Stingy Kids

Another mishmash

Maybe when I'm done teaching and fretting over my dissertation, I'll have the energy for a proper, narrative long post.  Here's another smattering of links, seemingly disconnected.

Vladimir Nabokov's "The Art of Translation," published in The New Republic in 1941, now available online.  I follow Words Without Borders on Twitter and received a link to this essay via a tweet.  I had read it before, and even have it in my files, but I really how WWB is using Twitter to bring good, thought provoking content on translation to its readers.

The pressing question "how did Sarah Hughes outscore Irina Slutskaya and Michelle Kwan for the gold medal in the 2002 Olympics?" is succinctly answered in this article (see the side bar for the details).

Wikipedia's list of "unusual deaths" is a major distraction.  Hypatia of Alexandria was flayed with oyster shells (though the word "ostrakois" may also refer to pottery shards).

I've been listening to Joni Mitchell's Clouds again.  

Some come dark and strange like dying 
Crows and ravens whistling 
Lines of weeping, strings of crying 
So much said in listening 

(from "Songs for Aging Children")

This 1970 profile of Mitchell provides some context for these songs.  My favorite quote: "Grass, it sits you down on your fanny."

Passover

Nathan Englander, author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges and The Ministry of Special Cases, is working on a translation of the Haggadah.  In an op-ed recently published in the New York Times, he offers readers a tantalizing glimpse:

Were it our mouths were filled with a singing like the sea,
And our tongues awash with song, as waves-countless,
And our lips to lauding, as the skies are wide,
And our eyes illumined like the sun and the moon...

There's more but we'll have to wait.  

Mitchum

My mother has been a James Dean fan most of her adult life.  He's right up there with Beethoven.  Growing up, pictures of Dean would grace our refrigerator (sexy pictures of Beethoven were harder to find).  James Dean didn't make many major pictures before he died, so I've seen them all, many times.  If it's true that all things have their opposite, then Dean's was Robert Mitchum.  My mother hated Robert Mitchum.  The mere sight of him revolted her, and she became convinced that he had wronged her in a past life.  "It's the only thing that makes sense," she would say, "I can't stand the man."  As a result, Mitchum films were never shown at my house.  And when I watched the original Cape Fear in college and really liked it, I felt like I had betrayed my mother.  

Earlier this year, my mother and I were talking about movies and she mentioned that she had just seen the Cape Fear remake.  Very gently, I suggested that she may want to take a look at the original.  "But, I have to warn you, it stars Robert Mitchum."  Without any hesitation, my mother informed me that Mitchum ban had been lifted.  He died in 1997 and, over the years, that strange karmic bond between Mitchum and my mother faded.

I told this story to Lloyd Robson, a poet from Wales whom I met several years ago in New York City.  We had lost touch but, last week, we found ourselves on the same train from DC to NYC.  Serendipity.  Lloyd was telling me about the projects that had kept him busy these past few years, among them a book on Mitchum.  "Did you know that he was a poet?" Lloyd asked.  

Apparently, Mitchum was something of a poet prodigy and published his first poems at the age of eight. He continued to write his entire life but was intensely private about his poetry, maybe because it didn't jive with the image of masculinity that he projected on the screen.  An image that filled my mother with dread, I might add.  Lloyd traced Mitchum's life story, going to the towns he lived in and places he passed through.  To get a feeling of the poet in the man. 

Oh Dad!  A Search for Robert Mitchum was published in 2008.

Links:

* Five Questions for...Lloyd Robson

* The Lost Poems of Robert Mitchum (Not sure if these are really his poems.  Need to ask Lloyd about this.)

* The Lost Mitchum Poems, a podcast (via jeunesse doree)