Hi, everybody! I'm going to violate all my principles... again! It puts me in mind of a line by Peter De Vries. I seem to remember that it's from his novel COMFORT ME WITH APPLES but I can't seem to find it just flipping back and forth in the pages of my crumbly old paperback, so I may be misquoting (then again, as you know, I don't mind a little shoddy scholarship in the privacy of my own "blog"). Anyway, I think De Vries has his narrator say of some action he has undertaken, "It was so unlike me, like everything else I did." So, yes, I'm going to fall off the wagon and tell you what I'm reading. I think I have a good reason, though. Because if you look at the book GERSHWIN: HIS LIFE AND WORK by Howard Pollack, you're going to be afraid! It's a big, fat brick of a book that seems to cry out, "Forget it! Are you kidding me?" But just crack it open. It's as clear as water. Somehow Pollack keeps all the people in Gershwin's life vivid and individualized, so you're never scratching your head over a name, even if you last saw it 40 pages earlier. Maybe a little background in music wouldn't hurt... but if you're at all interested in reading about Gerswhin's life and work, you probably have some little taste for musicology, enough to get by. Or if not, who cares? Dive in. Maybe you'll be titillated and go out and buy a small dictionary of musical terms. You probably need one anyway, just to have around for kicks. The bigness of this book is an invitation, not a warning. It signals joy - a healthy desire to cram EVERYTHING in, maybe a Dickensian or Joycean impulse. Sometimes you have to read a book like that!
