Learning A New Language

At age 53, literary and political essayist Pankaj Mishra, author of From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012), among other books, proves it is never too late to learn a new language. When he was asked in the New York Times Book Review (March 6, 2022) "What  books are on your night stand?," he responded:

"I am learning Spanish, so the bedside pile consists almost entirely of books I previously enjoyed in English translation and now wish to read, absurdly ambitiously, in the original: poems by Borges and Alejandra Pizarnik, and novels by Antonio Munoz Molina, Rafael Chirbes and Almudena Grandes."

Novelist Julie Otsuka's Ideal Reading Experience

My favorite question asked of those interviewed in the New York Times Book Review's "By the Book" Q &A feature each week is "What is your ideal reading experience?"

Novelist Julie Otsuka, I think, has given the best description so far (The New York Times Book Review, February 20, 2022):

"...I love reading and working in public spaces. My ideal reading experience: late afternoon, pre-pandemic, my neighborhood cafe, a seat in the far back corner, a slight coffee buzz. All around me, the pleasant hum of human voices. In front of me, on the table, a book, a pencil for underlining (Blackwing Palomino), a pen and a small unlined Muji notebook, in case I run across a sentence I want to write down, or overhear a good snatch of dialogue (which could end up in my next novel--sometimes I only appear to be reading)."

Zora Neale Hurston And Ida B. Wells, A Wishful Literary Conversation

February is Black History Month. So if I could go back in time, I would want to be transported to the Harlem Renaissance and sit in a room with novelist/anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston and journalist/anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells, two of my favorite African-American historical figures.

Both Hurston and Wells were contemporaries and probably knew about each other. For me it would be a joy to just listen to them exchange ideas and experiences, especially about the American South. Not only would their conversation be eye-opening, it would be intellectually stimulating.

Arthur T. Wilson, An Afro-Renaissance Man

The following excerpt is from a telephone interview I did with Arthur T. Wilson around 1984. Wilson, who is African-American, born in  Newark, New Jersey, could be considered a Renaissance man because of his many achievements as an actor, playwright, poet, educator, dance critic, and co-editor and publisher of Attitude, a monthly magazine devoted to the dance world.

On gays in dance:

"A majority of them [dancers] are [gay] but not exclusively. [New York City Ballet choreographer] George Balanchine was not and he dealt with some of the most beautiful bodies in the world over his 60, 70 years. But he was not gay at all, at all, period. [He had been] married to several beautiful women through his career. There's [choreographer] Jacques D'Amboise, who has a family. There's even [choreographer/dancer/actor] Geoffrey [Holder] himself, who's married to [dancer] Carmen de Lavallade. It just depends."

On the acclaimed Jubilation! Dance Company, founded in 1979 in Brooklyn, New York, by the African-American choreographer Kevin Jeff:

"[Jubilation! appeals] to a cross-section of those who go to dance concerts, period. Going across age. Also [it] appeals very highly to a college crowd. A cross-section of New York State citizenry. That's no different than any other fucking good arts troupe."

On sexuality's importance in creating a dance:

"That issue [homosexuality] is never important. It's the art that's important. Your bedroom politics doesn't make your painting better or your violin chirp any sweeter. Someone's sexual life really plays very little on what they do in terms of  how the audience gets it. Now in terms of your sexual life and all that represents you in relationship to how you then create your art, approach your art, yes, it does have something directly to do with it. But not in reference to the curtain goes up and the audience is either entertained or not."

The September/October 1983 issue of Attitude, a dance magazine of which Arthur T. Wilson was an editorial staff member.

Abraham Lincoln, Seeker Of Knowledge

As a lifelong reader and book lover, I can totally relate to young Abraham Lincoln's reading habits as cited in the following passage from Brian Kilmeade's The President and the Freedom Fighter: Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Their Battle to Save America's Soul (Sentinel/Penguin Random House, 2021):

"Whenever and wherever he [Lincoln] could, he read. He read in bed. He read sitting astride a log by a stream. One friend spotted him reading in the woods, lying on the ground with his legs extended upward along a tree trunk. He read while walking, so absorbed in his text that he would sometimes stop, oblivious to anything but the words on the page, before continuing on, never having lifted his gaze."

Composer Billy Strayhorn Was Never In The Closet

A biopic about composer and pianist Billy Strayhorn, Duke Ellington's friend and musical collaborator, is long overdue.

In the 1990s, director Irwin Winkler was set to turn David Hajdu's biography of Strayhorn, Lush Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996), into a movie. It never happened. I remember Winkler being quoted in a newspaper interview as saying that Strayhorn was not open about his homosexuality. Clearly Winkler hadn't read the book. I, who read a significant portion of the book, learned early on that Strayhorn was very much open about his sexuality.

"...Strayhorn," writes Hajdu (pronounced Hay-doo) on page 79, "made himself a triple minority: he was black, he was gay, and he was a minority among gay people in that he was open about his homosexuality in an era when social bias forced many men and women to keep their sexual identities secret."

Maybe it was a good thing that the movie was never made. Who knows what other inaccuracies would have crept into the script.

In the right hands a Strayhorn biopic could become a powerful and memorable cinematic experience. Someone like director Barry Jenkins (Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk) might be that someone who could accurately bring Strayhorn's life and musical achievements to the big screen.

The big question then becomes this--who would be a good candidate to play Billy Strayhorn?

A Harlem Renaissance Novel Becomes A Musical

One of the many books from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s that I need to read is George Schuyler's Black No More. It is described as a satirical novel in which, writes historian David Levering Lewis in When Harlem Was in Vogue (Vintage Books, 1982), "Dr. Junius Crookman, an Afro-American scientist, invents a process--'by electrical nutrition and glandular control'--which turns dark skin white and crinkly hair straight."

The book was recently adapted into an off-Broadway musical, complete with choreography by the renowned Bill T. Jones.

Schuyler, a black conservative, and his white wife, were the parents of a biracial child, Philippa, who became a piano prodigy. Joseph Mitchell of the New Yorker magazine wrote two lengthy profiles of Philippa in the 1940s when she was still a child. In 1967, covering the Vietnam War as a photojournalist, she was killed in a helicopter crash.

For a time there was talk of turning her life story into a feature-length movie, with singer Alicia Keys, herself a piano prodigy, portraying Philippa.