Of course, I am writing this from that quintessentially sloppy and temporary platform, the blog, but I agree with this man that the death of longform letter writing is a tragedy.
A while back, I was trying to write letters on my old-fashioned, manual typewriter (though that mournful essaying speaks of writing longhand).
But did I stick with it? No, I did not. I have hardly typed in a month. When I do, it is to get a better view of some poems I might be working on. Which is why I’m not using this post to pretend I will take an instrument that is mightier than the sword and swat the armies of ignorance. I will keep as I am and mourn uselessly for what has been lost.
But Epstein could not fathom that the appeal of holding a physical book in one’s hand would ever diminish. Instead, he dreamed of
machines that would print on demand, drawing upon a virtual library of digitized books and delivering physical copies in, say, Kinkos all across the country. The bookstores that might survive in this scenario would be essentially stocking examination copies of a representative selection of titles, which could be individually printed while customers lingered at coffee bars awaiting the arrival of their order. Ultimately, Epstein would devote himself to this vision.
Has he definitely failed yet?
One of the geniuses at the Washington Times spent an entire column explaining a service that people pay for (!) is somehow socialism.
It’s really stupid.
http://dcist.com/2012/05/washington_times_columnist_bikeshar.php
The other week (May 25th, to be exact), I went to the Washington National Opera to see Jules Massenet’s Werther. Having only recently read the Goethe novel upon which it was based, I was a bit excited.
Massenet is not among my favorite composers, by any means, but I enjoy the works of those great French composers who followed him and built upon his work, like Debussy and Saint-Saens.
Overall, the two leads (Werther and Charlotte) were strong singers, but the opera itself, frankly, lacked.
In terms of the production, the 1920s style costume and design, were present, but not used to add anything to the opera, so I’m not quite sure what the point was.
But mainly, when I say the opera lacked, I mean the music and libretto. And mainly, I mean the first half.
The opera ends strongly, with the two singers pouring their hearts out in some truly moving duets. But the first two acts are rambling and have a lot of loose ends. For example, there are two friends, drinking buddies of Charlotte’s father, but heck if I know what their dramatic purpose was. I can’t even remember if they appeared in the second half and if they did, they certainly didn’t have much to do. So why were they there, except to fill up space and time?
Massenet is accounted to be famous for his ability to match music to the conversational pace and cadences of natural conversation, so that the singing comes across as unforced and natural. Which it did. But Werther is about all-consuming, tragic, deeply romantic love and not about the rhythms of life in an idyllic French countryside. So push the musical envelope a bit, eh? Like those two disappearing characters, I don’t really know what the point was to a lot of the early music.
So, some excellent singing, but in a flawed opera.
You can read the Washington Post‘s review here.
the coffee philosopher 