Becca Reads

Police Log

2007-06-14T22:44:00.001-04:00

[no link to the local paper so as to preserve geographic anonymity]

At 6:22 p.m., a B Street resident called to report harassment from a friend. The woman said she went to breakfast with a man who then took her home to meet his wife. The wife was not home when she and the person arrived. The man then asked her if she wanted something to eat, which she thought was strange because they just ate. Police advised her that there was no criminal activity. She responded that she thought the person was being a bad friend and wanted to end the friendship.

Maybe she would have felt better if he'd asked her to give him a blow job.

Sextuplets

2007-06-13T16:45:00.001-04:00

I'm not an infertility blogger, but I have to wonder how artificial insemination could lead to sextuplets. (Reading it, I just assumed, perhaps skimming over the "in," that it said in vitro, and I was outraged that anyone would implant six embryos, but now I'm just confused.)

Knocked Up

2007-06-13T16:26:00.000-04:00

It wasn't as funny as The 40 Year Old Virgin.

It was still pretty funny.

Especially the shrooms in Vegas scene.

Which was really, really funny.

I love Paul Rudd.

Better not to think about politics or plausibility.

D couldn't decide which campaign sponsored it: Brownback, Rudy, or Hillary.

It was occasionally slow. And predictable.

But it was funny.

And I love Paul Rudd.

(In other news, I got a new phone, which was kind of traumatizing, though I'm getting used to it, except that the front screen stays dark except when it's open, so you need to open it to see if you have messages, which is kind of a drag. S got the same phone as me, so I put glitter flower stickers on mine, which is so unlike me--not the glitter flowers, but putting stickers on my phone. M got S's old phone. She is super-excited and has already changed all the settings, covered it with stickers, and sent me a text with a smiley face. I didn't know you could send texts with smiley faces.)

Blindsided by a Diaper

2007-06-09T22:51:00.000-04:00

As we know (how do we know? well, I know because I'm me, and you presumably know because you've heard me say it before, only it is late and I don't even know why I'm blogging at this hour, but I'm certainly not going to try to find out where I said it, so, alas, no link, but let me assure you, I've said it...OK, must abruptly exit this parenthesis)...where was I? Ah, as we know, I am over anthologies (got this one in galleys, and had to THROW IT OUT it was that bad, and I would never throw out a book, but it was a galley, and I just couldn't bear to have it in my house anymore) (no, it wasn't a galley, it was...what do they call it when they send you a book that looks like the book but the table of contents has no page numbers and there are lots of typos and a sticker on the front saying it is a whatever it is and you can't do certain things with it? come on, Dawn, help me out, what are those things?). OK, the point. The point is that I am over anthologies and I'm pretty much over parenting too--not the doing of it (yes, you've heard me say that before too), but the writing about it. So there is absolutely no way in hell I am going anywhere near this book (i.e. you might call this post BeccaDoesn'tRead rather than BeccaReads).

Nevertheless (you needed a paragraph break there, didn't you?), I am oddly intrigued by the subtitle, which is, of course, the same old anthology subtitle in its Number-Noun of Identity-"Reveal" [though this one, thank goodness, omits "the truth"]-Topic format [though, thank goodness again, this one does not formulate its topic as a string of Additional Nouns]. But what is interesting here is that the number is "Over 30" which makes me wonder if this is a book about thirtysomething Nouns of Identity ("Men and Women," in this case) or if there are in fact 31, or perhaps 32, essays in the book, in which case who on earth thought "Over 30" was a good idea?

Parents, Kids, and Networking Sites

2007-06-07T23:15:00.000-04:00

M hasn't made it to Facebook yet, but I joined LinkedIn this week. Weird, very weird.

The Glass House

2007-06-06T22:23:00.000-04:00

Visiting Fallingwater was a highlight of my life, and I am certain that visiting the Glass House will be another. Just reading about life there makes me tremble with excitement. So not me, but so eminently desirable.

The Muggwaps

2007-06-03T22:15:00.000-04:00

New from Dorrance Publishing (typed verbatim):

A book about the differences in each of us; A woman rescues defective stuffed animals in this tail of family, unity, and love.

(M and I debated whether "tail" was purposeful. We think perhaps it is. But maybe not.)

Jonathan Lethem and Ian McEwan

2007-06-03T22:11:00.000-04:00

This passage from Lethem's review of McEwan's new novel gets it exactly right on what it's like to read a great novel (obviously I'm in the "delicious agony" camp) (Atonement is one of the novels I experienced like this, another is Salman Rushdie's Shame, also Julia Glass's first novel, and, though not every sentence, The Portrait of a Lady) (I think I need to read some Jonathan Lethem) (and catch up on the Ian McEwan novels I've missed):

Among the encompassing definitions we could give “the novel” (“a mirror walking down a road,” “a narrative of a certain size with something wrong with it”) is this: a novel is a vast heap of sentences, like stones, arranged on a beach of time. The reader may parse the stones of a novel singly or crunch them in bunches underfoot in his eagerness to cross. These choices generate tension: in my eagerness to learn “what happens,” might I miss something occurring at the level of the sentence? Some experience this as a delicious agony, others distrust it. Our appetite for Ian McEwan's form of mastery is a measure of our pleasure in fiction’s parallax impact on our reading brains: his narratives hurry us feverishly forward, desperate for the revelation of (imaginary) secrets, and yet his sentences stop us cold to savor the air of another human being’s (imaginary) consciousness.

Shrek 3

2007-06-02T22:57:00.000-04:00

The big kids got to go somewhere exceedingly exciting with their grandfather (we'll just say it involved the number 38 and leave it at that), so my sister and I took the little girls to see Shrek 3 as compensation. This was a bit of a challenge for me, given my linear compulsions, because I have seen neither Shrek nor Shrek 2. However, my cultural antennae have given me the gist and, besides, it was not all about me.

Which is a very good thing because that was one boring movie. I don't get the appeal of Shrek, the guy, at all, and yes, I get that they are making fun of fairy tales, but...well...whatever. Maybe the original is just better.

The one thing I liked was when the lame princesses suddenly became superheroes. But E liked all the baby scenes, and L chortled frequently, and the children in the theater seemed generally happy, and it was only an hour and a half, so all was good.

Sarah Hannah

2007-05-31T08:51:00.000-04:00

I never heard of Sarah Hannah until I read her obituary. She committed suicide last week, at 40. Her poems are wonderful.

The Post-Birthday World

2007-05-29T23:23:00.000-04:00

I wish I hadn't read anything about The Post-Birthday World before I read the book. I don't even want to check before I write this, but I'm quite sure Jenny loved it (when I got to the pie scenes, I remembered her quoting them), and I'm fairly certain that the Times review (was it the Times? must have been, as I only read one review, and that would be the most likely candidate) was not so enthusiastic. But at any rate, my ability to respond instinctively was somewhat hampered by my knowledge that someone liked it and someone didn't, although you could also say that if I had a powerful instinctive response, whether positive or negative, it would have overcome the reactions of others. And, indeed, I have to say that my response to the book was fairly intellectual, which suggests that it did not bowl me over like, say, Lionel Shriver's last novel, or, most recently, The Last of Her Kind.

So this is the book in which Irina goes out to dinner with her husband's friend/friend's (ex) husband on his birthday and either kisses him, or doesn't. The novel then unfolds, in alternating chapters, two narratives: the one in which she kisses him (choosing passion over stability, and reaping both the benefits and the painful consequences) and the one in which she doesn't kiss him (choosing stability over passion and reaping both the benefits and the painful consequences). And that's the thing: The Post-Birthday World is clearly a work of virtuouso fiction, but it is profoundly schematic, and in its meticulous schematism, it profoundly irked me. If there is a win in one narrative, it is countered by a loss in another. If there is a dinner party in one narrative, there is a contrapuntal dinner party in another. If Irina's rival is fat in one narrative, she is thin in the other, but both her fatness and her thinness--or perhaps it is the dialectic between fatness and thinness--are so contrived that they never let you forget you are in a work of fiction, under the power of a meticulous author who never lets you--or the text, or the characters--out of her control. My success as a reader, then, came in learning to read Shriver's patterns skillfully enough that by the last third of the book I always knew what was going to happen, and while that may be success, of a sort, it is not my preferred form of pleasure.

The place of 9/11 in the novel is perhaps the best example of what I am describing. In 1997, Irina's partner Lawrence, searching for a foreign policy specialty, settles upon terrorism, which nobody else cares about. You know where this is going, don't you? Terrorism becomes a minor motif, there's the occasional suicide bomber simile, and there is a line repeated in each narrative (can't find the exact words) about falling through the sky from a tall building. When Irina goes to New York for an awards dinner, there has been one brief mention that it is 2001 and another, many pages later, that it is September. OK, OK, I get it. But was I supposed to figure it out (I did), or were these references meant to subtly shape my reading experience without me even being aware of it (they didn't)?*

Ultimately, I think, the issue at stake is realism, and I'm not quite sure I've worked out these ideas, but I'm going to try them out. Realism is one of those things you know when you see it, which means that of course untold numbers of words have been expended on pinning it down. But, basically, realism is about the representation of everyday life, complex ethical frameworks, and an illusion of coincidence and randomness that is in fact meticulously shaped by the author and feeds directly into those ethical frameworks. Think George Eliot; think Flaubert. Think, too, The Post-Birthday World, which has everything in the previous sentence--except for one word: "illusion." For the bargain the realist author makes with the reader, and the reader makes with the author, is that the fiction will in fact occlude the author's controlling hand. We know it is there, but we all agree to forget it and believe, as we read, that we are in the real, not the realist. Shriver eschews that occlusion: her hand is everywhere. So, we can read the novel as a critique of realism's illusions which, I'll be the first to agree, is a noble intellectual project. But I am the reader who derives profound pleasure from realism and has no problem with the bargain it insists upon, even as I know its terms. I'll take my realism magical if I must, and I'm fine with experimental fiction of some sorts (though I'd argue, perhaps iconoclastically, but maybe not, that modernism, of the Joyce/Woolf variety, is in fact realism taken to its extreme, as is minimalism), but I want my realism, I want to uphold my end of the bargain, and I'm just irked by an author who doesn't uphold hers, even if I know it's for a good intellectual cause.

*I am starting to think that at this historical moment, the only viable 9/11 fiction must take 9/11 as its premise and then explore its effects (this is why I'm so eager to read Falling Man) or touch upon it obliquely--gently?--in the course of a larger fictional agenda. Perhaps someday readers who have forgotten the details will be able to read a novel that begins in 1999, or mentions a perfect bright blue September day, without knowing exactly what is to come, and thus the fiction will be able to stand on its own, but The Post-Birthday World is, like The Whole World Over and The Emperor's Children, too portentous for 2007 (hmm, looks like I liked the 9/11 part of The Emperor's Children better than I remember, but it was still way too overdetermined, plotwise--I must say that the few pages where Shriver does describe 9/11 are really good, so again it's not the representation of the actual events, but their framing and foreshadowing which is just too much).

Buzz, Not

2007-05-29T23:18:00.000-04:00

I had no idea about the bees. The headline ("the sudden death of the nation's bees") is a bit alarmist compared to the text ("Last fall, the nation's beekeepers watched in horror as more than a quarter of their 2.4 million colonies collapsed"), and perhaps it's just a fluke and the bees will return, better and buzzier than ever, but still, this is the kind of article that makes one shiver and think perhaps it is better not to know and then feel really bad for thinking that.

Wherefore Art Thou, Thomas Hardy

2007-05-29T23:16:00.000-04:00

Jude the Obscure in real life. Truly ghastly either way.

Not Quite Sure

2007-01-05T20:47:00.000-05:00

Here's something to read, though I can't say how long it will be there.

Edited to add: For now I'll be blogging about what I read there. Two blogs just seems like too much.

Digging to America

2007-01-02T11:54:00.000-05:00

What makes a 9/11 book? Certainly a book in which 9/11 is central to the plot, or a book that uses 9/11 as an occasion for significant reflection, is a 9/11 book (I'm thinking The Emperor's Children and that Lynne Sharon Schwartz novel, and of course the Julia Glass novel). But what of a book that simply mentions 9/11, because it takes place now? Could we say that all our literature, post 9/11, is 9/11 literature, or is 9/11 simply the condition of our current literature, five years later?

It can be pretty persuasively argued that Digging to America is Anne Tyler's 9/11 novel, though there's only one overt reference. No, that's not right. The overt reference I'm thinking of is the arrival of the Dickinson-Donaldson's second child. When their first daughter arrives from Korea in 1996, everyone greets her at the gate; when they come back from China with their second daughter, at some point after 9/11, the grandfather and first daughter meet them outside security, everyone else waits by the baggage carousel, and momentum is lost. There are other overt references too, though, I'm remembering now, because the Iranian Yazdans, whose daughter Susan arrives from Korea on the same flight as Jin-Ho Dickinson-Donaldson, refer to how they are treated after 9/11.

But Tyler is more subtle than the writers who make their characters face the falling towers. I would call this a 9/11 novel because it addresses the question of what it means to be American, especially for immigrants, and it does so not through young Muslim men, but through Maryam Yazdan who comes to American as a young woman who opposes the Shah, her son Sami who doesn't even speak Farsi, Sami's wife Ziba and her more-recently-immigrated family of Shah supporters, the Korean girls, Jin-Ho and Susan, and Bisty Dickinson, Jin-Ho's culturally appropriative liberal mother. OK, now that I'm writing this out, I'm thinking it's not so subtle, perhaps oblique is a better word, or, and I know this is a lame compound and there's probably a better word, lightly oblique.

At any rate, there is something deeply comforting about reading Anne Tyler, and I mean that as the highest praise. Her worlds and characters are so fully realized, her dialogue so present, her plots so naturalistically meandering (though the end of this one is just a bit forced): she is a master of fiction, and we all should always remember to read her. (Just as I read great chunks of Joan Didion as I wrote my senior essay, I devoured Anne Tyler as I finished my first pregnancy and then sat on the couch and nursed for weeks--I nursed longer than weeks, but in those first few weeks it seemed like all I did was nurse and read Anne Tyler.)

Guest Blogger: Samantha Learns a Lesson

2006-12-27T18:19:00.000-05:00

(E demanded a turn.)

I've read these two chapters of the book a lot of times. These two chapters are called "Nellie" and "Mount Better School." But today is my first time reading the whole book.

What happens is her friend Nellie, the servant who lives two houses away, has just started school. She's nine, but she's in second grade. The teacher is mean and so are the children. And Samantha goes to Miss Crampton's Academy for Girls. Her teachers are Miss Crampton and Miss Stevens.

After Nellie's first day of school and after Nellie told Samantha how her first day of school was terrible, Samantha gets the second grade books from Miss Stevens and starts to teach Nellie. She teaches her to read and do all other sorts of schoolwork so she can move up to the third grade. She moves up to the third grade. But her desk is next to Eddie Ryland's because they sit in rows of how smart you are. Eddie Ryland isn't that smart, so he sits in like the back row or somewhere around the back row. Nellie just moved up from second grade, so she's not so smart for third grade, so she sits around the back row too.

Also at the end of the book, there's a speaking competition and Samantha is chosen to take part in it, but there's a mean girl in her class whose name is Edith Ettleton. She gets chosen too. But Samantha wins. I already told you about the part where she has a little school for Nellie. That was my favorite part. That's why I keep reading the book over and over again.

[Can I just say how thrilling it is that E now sits around and reads with us? The other day, S was cooking, and M, E, and I were reading in the kitchen with him, and I realized that my dream had been realized: everyone reads! so I can read! Can I also say that we are working on the difference between "smart" and "capable of doing the work," and it's a work in progress?]

Guest Blogger: Climbing the Mango Trees

2006-12-27T18:11:00.000-05:00

(M wanted to guest blog about her latest read.)

A movie star, food, India: all this stuff sounded kind of cool to me when I got this book. Before then I hadn't even known who Madhur Jaffrey was. Now I think she's probably a really cool woman because she had a really cool childhood.

Imagine having lunch, dinner, and breakfast with aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents, as well as your small family. This is what happened in India.

Also imagine being able to have exotic fruits to us in America almost any time you wanted.

This is some of what Madhur Jaffrey enjoyed.

I did learn some interesting facts about Madhur too. Such as: she was in one play when she was five and then wasn't in another till almost high school. Also, as a child she had never been out of India. She didn't go until she was out of college.

So if you like learning about food and India a tiny bit before, during, and after World War II and when the British didn't have India as one of their colonies any more, this is the book for you. I know I loved it.

Cheat and Charmer

2006-12-27T17:57:00.000-05:00

I'll just come out and say that I thoroughly enjoyed Cheat and Charmer, to the tune of 550 pages in three days (OK, so I spent two of those days sick in bed) and staying up till 4 in the morning to finish it (uh, not such a good idea after two days sick in bed). I get the mixed reviews, but hey, this novel has sister rivalry, sister love, Hollywood, Communists, Paris, London, writers, sex, betrayal, beaches, swimming pools, and melodrama, all wrapped up in the 1950s. If you liked Jill Robinson's Bed/Time/Story or have a secret yen for Irwin Shaw, by all means pick up this one. The story of nice girl Dinah Milligan Lasker and her glamorous younger sister, Veevi Milligan Ventura Albrecht; of their Communist pasts and the consequences of their encounters with the House Un-American Activities Committee; of Dinah's husband Jake's escapades at Marathon Pictures, in Paris, and in bed; of Veevi's first husband, Bulgarian filmmaker Stefan Ventura, and her second, novelist Mike Albrecht, and all her men before, betwixt, and after; of...oh, hell, either you are ready to get it already or you're already bored. If this is a novel for you, you know who you are.

Reinventing the Wheel

2006-12-25T15:52:00.000-05:00

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Today we are here to present the Reinventing the Wheel Awards for writers who become parents and make the remarkable discovery of a whole new realm of textual possibility, one that nobody has ever written about before, because nobody has ever been thoughtful about parenting, or had such a special child. Nope, nobody, not ever. This year, we are lucky to have not just one but two lucky winners.

- Peggy Orenstein receives the "What's a feminist mom to do when her little girl likes pink stuff?" award, with special mention for being the first feminist mom ever to encounter the quandary that is Libby Lu, or to realize that a girl can love princesses and still want to be a fireman.

- And in the dad category, the "My kid is remarkable and what a miracle it is to be a father, so let me tell you about it, in detail, and sometimes I'll even be self-deprecating" award goes to Steve Almond, who is pleased to follow in the footsteps of last year's winner, Neal Pollack, because his kid is cuter, his sex life is wilder, and he's a better writer.

Thanks for listening, folks, and remember, when you have an original idea, go for it, don't bother checking to see if anyone else has ever had it, because surely, even if their idea is some sort of facsimile of yours, it's nowhere near as original!

MotherTalk Blog Tour: Cycle Savvy

2006-12-18T10:15:00.000-05:00

When the savvy women at MotherTalk put out a call for moms and their teen or pre-teen daughters who wanted to participate in the blog book tour for Toni Weschler's new book, Cycle Savvy: The Smart Teen's Guide to the Mysteries of Her Body, I jumped on the bandwagon immediately. I am one of the legions of sworn adherents to Weschler's first book, Taking Charge of Your Fertility, without which, I am quite certain, we would not have the pleasure of E. And I'm the sex-positive, pro-communication mom of a pre-teen daughter who is definitely interested in what's happening to her body. So we signed right up, the book arrived right on time, and here we are.

I have to say right off the bat: pre-teen, not so much. M was initially taken by the cartoons, the quotes from actual teens, and the first factoid which is that you actually come into being inside your grandmother's uterus (you'll have to read it yourself to find out why). But after sitting down with the book three times, M ultimately pronounced it "boring," her code word for things she can't handle as well as things that bore her, and "too old for me," which makes sense, given that Weschler herself says it's targeted for14-18 year olds, and their issues--and bodies--are quite different from ten year olds' (for the younger set, I hope the blog book tour powers that be will not take it amiss if I slip in a quick plug for The Care and Keeping of You: The Body Book for Girls--yes, it's American Girl, but two of my smartest, coolest friends with slightly older daughters swore by it, and when things started to, shall we say, develop, I got it for M and she devoured it and still rereads it, as is her wont--it's a chatty, humorous, appropriately explict account of puberty and its consequences: a solid precursor to Cycle Savvy).

After M put the book down for good, I picked it up, and I was impressed. Those who are already aficionados of TCOYF, as Weschler's first book is colloquially known, know that her thing is helping people to understand all facets of the menstrual cycle (did you know your temperature goes up when you ovulate? how about that stuff in your underpants--know what it is?). Reading that book was a total eye-opener for me at 35--and I read the first edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves when I was ten, so it's not like I started out hopelessly uninformed. Weschler explains in her preface that she wrote Cycle Savvy because the most consistent response to TCOYF is women wishing they'd learned all this earlier, even been taught it as teenagers. So in Cycle Savvy, she does just that: teaches it to teenagers.

The book definitely aims for its target audience: it's got jokes, asides, sidebars, quizzes, pictures, and lots of italicized quotes from teens and former teens. Amidst all that teen magazine design, it packs in loads of great information--not just the details of the menstrual cycle and how to chart it, but what to expect at your first ob-gyn appointment, how to recognize and deal with PMS, first-time stories, birth control methods. Tone is hard, and I'm not a teenage girl, so I can't say if Weschler hits it (now I wish I'd grabbed my oh-so-teenage niece last night at our Hanukkah party and asked her to give it a skim), but I thought she struck a good balance between chatty and serious, humorous and informative. It seems like the kind of book a girl might resolve to skim and only look at the fun stuff, but then get seduced into reading the complicated parts (hormones, luteal cycles, and the like).

The one thing that makes me sad about the book (I've searched for the right adjective and sad, I think, is it), is the way contemporary mores force Weschler to equivocate more than I sense she wants to about teenage sexuality. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of realistic, positive rhetoric and information, from first-person stories of teens who regret being pressured into sex (and first-person stories of teens who had great first experiences) to descriptions of how different birth control methods work. But the goal of TCOYF is, as the title states, to help women take charge of their fertility, whether they want to avoid or facilitate getting pregnant, and that book helps you use all your newfound knowledge for precisely that purpose, via the Fertility Awareness Method. Apparently, though, urging teens to chart their cycles so they know when they are or aren't fertile is way too edgy in this abstinence-only climate, so in the "Note to Moms" Weschler provides feeble reassurance that this isn't her goal, and later on she gives similarly weak rationales for charting (so you won't be surprised by your period on a trip to the beach! so you can tell if you have an infection!). Like I said, I don't fault her for this, and she is pretty brave to include a lot of the material she does, and HarperCollins deserves kudos for publishing the book at all; it just makes me sad, once again, that we have come to this.

All in all, then, thumbs up from me, and I think in a couple of years, M will be glad to rediscover this one on her shelf.

It's Pronounced Dice-K

2006-12-13T22:36:00.000-05:00

You've just got to love Boston and the Red Sox: where else would a police cruiser be waiting on the tarmac to accompany the almost-signed (cross fingers, knock wood) star pitcher to his physical? (It's not Red Sox blogging; it's reading blogging: I READ the article.)

So Long, Paris

2006-12-12T17:02:00.000-05:00

I was just thinking about Paris Hilton this morning. Actually, I was thinking about Nicole Richie, which led me to Paris, and the general gist of the thoughts was how totally useless they are, and how sick it is that we allow them to waste so much of our bandwidth, literally and metaphorically. But Rebecca Traister says it better than I could, so I'll just let her.

Hanukkah Books

2006-12-09T22:07:00.000-05:00

I've always admired parents who rotate the toys. You know, the ones who only keep, say, one third of the toys out at a time, so the kids actually play with them, and then when they start getting bored, out come the next third and it's like new toys all over again? At least, I think that's how it's supposed to work, and it sounds admirable, though, in fact, I'm not sure I know anyone who actually does it. Oh no, that's not true, M and E's old daycare provider did it, and she was Admirable, at least very much so in her own mind, but we parted with her on bad terms, so maybe the rotation thing isn't all it's cracked up to be, though, then again, the toys had nothing to do with the bad terms...

Anyway, the only realm in which I have ever rotated is the Hanukkah books. And you can't really call it rotated if there's nothing to rotate with, because really what it is is putting them away from about two weeks after Hanukkah till maybe two weeks before, because we have--thanks to doting grandparents and Jewish friends in No-Longer-Red State with almost-grown-up kids--what is probably the world's largest and most beloved collection of Hanukkah books, and there is nothing more boring than reading Hanukkah books--except reading Hanukkah books in July! (Is it like that with Christmas books? God knows, the No-Longer-Red State Capital City Suburb library had the world's largest collection of Christmas books, every single one of which I believe I refused to check out, because while I am highly ecumenical on many things, and, yes, we have checked out Barbie books, I simply do not do Christmas books, so I wouldn't know.)

Anyway, I thought I would offer my opinion of the Hanukkah books worth reading (or rereading, as the case may be), which is to say: my favorites.

Sammy Spider's First Hanukkah. I love Sammy Spider (we also have Passover, and either Shabbat or Rosh Hashanah, I'm thinking Shabbat) (you know, I've been clicking on www.powells.com frequently these days, and they list the top five bestsellers of the hour on the home page, and The Gourmet Cookbook and the new Joy are always up there, but today #1 is Don't Let the Pigeons Drive the Bus! Go figure.). Sammy is--duh--a spider who lives with his mom in the Shapiros' house and learns about the holidays by watching Josh and his parents celebrate. These are really about holiday practices, not so much beliefs, and they have bright colors and not a lot of words and are great for toddlers, though my kids still love them, albeit perhaps sentimentally.

When Mindy Saved Hanukkah. Another tradition one, though it nicely weaves in the Hanukkah story as brave little Mindy fights Ahaseurus the mean cat to get the candle. The schtick here is that Mindy's family, the Kleins, are tiny people who live behind the wall of the Eldridge Street Synagogue in the Lower East Side, ca. tenement days. I love books about tiny people, from Mistress Masham's Repose to The Borrowers and even The Littles, and in this one Mindy is brave and tough and the denouement features a piece of herring. Fun pictures too, with bottle cap lamps and Mindy scaling the ark with the aid of a paper clip.

Judah Who Always Said No. Hanukkah is a tough one for the not-quite-not-Zionist pacifists among us, who don't want to buy into the nationalist rhetoric with which the minor holiday of Hanukkah has been imbued (it's not all counter-Christmas). Then again, we can always go with resistance to tyranny and oppression, which is our preferred ideology. When we first got Judah, I was not so happy with the indoctrination aspects. Then I started going into preschool to do Hanukkah. I went to preschool and kindergarten and afterschool to do Hanukkah more times than I can count--and then we moved to Blue State and were no longer the only Jews around, or at least, the only Jews in preschool, kindergarten, and afterschool, and I didn't have to do Hanukkah any more. But you haven't done Hanukkah with little kids unless you've led them in a rousing chorus of "No!" as Judah resists his mother, his father, his brothers, and, eventually, the evil Greek king. There is even a battle scene with elephants and bows and arrows. I'm a convert--to the book.

The List

2006-12-08T08:16:00.000-05:00

I keep a list of the books I want to read in the back of my datebook (I still buy a datebook every year--and it's time to get one, because the tiny lines for each day of next year are getting crowded--and inn the back of the book I rewrite, every year, my phone numbers, and everyone's social security number--I know, I shouldn't--and an updated version of the list.)

The list includes books people tell me about, books I see reviewed or read articles about or glance at on the table at the bookstore, books I hear about in conversation. Sometimes I write down the title, but sometimes just the author, and then later I look at the name and wonder who on earth it is.

The problem is: I keep the list, but I rarely refer to it. I get sucked in by the new books shelf, or someone gives me a book, or I pick up a book at someone else's house. So the list gets longer, and rarely shorter.

Here's the 2006 version, exactly as it looks in the back of the datebook (crossed-off books are, obviously, the ones I've read [uh, nope, I actually have no idea how to cross things out in Blogger--I thought it would be obvious, as everyone seems to do it, but it's not, so let's just go with asterisks for the ones I've read, or abandoned, which is in fact more visually accurate, as on the list itself I just make a dash at the beginning of the item, kind of ticking it off, rather than crossing it off]):

Laura Waterman, Losing the Garden
Donald Hall, The Best Day The Worst Day
Housekeeping [I know, isn't it scandalous?!]
* Wesley Stace, Misfortune [abandoned]
Towelhead
*Ruth Reichl [this was Garlic and Sapphires]
*Ian McEwan, Saturday
Andrea Levy, Small Island [I have taken this one out of the library many times, to no avail]
Christine Schutt
Lydia Davis [I wrote "short stories" by these two]
Patrick Hamilton [???]
Alice Mattison
*Jude Morgan, Passion [abandoned]
Lily King, The English Teacher
Dana Spiotta, Eat the Document [got this one from the library yesterday]
*Jay McInerney [read a few pages at the bookstore--yuck]
*Ayelet
Poppy Z. Brite
Octavia Butler
*Steve Almond
Deborah Eisenberg
Mary Gaitskill, Veronica [sitting on my desk since August]
Sarah Gran, Dope
I Capture the Castle [I know, I KNOW]
Megan McCafferty, Sloppy Firsts, etc. [I'm pretty sure I'll never read this one]
*Justine Picardie, My Mother's Wedding Dress [referenced here]
*Michael Walker, Laurel Canyon [abandoned and blogged]
*Shari Goldhagen, Family and Other Accidents
Lee Server, Ava Gardner
Edward P. Jones
Michael Patrick MacDonald, All Souls [I'm working on it]
Naomi Alderman, Disobedience
Alan Moore, Lost Girls
Elizabeth Frank, Cheat and Charmer [got it from the library]
Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother
Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog...
Rodrigo Fresan, Kensington Gardens
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Jim Crace
The Plot Against America
Cancer Vixen
*Alison Bechdel, memoir

Family and Other Accidents

2006-12-08T07:36:00.000-05:00

I fell off the wagon. I failed the non-fiction challenge. I went to the library, took out three novels and stayed up till 2 finishing the first one. At least they were novels from The List (to which eventually I will devote a post, maybe even this morning).

Somebody recommended Family and Other Accidents (if the text on the cover is all lowercase, should I write it like that? it's also in lowercase on the title page, but in caps on Powell's...if it's not e.e. cummings, or been down so long it feels like up to me [which has caps on Amazon, but was in lowercase typescript on the cover of my parents' paperback from the 60s], I'm going with the conventions). I'm thinking the recommender was A (not California A, the other A).

This is an interesting book that made me think about the nature of the novel. Actually, I'm not sure it's such an interesting book, but it kept me interested. It's a relationship novel--about men: two brothers, orphaned when one is 15 and the other 25, and the next 25 years of their life, which includes a bit of career, a lot of ambivalent brotherhood, and some women, and a lot of ambivalence about them too. What makes the novel worth reading is the ambivalence and complexity of the relationships, and the characterization, which is convincing and captures how we both change and stay the same over long periods of time.

Technically the book interested me because it was so completely focused on Jack and Connor, and, to a lesser extent, Anna, Mona, Kathy, Beth, and Laine. That is, though the point of view shifts from chapter to chapter, this is a single-focus novel: there are no subplots, no side characters (is that a term or did I make it up?), no history or politics, hardly any description, albeit quite a lot of rain. The characters are embodied: Jack and Connor are dark, Mona has red hair, Laine and Kathy are blond; Jack rubs his eyebrows when he is stressed; Connor's hair is long and lank; there is quite a lot of throwing up (really, I don't think I've ever read a book with so much throwing up). Some of this embodiment is compelling--actually, the throwing up, though it is oddly persistent, and thus perhaps meant to be thematically meaningful??--but some--the hair--seems like characteristics hung upon characters.

I think Family and Other Accidents could be made emblematic of the anemic bourgeouis (sp.?) domestic novel, probably in a critique-of-MFA-programs kind of way, but, still, it's a fine portrait of a family and a handful of psyches, and I'm not sure whether that is damning with faint praise.

[Just to compound my reputation as nitpicker: two things were glaringly wrong: ca. 1998, nobody used pins for diapers, and a former AmeriCorps volunteer now getting a master's at the Kennedy School would never read the Herald at home. Also, the novel is strangely atemporal. It happens in the present--lots of cell phones--but if Jack, Connor, and Laine talk about dead John and Carolyn Kennedy the first time Jack meets Laine, when Laine is pregnant with Jorie, then the novel must end several years in the future, for Jorie is 16 in the last chapter. It's just kind of odd.]

Fun Home

2006-12-07T23:10:00.000-05:00

You know, I read Fun Home almost two weeks ago, over Thanksgiving, and I even thought about what I would blog about it, and I have no idea why I never got to it, because it's not exactly like I've been blogging up a storm about other things I've been reading since then (perhaps this is the dwindling of the blog...).

So I thought Fun Home was very good. I've been an Alison Bechdel fan since way back when (I have the first several Dykes to Watch Out For collections, which I bought when they first came out), but it was kind of odd to realize that she's just a few years older than me...OK, now all the things I was going to blog about are coming back to me. Let's just go for the list format.

1) I've actually dipped in and out of comics and graphic novels for maybe 20 years, generally on the feminist end of things--I also bought Twisted Sisters: A Collection of Bad Girl Art when it first came out, and that one's so old you can barely find it on the internet. But I'm not quite sure why I've been interested in comics--probably because they are cool, and then there was the feminist angle--because I am, as I've said many times, the most hopelessly verbal person on the planet (quick illustrative anecdote: I was completely amazed when my art major best friend my first year in college said that he sat on the subway and took pictures in his head, because I had just assumed that everyone else also sat on the subway and made up stories about people in their heads). So I would read comics, but I would focus completely on the words--like I read fashion magazines and glance at the picture then turn quickly to the words. Illustrative example: it wan't until maybe the fourth time I read Maus that I realized that the Nazis were CATS. Get it? Mice--cats? I know, everyone got it immediately, it's that obvious. Except for me.

So anyway, reading Fun Home, I decided that I was going to focus on the pictures, and they were fascinating. Now I see why the graphic novel (or graphic memoir, as the case may be) is graphic. I mean, duh. I was particularly taken with the maps and how she drew her father's body hair so meticulously, and I spent a lot of time thinking about what it must have been like to draw those frames, and the same people and places over and over and over (not that she doesn't have practice with the Dykes, but still) (hmm, would you call these thoughts turning the production of pictures into a story?). I also liked the historical visual details--like those Norwegian sweaters everyone (at least everyone on the east coast, of a certain socioeconomic bracket) used to wear in the late 70s and early 80s.

2) The book did not convince me that her father committed suicide.

3) Of course I liked all the literary motifs and intertextuality.

4) I also liked the way she captured lesbian/feminist college life of the early 80s. Her stacks of books reminded me of a lot of things I haven't read in a long time.

5) Is it better to have a fascinatingly weird and hard life that you can make art out of, or a relatively easy and pleasant life, that's pretty darn boring? Is that the eternal question of the would-be artiste, or what?

6) The book also made me think a lot about being in one's 40s. Her father was 44 when he died. So was F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her father was frustrated and disappointed. Fitzgerald was successful, for a while, and frustrated and disappointed. Bechdel published this book when she was 46. She is much beloved by a subsection of contemporary American society, but she has no money. I am 42. I don't know what I am.

Like I said: good book, thought-provoking, highly recommended.

Mies

2006-12-07T08:46:00.000-05:00

Not sure I'd want to live in it for good (at least with the chaotic packrats I live with) (now there's a thought: life without the chaotic packrats), but I am loving this house ( I READ about it, so this counts as reading) (which means I could have been blogging about Britney all along, but I'm not, though I do have to say that the happiest thing I read yesterday was this article) (and I wish this made me optimistic, which it could, especially after Gates's testimony [don't be silly, of course I haven't read the whole thing, but I did read the money quote], only there's this little problem of the president, and it just doesn't).

Dave Alvin--Not

2006-12-04T13:21:00.000-05:00

I'm wondering why, in all the (ridiculous) discussion of whether the situation in Iraq has become civil war, nobody seems to be mentioning Orwell (one of the best essays ever--go read it now, if you never have; you will be a better person for it). Actually, I have no idea if nobody is mentioning Orwell, since I haven't read everybody. Mainly I was just shocked that Frank Rich didn't mention Orwell yesterday in his Times-Select-protected op-ed. So of course people are talking about Orwell, though not really a lot, which I still think is odd.

But that isn't what I want to write about. I want to write about why we love certain music. OK, really I want to write about why I love certain music. And really, if we get right down to it, I want to write about why I love Dave Alvin, which might, perhaps, offer some insights into the larger issues.

And, no, this is not an excuse of a post to make up for the fact that I haven't been reading so much. I read Frank Rich. I've decided to read non-fiction and I've started three non-fiction books, all of which I like, none of which are keeping me up late reading, which is probably worth considering, in the endless consideration of my novel habit. I've also been spending a lot of time reading this pattern, but the reading doesn't seem to be helping much, as I've already ripped it out seven times. I read Jenny's story which I quite liked, especially because I'm in it (can you find me? I'm subtle--or rather, Jenny is subtle, at least in her deployment of me) and, indeed, the whole story walks a lovely line between the real and the fictional, which is a good piece of its point, as well as one of Jenny's ongoing themes, and it also works the place where desire meets the literary, which is huge for Jenny, and quite relevant for me too, given that I spent much of my childhood wishing my books wouldn't end.

OK, out of time, I guess we should call this a reading update. More on Dave Alvin later, which is good, because it gives me more time to think about it, and also because I can figure out if "Fourth of July" skips on the CD player at home, not just the NEW CD player in the NEW car, because all this started with me wanting to hear "Fourth of July," which made me pull out Out in California and then listen to the whole CD and think about how much I love Dave Alvin, but then I got to "Fourth of July," which was the whole point, and it skipped. Luckily, I was driving at the time, not ripping out knitting, so I was not overly reminded of the futility of existence.

NY Times 10 Best Books of 2006

2006-11-30T22:37:00.000-05:00

Here they are.

I've heard of seven, read one and a few pages of another, actively want to read one plus the rest of the pages of another, wouldn't mind reading one, feel like I should want to read two, have no interest in the rest.

Obituaries

2006-11-30T21:33:00.000-05:00

I read the obituaries. I don't go searching for them, and I don't read every word from the first line of tiny print to the last, but if I pass them on my journey through the newspaper, I check the big ones to see if there are any that interest me--people I know, names or headlines that catch my eye--and then sometimes I glance over the little ones, especially the long little ones, which list accomplishments and memberships and those left behind. In No-Longer-Red State Capital City, where the print was clearer and there were often photos, I read the little ones more often, but here the print is just too tiny, unless I'm really interested.

Why do I read them? For famous people, because I like to know what's going on and what happened. For ordinary people, because I'm fascinated with how people live their lives. In general, because of my terrified fascination with death and loss.

S never reads the obituaries. But last night when he got home he went immediately to the newspaper and found the obituaries. There was a big one of the guy he buys his beef from, a young guy, very young, who had this incredible beef farm. He died over the weekend, in an accident, and S had heard about it that day at work. We never met him, but he knew people we knew, including our downstairs neighbor, in a random coincidence. And the beef, I don't eat it, but everyone who has eaten it says it's the best beef they've ever eaten. And he was so young.

Sometimes I wish I didn't read the obituaries.

Movies People Love That Don't Do It For Me

2006-11-27T22:57:00.000-05:00

Cinema Paradiso.

Napoleon Dynamite.

Little Miss Sunshine. (I knew I wasn't going to like it, but so many people loved it that I reneged on my gut. But I was right to begin with. I liked when they pushed the van; I liked the #1 Proust scholar; of course I liked the pageant, who wouldn't? But overall? Yet another dysfunctional family road trip movie that's supposed to be funny and heart-warming but is just too pathetic along the way for me. Sorry.)

(If you want to know the best dysfunctional family road trip movie ever, it's Flirting With Disaster, and, yes, Ben Stiller does seem to be something of a contrapuntal theme these days.)

Edited to add: I knew there was another movie in this category: About Schmidt. Which is very much the same thing as Little Miss Sunshine, if you substitute RV for van, wedding for beauty pageant, and old lonely guy for dysfunctional family.

Anorexia and Miscarriages

2006-11-27T09:33:00.000-05:00

That anorexia is one of my greatest fears for my daughters reveals how privileged my life is. Yet there it is: this is my life and that is my fear. They are just five and ten, but I scrutinize them regularly for perfectionist tendencies and unhealthy eating, though I'm not sure if I'm looking for signs or causes. One of the many reasons I hate my own overly-critical nature is my pop-cultural sense of parental pressure as yet another cause. I am ever vigilant in promoting positive body image and condemning our cultural focus on thin, even as I am secretly thankful for the lanky bodies that I hope will protect them from the compulsion to diet. So I read this article with fascination and fear. How do people bear it?

On the other hand, I found this essay completely uninteresting, in part because, although the author is almost my age, I am of a different developmental demographic, which is to say, fear of anorexia, not fear of miscarriage, but also because I feel like I have read this essay so many times (career woman certain she could have a baby later discovers otherwise, regrets, and tries to warn younger woman), and I'm sure it's a painful experience that I'm glad to have missed, but I'd rather read an essay that says something new.

Happy Feet

2006-11-26T20:43:00.000-05:00

J: It's like Moulin Rouge for penguins.

And that's only the beginning.

Ty Burr (best movie reviewer around: smart, erudite, funny, generally agrees with me): What do you get when you cross "March of the Penguins," Disney's "High School Musical," "The Ugly Duckling," a runaway jukebox, "Footloose," Joseph Campbell, "Riverdance," a Greenpeace board meeting, and five hits of prime, Woodstock-era brown acid? You get "Happy Feet," the new computer-animated family film that is quite simply the most bizarre thing under the Antarctic sun.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

You've got your conformity narrative (evils thereof), your religious fundamentalism narrative (ditto), your prodigal son narrative, your quest, your March of the Penguins imitation, your environmental depredation, your shockingly-almost-unhappy ending, your wisecracking sidekicks, your George-Clinton-meets-Barry-White guru, your minor breathy females (mother and girlfriend, respectively), and they're all penguins, and they sing and dance, and the finale is an endless vista of penguins tap-dancing to Stevie Wonder's "I Wish." I kid you not.

Truly one of the most insane things I've ever seen. And it's the most popular movie in America.

Am I not getting something, or are they not getting something?

(And if you're wondering whether it's too scary, well, we wondered too. A lot. We googled "happy feet scary" and checked out the IMDB comments and even emailed Ty Burr. There was much conflicting assessment. M decided to bow out. E insisted on going. Three times she said it was scary (the birds, the leopard seals, and the killer whales, as might have been predicted), and I covered her eyes and told her it would be OK (though when Mumble in the zoo started hallucinating his mother dissolving into ash, I had serious doubts). At the end she said she loved it and she was glad I didn't ask if she wanted to leave. Go figure.)

(That night we watched Zoolander which was entertaining enough, especially the gasoline fight to Wham's "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go," and I was struck by the thematic similarities, though the only one I can remember now is his penguin pajamas.)

Litvinenko

2006-11-25T22:58:00.000-05:00

If you are fascinated by the could-this-really-be-happening-or-is-it-all-just-a-John-Le-Carre-novel story of the former Soviet spy murdered by radiation in London, you need to be reading The Independent and The Guardian (which, as I write this, have fascinatingly different lead stories which show, once again, how much more vital the British newspaper business is than the American).

Dirty Blonde

2006-11-20T09:14:00.000-05:00

I haven't wanted to read anyone else on Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love until I wrote about it. There are apparently vehement letters on Salon, Emily Nussbaum reviews it in yesterday's NY Times Book Review, and I'm sure the Amazon hordes are waxing vituperative, but I'm not even going to find the links because I don't want to catch a glimpse before I'm ready. Now I'm feeling ready, though, especially with that NY Times Book Review sitting on the table in the living room, so I'm going to go for it, even though I haven't read the book cover-to-cover, which is what I was waiting for, because I generally don't write about things before I've finished them, but then I realized that this isn't really a cover-to-cover book for me, it's more of a dip-in-here-and-there, flip-through-the-pages-and-read-what-intrigues-me kind of book.

And I like it a lot. So there.

Now, I'm a Courtney fan from way back and don't talk to me about rumors that Kurt and what's-his-name wrote her songs or...oh god, I'm not going to list all the trash-talk Courtney has been on the receiving end of because either you know it all or you don't care. But Live Through This is just a killer album (when it first came out, I was in L.A. and training for my first marathon, but it was December and dark early so I ran at the gym a lot, and "Doll Parts" was in heavy rotation on whatever L.A. radio station I was listening to and I remember hearing it while I ran seven-minute miles on the treadmill and loving every single note and word) (I have never in my life run a seven-minute mile anywhere but on a treadmill), and I love Celebrity Skin ("Malibu" is one of those songs that gets stuck in my head regularly), and, OK, America's Sweetheart is just same old same old, but she was awesome as Larry Flynt's wife in that movie, and, yeah, she's made a lot of bad choices, really bad choices, but when we saw her on tour for Live Through This she was a total demon (and I've been trying to remember if we saw her both at the Fillmore and in Palo Alto, and I'm thinking we did, but I'm wondering why we would have, and maybe it was just Palo Alto, but I don't think so, and A or Postacademic, if you're reading this and you remember, can you clarify, and was that the show where A got mad at the woman in front of us and pulled out strands of her long bleached hair, one by one, so she kept slapping at her head, not sure what was going on, and then she turned around and glared at us, sure we had something to do with it, even though she couldn't figure out what it was?).

So I'm all about Courtney and I've defended her for years (in a sure-lots-of-things-she-does-are-indefensible-but-she's-still-great kind of way), but then I saw this documentary about her on YouTube which has, alas, been removed at the request of the copyright owner because its content was used without permission, and I thought maybe I was finally over Courtney, or Courtney was just over, because she came off as a total bimbo and one thing I always thought about Courtney was that she was smart. I mean, you don't accomplish everything she's done without being smart. But in that movie, which I only watched part of because it was kind of unbearable, she just chanted a lot and showed off her clothes and bragged about her Hollywood connections and seemed really spacy and pathetic.

But Dirty Blonde redeems her. It's a scrapbook as much as a diary, with diary excerpts, song lyrics, photos, notes. It's basically in chronological order, though there's no explanatory narrative, and if you don't already know the Courtney story, it's going to be pretty confusing, though there are helpful notes at the end, but, let's face it, nobody is going to buy this book except for fans, so that's fine. And it's beautifully designed, which I always like in a book, especially a book like this (I thought the Kurt Cobain diaries were really badly executed as a book, but that's another post, which I probably won't write).

And, yes, it's narcissistic, and, yes, it's opportunistic, but what the hell, that's Courtney, and I like reading her lyrics as they are written, and her plans, even if I know how they turned out, and her anguish and excitement, and I like seeing her pictures, and I'm sure I'll never read it cover-to-cover, but I keep picking it up and flipping through it, reading a page here and several pages there, and, yes, I still like Courtney Love, and, yes, I'm looking forward to the next album (with full awareness that it could just as easily suck).

Edited to add: I like Emily Nussbaum's review. Salon is typically having-it-every-which-way pretentious (God, Courtney is ridiculous, but, hey, it kind of works, though mainly I'll just drop a lot of references so that you think I'm really smart) (thanks to M for the correct spelling of pretentious). The vitriol of the Salon letters is also typical--typically boring.

Edited once more to add: S says we only saw her in Palo Alto and the show where A plucked the hairs was Dave Alvin at the Paradise Lounge.

Rock Kids

2006-11-19T19:03:00.000-05:00

This article makes me resolve only to let my kids listen to Disney. And maybe Raffi. It makes S really glad we don't live in Park Slope. (Note to disingenous NY Times Style Section reporter: there is, um, a difference between a couple of teenagers from St. Ann's starting a band--because, um, that is what teenagers do--and elementary school kids getting gigs because the drummer from the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion is backing them up or their dad used to work for Caroline.)

Yoga Journal

2006-11-17T08:18:00.000-05:00

I bought my first copy of Yoga Journal this month because Dawn has a cover story on forgiveness which is just lovely. But enough about that.

This post is about my first encounter with Yoga Journal, a magazine that many people have recently told me how much they love. My lack of encounters with Yoga Journal thus far has to do, I think, with my general lack of interest in self-help, which also relates to the fact that I never read parenting magazines, except in the pediatrician's office, where I'd rather read Parenting than Redbook, though really I'd rather read People. Basically, for me, there is a distinction between the things I do and the things I read, though the exception would be food writing, which I am quite interested in, though then again, with food, I might be more interested in the writing than in the eating, which would reinforce the doing/reading dichotomy (if you didn't follow that, I was trying to say that I don't feel the need to read about things I do...you know, this argument totally doesn't work, because I also like to read about travel, sometimes, so maybe it does come down to a broad definition of self-help/learning/informational writing that doesn't interest me, but I am no longer interested in this paragraph, so I will go on).

I could say really obvious things about Yoga Journal like "who knew there were so many yoga products?!" and "my, that thread of self-satisfied narcissism is practically a scarf" (trying to work with the thread metaphor there, but I'm not sure there's a viable image to substitute for Really Big Thread).

But what I really want to talk about, and this may go back to the self-help/learning/informational thing, is reading about yoga poses. For my birthday, I asked for yoga cards, and I got them, and I flipped through them, and I got really excited, and then I never used them. Why? Because I can't figure out how I'm supposed to read a card, or, especially, a sequence of cards, while I'm doing yoga. Do I read them first and then do my yoga really fast so I can remember? Or do I lay them out next to my mat and have to keep turning to look at them while I'm doing my yoga?

Same thing with these long articles about bow pose and backbend. Do I read them and gain new understanding and then go do yoga with a tranformed capacity? Do I fold the magazine open and put them next to my mat so I can refer to them mid-practice? But there's an awful lot of small print there, and it feels really un-yoga to be reading in the middle of yoga.

Seriously, I totally don't get it.

Perhaps the dirty little secret of Yoga Journal is that everyone is really reading it for the fancy yoga stuff, not the detailed instructions on poses.

Or maybe everyone else is just more enlightened than I am.

Edited to add: I just realized what I was talking about in that paragraph I lost interest in: how-to, I have no interest in how-to.

The New Yorker

2006-11-12T20:58:00.000-05:00

This week we again encounter that rare phenomenon: the New Yorker I read cover to cover (issue date: November 13, 2006), including:

- a fascinating and deeply disturbing piece about Lagos, Nigeria. I just started All Souls, about which I will certainly be posting anon, but what struck me in the very first chapter is how the best non-fiction makes you aware of things you had no idea of, and the very best makes you aware of how in fact you had no idea of things you thought you knew. Lagos? I had no idea. Though I'm a tiny bit--really very small but still there--suspicious of the purportedly objective tone of the essay. Not that I don't think Lagos is like that, but the generalizations seem a bit, not general, not one-sided, but, perhaps, disputable? Though then again, maybe not.

- a profile of Olafur Eliasson, who has one of the best names ever, and is from Iceland, and is one of those paragons of creativity who amaze me, and did The Weather Project at the Tate which was so so cool (yes, we lay on the floor and looked up at ourselves in the mirrors).

- a meandering Janet Malcolm piece on Alice B. Toklas that is informative, but oddly cranky in that Janet "I was sued and now I have deep sympathies that you can't possibly understand" Malcolm sort of way.

- a disappointingly mediocre Helen Simpson story (if you like your contemporary women's literary realism short, and with an occasional touch of the magical, you must read Getting a Life which is just unbelievably good).

- a lovely and very informative piece on Leonard Woolf (the other pieces are, alas, unlinkable except for the Simpson story which, take my word for it, you do not need to read).

Willsun Mock

2006-11-10T22:19:00.000-05:00

There's a story like this behind every single dead soldier. And behind every one of the 150,000 dead Iraqis. So let's get on with it, Democrats. (And while I was googling for a source for the Iraqi death count, I found this, which is from several months ago, so maybe it is too late, but still worth reading.)

The Brambles

2006-11-10T19:25:00.000-05:00

The dramatic events of this week are giving me the urge to blog a la Not Quite Sure. I mean, with K-Fed now Fed-Ex, and our country once again d/Democratic, there is much reason for joy and much to blog. But I am nothing if not disciplined (OK, I'm nothing), and I must stick to the topics at hand. Which today are apparently Tessie and Eliza Minot (who of course is not the kind of writer to have a website, but if you have the infamous Times Select, you can learn something about her here).

Eliza Minot is an exquisite writer. Her instrument of choice is the comma, and with it she plays a symphony of daily life, the images and details accumulating like Mozart's notes (apologies if the Mozart reference destroys the metaphor, but I know next to nothing [see above] about classical music, and I just have the barest inkling that I don't want Beethoven here, because he is ponderous and bombastic, and perhaps Mozart would work because he is light and full of notes, but I'm probably completely wrong, and all I know is I don't want to say Pachelbel, even though that is kind of a little bit what I'm thinking, because the connotations of Pachelbel are so lame, but then again sentiment might be a useful reference, so if anyone can help me here, either because they have a sense of what I'm trying to say, or because they've read the book, it would be most useful).

Minot really is a beautiful writer, and she is startlingly observant, the kind of writer who makes you go, again and again, "Yes! How did she know?" Or rather, "I know that too, but how did she think to write it down, and so evocatively?!" And I'll provide lots of examples in a moment, but first, two larger observations.

1) I've been feeling, lately, that I remember nothing about my children and their lives. What was E like at two? How did M learn to read? I'm known in my family as the one with the memory, but my children are so present, in the here and now, that they erase their own pasts. And then I wonder, too, if I notice them enough in the present. I mean, I live with them, and they are everything and everywhere, and yet, who are they? Do I really know them? All these other mothers seem so aware of their children, their children's thoughts and issues and needs, but I just kind of feel like mine are there, and I hang out with them, and I help meet their needs as best I can, and I (mostly) enjoy them, and I (sometimes) wish they would disappear, and that's about it.

Eliza Minot will not have this problem. It's hard not to read Margaret Bright, heroine of The Brambles, suburban New Jersey mother of three, as an avatar for Eliza Minot, suburban New Jersey mother of three, and I often had the same feeling I have when I read Ayelet Waldman's Mommy-Track Mysteries, which is that she could only be writing this if she had experienced it, which is not to take a totally essentialist tack on the writing process, but to note that the realist details are so realistic that they seem as if they can only come from life (or else Minot has the best imagination for motherhood divorced from motherhood itself of any writer I know) (or, to decouple this analysis from motherhood altogether, just think Hemingway, World War I, and the hospital).

2) After a while, all that exquisite prose and intensity of detail did, I must admit, get a little wearing, even, perhaps, bordering on cloying. I started to feel a faint desire, amidst the beauty, for plot. Then, eventually, plot came, and it was a bit preposterous. I suppose the plot was meant to explain the pain suffered by some of the characters, but it didn't really suffice, and the pain itself was somewhat preposterous (why didn't Max just tell his wife already? oh yeah, to keep the wheels of fiction turning).

If I could do that below the fold thing, which once, between them, Phantom and Dawn enabled me to do, but I have long since forgotten how I, or, really, they, did it, I would do it now, because what follows is a string of quotes that struck me, those moments when I went, "Yes, that's how it is!" So if quotes aren't your thing, you can stop reading now, because all that's left is quotes, and maybe a little commentary on the quotes.

Back then she looked in mirrors at herself, Rollerbladed the days away, saw movies, lots of movies, sometimes alone, sometimes back to back. (15) (I still look in mirrors, and I never rollerbladed, but the movies, oh how I miss the movies.)

They were like hired private detectives, the way at least one of them would descend upon her after she'd hung up, demanding immediate information. Usually at least one of them was there long before the phone call ended, asking for things they already had in their hands, orbiting the room, winding through her legs like a cat, getting in her way, looking for things, even if they'd been happily involved in something before the phone rang. (51) (Oh yeah, the phone thing, makes me INSANE.)

After getting dressed she brushes her hair, tosses the excess hair from the brush into the toilet... (88) (Does everyone do that, or just me and Eliza Minot?)

The huge bathroom (meaning two people could stand in it) had both a bathtub and a window, with a tiled floor of tiny white octagons and a thin ribbon of black around the border of the room like hockey tape. (103) (Every bathroom in New York, but whoever thought to write it down?)

Margaret puts it up there on the fridge for no reason that she's aware of...But most likely she put it up there for the same reason she tapes up the paroxysmal paintings and precise drawings done by her kids, as a method for trapping time somehow as their long little lives race ahead so quickly like tossed balls of yarn. (166) (Why am I saving E's coloring sheets from kindergarten, black xeroxed pumpkins overlaid with her orange crayon? Exactly.)

She's thought before that her life is simply made up of snippets, a connect-the-dots of moments of clarity, of instants, big and small, where life softly explodes in her head, which remain with her either because she simply decided to remember them for no reason at all or because it was something that was seared into her consciousness as if with a branding iron. (170) (A reverse description of the memory problem: I remember specifics, images, events, some important, some so minor I can't believe I remember them, but the big picture, the big picture always escapes me. Then again, this is a problem for me in general.)

It makes Margaret think of when her babies were born, that deferment of time and reality with its disrupted sleep and emotions like you're on drugs. (214) (I loved the weeks after my babies were born, and that is a perfect description of it.)

Tessie

2006-11-10T11:18:00.000-05:00

I don't know what made me think of "Tessie" the other day, but something did, so here's the video, and here's the making of the video, and if "Tessie" doesn't make you happy, there's something musically and athletically wrong with you, and I have some confused thoughts in my head about triumph and optimism and the Red Sox and the Democracts, and I fear if I straighten out the thoughts, they will be problematic, so I'll twist them into the general optimism of the brightness of the moment on this beautiful sunny November day and say: this November, the Democrats; next November, the Red Sox!!

[Phantom, this one's for you all, and Sandra, go download the song already!]

What Am I Reading Today?

2006-11-08T12:20:00.000-05:00

Election results. Compulsively. And I especially like this one. [link from one of Phantom's commenters]

Buying Books

2006-11-08T09:13:00.000-05:00

Life's been a little much lately, not bad, just...much. Work, kids, more kids, more work, laundry, and then, to top it all off, jury duty. So when jury duty ended mid-afternoon yesterday (guilty), and S was home with kids, I decided I deserved a reward for surviving the previous five days, and I took myself off to the mall, which is halfway between jury duty and home, and which I've been trying to get to for weeks. The mall was not a reward--in fact, it was hellish--but the work trousers that I finally found--Liz Claiborne petites at a truly hellish Macy's--were rewarding.

Then it was time for the real reward. I headed for the big-box bookstore where I got All Souls for S (who just read Easter Rising and loved it--both are on the top of my ever-expanding list) and some of our favorite board books for the new baby next door (Goodnight Moon, Good Dog Carl, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and Barnyard Dance) (has anyone noticed that regular books now all come as board books, which seems, to my mind, to dilute the babyness of board books, I mean, why does a baby need Olivia? then again, I think all those books, which we got in board, and which I thus think of as board, might have originally been regular, which makes me completely moot on this point) (I also saw these incredibly silly books, which made me feel way past the baby demographic, which, of course, I am) (not past the baby demographic because I didn't get the books, but because I imagined the yuppie baby showers at which the non-moms would coo over the books and I had no interest, indeed, was kind of disgusted) (I do have a sense of humor, really, I do, I'm just so bored of the coolness of babydom, even the self-mocking coolness of babydom, which, in our pseudo-ironic age, is, of course, the apotheosis of cool, supposedly).

I know, we're not talking rewards for me, yet. But we're getting there.

Then I sat on a stool and read the first 50 pages of Cancer Vixen, which I quite enjoyed despite, or perhaps even partly because of, the name-dropping fabulousness which some review objected to, but I found humorously self-mocking (unlike the boring self-mocking of those baby books). These days I am awed by creativity of all sorts, but especially the kind that can combine visual and verbal, which I am absolutely uncapable of, being a solely verbal kind of person, although my dear friend K the graphic designer is determined to prove that I have the visual deep within me. But she's wrong. Anyway, Cancer Vixen is definitely to be finished, but I think at the bookstore, as it is a quick read and not something I particularly need to own (I did start out wondering whether there was a graphic memoir section, and I think if Fun Home had not been out of stock, I would have bought them both, on some kind of principle I can't define, but Cancer Vixen was in--surprise--the cancer section, and Fun Home was out of stock, so I didn't).

And now we get to the real reward, the book I bought, for me. Yes, my lonely copy of Kurt Cobain's journals is lonely no more, for I now have my very own copy of Courtney Love's diaries, and I really need to get some work done now, so I will tell you about that another time.

Now Playing on the Vehicular CD Player

2006-11-06T16:18:00.000-05:00

Since I've already gone and added movies to the mix (haven't seen any lately, sorry, though still trying to make it to Marie Antoinette), I might as well take the next step to music.

I have a new car. If I still had the old blog, there would have been much blogging of the agonizing, albeit mercifully brief, saga of the new car, but suffice to say I now have a nice car, which is itself a trifle agonizing, because my old ridiculous car had become very much part of my identity, even, one might say--though I tried not to say it, to avoid being obnoxious, and ridiculous, like my car, though it was, secretly, in my head, kind of important to me--an indie statement, of sorts.

I keep remembering our realtor, when we were looking for a house in Red State Capital City Suburb, and she showed us a house that was a bit more than we were looking for--a bit more money, a bit more high-end--I remember her saying, "It's OK, you deserve a nice house." In the end we didn't like that particular house, but I keep saying to myself, "It's OK, I'm a fortysomething professional mom, I can drive this car." And it's not even a fancy car, it's just so much more than my old car, and I just need to get used to it.

But the point here is that my nice new car has a CD player, and that I got used to that immediately (old indie car had a tape player, broken).

And the real point is twofold:

1) M, E, and I have our first shared pop music obsession (OK, it's belated, but nobody's perfect). We are madly in love with KT Tunstall's "Suddenly I See" which, I would venture to suggest, is a perfect pop song--politically incorrect but emotionally true, if superficial, lyrics aside (though one might argue that politically correct but emotionally true, if superficial, lyrics are definitional criteria for perfect pop songs).

We play it every time we get in the car. It's Track 9. We sing along. If we're taking a short drive and we arrive at our destination before it ends, we keep the car running. We dance in our seats. We shake our fingers at each other. We love this song.

2) I never realized Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is about love--the whole album, I mean. The thing is, I rarely put on music at home. I live with music fiends (who always put on music), I kind of like quiet (which I rarely get), and I just am not in the constant music habit. Even when I do put on a CD, I pay attention to the first few songs and then get involved in what I'm doing and forget to listen. So I know the first few songs of a lot of albums really well. But in the car you have nothing to do but listen, and I have been listening to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and it's about love and I love it.

I mean, of course I love it, it's Wilco, but I'm feeling very Desert Island Discs about it at the moment, which makes me wonder what my other Desert Island Discs would be: Elton John's greatest hits, I'm sure, and something Dave Alvin, though I don't know which, then something loud and punky and raucous, maybe Nirvana, and something peaceful, maybe The Koln Concerts--oh god, how white and male and predictable--how many records do you get on Desert Island Discs anyway? I'm thinking five, but perhaps ten? Can't check, must stop, because I'm starting to feel like I really do match my nice, new, not-at-all-indie car. Ugh.

(In case you can't bear the mystery, it's a 2004 Subaru Outback Wagon, and now you know everything there is to know about me.)

Note on Reading

2006-11-06T16:17:00.000-05:00

Everyone reads at jury duty.

Paris

2006-11-06T16:16:00.000-05:00

Dr. B. says Times Select is free this week, so go go go right this very minute and read Maira Kalman on Paris!

Closeted Fundamentalists

2006-11-02T22:32:00.000-05:00

I can't help it: I just love this stuff.

Edited to add: Here's more. Of course he did; why else would he resign?

Edited again to add: Confession (no specifics, but they should be out any minute).

Lorrie Moore

2006-11-01T23:25:00.000-05:00

Confession: I have never read Lorrie Moore. I know. Shameful. A friend even lent me Self-Help, eighteen months ago, and I can tell you exactly where it is: on the floor behind the laundry basket, where it landed when it fell off my dresser. Maybe seven months ago.

Realization: Lorrie Moore is indeed as fabulous as they say. Of course.

Source of realization:The Lorrie Moore story in this week's New Yorker.

And now I have to go all Jenny on you and quote madly, because this is just so unbelievably good.

First paragraph: Although Kit and Rafe had met in the peace movement, marching, organizing, making no-nukes signs, now they wanted to kill each other. They had become, also, a little pro-nuke. Married for two decades of precious, precious life, she and Rafe seemed currently to be partners only in anger and dislike, their old, lusty love mutated to rage. It was both their shame and demise that hate (like love) could not live on air. And so in this, their newly successful project together, they were complicitous and synergistic. They were nurturing, homeopathic, and enabling. They spawned and raised their hate together, cardiovascularly, spiritually, organically. In tandem, as a system, as a dance team of bad feeling, they had shoved their hate center stage and shone a spotlight down for it to seize. Do your stuff, baby! Who is the best? Who’s the man?

A few paragraphs later: Of course, later she would understand that all this meant that he was involved with another woman, but at the time, protecting her own vanity and sanity, she was working with two hypotheses only: brain tumor or space alien.

And soon after that: Kit sighed again. “Yes, the toxic military-crafts business poisoning our living space. Do I fight? I don’t fight, I just, well, O.K.—I ask a few questions from time to time. I ask, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I ask, ‘Are you trying to asphyxiate your entire family?’ I ask, ‘Did you hear me?’ Then I ask, ‘Did you hear me?’ again. Then I ask, ‘Are you deaf?’ I also ask, ‘What do you think a marriage is? I’m really just curious to know,’ and also, ‘Is this your idea of a well-ventilated place?’ A simple interview, really. I don’t believe in fighting. I believe in giving peace a chance. I also believe in internal bleeding.”

Incredible, no? But what are you doing still hanging out at this silly blog? Go read the story already. Me? I'm going to go rescue that copy of Self-Help.

The Dilemma of the Joy

2006-11-01T11:16:00.000-05:00

(Isn't that just a great title for a blog post?)

The NY Times does not make me want to go out and buy it.

Can't seem to find any other reviews. It did only come out yesterday. Maybe Sunday.

If you scroll down the Amazon page, you'll see that Booklist and Publisher's Weekly are happy, but somehow they aren't exactly the authorities I would choose to evaluate my cookbooks.

May have to trek to the bookstore and take a look. I mean, I can't imagine not buying it, but, on the other hand, why buy it?

Michael Lewis

2006-10-30T12:03:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, maybe in my early teens, I loved Roger Angell's baseball books (1975! remember 1975?! S still hasn't forgiven his brother for rooting for the Reds, just to be perverse). Since then, though, I haven't been much for sports writing. But Michael Lewis may be converting me (talk about belatedly jumping on a bandwagon). He's even got me interested in football. I might just have to read Moneyball, which S and D (along with basically everyone else--like I said, I'm late to this party) think is one of the best baseball books ever.

Or I could just keep being disappointed by novels.

The Emperor's Children

2006-10-28T22:17:00.000-04:00

You might think, if you have read reviews, or even if you have read the book, that The Emperor's Children is about the pretensions of the boho liberal elite, New York ca. 9/11, the perils of idol worship, or Claire Messud's delectably perfect sentences. And you might be right. But I am here to tell you, right now, in this very blog, that even if The Emperor's Children is about any or all of those things, which it certainly is, its most important topic, nay, its central theme, is, I aver and assert, the power of motherhood. Yes indeed, Claire Messud has some babies, and lo and behold, the mothers shall save the earth.

I must confess that, as I read most of this novel, I was not so loving it. I was admiring the meticulous precision of the sentences, and the reach and breadth of the cultural observation, but the general...well, nastiness, was not so much my cup of tea. I don't think that Messud intended the book to be as nasty as I found it, but it just wasn't sitting right with me, the general sense of disdain for everyone.

Then I realized that the one character who was not deluded, in either her attitude to herself, or her attitude to others, really, in fact, the one character who was not, on a certain level, pathetic, was beautiful, forgiving, supportive Annabel Thwaite, loving mother and wife, dedicated public service lawyer, and hostess par excellence (can you say Mrs. Ramsay? I think you can, especially if you think of Murray Thwaite, her husband, as Mr. Ramsay with a feminist veneer, which is not, in this case, as oxymoronic as it might seem, the key word being veneer).

So I realized that, and didn't think much about it, and then I took a break from the book for maybe two days, 40 pages from the end (not a break because I didn't want to read, but because I didn't have time). And the funny thing was, I liked the last 40 pages of the book much better, or, perhaps, I felt much more comfortable in the last 40 pages, and I think, perhaps, that this is because 1) the 9/11 section is not only much better than any other 9/11 sections in recent novels I have read, but really very good; and 2) in the last 40 pages, the novel finally seems imbued with sympathy.

And really, what happens, in those last 40 pages, is that mothers take center stage. I'm going to try to do this without spoilers, so let it suffice to say that 1) Annabel is gracious, helpful, forgiving, and supportive, once again; 2) Bootie Tubb's mother is poignant, not oppressive, as she has been; 3) Randy Minkoff is a star; and 4) Danielle Minkoff, the only character besides Annabel whom the body of the novel kind of likes, and who, while she is not a mother, is quite maternal toward Bootie Tubb, becomes the novel's emotional core.

So that's the main thing I have to say about The Emperor's Children: it's not the emperor who really matters; it's his wife (other things I might say are that the Anglicisms annoyed me, especially given that Messud has spent much more of her life in America than in England; that I would compare this novel to On Beauty and The Corrections, but that would be an essay in itself; that Trollope seems like the historical comparison; that I liked The Last Life better [I thought that one was wonderful, a reaction I didn't have to this one], and that I fully agree with whoever said that the reason all the critics love this one so much is because it is about them).

Why I Can't Stand Daphne Merkin

2006-10-27T19:53:00.000-04:00

Let us now deplore the present moment and lament all that has been lost on the way to becoming overstimulated and spiritually starved inhabitants of an imperiled social order. First we must ask: Where did we go wrong? Where did we go so terribly wrong? I know many of you would blame it on the usual suspects, on the insatiable maw of the media or on large, amorphous forces run amok — our having started up in Iraq, say, or our having ravaged the planet in the name of progress and capitalist gain — but I blame it all on lip gloss. I believe there is something irrevocably ruinous about a culture in which women are expected to go around with their lips in a permanent state of shiny readiness, a perennial Marilyn Monroe moue of glistening sexual receptivity, hinting at the possibility that they, like Monroe, sleep fetchingly in the nude. Just after this thought occurred to me on a recent Saturday night while I was waiting for the subway, I found myself sitting next to two college-age women who were discussing — I kid you not, this is either synchronicity or Sartre’s idea of hell — the merits of various glosses, Kiehl’s as compared with Lancôme’s as compared with Trish McEvoy’s, which one lasted longer and why.

Neither the irony nor the references are cute. Nor are they effective. The diction and phrasing are headache inducing. The self-satisfied naughtiness (see Merkin on sex, anywhere and everywhere) is oppressively banal. God, she just makes my skin crawl.

This piece only gets worse. Or rather, the second paragraph is worse, and then I had to stop. If anyone has made it through and wants to persuade me I should keep reading, feel free.

Daphne Merkin, you are no Susan Sontag.

This Made Me Cry

2006-10-27T19:51:00.000-04:00

The first few paragraphs of a front page story in today's paper:

When 450 Marine reservists marched onto a grassy field yesterday morning, not a smile could be seen in the shoulder-to-shoulder formation of veterans who had just survived seven months in one of Iraq's most dangerous places.

But in a surging, curving line of loved ones who nearly encircled them, no such stoicism was seen. The boisterous crowd cheered, yelped, whooped, and shouted 450 names at the First Battalion, 25th Marines.

And when the order to "Fall out!" was given, the Marines, finally home from the insurgent cauldron of Fallujah, fell into the long, clenching embraces of tearful spouses, parents, and siblings.

Corporal Leonardo Jorge of Methuen, his arms cradling a 4-month-old son he was seeing for the first time, gently kissed the baby's head, over and over, as his wife, Teresa, pressed her head against the Marine's back. "He's beautiful," said Jorge, 27. "I've dreamed of this day every day for seven months."

It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys

2006-10-25T15:12:00.000-04:00

For reasons I won't go into, I am reading (OK, skimming) this book, which is quite odd because it is a self-help book about getting organized and I am a highly organized person who never reads self-help books. In fact, I don't think I've ever read a single one. No, that's not quite true, if you count Kim Chernin, though I'm not sure you can, because that book is more cultural analysis than help. Even in the early 90s, when all my friends were reading The Bonds of Love, I didn't (though as I look at the description of that one, it doesn't really register as self-help either, which probably tells you something about me and my friends; indeed, if you have a certain sensibility, or remember a certain historical moment, this paragraph should tell you a lot about me and my friends).

At any rate, I am clearly proving myself a self-help-book neophyte, and, you know, it's not like I don't need help, because, really, I do, and I'm sure there are self-help books that would speak to me, but in general when I commit to a book, I want narrative, so I have tended to meet my self-help needs with magazine articles, which require less of a commitment (and I'm not even going to riff on literary commitment issues and the viability of self-help, because I really did mean this to be the kind of blog that got to the point).

Anyway, this book, which is clearly self-help (I mean, it offers a "seven-step path"), but which I clearly don't need (like I said, I am constitutionally incapable of NOT being organized), is quite fascinating. Of course, what interest me most are the narratives of unorganized people, which are kind of like travel writing, for they are bringing me into a universe of which I know not at all (15 years of unopened mail?!). But also, the method of getting organized propounded here seems eminently sensible: the author argues that you need to understand why you are unorganized, you need to think about what you want in your life that disorganization is keeping you from, you need to have a reason to get organized, you need to take small steps (I know, that's not seven, and I'm not even sure those are her steps, because, like I said, I'm skimming, and I'm more interested in the narrative, but that's kind of the gist).

My point being: if you are NOT organized, you might want to take a look at this book.

Mountain Man Dance Moves

2006-10-22T22:15:00.000-04:00

I know, I know, McSweeney's is so turn of the millenium. But even the review of this book made me laugh. May have to get it for the bathroom. Those Schott's Miscellanies are pretty well-read by now, though M would never let me remove them.

Girls Who Grow Up to Be Writers

2006-10-22T21:33:00.000-04:00

When I was a girl, I was amazed by the fact that I wanted to grow up to be a writer and so did all the heroines of the books I loved. Rebecca (of Sunnybrook Farm), Maggie (whose Tree Grows in Brooklyn), Laura (in the Woods and on the Prairie), Ella (the oldest of the All-of-a-Kind Family), Betsy (but not Tacy or Tib), and I'm sure there were more. Perhaps everyone wanted to be a writer?

Then, of course, I realized that all those books were written by women who had once been girls who wanted to grow up to be writers, and then grew up to be writers and wrote books about girls like themselves.

So I just wanted to let everyone know that the trend continues in contemporary girl lit, because both Abby Hayes and Lily B. (who is on the Brink of Cool) want to be writers. And there must be more, no?

The Queen

2006-10-22T21:21:00.000-04:00

The first thing you need to know is that I got up at 5 to watch Diana's wedding and funeral.

So as a celebrity/royalty/politics/London junkie who agrees that Helen Mirren is a fabulous actress (though I can't call myself a Helen Mirren junkie), of course I liked The Queen.

And yet, I'm not quite sure why the superlative reviews. 98% positive? I've never seen such a thing.

So either I am the child who sees the naked emperor, or I'm an idiot.

I mean, this movie is seriously cheesy. And absurdly predictable. Of course we know what is going to happen, because we were there, and the movie works our knowledge with all its might, showing us those photos of Diana on the yacht with Dodi, photographers outside the Paris hotel, the queen agonizing over whether to go back to London and do the right thing, and, yes, Diana once again dies and the queen once again does the right thing, and our hearts surge along with all of it, because, well, because they did then, and they do again (yes, that's the royal we, in honor of the theme).

But it's worse than that. There's a beautiful stag out there in those Scottish hills, and Prince Philip takes the boys out stalking it (you get it, don't you? please, you have to get it). The queen's car stalls out in a river, and while she's waiting for the ghillies to rescue her, she sees the stag, tells him how beautiful he is, and, when she hears the stalkers, shoos him away. I don't need to tell you what happens to the stag, do I? And do I need to tell you that the queen sheds a tear...for the stag?

Then there's Tony coming to appreciate the queen and the queen coming to appreciate Tony, and at the beginning of the movie he goes to see her and is nervous, and at the end he goes to see her and is confident, etc. and so forth, and so on.

Cheesy, seriously cheesy.

Or, like I said, maybe I'm just an idiot.

Highlights: the actors who play Prince Philip and Alastair Campbell.

Lowlight: remembering how once Tony Blair was a beacon of hope.

Edited to add: Ooh, I just discovered Metacritic (you can heave a collective "duh" now--how could I possibly have been writing a book blog without Metacritic?!). There The Queen gets a 92.

Living With Haley

2006-10-22T21:18:00.000-04:00

Lately I've had several reminders of the old saw (is it an old saw? if it's not, it should be) that all that really matters is your health, which is to say, if you and your loved ones are healthy (and have enough material resources to meet your basic needs), life is good. This article is another reminder. Heartbreaking.

Overheard in New York

2006-10-20T12:02:00.000-04:00

Because, if you're anything like me, you forget about Overheard in New York for months at a time. And if you're anything like me, you could use a laugh right about now. (Be sure you make it back to the Wednesday one-liners.)

NY Times Magazine

2006-10-16T11:15:00.000-04:00

These pictures (click on the link to the slideshow) seem like adequate proof that models are too skinny these days. Yuck.

I was just noticing, as I looked up beets the other night (yes, I know how to cook beets, but it never hurts to check), how badly our current copy of The Joy of Cooking is falling apart. Like, the tape from its initial falling apart is falling apart. So I'm glad we'll have an excuse to get a new one. According to the article, the general consensus is that the 1997 is a failure, but we use it constantly. Of course we kept our old paperback copy of some previous version, which is now in perhaps three pieces, loosely bound together with, yes, more tape, but really, we hardly refer to it. We'll have to see if the 2006 similarly supplants its predecessor.

Atul Gawande

2006-10-14T14:17:00.000-04:00

I usually pay glancing attention to the MacArthur genius awards, noting the names I recognize, which tend to be in literature, politics, and the arts (my favorite MacArthur ever is Bob Moses, founder of the Algebra Project) (did you know that algebra is the single most important predictor of future academic success? make sure your kids take algebra! and, more importantly, support the Algebra Project and help disadvantaged kids gain access to algebra--and their futures!) (end of public service announcement).

This year's MacArthurs didn't really grab me. Now that I look over the list, I realize that I've heard of several, but when I first saw the announcement in the newspaper, I really only nodded my head at David Macaulay.

It wasn't till I read this story on childbirth from The New Yorker that I remembered Atul Gawande had won. Then I slapped myself upside the head and nodded really enthusiastically!

There's a doctor who writes features for my local newspaper who sucks (there's also a psychiatrist who writes op-eds who is really good--I'm not talking about her). I actually don't remember the guy's name, and I'm not going to try and figure it out, because I wouldn't mention it anway, but 1) he's not a very good writer, and 2) he has a hard time with the difference between objective and opinionated. I'm thinking of two pieces he wrote this year, one about some issue related to adoption (I think--or maybe it was religion? infertility? ...obviously memorable) and the other about pain relief in childbirth. In each, he set up the piece as a thoughtful exploration of the issues, when in fact he clearly had an agenda he was trying to sneak in--and in the case of the pain relief article, his agenda was "Pain is unpleasant and can be alleviated so what's wrong with these silly women who insist on natural childbirth?" Need I say more?

I mean, I'm fine with objectivity, and I'm fine with opinion, and I'm fine with subtlety and complexity, but I am totally not OK with sneaky writing, especially sneaky fact-based writing (sneaky suspense novels are a different matter altogether, but we're not talking about suspense novels here).

Anyway, doctor-writer Atul Gawande is the antithesis of that guy. He writes about science and medicine in a thoughtful, complex, careful manner that garners both fascination and respect. He upends conventional wisdom more effectively than almost any writer I know ("The Cancer-Cluster Myth" is one of the best examples of this). And he is a beautiful writer who impeccably models how to structure both the explanatory and the exploratory essay, often at the same time.

The New Yorker piece is a perfect case in point. It balances the story of a single birth with the history of childbirth and obstetrics; it acknowledges the complexities of human capability and natural processes; it shows us practical realities but also considers their metaphysical implications.

Definitely a well-deserved MacArthur.

Eat, Pray, Love

2006-10-13T00:17:00.000-04:00

Who told me to read this book? Jenny, was it you? Postacademic, I don't think it was you, but you should read this book, if you haven't already.

Recovering from depression, divorce, and a disastrous relationship, Liz Gilbert spends a year in Italy, India, and Indonesia trying to find herself (and, yes, she does note that all those countries begin with the egotism of I). I know, sounds narcissistic, not to mention vaguely squirm-inducing when I add that the India leg is spent in an ashram under the (remote) tutelage of a guru. So if you feel like you don't want to go there on this one, well, don't.

But for me? Oh, this was such the book (though I did spend the first 100 pages feeling hideously jealous of Gilbert for the glamour of her life, and then feeling hideously guilty for being hideously jealous of a woman who spent four years crying, which of course gets to the heart of one of the book's central matters which is the question of how to accept yourself for who you are, which is such an enormous issue for me that you'll just have to take my word for it) (and as for the jealousy part, as I was reading, which I've been doing whenever I have a moment for the last week,E wanted to see what I had blogged a year ago, and this was what I blogged a year ago, suggesting that there have been moments of glamorous traveling excitement in my life, and also, of course, pointing to the relativity of everything).

So anyway, this book has food, partying, yoga, transcendence, friendship, romance, and a best friend who can cure a urinary tract infection in less than two hours. Come on, how can you go wrong? And she's funny, too. And strikes a great balance (theme of Indonesia section) between spiritual and self-deprecating (not quite sure self-deprecating is what I mean--I tried sarcastic, but that wasn't right either: it's like every time you think she's going too far, too mumbo jumbo, too narcissistic, she lets you know that she knows you think she's going too far, and she nicely punctures the moment, but without letting the air out, if that makes any sense).

Anyway, a few other things I loved, which are really all about me, or should I say I?

- At the end of her four months in Italy, she goes to Taormina. I went to Taormina! I loved Taormina (in a unseasonably warm October, so there were no tourists but it was still beachily delightful, and I was three months pregnant, so I couldn't drink, but the food, oh the food, and the Sicilyness of Sicily).

- She arrived in India on December 30. I arrived in India on December 30! Oh no, I think maybe it was December 31. Because I think I spent New Year's Eve on the train from Bombay to Delhi. Oh well, close enough.

- Her list of emotional discomforts: "jealousy, anger, fear, disappointment, loneliness, shame, boredom." Oh yeah. Not to mention her failed efforts not to talk so much. Yup, been there.

- The "American" road trip in Bali: one of the funniest things I've read in a while.

And to get uncharacteristically serious for a moment, I live in a constant struggle for self-acceptance, contentment, and compassion. Sometimes the struggle is too much for me, but this book made me feel up for it again.

[I don't know why these damn posts are all so long. I'm sorry these posts are so long. I know it's bad blog form--or rather I think it's bad blog form--but I just can't seem to help it.]

Dream Double Feature

2006-10-12T21:53:00.000-04:00

The Queen and Marie Antoinette.

I'd settle for just one. Before the DVDs come out.

Junie B.

2006-10-11T21:34:00.000-04:00

When M was a new reader, she had zero interest in Junie B. Jones. She didn't like Magic Treehouse either. Those were her friends' favorites, but, she would have none of them. I was trying to remember what she did read, and all I could come up with was Nate the Great, though I also remember her loving Poppleton, about whom she did her first book report in the first grade. When I asked her this evening what she liked to read back then, she mentioned something else that I've forgotten, and now she's asleep so I can't ask her again. But basically, I remember her in kindergarten reading those little stapled-together literacy books--the ones that go "The tree is green. The leaf is green. The grass is green. I am green with envy at the greening of the entire universe." (OK, that's not quite a verbatim quote)--and in second grade reading Malory Towers and Laura Ingalls Wilder and Betsy-Tacy, and I have no recollection of what happened in between.

E, on the other hand, is a huge fan of both Magic Treehouse (known in her circles as the Jack and Annie books) and Junie B. They read Magic Treehouse in her class last year, and I think maybe Junie B. too. Then I read her Junie B. at home, and now [drum roll, please] she can read Junie B. to me (E is reading about a year earlier than M did, agewise, and maybe half a year, or a year and a half, depending on how you count it, gradewise, though it's hard to compare, because being a December baby, she is in her second year of kindergarten, which apparently makes her the rock star of kindergarten: the other moms come up to me at pick-up and say, wide-eyed, "R told me that E is the only kid in the class who can open her own package of animal crackers," and "M says that E is the only one who can read AND tie her shoes!" [I had no idea about the animal crackers!]).

But as we all recall, this is no longer a cute-kid-anecdote kind of blog, and the point here today is Junie B.

When E first insisted that I read her Junie B., I was completely disgusted. Not by the grammar, which I believe is a frequent objection (and this post really should be chock-a-block with links, but I just don't feel like it, and if you don't have a five-year-old girl and you have never heard of Junie B. Jones, well, you know how to google, don't you? you just put your lips together...oops, wrong allusion). No, I was disgusted because Junie B. is just so incredibly obnoxious.

Then a friend said that Junie B. Jones and the Yucky Blucky Fruitcake is one of the funniest books ever, and, friends, she was right. That is one hilarious book, and I can't say that I would pick Junie B. out of a line-up or take her to a desert island, but I came to terms with the presence of Junie B. in my life, and I accepted her.

Then my dad discovered Junie B. This weekend. Cousin L is about as enamoured of Junie B. as E is, and is also just now reading Junie B. on her own. We were all hanging out this weekend, and the girls were all about Junie B., and my dad was DISGUSTED. It was the grammar. It was everything. Well, actually, it was mainly the grammar, because he got about two pages into it, and refused to go any further (it was the flower girl one). Which made me think, once again, after I'd long ago resolved the issue for myself, in my usual pragmatic way, about the problem of Junie B., and thus feel compelled to share my (as usual, inconclusive) thoughts with you.

Scarlett Johansson

2006-10-10T12:54:00.000-04:00

I don't know which is worse: that this article is at the top of the CNN front page, or that it's the only article I clicked on.

Saturday

2006-10-08T20:33:00.000-04:00

It took me a long time to read Saturday.* I bought it before we went on vacation in August (with the gift card for our favorite independent bookstore that M bought me for my birthday--isn't that the sweetest thing ever?) (I also bought Veronica--I wonder if it will take me as long to read that). I think I read maybe 15 pages on vacation, then put it down and read other things, picked it up, put it down, even forgot what it was called--at some point I told a friend I was reading September, only I knew that couldn't be right, because I knew the big anti-war demonstration that forms the novel's backdrop had been in February--and then I finally got into it last week and plowed through to the end in just a couple of nights (it wasn't as unpleasurable as "plowed" might suggest, but I can't quite say I couldn't put it down, just that by that point I really did want to finish it, in a positive kind of way).

It's not that I didn't like it. In fact, I did some of that initial reading as I was reading some badly written books, and from the very first page I felt such a sense of relief to be reading good prose again. Ian McEwan is, simply, one of the most effective stylists writing today. And in Saturday, he combines exquisite sentences with erudition beyond belief, details of neuropsychology--yes, neuropsychology--that there cannot be another novelist on the planet who grasps, not to mention literature, geopolitics, geography, squash...

The novel is essentially a Ulysses of contemporary London, following wealthy neurosurgeon Henry Perowne through the Saturday just before the Iraq war started when millions of people protested in London. Perowne doesn't go to the rally--he's not sure what he thinks about the war, but is leaning in favor. Instead he plays squash (for 16 pages), buys fish, visits his senile mother, makes dinner, has three encounters with a criminal with Huntington's disease, and thinks about his life, as one does while living it. The other reference point, of course, is Nicholson Baker and The Mezzanine, though I'm not sure that one was on McEwan's mind (Joyce is pretty obvious, in the structure, in the sexual riffs, and in the last line of the novel which a bit too obviously alludes to the last line of "The Dead," though any allusion to the last line of "The Dead" makes me happy, as it's one of my favorite last lines ever.)

Anyway, it's an admirable book, a respect-worthy book, even, often, an engaging book, and it's certainly a Very Good Book, and in the end I quite liked it. But it was not a book I loved--like I loved Atonement, which I truly could not put down. I think I must read some more McEwan so I can formulate a broader position.

* Powell's is down, hence the Amazon link, and I have no real rationale for why I use Powell's--besides my general instinct to stick it to the dominant capitalist powers-that-be--I just do, except sometimes I don't, only I won't be mentioning it anymore.

Recent Movies

2006-10-06T12:57:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I actually saw two movies in one weekend, and I thought about whether I could blog about movies here. Then I saw another movie last night, and I decided that I would blog about movies here. I could go all meta and talk about the nature of reading, or of culture, or of criticism, but instead we'll just go with the fallback rationale: It's my blog and I can do what I want.

Festival Express - Being an old Deadhead from way back, I wanted to see this one as soon as I heard about it, and a few weeks ago I finally remembered that I wanted to see it when I was at the video store and could actually do something about it (video store? do we still call them video stores? movie stores? certainly not DVD stores!).

In the summer of 1970, the Grateful Dead, Janis, Buddy Guy, The Band, Ian and Sylvia and a bunch of other musicians took a train across Canada to play at a bunch of music festivals. A bunch of film was shot, but nobody did anything with it till recently when they cut it into a documentary. It's about four months before Janis died, and she is totally intense. Ian and Sylvia, whom I used to pretend were my parents when I was a kid, and I know you haven't heard of them, but you can google them yourself, were quite hip and Canadian, which was interesting because I always thought they were such folksingers, but here they were doing the rock and roll thing. Someday I'm going to write something about how incredibly unsexy the Grateful Dead are, and this footage confirmed that insight once again. The Band, though? Now THAT was a sexy band. The really interesting thing, musically, was that seeing all those musicians together, jamming on the train, in the summer of 1970, you realized (again) (I mean, duh) how profoundly traditional rock and roll, of that iteration, in fact was. Blues, bluegrass, folk: that's where it all came from, and then of course we can just say alt-country. Or not.

The OH in Ohio - I knew this one would come to the second-run movie theater around the corner, and sure enough it did, and one night when S was miraculously home, I just walked myself out and saw the 9:30 show. Nothing great, just silly entertainment with lots of laughs. Parker Posey is pretty brilliant as a successful businesswoman who is dysfunctional in, shall we say, the intimate realm. So she tries to do something about it. And succeeds, somewhat predictably, but still entertainingly. The scene at the big client presentation with the cellphone? Well, you just have to go see the movie.

Fever Pitch - This is another one which I kept seeing on the shelf at that place where we rent the DVDs which these days enable us to view movies in the privacy of our own homes. Suddenly yesterday I got the urge to watch it, so I did. I think perhaps the urge had to do with catching a glimpse of the San Diego-St. Louis game at a restaurant and remembering how different things were two years ago this month.

The movie was fine, but I think particularly enjoyable for a target audience of which I am certainly a member. Being a hardcore Drew fan from way back (can you say Poison Ivy? I can), plus, you know, there's that team for which I reserve my affections: how could I not like it? Basically it's kind of a lame romantic comedy, not nearly as good as 50 First Dates (Jimmy Fallon is no Adam Sandler), but thoroughly redeemed by the Red Sox. Drew running across the field at Fenway? Priceless. And the soundtrack has the Dropkick Murphys and Jonathan? Come on, aren't you melting already? And the closing montage with the victory parade down the Charles in the duck boats?! It was, indeed, the best of times.

Oh, and E and I watched about a half hour of Annie last night. Kind of scary in that there orphanage! E huddled behind my back and peeped over my shoulder (she really did), but she insisted that we keep watching (M, I'm sure, would have fled at the first appearance of the brilliant Carol Burnett as Miss Hannigan, but she was away at 5th grade camp, and E is made of sterner stuff). We might watch some more tonight, or I might persuade M to watch Fever Pitch, as part of my continued campaign to expand her filmic horizons.

Collecting Myself

2006-10-04T13:30:00.000-04:00

Oh my god, I was just going to post the most amazing thing, and tell you you must go read it, immediately, before it disappears behind the wall they put around old NY Times articles, and then I realized it is Times Select, so it is behind the wall already, and this is just a huge tragedy, because it is the most amazing piece by Maira Kalman, who asks one of my biggest questions, "How do you know who you are?" and doesn't even answer it, but instead quotes Abraham Lincoln and Goethe and talks about candy and embroidery and empty boxes and the Holocaust and collections, which are, you know, all about trying not to die, which is another one of my biggest issues, and, really, this piece is so fabulous that everyone must read it immediately, except you can't, because of the evil Times Select, and I wonder once again why I am such a slave to the NY Times which is so increasingly evil.

But someone called me a "renegade mama" today, which although I don't much like "mama," works for me, especially since I just finished writing something else in which I used just that word, "renegade," to describe myself, or rather, my household. So I have a solution, and I will let everyone I can enable read this wonderful thing, but you must email me or comment on the blog with a real email address, and then I will make it happen.

Arts & Leisure

2006-10-03T19:49:00.000-04:00

Besides forgiving, I try to use Yom Kippur in a New Year's resolution kind of way to become a better person. This year I forgave my old boss and resolved not to get worked up about ridiculous things. So I will not be blogging about recent NY Times parenting articles, because they are so very same old same old--groveling for the affluent demographic, demonizing working mothers, irrelevant to the lives of the vast majority of Americans--and nothing is gained by me going there.

On the other hand, I--uncharacteristically--read the Arts & Leisure section cover to cover yesterday, while trying to make time pass on a fasting afternoon (I'd already done synagogue and a meaningful walk to the pond with M where we threw sticks in the water for the things we wanted to get rid of from the old year [sticks float away] and rocks for our wishes for the new year [rocks stay] [yes, I know Tashlich is supposed to be on Rosh Hashanah, but this is our own version], so I figured I deserved a little newspaper reading).

Great, if depressing, piece on indie filmmakers that referenced all the filmmakers I loved back in the day: John Sayles, Hal Hartley, Jim Jarmusch--I even saw Finn Taylor's first movie. Yes, I am hopelessly marooned in the aging boho demographic. Also an interesting article about David Lynch, who turns out to have been practicing TM since 1973 (my cousin was huge into TM back then--she claimed to levitate--when we went to Disneyland and got freaked out on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, she kept saying to her daughters, "say your mantras, girls, just say your mantras"). What made me write this post was that S just put on the Hold Steady which I had no idea he thought made the best album of 2005, but I liked the article and I'm loving the new album (it's reminding me of Bruce and Jonathan, and we all know how I feel about them). And, of course, I'm a sucker for anything "Chorus Line."

Another thing I'd like to be this year is more positive.

The Man of My Dreams

2006-09-30T13:49:00.000-04:00

Another disappointing second novel.

I quite loved Prep for the impeccable complexity of its sentences, the obsessively detailed realism of its milieu, and the thorough representation of its protagonist's subjectivity. In short: excellent writing and a narrative of class awareness and adolescent development that worked for me (I tag that on because my sister thought it was well-written but wasn't interested in the story, which I can understand).

Interestingly, in The Man of My Dreams, Sittenfeld writes very differently, and I give her points for not going straight into a stylistic rut. The only problem is that her simple sentences are boring. As is her heroine. As is the structure of the novel which episodically details bitter, mopey Hannah Gavener's romantic history (desire for desire, unrequited love, earnest boy, bad boy, more unrequited love, resolution), with none of the sharply-observed social and cultural context that made Prep such an intense read.

The difference between the novels' resolutions kind of sums it up: At the end of Prep, Lee Fiora realizes that much of her difficulty has been of her own making, a realization that reshapes not just her experience, but the reader's, for she suddenly becomes an unreliable narrator in a novel that has fully depended upon her narration. Then she does something stupid--or naive, or unconsciously wish-fulfilling--(the newspaper interview) that dramatically changes her status and understanding, and, again, both Lee and the reader get it, the reader because we have followed her through all the steps.

In The Man of My Dreams, on the other hand, Hannah tells us early on that she makes things difficult for herself, but then she doesn't do anything with this realization, just keeps on being her own passive, grumpy self (OK, she goes to therapy--and the last section of the novel is a letter to her therapist that is so un-letter-like that we are positively in the realm of bad writing). At the end of the novel, she too undergoes a dramatic shift, but she tells us (and her therapist, in the letter), rather than showing us, and it is not so believable. The utter narcissist, fixated on desire, moves to Albuquerque, starts teaching autistic kids, and realizes it is better to give? Uh, yeah, no, not so much.

In other words: not worth reading, though Sittenfeld contines to excel at the writing of mortification and awkward sex.

Again and Again

2006-09-28T22:09:00.000-04:00

E got this book from the library. Again. (I guess I could write that title and not worry too much about the author googling it, given the title, but I'm still feeling delicate about negativity.) (Though that delicacy may go out the window when I finish--if I finish--my current novel.) (And sorry about the Amazon link, but sometimes Powell's just has insufficient information.)

Anway. The book. I tried to dissuade her ("We already got that book once.") but failed ("I love this book.") Which means I will be reading the book again, and not enjoying it, again. I mean, it's OK, but it's the kind of book you read once with some interest, to find out what happens, and then have no desire to read again. Except that your kid wants to read it again. And again. And probably again.

That book just isn't a very good book. But The Jolly Postman is a great book. Only my heart sinks every time E pulls it out. I think it might be all the little pieces that you have to take out of the envelopes and read. It takes so long, and I've read them so many times, and I just don't want to read them again.

One Morning in Maine is another. We haven't gotten on a serious jag with that one, thank goodness, and I love reading it--every six months. But two days in a row? Shoot me now.

And yet, there are books that I can read (and have read) every day for months, and enjoyed every single reading. To name just a few: Make Way for Ducklings, Chrysanthemum, Clementine's Winter Wardrobe, Madeline, Something From Nothing, Joseph Had a Little Overcoat (did you know that Something From Nothing and Joseph Had a Little Overcoat are the same book, and they're both fabulous?), Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (just linking to the ones that aren't the same old same old, because these are some great books, and if you don't know them, you should).

There's really no analysis here, just the point that some books are fine for reading again and again, and some aren't.

Wednesday Is for Food Reading

2006-09-27T15:31:00.000-04:00

How can you not love Paul Newman? (It's about food, really.) (I just wish my husband had that gig.) (The chef's gig, not Paul Newman's gig.) (Then again, if my husband had Paul Newman's gig, would that mean I'd be married to Paul Newman?) (Of course, he is a little old for me.) (And I don't even know that I fancy him.) (But, after all, he IS Paul Newman.)

Sometimes All It Takes Is a Sentence

2006-09-27T08:03:00.000-04:00

From an article about a coffee cake in today's Food section:

The firm-but-tender streusel crumble rippling over the silky cake creates a wonderful sweet, a cake that has a certain deliciously dependable, heirloomlike quality.

There's the general tendency toward the purpling of prose in contemporary food writing, and then there's the idea of an heirloom coffee cake. I don't know about you, but I'd rather inherit tomato seeds than a coffee cake.

The Year of Magical Thinking

2006-09-25T14:51:00.000-04:00

Reading, like everything else, takes place in context. A great book will probably be great and a bad book bad whenever you read them, but the experience of reading a book is inevitably shaped by the circumstances in which you read: by the last book you read, by recent events, by whether your back hurts, by whether you devour the book flat out in one sitting late into the night or nibble it in bits and pieces at the bus stop and in ten free minutes before picking the kids up from school.

A friend lent me The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion's memoir of the year after the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, maybe six months ago. Had I read it immediately, I wouldn't be comparing it to Sandra Gilbert's Death's Door: Modern Dying and the Way We Grieve, another literary widow's recent book about death, which I read this summer. Nor would Jenny's recent Didion post have left me slightly embarrassed at my apparently jejune affection for Didion's prose.

I might not have noticed that there appears to be a canon of death--Geoffrey Gorer, C. S. Lewis, Phillipe Aries, Sherwin B. Nuland--to which both Didion and Gilbert turn in the face of loss. I might not have wondered whether their books will enter this canon. I might not have been so aware that it seems impossible to speak of death today without referencing 9/11.

If I hadn't just read Gilbert's argument for the permeability of the barrier between dead and living, I might not have noted how acutely absolute that barrier is for Didion. On the other hand, if I'd read Didion's brief reflection first, Gilbert's lengthy exposition might have seemed not only unnecessarily long, but perhaps even unnecessary.

Six months ago, I might not have focused so intently on Didion's prose, probing, like a tongue in a dubious tooth, whether or not I do in fact like it. I might not have noticed that her sentences in this book seem different: simpler and less show-offy, more drastically to the point, and thus not a useful gauge.

Then again, I might have noticed, for if I'd read the book six months ago, I would still have been me. I would still have had my fascinations with death and disaster, with prose style, with glamour (for even, or perhaps especially, in the devastating wake of its loss, Didion and Dunne's life still comes across as enormously glamourous, and I must pinch myself in punishment for my envy of something whose loss has left someone else bereft) (I have a host of other fascinations, but those were the ones that primarily shaped this reading experience).

I think The Year of Magical Thinking is a very good book, and I think I would have thought so six months ago. The name dropping gets to be a bit much, though you could argue that it was simply her life (Jenny's comments about Didion's sense of her own preciousness poke at me), and at the end the circling back and repetition, which I liked for most of it (structure is always Didion's strength), starts to lose its power. But unlike the excerpt that appeared in the NY Times Magazine, the whole book does not seem arrogant and solipsistic, or even cold (I don't remember, now, why I thought the excerpt was so cold, except it had something to do with the absence of her daughter, who is a central presence in the book, and with the sense that she knew everything there was to know about how everyone grieves, which isn't so much the case in the book). I like, too, how she describes her fights with Dunne, refusing to fall into the everything-was-beautiful-all-the-time trap with which the dead are so often recalled. It comforts me, somehow, to know that other couples, famous writer couples, hardly speak for days after stupid fights.

As I was finishing the book (more context) I read Ron Rosenbaum's review of Daniel Mendelsohn's new book about the Holocaust. I'm not sure I can read the book. For all my obsession with death, the Holocaust is not one of my readerly preoccupations. It's too much for me. In fact, I'd been thinking, with reference to Didion, about how difficult it is to imagine the unimaginable--one's husband dropping dead across the dinner table--and how perhaps I read these books about death to try to get there, where I can't imagine, even though I don't want to go. Perhaps it's a kind of inoculatory effect: if I can know, from someone else, what it will be like, perhaps it won't be so bad, or perhaps I can at least anticipate the badness. And I was thinking, as I do, in my liberal guilt kind of way, how much easier it is to access the pain of a famous writer losing her husband, than a Lebanese grandfather losing his whole family in a bombing, or a Mexican mother losing her children in a mudslide. And I was thinking about boxcars, really, I was, and then I read this passage in Rosenbaum's review:

And if one thinks one has lost one’s capacity for horror at the depths of human nature, consider this, from an eyewitness deposition he finds about the second roundup of Bolechow Jews: “A terrible episode happened with Mrs. Grynberg. The Ukrainians and the Germans who had broken into her house found her giving birth. ... When the birth pangs started she was dragged onto a dumpster in the yard of the town hall with a crowd ... who cracked jokes and jeered and watched the pain of childbirth. ... The child was immediately torn from her arms along with its umbilical cord and thrown — It was trampled by the crowd and she was stood on her feet as blood poured out of her with her bleeding bits hanging.”

It’s an episode that raises questions about the limits of representation. After giving us an excerpt from another eyewitness account — of Jews packed in cattle cars on the way to the death camps — Mendelsohn writes: “Whatever we see in museums, the artifacts and the evidence, can give us only the dimmest comprehension of what the event itself was like. ... We must be careful when we try to envision ‘what it was like.’ It is possible today, for instance, to walk inside a vintage cattle car in a museum, but ... simply being in that enclosed, boxlike space ... is not the same as being in that space after you’ve had to smother your toddler to death and to drink your own urine in desperation, experiences that visitors to such exhibits are unlikely to have recently undergone.” Well intentioned as such exhibits are, the power of eyewitness testimony suggests that sometimes words are worth a thousand pictures.

If one reason we read is to get into another context, to understand another circumstance and another life, if we feel that we must go there, even if we don't want to, then Didion's book works, regardless of her preciousness or her prose.

[I am wildly dissatisfied with this post. It's been bobbing around in my head since I started the book on Friday night. There are too many bits and pieces here, and I didn't even include them all. But maybe that's why I can't just delete it. Sorry.]

Bunnies

2006-09-21T20:51:00.000-04:00

E has a shelf of books at Grammy's house. The books used to be for Grammy and Grandpa to read to her, but now she reads them herself. The other day she wanted to read to me. She read I Love You, Bunny Rabbit. Which got me thinking about the number of picture books that feature bunnies.

At the top of the list, of course, are Pat the Bunny and Goodnight Moon, which are absolutely lovely books that just happen each to feature a bunny. But think about it: why a bunny?

Bunnies seem to be particularly lovable, as in Bunny, My Honey, or goofy a la Knuffle Bunny. Of course there's the distinction between the stuffed bunny, featured in I Love You, Bunny Rabbit and Knuffle Bunny, and the anthropomorphic bunny of Bunny, My Honey.

But any seasoned picture book reader knows where this is heading: toward the most horrifying bunny book around--nay, one of the most horrifying picture books around--The Runaway Bunny. I wish I could find the full text, but a superficial search does not reveal it. If you think there's a copy on your bookshelf, find it and take a good look. If not, you'll have to be satisfied with a few choice quotes:

"If you run after me," said the little bunny, "I will become a fish in a trout stream and I will swim away from you."
"If you become a fish in a trout stream," said his mother, "I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you."

"If you become a tree," said the little bunny, "I will become a little sailboat, and I will sail away from you."
"If you become a sailboat and sail away from me," said his mother, "I will become the wind and blow you where I want you to go."

Calling Dr. Freud, anyone? WHEREVER YOU GO, YOUR MOTHER WILL FIND YOU. YOU CANNOT ESCAPE!

The only book scarier is Love You Forever, in which the mother climbs through her adult son's window to snuggle him while he is sleeping. Let's not even go there.

But this all begs the question: why bunnies?

I can venture some answers: they're cute and snuggly; spring and Easter and rebirth all that; reaching back to our pastoral origins; um...I'm running out of answers.

The weird thing is: how many kids hang out with bunnies these days? Not a lot (though there is a family in our neighborhood that keeps bunnies in a hutch in their side yard). So bunnies have become some weird kind of fictional avatar for our snuggly, newborn, pastoral imagination?

Help me out here, people. Bunnies?

Jon Carroll

2006-09-19T10:51:00.000-04:00

I'm a hopeless newspaper reader.

I know: newspapers are dying; nobody reads newspapers any more; newspapers are the mainstream media and you know what that means (what does it mean?); you can get anything you want online anyway; blogs are the future; etc.

Whatever.

I like the newspaper: it's a routine; it's there every morning; I don't have to turn anything on; it's quiet; I can hold it in my hand; I can skim headlines all at once; I can get funnies and the weather and the score and the news and Dear Abby (or whatever advice column that particular paper offers, because all newspapers have advice columns, and I'm not one to go out and seek advice columns, or advice, for that matter, out in the hinterlands of the internet, but like everyone else, come on, admit it, I like me a good advice column, if only to be reassured that I am not so badly off and, admit it again, stupid, as lots of other people out there).

I pretty much always read the local paper: in London I read The Guardian and The Independent (and The Sun or The Mail whenever I managed to pick up a copy on the Tube) (really, London is the best place in the world for newspapers); in New York I read the Times (OK, that one I read online wherever I am) (of course also the Post, if I can pick up a copy on the subway); here I read the local liberal establishment paper (and, yes, I will admit that it sucks) (and don't forget the local conservative tabloid, yes, whenever I can pick up a copy someone else has bought and discarded); and in the Bay Area I read the San Francisco Chronicle. And now I am having kind of a spelling/grammar/writing problem, because in London and the Bay Area I meant "read" to be past tense, whereas "here" and in New York, where I am more often these days, at least than when I lived in the Bay Area, "read" should be present tense.

This is important because you need to understand the context when I say that after I left the Bay Area, I kept reading the Chronicle online for a long time, first because I missed the Bay Area, but then because I loved Jon Carroll so much. Jon Carroll is simply the best columnist ever: he is funny; he makes sense; he nicely balances the big issues and the small, as a good columnist should; he has excellent politics; and, really, I think he should be president.

Eventually I had to embrace my life in Red State (where, yes, I read the Red State Capital City paper every day), so I gave up the Chronicle, but whenever I stumble upon it, I check up on Jon Carroll, and today, once again, he is so smart and sensible that I vow definitively to give up complaining about Vanity Fair.

Kate and Spence

2006-09-18T13:45:00.000-04:00

Getting a pedicure at a fancy salon, I picked up this month's Vanity Fair (and, oh, how glad I am that I did not buy it, because then I would be forced to rail against this month's puff piece, the text, if one can deign to label it thus, though I suppose text is a better term than article, that accompanies the famous Suri Cruise photos, and basically consists of Tom and Katie talking about how great they are, and the author, whose name I will not look up, so as not to have to print it and embarrass her, talking about how great Tom and Katie are, oh, and what a great and loving--and did I say great and loving--big happy family the whole Cruise-Holmes melange turns out to be) (though you know, that author probably would not be embarrassed at all, and I really need to stop complaining about Vanity Fair being Vanity Fair, or, if I am going to be offended and complain, I should stop reading the damn magazine).

At any rate, because I did not buy the magazine, I need not offer a sustained analysis or critique (hmm, am I creating a new magazine-reading-blogging rule here? let's not...). Instead I can just comment upon (my, it is taking me an awful long time to get to this comment which is all I really want to make) the excerpt from William J. Mann's new biography, Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn.

It's one of those reads that makes you see everything in a new light that is immediately completely obvious, which is my absolute favorite kind of non-fiction read. We all thought of Hepburn as the ultimate in feminist New England authenticity, but she was a movie star, for god's sake, and Mann's argument that she invented and reinvented herself makes total sense, especially when you consider the complications of her politics and sexuality, writ against the history of Hollywood from the 1930s on.

But what I found really interesting was his account of how Hepburn herself participated in the sentimentalizing and romanticizing (they are slightly different things, especially in this case) of her relationship with Spencer Tracy. I remember reading Garson Kanin's Tracy and Hepburn (no links worth linking to) and being entranced by the stuff of tragic love story. Turns out it's not the case: the romantic part of the relationship ended in 1952, they both had significant same-sex relationships, Tracy's guilt was not just about drinking or his deaf son, but about gay sex, Hepburn's friends were shocked when, in the late 80s, she herself started trumpeting the relationship as tragic romance. Fascinating stuff, and much more commentary about current celebrities, celebity biographies, and the like could be vouchsafed, but I must go pick up authentic children at very un-Hollywood school.

Empty Pages

2006-09-15T09:51:00.000-04:00

Here is a lovely essay by Jonathan Safran Foer about blank pages. It begins with a friend sending him the top page from a stack of typewriter paper Isaac Bashevis Singer left behind when he died, the next page, presumably, that Singer would have used. (Was Singer still writing when he died? I met him once. I was maybe 12. He told me I had beautiful eyes.)

Foer becomes obsessed with the sheet of paper, and then, more generally, with the idea of the blank page and all the potential it holds. He writes to other authors, asking them to send him the next sheet of paper they would have written on, and there follows a lovely description of all the pieces of paper he receives, culminating in a sheet of Freud's stationery which a guide gives him at the Freud house in London.

This is the kind of writing I can fall right into: the specific descriptions, the symbolic value of the material object, the touch of sentimental cliche in the blank sheet of paper as metaphor for the rest of our lives (is sentimental cliche redundant? I don't think so, but I'm not sure). Except, I'm a bit skeptical throughout, and my skepticism is confirmed by a sentence in the next to last paragraph of the essay: But I can remember, as if it were yesterday, turning on my laptop, knowing that I was about to start my first novel--the moment before life wrote on me.

Sure, some of us still write on paper, but most of us write right into the pixilated evanescence of the computer screen, where a word can be deleted as easily as it is written (I've deleted more than you can imagine as I've written this post, and I'm not even writing that carefully). By the time the words print out on paper, they are fully reified, several steps removed, by the mechanisms of technology, from us (where once the hand held the pen that touched the paper, now the fingers tap the keys that send the words to the screen from whence they disassemble through the printer cord to reassemble in the printer and be spit out, via the ink cartridge, onto the page; that the the hand also wields the mouse, or in this case taps the touchpad, to hit the Print button hardly affects the disconnect between hand, word, and page). This doesn't erase the power of the metaphor, but the injection of unacknowledged nostalgia does increase its sentimentality, perhaps too much for me.

Disappointing Summer Reads

2006-09-14T12:10:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I wrote a long post about why I wasn't so crazy about this novel. To summarize: I have a soft spot for the author, because we have much in common, including some mutual friends, but while I loved her second novel, I wasn't so crazy about her other books, and I wasn't so crazy about this one either. Neither the prose nor the plot were that great, but then at the very end I realized that she was trying to rewrite Middlemarch, and it didn't work, because of some fundamental narrative and ethical issues. Anyway, I went on at some length, posted, and then saw that Jenny had just disavowed negative reviewing (albeit in the act of abetting it), and I felt bad, so I deleted the post. (Libby, if you want details on the Middlemarch thing, you can email me.)

I'd actually been planning a series of three posts on disappointing summer reads. There was to be that one. Then there was to be one on this novel which was nowhere near as good as its predecessor. The predecessor is one of my favorite books of the decade, beautifully written and plotted, but this one had unappealing characters, a kind of silly storyline, and a fairly leaden approach to 9/11 (I'm sure someone somewhere I haven't read has addressed the prevalence of 9/11 novels this season, what with Claire Messud and, oh there are so many, but since Jenny hasn't linked to anything, and she reads everything, maybe not).

Then there was going to be one on this memoiristic collection of essays, which I had also been looking forward to, and then found pretty unreadable. I have a bit of an obsession with the author and her sister, which I won't go into, because writing in this euphemistic mode is too hard for me and probably too annoying for you, but I realized when I got this book that in fact I haven't actually read anything by the author because I just find her writing totally annoying, which is too bad, because the topic of the book is quite interesting to me, but somehow she made it immensely dull.

The annoyingness of her writing was actually the occasion for more self-doubt (along the lines of reading Jenny's blog and then deleting my post), because the thing that bugs me most, before we even get to the dullness, is her long, digressive, parenthesis-and-semi-colon-laden sentence structure.

OK, you can laugh now.

But it's that very sentence I just wrote, I hope, that can justify my hypocrisy. I am very conscious about sentence structure, and I know when I am writing endless sentences, and I do it on purpose, and I believe I can say I have a fairly good grasp of grammar, so my sentences generally work. Except when they don't. And then hopefully it's funny. Or maybe not.

And there I'm doing it again: varied sentence structure, people. Sentences that match your content. Parentheses and semi-colons for a reason, not just because it's what you always do.

Exceptions, of course, for Henry James and Dave Eggers.

My point is not that long sentences are bad, or even that writing always in long sentences is bad (note, again, Henry James and Dave Eggers), but neither are long sentences necessarily good, and I guess the bottom line is that I just didn't like her sentences, and I didn't like her book.

Now I think I will go find something I like to read so I can blog about it, because, really, it is not so pleasant to be so negative all the time, nor is it pleasant to read things one doesn't like.

The Callahan Cousins

2006-09-12T16:34:00.000-04:00

Last night M and I finished the first Callahan Cousins book. M decided she didn't want me to read to her at bedtime over a year ago, but when Grandpa gave her the Callahan Cousins, we decided to resume reading aloud and it's been nice. M devours all her books, so eking out a chapter a night has definitely been a challenge for her, but we've come to enjoy the suspense and it's nice to have the time together snuggling in the big chair (OK, so it barely fits the two of us, especially last night when we were both in sleeping bags, but we still sit there, because that's the place to sit for bedtime reading).

The Callahans are four twelve-year-old girl cousins spending the summer at their grandmother's summer house on Gull Island (read Block Island) (read enormous privilege that it is quite enjoyable to read about--M and I are both bedazzled by enormous summer houses with sailboats, swimming pools, private beaches, and housekeepers who make delicious food appear regularly). There appear to be four books--the fourth comes out next month--each focused on a different cousin with a different adventure. In this one, Hilary, whom we might also call Sporty Callahan, convinces the others to revive their dads' childhood competition with another island family and try to plant the family flag on Little Gull Island. Not a lot of drama, but some nice relationships, plus all that summer house life. We liked it; we're planning on reading the rest.

But what got me thinking (as opposed to just salivating) was the whole disparate cousins motif, as subtly hinted at in my characterization of Hilary as Sporty Callahan (please, someone, reassure me that you got the allusion, which should become obvious in a moment). Each girl, of course, has one distinguishing characteristic: Hilary is sporty, Kate is a mini-Martha Stewart, Phoebe reads, and Neeve is wild and crazy. Which got me wondering about the origins of the one-characteristic-per-girl model.

Let's see, there are, of course, the Spice Girls (last night at dinner we managed to remember them all--kind of like the time when I was a kid and we tried to remember all the seven dwarfs and it took us days to come up with Bashful, except this time we got them all in about three minutes: you remember: Sporty, Posh, Scary, Ginger, and Baby). I remember I used to read Camp Fire Girls books when I was a kid, and I'm pretty sure they were all typed. Maggie Tulliver*, complaining about Madame de Stael's Corinne, laments the type-casting of the blonde heroine (who would be her cousin, Lucy Dean, destined for sweetness, light, and boys), and the dark heroine (i.e. Maggie herself, headed for tragedy, and though Eliot critiques, she nonetheless enacts), and I believe Maggie mentions Rebecca and Rowena,** but if she doesn't she should. And what the heck, let's just go all the way back to the original virgin/whore dichotomy with Mary Magdalene and Martha.

So, one question is: is this girl-specific? Unfortunately, as child and adult, I have read mainly girl books, so I don't know. Is there a smart Hardy Boy and an athletic one? Do Frederick Exley novels revolve around a sensitive guy and a tough guy? Of course there's Ashley and Rhett***, but that's still a girl book.

Then there's the question of what this modeling does for girls. S argues that there are in fact two different things going on here: that in the Maggie/Lucy/Rebecca/Rowena model, type is destiny, but in the Spice/Camp Fire Girls model, type is just descriptive. I'm concerned, though, that the second model still sets girls up by suggesting that they can only be one thing: you pick a character to identify with (because, obviously, all those characters are there so that as many girls as possible can identify--hmm, this is getting a little chicken and egg, but I'll just keep going with it), and that's who you are.

Case in point: M, who is ecstatically convinced that she is Neeve. Neeve is short (check), has short dark hair (check--M just got her hair cut), and loves wild fashion (check, check, check, and this is the heart of the identification, because M is very into wild outfits these days, and she is very excited to have Neeve as a model--she even tried on the old dress-up tutu, because one day, in the book, Neeve wears a tutu, but, alas, it was too small) (just to illustrate: today M wore a white and red Serena Manish t-shirt [they're another band you've never heard of], a knee-length black satin skirt with embroidered flowers and a light brown ruffle, a thigh-length purple cardigan with a collar, white socks, and red Chinese shoes).

Now I'm very happy that M has Neeve to validate her fashion choices, but in fact, M is really a combination of Neeve (wild, fashion), Hilary (spunky leadership), and Phoebe (books, books, books), and when I pointed this out to her, she agreed. And then we agreed that she was not at all Kate.

And, in fact, this points to a point I have made many times, which is that readers are often smarter than books set them up to be. So perhaps I just need to have confidence in the ability of girls to construct complex identifications, even in the face of simplistic character types. After all, I'm Rebecca** and I didn't die in a flood*.

* George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
** Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe
*** Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind (duh)

Vanity Fair and Key

2006-09-10T13:59:00.000-04:00

Who can be surprised that the NY Times has launched one of those Sunday magazine supplements about real estate (for as long as I can remember there was the fashion one, then it was joined by the home one and the travel one, and more recently the sports one, which I have never even cracked open, though I do keep the others in the bathroom for weeks, until I find myself flipping them open to articles and blurbs I have already read)? I can't seem to find a link on the website, but it is called Key and as soon as you open it (hard copy--aha, this may be the reason it can't be found on the website, because you couldn't appreciate the ads in quite the same way) it is quite obvious that the purpose of this new supplement is to provide even more space for those advertisements for luxury apartment buildings that have recently been clogging the front pages of the regular magazine. You know, those advertisements that make you wonder who on earth lives in such buildings, like the one designed by Ian Schrager, or the ones for really rich people with kids (who apparently have different household needs than ordinary people with kids--I would settle for one more bathroom). There are also articles about things like teeny-tiny houses and cohousing which, you know, have never before been covered by the mainstream media, not ever (that is the sound of sarcasm), but you have to have some kind of copy to hold together the advertisements.

At any rate, one cannot be surprised, but if one has been plodding through the September Vanity Fair and has just read Michael Wolff's piece on how the Times has lost its path and is trying to be a national luxury newspaper, a dubious goal at best, one is nodding sagely at this latest piece of evidence thereto. Of course, for Vanity Fair to chide the Times on such a count is a bit pot/kettle/black, given that the line between editorial and advertisement in Vanity Fair seems to get thinner with every issue, and while exposes on Iraq and Gaza are all very good, it's hard to take them seriously when they are surrounded by girl-on-girl high-fashion action and an apparently infinite number of Kate Moss product promotions.

And while we're talking about the NY Times, real estate, and luxury goods (which is the implicit subject of the end of the previous paragraph), I'll just take a moment to offer a contained version of last Friday night's rant upon reading Judith Warner's latest blog post, alas available only to those with Times Select and I am too lazy to fiddle with programming below the cut so I can cut and paste the whole thing (one point of this blog is ease and lack of anxiety). Anyway, Warner talks about the month she just spent in Normandy and what a great break it was and I think that's just super for her.

Because, you know, some people are privileged and that's fine. I really do think it is. What's not so fine is denying privilege, like those people I went to college with who dressed in ratty sweaters and always nitpicked over the bar bill and then you went home with them for the weekend and discovered they lived in mansions. So this paragraph just made me explode:

It sounds grand, doesn’t it; vacationing for a month, every summer, in France? But picture this: our house in Normandy – a thatched-roof, half-timbered chaumière that we bought when we lived in Paris – sits on a field that is flooded nine months of the year. In its entirety, it is the size of most people’s bathrooms in Bethesda. Speaking of bathrooms – it has just one, with pencil marks on the walls where the light fixtures I bought five years ago ought to be. And the guest room is accessible only by an outdoor stair, unless you’re a mouse or a spider, in which case you can come right in through the charmingly exposed bricks behind the bed.

Judith, repeat after me: I have a house in Normandy. I get to spend a month there every summer. That is a very nice thing, I am very lucky, and I appreciate it. In fact, I wish everyone could have this opportunity that I am so lucky to have.

That's all you need to say, really. And then people might not hate you so much. Until you say that some of your best friends are black.

The New Yorker: September 4, 2006

2006-09-07T09:47:00.000-04:00

The New Yorker arrives every week. Generally I look at the table of contents and then put it down. OK, that's not quite right: generally I look at the table of contents, flip through the Goings On About Town to find Tables for Two, read Tables for Two, because the wife of a chef must keep up with restaurant doings, and then put it down. Occasionally, though, I read some articles, or even the whole magazine, and even more occasionally, I blog about it.

But when I flipped through the table of contents of the most recent New Yorker, The Education Issue, I was pleased to be taking an airplane to California the next day, because I actually wanted to read it. And read it I did, most of it, at least. Fascinating article on the Duke lacrosse/rape story, though I'm suspicious of the "objective" tone and I take issue with the implication that "the coarsening of undergraduate life" is specific to Duke, when I would argue it is generic to the contemporary college experience. Liked the article on Deep Springs College because I'm always drawn to self-sufficient models of alternative education, even when they tend toward pretension and homo-eroticism (not that there's anything wrong with pretension or homo-eroticism) (OK, pretension isn't so great, though, let's face it, anyone reading this blog has probably been guilty of it at one time or another or many, but homo-eroticism is quite fine). Liked the piece on school lunches in Berkeley, especially because it pierced the Alice Waters idealism, and much as I love Alice, I love pragmatists even more, especially when it comes to the public schools.

Did not, however, so much like the Antonya Nelson fiction offering, "Kansas," yet that story is what I keep thinking about days after I put down The New Yorker and picked up the September Elle which M made me buy and which bored me to tears. I guess I don't get why this story is in The New Yorker (which comment presumes that if fiction is in The New Yorker it is somehow worthwhile, a presumption which is obviously ridiculous, especially given how utterly skeptical I am of the poetry in The New Yorker, and how pleased and surprised I am by the extremely occasional appearance of a wonderful poem therein).

Basically the story is about a dysfunctional family held together by its cellphones: seven of them, each number separated by a single digit, i.e. a family plan. There are two sisters (one pregnant), their husbands (an old psychiatrist and a young, abusive drug dealer), their mother, and their daughters, the one's teenager who abducts the other's toddler (and then returns her, and life goes on). The story is completely preposterous, in both situation and plot, and the cell phones felt way too gimmicky: FAMILY plan, FAMILY narrative. Yet the story was eminently readable, which is to say I read it, even as I was annoyed by it in the very act of reading.

I wonder if I'm missing something. I wonder if I'm incapable of appreciating the sophistication of contemporary fiction. I wonder if I should try to find out more about Antonya Nelson. Maybe not.

A New Blog

2006-09-07T09:39:00.000-04:00

I used to blog every day about a lot of stuff. Now I blog when I feel like it about what I read.