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PREPARE FOR SAINTS

GERTRUDE STEIN, VIRGIL THOMSON, AND THE MAINSTREAMING OF AMERICAN MODERNISM

A somewhat lite but always engaging account of the modernist movement’s development in America, as seen through the prism of a great American opera. Modernism first arrived in the US via the highly influential and controversial Armory show of 1913, but didn—t gain mainstream appeal until the late 1920s and early 1930s—when it was picked up and promoted by a group of young Harvard graduates who styled themselves “The Friends” or “The Family.” Including the architect Philip Johnson, museum curator Chick Austin, and balletomane Lincoln Kirstein, “The Family” consisted of a brotherhood of wealthy, well-connected, largely homosexual boy geniuses whose support and patronage of fellow alum Virgil Thomson led to the 1933 staging of his opera Four Saints in Three Acts on Broadway. Watson (The Birth of the Beat Generation, 1995, etc.) argues that Four Saints helped to foster mass American acceptance of modernist modalities. Certainly, the opera brought together a glittering assemblage of collaborators. Gertrude Stein wrote the lyrics, Frederick Ashton choreographed, John Houseman directed, and Florine Stettheimer created the set and costumes. Watson provides brief biographies of all concerned. But he focuses on the tumultuous relationship of Stein and Thomson. She was 22 years older, prickly, less famous than she wished to be, while Thomson was a promising unknown. Even with his powerful allies, it took nearly six years to get the opera produced. The ruptures and reconciliations with Stein made things even more difficult. The opera is rarely revived today, but the beauty of its staging, the novelty of its all-black cast, and its general newness made it a landmark when it opened. Despite the opera’s success and its influence, Thomson and Stein only collaborated once more (on the lesser-known The Mother of Us All). The occasional shallows of his wide-ranging account are surpassed by the depth of Watson’s presentation of a pivotal cultural moment. (100 b&w photos, not seen)

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-679-44139-5

Page Count: 512

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1998

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THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.

Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955

ISBN: 0679733736

Page Count: 228

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955

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THE ART OF SOLITUDE

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.

“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0

Page Count: 200

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019

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