Tuesday, May 13, 2008
6/7) "Bartleby," directed by Jonathan Parker (Outrider) and Ralph Rumney, "The Consul: Contrbutions to the History of the Situationist International and Its Time -- Conversations with Girard Berriby," translated from the French by Malcolm Imrie (City Lights)
Yes, Crispin Glover is believable as the clerk whose purposeful withdrawal from work, passive resistance to termination and finally refusal to vacate his office even after the concern that hired him has vacated the premises slowly drives his boss David Paymer mad -- as he is as Adolf Hitler, as Bartleby appears in one of Paymer's nightmares. Not that the tale, which in its present-day setting owes as much to Mike Judge's 1999 film "Office Space" as to Herman Melville's 1856 short story, can't play differently in real life. "One evening, during our time at Canterbury when I taught art, I was a bit worried because one of my students had barricaded himself inside a kind of shelter he'd made out of his canvases," the late painter Ralph Rumney (1934-2002) recalls in ruminations over his travels with the European avant-garde. "He refused to come out or to communicate. Despite my superiors' wanting to call the police and the student psychiatric services, I got an agreement that we would do nothing until the next morning on the grounds that he might see things differently after a night's sleep. Michhle [Bernstein, with Rumney and others a founder of the revolutionary artists' group the Situationist International in 1957, and Rumney's second wife], had told me the solution was simple: I had only to give him Melville's 'Bartleby' to read and everything would sort itself out during the day. Which is exactly what happened." Bernstein knew how terrifying the story really is.
8) Charley Patton (1891?-1934), "Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton" (Revenant), con't.
Sausalito Slim writes: "I'm avoiding trying to totally rewrite yet another piece for the Great Metropolitan Newspaper (they now want only 'interview-based' record reviews, whatever that's supposed to mean. Me: 'So, Neil Young, how come your new album sucks?' NY: click). They held on to my Charley Patton piece for six months, then rejected it after the box set didn't win a Handy Award, because it wasn't 'newsworthy.' And Revenant said they couldn't set up a phoner with Patton because he's been hanging with Mingus lately, and he's convinced him that letting the white man call him 'Charley' is demeaning."
9) Hobart Smith, "The Coo Coo Bird," from "Songcatcher II: The Traditions That Inspired the Movie" (Vanguard)
These selections from 1960s Newport Folk Festival performances make it plain that Doc Watson was one of the dullest traditional singers ever to record and that Hobart Smith, a Saltville, Va., banjo player who died in 1965, was one of the most fierce. Surrounded here by Dock Boggs, Clarence Ashley, Fiddlin' Arthur Smith and Roscoe Holcolmb, he sounds as if someone or something has set him on fire, as if his only chance to escape is to run right out of his own skin.
10) "R. Kelly, R&B Star, Is Indicted on Child Sex Charges" (New York Times, June 6)
"Chicago, June 5 -- R. Kelly, the Grammy-winning R&B singer, was indicted today on 21 counts of child pornography after the authorities said he made a sexually explicit videotape with an underage girl that has been selling in bootleg versions on street corners across the country ... In a statement released this afternoon by his Los Angeles lawyer, Mr. Kelly said, 'Even though I don't believe any of these charges are warranted, I'm grateful that I will have a chance to establish the truth about me in a court of law.'" "Smacks of a desperation ploy," writes one correspondent: "his one and only chance to be mentioned in the same breath with Chuck Berry."
Thanks to Perfect Sound Forever
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