Southern Bookman

Emily Nemens leaves Paris Review editorship to pursue career as novelist

Paris Review editor Emily Nemens announced Wednesday that she's leaving, three years after being the surprise selection to take over George Plimpton's venerable literary journal.

Nemens, the author of the successful baseball novel "The Cactus League," said she's moving on to write a second book. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, “The Cactus League” drew critical praise. 

In her farewell letter, published on the Paris Review's web site, Nemens cited the journal's record circulation, web site and podcast development, and publication of several anthologies during her tenure.

An accompanying announcement from Mona Simpson, head of the journal's board of directors, revealed no signs of displeasure with Nemens, who took over from disgraced editor Lorin Stein, who replaced Plimpton after his death. Simpson lauded Nemens' leadership and announced a search for her successor.

A native of Seattle and a graduate of LSU's MFA writing program, Nemens vaulted into the prestigious position after serving as co-editor of LSU's lauded Southern Review.

After her move to Manhattan, she maintained her Baton Rouge ties, recently recommending the rhythm and blues, swing and jazz programs of WBRH, the Baton Rouge High magnet school's public radio station.

Along with editing and writing, Nemens has also contributed illustrations to the New Yorker and other magazines.

While Nemens didn't rule out a return to editing, she's brimming with talent to develop a lucrative writing career in a  publishing industry more and more dominated by women authors.

Nemens' departure follows a flurry of national media turnover, including the retirement of Washington Post editor Marty Baron last week. The New York Review of Books recently announced editorial changes.

Paris Review aficionados will keenly wait to see who fills one of American literature's prime jobs.

 

 

Farewell, Lawrence Ferlinghetti

City Lights Bookstore shone through the fog and darkness of the San Francisco night, a beacon that made me think I was dreaming.

That was my first of several visits to Lawrence Ferlinghetti's fabled bookstore in the city's North Beach neighborhood. Each time, I felt a special sense of reverence and grandeur, as if at a World Heritage site.

Ferlinghetti, who co-founded the bookstore in 1953 as a mecca of free expression, died Monday at 101 at his home in San Francisco. His City Lights Publishing Co. gave the world "Howl" and other revolutionary literary works.

The cause of Ferlinghetti's death was interstitial lung disease, a scarring of the lungs, rather than Covid. But Ferlinghetti's the latest exemplar of American freedom and creative spirit lost during the pandemic. The covid era has brought a devastating toll on American culture. 

Associated with the Beat generation, although Ferlinghetti called himself the last of the generation of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, Ferlinghetti was arrested for publishing Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," after Ginsberg's electric reading of the poem at San Francisco's Six Gallery in October 1955.

Ferlinghetti's City Lights Publishing won a court case upholding "Howl's" literary value,  a landmark for freedom of expression.

An acclaimed poet, novelist, travel writer and painter, Ferlinghetti was a major culture figure whose death deserved front-page recognition in The New York Times rather than display at the back of the Business section.

Ferlinghetti's "Coney Island of the Mind" is one of the few poetry books to achieve best-seller status. Last spring, he published a charming memoir, "Little Boy," capping a multitude of works written during his career. He also was a tireless activist for progressive causes.

The Times' obituary, while noting his Navy service during World War II, shamefully neglected to mention that he was a veteran of D-Day. It also failed to note that he visited Nagasaki after the United States' nuclear bombing of the Japanese city at the end of World War II. Seeing Nagasaki's destruction inspired Ferlinghetti's lifelong pacifism.

When the pandemic threatened City Lights' survival last spring, supporters rallied with contributions to keep the bookstore and publishing company going.

In his later years, Ferlinghetti lamented the high-tech industry's corporate forces ravaging his beloved San Francisco. Soaring housing prices, income disparities and gentrification sapped the social freedom and economic diversity that first drew him to the city.

Ferlinghetti's gone but the soul of San Francisco will keep beating at long as City Lights shines on Columbus Avenue.

 

 

 

 

 

John Keats' poetry lives on, 200 years after his death

Young American tourists like me, clutching their copies of "Europe on $5 a day," packed the Spanish Steps on a splendid midsummer morning.

I was the only visitor to the Keats-Shelley Memorial House next to the Roman landmark where the young backpackers gathered like a flock of birds above Bernini's Barcaccia fountain. 

Adjacent to the Spanish Steps, the two-room apartment where John Keats died on Feb. 23, 1821, was faithfully recreated, down to a replica of Keats' deathbed. After the 25-year-old poet's death from tuberculosis, Italian authorities had burned everything that remained.

When I entered, a severe English woman stroking a cat held in her arms came out from a back room, looked me over, and retreated.

All alone, I inspected the impressive collection of rare Romantic and Victorian books and artifacts, and stood for a moment beside the tiny bed in Keats' room before exiting into the brilliant sunshine and my contemporaries' palpable erotic energy.

In hopes that the warmer climate would improve his condition, Keats had traveled to Italy from England in the fall of 1820 on the Maria Crowther. After the ship docked in Naples, Keats was quarantined before making an arduous journey to Rome.

English artist Joseph Severn, who had nursed Keats during his final three months, drew a death portrait. Severn, in one of history's most encouraging humanitarian gestures, had agreed to accompany the dying Keats to Italy, although he'd barely knew him in London.

After a successful career as an artist and diplomat, Severn died in 1879 at age 85, and was buried next to Keats in Rome's Protestant Cemetery.

I was at the same age at which Keats died when I visited Europe. Now, 50 years have passed away. An epidemic has cost the lives of 500,000 Americans in 51 weeks. At times, it feels as if the world has made little progress in the 200 years since Keats died. Humans have ravaged the natural world that Keats celebrated in his poems. Those 200 years have been marked by endless wars. along with amazing accomplishments. Keats' poems are everlasting.

As Notre Dame English professor Ian Newman said in a recent essay, Keats' death shouldn't overshadow the cheerful, vibrant young poet of  his marvelous letters, a personality so intellectually and artistically aware.

In the winter of Keats' death, let us remember the glorious spring and summer of 1819, when he wrote some of the English language's greatest poems.

 

 

 

 

 

John Ed Bradley pens love letter to Louisiana artist Cora Kelley Ward

Louisiana native Cora Kelley Ward in her lifetime never received recognition for her art.

She was part of New York City's post-World War II art scene, a close friend of the influential critic Clement Greenberg. Ward was known within the artistic circle for taking photos of stars like Helen Frankenthaler.

But while Ward kept painting, she remained unheralded. Greenberg after Ward's death in 1989 at last praised her, but never during her lifetime.

Now, Ward's work is gaining acclaim. Louisiana writer John Ed Bradley in an article in the current Garden & Gun says he's become devoted to Ward's work, and keeps acquiring more and more of her paintings.

Bradley, an accomplished novelist known for his memoir about playing football at LSU for coach Charlie McClendon, "It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium," gives an impassioned discourse on art's power. 

Ward, born in 1920 in Eunice, La., was trained as a nurse in New Orleans and married a physician before leaving him to study art at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where she met Greenberg.

After further studies at the Bauhaus in Chicago, she moved to New York City, where she worked as a nurse while pursuing her art. She also received a master's degree from Hunter College in New York.

Bradley gives a vivid portrait of Ward as a beautiful, engaged artist dedicated to her work despite her lack of success.

After her death, her paintings were donated to the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. The museum held a bargain-basement sale of her work, where Bradley discovered it. At first he was indifferent to her paintings, but they began to mesmerize him.

He's not alone in his passion for Ward and her creations. Her paintings are drawing big-ticket prices at galleries, and the Mobile Museum of Art has acquired a sizable collection of her work. One of her paintings is shown above.

Bradley at the end of his article tells of offering a friend thousands of dollars for one of Ward's paintings. The friend wouldn't sell.

It's sad that Greenberg neglected his friend's work. But now, Ward's moment has arrived.

Rereading James Joyce’s “The Dead”

I once again reread James Joyce's "The Dead" to start the new year, although I'd thought I would give up my annual ritual.

After all of these years, I suppose I thought Joyce's story had no more to tell me.

But with the pandemic overwhelming hospitals, political turmoil boiling and the impending climax of momentous Senate elections in Georgia, I turned once again to the timeliness of the Misses Morkans' annual Christmastime dance in early 20th century Dublin.

Once again, I found the story new. It's changed over the years.

Almost as long as a novella, "The Dead" concludes Joyce's "The Dubliners," the brilliant short story collection that began his evisceration of his native city that continued with "The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man," "Ulysses" and "Finnegan's Wake." For me, "The Dubliners" is his most precise portrait of the Irish city and its people.

I first read "The Dead" when I was Joyce's age when he wrote the story while in exile in Rome. I nurtured similar youthful ambitions.

As I grew older, I more and more identified with the story's main character, Gabriel Conroy, as he enters middle age.

Now, I have reached the age of the elderly sisters who give the party each year, looking back on their lives.

The story opens with a wide lens on the gathering at the Morkan sisters' house, then closes in on the intimacy of Gabriel and Gretta Conroy's marriage.

In the final scene, in a Dublin hotel room as snow falls outside, Gabriel's sexual longing for his wife is frustrated by her memory of her first love, a young man whom she believes died for her.

Her memory of the young Michael Furey is triggered at the party's end by the tenor "Mr. Bartell D'Arcy" singing "The Lass of Aughim," the same song that Furey sang for her when he caught pneumonia.

The story closes with Gabriel contemplating human mortality as he watches the snow fall beyond the hotel room window:

"A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

When I read the story this time, I found a new poignancy in the conversation between Gabriel and Gretta at the party after he's had a confrontation with his colleague Molly Ivors. Ivors accuses him of being a "West Briton" for not wanting to travel in Ireland.

"Were you dancing?" asked Gabriel.

"Of course I was. Didn't you see me? What row had you with Molly Ivors?"

"No row. Why? Did she say so?"

"Something like that. I'm trying to get that Mr. D'Arcy to sing. He's full of conceit, I think."

"There was no row," said Gabriel moodily, "only she wanted me to go for a trip to the west of Ireland and I said I wouldn't."

His wife clasped her hands excitedly and gave a little jump.

"O, do go, Gabriel," she cried. "I'd love to see Galway again."

Gretta's simple reference to her native region shows Joyce's genius, foreshadowing the story's conclusion by signaling a depth of associations.

The story is a meditation on history and how it intersects with our lives. During the story, issues of the day surface, many long-forgotten, others still weighing upon us, such as British-Irish relations.

Reading the story, I was reassured that political crises reaching a climax this week will subside.

"The Dead" affirms the enduring power of love and art.

 

A Christmas wish for the return of live performances

For my wife's Christmas gift last year, I purchased tickets to Tony Bennett's Valentine's Day concert at Atlanta's Symphony Hall.

Bennett gave a great performance before a festive, sold-out audience. Before the show, we enjoyed a romantic dinner at the Arts Center's packed 1280 Restaurant.

Covid-19 was a small cloud on the horizon. In a few weeks, the virus had grown into a vicious storm, closing down all public events.

For Christmas last year, we also received tickets to see Wynton Marsalis perform with the Atlanta Symphony in March. We also planned to attend the Atlanta Opera's production of "Porgy and Bess" in late February. Both events were canceled as the coronavirus spread. I've imagined the performances taking place in some alternative universe.

In previous years, we've found under the tree tickets to "Hamilton" and "To Kill a Mockingbird." But no such gifts this holiday season, with Broadway dark and its return unknown. No concerts at Atlanta Symphony Hall to give as presents. The 1280 is closed.

With such a damper on Christmas joy, I was cheered at AJC stalwart Bo Emerson's recent report on the return of the Fox Theater's Mighty Mo organ after a renovation.

My Christmas wish is that one day we'll gather again to hear those majestic sounds.

 

New York Times' Anthony Tommasini won't give up his compact discs

New York Times classical music critic Anthony Tommasini in a Thursday essay vowed to hold on to his thousands of compact discs.

As the owner of many CDs, more rock, jazz, country and Americana-oriented than Tommasini's, I welcomed the support from a fellow pack rat. Tommasini also defended keeping old vinyl records, which I also possess from my college days.

For years, I've loved Tommasini's reviews and learned essays on composers, especially those not well-known. His essay affirmed art's power to enrich our lives.

When Tommasini recalled buying many of his CDs at the Harvard Co-Op at Harvard Square in Cambridge, Mass., across the Charles River from Boston, I felt the thrill of recognition.

Over the years, I've spent many happy hours at the co-op, as well as several other wonderful bookstores lining Harvard Square, one of my favorite places in the world.

Along with browsing and buying books at the co-op, I fondly remember eating lunch there one day, standing in the cafeteria line with Harvard students and professors. The stew was delicious, along with the overheard conversations.

Tommasini points out that the younger generation now listens to music through streaming services, as does his husband, Ben. I enjoy YouTube music videos, but haven't yet warmed up to services such as Spotify. Like Tommasini, I still enjoy going back to my CD collection for old favorites.

And, I keep buying new ones to add to those overflowing their ramshackle shelves. Perhaps I should adapt Tommasini's rule, imposed by Ben, that for every CD bought, one will be given away.

Tommasini also upheld the pleasures of reading old-fashioned books. I've also come to appreciate the convenience of e-readers. But I'm still a print creature.

Hey, Tony, I read your piece in the newspaper printed on paper, delivered to my driveway in the pre-dawn darkness each morning so that I can look up to see the moon, stars and planets. I don't even know the password for the Times' online publication, if that's the word.

Although I have a couple of turntables, I haven't returned to playing vinyl. I sometimes think of selling my vinyl record collection, which includes treasures like the original-cover Blind Faith album, but hold on to them year after year. And what about those cassette and VHS tapes? My house is a museum, or graveyard, of obsolete technology.

Thanks to Tommasini, I don't feel so alone and obsolescent myself in this de-clutter age. Anybody want a Moby Grape album?

 

 

 

 

 

Farewell, Jerry Jeff Walker

Jerry Jeff Walker's "Viva Terlingua" remains fresh and vital after all these years.

The 1973 album brought a new sound to aspiring Southern hipsters like me, making Austin as cool as San Francisco and New York.

Recorded with the impromptu Lost Gonzo Band, Walker's insouciant album defied both the refined Nashville sound and progressive rock pretensions. The feeling of a bunch of guys jamming on a front porch derived from a deceptive artistry

With era-defining standards like "London Homesick Blues," "Up Against the Wall Redneck Mothers," "Desperadoes Waiting for a Train" and "Wheel," the album set the stage for Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Jimmy Buffett.

Walker, who followed the country tradition of career-destructive drinking, drug-use and not showing up for concerts, died Friday at age 78 of throat cancer. Long sober, he kept performing and recording, inspiring younger singer-songwriters striving for artistic independence.

His good-ole-boy persona hid the sensitive performer who wrote one of the era's most beloved songs, "Mr. Bojangles," a poignant portrait of an aging street performer Walker said he met in the New Orleans drunk tank.

Walker and the Gonzo Band's performance of Clark's "Desperadoes Waiting for a Train" shows artistic depths reached with little rehearsal.

The novelty "Up Against the Wall Redneck Mothers," hastily finished by Ray Wylie Hubbard for the album, consciously answers Merle Haggard's political anthem "Okie From Muscogee." As with Haggard's song, listeners interpreted "Redneck Mothers" on different levels, from satire to a perverse ironic pride.

"Viva Terlingua's" most masterful work, "London Homesick Blues" was written and sung by Gary P. Nunn, a member of the band.

Telling the story of a Texan in London feeling homesick for his native state, the song has the authority of a short story or film, evoking the essence of both places.

The band's rowdy honky-tonk performance, with Walker singing harmony, provides effective Texas-flavored counterpoint to the wistful, gloomy portrayal of London.

Walker was one of those American originals who made a lasting influence. For me and others of my generation, "Viva Terlingua" will always bring back that time when our youth was almost gone and we didn't want the music to end.

 

 

 

 

Dolly Parton brings healing touch to wounded America

I nominate Dolly Parton for the Nobel Prize.

Watching the country star discuss her new book, "Storyteller: My Life in Lyrics" on "The Stephen Colbert Show," I realized that she's had a songwriting and singing career equal to that of Bob Dylan, who won the Nobel Literature Prize in 2016.

As the book's title reflects, Parton's songs tell stories of love, faith, humor and endurance. Many of her songs give voice to her mountain culture, struggling to hold on to its traditions in the contemporary world. Like Dylan, Parton has created great poetry.

Recalling her mother singing old folk songs to her when she was a child, Parton made Colbert cry with a spontaneous a cappella performance of the Carter Family classic "Bury Me Beneath the Willow." Parton's work shows the authenticity of those timeless folk songs.

Parton touched my heart by looking back on beginning her career on "The Porter Wagoner Show." When I was an adolescent boy, I had a crush on the shy young Dolly from watching Wagoner's show on Saturday afternoons. I liked old Porter, with his shellacked pompadour and wild Nudie suits, but Dolly's talent glowed on a higher level.

She's gone on from that modest start to fashion one of America's greatest musical careers. Her majestic achievements have been matched by Loretta Lynn, who rose to stardom from a similar childhood in the impoverished Appalachian Mountains. Like Parton, Lynn with "Coal Miner's Daughter" and other songs has achieved great literature.

As Parton discussed with Colbert a new Christmas album that features a guest appearance by another major star, Willie Nelson, I hoped that Parton would record again with Lynn. They put out an album several years ago with the late Tammy Wynette. A new Lynn-Parton endeavor would be a wonderful gift to America and the world.

 

 

 

Ella Fitzgerald's "The Lost Berlin Tapes" brings echoes of history

Ella Fitzgerald's "The Lost Berlin Tapes" restores a vanished slice of time.

Fitzgerald on March 25, 1962, performed at West Berlin's ancient Sportpalast as part of her producer Norman Ganz's Jazz at the Philharmonic tour of Europe.

Ganz recorded the concert on reel-to-reel tapes, but they were lost for years until recently rediscovered in the archives of Verve Records, which Ganz founded to produce albums by Fitzgerald.

The recently released "Lost Berlin Tapes" album comes from Ganz's recordings, digitally remastered with high-tech software.

The recording captures one performance in an exhaustive European tour that also featured trumpeter Roy Eldridge and legendary saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, according to Stuart Nicholson's liner notes. Fitzgerald's trio, pianist and leader Paul Smith, bass player Wildred Middlebrooks and drummer Stan Levey, would play before Fitzgerald came out for an hour-long grand finale.

Under Ganz's punishing schedule, the musicians often gave a performance at one city beginning at 6 p.m., then traveled hundreds of miles to another city for a midnight show.

As the "Lost Tapes" reflects, Fitzgerald generated energy from the relentless pace. She's ebullient, witty and effervescent in interacting with the Berlin audience, which responds with thunderous applause after each number.

Built in 1907 as a hockey arena, and the site of speeches by Hitler and Goebbels, the 14,000-seat arena had been retrofitted for musical concerts. In a place where rock groups would later blast the walls with electric instruments, Fitzgerald captured her fans with an acoustic trio, a microphone and her fabulous voice. The arena was demolished in 1973, nearly 20 years before the end of the Cold War.

As Nicholson notes, Fitzgerald's performance includes songs not in the American Songbook mainstream.

While she delivers dynamic interpretations of classics like Irving Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek," which she recorded with Louis Armstrong, the Gershwins' "Someone to Watch Over Me" and "Summertime," and Jerome Kern's "I Won't Dance, Don't Ask Me," she displays her virtuoso stylings on obscure numbers like "Jersey Bounce," "Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie," and her signature novelty "Mr. Paganini."

She turns the unorthodox songs into stirring vehicles for her famous "scat" singing. Her voice swoops and soars with a range of innovative sounds, as if she's invented a new instrument.

In more straight-forward performances, she gives resonance to the haunting "Angel Eyes," the vibrant "C'est Magnifique" and the jaunty"Mack the Knife," a reprise of her hit record from a 1960 Berlin performance. In a nod to the rock generation, she swings on Ray Charles' "Hallelujah, I Love Him So."

The recording brings haunting historical echoes. The audience's rapturous applause made me wonder about their lives in the shadow of the recently built Berlin Wall.

Fitzgerald's voice is that of freedom.