Title source for "Some Dance to Remember "

(Posted on behalf of Walter)

Some of you may have already figured out where the title of our Jan. 6 selection, Jack Fritscher's Some Dance to Remember,
comes from. I knew I'd heard/read the phrase "Some dance to remember, some dance to forget." The words are in the lyrics of The Eagles' "Hotel California." "Hotel California" appears a few times in the book. The reference seems appropriate because of some similar hedonistic nightmarishness in the story--plus its location.

"Hotel California"

On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night.

There she stood in the doorway;
I heard the mission bell
And I was thinking to myself,
'This could be Heaven or this could be Hell'
Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way.

There were voices down the corridor,
I thought I heard them say...

Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)
Such a lovely face
Plenty of room at the Hotel California
Any time of year (Any time of year)
You can find it here

Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes bends
She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys she calls friends
How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat.
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget

So I called up the Captain,
'Please bring me my wine'.
He said, 'We haven't had that spirit here since nineteen sixty nine'
And still those voices are calling from far away,
Wake you up in the middle of the night
Just to hear them say...

Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)
Such a lovely face.
They livin' it up at the Hotel California
What a nice surprise (what a nice surprise)
Bring your alibis.

Mirrors on the ceiling,
The pink champagne on ice
And she said, 'We are all just prisoners here, of our own device'.

And in the master's chambers,
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before.

'Relax,' said the night man,
'We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave!'

Walter

Commentary on A Single Man

I've been reading David Bergman's The Violet Hour: The Violet Quill and the Making of Gay Culture, and while I don't necessarily recommend the book as a whole (unless one is extremely interested in the Violet Quill writers, and occasionally aggravatingly academic discussions of the writers' work), there's an intriguing section (pp. 60-67) about Isherwood and A Single Man in the chapter entitled "Gay Writing Before the Violet Quill."

***Spoilers ahead, in case you have not read A Single Man (which you absolutely should!)***

The reason I particularly recommend this discussion is that it takes an interesting, and I think very intelligent, angle on the question of the final scene, which I recall we discussed at great length. Bergman does not think that George dies at the end of the book, but rather that Isherwood is using the playful "let's suppose" of the final two or three pages to both supply and subvert the traditional "the gay man must die" ending of so many prior mainstream gay novels. He also connects the final scene back to the "rock pool" description from several pages earlier, in a way that I wanted to do myself while I was reading but was unable to see my way clear to.

This particular discussion is well worth a look.

Persistent Voices Persisting (We Hope)

You wouldn't know it from the link in the posting below, but Philip's reading from Persistent Voices at the DC Center tomorrow evening (Dec. 10) has been postponed. I'll put up the new date when I learn of it.

Aristophanes’ speech on YouTube

These two YouTube videos may be of interest:

Aristophanes’ Speech from Symposium

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4paSMqKYXtY


Hedwig and the Angry Inch - Origin of Love

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YO9FpWX57E

non ridere etc

Just came across this Guardian interview with Alan Hollinghurst shortly after he won the Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty. Considering how moralistic a response Hollinghurst's works, in particular this novel, sometimes elicit, I thought this quote especially worthwhile:

Nick's millionaire Lebanese-born lover, Wani, is hooked on extreme porn and takes bucketloads of cocaine. One reviewer called Wani depraved, an odd remark to make about Hollinghurst's morally neutral fiction. "I don't make moral judgments," he says. "I prefer to let things reverberate with their own ironies and implications. That was one of the interests of writing this book from the inside and not just writing something that broadly satirised or bashed up the 80s. To tell it from the point of view of someone who was very seduced by it." Nick is as morally compromised as the rest. Or not, depending on your point of view.

Judgments are easy. Every person has them. Insights are rarer.

Persistent Voices

Our own Philip Clark reads from his new anthology Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS, on Thursday December 10th from 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM at the DC Center (we used to meet there: Suite 350, 1111 14th St NW, just below Thomas Circle).

Stephanus and Plato

I'll let the link explain Stephanus numbers. They're little numbers you find running down the page in Plato (or less helpfully at the top or bottom of each page). They're useful for locating passages among different editions. If you buy or use an edition other than the "Penguin Classics" Christopher Gill translation, be sure the translation you use has these Stephanus numbers. It will be very hard to keep everyone on the same page, so to speak, without them. In particular, be aware that Penguin has a "Great Ideas" edition of the Symposium, also using the Gill translation, but without the Stephanus numbers! I encourage people to bring or even use other translations than the Gill (the old Victorian Jowett, for example, has the most beautiful phrase and clause in the English language) but don't be without Stephanus.