The acclaimed poet and iconic University of Montana professor died July 14. Her late husband was the New Yorker writer Leonard Wallace Robinson. Further links to follow; for now, the obituaries from The Missoulian and the Missoula Independent. From the latter:

Goedicke was last mentioned in the Independent almost a year ago (see “A Life Remembered,” Sept. 22, 2005 [link to piece includes wonderfully glamorous photo of Goedicke and Robinson]) when she spoke about Now and Zen: A Life, the posthumously published collection of haikus by her late husband, poet and novelist Leonard Wallace Robinson. Goedicke’s reading of Now and Zen at last year’s Festival of the Book would be the last time many would hear her read. Of her late husband’s haikus, Goedicke once said, “They’re acorns fallen from a rather short but truly giant oak tree. I know, because I have the privilege of living in its shade.” Though Goedicke applied the metaphor to her husband, it’s one that her community, her students and her peers can apply to her: her poems are acorns left to us and her life provided a shade in which we once had the privilege of finding shelter.

Poems by Goedicke reprinted online (please alert me if any of these poems contain errors, and if you know of any others):

The Reading Club [Academy of American Poets]
Cousins [Ploughshares]
What the Skin Knows [Ploughshares]
Big Top [Ploughshares]
In the Middle of the Worst Sickness [Ploughshares]
Without Looking [Poemhunter]

***

I hope it isn’t too crass to be gently (and tangentially) critical of an obituary writer in a memorial note—I know well how hard it is to write obituaries, since you’re usually working against the clock with editors literally panting with agitation around you—but I don’t think Post staff writer Patricia Sullivan has it quite right here: “Unlike the two-fisted [Richard] Hugo’s paeans to the working-class life and nature in the Northwest, Ms. Goedicke’s work reaches out, open-handed, to those around her.” In fact, Hugo reached out constantly, if not always successfully. Branded as a regional poet, he spoke for everyone with a heart and a treacherous memory. Fish too, of course. But it’s the easiest thing in the world to assign two poets exaggerately opposite qualities, and goodness knows we have enough troubles without that.

The movie (it “may be coming soon to the New Capitol Cinemas”) is discussed today in Mmegi, which according to its site is “the only daily independent newspaper in Botswana”:

The story of Truman Capote (a.k.a Truman Strekfus Persons), the great American writer, novelist, and his endeavours to create the first “non-fiction novel”, which was published as “In Cold Blood” (1966, the movie came out in 1967), is both a fascinating and upsetting film. Truman Capote was not a pleasant man (acted with unusual flair by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who captures Truman’s mannerisms and way of speaking perfectly, and who was awarded an Oscar as Best Actor, 2006).

Truman loved being the centre of attention and knew how to hold an audience. The story of the prolonged agony involved in writing is also not the normal content of a good movie, but director Bennett Miller and scriptwriter Dan Futterman manage to pull it off (using Gerald Clarke’s 1988 biography of Capote – he died from alcoholism at sixty in 1984). Truman, who was born in New Orleans on 30 September 1924, was in a state of limbo on November 15, 1959, when he read about the murders in Kansas and decided to change his life most dramatically. He was a young man of 35, basking in the success of his short story, “Shut a final door” (1946), his first novel, “Other Voices, Other Rooms” (1948), “House of Flowers” (a musical in 1954), and most recently, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1958, not yet made into a movie).

Fascinating (and in some instances upsetting) indeed. There is actually a movie of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but clearly it hasn’t made it to the New Capitol Cinemas yet. (The writer also notes that Cary Grant starred in To Kill a Mockingbird, which was news to me.) All this reminds me of a meditation about the depiction of William Shawn in the movie, after previous protests from, for instance, Roger Angell and Ken Auletta. The meditation, by Levi Asher in LitKicks, goes like this:

Now that I’ve watched the DVD, I can make sense out of a controversy that’s been brewing in the New Yorker magazine for the past few weeks. One of the main characters in Capote is the legendary New Yorker editor-in-chief William Shawn, and the magazine has now published several complaints that the film’s portrayal of this legendary publishing figure is an insult and a throwaway.

David Denby, Wallace Shawn (the editor’s son, and a notable writer/actor) and the other objectors are probably correct. William Shawn is played by Bob Balaban, the nerdy character actor who played the NBC television executive (based on Warren Littlefield) in Seinfeld, then varied the persona only slightly in Waiting for Guffman and A Mighty Wind. The latter two movies are excellent comedies, and Balaban may be a good actor for all anybody knows, but he shows up in Capote with the same mannerisms, the same expressions, the same voice and the same posture he used in every other movie or tv show, and I don’t blame the friends and family of the late William Shawn for feeling shortchanged.

A quick look at William Shawn’s life makes clear that he is nothing like the fussy, business-minded bureaucrat Balaban plays. In Cold Blood is only one of many important books this editor nurtured; Hiroshima and Catcher in the Rye are two others. One can only imagine how the filmmakers made this casting decision. “Who’s this character?” “Some magazine editor.” “Call Balaban.”

So predictable. Just like Geoffrey Rush, who they’ve been squeezing into feathery leotards for every historical epic about Elizabethean England made in the last fifteen years. Or poor Jim Broadbent, who was so absolutely brilliant as W. S. Gilbert in Topsy-Turvy, but who’s since allowed himself to be cast in every movie ever made that needed a chubby old bearded guy with a funny accent (British, French, who the hell cares?). Balaban has become the latest of this type, and it really is a shame that a subtle and powerful literary giant like William Shawn should get played by a character actor so dull he couldn’t even be funny on Seinfeld.

But at the same time, it would also be a shame if the filmmakers’ one casting misstep were to reflect badly on the entire film. Maybe there’s even something appropriate about the fact that Truman Capote, who was never known for willfully sharing a spotlight, should crowd all the other characters out of the movie that bears his name.

Call me crazy—you wouldn’t be the first—but I’m pretty positive I saw Balaban in Carroll Gardens last week, buying yogurt at the health food store where Heath and Michelle also shop (this is not my neighborhood but the neighborhood of my far more elegant friends). Balaban, for I’m certain it was he, was wearing white and looked very good, and of course short. Anyone have a Gawker Stalker cross-confirmation? As for his Shawn portrayal, it was unnecessarily prurient, a la Terry Gross, and many agree that he wouldn’t have just up and flown to Kansas like that in the middle of a production cycle (Jonathan Rosenbaum mentions this detail as well), but I loved the movie anyway. One of LitKicks’ commenters suggests that Wallace Shawn would have been better for the part, but that would have been strange indeed. Not that I’m not a fan; I am, despite his finding my own cinematic behavior a little unhinged.

Via Straight, this necessary site: Why a Duck?, an endearingly ’90s-throwback yet quite comprehensive Marx Brothers resource, greeting cards included.

I’m extremely thrilled about the upcoming movie of James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia, to be released in September. With Scarlett Johansson (see the Emdashes Island review), as I’m sure you know, and a fine choice, since she’s one of the few actually beautiful, genuinely mysterious actresses in Hollywood. Here’s a brief interview with Ellroy in PW (“Aberrant behavior is seductive, there’s that. And noir is the prism through which we visit the recent past”). Looks like there’s another Dahlia retelling afoot, too, which IMdB says is “undergoing audio sweetening.” That might not be enough to counteract the Brian De Palma factor, but I say show them as a grisly double feature. There aren’t enough movie pairings going on, in general.

The New Yorker connection? Find it and you get a prize!

Good news from our friends at the Robert Benchley Society:

Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone, and Robert Benchley in “Dancing Lady” available now on DVD

Watch for:

–Joan Crawford in a rare dancing role;

–Ted Healy and His Stooges presenting their physical humor in the same film with the dry wit of Robert Benchley (it’s so early a Stooges appearance that Curly is still being billed by his real name — Jerry);

–Film debut of Fred Astaire;

–File debut of Nelson Eddy;

–Early (uncredited) appearance by Eve Arden; and

–Grand musical finale with sets and choreography that MGM will recycle later in the decade for the Emerald City scenes in The Wizard of Oz.

No indeed; the longtime New Yorker Profile artist is being Volterraized. In Utah, some people (at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art) just don’t like nudes:

Silverman, who chuckled about the religious university eliminating his nudes from the show, said he began doing nudes by visiting burlesque houses.

“Nudity in public life is relevant,” he told the Deseret Morning News.

BYU officials take exception to that view, maintaining that nude illustrations are irrelevant to the exhibition that will open July 29.

Update: Another local profile of Silverman. Nudes not included.

Right up there on stage and live on the radio. From the travelin’ preachers at Cybergrass:

Bristol, VA-TN – /BCMA/ During the weekend of July 22-23, the Birthplace of Country Music Alliance, with contributing support from The Crooked Road: Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail and Virginia Tourism Corporation, will be hosting Mountain Stage, for a celebratory weekend acknowledging Bristol’s designation as “the Birthplace of Country Music.” Both shows start at 7:00 PM and admission is $18 for adults, $15 for seniors/students, and children under 12 admitted free. Tickets may be purchased at the Paramount Center for the Arts Box Office or by calling (423) 274-8920.

Mountain Stage will record two radio shows and at least four public television productions. Mountain Stage, a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, is a two-hour radio show recorded before a live audience that has established a long tradition of featuring national and international acts in almost every style of music. Mountain Stage can be heard weekly on over 100 Public Radio International affiliates throughout the United States, Voice of America, and XM Satellite Radio. The television program has been carried on over 200 PBS stations nationwide.
…
Artists confirmed for the shows include Roni Stoneman, Darrell Scott, Rambling Jack Elliott, Ollabelle, and Reagan Boggs for Saturday night; with Ralph Stanley, Yonder Mountain String Band, Tim O’Brien, Dale Jett, Odetta, and Chris Thile performing Sunday evening. “Our goal is to work with the local community putting together programs that reflect where country music has come from and some of the directions it is taking,” commented Larry Groce, host and artistic director.
…
SUNDAY, JULY 23

Dr. Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys – An influential figure in American music, Ralph Stanley has recorded more than 200 albums since he and his brother Carter founded the Stanley Brothers in 1946. Inspired by the dark emotions of Appalachia, their haunting mountain melodies made them stand apart from other bluegrass bands. When Carter Stanley died in 1966, Ralph carried on, and the Clinch Mountain Boys grew to be one of the most respected outfits in bluegrass. His music had a direct influence on Dwight Yoakam, Emmylou Harris, the late Keith Whitley and Ricky Skaggs. While he has long been revered by folk, bluegrass and country enthusiasts, thanks to the success of the film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”, Stanley has become a star. In 2002, he won Grammys for “Best Country Male Vocalist Performance” and “Album of the Year” (for his part in the O Brother collection). He was profiled in The New Yorker by novelist David Gates [in the August 20 & 27, 2001, issue] and is the central figure in the D. A. Pennebaker/Chris Hegedus documentary “Down From The Mountain.” In January, 2000, Stanley became the first artist to be inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in the new millennium. He holds the “Living Legend” award from the Library of Congress and was the first recipient of the “Traditional American Music Award” from the National Endowment for the Humanities. It was only fitting that Stanley was chosen to be the closing act for the 2002 Down From The Mountain Tour, a sold-out series of concerts inspired by the success of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? album.

From Gates’ 2001 piece—not online, but available at a Complete New Yorker near you. What, you mean to say you don’t have one yet? To read the rest, go git ‘er.

Ever since the death of Bill Monroe, the putative father of bluegrass, in 1996, Ralph Stanley has been the supreme icon of authenticity in American vernacular music. He is neither the last nor the oldest ofthe mountain-music patriarchs: Earl Scruggs, who is the prototypical bluegrass banjo player,and served as an early model for Stanley, has just released his first album since 1984, “Earl Scruggs and Friends.” But Scruggs hasn’t performed much in the past quarter century; Stanley, who is slightly younger, continues to do more than a hundred shows a year. Even when he was in his twenties, Stanley’s voice—hard, piercing, with a touch of raspiness—made him sound like a scary old man. Today, he sounds even scarier, and he has begun appealing to an audience far beyond the usual bluegrass circuit of summer festivals, college-town coffeehouses, and school and firehouse gigs throughout the rural South.

Thanks, Montreal counter guy, for making a rocky night a little less so. So Scott Johnson at the Free-Market News Network and Hugh Hewitt from Town Hall don’t much like David Remnick’s recent Comment on Bush, the press, Nixon, and national security, and here’s why (from Johnson’s post):

Hugh Hewitt sends a hoot of derision in the direction of David Remnick and his ludicrous New Yorker column “Nattering nabobs.” Hugh’s column is “The decline and fall of the bemoaning empire.” (Hugh interviews John Podhoretz on the Remnick column here.)

Remnick’s column provides a case study in liberal hysteria of the kind that Tom Wolfe mocked in his aphorism (recently recalled by Eugene Volokh): “The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Eruope.” Remnick ominously invokes the specter of Richard Nixon and the Pentagon Papers case to suggest that the Bush administration has set out to “stifle the press.”

Hewlett begins one sentence, “And Remnick explains it all for his fellow Manhattan readers…” This tired, cheap line is common in conservative criticism of the magazine. Come now; we’ve all seen the red-blue map of America’s erratic dots, not to mention dotty errors. There’s a New Yorker reader somewhere near you, friend. Not to mention that we’ve been joined by some other boroughs. If you lived here, you’d be home now!

Meanwhile, New Yorker contributor Derek Van Gieson, a fascinating illustrator from Kalamazoo, just put out a limited-edition book called Journey by Ferry to Celibate City, or Thigh Town. From the Kalamazoo Gazette (lucky is the paper with two Zs in its name!):

In the past few years, Van Gieson’s pen-and-ink imagery has graced the pages of New Yorker, including an illustration for a review of the film “Enduring Love” in November 2004, which he called a “tough one” since he hadn’t seen the film and had to base the drawing on photos and reviews of the film. Another piece appeared in The New York Times Book Review on May 4, 2003, and accompanied a review of Graham Swift’s “Light of Day.” It was an illustration of a woman with a Mona Lisa look and a most morose man. He also illustrated the cover of up-state New York arts magazine Chronogram in October of 2003.
…
“I’m not sure where they’ll file [Celibate City, $13,] in a bookstore,” he said. “I think the catch phrase for the book was ‘literary and arts honky-tonk.’ … It’s wall-to-wall photographs, drawings, short stories, and the drawings relate to the short stories. You’re constantly bombarded with new ideas and new imagery.”

On Van Gieson’s awesomely scrawly website, under Archives, check out his Buddy Holly Fish. Look in “Shutdown Vol. 3,” too, for a fine employment of beer bottlecaps. I really, really like his Photography page too (frames, or else I’d link ’em). Powerful stuff.

Swartz, who’s been a staff writer for The New Yorker (from 1997-99), just won the John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism, for a Texas Monthly story: “Hurt? Injured? Need a Lawyer? Too Bad!” (“Like a lot of old-fashioned Texans, Alvin Berry is the kind of man who bears the pain and indignities of life with good grace….”)

Swartz’s piece is about tort reform. Semi-related: Last month I served for nearly a week on a medical malpractice case, and we sided with the plaintiff. Make of that what you will. And please, for the love of feet, warm up before you exercise, won’t you? Don’t, I repeat, don’t, snap that essential Achilles tendon. Especially if you’re a guy (it happens most often to older men—older meaning older than 30, according to Dr. X the expert witness). Trust me, please. If you’d seen what I’ve seen, you’d be stretching the thing 24/7.

And when I made this observation to the gaggle outside my office building, they replied, “We are persecuted.” Poor devils.

As the Surgeon General’s uncompromised edict swirls around our bombarded heads, let us note once more how lame that Times magazine piece was about the Philip Morris flack Steve Parrish. It had, at first, the deep, satisfying pull of a principled stand, then became so much hot air.