Tristine Rainer's 'Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin' (2017)

Tristine Rainer, Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2017.

An insightful and entertaining journey, focusing on the period from the early 1960s until Nin's death in 1977. We learn a lot about Rainer's lives -- inner and outer -- and about Anaïs Nin and some of her core relationships. There's also much about the creation of art through living and writing -- including the interconnection of diaries, memoirs, novels and essays. 

Synchronicity: in the last post -- on James Brown and the American South -- James McBride discussed the use of "masks" by people in order to live in the world. Here, too, Rainer and Nin delve into the same concept, with a Jungian flavor.

Nin had spoken a Jungian "riddle" about persona masks: "The mask should be held eighteen inches in front of the face." (page 330)

Who is the inner person, and who is a projection, or is there any difference? (Good question in the Age of Trump).

Tristine Rainer: "I had confused a lot of masks with myself. . . Anaïs certainly had worn masks, too -- dazzling creations, their beauty attracting her followers . . . Maybe she was saying that personas, while seductive and useful, are not the dancer, and like the dancer's fan, they can be discarded, replaced, or retrieved when the music changes." (pages 330-331) 

Rainer quotes Hugo Guiler, speaking to Anaïs near the end of her life: "You were a creature of flight and had to fulfill your nature." (page 345)

Anaïs tells Rainer: "You must complete yourself . . . You must own your own wildness!" (page 213)

Rainer's description of meeting Henry Miller in 1965 is mordant. Anaïs needed his blessing in order to publish her diary volumes with him in it -- he was all the rage in 1965. His novel Tropic of Cancer, finally published in the USA, had been cleared of obscenity charges by the Supreme Court in 1964. 

What Rainer saw in Miller, then seventy-five: "When Henry opened the door to his surprisingly conventional white ranch house [in California], I saw a bald troll holding onto a walker, and my heart sank. Anaïs air-kissed his wrinkled, sagging cheeks." And: "His troll eyes twinkled." (page 241).

My only wish for any new editions of Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin?  An index.

Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998), with whom I became friends near the end of his life, told many gripping stories about Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin. He knew them both and corresponded with them, but especially with Miller. He was a great correspondent and also sent me several letters, which are now part of the Wallace Fowlie Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. It gives me a tingle to note that letters from Anaïs Nin to Wallace are in Box 2 and letters to me from Wallace are in Box 5. Here's a link to the guide. 

It's a small world after all -- as Tristine Rainer writes about so well. 

p.s. Anaïs Nin is often thought of as purely French, but her parents were Cuban and she spent much of her life in the USA. 

Today's Rune: Growth. 

Divina Commedia: Inferno

Next up is Wallace Fowlie's A Reading of Dante's Inferno (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981). It's fun to read The Inferno without any guide, but Fowlie's work makes things much easier to decipher even after the fact. 

Each chapter has a "Principal Signs and Symbols" section. Here's an important tidbit from Canto 2: "Three images of help: in the order of their appearance in the poem, Beatrice, Lucia, and Mary; in the order of their help to Dante, Mary, Lucia, and Beatrice (Fowlie, page 29).  

Saint Lucia, aka Saint Lucy. She can be found just about anywhere, starting in Europe from Italy to Sweden and Spain. She's not just for Catholics anymore.  

Saint Lucia in a work dating close to Dante's time (Dante lived from about 1265 to 1321 A.D.)  In painting, a Little Red Riding Hood phase?

One can read Fowlie's book in a jiffy. As for Little Red Riding Hood, this tale may trace back 2,000 years or so. For more about its origins and spread, here's a link.

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune. 

Wallace Fowlie's 'Poem and Symbol: A Brief History of French Symbolism'

Wallace Fowlie, Poem & Symbol: A Brief History of French Symbolism (University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University, 1990).

I love international interplay, and among those French poets broadly termed symbolists, we have Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) inspiring Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) and Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898), who in turn have inspired T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Patti Smith, Dum Dum Girls and onward.

But let's get back to Baudelaire via Fowlie: "The word associated with Baudelaire in the new aesthetic credo was bizarre. In announcing in his salon of 1855 that 'le beau est toujours bizarre' ('beauty is always strange'), he indicated that the artist's attraction to the strange is an element of . . . personality and separates [the artist] from [the majority of people], who submit easily to the conventional and the traditional, who prefer not to be startled by originality . . ." (p. 5). Exactly.

"[I]mpulses that often manifest themselves in the subconscious -- fantasies, hallucinations, and sentiments of fear -- and which in most . . . are not allowed to develop represent the sources of experiences in [humanity's] moral and physicial life. The artist, for Baudelaire, feels a desire to know and explore such fantasies that border on dreams and nightmares." (p. 5). Absolutely.

In a section on René Char (1907-1988), Fowlie continues: "The poetic act is a finding of a form for things that otherwise would never emerge from their abyss or their silence or their possibility . . . The risk of poetry is precisely this responsibility of the poet in the action of drawing poetry from the poet's sleep and from his [or her] subconscious." (p. 146).

"There is a price to pay for feeling deeply and for writing as a poet. That price is the daily assumption of peril." (p. 147). Indeed. 

Today's Rune: Growth. 

Mallarmé

Wallace Fowlie, Mallarmé. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1970; originally published in 1953.

Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) romps through Stéphane Mallarmé’s life (1842-1898) and writings, providing English translations and comparisons with interconnected poet-writers like Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire along the way. Not neglected are Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Marcel Proust, or Paul Valéry, nor Symbolist painters such as Odilon Redon, or composers Richard Wagner, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and others. 

Symbolism is oft the name given to Mallarmé’s “style,” which is related to all of the above.

I’ve chosen a handful of Fowlie’s quips that may or may not shed light on the creation of poems specifically and artistic impulses in general. It’s your call.  

“The poem is the surviving mystery.” (p. 188)

“The legend of Mallarmé’s life was the great work dreamed by him, the unique work destined to subsume all other works. But it was never composed.” (p. 194)

“A doubling of the consciousness is indispensable for the artist.” (p. 197)

“The struggle of the artist to create out of the chaos of experience is not unlike a tempest of nature. The mystery of all art is the seeming chance, a throw of dice . . . out of which an order of logic and construction is achieved.” (p. 218)

"Poetry is a game of risk, of magic and incantation. Its meaning is always hidden under the brilliance of its images and the unusualness of its analogies.” (p. 223)

“At some point or other in the fabrication of [a] poem the poet is helpless and useless before the gift of chance.” (p. 226)

“The experience of religion for Mallarmé seems to have been completely merged with that of art, and particularly joined with the experience of theatre and music .” (pp. 235-236)

“The dead move and have their being in the words they leave. To live is to endure dangers, to move from one disaster to another.” (p. 247)

“First as a man  [Mallarmé ] made himself different from other men. And then as a poet he celebrated language, the sanctity of language, as a new Orpheus.”  (p. 287)

And so adieu: a salute to Wallace Fowlie and Stéphane Mallarmé.

Today's Rune: Strength.

A Reading of Proust: Take III

Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998), A Reading of Proust (London: Dennis Dobson, 1967; originally published in 1964).

Let's bring this show to a close, for now, with a few more observations:

"No one knows exactly what anyone else is thinking or plotting. Every one knows only partially, or suspects, or believes he [or she] knows. Such approximations of knowledge and ignorance account for the human comedy and . . . tragedy. These two terms have to be used simultaneously, because in Proust comedy is always tragic." (p. 128).

"According to Proust's canon, only the artist, when functioning as artist, is fully conscious." (p. 147).

"A work of art is the life of the artist. Marcel has just made the momentous discovery that a record of this life resides in the deepest part of himself . . . And he is the only one able to read this book, or to decipher it." (p. 262)

"The milieu, the world described by the novelist, is not important. What is important is the reflective power of the novelist, his [or her] ultimate value as a mirror." (p. 265). 

I think what he means by this is that choice of setting, world, genre, etc., can be anything, if it's done well. Whatever works. 

Finally: "An individual life is so bound up with the lives of the men [and women] of his [or her] time, and with the very existence of the world, that there is no end to his [or her] mystery, no clue to his [or her] absolute reality. Analogy is the only principle by which we begin to understand the mystery of human life." (p. 268). 

Today's Rune: Harvest. 

A Reading of Proust: Take II

Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998), A Reading of Proust (London: Dennis Dobson, 1967; originally published in 1964).

There's so much to cover here that I'll compress these ideas into three snippets, with brief responses.

"[W]hat is communicated between two individuals is at best fragmentary and usually susceptible of radical misunderstanding." (p. 100). 

This reality is both comic and tragic. Anyone can know -- even from social media alone -- how often glancing is our actual communication, usually coming down to Iggy Pop's cartoon news watcher, reducing most responses to either "Approval" or "Frown." (Social media time is like a roadrunner). One's immediate circle will understood much more, but such deeper understanding will still be incomplete -- while our self-understanding will probably also remain incomplete and subject to change. 

“[W]riting is not a transcription but a reordering of life . . . [O]bjective reality is never fully knowable. All that we can hope to have from it is illusions, and the artist’s work is the record of these illusions.” (p. 109).

This is true regardless of genre, format, or intention. We simply cannot transcribe real (or fictional) lives -- even our own -- or events -- with anything close to full accuracy in the sense of chronicle or diary. If we tried, we'd be spending more time writing about one day than in having lived it in the first place. (See James Joyce, Ulysses, 1918-1920). 

“The artist looks at the world freshly and does not see it in the same way as others, trained by habit and custom, see it. . .”  (p. 109).

This is the best part of artistic impulse, no doubt. Even if there may very well be a lag time (if ever, except for the sporadic and blessed peregrine) before this freshness is understood by anyone else beyond a small coterie, it's worth the effort of trying.

Today's Rune: Signals.   

A Reading of Proust: Take I

Wallace Fowlie, A Reading of Proust (London: Dennis Dobson, 1967; originally published in 1964).

I originally read this in the late 1980s after meeting Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) in North Carolina, and still find it interesting and helpful, not only about Marcel Proust -- one of the great and enduring global authors -- but also in its observations about art and writing. Some brief samples follow.

"A literary work is not a copy of life, but the development and . . . deepening of an original intuition. The permanent law of all art is the necessity of choosing . . ." (p. 7).

"If a novel is looked upon as a creation . . . it will inevitably call to mind the analogy with the Creation of the world." (p. 8).

"The artist does not rival the universe, he [or she] is a universe unto himself [or herself] . . . The creation of the novelist, according to one of Marcel Proust's most cherished beliefs, is more 'real' than life . . ." (p. 15). 

"An artist expresses not only himself [or herself], but hundreds of ancestors, the dead who find their spokesman in him [or her]." Because of this, the conscious, psychically aware artist will oftentimes be creating with a certain gravitas.

"The Book ends by becoming, in the language of the poet [Mallarmé], an instrument of the spirit . . . in which the smallest detail has some meaning." (pp. 35-36).

"[Henri] Bergson's distinction between two egos, the social ego (le moi social) with its discursive knowledge, and the real ego (le moi profound) which is intuitive and and continuous, residing below the social self, will be brilliantly illustrated in Proustian psychology." (p. 37).

"[The poet Charles] Baudelaire and Proust were both deeply and persistently conscious of the vanity of man's ambitions, of most . . . achievements and even of . . . existence, and yet their work retains and consecrates the poetry, the magic  and the beauty of certain moments of life." (p. 40).

In Proust, "the  principle becomes clear to the narrator that the past which seems lost because it is time elapsed is not lost. It is within us, and ready, under the appropriate circumstances and the appropriate stimuli to return as the present . . . Time is constantly destroying the present. But memory is able to restore the past . . ." (p. 55).

And: "A lifetime is required to understand life" (p. 84) -- or even a substantial part of it. In a strange sense, life's past moments become more important in the act of remembering them, funding them with deeper meaning than could have been understood the first time around.

D'accord. Today's Rune: Signals. 

Wallace Fowlie and the Art of Letter Writing

Professor Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) of Duke University was in his eighties when we corresponded. I first met him right after a lecture he gave that showed the connections between French poet Arthur Rimbaud and Jim Morrison: we struck up a brief conversation that led to later ones. These chats were supplemented by letters when either of us was traveling or otherwise hunkered down with work.

Wallace's letters, after a first brief introductory note, were almost invariably of an ideal length -- two pages. They were sometimes typed on his Olivetti but usually written with a pen.  What we discussed in epistles --as in person -- ranged from writing, reading, teaching, French literature, music, movies and general matters pertaining to art. I learned much from him. What I provided in return was an enthusiastic listener-reader plus some fresh insight into contemporary music.

Wallace Fowlie is a satisfying example of what can result from actively respecting and engaging worldly people -- particularly ones who happen to be over the age of 65. 

Seek and ye shall find, and listen well when you do, whether you meet once or a hundred times. Cherish, treasure and record for posterity -- my motto.

An example of one of Professor Fowlie's letters from our correspondence can be found here.

In 2015 and beyond, there's nothing to prevent letter-writing, especially when the medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan put it. Letter writing is prevented only because of "a need for speed" cultivated by the disputive tendencies of modern communications; that is to say, because of 21st century impatience and the desire for instant, even if only ephemeral, gratification. 

As Gore Vidal used to quip from the Ancients, "life is short, but the art is long."

I'm open to new correspondence. If anyone would like to write, I'll send you my mailing address. Email me, if you wish, at: efrance23@gmail.com
And tally-ho!

Today's Rune: Strength.   

Pilgrimage to Memphis: Done Gone to Graceland

O seasons, O castles, 
What soul is without flaws? 

(Arthur Rimbaud, circa 1871)

Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.

(Rimbaud, A Season in Hell, 1873).

I believe I am in Hell, and so I am there.

(Rimbaud, A Season in Hell, 1873).

"I say one must be a seer, make oneself a visionary. The poet makes himself a seer by an immense, long, deliberate derangement of all the senses."

(Rimbaud letter, 1871)

Once, I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.

(Rimbaud, 1873).

Elvis Presley (1935-1977), RIP.

Today's Rune: Movement.  

Note: English translations of Rimbaud (1854-1891) derived from Wikiquote (open source). I changed a translated word in one instance, from "seer" to "visionary."

Marcel Proust: Du côté de chez Swann (1913)

All right! Du côté de chez Swann / Swann's Way  (1913) hits one hundred today. This calls for remembrance of things past, the search for lost time, and time regained. I raise high my glass in salute. 

One of my most memorable reading pleasures remains finishing Proust's complete cycle, À la recherche du temps perdu. And I'm certainly not alone in this the world over. 

For the record, traces of Proust are revealed in films ranging from Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep (1945)* to Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris' Little Miss Sunshine (2006) -- and the beat goes on. 

Du côté de chez Swann / Swann's Way is a good place to start Proust, come to think of it. Swann and Odette de Crécy and l'amour fou ~ a most memorable start, indeed.

Proust's intricate, finely wrought sentences are a wonder even in English translation. For example, from Du côté de chez Swann / Swann's Way:

"When from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection" (Wikiquote translation).

An easy way to sample Du côté de chez Swann / Swann's Way is to check out Volker Schlöndorff's Un amour de Swann / Swann in Love (1984). But beware: sensuality is depicted! 

Today's Rune: Joy.   *William Faulkner, a Proust admirer, was one of the screenwriter-adapters of the 1939 Raymond Chandler novel.

Dreaming in French, Part III: Susan Sontag's Way

The main Susan Sontag (1933-2004) part of Alice Kaplan's Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis (The University of Chicago Press, 2012) provides a substantial backdrop to her life, covers her intense 1957-1958 Parisian residency, then looks at her life and career afterwards, though not detailing much about her many years (1989-2004) with Annie Leibovitz, her last partner.

Because Kaplan was able to go through voluminous notebooks and other manuscripts, this thick middle section is sometimes dizzying to keep up with on a first read-though. One thing is certain: born in New York, having lost her father as a small child, and relocated to Arizona presumably due to her asthma, Sontag had a strong desire to escape her circumstances. Which she did -- inspired by French literature, among other things.

I was happily surprised to learn from Dreaming in French that another Francophile, my old buddy Wallace Fowlie (1908-1988), helped her clear a significant academic hurdle at the University of Chicago in praising and passing her junior paper on Djuna Barnes' 1936 novel Nightwood.  Fowlie was her fourth reader, brought in by her principal advisor, Kenneth Burke, to save the day.

It was also gratifying to read Kaplan's comparison of Susan Sontag's married, with child life to that of the Jeanne Moreau character in Louise Malle's Les Amants / The Lovers (1958). Beyond that even, everything being connected -- especially everything French -- it turns out that the screenplay for Les Amants was "written by the same Louise de Vilmorin whose blue salon at Verrières-le-Buisson had welcomed Jacqueline Bouvier in 1949" (pages 111-112).

After her 1957-1958 Paris residency, Sontag emerged as a leading proponent of French culture back in the USA, abetted by a durable friendship with poet-translator Richard Howard. "The two were leaders in the conversation that was bringing that thing called French Theory to the United States, made of equal parts Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Jacques Derrida" (page 127).

Which reminds me that I was lucky enough to hear Richard Howard give a reading in Chapel Hill, North Carolina at UNC, and bought a couple of his books then and there. Now, thanks to Alice Kaplan's alluring account, I wish I'd have met Susan Sontag, too.

Today's Rune: Signals.         

Age of Surrealism

I aim to maintain a library of about 500 books -- "3D" books. Ebooks are another virtual matter altogether.

Here's one of the 500. Wallace Fowlie's Age of Surealism (The Swallow Press and William Morrow & Company, 1950).

Why do I keep this one? It's interesting in its own right, but I knew Professor Fowlie (1908-1998) in the 1980s and 1990s. He was still teaching at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, when I first spoke with him, after a lecture at the Durham Public Library.

The good professor was gregarious and open-minded. He knew or had known many people, a variety ranging from students and former students to veteran writers and artists (including Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin). He was particularly well versed in French culture. Age of Surrealism continues to speak. I'm still learning about its main topics, most lately through Jean Cocteau's works.

From the Table of Contets:

ORIGINS
LAUTRÉAMONT: the temperament
RIMBAUD: the doctrine
MALLARMÉ: the myth (Hérodiade)
APPOLLINAIRE: the poet
BRETON: the manifestoes
COCTEAU: the theatre
ELUARD: the doctrine on love
PICASSO: the art
CONCLUSIONS

All in all, Age of Surrealism continues to inspire curiosity; that plus having known the author is why this book remains one of "the 500." 

Today's Rune: Fertility.

Picasso's Stare

Gearing up to see "Picasso and Braque: The Cubist Experiment, 1910-1912" at the Kimbell in Fort Worth. I remember roaming around the South of France and seeing Picasso works in many places, mostly small museums or displays. This was in the 1980s and there were many people who'd met him personally -- he'd only died in 1973.  I met Wallace Fowlie in Durham, North Carolina, and he had tons of good stories related to Picasso and friends. For his Rimbaud translation -- Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters, 1966 (pictured above) -- he'd gotten Picasso to sketch Rimbaud, an act that took the artist just moments of scribbling. The new exhibit ought to be fun.



Here's The Modern Lovers song "Pablo Picasso" from 1972, pioneering in the Velvet Underground proto-punk style.

Today's Rune: Signals.  

Life Among The Blue Devils, Part I

Duke's latest triumph reminds me of the couple of years I worked among Blue Devils. A "Carolina"  alum and library school graduate student, I worked in Public Documents and Maps, Perkins Library, in the late 1980s. Verdict: an excellent experience.

My pal Evan's parents were both librarians, friends and co-workers -- Donn Michael Farris, head of the Duke Divinity School Library (d. 2005) and Joyce Farris (d. 2006), original cataloging librarian at Perkins Library.  My pal Ken's father also worked there and has since donated his papers to Duke. To quote from the official abstract:  Dale B.J. Randall taught in the English Dept. from 1957-1999 and in the Drama Program from 1991-1999.  The collection includes material related to both the English Dept. and the Drama Program as well as Randall's research. Types of material include correspondence, flyers, programs, clippings and articles. The collection ranges in date from 1940-2009.

Two of my favorite folks in the Public Documents and Maps Department were Yoko Akiba (d. 2004), who'd survived the American bombings of Japan during World War II and later worked at the Library of Congress; and Stuart Basefksy, Public Documents Reference Librarian, who now works at Cornell University. 

I've written before about Wallace Fowlie (d. 1998), the author who donated his art collection to Duke's Nasher Museum of Art and various other materials to the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, and have mentioned  my pal Joe McGeary, who earned his Ph.D. at Duke and now teaches English in Germantown, Philadelphia, after a stint in Detroit.  A salute to all, living and departed. 

Today's Rune: The Self.

Aubade, or Morning Song

I. A songbird woke me up this morning and when I went outside, it was clear that spring is on the way. This little bird triggered another thought: there's a name for what she (or he) is doing -- performing an aubade, or morning song (sounds like oh-baud, or ō-ˈbäd).

Wallace Fowlie taught me this back in the 80s.

Believe it or not, Erik's Choice is moving into its fifth year of existence and I am moving toward my 50th year on Earth. I began this "web log" back in February of 2006, and have posted at least once daily ever since, more than 1600 posts so far.  Not only have I enjoyed ruminating and posting, but more importantly, it's been a great pleasure getting to know other bloggers, readers and commenters from around the globe.  Many thanks for stopping by -- and for those who also write their own stuff, for writing!




















II. My main advice after four years of posting: write about folks 65 or older. Go out and listen to more "seniors." Cherish, treasure, engage and record.

Besides extended family members and students and teachers and librarians and writers who are of all ages, some of my best friends are (or were if they're gone) people I met when they were considerably past 65. For instance, Nishan Baba Toumajan and his younger wife, Louise Toumajan taught me about their lives as Armenians in the Ottoman Empire/Turkey -- and in the USA through most of the 20th century. Baba had been born in the 1800s; Louise had been a professional tennis player after the First World War. Madame Françoise Marcus has taught me about her life growing up in France and is always quick with charm and conversation, the good life. I only met with Wallace Fowlie maybe a dozen times but we also became good friends. Then there were the Germans who'd been captured at Normandy on D-Day (Willy Wiederstein and comrades) and then worked on Scottish, Canadian and American farms during the last year of the Second World War. There was also Doctor Dick Pearse, who'd inspired me and my pal Kenny to walk the eleven miles between Durham and Chapel Hill. And there was an older guy walking along what was left of Hastings Street in Detroit, who remembered the days when John Lee Hooker lived in town playing the Apex Bar and Henry's Swing Club, and the day he saw Jimi Hendrix play.

You see what I'm saying -- seek and ye shall find, and listen well when you do, whether you meet once or a hundred times.

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.

Paris: At the Grave of Jim Morrison

I've mentioned visiting the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris before, and paying homage to Jim Morrison and others there. Three times is a charm. Here are two shots of the second visit, on July 8, 1983. At that point, everything was intact: a bust of Morrison, his grave, and a lot of graffiti.  The dude on  the left is Heinz, from Germany.














Graffiti is on adjacent headstones. Heinz on left, Marina from Italy on right. Met them  then and there, with great conversation in broken English. I could speak a little German and no Italian phrases, so English worked better for all of us. They wanted to know more about certain lyrics on live albums, and about the USA.  I don't remember the guy crouching by Morrison's bust at all -- maybe he's a ghost.













These shots remind me of my old pal Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998), who was hip about Morrison despite having earned a Ph.D in 1936. In the 1980s, he began giving lectures about French poet Arthur Rimbaud and made clear connections to Bob Dylan and Morrison; I first met him at the Durham Public Library when he himself was nearly eighty years old. He polished these lectures and turned them into an interesting book: Rimbaud and Jim Morrison: The Rebel As Poet (A Memoir) (1993/1994). At some point, a lot more to say on all that jazz. 

Père-Lachaise is a sprawling, spectacular cemetery worth exploring if ever in Paris: just don't mind the free-floating spirits and feral cats.

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.

World Traveler

John Updike (3/18/1932-1/27/2009), RIP. When he came to Duke University ca. 1988, I was working in Perkins Library as a library assistant, Public Documents and Maps Division. Walked over to the Bryan Center, asked him to sign Trust Me (1987) and a couple other of his books in front of the Gothic Bookstore, and shook his hand. He looked exactly as he does in all the photos, acting with courtesy and a faint halo of the bizarre.

Had seen a number of other interesting characters while working at Duke, too, all of whom had written books: Stanley Fish, Frank Lentricchia, Wallace Fowlie, Robert Dole, George McGovern (a very tall man), Tedd Ropp, Dale Randall spring to mind.




















I was thinking about John Updike's Rabbit, Run (1960) the other day while watching Bart Freundlich's World Traveler (2001), starring Billy Crudup, Julianne Moore and David Keith. The movie received mixed reviews when it came out, but seems a lot more poignant now, post 9/11 -- especially the beautiful shots of Manhattan from above. World Traveler is like a cross between Rabbit, Run and the Steve Earle song, "The Week of Living Dangerously (1987)."*

*(Well it was well after dark so I knew my wife and kids were waitin'
And I guess I took a left where I generally take a right
Well I filled her up with gas, checked the oil at the Texaco station
I threw the car seat in the dumpster and headed off into the night . . .)

Either Billy Crudup's character is running away from his young family, or he's running toward something else entirely. An architect in Manhattan, he blows out of town in a Volvo wagon -- a nice quirky touch. During his plausible adventures, he hooks up with the Julianne Moore character. Moore is really interesting and has a memorably different look, with dark hair and a crazy disposition. As for Crudup, he's good at smirking and quietly causing trouble, more irritating when he whines about his father. But hell, he's a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and it's as if he's raiding nearby Duke for entirely personal reasons. And Juliane Moore, originally of Fayetteville, North Carolina? She married Freundlich, the director, in 2003. Let's not forget her turn as Maude Lebowski in The Big Lebwoski (1998).

Today's Rune: Fertility.