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Back in the saddle - catching up
Sorry for the lack of posts last week, but I decided to take a true break from work (OK, a break after coming back to finish some stories) and not even post from home.
I did want to comment on two things last week. One was the death of sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke, best-known for the novel behind 2001: A Space Odyssey. I haven’t read anything by Clarke in years, but I devoured most of his short stories and books when I was growing up. In an indirect way, he got me into my career. He had a reputation as a hard science-fiction writer, one whose imagination was tempered and shaped by hard science. That’s what appealed to me, science-geek-in-training that I was in school, and I preferred Clarke to what other friends were reading, primarily Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov (though I enjoyed Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy in my college days). Clarke’s vision of space as a limitless challenge dovetailed with the 1960s heyday of America’s manned spaceflight program and I gravitated toward science as a career. That led me to Texas and the University of Texas at Austin, where I decided 10 years in a lab coat before getting to what intrigued me wasn’t for me. I got into journalism at UT and that eventually led me here, where I get to enjoy other passions, namely reading and writing. I still like science, though, and Clarke gets partial credit for that.
Last week, I also finished reading Alex Ross’ marvelous overview of classical music in the 20th century, The Rest Is Noise. Highly readable and understandable, Ross’ book traces the branches along which classical music evolved. Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, obviously loves and understands what he covers and I found myself scribbling a list of works to listen to. I finished the book wanting more - I wish he’d covered what was happening in Latin and South America more or expanded the development of Hollywood film music, into which many European emigre composers went during Hitler’s rise to power - but that’s because this book whets an appetite for more.
Ross believes that the current dialogue between contemporary classical and rock/pop music is blurring the distinction between the genres. Rather than its death in the 21st century, as some have predicted, classical music may be on the edge of a fresh burst in creativity that could lower perceptions that it’s elitist, static and the preserve of dead white male composers. The Waco-McLennan Library has a copy - I’ve checked mine back in - but it’s worth buying.
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