Joanna Rotté, a writer, actor and director, studied with Stella Adler for three years in the 1970's. A member of Actors Equity, she has a doctorate in theatre from the CUNY Graduate Center and is a professor of graduate-level theatre at Villanova University in addition to teaching at the Stella Adler Conservatory in New York City.
Ellen Adler, Stella's daughter from her first marriage to Horace Eliascheff, has contributed an unusual foreward that eschews tracing her mother's life or career. Ms. Adler devotes a few sentences to her mother and her three husband and devotes the bulk of the foreward to describing the Adler family burial plot in Mount Carmel Cemetery in Queens, N.Y. This is the final resting place of two major stars of the late 19th/early 20th century Yiddish theatre, Jacob and Sara Adler (Ellen's grandparents), their sons Jay, Abe, and Luther (he of the piercing stare) and daughters Frances (with her daughters, Pearl and Lulla) and Stella (along with her second husband, Harold Clurman. )
Acting with Adler is of interest to the casual reader for its insight into one method of teaching acting (sometimes referred to as "The Method"). Readers with an interest in the life and career of Stella Adler can glean some nuggets of information but this distillation of Miss Adler's ideas only makes me wish someone would write a proper biography. In the meantime Harold Clurman's The Fervent Years is the best substitute that I've found.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Paul Robeson by Martin Bauml Duberman
Paul Robeson by Martin Bauml Duberman. New York : Knopf, 1988. 1st ed. xiii, 804 p., [48] p. of plates .
Good thing I double-checked as I wrote a new FB that I'd blogged about this book when, in fact, this entry has been in draft form since September 2009.
This may be first book where I spent as much time reading the "Notes" as the text. 198 pages of notes printed in a small typeface and arranged in a double column make for a considerable amount of reading. Many of these notes provide highly detailed clarifications or contradictory evidence; readers ignore the notes at their own peril.
As Professor Duberman explains in the "Note on Sources", this level of information was necessary because so much of his research was based on the Robeson Family Archives (RA), a 50,000-item collection made by Paul Robeson's wife, Eslanda (Essie), and later organized by their son, Paul Robeson, Jr. Writing in 1988 Duberman hopes that the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University will open the RA to general use shortly. He has attempted to assist future scholars by citing gaps or contradictions in the record and also pointing to valuable seconday sources. In addition to the documentary material in the RA, Duberman consulted the holdings of an additional 29 repositories and 30 privately-held collections of manuscript materials. He interviewed over 100 acquaintances and colleagues of Robeson, going back to high school and college classmates.
Paul Robeson was not a diarist nor was he a prolific correspondent; the years before he met and married Essie Goode are sparsely documented. For the later chapters of Paul Robeson's life, much of the documentation is provided by files from the FBI which Paul Robeson, Jr. was able to obtain under the Freedom of Information Act. Feeling there was additional FBI material that Mr. Robeson had not received and recognizing that access under FOIA had become more restricted, Duberman eventually filed a lawsuit against the FBI for materials relating to Robeson's physical and mental collapse. Sadly, the files received were inconclusive, leaving another avenue for future scholars to probe. Since this work was researched and published prior to the end of the Soviet Union, one can only hope that the opening of Soviet-era archives in Russia and Eastern Europe will provide access to additional unpublished material from these counties.
112 black-and-white photographs from family, friends and a wide range of other sources
Martin Bauml Duberman is Distinguished Preofessor of History at Leman College, The City University of New York and the author of ten previous books and a play.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
The Blue Flower: A Novel
In The Blue Flower: A Novel Penelope Fitzgerald, winner of the Booker Prize for her novel Offshore, presents a richly detailed imagining of a brief period in the life of Friedrich (Fritz) von Hardenberg (1772-1801) better known by his pen name, Novalis. Drawing on literary and historical writings - correspondence, diaries and other documents - Fitzgerald depicts Hardenberg's family life and friendships during his university years and the start of his planned career, The position of mining inspector in the Harz Mountains has been chosen for him by his family as it will allow him to continue in his father's footsteps and keep the family landholdings together.
This period encompasses Fritz's "love at first sight" meeting with Sophie von Kuhn, the 12-year old step-daughter of a business associate of Hardenberg's mentor and teacher, Coelestin Just. Fitzgerald throws her readers into an unsettled historical period and an unsettling period for Fritz, given his tumultuous relationship with his father Sophie's age is less of an issue than modern readers are apt to expect, particularly once Friedrich agrees to wait until Sophie reaches an age specified by her family to formally announce their engagement. The bigger issue for the von Hardenberg family is Sophie's lower social status. Her father was a minor noble but following his death, her mother remarried ; her new husband is a one-time military officer who retired to the provinces with no particular distinction other than an outsize, booming personality.
Reading The Blue Flower, I was puzzled by Fitzgerald's use of "the" preceding certain names. Both Fritz's younger brother August Wilhem Bernhard ("the Bernhard") and Sophie's married older sister "the Mandelsloh" (the wife of an army lieutenant of that name and Sophie's companion and nurse) get this treatment. These two individuals were very important to Fritz and Sophie, respectively, so perhaps that's the reason for the emphasis.
According to the Afterword, Fritz informed his friends he would write under the name Novalis in Feb. 1798. Novalis was an old family name which translated as "clearer of new land." Three years later he was dead of the same disease which claimed his beloved and several of his brothers and sisters, pulmonary tuberculosis.
The Blue Flower is a delight to read, at turns tragic and comic, filled with unforgettable characters, set in a region torn by war, in 227 pages (including an illustration of the engagement ring), this novel also delineates the state of medicine in the late 18th century when it is beginning to emerge as a profession based on experimental science from its earlier wellsprings of observation, analogy and speculation.
Throughout Fitzgerald contrasts the protagonist's artistic aspirations with the practical demands of career and preparation for eventual inheritance and elevated social position in such a way that the plot is propelled forward at a gallop.
Published by Houghton Mifflin, Boston, c1995.
This period encompasses Fritz's "love at first sight" meeting with Sophie von Kuhn, the 12-year old step-daughter of a business associate of Hardenberg's mentor and teacher, Coelestin Just. Fitzgerald throws her readers into an unsettled historical period and an unsettling period for Fritz, given his tumultuous relationship with his father Sophie's age is less of an issue than modern readers are apt to expect, particularly once Friedrich agrees to wait until Sophie reaches an age specified by her family to formally announce their engagement. The bigger issue for the von Hardenberg family is Sophie's lower social status. Her father was a minor noble but following his death, her mother remarried ; her new husband is a one-time military officer who retired to the provinces with no particular distinction other than an outsize, booming personality.
Reading The Blue Flower, I was puzzled by Fitzgerald's use of "the" preceding certain names. Both Fritz's younger brother August Wilhem Bernhard ("the Bernhard") and Sophie's married older sister "the Mandelsloh" (the wife of an army lieutenant of that name and Sophie's companion and nurse) get this treatment. These two individuals were very important to Fritz and Sophie, respectively, so perhaps that's the reason for the emphasis.
According to the Afterword, Fritz informed his friends he would write under the name Novalis in Feb. 1798. Novalis was an old family name which translated as "clearer of new land." Three years later he was dead of the same disease which claimed his beloved and several of his brothers and sisters, pulmonary tuberculosis.
The Blue Flower is a delight to read, at turns tragic and comic, filled with unforgettable characters, set in a region torn by war, in 227 pages (including an illustration of the engagement ring), this novel also delineates the state of medicine in the late 18th century when it is beginning to emerge as a profession based on experimental science from its earlier wellsprings of observation, analogy and speculation.
Throughout Fitzgerald contrasts the protagonist's artistic aspirations with the practical demands of career and preparation for eventual inheritance and elevated social position in such a way that the plot is propelled forward at a gallop.
Published by Houghton Mifflin, Boston, c1995.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Swept away with T. C. Boyle
Water Music by T. Coraghessan Boyle ; introduction by James R. Kincaid. New York : Penguin Books, [2006]. Originally published by Little, Brown and Company, 1981. 25th Anniversary Edition with a new introduction. (Kincaid is Aerol Professor of English at the University of Southern California.) "Map to illustrate Mungo Park's missions into West Africa (on 2 facing pages preceding the t.p.)
The citation for this novelized version of the life of Mungo Park in Richard Holmes' The Age of Wonder (more on this later) reminded me of my resolution to read more of T. Coraghessan Boyle's work. Several years ago I read Riven Rock and Road to Wellville but wandered off to read other authors. From his wikipedia entry I realize he's written a dozen novels so I've more than a few books to I have to read in order to catch up. OK, one of these days.
Back to Mungo Park and his fascinating life (the unusual first name stuck in my memory but prior to reading Mr. Holmes' book I lacked a context in which to place the famed English explorer.) Here in a most unconventional fictionalized biography, Boyle reimagines Park's life in parallel with the experiences with those of an orphan who grows up in the slums of 18th century. This fictional alter ego, Ned Rise, is a young man in a hurry to succeed who pretty much turns everything he touches into a mess (not all that dissimilar from Boyle's view of Park.) Along with real characters like Ailie Anderson Park, Mungo's wife who gives new meaning to the term long-suffering, and Joseph Bank, one-time explorer but now stay-at home president of the Royal Society, Boyle creates a batch of fictional characters including Johnson (Mungo's guide to the mysteries of the River Niger), Gleg (a Scottish physician who stays home and tries to stand by Ailie) and various friends and enemies of Ned Rise.
If you're a fan of T.C. Boyle's but missed this uproarious first novel, please read it; if his reputation as a modern great or the ponderous pace of the film version of Road to Wellville has turned you off , give Water Music a try. I think you'll be in for a treat.
The citation for this novelized version of the life of Mungo Park in Richard Holmes' The Age of Wonder (more on this later) reminded me of my resolution to read more of T. Coraghessan Boyle's work. Several years ago I read Riven Rock and Road to Wellville but wandered off to read other authors. From his wikipedia entry I realize he's written a dozen novels so I've more than a few books to I have to read in order to catch up. OK, one of these days.
Back to Mungo Park and his fascinating life (the unusual first name stuck in my memory but prior to reading Mr. Holmes' book I lacked a context in which to place the famed English explorer.) Here in a most unconventional fictionalized biography, Boyle reimagines Park's life in parallel with the experiences with those of an orphan who grows up in the slums of 18th century. This fictional alter ego, Ned Rise, is a young man in a hurry to succeed who pretty much turns everything he touches into a mess (not all that dissimilar from Boyle's view of Park.) Along with real characters like Ailie Anderson Park, Mungo's wife who gives new meaning to the term long-suffering, and Joseph Bank, one-time explorer but now stay-at home president of the Royal Society, Boyle creates a batch of fictional characters including Johnson (Mungo's guide to the mysteries of the River Niger), Gleg (a Scottish physician who stays home and tries to stand by Ailie) and various friends and enemies of Ned Rise.
If you're a fan of T.C. Boyle's but missed this uproarious first novel, please read it; if his reputation as a modern great or the ponderous pace of the film version of Road to Wellville has turned you off , give Water Music a try. I think you'll be in for a treat.
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