tell.
(I often wonder about the considerations that lead to a book title change; why and to what end – aesthetic, linguistic, marketing. In the LRB review above, “Caste: …” is (mistakenly?) subtitled as in the US, but in the UK it seems to actually have been published as Caste: The Lies that Divide Us.)

January 17 2021: As I intimated above, prior to hearing this podcast, only positive takes on Wilkerson’s book had come my way, but a newsletter that I receive regularly from Jamelle Bouie (which always has something interesting to read, think about – and sometimes to eat!) has just suggested this review by Charisse Burden-Stelly in the Boston Review, in which, similarly to Hazel Carby, she considers “caste” to be an inadequate, even misleading, terminology under which to talk about race in the United States. Their critiques may differ in emphasis, but both reviewers dismiss this (imported) system as too rigid in structure and too dependent upon popular acceptance to lend itself to the complex interplay of politics, class and resistance in a volatile, changing social construct such as that which has evolved – continues to evolve – in the U.S.