Monthly Archives: August 2012

The Opera Ticket, The Backpack and The Feline Asylum

Posted on August 20, 2012 by | 7 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Elroyjones and others who’ve asked for pics,  I don’t have this miracle out here yet so I can’t provide you pics at the moment of that specific one.  But the cool thing about living in the 21s Century is a person can meet himself coming the other direction down the road he’s going on.

Someone on Craigslist is selling one so much like it I had to look twice to make sure it wasn’t the same backpack.  http://sandiego.craigslist.org/csd/rvs/3189851591.html

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A couple of things are different, but generally the same animal.  The Craigslist one’s 21′ and the Opera Ticket’s 18′, I’m thinking.  Same model, same engine, interior design somewhat different – this guy claims 18 mpg on the road.  The one I’m getting has a generator mounted below on this side, while this one doesn’t.

But the Feline Asylum’s got 76,000 miles on the 22R engine, sat up a decade after the man owned it was killed in a plane crash.  Then another man bought it, worked on a lot of it for five years, put a new set of tires on it, and before he was finished decided he has to move to Arkansas.  It has a few things to be done before it’s ready to head off looking at operas.

I’ll be back and forth this week getting things arranged while the cats chew their toenails and stomp around complaining.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Animals, Senior Citizens, Transportation, Trucks

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Hot Diggety Damn – Join Me for One of These Next Year! Let’s Party!

Posted on August 19, 2012 by | 5 comments

2013 SANTA FE OPERA SEASON ANNOUNCED

WORLD PREMIERE OF OSCAR BY THEODORE MORRISON
Co-Commissioned and Co-Produced by The Santa Fe Opera and Opera Company of Philadelphia.
Featuring David Daniels in the title role.

 FIRST SANTA FE OPERA PERFORMANCES OF ROSSINI’S LA DONNA DEL LAGO
Featuring Joyce DiDonato in the title role.

 RETURN OF OFFENBACH’S THE GRAND DUCHESS OF GEROLSTEIN
First performances since 1979. New Production.
Featuring Susan Graham in the title role. 

TWO POPULAR REVIVALS
Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro from 2008. 
Verdi, La Traviata from 2009.
In honor of the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth.

TWO SPECIAL CONCERTS

 SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 4:00 PM
Venue to be Announced
In honor of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Richard Wagner
and the 100th anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Britten.
Richard Wagner, Wesendonck Lieder
Original version for voice and piano
Benjamin Britten, Cabaret Songs
Christine Brewer, Soprano
Frédéric Chaslin, Piano
Liszt, Wagner Transcriptions
Frédéric Chaslin, Piano

SUNDAY, AUGUST 18, 2013, 4:00 PM
STRAVINSKY COMMEMORATION
Basilica Cathedral of Saint Francis of Assisi
Stravinsky: Mass
Monteverdi: Vespers (selections)
A recreation of the concert Igor Stravinsky himself conducted on this date fifty years ago in his last appearance in Santa Fe.   That historic concert will be recreated by members of The Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Program and the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra led by Chief Conductor Frédéric Chaslin. 

THE GRAND DUCHESS OF GEROLSTEIN
Jacques Offenbach
Last performed by The Santa Fe Opera in 1979.  New Production.
Sung in French
With English Dialogue
June 28, July 3, 6, 12, 19, 30, August 7, 15, 21, 24

 

CONDUCTOR   Frédéric Chaslin
DIRECTOR     Lee Blakeley
SCENIC DESIGNER *Adrian Linford
COSTUME DESIGNER    *Jo van Schuppen
LIGHTING DESIGNER   Rick Fisher
CHOREOGRAPHER       Peggy Hickey
   
GRAND DUCHESS   Susan Graham
WANDA +*Anya Matanovič
FRITZ *Paul Appleby
BARON PUCK +Aaron Pegram
PRINCE PAUL  +Jonathan Michie
GENERAL BOUM  Kevin Burdette

 

Santa Fe Opera audiences in the 1970s loved this grande opera bouffe, and it was presented no less than four times in a decade.  Mr. MacKay decided it was time to bring it back.  The Grand Duchess, a young woman raised by tutors, is a tyrant, and the opera revolves around the complications of her love life.  Susan Graham, one of the world’s leading dramatic mezzo-sopranos, has a virtuoso comic side which will be remembered from the 2003 performance of another Offenbach gem, La Belle Hélène.  The object of her affections is a young officer, Fritz, sung by Paul Appleby in his debut.  Mr. Appleby was a national winner of the 2009 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, a career grantee from the Richard Tucker Foundation in 2011, and recently, the recipient of the 2012 Martin E. Segal Award. He performs extensively with pianist Steven Blier and the New York Festival of Song.  The object of Fritz’s affection, Wanda, is sung by Anya Matanovič, also making her debut. The cast also includes Kevin Burdette, remembered as Kitty’s father in the 2011 production of The Last Savage.  Making their debuts are scenic designer Adrian Linford and costume designer Jo van Schuppen.  Both have worked with director Lee Blakely, who is returning to Santa Fe for the 2012 production of The Pearl Fishers.  Chief Conductor Frédéric Chaslin will conduct.

 

THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Sung in Italian
Last performed by The Santa Fe Opera in 2008.  Revival.
June 29, July 5, 10, August 3, 8, 13, 20, 23

 

CONDUCTOR      John Nelson
DIRECTOR   Bruce Donnell
SCENIC & COSTUME DESIGNER  Paul Brown
LIGHTING DESIGNER     Duane Schuler
PRODUCTION Jonathan Kent
   
FIGARO   TBA
SUSANNA   *Lisette Oropesa
COUNTESS ALMAVIVA +Susanna Phillips
CHERUBINO       *+Emily Fons
MARCELLINA   Susanne Mentzer
BASILIO      +Keith Jameson
COUNT ALMAVIVA      Daniel Okulitch
DOCTOR BARTOLO  Dale Travis

 

The American soprano Lisette Oropesa will make her company debut as Susanna.  Ms. Oropesa, a former member of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera, has appeared in a number of operas there including Das Rheingold and Siegfried.  Most recently she appeared in the Met’s production of The Enchanted Island.  The Countess and Count will be sung by Susanna Phillips and Daniel Okulitch, who was last seen in 2011 as the Last Savage in the opera of the same name.  Ms. Phillips has been singing leading roles both in this country and abroad, including the Metropolitan Opera.  Emily Fons, an apprentice in 2008 and 2009, is Cherubino.  The distinguished conductor John Nelson, who has appeared with orchestras and ensembles in this country and in Europe, led the Company’s 1997 production of Semele.  Director Bruce Donnell will recreate the original production by Jonathan Kent.  He has directed extensively at the Metropolitan Opera including a tour to Japan, and with opera companies in Europe, Canada and South America.  He has directed a number of productions for The Santa Fe Opera, most recently Salome in 2006.

LA DONNA DEL LAGO
Gioachino Rossini
First performances by The Santa Fe Opera.  New Production.
Sung in Italian
July 13, 17, 26, August 1, 6, 14

 

CONDUCTOR   Stephen Lord
DIRECTOR   Paul Curran
SCENIC & COSTUME DESIGNER  Kevin Knight
LIGHTING DESIGNER  Duane Schuler
   
ELENA  +Joyce DiDonato
MALCOLM GROEME     *Daniela Barcellona
UBERTO   *Lawrence Brownlee
RODRIGO DI DHU   *René Barbera
DOUGLAS D’ANGUS   Wayne Tigges

Rossini’s opera of 1819 is based on The Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott in which a young woman, Elena, is pledged to marry one man, but loves another.  Joyce DiDonato, in the title role, performed the opera in 2010 at the Paris Opera and in 2011 at La Scala.  In La Donna del Lago, her true love, Malcolm, will be sung by mezzo- soprano Daniela Barcellona.  Born in Trieste, Ms. Barcellona is recognized as a superb interpreter of Rossini whose works she has sung throughout Europe.  She appeared with Ms. DiDonato in the Paris and La Scala productions.  The brilliant American tenor Lawrence Brownlee is Uberto, the disguised King James who also loves Elena.  He studied at Indiana University, making his Metropolitan Opera debut in 2000. Tenor René Barbera, a native of San Antonio, is Rodrigo.  In 2011 he received the top three prizes in Plácido Domingo’s Operalia Competition, the first singer to do so.   All three are making their company debuts in this new production.  Stephen Lord returns to conduct.  He led The Tales of Hoffmann in 2010.  Director Paul Curran and scenic and costume designer Kevin Knight most recently created Albert Herring in 2010.

LA TRAVIATA
Giuseppe Verdi
Sung in Italian
Last Performed by The Santa Fe Opera in 2009.  Revival.
July 20, 24, 29, August 2, 5, 10, 16, 22

 

CONDUCTOR      Frédéric Chaslin
DIRECTOR   Laurent Pelly
SCENIC DESIGNER  Chantal Thomas
COSTUME DESIGNER Laurent Pelly
LIGHTING DESIGNER    Duane Schuler
   
VIOLETTA  *Brenda Rae
ALFREDO    +*Michael Fabiano
GERMONT     *Roland Wood (American debut)
GASTONE    +Keith Jameson
DOUPHOL +* Jonathan Michie
DR. GRENVIL  Dale Travis

French director Laurent Pelly returns to Santa Fe to recreate his striking production of La Traviata with scenic designer Chantal Thomas.  Making her debut as Violetta is Brenda Rae.  The American soprano has been a member of the ensemble at Frankfurt Opera where she has sung major roles.  Her appearances in Europe include performances at National Opera of Bordeaux, Glyndebourne Festival, Bayerische Staatsoper, and Arena di Verona.  Alfredo will be sung by Michael Fabiano, a former apprentice who has been winning acclaim in this country and in Europe.  He was a grand prize winner at the 2007 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and was featured in The Audition, the documentary about the competition.  He has made debuts at English National Opera, San Francisco Opera, Dresden Semperoper, Opera Cologne, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and others.  Baritone Roland Wood is a British native, having received his music education at Royal Northern College of Music and at the National Opera Studio and English National Opera where he has also performed.  He has sung with opera companies throughout Scotland, England and in Europe.  All three are making their first appearances in Santa Fe.  These performances also mark Mr. Wood’s American debut.

OSCAR
Theodore Morrison
Libretto by Theodore Morrison and John Cox
World Premiere
Commissioned and Produced by
The Santa Fe Opera and Opera Company of Philadelphia
Sung in English
July 27, 31, August 9, 12, 17

 

CONDUCTOR  Evan Rogister
DIRECTOR   Kevin Newbury
SCENIC DESIGNER   David Korins
COSTUME DESIGNER David Woolard
LIGHTING DESIGNER     Rick Fisher
CHOREOGRAPHER    Seán Curran
   
OSCAR WILDE   David Daniels
ADA LEVERSON  Heidi Stober
FRANK HARRIS  +William Burden
WALT WHITMAN  Dwayne Croft

                                                               

David Daniels is one of music’s leading countertenors whose career spans music of the Baroque era to the contemporary.  He appeared in the Company’s 2011 production of Vivaldi’s Griselda and recently in the title role of Handel’s Rinaldo at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.  He was the leading countertenor in the Metropolitan Opera’s Baroque pastiche, Enchanted Island, seen worldwide in theaters in HD.  Heidi Stober was Musetta in the 2011 revival of La Bohéme and prior, as Tigrane in Radamisto with Mr. Daniels in 2008.  She is singing the role of Zdenka in the 2012 production of Arabella.  Mr. Burden will be remembered for his sympathetic performance of Captain Vere in the 2008 production of Billy Budd.  He is appearing as the mysterious Shepherd in the 2012 production of King Roger.  Kevin Newbury last directed Life Is a Dream by Lewis Spratlan in 2010.  He will continue his collaboration with scenic designer David Korins. Evan Rogister, who has made his career primarily in Europe, is now in demand with opera companies in the U.S and returns to conduct King Roger in 2012.

http://www.santafeopera.org/thecompany/news/pressreleases/detail.aspx?id=6802

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Posted in Adventure, America, New Mexico, NM, Senior Citizens

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Turning Imagination Loose on the Future

Posted on August 19, 2012 by | 9 comments

Hi readers. 

You people who stay excited about things all the time and are forever racing around doing the things you’re excited about probably won’t be impressed with this.  But suddenly having a gate open in front of me has this old 70 year old mind reaching out caressing all the damned things it didn’t even know it was missing.

One of the joys, just having the possibility where it wasn’t before, is that I might get to attend a performance at the Santa Fe Opera one more time before I die.  [ The Horror of Discovering You Love Opera] Maybe more than one if the Coincidence Coordinators allow for it.  When the thought of it sneaked into my head I broke out into a grin and found a cat to scratch behind the ears while I went on imagining it in detail: 

Parking that old RV up there, sitting in a camp chair watching all the dressed-up people pulling up in their BMWs and Mercedes with bow-ties and fancy dresses.  Sipping a cold suds and smiling to myself while I eavesdrop, then sauntering in to lose myself in something I haven’t done in almost two decades.  And didn’t even discover until ‘way to much of my life had passed, opportunities missed.

But there’s also crawling around Hueco Tanks at least one more time.  Maybe spending a night at Monahans Sand Hills State Park.  I think the cats would love that place.  Camping up on the Mimbres Divide, climbing to the top of the ridge where you can see all the way to Dallas or Somewhere, flashing a mirror at all those city folks on the Rio Grande scurrying about their lives.

Maybe setting up my little CB radio hock shop across from the Sky City Casino, listening for truckers who lost all their gas-money inside trying to sell everything they own for enough money to get fuel to California or Denver.

I din’t even know my brain was going dead here, but it’s been so long since even thinking about that sort of thing had a smidgin chance of happening, the grey matter went to sleep.  And now it’s beginning to awaken.

Uplifting, uppidy, peeling years, decades off my brain and my life just on a promise.  I need to go outdoors and lift something heavy to get my feet back on the ground.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Senior Citizens

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Down Here Where It’s Sane

Posted on August 19, 2012 by | 12 comments

Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

I try not to allow myself to get too involved in the kinds of things real people trouble themselves over, but for the past several months Real Reality’s been poking me and pinching me on the rump.  Real Reality’s an ego-maniac, thinks it’s important and if a person isn’t careful it can convince him it has something to do with anything, make a considerable nuisance of itself.

All these oak trees falling, others threatening to fall on inconvenient and distracting places.  Various new roof leaks.  A number of other nagging items not worth mentioning.  They’ve been taps on the shoulder by Real Reality I’ve suspected might be followed by a round-house to the jaw if I didn’t duck and dodge.

So, a few days ago when I came across a 1983 Toyota RV I can manage to squeeze me and the cats into [out from under trees] I felt more relief than I expected of myself.  I can quit wondering where I’m going to live, at least structurally and what I’m going to drive transportationally.  Opens the doors to more palatable geographic questions.

I’ve a number of issues I’ll need to wrap up here, depending on all manner of non-ponderables, but if things required it I could be out of here in a couple of weeks.  Or, if I’m left to piddle around doing it, a couple of months.  But one-way-or-another the engine’s running and the Coincidence Coordinators are giving their approval for me to get the hell out of Dodge before the snow flies out west.

The road mightn’t be brick, mightn’t be yellow, but there’s an exit ramp coming and if I can get this thing slowed down enough I’m going to cut myself loose from all this pesky Real Reality rushing around making a nuisance of itself. 

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, America, Transportation, Trucks

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21st Century King-Election Weenies Got Nothing on 1968

Posted on August 18, 2012 by | 5 comments

No way you could manage it.

The Vietnam War raging in a daily bodycount to see if we were winning right now; half- the cities in the US on fire with race riots.  Decision time for America:

So the Democrats ran Humphrey Dumprey, pledged to keep the War going, continue with LBJ strategy counting bodies.

The Republicans ran Tricky Dicky Nixon, pledged to get us out of Vietnam, but only with ‘honor‘.  [Same as he ran on four years later.]

And on a third party campaign, pro-segregation, former Alabama Governor George Wallace ran to ‘Take Back America’.  And get out of Vietnam in 90 days if it couldn’t be won.  And he carried five Southern states.  I’ll leave it to your imagination identifying ‘take it back from whom’.

Hell, Humphrey Dumprey only carried eight states that election.

So the outcome was we got peace with honor for four years with Tricky Dixon and the war killing them off like flies, counting bodies.  Dixon elected again, four years later and everyone in sight fleeing Vietnam hanging from helicopters off the top of the US embassy in Saigon. 

But honorably.

I think I voted in the 1968 King Election, but my mind won’t allow me to examine the memory in enough detail to recall whom I voted for.  Seems clear to me today I should have just given it a miss.  I think I’d remember that.

One of my favorite Playboy limericks of the time:

There was a young man named Hollis
Used snakes and snails for his solace
The offspring had scales
And prehensile tails
And voted for Governor Wallace.

Wish I’d written that.

Yeah, we were weenies in those days, but REAL MEN weenies.  We knew how to do it up right.

Old Jules

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Posted in 1960's, 2012, Education, Government, Politics

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Institutionalized Crisis, Illusion and Hate Management

Posted on August 18, 2012 by | 14 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for the visit.

I dunno.  It seems to me we’ve been had fairly badly, and we cooperated every step of the way, loving getting our buttons pushed.  It probably began during the Vietnam War.  Maybe further back than that.  But when US National Guardsmen opened fire on protesting students [who might have been threatening them with injury, but certainly not their lives] at Kent State University it seems a turning point, to me.

LBJ and Nixon both loved their military adventure in Vietnam and both spent their terms in office doing everything in their power to polarize opinions about it, to stifle dissent by encouraging and inciting supporters for the war.  Kent State was the first major manifestation of the one side enforcing their views with gunfire directed at the other.

A few years later during the latter years of the Carter Administration it’s been clearly established that the Reagan Campaign lackeys bargained with Iran to keep the Embassy hostage crisis going until after the election.  Kept the daily news full of it.  And bargained with the promise of weaponry that eventually became the Iran/Contra debacle.

Then came the War on Drugs because Reagan [whom I’d voted for] decided there was a drug crisis in the US, started the ball rolling for billions to be spent on new layers of law enforcement, prisons to fill up, a welfare program for lawyers, judges, cops, and private prisons invented to hold the perpetrators of victimless crimes.  Buzzillions of bucks spent to prevent traffic in drugs still available even in prisons, on any street corner in a major city.

Ah.  Then a new crisis.  Militia!  So scary Bill Clinton’s attorney general was sending federal troops to burn down and roast a hundred-or-so religious fanatics in Waco, sneaking up on Danny Weaver’s family at Ruby Ridge killing his teenage son, his wife and her baby.  And various other such.  Because the fear tactic for polarizing the population was that those silly-assed militia might take over this country, might overthrow the entire giant military establishment.

Then came 9/11 and it was Muslims we needed to hate, ‘terrorists’ we needed to spend billions to keep from potentially thousands of dollars worth of damage.  While still keeping up the long-failed War on Drugs.  More layers of law enforcement.  Homeland Security.  Fear and moneymoneymoneymoney.  A new war in Iraq.  Afghanistan.  Moneymoneymoneymoney.

So now we’re down to pretending two identical political parties are at war with one another, got both sides believing the world’s going to end if the other wins the next election.

What fools we mortals be!

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, America, Communication, Current Issues, Education, Emergency Preparedness, Military, Politics

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A Perspective About Unions

Posted on August 18, 2012 by | 5 comments

Hi readers. Thanks for coming for a visit.

My biological father, Raymond Waxey [Red] Purcell, was a union organizer for 45-50 years. [One of the Fascinations of Christian TV]

I can’t think of a single thing I admire about him.  In fact, I sincerely believe in a well-ordered, well-meaning, sane world he’d never have been allowed to reproduce.  And most especially not allowed to combine his gene-pool with the gene-pool of Alice Eugenia Hudson.

However, I can thank him for a lot of what I know about unions in the United States.  During the years I knew him  it was mostly the only thing he cared about, generally the main thing he talked about.  And I do believe he cared about the workers he organized, their dismal wages, long hours, dangerous working conditions.  He was a fighter, and he fought hard for them at considerable physical risk to himself.

Especially during the early years getting thrown in jail, beaten up, harassed by cops and company goons was a way of life for him.

I’ve been a union member myself, longshoreman, construction worker, taxicab drivers, teamsters, and I’ve seen the sweetheart contracts, the corruption, the sellouts, and I’d want nothing to do with unions if I were a member of the work force today.

So when I was eavesdropping on a couple of Texas geniuses  in a restaurant the other day explaining to one another how the unions have driven all the industry out of the US I found myself asking myself,

“Could any US worker make a living on 13 cents an hour?  Would the multi-nationals have kept the operations here if only workers would work for the wage they’ll be paying in the country where they’re sending the jobs?”

To suggest organized workers have ruined this country is to turn a blind eye to the sacrifices and risks they chose to take to organize, and why they made those sacrifices, took those risks.

Jeanne’s granddad owned a lumber mill in Oregon during the 1930s.  It was burned down by unions, it’s said.  She says she was talking with her cousin about it and he explained it was at a time unions where at the pinnacle of corruption.

“But then of course,” She went on, “He was a man who didn’t care anything about anyone, or anything but himself.”

That probably just about sums up why we had unions, why workers organized.  What it doesn’t explain is why, having done it, they became so corrupt so pervasively.

The nearest Red Purcell ever came to getting actually homicided as a result of his job, he often said, was when he was hiding under the table in a locked house with union goons from a competing union trying to get in.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, America, Government, Human Behavior, Police, Politics

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Book Review – The Egypt Game – Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Posted on August 17, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Another Newbery.  Kids, back when kids still played outdoors unsupervised with other kids.  When they still dreamed their own games and played them.  Still went door-to-door a few at a time knocking on doors on Halloween.

But almost the end of it, and Snyder manages to catch the seed of why in The Egypt Game.  Partly it was computers, of course.  But, despite the fact it’s a book for kids, a threat haunts the wings and the sidelines in this one, and the threat rhymes too well with what was still in the future in 1967, to be much fun.

A kid changes towns and schools, comes to live with a grandma while her mom takes a run at Hollywood.  Seriously.  Naturally the girl is infatuated with what she left behind, the glamor of mom’s aspirations.  And naturally the kids around her aren’t overly impressed.

But grandma lives in a stack of apartments and some of the units have kids her age and proximity demands they become friends.  Basic setting.

The Hollywood girl has imagination, though.  She finds a vacant, private lot with a storage building behind an antique store with lots of the kinds of artifacts kids once couldn’t resist.  She and her friends begin the Egypt game, building a shrine, creating rituals and donning costumery.

But they’re being watched from a back room window in the antique store by a man everyone in the neighborhood’s afraid of.  Not because he’s done anything sinister, but because he’s definitely not sociable.

Meanwhile a kid is murdered in the vicinity and parents batten down the hatches, demanding rules be followed and a lot more supervision be adherred to.  The Egypt Game continues, but it goes further underground.  Still watched through the back window.

But somewhere toward the end things manage to turn around in a way to make this plot refreshing, a ray of sunshine where today, most likely, it would go an entirely different way.

A nice read.  Adults will get a smile, kids will probably remember it.  Not as long as they’d remember Charlotte’s Web, or Stuart Little, maybe.  But they’ll probably recall it for a while. 

Old Jules

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Super Baked Fish Recipe

Posted on August 17, 2012 by | 6 comments

I used the Vietnamese Pan-something-or-other fish I told you about on earlier posts.

Bed the bottom of the pan with half-dozen corn tortillas,

1 each frozen fish filet

1 cup frozen green beans

1 cup frozen brocolli

1/4 cup tropical trail mix

Generic Cajun seasoning to taste

1/4 stick butter on top

Bake 60-90 minutes at 350 F.

You can be the second person in the Universe ever to try it if you hurry.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012

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Book Review – Baudolino by Umberto Eco

Posted on August 17, 2012 by | 8 comments

Don’t expect the earthquake power of The Name of the Rose in this one.  Don’t even expect the addictive confusion of Foucault’s Pendulum.  Umberto Eco never does the same job twice.  After he’s done it once it doesn’t need doing again.  Even though the reader-heart might hunger, grovel and beg.

So the monastic whodunit, the Dante-esque tour through a maze of mist and myth are replaced by the subtle, savage Eco wit, a God’s Little Acre fantasy, and inevitable, once again, awe.  Where the hell does a writer such as Eco come from?  Why can’t I create characters, plots, webs of credible craziness to challenge dreams and nightmares?

For instance, near the time of the 4th Crusade sack of Constantinople:

“[I] told the whole story to my father Galiaudo who said you big booby getting mixed up with sieges and the like one of these days you’ll get a pike up your ass that stuff is all for the lords and masters so let them stew in their own juice because we have the cows to worry about and we’re serious folk forget about Frederick, first he comes then he goes then he comes back and it adds up to fuckall.”

Yeah, we’re talking the 4th Crusade.  It ain’t enough Baudolino, a peasant lad, befriends Frederick Barbarossa, gets himself adopted and sent off to Paris for schooling.  Eco’s not going to be satisfied until he can rain it down knee-deep.  He sends Baudolino off searching for Prester John, where plots, characters and settings have some elbow room.

Gargantua and Pentagruel, by Umberto Eco, more-or-less.  If you can’t laugh until you cry reading Rabelais, you’d best stay-the-hell away from Baudolino.  But if, on the other hand, you can, if you’ve done it so many times you roar when you notice Gargantua on the bookshelf, you need Baudolino.   And quite possibly some professional help.

A damned good book.  A keeper.

Old Jules

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