- When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. [Attributed, perhaps falsely, to Mark Twain.
Real
True Narratives
- Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (Grove Press, 2012), a memoir about the author’s Pentecostal upbringing that “wrings humor from adversity . . . but the ghastly childhood transfigured there is not the same as the one vivisected here in search of truth and its promise of setting the cleareyed free.”
- Vivian Gornick, Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2020): “. . . an urgent argument that rereading offers the opportunity not just to correct and adjust one’s recollection of a book but to correct and adjust one’s perception of oneself.”
- Menachem Kaiser, Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021): “‘Plunder’ has many moods and registers. It acquires moral gravity. It pays tender and respectful attention to forgotten lives. It is also alert to melancholic forms of comedy.”
- Annette Gordon-Reed, On Juneteenth (Liveright, 2021): “Gordon-Reed acknowledges that origin stories matter, even if they often have more to say about ‘our current needs and desires’ than with the facts of history, which are often stranger and less assimilable than any self-serving mythology will allow.”
- Erika Krouse, Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation (Flatiron, 2022): “She Became a Private Eye. And Investigated Her Past.”
Documentary and Educational Films
- 51 Birch Street: after a man’s mother dies and his father plans to move to Florida with his former secretary, his mother’s diary reveals some unsettling facts about the couple’s 54-year marriage
Imaginary
Visual Arts
- Frida Kahlo, Portrait of My Father (1951)
- Salvador Dali, Portrait of My Father (1920)
- Ilya Repin, Portrait of Efim Repin, the Artist's Father (1879)
- Paul Cezanne, The Artist's Mother (1867)
- Paul Cezanne, The Artist's Father Reading His Newspaper (1866)
- Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of Rembrandt's Father
- Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of Artist's Mother (1639)
Fictional Narratives
Novels:
- Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011).
- Susan Neiman, Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2019): “Neiman contends that postwar Germany, after initially stumbling badly, has done the hard work necessary to grapple with and come to terms with the legacy of the Holocaust in a way that could be a lesson to America in general, and the American South in particular.”
- Alexander Starritt, We Germans: A Novel (Little, Brown & Co., 2020): “. . . Meissner offers a layered meditation on the ideology of the Nazi Party, and on what his actions say about him as a human.” (Germans holding themselves accountable for Nazism)
- Jon Fosse, Septology I-VII [I-II; III-V; VI-VII] (Transit Books, 2020-22): “. . . an extraordinary seven-novel sequence about an old man’s recursive reckoning with the braided realities of God, art, identity, family life and human life itself . . .”
- Joseph Kanon, The Berlin Exchange: A Novel (Scribner, 2022): “Martin once believed he was working for the greater good, but now wonders whether any side is worth his loyalty.”
Film and Stage
From the shadow side:
Music: songs and other short pieces
- Theobald Böhm, Elegie in A-flat Major, Op. 47
Music: Composers, artists, and major works
Compositions:
- Felix Mendelssohn, Symphony No. 3 in A Minor, Op. 56, “Scottish” (1842) (approx. 39-44 minutes), was inspired by the composer’s experiences in Scotland. “Though he did not embark on its composition in any sustained way until 1840, Mendelssohn first thought about writing a piece such as the Scottish Symphony in 1829, when he toured the British Isles in the company of Karl Klingemann, a friend eleven years his elder who had left Berlin for London to serve as Secretary to the Hanoverian Legislation.” “We went, in the deep twilight, to the Palace of Holyrood, where Queen Mary lived and loved. There’s a little room to be seen there, with a winding staircase leading up to it. This the murderers ascended, and finding Rizzio, drew him out. Three chambers away is a small corner where they killed him. Everything around is broken and moldering, and the bright sky shines in. I believe I found today in the old chapel the beginning of my Scottish Symphony.” “The actual composition of the Scottish Symphony was not completed until thirteen years after his Scottish journey making it, despite its designation as Symphony No 3, the last of his five symphonies. He returned to the work on occasions throughout the 1830s but found it difficult to recreate his ‘Scotch mood’ and it was only in 1842 that the work received its first performance in Leipzig, being repeated in London in the same year to an audience that included the young Queen Victoria, to whom the symphony is dedicated.” “As we can readily hear in the Scottish Symphony, Mendelssohn’s 'travel music' really does suggest the landscapes and cultures that inspired it. The symphony’s first movement is grand and joyful, with a briskness and energy that seem true to Scotland. This effect is even more marked in the lively second movement, which evokes the tunes and rhythms of Scottish folk music without directly quoting from Scottish sources. The contemplative third movement gives way to an energetic finale that draws from the rhythms of Scottish folk dances. In an elevated, German-style coda, Mendelssohn seems to conclude the symphony with a Scottish-German alliance of his own invention.” Top recorded performances are conducted by Toscanini in 1941, Rodzinski in 1947, Maag in 1957, Klemperer in 1960, Karajan in 1971, Harnoncourt in 1992 ***, Ashkenazy in 1999, Colin Davis in 2004, Litton in 2009, Chailly in 2009, Gardner in 2014.
- Glazunov, Suite Caractéristique in D Major, Op. 9 (1887)
- Boris Lyatoshynsky, Symphony No. 5 in C Major, Op. 67, “Slavonic” (1966), “gazes backward through ancient Slavic history by its use of folk tunes from Russia, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia.”
- Kapsberger, lute works: Lutenist Paul O’Dette observes that Kapsberger’s contemporaries labeled his work as “unbelievably poor”, “inept trifles . . . bungling and unmelodious.” O’Dette, who performs these works brilliantly, calls Kapsberger “a pearl distorted.”
- Franck, Prélude, Chorale & Fugue for Piano, M21 (1884)
- Carbon, Six Spanish Lessons; Six More Spanish Lessons
- Carbon, Piano Sonata
- Michael Tilson Thomas, Upon Further Reflection (1963-1977) (approx. 25 minutes), “. . . is a three-movement meditation on the artist’s early life . . .”
- Joan Tower, Still/Rapids (2013/1996) (approx. 17’): “'Still' was written later as an introduction to 'Rapids' because I felt that the fast-paced and busy 'Rapids' might be helped by a short, slow and simpler soft piece.”
Piano music of Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937):
- 3 Métopes (3 Poèms), M31, Op. 29 (1915)
- 4 Études (4 Studies), M3, Op. 4 (1902)
- 4 Polish Dances, M60 (1926), M60 (1926)
- 9 Preludes, M1, Op. 1 (1900)
- 12 Études (12 Studies), M34, Op. 33 (1916)
- 20 Mazurkas, M56, Op. 50 (1925) and M73, Op. 62 (Opp. 50 and 62)
- Fantasy in C major, M13, Op. 14 (1905)
- Masques (Masks), 3 Pieces, M35, Op. 34 (1916)
- Piano Sonata No. 1 in C Minor, M8, Op. 8 (1904)
- Piano Sonata No. 2 in A Major, M25, Op. 21 (1911)
- Piano Sonata No. 3, M38, Op. 36 (1917)
- Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp Minor, M19 (1905, 1909)
- Variations in B-flat Minor, M5, Op. 3 (1903)
- Variations on a Polish Folk Theme in B Minor, M10, Op. 10 (1904)
Albums:
- Apocalyptica, “Amplified: A Decade of Reinventing the Cello” dual album
- Christen Lien, “Elpis”: “What will we remember? Who does hindsight blame? If I tell you all that happened, you may not see the same.” (From the composer’s poetry and liner notes with the album.)
- Gabriel Akhmad Marin, “Ruminate”: an improvisational album on which the artist “amalgamates numerous Silk Road musical instruments and genres that are rooted in the traditions of distinct regional performance-practices yet infused with melodic phrasings and strumming techniques spanning across Eurasia”