Jeff Smith

Jeff Smith is a Reader contributor. See staff page for stories and blog entries.

Comments by jsmith

Another Iliad

T: I read what's left of my early stuff and say "he was so YOUNG." I recognize the guy, and appreciate that he wasn't trying to imitate other writers, even at ground zero. But as the poet sayeth, "but I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now."
— August 24, 2012 10:27 a.m.

Another Iliad

T: it wasn't a translation. Just something I wrote back then that managed to survive the various demolitions of stuff I wrote back then. By Simone Weil, do you mean her "The Iliad, or The Poem of Force"? It's not a translation. It's a brilliant study of the poem, just a pamphlet, but one of the few times where criticism reads like literature. She wrote it in 1940, just after France (Troy) fell to Germany (the Greeks). I've been tempted to blog her/it. In fact, take "poem of force" and Alexander Pope's preface to his translation (one of my two favorites, the other being Robert Fagels') and that's all the intro one would need for the Iliad. Dwight Macdonald printed "Force" in *Politics* (1945, the Mary McCarthy trans.). He helped in that sense. Listen to Weil: "Soon, however, he grasps the fact that the weapon which is pointing at him will not be diverted; and now, still breathing, he is simply matter; still thinking, he can think no longer."
— August 20, 2012 9:21 a.m.

Another Iliad

Twister. I can't just now. I have a review due, and a history column due on Monday, and...and... But I will do a blog or two. And see the show if you can. I saw it last night. It's really something!
— August 18, 2012 10:40 a.m.

Fiddler on the Roof at Moonlight

All day and all night! She's meant so much to theater in North County and San Diego in general. Anyone who remembers the original Moonlight outdoor setup - a stage and a hillside - would be astonished an what's there now. And behind the scenes she's been an indefatigable support system to who knows how many actors and designers and volunteers...
— July 29, 2012 11:11 a.m.

The Impossible Dream Team

Ha! A believer! It's always amazed me how little baseball has changed. How Abner Doubleday, or whoever, figured 90 feet to be the perfect distance for the bases. The more I think about my "dream team," I wonder how much the game has changed. There are so few genuine centers - a la Wilt - these days. And Shaq couldn't have carried the Dipper's athletic supporter. But the great shooter from each era - Bill Sharman, Freeman Williams, Ray Allen - launches from farther out than the previous one. And, and this may be a big difference, nowadays they release the ball a LOT quicker.
— July 26, 2012 10:22 a.m.

The Old Globe stages Richard III

It wasn't just a phase. Scouts report that the actors are still screaming their lines.
— July 19, 2012 12:04 p.m.

Joe vs The Volcano, The Musical, at Lamb's Players

Or the curse of CFS.
— June 26, 2012 10:17 a.m.

Ripples from Walden Pond

That's correct. There's even a play, by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee called *The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail* - and they jazz him up to mythical proportions. Also, Walden Pond wasn't five clicks beyond nowhere. It was just one mile from Ralph Waldo and wife Lydian Emerson's house. Many say that Henry David took full advantage of Lydian's excellent cooking - especially on chill winter's eves. There's "Thoreau" and Thurr-ow - the legend and the person. Best to read *Walden*, "Civil Disobedience," and the others and thorow the legend back into the pond.
— May 4, 2012 10:50 a.m.

Lucille's Ashes

So they took the law into their own hands and hung him. And because they were prominent members of the govt. this somehow made it RIGHT? I think I've figured something out. The discussion began by comparing apples with crayons. It sounds like you didn't see Cygnet's production and base your points on the Broadway version - which was slanted hard in favor of Frank's innocence. The Cygnet version un-slanted things, even added doubts about Frank. I praised the show because it did away with simplistic melodrama - shining good here, smarmy evil over there - on which so much theater is based. I wish you could have seen Cygnet's, instead of assuming that it followed the Broadway version in every regard. The case you make makes me want to learn much more about the "affair." On a personal note: I've been researching and writing about San Diego's vigilantes (1912, same era) for the last six months. I've studied Cygnet's multiple-perspective approach to find ways of understanding the impulse.
— May 3, 2012 10:43 a.m.

Lucille's Ashes

I'm buying a lot of what you say. The generality's way too sweeping (and the Cygnet production cuts against it by making Frank more complex than the script suggests, possibly even culpable). So why can't you say Frank was just a factory boss and not a "Jewish factory boss" and why not just a white man trying to frame a black man (instead of a "White Jew" - in capital letters)? Why add these inflamatory words if you're arguing against that attitude? And what about the lynching? Wasn't there even smidge of anti-semitism in it, or was that just good clean vigilante fun?
— April 29, 2012 11:06 a.m.