"As much as Giger shunned the limelight, preferring his work to speak for him, he was greatly appreciative of every compliment he ever received and we know he would be amazed and humbled by the kindness that continues to be the subject of his eulogies.
And yet, despite his fame, Oum had always been a rather quiet and demure individual, preferring his work to do the talking for him.
With Rossini's radiant late operas receiving ever more respect and attention, it seems increasingly perverse that Stendhal, his first biographer, loudly preferred his early comic works.
But if people preferred his "earlier, funnier works," why did they also allow him to make later, darker, more misanthropic ones given the circumstances?
During a trip to Puerto Rico in the '70s, it was this carpe diem spirit that led my dad to play tennis all week long with the adult-film star Harry Reems — the same Harry Reems who was in "Deep Throat" (not that you recognized the name, dear reader), though true aficionados prefer his later work, in films like "For Your Thighs Only".
In preferring Cherubini, Mr. Rousset is in good company: Beethoven was a huge admirer of Cherubini and much preferred his opera to those frivolous works by Mozart with librettos by Lorenzo da Ponte.
He would prefer his life's work to be read for its literary rather than its political value.
The arrangement is voluntary: she prefers Montreal; his work keeps him at Oxford.
Vollmann certainly has his followers, and I won't argue against the judgment of his publishers, but I prefer reading his work in short bursts.
