"I see plot as a vehicle of meaning. It should be as complex as contemporary life, but balanced enough to say true things about it. The surprise with which a detective novel concludes should set up tragic vibrations which run backward through the entire structure. Which means that the structure must be single, and intended."

- Ross Macdonald, "The Writer as Detective Hero", 1973.

Le Duc

America's greatest composer was born Edward Kennedy Ellington 113 years ago today in Washington D.C. A few stories about him:

"At a White House party on Duke Ellington's birthday, President Nixon pumped Cab Calloway's hand with such special warmth that Cab assumed that the President was a fan of his. Then Nixon said, "Mr. Ellington, it's so good you're here. Happy, happy birthday. Pat and I just love your music." Cab thanked him and stepped on down the receiving line."

Part I of an 1963 interview for Swedish television:

"Duke loved the company of women, and had a number of stock lines with which he charmed them. He'd say, "I can tell that you're an angel; I can see the reflection from your halo shining on the ceiling." Or "My, but you make that dress look lovely!" When he spotted a female to whom he hadn't been introduced,he would usually say, "Whose little girl are you?" ...

Duke's band was booked on a concert with Louis Armstrong. Louis's vocalist at the time was Big Maybelle...Harold Baker said that when Duke first encountered Maybelle backstage he automatically raised his eyebrows, turned on his 1000-watt smile, and murmured, "Well! And whose little girl are you?" Maybelle snapped back indignantly in her stevedore's voice, "What the fuck you mean, whose little girl am I?" The whole band nearly died laughing as Duke graciously backpedalled and moved on to chat with someone else."

Part II:

"Paul Gonsalves, Duke's star tenor player after 1950, was a liberal user of alcohol, among other things. When a critic deplored Gonsalves's condition on the bandstand one night, Ellington defended him, claiming that Paul was a war veteran who had served in the South Pacific where he had contracted malaria. Jimmy Jones described some incidents involving Gonsalves: "Paul fell down on the stand at the Sands in Las Vegas, and he was sober as a judge that night. Just fell off his chair. He stood up and held his horn up to let everybody know he was all right. And Duke walked to the mike and said, "Isn't that amazing? This man doesn't even drink!"

- Bill Crow, Jazz Anecdotes, 1990.

A World of Piano

– Phineas Newborn, Jr., with Al McKibbon and Kenny Dennis in a superb performance from 1961. One of the finest jazz pianists and, next to Bud Powell, Bill Evans and Sonny Clark,  my own personal favorite. Like Clark, he is tragically under-recorded, and like Clark he had a rough life and died too young. 

"In the meantime we wait for a phone call."
"It's hideous, waiting."
"I know. You should try to think about something else."
"What else is there?"
"Lots of things." I think he tried to name one, and gave up. "Anyway, it isn't good for you to be sitting out here in the cold hall. You'll give yourself pneumonia again."
"People don't give it to themselves, Ralph."
"We won't argue. Come into the sitting room and I'll make you a drink."

- Ross Macdonald, The Far Side of the Dollar, 1965.

"My top forty? I suspect the list would be longer than that and would seem odd, mostly because I couldn't stop to explain why I like each writer. Even then, much of it probably resembles the lists of everyone else (or of English class syllabuses); for instance, my favourite book is Ulysses and my list would no doubt include Swift, Fielding, Sterne, Dickens and George Eliot, Hawthorne, Melville and Poe. So let me just mention at random a few people on my list who might not turn up everywhere. Ring Lardner, G.K. Chesterton, O. Henry, Nathaniel West, John Barth, Donald Barthelme, William Gaddis, Harry Mathews, Bernard Malamud, Vance Bourjailly, George P. Elliott, Djuna Barnes, Joe Orton, Tom Stoppard, Kenneth Koch, Robert Coover, Vladimir Nabokov, Angus Wilson, Terry Southern, Evelyn Waugh, Flann O'Brien -- to mention only writers in English. The problem and privilege we all have is being alive in this century and able to read this language. It makes any list meaningless except the list of an illiterate."

- John Sladek, from an interview from 1982.

Dan de Lion

"All about her, life flourished and increased itself, in field, in fold, in the rose-flushed bramble stems of spring before the green leaf unfurled, and in the vine leaves of autumn that lay like fire along the corded branches. She felt this passion within herself like the wine they drank in the early days of spring, light, tart, heady, and having a special fragrance, and her delight illuminated her love like the May sunshine pouring downward into the cupped wine."

 - Janet Lewis, The Wife of Martin Guerre, 1941.

"And I would sit and listen to him and try my best to show some interest in what he was saying, and gradually my eyes would glaze over and my blood would turn to water and a kind of paralysis would set in. I was young then, and much more courteous to older people - and to everyone else, for that matter, as I look back on it - than I should have been. Also, I had not yet found out about time; I was still under the illusion that I had plenty of time - time for this, time for that, time for everything, time to waste."

- Joseph Mitchell, Joe Gould's Secret, 1964.

Possibly the best invention in history:

"Whether you be Dilettante or Professor, in these Compositions do not expect any profound Learning, but rather an ingenious Jesting with Art."

– Domenico Scarlatti, from his forward to the first publication of a collection of his sonatas, 1738.

"Mazie's favorite saint is St. John Bosco. There is a statue of him in a niche in the steeple of the weatherbeaten Church of the Transfiguration in Chinatown. At night the saint can be clearly seen by the light of the galaxy of neon signs on the chop-suey joints which surround the church."

– Joseph Mitchell, "Mazie", 1940.