Posts by Jay Barksdale

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, or does it? If you come to the South Court Auditorium of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at 42nd Street this Thursday at 1:15 p.m. (whew!) you might find a clue. The first lecture of the year by the writers of the Wertheim Study and Allen Room will be given by John R. Bohrer, a cool guy and journalist often writing for Slate, Huffington Post, Esquire, etc. He's currently writing a book in the Allen Room about Robert Kennedy.

St. John Ervine was an English theatre critic in 1920s, '30s, writing often for Time and Tide, that remarkably sensible middle-class magazine which first featured the dry and sly E. M. Delafield's Diary of a Provincial Lady (reserve this book right away!). But I digress.

Thinking a great deal just now about the Great One, I thought of last years venture, April 11-15 2011.  It was a great deal of fun, and inspiration, and I felt great admiration for the Allen Room and Wertheim Study scholars who presented such fine work.  The week was audio-taped if you would like to listen to them, before you come to this year's lectures.

Since in less than a week you will have heard a terrific lecture incorporating and marmorializing [sic] Romeo and Juliet, I thought to prime the pump with a reprint of an earlier post: The Juliet Club by Suzanne Harper.  It is still one of my favorite, for joyous, books.

Its'a comin'.  Five presentations on Him.  At 1:15 in the South Court Auditorium at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. 

In the meantime, last night at the Columbia Shakespeare Seminar, a friend and I began to explore the idea of an anthology of poems about, not by, Shakespeare. What do you think?  Do you have one to contribute?  Should we create a blog? Facebook page? Create a pamphlet (how deliciously old-fashioned)? If you have a favorite poem about Shakespeare, please let me know.  One by favorite author, Sylvia Townsend Warner, follows.

It's coming up, 5 lectures from really smart people on the one and only Mr. William "Bard" Shakespeare.

Hamlet, Hamlet (redux) Taming of the Shew, The Winter's Tale and a super presentation on the Library's Shakespearean collections by our own Robert Armitage.

It's here again, featuring the one and only Robert Armitage, Humanities Bibliographer and Blogger Extraordinaire, and 4 cracker-jack scholars from the Wertheim Study.

Though there’s very little chance, apparently, of accurately predicting the future, it seems we’re hardwired to try.  History, reason, and desire seem to be the main tools in this quixotic venture. It helps if you don’t go too far, as The Economist does. But for longer visions, the results are often, in hindsight, hilarious.

Who doesn't like a skyscraper? Acrophobists. But who else can resist those clean (usually) lines, impressive (always) feats of engineering, massive symbols of power (the jury's out on that one)?  New Yorkers are lucky that we have, still have, so very many admirable ones about. Perhaps my favorite is one close to the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building — the Springs Building.

To get ready for the upcoming Symposium on Frankenstein, or, Everybody Loves the Creature, I’ve been re-reading (yes, re-reading thank you) Shelley’s The Last Man.  Sometimes it is billed as science fiction, because in 2056 the world is ravished by plague and we get down to, yes, the last man.  But besides being spared any inkling of what 2011 would be like, lucky creature, let alone 2056, Shelly writes pretty much of her own time.  Yes, England is a Republic, but there is still a royal faction in the wings, plotting a come-back.  There is quite a bit of roman à clef about it.  Lionel, our narrator and LM, is Shelley herself; Adrian, 

We're off and running.  Today was fascinating.  Professor Matt spoke convincingly about the various solutions, or non-solutions, to the end of the sonnets.  At each sonnet's end, at the end of the 'young man' sonnets, or the 'dark lady's' sonnets, or the end of the set, or the end with "A Lover's Complaint" to follow?  All indeterminate, false and tricksy.  The sonnets seem to invite that.  But what was really fun was John Benson (no, not Ben Jonson - one can't make these things up) and his re-ordering and regrouping of the sonnets into a storied sequence.  Professor Matt approves, thinking the sonnets cried out for this.  And 

Five Dayes! Beginning Monday!  Abandon thine drabbe chores aynd Come ye too heare the Great One explained.

William Doyle, a writer in residence in the Library's Allen Room, thinks so.  His new book A Soldier's Dream explores the question of whether one young American soldier helped change the course of the Iraq War? 

Who hasn't had a fascination with a camera?  Mine was long ago with an Olympus when I was young and snobbish and only snapped black and white.  Perhaps the most successful series was Medicine Cabinets, sometimes taken surreptiously.  My two favorites were those of my friend F___ , whose didn't change, at all, from year to year, and that of a cataloger.  I don't even remember her name, but aspirin was in the upper left and Zantac in the lower right.  

New York in the 1970s, without cellphones, the internet, globalization, etc., was a very different place and arguably more vibrant (though I'm glad Central Park isn't like it used to be.)  Photographer extraordinaire Peter Moore tirelessly went about the City capturing just about everyone and everything, and became particularly known for his thorough photojournalism of the avant-garde scene, which included such influential groups as Fluxus and the Judson Dance Theater.  Tuesday will feature one facet of this multi-talented man's enormous body of work—The Avant Garde Festivals of Charlotte Moorman.

Tuesday is the second of the Wertheim Study scholars' lecture series: Singular and Collective: Radical Women Artists [in NYC during the 1970s].  This one, by Dr. Aseel Sawalha, is the collective part.  She's going to examine the scene from the perspective of anthropology, focusing on two women's arts collectives: The New York Feminist Art Institute (still going strong) and Heresies, which was both a school and a magazine, available at the Library and at home with a library card.   I'll bring the bound printed journal on Tuesday.

I'm looking forward to Tuesday.  Wouldn't you like to meet an artist who draws herself with bunny ears?

Together at last!  Two Worthies from the Study, Jean Mills & Anne Fernald, and Isaac Gewirtz, Curator of NYPL's Berg Collection (and doctors all), will present three lectures this coming Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, in the South Court Auditorium at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, on the one and only Virginia Woolf, of whom I am afraid. 

Gentle Reader,

Every so often I keep a yearly log of what I read.  Why?  'Cuz it's fun, mama, 'cuz it's fun.  Besides, it's no big deal—you read, I read, everyone we know reads.  So here it is.  The titles in bold are by the wonderful folks of the Research Study Rooms (Allen Room and Wertheim Study).  If you keep a list, I would enjoy seeing it posted here, as a reply.  If not, why not start and get in touch this time next year.  If the Fates allow, I'll be here.