ARTS SThe Michigan Daily Recollections and rewrites *Nick D elbanco tackles history by Joseph Schreiber Tuesday, September 17, 1991 Page 5 Nicholas Delbanco swings his feet up onto his desk. He is a deeply-tanned man with a purring, understated manner of speaking that makes you lean far forward to listen, afraid you'll miss a word. After all, this is an interview, and I've forgotten my tape recorder. What I've got instead is a clear memory of a man who has written ten novels and is three years into his newest work, a man who's won the Guggenheim once and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship twice. But this isn't a memory I'm working from. It's a recollection. And, Delbanco can tell you the difference. For three years he's been re-collecting the scattered and sometimes elu- sive pieces of another man's life for Rumford: His Book. Count Rumford was a genius, expatriate and spy whose world travels landed him in Germany, where he was hired to design winter coats for the German army at the end of the 18th century. Because of his theories on heat mechanics, some scientists today call him the father of nuclear physics. That's how the Brittanica entry might end. For Delbanco, it's just a start. Re-collecting is also re-connecting, and in writing what he calls "the fiction of Count Rumford," Delbanco has had to imagine a connective tis- sue of detail and daily life, a texture, to hold Rumford's history together. The task is not advised for greenhorn novelists. Rewriting history, Delbanco concedes, can be a "severe" business, and it takes serious fortitude to push aside a stack of Rumford biographies, as if to say, this isn't enough. Last week Delbanco was in Massachusetts viewing a portrait of the good Count, and this week he'll read from the next-to-last draft of In writing what he calls 'the fiction of Count Rumford,' Delbanco has had to imagine a con- nective tissue of detail and daily life, a texture, to hold Rumford's history together Rumford. Just listening to his whispering, almost conspiratorial voice will *make the hour a worthy experience. What you hear on Tuesday, however, won't completely reflect the style of the book when it's published - in the final draft, Delbanco vows to fic- tionalize the Count's character a bit more. But neither will you recognize the "inward-facing" tone of his previous work. "If you go to the reading on Tuesday, you won't recognize the author of About My Table," Delbanco says, referring to his 1983 collection of stories. "Rumford is deliberately outward-facing." Delbanco considered writing the book as a modern-day rumination on a historical figure, a timeworn device which he abandoned in order to get closer to the character of Count Rumford himself. And while Delbanco has not altered any of the established facts of the Count's life, he admits he has given the character "at least a few redeeming qualities." "I think in reality," says Delbanco, "that he was probably an irascible son of a bitch." But, wonderfully, no one is sure, and the topic is fertile for fiction. NICHOLAS DELBANCO will be reading from Rumford: His Book today at 4 p.m. in the Rackham Amphitheatre. Admission is free. 4 Deco (Andrew Strong), the obese, obnoxious, pony-tailed lead singer of the Commitments, looks suspiciously like the obese, obnoxious, pony-tailed lead singer of a certain local Ann Arbor band, doesn't he? Say it loud: Black (jrish) and'proud The Commitments dir. Alan Parker I by Annette Petruso It doesn't make much sense that The Commitments is in wide release - i.e. at Showcase, where you can also see Freddy's Dead every hour. on the hour. Alan Parker's ex- quisitely detailed photodrama, an adaptation of a book by Roddy Doyle, is embellished with the accents, slang and attitude of the Dublin working class. It's not that American audiences will be unable to appreciate the Old Country, or that a deft narrative about getting out of an unem- ployed/low-labor hell hole is some- how not universal. But The Com- mitments could easily go underrated, a potential wash-up that defies- the current wave of stupidly cliched feel-good movies. The film makes you feel something, but good is only one emotion in the spectrum - and. good is not how life turns out when you're from the slums. If nothing else,The Commitments is the most honest movie in ages. Jimmy (Robert Arkins) is an un- employed young adult who agrees See 'MENTS, Page 8 Metallica Metallica Elektra Through Kill 'Em All and Ride the Lightning there was always Metallica; through Master' of Puppets on the late-night radio shows with hundreds of other metal groups, many long ago kicked over and dead; through ...And Justice For All, past the groups long sold out to Dokken-like Bon Jovi clones trying to get Top 40 but only sounding pa- thetic; through the thick Danish ac- cents sounding weirder than the sub- jects they sang about, there was Metallica, and 'if one album never sounded like the last it was because they,were letting us know that you have to keep moving to stay alive. (Now there is "Nothing Else Matters," a ballad that sounds Scorpion-y, and "The Unforgiven," the slow part of "One" without a speed part to intensify. This reeks of sell-out. So do the self-title and the shadowy portraits inside. Shit. The album starts with guitars going way too slow. "Wherever I May Roam" has a chorus almost sing- songy. There are cheese-metal ele- ments like the kid's prayer on "Enter Sandman," the I-like-to-ive liet-iein-America guitar intro to "Don't Tread on Me" and the sometimes self-consciously weird song lyrics. Certain death). But listen: stare at the portraits for hours on end and turn up the volume and soon you will begin wishing you had longer hair to thrash about because the guitars are there and the vocals are there. Listen to Metallica and you will hear the sounds that have been there for the last ten years, and if they haven't gotten faster, they have got- See RECORDS, Page 8 ". Study Abroad ______with Beaver College 4 OK, so it's not exactly the Holy Trinity - how about the Dynamic Duo? Jimmy (Robert Arkins), manager of the Commitments, stands in awe. M M ANNA RsORi 2 STH AVE. AT LIBERTY 761.9700 $3 00 DAILY SHOWS BEFORE 6 PM e ALL DAY TUESDAY The Doctor (P+. ) Barton Fink (R), BUYA22OZ. DRINK AND GET ONE f Free 46 oz. 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