Wednesday, August 08, 2007
LCC is back
Le Colonel Chabert is back from the dead - a in-joke for Balzacians that she will, I think, enjoy. I'm glad to see her back, although she was immediately summoned to battle on her first post, with the usual vaudevillian thread. I'm hoping she will continue to do some of her slooowly sloowly posts, as well as the usual flash of the dagger things. I am really hoping one day she does a post about Victoria de los Angeles, because I just interviewed a man who was de los Angeles' great friend, who wrote a portrait of her for the New Yorker - and I, a true putz when it comes to opera, god damn it, had never heard of her before. My knowledge goes about as far as Kiri ti Kanawa and then stops. Disgraceful, I know. Not that I let on! The man I interviewed - James McCourt - has written a cult opera novel that was re-issued by the NYRB press, Mawrdew Czgowchwz, with a preface by Wayne Koestelbaum. Now Voyagers, coming out in October, is the Ulysses of camp Manhattan.
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4 comments:
"Le Colonel Chabert is back from the dead - a in-joke for Balzacians that she will, I think, enjoy. I'm glad to see her back, although she was immediately summoned to battle on her first post, with the usual vaudevillian thread"
Old "Talk of the Town" and "Notes & Comment" ersatz.
Anonymous, I'm not sure if that is a diss or a compliment, although I incline to the former. However, I have to say, I'm flattered. Old Talk of the Town was the best! I don't know if you have read the t. of the t. that E.B. White used to do - some are in his essays, I think - or Thurber, but they've always been models for me. In general, you can't beat the New Yorker writers from the 30s up to the 50s. White, Thurber, Liebling, Mitchell - the best lineup of any popular magazine in America ever.
As for Hertzberg - I am sad that the New Yorker is undergoing a TNR-ization. Hertzberg is fine, but he doesn't bring that sense of the essayistic occasion that was the New Yorker's forte. It is all too often depressing punditry. And bringing Lizza and Wood into the fold is, I think, a bad idea. Especially Wood. They should have brought me. God damn it.
"Victoria de los Angeles, because I just interviewed a man who was de los Angeles' great friend, who wrote a portrait of her for the New Yorker "
ooo ooo whaddidhesay? She is one of my most most favourites, especially here Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia.
(thanks for the plug; i was actually hoping for something more sivileyzed to start but, ah well)
LCC, that is just it. I have google knowledge of Victoria, but didn't really know what questions to ask.
However, part of the plot of his first novel was about the diva fights of the fifties, centering around the ever battlesome Maria Callas. I was surprised and pleased to hear that, like one of my favorites, Lil Kim, Callas also dissed her rivals and told them, essentially, to kiss her ass.
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