Cinematically Yours
A place I want to visit: Benmore Botanic Garden in Argyllshire. Did you know that that part of Scotland is a temperate rain forest? Now you do.
In the newsreel at the beginning of Citizen Kane, the stentorian voice of the narrator says, “Then last week, as it must to all men, death came to Charles Foster Kane.” I have just discovered that Herman Mankiewicz and Orson Welles, who wrote the screenplay, nicked that formulation from Time magazine’s 1926 obituary for the great labor leader Eugene Debs: “As it must to all men, Death came last week to Eugene Victor Debs, Socialist.” I wonder if they did so consciously or unconsciously.
I have an essay on Citizen Kane coming out next month on Literary Hub. I’ll link to it when it’s out.
For the first time in many years, I’m teaching three courses next semester. (Yikes.) I have rudimentary web pages for each of them:
Some folks have asked for me to link to posts on my blog. I can do that! (Though I probably won’t link everything.) Here are a few recent ones:
- The relationship between religious liberty and other issues for religious believers
- Why I don’t want to listen to or deliver any more lectures
- How the proliferation of administrative offices at universities is weakening the relationship between teachers and students
I will certainly continue to link to my own posts (and other writings). But do please consider getting yourself an RSS reader. With RSS you can still find a lot of wonderful stuff on the internet that doesn’t show up in social media, and you have complete control over what you see.
STATUS BOARD
- Work: Teaching Out of Africa, which remains a truly great book, though heaven knows the whole colonial context, and Dinesen’s unwavering belief in aristocracy, can create some uncomfortable moments in the classroom. I would be sad to conclude that this book cannot be recovered in our moment.
- Music: This, my friends, is a truly great record, and it is capable of sustaining the listener through the rough patches of life.
- Viewing: Hoping to work my way through all the Ozu films starring the great Setsuko Hara. Though people usually single out Tokyo Story as Ozu's masterpiece, and it is indeed one of the wonders of world cinema, I would say that if Late Spring is not the greatest film ever made, it is very very close. Here is a lovely tribute to Hara by Robert Gottlieb.
- Food and Drink: This is the season when, at Torchy’s Tacos, I shift from guacamole to queso with my chips.
