Log24

Natasha’s Dance

It seems, according to Eliot’s criterion, that the late author John Gregory Dunne may be a saint.

Pursuing further information on the modular group, a topic on which I did a web page Dec. 30, 2003, the date of Dunne’s death, I came across a review of Apostol’s work on that subject (i.e., the modular group, not Dunne’s death, although there is a connection).  The review:

“A clean, elegant,
absolutely lovely text…”

Searching further at Amazon for a newer edition of the Apostol text, I entered the search phrase “Apostol modular functions” and got a list that included the following as number four:

Natasha’s Dance:
A Cultural History of Russia,

which, by coincidence, includes all three words of the search.

For a connection — purely subjective and coincidental, of course — with Dunne’s death, see The Dark Lady (Jan. 1, 2004), which concerns another Natasha… the actress Natalie Wood, the subject of an essay (“Star!“) by Dunne in the current issue of the New York Review of Books.

The Review’s archives offer another essay, on science and religion, that includes the following relevant questions:

“Have the gates of death
been opened unto thee?
Or hast thou seen the doors
of the shadow of death?”

From my December 31 entry:

In memory of
John Gregory Dunne,
who died on
Dec. 30, 2003:

For further details, click
on the black monolith.

The Dark Lady

“… though she has been seen by many men, she is known to only a handful of them.  You’ll see her — if you see her at all — just after you’ve taken your last breath.  Then, before you exhale for the final time, she’ll appear, silent and sad-eyed, and beckon to you.

She is the Dark Lady, and this is her story.”

— Mike Resnick

“… she played (very effectively) the Deborah Kerr part in a six-hour miniseries of From Here to Eternity….”

— John Gregory Dunne on Natalie Wood
in the New York Review of Books
dated Jan. 15, 2004

Very  effectively.

ART WARS:

Shall we read? — The sequel

Two stories related to my recent entries on the death of Stan Rice (Sequel, 12/11/02) and the career of Jodie Foster (Rhyme Scheme, 12/13/02)  —

See also my entry of December 5, 2002,
Key (for Joan Didion's birthday):

I faced myself that day
with the nonplused apprehension
of someone who has come across a vampire
and has no crucifix in hand.

— Joan Didion, "On Self-Respect,"
in Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Divine Comedy

Didion and her husand John Gregory Dunne
(author of The Studio and Monster) 
wrote the screenplays for
the 1976 version of "A Star is Born"
and the similarly plotted 1996 film
"Up Close and Personal."

If the incomparable Max Bialystock 
were to remake the latter, he might retitle it
"Distant and Impersonal."
A Google search on this phrase suggests
a plot outline for Mel Brooks & Co.