What we learn from Eileen Battersby's review of Marina Carr
What is society increasingly becoming? Strange, even terrifying.
What is the family? A minefield.
What kind of humour and realism has Marina Carr brought to her handling of the family? Sudden humour & savage realism.
What kind of grasp of simplicity has Marina Carr? A sophisticated one.
How was The Cordelia Dream mauled by the British critics? Comprehensively.
How does Carr think? On several levels at once.
What is her imaginative energy well served by? Her practical reasoning.
The Battersby piece is at
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2009/0207/1233867924563.html
Meanwhile, Fintan O Toole felt ‘almost unbelievably blessed’ to attend a Keith Jarrett concert in Carnegie Hall. (O Toole specifies that Carnegie Hall is in New York & that Jarrett is a musician though he later calls him a ‘great high-wire artist.’)
Jarret is a ‘performer working at the edge of possibility’ whose imagination is ‘flawless.’ Mr O Toole did not explain what a flawed imagination is like, though he did confirm that they existed, nor did he discuss what working conditions are like in the safer areas of possibility (such as the centre, and the corners of possibility).
‘There is no finer experience in contemporary art’ than when a genius ‘plucks music from the air and makes it suddenly (and in some cases violently) audible.’
Mr O Toole has since apologised for the article, which can be read at
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2009/0207/1233867924546.html
He has admitted to JWR an overfondness for ‘sheer’ and for sentences that begin ‘It is not just that….......but….’ Mr O Toole also acknowledged that whatever he reviews is always ‘nothing less than’ something. He has pledged to cut this out in the future.
For a musical review of a Jarrett concert see Nate Chinen, nytimes, September 28, 2005:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/28/arts/music/28jarr.html?sq=keith%20jarrett&st=cse&adxnnl=1&scp=2&adxnnlx=1234094469-BbSIxjJZYHpUT0aIUMNQPw
