Well, Julia is back in school. Gabriel, who had an evaluation today, starts his preschool in a couple of weeks. That leaves Daisy and I (and the nefarious cats) at home, taking our sojourn-like walks.
I just finished The Paris Wife by Paula McLain. It was a solid book. There's not much I can really say about it. McLain tries to make Hemingway sympathetic and partially succeeds but Hadley Hemingway, Ernest's first wife and the focus of the novel, didn't really do much for me as a character; she's stodgy, flat, lacking dynamism. And if some of the dialogue is stiff, McLain mostly writes fluidly and well and the novel is a fine introduction to Paris at the time - a great deal of research went in to it (it can provide delightful companionship to Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris) - here's Alice Toklas, here's Ford Madox Ford! It just didn't surprise me or really lead anywhere new and exciting. You know from the beginning what is going to happen and when it does, it just leaves you unmoved. I appreciate McLain's ambition, however, and some of her deft characterizations, and am looking forward to what's up next from her.
You might be wondering who Michael Fassbender is. The drop-dead gorgeous Irish-German actor has made quite a splash this year (the male equivalent of what Jessica Chastain has done) in, to my count, four well-received turns showcasing a dazzling display of range: the dashing Rochester in Jane Eyre, Magneto in X-Men: First Class, Carl Jung in A Dangerous Method, and, in the role that very likely will garner him an Oscar nod, a sex addict in Shame, for director Steve McQueen (nope, not that one), for whom Fassbender gave an award-winning performance a few years in Hunger (about the 1981 IRA Hunger Strike), which put the actor on the map and led to roles in, among others, Inglorious Basterds (as the ill-fated Lt. Hicox). Fassbender has two other movies in the works, not counting this Friday's Haywire.
Here is a good article, if you're interested, on Fassbender in the Hollywood Reporter. Is it just for me or does Fassbender give Pitt and Clooney (his likely comrades in the hunt for Best Actor glory) some contention for Sexiest Male Actor? http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/THR-cover-michael-fassbender-shame-nudity-dangerous-method-282859 (Just sayin'... If I were gay, Fassbender would be in my top 5...)
Julia, check out this article about some of the Spanish-built Baroque churches nestled within the villages of the Andes: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/The-Sistine-Chapel-of-the-Andes.html
What else?
- Paula Deen vs. Anthony Bourdain. I'm going with Bourdain on this one. Deen cooks for fat southern people like herself and it's caught up with her.
- Michael Jordan verifies what basketball fans have long suspected. The one player today who's truly worthy, in MJ's opinion, of being "Jordanesque" is Kobe Bryant.
- LL Cool J is hosting the Grammys. File this under Who Cares?
- Tonight, a-n-o-t-hh-eee-rrrr season of American Idol kicks off. I would also file this under Who Cares? if it weren't for the fact that tonight's audition takes place in Savannah. Still, I probably won't watch it.
This week's American masterpiece is John Singer Sargent's The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, from 1882. Sargent's work was inspired by Velazquez's Las Meninas, viewed by Sargent when he was traveling in Spain. It was a highly-praised, yet somewhat baffling painting to critics, who couldn't understand how any of the four girls were related to each other. Sargent (1856-1925) studied in Europe and was schooled in Old World painting by a friend of Manet, himself an admirer of Velazquez. Sargent became a master of portraiture, but he was equally adept in Impressionist brushwork.
But the question remains: Who are the girls? The daughters of the bourgeoisie? The daughters of the servants? What are they doing? Okay, we know they're the daughters of Edward Darley Boit, a fellow expatriate American painter, and his wife, but the isolation, the way each girl seems slightly, but ineluctably, different from the others, is still beguiling. Sargent painted the picture in the Boit's apartment in Paris, the girls informally, asymmetrically posed. From Velazquez, Sargent obviously learned the importance of of dark tones, shading, distant light sources. The gigantic vases in the picture really existed. There is so much empty space! What's really spooky is that none of the four girls (at the time of the painting ranging from ages four to fourteen) ever married; it is known that two of them became to some extent emotionally or mentally disturbed over the years. Only the two girls in the foreground remained close over the years. Sargent was a Modernist through and through; there may not be any loaded meaning here, no allegory. What is, is. Perhaps. (Two years ago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston temporarily loaned out the painting to Madrid's Prado so that it could hang next to Las Meninas.) Henry James, a fellow expatriate, praised the painting and the work has gained more and more relevance and esteem since its 1883 Salon debut - the loneliness and isolation the painting captures continues to stand out, intrigue.. Some critics think these themes Sargent captured were related to the plight of the expatriate: always itinerant, always moving, never at home anywhere.
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