A classic

Let's go back to 1998. I remember thinking I was the only one who got this joke: A parody of Ron Rosenbaum, rhapsodizing over a genius—in this case, Bobby Goldsboro:

Longtime readers remember that I pondered the esse of Carrot Top's uniquely redheaded comedy in a previous column, and explored the quidditas of evil in my book Hitler Was a Jerk. What I propose to do in this and subsequent columns is to determine whether there is an exceptionalist Goldsboro fingerprint: Whether his genius can be said to exist on the same human continuum we all share, on the outermost extreme of heartfelt lyricism and weepy melody, or whether, as some musicologists have argued, he occupies some special category of turtlenecked sensitivity all his own - a separate realm of Goldsboro qua Goldsboro.

Not sure how I came across this, way back when—it's from a site called Simpleton.

UPDATE: Simpleton is still around. I don't even know what it is, exactly...

Changing the game

Paper Cuts on Ron Rosenbaum on Nabokov as game changer:

[In Slate] Rosenbaum wrote:

I have my own strong feelings about the question of genius in literature. I’ve always felt that if we look at the past century, Nabokov was a game-changer, as the academic phrase has it. Nabokov showed there is a place you can go, a place that the alchemy of words can transport reader and writer to, that no one had gone before. And Nabokov went there, with ease, in “Lolita” and “Pale Fire.” So it’s hard to call any other writer in the past century a genius of the same order.

Really? I guess it’s time to push Proust out of the pantheon and kick Kafka to the curb.

And yet...I think R.R. is right!? (At 2 in the morning.)

(Am not going to read his Slate piece on The Orig. of Laura, though, b/c I want to come to it "fresh.")

Nabokov Monday

The Economist reports that Nina Khrushcheva (Nikita's granddaughter) has published a book on VN....(Via Maud)

And Dizzyhead Leland talks about The Original of Laura—to burn, or not to burn?—with Brian Boyd and Ron Rosenbaum...on Australian radio!

Film issue

Am I the only one who didn't care for Children of Men? The long take at the end was pretty impressive, or was it simply impressive because I kept thinking, "It must be hard to do a long take like that, how do you choreograph everything?" etc.

Anyway, via Very Short List, here is Daily Film Dose's look at the long take. My favorite: "Russian Ark—The Whole Damn Movie."

And via The Morning News: Kristan Horton shoots scenes from Dr. Strangelove using household items.

* * *

Ron Rosenbaum's written about the surreal in-flight catalogue Sky Mall, and suddenly the world of airborne literature seems ripe for analysis. The editor's note in the new American Way magazine gives you the sense that Sherri Gulczynski Burns figures, Nobody is going to read this, and if so—so what?

Do you have things on your to-do list that, no matter how important they are, take a backseat to everything else? Or is it just me? As I’ve mentioned before, writing this column is something I put off until the very last minute every single issue. I don’t know why. I think that only extensive (or intensive?) therapy would help me figure that out. This time, I even channeled the ghosts of all the users that IT people (read Wes) have “deleted” over the years, and I persuaded their spirits to infect my computer so that this file (and only this file) would not open. Sadly, the said IT person was able to fix it. So here I am.

As it makes me feel better to have an excuse, this time I’m chalking my procrastination up to it being the end of winter.

Hockey and basketball seasons have just come to a close, so it’s time to turn our attention to America’s favorite pastime. (And believe it or not, that favorite pastime is not happy hour!)

(It goes on...!)