Re: got the coffee! not harumphing at you, Jim!

[Jim Morrison <jim_morrison@sprynet.com>]

HI List, 

 

How about just a little bit more on this Auster/Gould/Davis relationship.

 

Follow the link to find out more about their marriage

 

http://members.aol.com/knkreutzer/auster/austbiog.htm

 

It seems that both Auster and Davis chose to write about their marriage.

It's not a one-sided Judas-biography sort of thing.

Nor does it seem to be a mud-slinging affair.

More like two people writing about times that were important, though troubling, to them,

two people that are, by the way, in their somewhat small literary circles

respected authors.  In the Davis/Auster case there doesn't seem to a problem of the breaking of loyalties,

though I could be wrong.

 

I've found that

the fiction that moves me the most is based upon fact,

fiction that digs deeply in consciousness and emotions of relatively everyday life

(with in inclusion of the stresses as well as the goodness of such a life)

that forgoes more exciting plot developments and heightened action.  "In the house

fiction" it's sometimes called.  "Kitchen fiction"

 

Raymond Carver, for example, and in his own baroque prose way,

John Updike in his short stories.

 

Dig a little into their lives (which they often talk about) and you'll see the

close correspondence to real life.

 

(but please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that one form

of fiction is better than another.  It's just somehow in this rambling email

I came to the idea that it would be pertinent to mention my preferences--

a sentence that made me chuckle as I wrote it.  Please forgive the now

hungry and  caffeine-less Jim)

 

In a way, I see Glenn as a performer who also forgoes the dramatic gestures

and prefers to try to reach the listener with delicacy and intimacy

and a skill with interweaving voices that can seem almost maniacal

with its convoluted energy, that is, drama not coming from one grand

gesture after another but from a sustained and ever increasing complexity. 

Here Jim once again mentioned the prelude to the second English suite.

 

Anyone read the

Rosen article?  He talks about the intimacy of Bach's compositions,

how some of the works were meant to be read or listened to in

a very private setting as contemplative creations and inspiration and guidance

to other composers.  This sort of private feeling to fiction (which

is admittedly often confessional) moves me.  I suspect our hero, however

would not have been so impressed with the fiction, and would be more in line with Elmer's

thoughts.

 

(nice comments on Sesame Street.  Anyone heard the Indigo Girls version

of Buffy's song Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee? Now that's a great rock and roll

protest song.)

 

(An aside, anyone remember a previous discussion that touched upon films?

Auster wrote the screenplay to what I think is a good film, "Smoke"

Don't ask me why, but it feels to me like Auster should somewhere in his work

mention Glenn Gould.)

 

--why Glenn Gould; what is L Davis' connection with him (ie. why did she choose him over, say, Horowitz?)

 

 

Jim here: I think one of the funniest things about The Loser is that it has Gould study with Horowitz,

a pianist that Gould despised and made fun of.  By the way, I love some of Horowitz's playing,

esp his Scriabin.  I imagine Gould had Horowitz in mind when he recorded his energetic

Prokofiev Seventh Piano Sonata.  If I remember correctly, there's a video of Gould playing

this piece in which during the third movement he really starts to break out in a sweat,

something you rarely see Gould do.  All that recollection is coming from a guy in LA

who hasn't had his morning tea yet, so I could be garbling the facts.

 

Perhaps the woman in the Davis story is simply listening to the radio and Glenn comes on.

Perhaps this came directly from her life, this emotion she tires to capture, and rather than

change the name of the performer who helped induce the feeling in her, she kept the event

pure and used the truth in her fiction.

 

I really must see about getting my hands on that story again,

 

bye for now,

 

Jim (who may have just written the most rambling email of his life)