RIP Merce Cunningham
Written by Edward ChampionPosted on July 27, 2009
Filed Under Obits
New York Times: “He went on doing so almost to the last. Until 1989, when he reached the age of 70, he appeared in every single performance given by his company, Merce Cunningham Dance Company; in 1999, at 80, though frail and holding onto a barre, he danced a duet with Mikhail Baryshnikov at the New York State Theater. And in 2009, even after observing his 90th birthday with the world premiere of the 90-minute ‘Nearly Ninety,’ at the Brooklyn Academy of Music he went on choreographing for his dancers, telling people as they went to say farewell to him that he was still creating dances in his head.”
(via Books, Inq.)
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Girl Power by Marisa Meltzer. During the 1990s, artists such as Liz Phair and Bikini Kill came very close to unsettling the patriarchal pop hierarchy. And this small yet thoughtful volume delineates many connections between girl bands and post-Beauty Myth ruminations, suggesting that we may have come closer to a musical revolution than we realized, but settled for less.
Reality Hunger by David Shields. This book, challenging both "originality" and the conventional narratives we accept in literary "masterpieces," is mandatory reading for every working writer. It's almost designed as a litmus test carefully designed to uproot charlatans. (Indeed, Zadie Smith confessed last November in The Guardian that she could not write a novel after reading this book. Interestingly, her essay is no longer available online.) The book presents numerous thoughts and maxims: some contrived, some taken from other sources (see the numerous endnotes), and some sincere. And even if you don't agree with the sentiments, you'll come away from the book rethinking your perceptions of the novel and possibly galvanized to reapproach your own work. 
Psycho Too by Will Self. This handsome followup to Psychogeography containing the last half of Will Self's New Statesman columns and accompanied by Ralph Steadman's gloriously savage illustrations -- seems to have escaped the attention of most American newspapers, save for a widely syndicated Alexandra Fuller review in The New York Times Book Review. Small wonder that in a universe happily handing over its glass-encased brains to the likes of People and TMZ that Fuller would accuse Self of penning a "densely written" book and focus her interests more on Self's "rakish behavior" from fifteen years ago rather than his post-Debordian meditations on the dérive. That's too bad. Because Self's enjoyable and hyperliterate essays, laden with cranky asides and thoughtful considerations about the fixed manner in which humans unwittingly accept their spatial limitations, deserves your consideration.
Contact Ed by email.
Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
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