Monday, June 29, 2015

In which we get all artsy fartsy

Not much going on in Debateland, this being the summer and all. I’m giving myself another week before I go into the Yale setup on tabroom. The Pups put it up themselves, no doubt based on last year, so it should be mostly okay, but given that CP secretly updates it every 27 hours, one never knows, does one? Over the weekend I posted a whole bunch of coach jobs for Bronx Science on NDCA; looks like a complete turnover. That’s a tough one, replacing everyone under the sun. It’s hard enough to replace one person, going by the other local postings. Oh, well. It is what it is.

We went up north this weekend, ostensibly to see the Van Gogh exhibit at the Clark, but also just to see what they’ve done to the Clark overall. Nice job: the galleries really flow well. The pix weren’t bad either. A few revelations, but mostly just an interesting and focused display on V and the natural world. We also went to Edith Wharton’s house about an hour south of Williamstown, in Lenox. She lived there with her husband, and got to design things according to her own lights (she was big on that sort of thing), but honestly, while the house was nice and pleasant, I was more taken by the various thematic displays. While a pretty big Wharton fan, I can’t say I knew too much about her war work, which was fascinating. She lived in France during WWI. In fact, she only lived at this house, the Mount, for a relatively short period of time. She’s more interesting than the place, in other words. I got a bit of an itch to do some rereading. I read all the big novels before getting to Ethan Frome, which is burned into my brain. That’s another one of those books that they should never assign to teenagers to read. They’re too young for it. Of course, I have plenty of complaints about what is assigned to teenagers from the so-called canon. Chief among this is ATOTC, which as far as I’m concerned is the least fun of all the Dickens novels. Perhaps the most entertaining author in the English language, so let’s make everybody read his least entertaining book. Of course, maybe that’s just me, and the world at large thinks it’s his best. Not that it doesn’t have its moments, but compared to BH or OMF, or even DC? Pull-eeze. Maybe, aside from a nodding acquaintance with Scrooge and company, CD is another author educators shouldn’t teach teenagers. Can’t say I’ve met many teenagers who don’t think CD is death on two wheels. The joy of his work has been beaten out of them.

Along these lines, there’s Wharton's buddy Henry James. I tried to read James in college, and aside from getting through the short stuff like Daisy and Turn (which were packaged together in my paperback), I just didn’t get it. I said to myself then that I’d wait until I was older, and I had Portrait on my reading table for about 30 years. When I finally got to it I devoured it. To everything there is a season… Novels where not a lot happens openly are probably not the best things for young people. There will be time enough for those books after first getting through the more lively ones. I read Trollope’s He Knew He Was Right during my most recent vacation. There’s a lively one for you. With all the hoopla for his bicentennial, there’s been plenty of articles, but the one that struck me as most relevant was a comparison of him and CD, where the latter was described as the more poetic author. True, I think, but the article's point was that where Trollope has him beat is in his female characters. Say what you will about CD, his women are dreadful. Trollope’s are alive and remarkably memorable (I have yet to get over falling in love with Lady Glencora).


Oh, well.

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