We are headed to a third party in a week's time this evening over in Ithaca. Should be nice. A pot of chicken barley soup is on the stove, and I have candles lit all over the house to stave off the darkness. The teenager was disappointed that his plans to snowboard today are all washed out.
I watched Salinger the other day. It was a fascinating documentary, and I am now all charged up for the 2015 releases of never before published works that he wrote in his many reclusive years in NH. After seeing the film, I re-read Nine Stories, and they are as brilliant as ever, and I felt much more informed on the sources for his material -- his life was extraordinary. He was an amazing writer, a flawed human-being as most of us are, and an interesting persona. (Did you know that Nabokov also wrote a work called Nine Stories, released in 1947, just six years before Salinger did? I didn't...)
I am not sure there will ever be another voice like his. If you have not read his Nine Stories, it is a great introduction to his work -- and bits about the Glass family, which will be featured in the soon-to-be published "new" works. Salinger's short stories are an art to write and a pleasure, if not a haunting pleasure, to read. Not sure if I will go back and re-read Catcher, Franny and Zooey, or Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters. I first read these when I was 13 or 14 and was surprised then that I "got" them. (My mother was too). The paperbacks still sit on my bookshelf... getting a bit tattered and worn looking. My appreciation for Salinger's writing has only grown since then.
The other thing I did today was listen to a lot of flute pieces that I have loved and played over the years. Here is James Galway playing an impeccable second movement of Poulenc's Flute Sonata. Wow. (Embedding was disabled, so you will need to take a look HERE.)
See ya.
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