Category: Reviews
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According to pablopicasso.org, the artist was living in occupied Paris during World War II when some Nazi soldiers invited themselves into his apartment. Seeing Guernica (above) displayed on a wall, one of them asked, “Did you do that?” “No, you did,” Picasso is said to have replied. I read that today. It must’ve been a…
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Regarding the outpouring of love for Dolly Parton, here is a tweet from Eminem in which he posts a note he received from her on the occasion of his induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: And, regarding “Huckabee swings, hits a fair ball,” here is a link to an interview, conducted by…
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Lots of affecting tributes, especially from hitherto anonymous beneficiaries of her philanthropy, like the African American musician who says he didn’t know till he got to college that school fund raisers for band were practically a universal phenomenon, because “Dolly Parton paid for us.” But maybe my favorite goes to “William Shakespeare,” the name under…
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Singer and songwriter Nanci Griffith died on this date, August 13, five years ago, in Nashville. She was 68–my age exactly.* According to her NYT obituary, here, the cause of death was unknown on account of her expressed wish that there be no formal statement or press release within a week of her passing. The…
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Reading J.F. Powers’s Morte D’Urban again. I do it every five or six years, which seems to be about the right interval for the memory of the deliciousness to have subsided enough for my enjoyment to attain its former height. Powers was born in Illinois in 1917 and lived for most of his adult life…
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Watching in agony and then cathartic relief as the Twins eked out a 12-inning win in Cleveland, while teen-aged pitter-patter drifted in from the next room, brought to mind W.H. Auden: About suffering they were never wrong,The Old Masters: how well they understoodIts human position; how it takes placeWhile someone else is eating or opening…
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In Civil War times, before we commemorated Memorial Day, Walt Whitman, author of the self-published book of poems now known as Leaves of Grass, traveled to northern Virginia upon hearing that his brother George, a soldier in the Union army, had been wounded and was convalescing there. He found George, whose wounds were slight, but…
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Sitting at home with a bad cold and Swag, one of Elmore Leonard’s early crime novels. Favorite parts are those in which the lucrative trade of armed robbery brings the low-level criminal team into contact with similarly affluent young men and women who work in the legitimate part of the economy. After just a few…
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It’s been ten years and two days since Prince died, which means it was ten years ago today that Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band played a scheduled concert at the Barclays Center, in Brooklyn. When the musicians took the stage, which was bathed in purple light, they opened with: I’m going to establish…
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It occurred to me yesterday, while watching the NCAA women’s tournament game between the Gophers and UCLA, that in basketball it’s helpful to be tall. Don’t look now but, for the first time since before last year’s all-star game, the Twins do not have a losing record. I saw that if you want to bet…
