Check out Lally's terrific riff on Frank Sinatra: "I've always been impressed with humans who can extend the natural talents of our species beyond what anyone previously thought was possible. The great artists and scientists and athletes and thinkers and leaders etc. Sinatra was one of those."
Billie Holiday, born 100 years ago today, may not have been as tenaciously devoted to craft & technique, but she can blow your head off. It's the old dilemma: technique or passion—but great artists, like great lovers, have both.
Sinatra's mean attitude toward women is what comes out to me in his singing. Johnny says all singers learned from him—if you can understand Johnny Cash's words, it's because he understood Sinatra's phrasing.
Billie Holiday just seems beyond understanding.
Not so much comparing, just thinking about why I hands down prefer Holiday.
Also see: Frank O'Hara's fantastic poem "The Day Lady Died." Is there a great, moving poem about Sinatra?
Everybody has something that makes them feel secure, as long as they have enough of it. I buy dental floss pretty much every time I go to the drugstore. Maggie's grandpa had extension cords in every drawer of his house. Susan Cataldo's most memorable observation was that buying a four-pack of toilet paper made you feel like you were going to be around for a while. I guess that's it: I'll live long enough to need all this floss. Will I outlive the ink cartridge, the staples, the socks I just bought? When is it time to stop adding on?
Read MoreThe tradition of fictional personae and false attribution goes back pretty much as far as writing has existed. There are Greek, Biblical, and classical works where the claimed author is not who really wrote it. Homer didn't write Homer, King David didn't write the psalms.
Some writers use pseudonyms: George Eliot, Mark Twain, and there are people who invent a whole separate person, an alter ego (Latin for "the other I"). In the literary world it's common: Chatterton attributed a series of poems to a 15th-century priest named Thomas Rowley; James Macpherson wrote the works supposedly composed by a 3rd century Scottish bard named Ossian (and incidentally gave a boost to Scottish cultural nationalism); Richard Hell wrote Theresa Stern's Wanna Go Out?, the KOFF poets gave us Maria (Surprise Surprise Surprise That's Not My Finger) Mancini.
I can barely think of a writer who hasn't fooled around with identity—it's part of what artists do: change words into poems, change personality into novels. We speak in the voices of Civil War veterans, Lord Byron, aliens. We become someone else in order to explore other lives, thoughts, ideas.
I edit the smallest magazine in the world, 16 pages, circulation 350. I ran a sweet 50-word story by a woman whom a few people believe to be an invention, & boy have I heard about it. They are not amused.
There's no financial fraud. The story was good, no matter the source. So why are they bugging? Why do they care? Is it that non-artists feel somehow cheated or fooled or that someone is getting away with something? Do they have no sense of humor? Do they feel like it's somehow a joke at their expense?
I really don't understand it. In art all that matters is if it works.
