Discoveries: Arts and Culture

I find I can hardly finish my New Yorker before the next one arrives on Thursday of each week here in E Bay SF. In the October 26 issue, I read Leo Robson's "Delusions of Candor", yet another portrait of Gore Vidal's arrogance, as perceived by others.  Was reminded of "Burr" today in a bookstore in Berkeley when someone wanted a new biography out, "Aaron Burr", of the former one, as Burr is Vidal's relative.  What is fascinating about this account is the material about him and Anais Nin!  It is the thread which ties the piece together and is a revelation. Then, there is Elizabeth Kolbert's review of the new book about Humbold, "The Invention of Nature:  Alexander von Humboldt's New World" (Knopf) by Andrea Wulf, an author and dweisgn historian who lives in Britain. She argues for the relevancy of his ideas, especially the "Green ones". I know who Humboldt is; he was connected with plant exploration with Joseph B...

Enjoyed a 45 minute performance of a dance inspired by poems of Jane Hirschfield.  These lines were from "A Cottony Fate", ... It troubles the mind/as a held out piece of meat disturbs a dog/  Now I too am sixty/there was no other life. "      from The Beauty (Knopf, 2015),  I heard her read in the lunch hour series at UCBerkeley when this book was released. "China" from "Come, Thief"  (knopf 2012).  This was my favorite, for obvious reasons of my own journey...... “ China Whales follow the whale-roads. Geese,  roads of magnetized air. To go great distance, exactitudes matter. Yet how often the heart that set out for Peru arrives in China, Steering hard. consulting the charts the whole journey.”  ―  Jane Hirshfield ,  Come, Thief  and "It was Like This:  You were Happy from "After" (Harper Collins, 2006).  Used by permission of Jane Hirshfield.     It Was Like This: You Were Happy It was like...

I read the recent New Yorker this afternoon, and the article on Primo Levi really moved me. It is entitled, "The Art of Witness" with a subtitle, "How Primo Levi survived", by James Wood. It reminded me when I attended the Primo Levi tribute at Princeton University, with Lili Kahler. W.S. Merwin spoke at this event.   He was with the native Hawaian woman with whom he had an important relationship.  I never learned her name but met her and she was beautiful, and I knew he loved her. Primo Levi was important among all the chroniclers of the holocaust.  I had read Peter Matthiesen's return to Auschwitz, in his PARADISE...where he was examining with others, present the signifiance of this place. It was moving, in his seeking, and he died shortly thereafter; it was published posthumously. A beautiful sentence:   "The word becomes the monument, even as Levi disowns the building of it."  Levi writes of his friend, Eiulia Vineis:  immune to the poi...

Walked beneath the redwoods in the groves in the Samuel Taylor Park, on Sir Francis Drake Highway, near Pt. Reyes.   Lovely spot; walked for three miles, crossing bridge and bubbling creek, a real luxury in California, where Coho Salmon and trout swim, and saw black tailed deer, along with chipmunks, and identified beautiful Douglass Fir.   Like Rittenhouse in Philadelphia, who early established a paper mill, Taylor provided all the paper for the newsprint in SF, from his mill here in the early days the park commemorates his presence and contribution. 

I have failed to read all of Rushdie's books but this new one, a fantasical one, intrigues me. His interview surprized me as he is essentially without belief at all, and has lived in New York City, which he feels has embraced him for more than a decade.  Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty Eight Nights has a Sherazade theme    As Joyce Carol Oates says, " This is history, jubilantly mixed with postmodernistic magic realism.  "  Ursula Le Guin says, "Brillinant...Rushdie's sumptous mixture of history and fable is magnifent."  I received an autographed copy at the Nourse Theater lecture of Arts and Lecture Series, and plan to read it. At last, I have seen and heard(from row 2) one of the great figures of our time.

Translator at UC Berkeley Such a pleasure to see Amitov Ghosh again, at UC Berkeley, in the third of his trilogy, all of which he has presented at UC Berkeley.  I met him in Shanghai at M on the Bund, when he started his trilogy on the Opium Wars.  We talked genially, before I realized who he was, as he was sitting in front of me, during his wife's presentation. I was then researching botanical expeditions, and the tea gathering, done in India and China by the British, as they were addicted to tea, whereas they exchanted opium from India, through their handlers for their tea from China....  Ghosh tells us the military history, the local history, the whole story which has not been told, even in historical accounts.  

Katrina Dodds grew up in Brazil, being Portuguese and Viet Namese, and dedicated herself to this translation.  She met Mozer on her Fulbright and he provided her this project and edited her translations. It was a pleasure to meet her; she read Lispecter in the original Portuguese in Brazil. She has worked hard on the translation and the NYT gave her front page coverage and review in the Sunday NYT Book Review. 

Paul Theroux wrote the "Iron Rooster" from a train journey in 1986-87, the very year I was in China, and of course, I read it, and then enjoyed many of his little novels about life in SE Asia, and tonight, heard him speak about America, in terms of the deep South.   He was critical of the Clintons, as the airport in Little Rock is named the "Hillary and Bill Clinton airport", and yet there is so much poverty in the state.   He says that people live off the land.  One of his more memorable quotes, which gives you a sense of where he was coming from, is: Raccoon?  Squirrel?  They is mighty good eatin'" He proceeded to give us the recipes and then told us how he gains trust with local people.  He tells them he is a retired geography teacher! Noone recognizes him.   He says the best way to gain information about people is to sit down at a meal with them.  He thinks America could be developing its industries and employing Americans in these states, in...