comedy

Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last (2005) is the stunning conclusion to Susan Juby's debut trilogy (preceeded by Alice, I Think and its sequel Miss Smithers). You might recognize Juby's name from the 2009 Edgar Awards where Getting the Girl was a nominee.

This installment opens with the first scene from Alice's screenplay "Of Moose and Men"--a creative work loosely based on her own life. Excerpts of the screenplay are sprinkled throughout the novel. The writing is overwrought, exaggerated, and provides hysterical insight into Alice's psyche throughout the story. In addition to being Alice's latest career of choice, writing her screenplay also helps this sixteen-year-old heroine make sense of the chaos that has become her life.  read more »

Regular readers might remember my previous demonstration of fondness for Alice, I Think by Susan Juby. By itself, the book was fantastically funny with some great plot points and characters. So imagine my happiness back in 2005 when I realized a sequel (set a bit after the first novel's events) had been published and was available from my place of employ.

Like many good stories, Miss Smithers (2004) starts with an offer that Alice can't refuse--especially if she wants to prove to everyone that she really is a special girl. Being previously home schooled and a bit of a loner, Alice is surprised when the local Rod and Gun Club asks her to be their representative at the Miss Smithers Beauty Pageant. That is until she hears about the four hundred dollar allotment for clothing. At that point, much to her mother's horror, Alice is prepared to participate in anything.  read more »

Alice, I Think (2003) is Susan Juby's first novel. It is also the start of her Alice series (not to be confused with Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's Alice series). Before going into the details of plot and why I love this book, I want to address some of the issues I saw in negative reviews by saying this: The book is fiction and it is in the vein of satire. Juby uses hyperbole, sarcasm, and caustic wit to create this story. That doesn't always create realistic situations or accurate portrayals of "real" people. But it does create a good novel. As long as readers go into this novel with what the film industry would call a willing suspension of disbelief, I genuinely believe most of them will be able to find something to like about this book. So, why am I saying all of that? Because Alice is awesome of course.  read more »

“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22”

Books can accumulate a lot of personal baggage. Keep them in your life for long enough, and they’re likely to become encrusted with memories. This dust jacket is from my personal copy of Catch-22 and goes back a long way, as you can tell from the $2.45 price drastically marked down to $2.19. This was the second and more durable copy I owned after I read ragged the more familiar blue paperback with the dancing airman on the cover. The library’s copy in the Berg Collection of English and American Literature is the first edition, published in 1961. The branch libraries have a recent Everyman's Library edition with a picture of Joseph Heller on the cover. But it is the Modern Library edition and its cover art that resonate with me. I didn’t encounter the novel until the early 1970s, during my first years of college and the last nightmarish years of the Vietnam War; but I read it again and again, not only for its wit and style, but for the message, articulated for me clearly and for the first time, that governments and other institutions were not always to be trusted, that they might even be out to cause harm. Heller’s assertion that “The only freedom we really have is the freedom to say no” vibrated through the halls of Hunter College--as well as most other college campuses--and black humor was the very atmosphere we breathed.  read more »

If serendipity is a useful thing when browsing through the holdings of The New York Public Library, it's all the more true for The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, whose extensive collection contain an enormous amount of ephemera (most of which does not appear in the catalog). Some years ago, in going through some of our extensive program files, a coworker found an intriguing flyer for the Town Hall (and possibly New York City) recital debut of Oliver J. Dragon, baritone.

The soloist was none other than Ollie, from the famed 1950s television show Kukla, Fran, and Ollie. The rear of the flyer offers many informative comments, and a warm picture with "a friend" -- Licia Albanese, soprano of the Metropolitan Opera.

.

(You may be thinking this is some kind of joke, but bear with me -- I do have a point to make below.)

The reviews were singular. Writing in the New York Herald-Tribune of November 27, 1953, Jay S. Harrison wrote:

"Oliver J. Dragon, a distinguished baritone member of the Kuklapolitan Players, gave a recital last night in Town Hall. It was his debut. It was also mine. Never before had the present writer reviewed a singing dragon, and, if the fates oblige, he never will again."

From the same date in the New York Times, chief music critic and author Harold C. Schonberg wrote:

"He is a rather remarkable performer. The way he moves around the stage you'd think he was made out of cloth, or something. He is completely uninhibited. He even departed from the printed list, choosing what suited his fancy. Very unorthodox, very.

It is difficult to appraise his voice, a cross between a whiskey baritone and a basso chevalier. Part of this difficulty stems from the program he selected. Was Bach present? No. Hugo Wolf? No. And how can one assess a singer's musicality without any excerpts from the "Quellennachweissamlungantiphonariumromanusbuchstaben?"

The Music Division has an extensive run of programs from Town Hall, where I was able to find one for November 26, 1953:

The note on page one of the program is particularly interesting:

"Since it is undetermined, at the time of this printing, whether or not Mr. Dragon is going to be in the proper artistic frame of mind to cope with the program as listed, his managers have persuaded him to render his selections in any order he pleases. Consequently, we have numbered each individual song and Mr. Dragon will announce from the stage, by number, the actual order of appearance. Intermission will, in a like manner, be determined by the artist."

Page four of the program offers a unique view of the range of compositions, including composers such as the French Dragoneau through the Italian Dragoni to the "native songs" of Chicago:

A look through the finding aid of the Town Hall Archives (held in the Music Division, call number: JPB 88-26) did not reveal any documentation of this special recital.

So you may be wondering why highlight a children's tv character from the 1950s in a blog devoted to rarities from the Music Division?

Out of necessity (for example, whether by limitations of space, or preservation) most libraries need to make a distinction between materials that can and should be acquired, and those which should not be. For many years, the Music Division has been known for its excellent collections of classical music, but less so in the popular or non-classical areas. Observing current interests and trends in research, it's obvious that we should try to avoid such distinctions, and leave it to our patrons to make that determination for themselves. The value that accrues to objects and information is based on how it is used by the public and the meaning and significance they attach to it.

This recital of a then-leading television program character is certainly humorous, but it can also be seen as a gentle parody of other recitalists who eschew a strict program in favor of a selection and order that is determined on the spot. (Is that not suggestive of later trends in contemporary music, where the unplanned nature of a recital was akin to the creation of music? Think of John Cage.) From the point of view of Town Hall, it shows the democratizing influence of their management (which still continues a tradition of diverse programming).

Much can be learned from an examination of flyers and ephemera. And it's a pleasing thing when the materials are so entertaining.