R.I.P. - Jim Carroll: A Catholic Lapsed

For whatever reason, I never got into this dude's work. I note his passing, though it be as a ship in the night, for we each spent some time foundering in the same rough waters.

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R.I.P. - Merce Cunningham

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I'm quite certain that I've never posted two obituaries in succession. But what am I to do? My former involvement with the world of dance and with the world of New York City combine to make this post a necessity.

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Here, then, is an obituary worth reading of a life worth having been lived.

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R.I.P - Playing Catch-up

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The miniscule, but exclusive, clique of high-minded readers who have been visiting Rodak Riffs since its launching are familiar with my practice of noting the deaths of prominent writers. It was anomalous, then, that I let the recent suicide of postmodernist superstar, David Foster Wallace, go by without mention. I neither linked to the NY Times obit, nor to any of the several articles that were published about him in the aftermath of his death.

Partially, it was just too depressing: he was very young. Partially, I didn’t feel that I knew him well, having read only one book of his short stories, and having failed to tackle his magnum opus, the 1000-page novel Infinite Jest. which had been just too difficult, too long, and not of the right tenor to suck me in on the occasion of my having taken it out of the library a couple of years ago. I read the first 100 or so pages and gave up.

Since his death, however, I have read his story collection Oblivion, and have almost finished another: Girl With Curious Hair. The last piece in the latter is a very long story, or novella entitled “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way” of which I am about half way through. It is very funny, in my opinion. The following excerpt is a good example of that humor.

Here we see a market research operative named Hogan in an airport in Illinois. He is there in connection with the arrival for a grand reunion of all the people who have ever appeared in a McDonald’s commercial. We overhear him speaking to two of the arriving former commercial actors. The subject of his discourse is his boss, J.D. Steelritter, the adman behind the McDonald’s commercials since day one:

“… This man is a genius. It’s an honor to even do market research for J.D. Steelritter. Even in this God-forsaken place.” He looks around as if for eavesdroppers. “This is the man, this is the legendary man, I’m sure you two know, who eventually got Arm and Hammer baking soda customers to start pouring the stuff down the drain. As…get this…drain freshener!” He licks a bit of sweetener off the heel of his hand. “Is that genius? Is that textbook planned-obsolescence, or what? And all off fear. J.D. eventually figured out that anybody who’d buy a box of baking soda out of fear of refrigerator odor wouldn’t hesitate one second to shell out for another box to prevent drain odor.” He laughs a marvelous laugh. “Drain odor? What’s that, for Christ’s sake? It’s just fear. Very careful research, fear, and the vision of a genius."

Prior to this scene, Hogan had been engaged in fear research in the airport in the conduct of which he had been handing out money in exchange for having his targets name their worst fear. Says Hogan:

“I ask the person who’s taking the money to name, right off the top of their head, what they fear most in the whole world. Their one great informing fear.”

The list of the fears named, as Hogan recites them, is darkly hilarious – my favorite one being:

“That I die and go to heaven and I get there and it stops being heaven because I’m there.”

I don’t know about you, but I can relate to that. I pray that the very talented, super-intelligent, and sadly funny, David Foster Wallace, who finally lost his battle with chronic depression, was not prophetic in writing those words.

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R.I.P. - Pearl Lang

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I was saddened to read this morning of the death of dancer and choreographer, Pearl Lang.

This may be the first time that a New York Times obituary has featured a person whom I personally knew and with whom I had a bit of a working relationship. It was going on 35 years ago that I worked for some months as a sort of assistant to Pearl Lang’s company manager. I did everything from typing up grant proposals, to moving props around, to running out to the deli to buy Pearl some rare roast beef and Jarlsberg cheese, to treat her hypoglycemia. My wife at the time, a beautiful and talented dancer in her own right, was then a member of Pearl’s company. It was with Pearl’s company that I made the trip to Italy which I mentioned here.

In those days, Pearl was in her early fifties, and still dancing beautifully. One season, she returned as a guest artist to the Martha Graham Company to reprise her role as the Bride in Martha’s great piece, Appalachian Spring. My wife was by this time a member of the Graham Company, and I remember accompanying Pearl’s husband, the actor Joseph Wiseman, from backstage to watch Pearl perform that role. Not having tickets for that performance, we watched from behind the rail in standing room. There were tears streaming down Joe’s cheeks as Pearl moved with perfect grace across the stage; and then there were tears streaming down mine. Joseph Wiseman is one of the nicest men I have met in this world. He has been so fortunate to have so long and rewarding a life with his Tiny Dancer. I proved to be not so deserving.

While I was working for Pearl, I was tapped on one occasion to present her with the bouquet of roses on stage at the end of a concert—at the 92nd Street Y, as I remember—an honor that I have never forgotten.

I humbly present her a second one now.
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R.I.P. - Blossom Dearie

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I knew more than one person during my sojourn in New York City who followed the cult of Blossom Dearie; and at least one sweet-throated young woman who aspired and trained to follow in her wake. The little upper-East Side bar and restaurant—Nimrod—where I spent most of my evenings—and wee small hours—during my final decade in the City, often featured cabaret nights, and was ambitiously conceived of by its proprietors as the kind of joint where Blossom Dearie might perform.

Read her New York Times obituary, and try to internalize what the life of Blossom Dearie must have been like. It wasn’t like yours…
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R.I.P. - John Updike

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I was saddened today to learn of the death of that masterful man of letters, John Updike. As was the case with Norman Mailer, who preceded him in death, Updike richly deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature that never came his way. I will leave it to the New York Times obituary to recap his long, varied, and illustrious career, and instead say a few words about what the man gave to me personally.

The occasion of Updike’s passing provides me with an opportunity to remember that “one teacher” whom every enthusiastic student has on the way up—the teacher who makes the difference that changes the course of his student’s intellectual development. For me, that was my ninth-grade English teacher, Mr. Johnston.

Mr. Johnston was a twitchy, nervous little guy. Looking back on it, he reminds me a bit of Dustin Hoffman, playing Ratso Rizzo. He suffered greatly, I think, from nicotine withdrawal as he taught his classes. Nonetheless, he taught me to write so well as a fourteen-year-old that I rarely ever got a grade less than A-minus on any writing assignment that I turned in subsequently, through both high school and college. Mr. Johnston went to the administration on my behalf to obtain permission for me to give an oral book report on J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye. (One didn’t routinely allow discussion in a junior high school English class of a book containing the word “fuck” in 1961.) Mr. Johnston also obtained clearance to teach our class Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, a novel controversial for its racially-charged plot in those pre-civil rights days. He treated his students like young men and women, and thus encouraged us all to live up to the respect that he showed us.

Because of my interest in Salinger, Mr. Johnston took it upon himself to recommend another contemporary novelist to me; a man younger than Salinger, still under the age of thirty, who had already demonstrated a major talent. The novel was Rabbit, Run. The author was John Updike. I loved Rabbitt, and quickly obtained a copy of his earlier novel, The Centaur.

I have continued to read Updike throughout my life. I asked for and received a volume of his early stories for Christmas just last year. I loved his late-nineties novel In the Beauty of the Lilies so well that I gave it to my dad for Father’s Day some years ago.

I don’t feel that John Updike ever received his full due from the literary establishment. Most likely Mr. Johnston never got the kudos he deserved either. I can only express my gratitude to both of these great men for what they contributed to my life. And remember.

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Update: Speaking of remembering, the information in the NPR article linked by reader Anonymous in the comments section has corrected my memory. The novel that I read next after Rabbit, Run must have been The Poorhouse Fair, since The Centaur came after Rabbit.

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R.I.P. - Mouseketette, Cheryl

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You know you’re getting old when the little show biz girls that you had a crush on in elementary school start dying off. Most of the Mickey Mouse Club guys huddled around those black and white TV sets, back in the day, waiting for the music stuff to end so that the next episode of Spin and Marty could come on, fell for Annette and her precociously bodacious ta-tas. But I was always a Cheryl man.

Rest in peace, pretty Cheryl. We won’t forget.

Y? Because we like you!

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Three Obits: R.I.P.

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I want to pay brief tribute to three musicians who have died at the end of this eventful year. The first to die, Odetta, is significant to me in that I saw her perform live at an Ann Arbor venue called Canterbury House (which I was surprised to learn is still in operation) in the late ‘Sixties. This was at the height of both the folk music craze and the civil rights movement. Odetta was significant to both. Canterbury House was important to me not only because I heard a lot of great music there in the ‘Sixties, but also because the minister who ran the place in those days performed my marriage ceremony in the University of Michigan campus chapel in 1969. Odetta sang this song the night I saw her perform.

The next to die was Freddie Hubbard. If you wanted to draw up a list of the top five jazz trumpeters of all time, Hubbard would have to be included. As I rank them you’d have: Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, Freddie Hubbard, and the fifth spot would be up for grabs. Lee Morgan? Miles Davis? Clifford Brown? Fats Navarro? Wynton Marsalis? I’m a Chet Baker fan. Over the years, Freddie Hubbard played with everybody. Here he is, playing with one of my favorite tenor sax men, Joe Henderson, and Herbie Hancock.

Finally, Delaney Bramlett. I don’t know that many people will know who he was. Even in the ‘Sixties, of which he was a figure who did not transcend the times, he wasn’t what you’d call a foreground figure. But he was big in the background. Here is Delaney, playing with his then wife, singer Bonnie, and some other guys… This is a nice clip. Give it a listen.
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Reflections: Endless Sleep

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Today’s New York Times features a couple of obituaries that echoed of the past for me. The first was notice of the passing of dance and theater critic, Clive Barnes. Back in the day when I was living in the City, married to a professional modern dancer, and then to an actress; when I was hanging out in the Village and on the Upper West Side with theater types and artists, Clive Barnes was an omnipresent figure whose Word hung over that world like rolling thunder. Rest in Peace.

But that was in the 1970s and 1980s. Long prior to those days, during the Boomer generation’s formative years—the mid-fifties to the mid-sixties—pop music was notable for its obsession with the prospect of dying tragically young. Perhaps it was the threat of nuclear annihilation that had always been there, just over the horizon. Or perhaps it was that they made us read Romeo and Juliet in 8th grade English class. Whatever the source of our hunger for lugubrious thrills, the music we listened to—from Mark Dinning’s overly cutesy “Teen Angel” to Jan and Dean’s overly contrived “Dead Man’s Curve” to Bob Dylan’s overly journalistic “Percy’s Song”—was always spiked with similar examples of the popular macabre. Of all the tunes in that genre, however, the most deliciously haunting was Jody Reynold’s ballad, “Endless Sleep”. Rest in peace.
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