David Shields's Reality Hunger: A Manifesto has been eagerly anticipated by many, including The Millions. While I consider David a mentor, he is also someone I have enjoyed and from whom I have learned by disagreeing with as much as anything. In this context, we had a spirited exchange about RH: In fact, we got rather carried away, so we will be publishing this interview in two parts, today and tomorrow.
Explicit self-exhibition has become such an integral part of contemporary culture: You seem to both posit the reality of this, and argue for its artistic interest and vibrancy — in RH: AM and also in your previous nonfiction work. Is there anything you think is being lost as a result? I am thinking just now of the late J. Seems to me a very old-fashioned, high-modernist distinction—between the artist paring his fingernails high above the planet, and the work down below, to be studied and envied.
Without exception, such works are those that risk everything on a personal level, from St. AM features many different kinds of lists. What is it about lists that interests you? Why do you think readers love lists so much? Why am I interested in lists and why do readers like lists so much? Because lists remind us of the randomness of the world, the insane heterogeneity and voluptuousness of the world, and the list evokes that in us. At that point I had a decision to make about how to read the book, i.
My ideal reader is not going to be a quote-spotter or a cite-sifter.
- Mignarda Editions.
- Francos Map.
- Formats and Editions of Celestial harmonies [theranchhands.com];
- WHY?...BCUZ;
I very much want the reader to experience a certain vertigo when reading the book—is this Shields? Is it some odd combination of the two? Is it all of us? Just as a work of fiction might be based heavily on quotation Finnegans Wake , anyone? I want to claim for nonfiction the same license and freedoms as fiction writers and visual artists have done for centuries.
The two arguments overlap: I want work that defies genre, and I want work the author of which and the provenance of which is debatable, that is to say not fixed, that is to say alive. How much of the ideas and arguments you explore in the book boil down to problems of semantics — and in that sense are unresolvable, a kind of running-in-place? These are the central questions, yep, and they have no definitive answers, yep, but the book is best read as an anti-manifesto manifesto, is it not?
I include many statements that argue against my premises; I argue against myself; I show the psychic underpinnings and artistic yearning underneath my manifesto. Is this ultimately a book about the certainty of uncertainty? Seems to me close to a rhetorical question. A book about the certainty of uncertainty. Hard to think of a better description. Many people look to religion in this way, i. Do you have a sense that RH: AM primarily reflects contemporary life, in its blur, chaos, mix-and-match experience; or is your vision that the book will also effect a shaping of the culture, of lived experience?
The latter, with a bullet. I have the vainglorious hope that the book will shape the culture. That has to be the goal. A follow-up, then -- you write: The Chekhov line is fingernails on a blackboard to me. The end-point of all this is that serious work is at the very least deeply shadowed, deeply tainted by sadness and failure. A strong thread throughout RH: AM is a refutation of the novel in its conventional, plot-and-invented characters form.
You write, for instance, [Writing fiction] feels like driving a car in a clown suit. We want to pose something nonfictional against all the fabrication—autobiographical frisson or framed or filmed or caught moments that, in their seeming unrehearsedness, possess at least the possibility of breaking through the clutter. What would you say to novelists like myself who feel that in fact fiction is the more honest, less clown-like medium? You think of that as a fiction? I will say, however, that I pretty much stole the activating premise — of meditating on celebrity — from Remote. I tend to try to kidnap work for the nonfiction canon.
And for writer after writer after writer I see that their best work is their essayistic work, in my view. Let us Now Praise Famous Men. What we have here is a dead shark. Can we not shock it awake? Read Part Two of this interview. Cancel reply Your email address will not be published.
Ebook Free Prime Harmonia Cælestis German Edition Pdf Djvu Fb2
Our country is built on these two primal sins: How I shape my story, mold it, form it and direct it is my craft, but it's already there on some plane that I'm accessing as I write. It is a symphony of stillness and neutrals in stark contrast to the constant motion, precise convictions, and easy chatter of the man who inhabits it.
He apologizes for having nothing to offer but ice water, but is generous and forthright in his conversation. Mendelsohn is the author of two memoirs, The Elusive Embrace and The Lost , as well as a translation of the poems of C. He has a Ph. Yet his lean freelancing-and-grad school, ramen-eating days remain a favorite topic, as do current movies and TV shows.
You wrote about all of the things I was going to ask you. There goes my thunder. Then there was this great outpouring in the literary community. The New Yorker emailed me and said do you want to weigh in on this? I thought the way the discussion was trending, should negative reviews be published, seemed so egregious. I just wrote it in one white hot sitting.
This is very important to me. And I laugh, because this is not a day job. This is what a lot of my mind inhabits. What makes a critique meaningful?
User activity
If everyone is not really a critic, where is the magic? We all have opinions, and many people have intelligent opinions. Nor is it the case that great experts are good critics. I spent a lot of my journalistic career as a professional explainer of the Classics—when I first started writing whenever there was some Greek toga-and-sandals movie they would always call me in—so I developed the sense of what it means to mediate between expertise and accessibility. You use the word magic, which I very well might make part of my stock Homeric epithet about criticism.
I know a good critic when I read one.
Critics have weak spots and strong spots according to their personalities. I think good critics avoid their weak spots, the things you dislike for reasons that might not be totally kosher. What is vitiated in this project of criticism right now is the consumerization of everything. Everything is should I get it?
Should I not click? And what do critics give? They give their opinion. And it should be a meaningful opinion, and have something to back it up. Traction is the word I always come back to. It has to have a purchase on something. I like that idea of the opinion. No judge says this is the law of the cosmos. He says this is my opinion based on everything I know which should be a lot. They match up a writer with a subject. I in a million years would never have chosen to write about The Producers. Bob was very insistent. And in the end it was fruitful.
For the record no serious critic goes into a job planning to do a takedown. All I heard about Mad Men was that it was great. So I was excited. Why does everyone else love it but not me? That becomes the germ of the piece. To pick up on what you were saying before there can be a danger to staying in your comfort zone. You have your schtick, right? And sometimes you can just not have something to say. Bob wanted me for years to do a big piece about John Cheever. When the Library of America volumes were coming out. And I spent six months working on this piece. I read every word of, about, for, and by John Cheever.
So I said this is a waste of your money. You mentioned loving the New Yorker critics of the 70s and then elsewhere you named Henry James , Susan Sontag , Gore Vidal , and Aristotle as critics who influenced you. Is there anyone else you feel like has molded you as a critic?
I would certainly say Gore Vidal had a huge influence on me. The best thing about Gore Vidal was even when he was writing about something he knew intimately he never came off as academic. I still remember a piece he wrote about Montaigne. It was always conversational, engaging. In terms of influences those early people— Andrew Porter , in the New Yorker , I learned more about music from him than I did for the rest of my life.
Ebook Free Prime Harmonia Cælestis German Edition Pdf Djvu Fb2 | Site For Free Ebook Download.
Particularly opera, which is a great love of mine. And [ Helen ] Vendler. Look, not everyone is a Vendlerite. She has a kind of voice. I still remember this thing she said when Jimmy Merrill died which made an incredible impression on me. Your first obligation is to do your homework, obviously, read everything, but there is that subjective magic. Those were the people: They just seemed to have authority.
It made that an attractive idea: Or they are specialists writing for specialists. Which becomes a kind of crazy Dog eating its tail. He is someone who strikes me as a novelist, and these essays are a smaller part of his output. He should be making novels out of them, not essays. I was working on that piece in , but I had reviewed The Corrections when I was book critic at New York magazine which I had very much liked. Certainly the Mad Men thing was just out of control.
It took me a little by surprise. But that demonstrated the intensity of the phenomenon I was describing in the piece: I found myself having arguments with nineteen-year-old skateboarders in Seattle. Here again I would say my Classics background influences me because when you are a Classicist you are learning how to read a culture through more specific readings of buildings, tragedies, comedies, whatever. In that sense I think it can be your job not just to look at the text itself but to look at the cultural surround, which is why in a piece like that one is allowed to mention the action figures, the Sesame Street episode.
The compositions are conceived for a course lute in Renaissance tuning, but may also be played on an 8-course lute.
This edition contains only the lute solos without added instrumental parts as they were originally conceived. Mandatum novum by Cosimo Bottegari. Volume One of Mignarda Editions' long-awaited performing edition of the Bottegari manuscript is now available for shipping.
The Bottegari Lute Book: Volume One contains music for voice with lute from the manuscript, including all the sacred music with Latin and Italian texts, the complete lute solos, and some of the more important settings of madrigals arranged by Bottegari for solo voice with lute. The edition is formatted for performance and only one exceptionally long piece has page turns. Fortuna Desperata by Antoine Busnoys. Mignarda Editions is very pleased to present an anthology of music from late fifteenth-century France and Italy.
Also featured are settings of chansons for lute solo from the Capirola manuscript as well as new arrangements. Included are texts, translations, and editorial notes. As always, Mignarda Editions are carefully formatted for performance with text underlaid and no page turns. Mignarda Editions presents a rare selection of airs de court from Jean Baptiste Besard's printed work, Thesaurus Harmonicus , a publication famous for its errors. The cantus of each air is transposed to conform with a lute tuned in G.
The edition includes variants, translations, lute solos, and performance notes. Several vocal settings are paired with intabulations for lute solo of the same piece, either from original sixteenth century sources or arranged by the editor for performance purposes. Also included are fantasias and recercars that are linked thematically to the vocal pieces.
All songs are set for a lute tuned in G and most cantus parts are in the treble clef. His imaginative and highly decorated lute songs, found in the Bottegari manuscript, appear to represent the oft-depicted sixteenth century practice of playing the lower voices of a madrigal on the lute while singing an ornamented version of the superius. French tablature for renaissance lute in G and treble clef. Ron Andrico is a specialist in historical music for plucked strings and has had an active career in solo and ensemble performance, vocal accompaniment, recording, as an arranger, and in music for theater.
Since , he has been concentrating on the lute and is known for his work in editing historical sources of lute music, producing results both scholarly and practical. He is the author of the internationally-popular blog, Unquiet Thoughts. I use it every day with my archlute.
I find it to be clearly set and a delight to read. Thank you for this fine work. You have some great ideas, and the layout is very user-friendly! Web site by Donna Stewart, Eglantyne Design. A Pilgrimes Solace Sfumato: Musica per voce e liuto del Rinascimento Italiano Harmonia Caelestis: French chansons of the 16th century Duo Seraphim: Edward de Vere and his circle Divine Amarillis: Iberian composers While most informed lutenists of our age understand the significance of sacred repertory from the 16th century, many players stop short of exploring the music in favor of the dance tunes and fantasias.