The edition I’m using.
SOUNDTRACK: RICHARD WAGNER-“Ride of the Valkyries” (1856).
Possibly the most famous piece of music from any opera (known for a billion reasons other than the opera itself). This song was introduced to be by Bugs Bunny. And then cemented in my consciousness in Apocalypse Now.
It’s really impossible for me to listen to it without seeing helicopters dropping napalm.
I’ve never seen it performed before. Most of us think of it as an instrumental, but there are vocals, and they add a lot to the performance. I also didn’t realize that the whole first minutes is a prelude to the third Act–with a darkened stage. I just watched this version by the Danish Royal Opera in which the setting is updated. The Stage is amazing and it’s a pretty powerful image, that won’t leave me head too soon. And of course, the women sound phenomenal.
Smells like victory to me.
[READ: Week of June 19, 2012] JR Week 1
And so begins the saga of JR. A little of my background:
I read JR about a decade ago. I recall the structure and some of what happens, but not enough to actually remember anything ahead of time, plotwise.
Usually for these weekly group reads, I post fairly detailed recaps of the book. And usually I do that because there’s so much going on in a large book, that it’s one way for me to keep track. JR is going to be a little different. If you’ve gotten this far in the book, you’ll notice that there’s not a lot of plot going on. There’s a few scenes with lots of dialogue and maybe something comes of it, maybe not. So, I’m certainly not going to try to recap everything that happens in the dialogue, nor am I even going to try to figure out who said what or even who is in every conversation–I’m not even sure that’s possible. But I am going to talk about each scene a bit and see if I can pick out anything that seems important.
The book strikes me as being like an unedited film. Or like a Picasso–Gaddis wants to show you everything, and let you pick out the important bits. And so the book feels like a boom mike has been inserted into a room or scene. We’re not really sure who everyone is, or even who is talking at a given moment. But we hear everything that’s said. And then the boom mike pulls out and the camera pans somewhere else and the boom mike goes down and we hear some more. It’s not always clear even that a scene has shifted–although usually a dense paragraph of prose indicates a shift in scene.
As far as characters, it’s not clear if anyone mentioned early on is going to stay with us through the book. It’s clear that JR will be here (although his first real scene is right after my spoiler line for this week). There’s also the Bast family who will no doubt play some ind of important role. Then there’s a lot of teachers as well. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 