This week's special... Saw a man at the 7-eleven counter this morning, middle-years, portly, maybe from somewhere in South Asia. He looked like someone's unce, with a good haircut and woolen trousers...until I noticed the small revolver tucked into a holster--well-oiled--on the right side of his belt. A jeweler, perhaps?
Story from Shelley Winters, in Los Angeles during the war years. Close with Bertolt Brecht, she once invited him to her mother's home for dinner. Long afterward, her mother asked about "...that fellow in the jewelry business you once invited here." "Jeweler? I don't remember anyone like that..." "Oh yes, when I asked him about his work, he told me he made jewels for poor people..."
2 comments:
Tony, I enjoyed the story and the image!
Reminds me of a Shakespeare quote on a Shakespeare and Co. bookmark I once had, "A beggar's book outworths a noble's blood."
I always wondered what the context of that was. I'll have to look it up sometime, and explore more Bertolt Brecht's jewels for poor people.
The image is from a recent Dublin production of Anna Karenina. (Anna Karenina and Levin pictured here.) Seemed appropriate, somehow. Yes, the Brecht is great. And remember that Dylan mentions "Pirate Jenny" (which he saw/heard in NY in the early '60s--a song in Brecht's Three Penny Opera) as the inspiration for his going beyond "folk music" into territory that ultimately became his own. Brecht, of course, would totally approve.
“A Manual of Piety”, or “Die Hauspostille” is a good place to start. See "The Fort Macdonald Railroad Gang."
There are lines from this book recited--to powerful effect--in the new German film (set in East Germany in the early '80s--"The Lives of Others." Also very much recommended.
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