It's summer reading season. The question, as always, is: What am I going to read this summer? I always try to reread a classical novel. This year, as far as the field of this blog is concerned, it's Le Cousin Pons. I am also bringing with me a new translation of the letters exchanged between Marcus Aurelius and Fronto. The book is published by Amy Richlin (Marcus Aurelius In Love,The University of Chicago Press, 2006) and is intriguing. I also have a sentimental novel, The Story of a Marriage (Andrew Sean Greer, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008, 208 pp.), for the waiting lines at Disney World, downloaded to my eReader.
Isherwood and his long-term relationship with Don Bachardy are the topics of a recent documentary by Guido Santi and Tina Mascara (Chris & Don: A Love Story). I watched it at the Quad Cinema in the Village, before leaving New York for Miami, a small auditorium which reminded me of the 'cinemas d'art et d'essais' of my youth in Paris... The movie is puzzling... At the start, someone begins to talk. It's the voice of an old lady... until you realize it's Don's voice, today aged 74. Unfortunately a very unpleasant voice, worsened by the mimics of his mouth, when he is being filmed... The film is confusing: old home movies showing scenes remembered out loud by Don... are mixed with scenes played by actors, as the credits at the end of the movie seem to indicate... Isherwood remains physically more or less the same during the time span showed in the movie. He was almost fifty when they met. But Don evolves from a charming and beautiful teenager - he was not even twenty- to a dry old man desperately trying to remain fit through regular workouts at the gym... Sad... But nonetheless a document. Short sequences show Auden, Stravinsky, Burt Lancaster, Tennessee Williams, among others. As Stephen Holden writes in his review for the New York Times, it "is one of the ultimate true stories of a proto-gay-marriage succeeding in a forbidding climate."
Charlie Crist the Republican governor of Florida who is regularly mentioned as a potential running mate for Senator McCain was interviewed by Deborah Solomon for her weekly page in the New York Time Magazine. Rumors about him being gay have surfaced from time to time, influencing some of the questions - nasty - asked by Ms Solomon to this atypical Republican who does not own any property ("I just never found a need for it") and answers with a certain sense of humor: "You were married nearly 30 years ago, but the marriage lasted less than a year. Do you prefer living alone? I got married and divorced because it didn't work out. I haven't found the right one since. It's really that simple. You can't find one woman in all of Florida? Maybe I have. Stay tuned."
Meanwhile the CDC reported this week that HIV infection and AIDS in men who have sex with men rose significantly from 2001 to 2006.
2008.06.29
