“When I was nineteen I shared an apartment in Manhattan with jazz singer Annie Ross, and it led to my doing something I now wish I hadn’t” —
Artist in Residence by
Lawrence Levy is the best thing I’ve read this week.
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| Count Basie and Annie Ross, twistin' the night away in '62 |
As for me, the words were simply not cooperating. I’m hoping to do a shallow dive through some of the books that spoke to me in my 20s, so please — don’t touch that dial!
Levy is my age exactly, and we’re worlds apart. Or would be but for my little recent period in NY, seeing someone who grew up among people who made Elaine’s the reference point he adopts it for here. (I’d never heard of it until I met S.) I did try to get a job at an alt-weekly once, in Baltimore, it occurs to me — not as a would-be writer, though, and certainly not as someone who belonged to the scene the way a 19-yr-old Levy evidently did at the Voice.
ReplyDeleteI saw Short Cuts when it was still pretty fresh, a few years old. Not in a theater, not as an Altman fan. I had to read Carver for a class, and the film, of course, went with it. Haven’t seen it since, but a handful of little things about it stick with me. I’d completely forgotten Ross, however, and her part’s importance to the whole. (Of What We Talk About, I’ve forgotten just about everything. I feel worse about that than about the Altman, though neither dissipation weighs on me much these days, I guess.)
1989 -- when 19-year-old Levy clumsily ushered Ross out of his life -- was a big year for me, too. I picked up Where I'm Calling From, committed to my own episodes of jerkish behaviour, and lit out for the Big City, where I watched the bottom of my boat slowly erode and disappear. I was 24 in '89, so I had a little more wherewithal than most 19-year-olds do, including a better sense of whose advice and insight was worth listening to and acting on. And I kept company with some very good people.
ReplyDeleteShort Cuts came out four years later. I thought Altman was cynical and cruel, often at moments where Carver was edging toward sentimentality. Maybe that was a course correction on Altman's part (and why should his attitude toward Carver material be any different from the overbearing Lish whose commandeering editing mode was all but authorship?), but it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. And I was surprised Tess Gerritsen signed off on it, even chumming with Altman for the promo dog-and-pony show. I expect the paycheques came at an exceptionally welcome moment.
I think I am a little cooler toward Carver these days as well. And yet here is Annie Ross, a figure tied into all these currents, and I like Levy can't help taking it just a little personally when she says, "It's called listening." Long may she live.