{"id":5134,"date":"2017-04-30T21:31:28","date_gmt":"2017-04-30T19:31:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpethzprd.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/?p=5134"},"modified":"2024-02-20T13:40:32","modified_gmt":"2024-02-20T11:40:32","slug":"two-biographies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/2017\/04\/30\/two-biographies\/","title":{"rendered":"Two biographies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coincidentally, I finished reading two biographies in the last few days: R. Ellman’s<\/a> “James Joyce” and R. D.G. Kelley’s<\/a> “Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of American Original”. Although I admire both Joyce and Monk, there is no question who is my favorite: on a desert island, I would take Monk’s records with me. And yet, I read through Joyce’s biography in barely more than a week, and only read Monk’s rather slowly over a few months — obviously, it is much easier to write about the life of a writer, quoting liberally from his letters and limericks, than to write about a musician without an accompanying CD or recording.<\/p>\n

P.S. Ellman’s biography at least convincingly corrects the story I mentioned in an earlier post<\/a> about Joyce moving frequently in Z\u00fcrich because of his inability to pay the rent: his Z\u00fcrich years during the first World War coincide with the time when he finally got a decent income (in principle) to not have to worry about such things. It seems however that he was very inventive in dealing with creditors earlier in Trieste…<\/p>\n

P.P.S. The first name “Thelonious” apparently comes from Saint Tillo or Th\u00e9au or Tillonius, who was active in the late 7th Century in Flanders and France; his feast day is January 7th, and he is noted<\/a> for having cured the Bishop Hermenus of Limoges by informing him that he (Tillonius) was dying and requested him (the Bishop) to come and bury him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coincidentally, I finished reading two biographies in the last few days: R. Ellman’s “James Joyce” and R. D.G. Kelley’s “Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of American Original”. Although I admire both Joyce and Monk, there is no question who is my favorite: on a desert island, I would take Monk’s records with me. And … Continue reading Two biographies<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":625,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1825,313,5543,362,1185],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts","category-france","category-jazz","category-language","category-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/625"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}