James Castle, Untitled (Interior), nd. Soot on found paper 11 1/8 x 12 3/8 inches. © James Castle Collection and Archive. All rights reserved. Shaun Gillen Photography

 

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This week: Fleming, Freud, and Art Farther Afield.

FictionTrigger Mortis: With Original Material by Ian Fleming, by Anthony Horowitz (Harper): Faulkner’s oft-quoted line from 1951’s Requiem for a Nun that “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” proves prescient in another context: beloved literary characters. Ian Fleming may be dead but James Bond is not; in fact, the Fleming estate has commissioned a new Bond novel by the prolific pastiche artist Anthony Horowitz. The best literary retreads convince the reader he is reading the work of the original author, and Horowitz has proved adept at this, authoring two recent Sherlock Holmes novels. The commissioning of new novels featuring old characters is not a recent phenomenon; Kingsley Amis famously penned a Bond continuation titled Colonel Sun under a nom de plume, and 2013 brought the publishing of Sebastian Faulks’s attempt at the work of P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Wedding Bells. Whether Horowitz is successful will be a question for the Bond fanatics, of which I am not one. If the title (insouciant like much of Fleming’s actual work) is any indication, the enthusiasts have much to anticipate. —BR

Nonfiction: Mormon Rivals: The Romneys, the Huntsmans and the Pursuit of Power, by Matt Canham and Thomas Burr (The Salt Lake Tribune): In Civilization and its Discontents, Sigmund Freud speaks of the “narcissism of minor differences,”—essentially that the closer two groups of people are to each other (geographically, ethnically, socially, etc.), the more virulent their hatred for each other. In all the nonsense propagated by Freud, here is real wisdom, borne out by millennia of evidence. The ongoing troubles in the Balkans, former troubles in the Baltics, and countless other examples prove the point. And so it is with America’s two greatest Mormon families, the Romneys and the Huntsmans, scions of both of which are erstwhile presidential candidates. In this insiders’ take, Canham and Burr, reporters for The Salt Lake Tribune, detail the long, often antagonistic history of Mormon America’s two first families (who are, of course, close relations). Followers of contemporary politics will be delighted to read this account, which may even hold insight on future elections. Something tells me we haven’t heard the last of either the Romney or Huntsman names. —BR

Poetry: Skywriting and Other Poems, by Charles Tomlinson (New Criterion Series): This week we mourn the death of Charles Tomlinson (1927-2015), one of the most consistently readable and insightful poets of our time. Tomlinson, who died last week at the age of eighty-eight, was published frequently in our pages and was the recipient of the 2002 New Criterion Poetry Prize for his work, Skywriting and Other Poems. Tomlinson’s sensitive and graceful style won him wide praise, and the TLS declared that though “his style has been little imitated . . . it will come to be seen as one of the major achievements of late twentieth-century English verse.” Please click here for an archive of Tomlinson’s works published in The New Criterion. RIP. —BR

Art: “Inside the Outside: Five Self-Taught Artists from The William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation,” at the Katonah Museum of Art (Through October 11): The art collector William Louis-Dreyfus may be most well known for his expressed intention to sell his collection to benefit Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children's Zone. The actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, William's well-known daughter, recently made a film called "Generosity of Eye" about this exceptional bequest. Yet William Louis-Dreyfus deserves to be better known as a collector with rare discernment who looks beyond bold-faced names. A part of his collecting interest has been dedicated to "outsider art." Created by those who lacked artistic training and exposure, the best outsider art nevertheless achieves " an inescapable and meaningful artistic presence," says Louis-Dreyfus. Now on view at the Katonah Museum of Art, just north of New York City, five of the best American outsider artists from his collection are on display in "Inside the Outside: Five Self-Taught Artists from The William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation." This compact exhibition of sixty-two works, featuring art by James Castle, Thornton Dial, Nellie Mae Rowe, Bill Traylor, and Willie Young, offers a wide-ranging appreciation for the "artistic urge that forced itself through their difficult life-conditions," writes Louis-Dreyfus. Or as Karen Wilkin writes in her catalogue essay, they remind us "of what it means to be human." —JP

Music:  Rachmaninov Variations, performed by Daniil Trifonov (Deutsche Grammophon): ?Daniil Trifonov has a new Rachmaninoff tribute album that could easily have taken its title from a piece of his own composition that appears on the disc: Rachmaniana. Not quite in the vein of Nathan Milstein's Paganiniana, this series of Rach-inspired vignettes for solo piano is more than a clever hommage; the young pianist shows a strong voice in the piece, blending twentieth-century romantic sonority with hints of impressionist texture. Also on the disc are Rachmaninoff's Chopin Variations (op. 22) and the superb Variations on Corelli's "La Folia" ?(op. 42). Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra lend a hand for the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. —ECS

From the archive: The Etruscan graveyard at Marzabotto, by Charles Tomlinson: A haunting poem by Charles Tomlinson from April 2002.

From our latest issue: A normal Narva, by Andrew Stuttaford: With only one more day until our September issue debuts online, read Andrew Stuttaford on “A normal Narva” from our June issue.

 

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