I have gotten hopelessly behind with a regular accounting of my reading this year, never mind the theatre, films, operas, and exhibits that make up my New York life. Take this week. I finished the new Charles Lambert thriller
The View from the Tower which I heartily enjoyed (I'll link the post when I write it). I dipped again into Ray Monk's
Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center, a biography of the influential physicist which I have had going since late last year. While Monk makes the case for an interesting life full of internal conflict, his rendering is too comprehensive. You lose the forest for the trees, the forest in this case, being the narrative throughline. I'm disappointed by biographies that seem to be nothing more than repositories for the totality of an author's research plopped on the page in chronological order, rather than the crafting of a narrative which has an opinion about that life. To be fair, Monk has a strong point of view about Oppenheimer's judaism which, he asserts was repressed and the source of tremendous interior conflict,however, that opinion fails to cull his narrative.
I started and gave up on
Night in Shanghai (thank you Henry Holt for this copy) which was promising for its setting in 1930s Shanghai and the way the author Nicole Mones created atmosphere, but I couldn't for the life of me keep track of the characters. The unfamiliar language impeded my remembering who was who and my lack of historical knowledge added to my difficulty remembering which side of the nationalist versus communist struggle they were on, so I couldn't follow what motivated the plot and, unfortunately, I lost the thread. The sense of place was successfully pervasive and the writing entertaining, so don't let my faulty memory discourage you.
I went to the Antiquarian Book Fair yesterday, which, given the average price of the items displayed there was more of an antique book museum for me. I came across a novel by Tennessee Williams I had never heard of called
Moise and the World of Reason and would have bought the beautiful first edition if I had had $295 to spare.
I then wandered down to
MOMA where I saw a very interesting exhibit of Gauguin's prints, how they interacted with his painting, a show whose theme was the gallerist Ileana Sonnabend and the works she brought to public attention at her Paris and New York galleries. I have to say I found this more interesting for its history than likeable for the work in it. I also saw a small exhibit of
Jasper John's latest works: Regrets, based on a photograph of Lucien Freud. Small, tightly curated shows are always my preference. I didn't merely enjoy the work for itself, I appreciated how the prints and paintings on grew from the original photograph, which is also on display. This is a show that's about creative process more than anything, and how the act of an artist doing something as a result of their experience of some source, becomes the seed of new work. Wonderful show.
Finally, I made my chilly, rainy way home, poured a glass of red wine, got under a blanket and watched Guillaume Canet's 2010
Les Petits Mouchoirs; the English title is
Little Whie Lies. This is a French
Big Chill, complete with a tight ensemble cast of solid actors, great music choices, and a somewhat sentimental story of a group of middle aged friends minus one. The love and pathos of old friendships is beautifully captured by the cast in that undemonstrative way that French films are so good at, where people seem like people because they are free to feel but not getting off on showing you that they can. Be prepared to use at least one mouchoir if you're at all moved during films.
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