The Sheila Variations

Roger O. Thornhill: "Now, what can a man do with his clothes off for twenty minutes?"

The following essay is about the emotional journey of Cary Grant's suit through North by Northwest.

The essay worked slowly on me. At first I resisted it, maybe it seemed too silly (although there was nothing silly about clothes to the impeccable Grant)? But I was wrong - I figured that out once I succumbed to the essay. It's a keeper. Well worth reading the entire thing.

I loved this bit:

In the suit are a number of subtle tools for Cary. It’s so well cut you can’t tell if he’s even carrying a wallet (turns out he is). Here’s what he’s got in that suit! He goes all the way from New York to Chicago to the face of Mount Rushmore with: a monogrammed book of matches, his wallet and some nickels, a pencil stub, a hanky, a newspaper clipping and his sunglasses — but these are shortly to be demolished when Eva Marie Saint folds him into the upper berth in her compartment. (Really this is a good thing, because Cary Grant in dark glasses looks appallingly GUILTY.) All this stuff fits into the pockets of the most wonderful suit in the world. Does the suit get crushed in the upper berth as his Ray-Bans are smashed? No. Cary keeps his jacket on in the make-out scene that follows. The suit defines him, he’s not going to take off that jacket. I know this feeling.

Beautiful (and surprisingly deep) essay. Well done.

How Alex and I met (by request)

Please realize. This is MY version. She may say something totally different. Although I'll kill her if she leaves out the kumquat. I say it was a gourd. She insists it was a kumquat. We'll leave it at that.

It's an episodic story. And YEARS pass in between encounters. It's truly insane to think of it - and I sometimes actually shiver to imagine that we might not have met. I shiver. And weirdly, with all of our friends in common, what brought us together was our blogs.

Well, and Mitchell, of course. Surprise surprise.

Praise Xenu it all lined up properly, putting us in each other's paths. Oh, and praise Xenu himself, that damned evil warlord, for REALLY bringing us close together. But I'll get to that.

We need to go back 16 years. My God. No. Is that right? Let me check my math. Yup. 16 years.

Sorry. I have just realized that I am actually a withered crone.

1.

I had just moved to Chicago. And Mitchell soon followed. I had very quickly gotten work as an actress in Chicago - and so had Mitchell. He became involved with StreetSigns' production of Right As Rain, about Anne Frank. I eventually was cast in that as well, in its touring company. So almost immediately we were thrust into a brand-new world, meeting a whole batch of new people - many of whom are still dear friends today (cough KATE cough). In 1992, StreetSigns did a production of Lorca's The Public, a bizarre piece of work ... and I thought was brilliantly done by StreetSigns. I still remember some of the staging of it. Derek Goldman (artistic director) is a master adapter (Google him, the guy is a phenom) - and he was always all about excavating the script for theatrical ways to tell the story - not just verbal or literal. Mitchell and David and I went to go see it, to see our new friends in action, and also to see our fellow colleagues at work, even though we weren't in it. And Alex was in it. She had a key part, THE key part, as kind of the emcee, a sort of omnipresent Joel Grey in Cabaret type person. I still remember seeing her in that show, which was the first time I laid eyes on Alex. She wore a blinding white pant suit. She had an air of unbelievable stillness. She watched over the action, quietly. We could only imagine what she was thinking. When she spoke, it was always in a soft voice, but nevertheless totally commanding. She had such focus onstage. I was riveted. Not to the mention the fact that I knew (everyone knew) she was transgendered. To me, at that time, it added such an air of mystery to her (I'm sure she's so sick of that kind of thing, so forgive me, Alex, for bringing it up now ... it's just a first impression kind of thing - and now that i know that she basically sits at home on a nightly basis in ratty pajamas playing with her kittens and talking with her wife Chrisanne about Abraham Lincoln and Bette Davis it seems even silly to mention it. I never even think of it now) ... but at the time, I couldn't help but stare at her, thinking, "Who IS this person??" Not to mention the fact that she was obviously a fucking actress. Girl had chops. She exuded it.

2.

2 may come before 3. I can't remember. I'll start here. Mitchell got a day job as a receptionist in a dentist's office that catered primarily to the gay and lesbian community in Chicago. Michelle and Maureen (Michelle was the dentist, and Maureen was her doctor girlfriend) became huge parts of our lives in Chicago, beloved friends - and I will never, and I mean NEVER, forget that Maureen made a house call - a HOUSE CALL - when I was gravely sick with a fever - to the point of hallucinating - and had no insurance. THAT'S a doctor. Anyway. I loved those two and I miss them both. And I knew, through Mitchell, that Alex was a patient of Michelle's. Mitchell didn't become friends with her immediately (which is shocking, knowing Mitchell's propensity for friendship) but they did become friendly. I never saw Alex at Michelle's office, and had no encounters with her ... but her name was everywhere at the time because of a crazy hit show she was doing, late night ... and she still held a kind of fascination for me. I'm not sure why. She seemed "other" ... by that I mean: I wanted to know her. I remember that feeling. Wanting to know her. But we're still in 1993 here, we didn't actually SPEAK - not really - until 2004. What?? Thank you, Xenu, for making sure it happened!!

3.

My time in Chicago (and for many years after) was taken up with a guy I call "M" on ye olde blog. I've written about him extensively. He's the lunatic who used to crawl through my window at 3 in the morning. Our beginning was no less unconventional. I realize I'm just writing about myself, but whatever. I love writing about myself (as, duh, should be obvious!!!) Anyhoo. I have no idea how ALEX would describe M., although I can imagine. He was a big obnoxious jock-gone-to-seed, a goofball, a self-described "right-wing sexist pig", one of the funniest people I have ever met, and pretty much insane. I also found him almost apocalyptically sexy and found it difficult to carry on a conversation with him in the first 3 months of knowing him. The perfect guy for me! I have to leap ahead now - years later, when Alex and I finally met - and we talked about M. - she was like, "Please. Please. Help me to understand him and help me to understand WHY YOU WERE WITH HIM." He was tough, I'll give him that. But for me, he was magic. And not only that, but I was pretty damaged when he met me. And something about the way he was with me helped me heal. Sounds goofy, but I swear it is the truth. He was never ever impatient with me. EVER. I was used to men being impatient with me. With my damaged-ness. He NEVER was. He accepted it, but he also wanted me to be better. He treated me in an egalitarian manner, and that was totally singular in my experience. It forced me to meet him halfway, and that was awesome. So. There's the M. factor.

Now. There was a show that opened around this time (it is now known as "the show that will never die") - and it was called Hamlet! The Musical. Notice the exclamation point. Very important. It was written by Jeff Richmond (now husband to Tina Fey - and actually, I believe they were dating at the time - M. ran with that crowd) and it was (is) hilarious. It began in a workshop theatre space at Improv Olympic, then moved to a bigger venue on Belmont (selling to soldout shows the entire time) - and finally made it to Navy Pier in a gigantic production - before coming to New York for an off-Broadway run. It was massive. In its first incarnation, M. was cast as Claudius, the conniving uncle ... and Alex was cast as his wife, the conniving Gertrude. At the time of the show (because, again, it's all about me) M. and I weren't seeing each other anymore (although it was a brief respite ... it always was) ... and he was dating someone else. No biggie. Sure, I had a haiku fit about it, but that's to be expected. (Ah, to be in my mid-20s again). But the thought of M. .... big gruff obnoxious M. ... singing and dancing and doing a freakin' box step was more than I could bear. I had to see it. I ended up seeing it probably 5 times - in its first incarnation. The audiences were RIOTOUS. Your stomach hurt at the end of the show. Ann Marie and I went one night (which will be known as "the night of the gourd" forevermore) ... and we STILL laugh about how funny that show was. It almost lost something when it moved to Navy Pier into that huge space ... because to see it in a 99 seat theatre at the 10 o'clock show (2 shows a night on weekends) on a crazy Friday night ... was something else. It was electric! And yes, seeing M. boxstep - in a cape and a CROWN - being all evil and twirling-moustachey - was an image that got me thru many a dark hour.

And there was Alex again. In a glittery mermaid dress, behaving like an absolute retard. She had a vampy number called "Mama Is a Boy's Best Friend", mkay? She is a force of nature onstage, seriously ... the humor that she finds in every moment is almost RUTHLESS and CRUEL and you want to beg for mercy! Just STOP for one goddamn SECOND and let me REST. Her Gertrude - was a Freudian nightmare. Poor Hamlet (played in the original incarnation by Jeff Richmond himself) kept trying to get through the "To be or not to be" speech, only to be interrupted by her knocks on the door.

I didn't know Alex, at this point - but as should be obvious, she had been peripheral for a couple of years now. Our paths had not yet crossed. I had seen her onstage - and that didn't really count ... and I had no inkling that we would one day become fast friends. Not yet.

Let's get back to the night of the gourd. (IT WAS NOT A KUMQUAT.) I actually posted it all out in a Diary Friday - and I just re-read that entry right now and found myself guffawing. I had started seeing Michael (kind of - after our first passionate love affair of all of 6 weeks) ... and he was, you know, 20 years old ... so things were not going well, even though I adored him (and still do.) So Michael blew me off for a date we had had, and I was at my wit's end - so I called Ann Marie and we decided to go see Hamlet! The Musical. I had not seen it yet. I was dying to see M. in action. I decided to send him something backstage - but flowers would not do ... too weird ... so I decided what WOULDN'T be weird, I decided what would be LESS weird - would be to take a little warted-up gourd, and write "Break a leg" on it - and send it backstage. Yes, I considered that to be NOT AS WEIRD AS FLOWERS.

The entire night became about the gourd (see link above for the full panoply of that night, which was epic). And yes, I did send the gourd backstage. All by itself, poor little thing.

I only learn this a bazillion years later when Alex and I have become friends - that she was there, in the cramped co-ed dressing room, when my gourd arrived. This is so insane!! I had put it in a paper bag, so M. would have had to open it up. He pulled out the gourd (Alex remembers it as a kumquat, but she's wrong) and said, in kind of a pleased tone, "Sheila sent me a gourd!" (Again. I am HOWLING with laughter as I type this.)

Alex, who had all kinds of opinions and thoughts about M. (wonderful onstage, kind of annoying off), wondered who was the RETARD who sent him a kumquat? "What kind of asinine bimbo would send this jagoff a kumquat backstage? Honest to GOD, people are assholes." She had all of these opinions about me ... the bimbo who sent the kumquat to the sexist pig sharing her dressing room ... like: there must be something WRONG with that person.

I am shaking with laughter.

Okay. So let's leave the gourd behind.

Years pass again.

4.

I move from Chicago and go to New York. I live there for years. "The show that will never die" continues on. And when it moves to Navy Pier, Mitchell is cast as Polonius. M. is no longer in it - but Alex, in all her Freudian spangled glory, remains. I fly back to Chicago for a vacation and go to see Mitchell in Hamlet! The Musical. I almost feel like this show has now been in my life for a decade. Yes, I am absolutely 100% peripheral ... but it still feels omnipresent. Navy Pier has a plush massive theatre, and the place is packed.

I wait for Mitchell in the palatial lobby afterwards, Lake Michigan gleaming out of the plate glass windows all around. And Mitchell walks out with Alex, who is in a sweatshirt, face scrubbed of makeup, and her arms are crossed over her chest. This is our first meeting. Mitchell introduces us. Alex un-crosses her arms, just long enough to shake my hand, and then crosses them again. I have all of these weird emotions about her - I guess how people feel about stars - it feels like you know them, even though you do not - and so you have an intimate response to a person, even though it is totally unwarranted.

"Hi, nice to meet you. Great show."
"Thanks. Nice to meet you."

Friendly, yes, but a little bit distant and cold. I wouldn't realize until much much later that Alex is actually shy. You would never guess it from her persona onstage. And I'm shy, too. Although you would never guess it from afar, I seem so dominant. So we were two shy people, being awkward, and distant. It just makes me LAUGH to remember it. I want to intervene. I want to lean into the action, from the future, and say, "Okay. Alex? Uncross your arms. Sheila? Stop the hero worship. See this person standing right in front of you? You are going to be FAST FRIENDS ... so cut. the. shit. NOW."

But it wasn't meant to be.

Mitchell and I went off on our way, and Alex went off on hers, and it would be years ... years ... before we would meet again.

5.

October, 2001. The smoking aftermath. Nothing is normal, nothing is even approaching normal.

And in the middle of all of that, I have a dream.

I dream of a nuclear holocaust, which affected only New Jersey and Manhattan. You just knew: It's over. I am going to die. But the bomb had already been dropped - and the sky was a heavy crayon-black. You knew you could not escape, but everyone was trying to anyway.

Everyone was trying to get to the ocean, everyone in Manhattan and in Jersey were trying to get onto the New Jersey turnpike, towards the Atlantic. But there were too many cars. It was like the roads were backed up from Cape May to lower Manhattan. You could not get out.

There was panic. People were running, and screaming, with their hair on fire, their clothes falling off. The bomb had already been dropped, that blackness in the sky was the fallout, and we were trapped - we could not get out.

I was alone in the dream. I was climbing down the cliffs from Jersey Heights down into Hoboken, looking at the blackened smoking skyline of Manhattan and seeing the roads below me, filled with cars, stalled cars as far as the eye could see.

And suddenly - climbing down the cliff with me - was Alex, who was hugely pregnant in my dream. Maybe 8 or 9 months along.

She was not panicked. Not at all. She knew what to do, she took me in hand, she knew a way out. She was on some other plane of thought, entirely.

"We're gonna get to the ocean," she said, as she climbed down the cliff, huge belly in front of her, moving gracefully and certainly. "I know the way."

I do not know why Alex showed up in my dream during that terrible time, I do not know why I would dream about her when I had had so little contact with her up until that point ... but for some reason, in my mind, and perhaps it was because of how caring and wonderful she had been to my friend Mitchell, she would be that person. That person who would know the way out of the nuclear fallout. Carrying new life with her.

I had not seen Alex since that moment in the lobby at Navy Pier, when we said hello to each other in distant guarded manners. Why on earth would she appear as a savior in my dream? I can't explain it. I know that I sensed something in her ... from the beginning. I don't want to make too big a thing out of it, because it ruins the special-ness of it ... but when I think of her, as a person, and who she eventually would be to me, I realize: Of course. Of course she would know the way. And of course, I had sensed it from moment one, when I saw her in that white pant suit as the emcee of The Public. It was there then. I knew it.

It is still odd to me that Alex would appear in my dream, while the smoke still rose from lower Manhattan ... but I choose not to question such things.

It would still be 3 more years before we actually spoke.

6.

Unbeknownst to one another, we both start blogs. Mitchell, however, is the key here. He is the connection. He had, meanwhile, become dear friends with Alex back in Chicago, and she started up her site and I started up mine ... and Mitchell read both ... and somehow he mentioned to Alex one day something about "my friend Sheila's blog". Alex secretly then began to read my site. She knew nothing about me, except that Mitchell loved me (and that's pretty much all I need to know about anyone!) It would not be until many years later that she and I would put our timeline together - who saw whom first, first impressions, paths almost crossed, etc. And it was Mitchell (the gossip!!) who told me, "Alex loves your blog, you know." What?? Alexandra Billings?? From Hamlet The musical? She reads me? What the hell??? This was in 2004. Mitchell has a way, too, of bringing people together. He loves to introduce people from 2 different sections of his life, and watch them hit it off. He is the personification of generaosity. Some people are stingy with their friends ... or they want to HOARD their friendships to themselves. Mitchell is the opposite. If Alex and I hit it off to such a degree that I end up traveling to Vegas with her to see Liza Minelli ... Mitchell is not jealous. Or, he's jealous that we're going to see Liza - but he's not jealous that Alex and I have hit it off. On the contrary. He basically jumps up and down in joy when something like that happens. I love that about Mitchell.

I hear that Alex reads my blog. I freak out. Privately. Mitchell tells me about Alex's blog. I begin to read it obsessively. Neither of us comment on each other's blogs yet.

We are stalking each other. I know she reads me, she knows I read her ... but neither of us break the silence yet. It's hysterical, in retrospect. I mean, we ended up storming the $cientomogy castle together in LA ... and here we are being shy and awkward??

Alex finally emails me. And basically declares her undying love.

I email her back. And declare my undying love.

Huge breakthrough: we begin to comment on each other's sites. It's like our intensity for one another can now be admitted, and is out in the open. I am passionate about Alex and she is passionate about me. I LOVE her. I haven't even met her! (Well, not really.) I haven't even mentioned the gourd yet! But it's like we know all we need to know about the other. We are hooked. That's it. We're friends. We haven't even spoken on the phone yet.

7.

In June of 2004, Alex is going to play Bella, in Victory Garden's production of Ulysses. As they begin rehearsal, Alex is like, "What the hell is going on with James Joyce." Oh - and forgot to mention - Mitchell, by this point, lives with Chrisanne and Alex. Mitchell says to her, "You know, Sheila knows a lot about Joyce - you should call her." Now let's remember. Alex is shy. So am I. Neither of us barge into relationships. We are cautious. Our friendships are particular and deep. We choose well! So Alex emails me, wondering if I could de-brief her on Joyce. I say of course! So we set up a date.

I am strangely nervous.

I am about to talk to Alex for the first time!! But ... it's weird ... I feel like I've known her for over a decade.

I call her. She picks up. There she is. There is her voice. We are both so nervous and so pumped to finally be speaking that all we can do is say stuff like, "What. the HELL. is happening ..." or "What. THE FUCK. is going on???" We go back and forth like that for about 15 minutes. We already love each other. It is so freakin' awesome.

And then she quizzes me relentlessly about Joyce. I answer her questions for over an hour. We go through the script, I have my copy of Ulysses with me - she asks questions, I do my best to explain ... we babble about James Joyce forever. In particular, we talk about the Night Town episode - since that's her scene. What is going on there? What is Joyce doing? What the hell is his point? I am obviously passionate about James Joyce, so the opportunity to talk about him like a maniac (and NOT have people roll their eyes) was really special for me.

I still wish I could have seen her do that part. Damn!!

8.

In October of 2004, my friend Kate marries Tim. I am asked to be in the wedding, and I feel very privileged about it. It is such a joyous occasion. Kate is one of my best friends, and Tim is a prince among men. I will be in Chicago for a week, since I'm wedding-party material ... and I am going to stay with Alex, Chrisanne and Mitchell. Now. It is Alex and Chrisanne's condo. Mitchell lives in the guest bedroom. Alex and Chrisanne are true homebodies ... I think if they COULD get away with never ever leaving the house (and still somehow managing to live their dreams?) they would. So to invite someone in - a stranger - even though beloved by Mitchell - and now Alex and I know each other through our blogs ... I know it's a big deal. I know it's not how they normally behave. And so I feel honored ... to be invited in. I am going to be the best guest ever.

I will never forget my moment of arrival. Ever. I'm probably embarrassing Alex with all of this, but whatevs. She can take it. I fly in to O'Hare. For some reason, that month in 2004, I am as broke as I have ever been. I had already bought the ticket ... and spent literally (LITERALLY) my last 100 bucks on the bridesmaid dress which I bought at Filene's Basement. I was concerned that it made me look like Bea Arthur at a Tony Awards ceremony in 1987 ... but I was assured that it did not. But I was scarily broke. Why? I was working ... I don't know ... I just remember being really afraid of being on vacation and having ZERO money. Of course, once I was there - all I did was sit on the couch with Alex and Mitchell (oh yes and Eric!! Eric was staying with them too! Dammit, i forgot to mention that) ... and watch Joan Crawford movies, and eat the sumptuous gourmet dinners that Chrisanne cooked for us. I spent no money. It was the best vacation I had ever had.

But that's a side note. Let me get back to the moment of arrival.

Now, because I'm a bit more financially solvent, I usually take cabs - especially if I am traveling. But in October of 2004, I couldn't. So I hauled ass, with my huge suitcases and duffel bags, to Chrisanne and Alex's, via the El and then the bus. Insane. I struggle down the sidewalk, I find their condo complex. I ring the buzzer. I am beside myself. Mitchell comes down to get me, and help me with my bags. We talk a mile a minute as we galumph up the stairs. I walk into the apartment, and Alex is standing there - in baggy sweatpants, a sweatshirt, a scrunchy on the top of her head - and we stare at each other for a long weird moment (are we going to just cross our arms at each other? And be polite and distant?) - and then suddenly we find ourselves embracing and jumping up and down, screaming and laughing.

Within 15 minutes we were watching Now Voyager.

That week cemented our friendship forever. We sat out on the porch and talked until 4 o'clock in the morning. We laughed so loudly that neighbors complained. We talked and talked and talked ... about movies and life and Liza (I did my imitation of Liza for her on that porch, for the first time) ... Eric was there, Mitchell was there, Chrisanne was there ... but when they went to bed, or were NOT there, Alex and I were ... and we could not stop talking.

A couple highlights:

-- Alex and I, for some reason, told Eric the entire story of the American Revolution, tag-team style. I have no idea how it happened, but it was absolutely brilliant. We should have a television show on the History Channel. It would be epic.

-- We discovered our shared obsession for all things Xenu. We went nuts, and we have never returned. At one point we had the following exchange. We were discussing the moment when Mr. Tom Crooze was squirted with a water gun on the red carpet. We had differing opinions about it. I thought he had handled himself well. Alex bulldozed over me with her own analysis. And here is what happened (and it cannot be explained - I could never explain why this was so funny, but here goes):
Me: "But what was going on with him at that time ---"
Alex: "It was manipulation AT ITS ZENITH!
Brief pause.
Me: (correcting her) "Xe-NU."

Guys? We laughed for (I am not kidding) 45 minutes. At one point, Alex began to crawl away from me, like a scene in Sybil, on her hands and knees, trying to get away from me. This was when the neighbors complained. We were literally HOWLING. HOWLING TO THE DAMN MOON. I cannot explain why the response "Xe-NU" was that funny -but it fucking was ... and it took us days to recover. Days.

Meanwhile, I got to know Chrisanne. She was someone I had gotten glimpses of from Alex's blog - and so I had a little bit of celebrity worship with her, too. I just wanted her to like me. And approve. And I didn't want to intrude or be a bad guest. All of that.

Chrisanne was not there when I first arrived ... but when she did come back, she was a little bit late, because she had stopped off at a second hand bookstore and couldn't stop herself from buying a couple of books about John and Abigail Adams.

Can you say kindred spirit? I know you can.

Chrisanne deserves her own post entirely - but I will respect her privacy and not go there. Suffice it to say, she's an amazing person - and just being in the presence of the two of them together is being in the presence of love un-hindered, openly expressed, no barriers. It's being with love at its purest. It's quite extraordinary.

And so during that week, I raved about Joan Crawford with Alex, and I talked about people like Patrick Henry and John Jay with Chrisanne.

Frankly, I was in heaven.

No going back.

Put a fork in Sheila. She's done.

I'm friends with Alex for life now. That's it.

Xe-NU.

We would go on to have multiple adventures - involving broken-down cars on freeways, e-meters on Hollywood Boulevard, driving across the desert to see Liza Minelli, watching Alex teach her acting class, meeting up with Emily at the race track (a wonderful memory - I'm so glad we did that), watching Liza with a Z with Mitchell and Alex in an apartment on 73rd Street, getting a private tour of the Elron Hubman Life Exhibit in LA (where we said stuff to our cult tour guide like, "So ... is this the thing that John Travolta is into? Wow!!! Okay - go on!" or "So Elron Hubman was the youngest Eagle Scout in the history of Eagle Scouts? Wow!!!" An unforgettable day.), coming across a dead body moments after he was murdered (good times! Alex hissing at me, as I tiptoed along near the bloody corpse in my platform shoes, "Get the FUCK over here!!") ... and then all of our conversations on the phone ... they're always marathons, hours long, and we have to set them up beforehand. I call her, and Alex always answers the phone like this, just like our first time, "What. the HELL. is going on."

I have no idea, but I love it.

Edvard Munch ...

A gorgeous and haunting post of images.

Edna O'Brien on The Country Girls

A terrific essay by Edna O'Brien about the publication of her first novel The Country Girls. Well worth reading but I'll pull out the two parts I liked especially:

The Country Girls took three weeks, or maybe less, to write. After I brought my sons Carlo and Sasha to the local school in Morden, I came home, sat by the windowsill of their bedroom and wrote and wrote. It was as if I was merely a medium for the words to flow. The emotional crux hinged on Ireland, the country I had left and wanted to leave, but now grieved for, with an inexplicable sorrow.

Images of roads and ditches and bog and bog lake assailed me, as did the voice of my mother, tender or chastising, and even her cough when she lay down at night. In the fields outside, the lonely plaint of cattle, dogs barking and, as I believed, ghosts. All the people I had encountered kept re-emerging with a vividness: Hickey our workman, whom I loved; my father, whom I feared; knackers; publicans; a travelling salesman by the name of Sacco, who sold spectacles and sets of dentures; and the tinkers who rapped on the door demanding money in exchange for mending tin pots. There was the embryo poet, an amateur historian and the blacksmith who claimed to have met the film director John Ford on the streets of Galway and was asked to appear in The Quiet Man, but declined out of filial duty. The lost landscape of childhood.

I'm going through something right now - some developments in my life - that have put a fire under me. I have a deadline. I have to get to work. Reading her essay really bolstered me up.

And then this lovely bit:

Where do words come from, I wondered. I still wonder. Because even without books or rather with only prayer books and bloodstock manuals in our house, I had conceived a love of words and assembled my own little crop of them. I believed they had magical associations and that something amazing could be done with them. I had, of course, the language of the Gospels, which to me seemed and seems perfect, and the marvelling narratives of Irish myths and fables. I learnt everything through Irish, except English itself, and I loved both tongues.

Here is my post on The Country Girls.

The Books: "The Bell Jar" (Sylvia Plath)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath. Like many high school girls, I went through a huge Plath phase when I was about 17. I didn't just read The Bell Jar, Plath's only novel, but I read all the poems, the diary, the letters home to her mother, the posthumously published collection of short stories, everything. Here's a gigantic post I wrote about Plath. Like many authors, I have now had almost a lifelong relationship with Sylvia Plath. I have gone through phases with her. There was the first feverish adolescent phase, when I idolized her, and she seemed to express some of the desolation and disorientation I felt as an adolescent girl. The Bell Jar is often just remembered as the autobiographical novel about her suicide attempt, but to me - in high school - it was about what it was like to be a girl. Now Plath was writing about the much more restrictive 1950s - and what those restrictions did to an unconventional (internally, I mean) female spirit. Plath was a perfectionist, and a high achiever. She did all the things she was supposed to. She was a genius at school, she published her poems, she got scholarships, she really had a wave of huge successes as a young woman. But there is a mania there, which can really be seen when you read her journals (not to mention her letters to her mother, which are truly disturbing). The whole sex thing, and the good girls don't thing ... absolutely trapped her. She knew what was going on, she looked around and saw how the social rules were different for boys, and it is my opinion that it is THAT that caused her to crack up in college, NOT the fact that she didn't get into the writer's workshop she wanted to get into and was forced to spend the summer at home. The Bell Jar makes that pretty clear. The social restrictions were unfair, and Plath questioned them. But life was a howling wilderness, it was pre-sexual revolution, and for someone like Plath - the pressure on being normal was enough to make her go nuts. It really was. She found herself split off from herself. There was the good girl and then ... the other girl. The real girl. Nobody can sustain a split for that long without either one or the other side winning. Plath, instead, cracked, tried to commit suicide and spent a year in a mental institution. So she fell into the own crack in her psyche. That's what The Bell Jar is about.

I have read The Bell Jar many times, and while I was captivated by it in high school, it doesn't really hold up as a whole, when I read it now. Her poems are another story altogether. But I'll get to those when I get to my poetry bookshelf, which, at this rate, should be sometimes in the year 2018. The Bell Jar is a kind of selfconscious work, stilted at times - and there is much that is quite wonderful about it - and there are set-piece scenes that I will remember forever. The entire intern staff getting food poisoning in the hotel. Breaking the thermometer in the hospital and playing with the mercury. Seeing the baby born. And the excerpt below. Not to mention the stunner of a first sentence:

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.

The writing is cold, and mean. Plath was not a "nice" person, and that was one of her biggest problems. Women are supposed to be "nice"! I think Plath found it very freeing in her writing when she stopped putting the pressure on herself to be nice. And when she started ignoring her mother's usually malevolent advice to be "nice". I actually don't think Aurelia Plath was well-intentioned. I think she had a lot of anger and jealousy towards her daughter - she was at the same time living vicariously and also trying to suppress her. Talk about being angry at the restrictions placed on women - I think Aurelia Plath's rage at her OWN life was titanic in nature. But she covered it up with a sickly sweet "nice"ness ... Now I'm seeing her thru Plath's eyes, it is true - but seriously - read her simpering defensive preface to Letters Home, and you'll see what I mean. What I hear in her words is rage. Plath eventually realized that the relationship with her mother was toxic and basically had to move to England, to put an ocean between them.

All that being said, I don't think The Bell Jar holds up very well. It seems to me to be MADE for adolescent girls, who want to be "deep", or who are relishing their own deep-ness. I went through that phase, and The Bell Jar was perfect for me at that time. But as a grownup, I read it and think, "Oh, come now, dear, I know it seems horrible now, but it'll pass. Just go out and get laid, don't worry so much about the rules, you'll be fine, dear ... just CHILLAX." And so the book loses its oomph if you think that our main character is, well, kind of over-reacting.

Again, the poems are completely another story altogether - I'm choosing now to just focus on The Bell Jar.

It is the story of Esther, a college student, who has won a prestigious summer internship at a ladies magazine in New York City. There are only 11 girls or something like that, and they are all put up in a women's hotel. Esther is an over-achiever, a scholarship girl, and is overwhelmed by New York City. She's kind of fragile, in some ways. She has internalized the "good girl" restrictions to such a degree that she has become rigid. But, tellingly enough, the other girl she befriends is a blowsy platinum blonde bombshell named Doreen, who doesn't seem to give a hoot about the world's restrictions, and she does whatever she wants. There's something freeing about being with Doreen. She's not portrayed as a slut, just as a woman of the world ... and Esther is envious, wishes she could be like that. Meanwhile, the Rosenbergs are going to be electrocuted, and Esther starts to obsess about it. Not about the case or the trial ... but about the fact of electrocution and what it must be like. (Later in the book, when she goes through electroshock treatment, she finds out). It upsets her.

The first third of the book takes place in New York. Then Esther goes home, bringing the second section of the book - hoping that she will receive the letter accepting her into the writer's workshop in Boston ... her mother picks her up at the station and tells her that she was rejected. So now the summer yawns before Esther - she has nothing to do, nothing to look forward to ... and she begins to spiral downward. Her mother wants her to take shorthand classes, just so she will have a backup career (until she gets married, of course). Esther begins to lose it. She begins to forget that she has any good qualities, that she can do anything well ... she feels trapped by the suburbs (Plath's evocation of that kind of claustrophobia is pretty damn great) ... and things get so bad that she is finally brought to see a psychiatrist. He recommends electroshock therapy on an outpatient basis. Good idea, bro! The therapy is brutal, handled awkwardly and unsensitively, and Esther comes out of it disoriented and upset. This goes on until she finally can't take it anymore, and tries to commit suicide.

The last third of the book takes place in the mental institution where Esther is in recovery. She's there for a long time. And she actually ends up getting a GOOD doctor, as opposed to the asswipe she saw earlier. This doctor is a woman, and there's something about her that Esther finds deeply encouraging ... not to mention the fact that the doctor seems to understand what the real problem is: the whole good girl/bad girl sex thing ... and basically gets Esther fitted for a diaphragm, and tells her not to worry so much about it. That she can be free, too. Just be safe. As Esther starts to recover, she is allowed "out" on short jaunts, and during one of those jaunts - she decides to lose her virginity. Let's get this thing OVER WITH so I can just MOVE ON. I can't remember now who she chooses - some guy she meets ... and the virginity-loss goes unbelievably badly (like 1 in a thousand badly) and she begins to hemorrhage. She has to go to the hospital. But somehow, in the chaos of all of that, Esther finds herself better. In the head. Her boyfriend from college Buddy comes to visit her in the hospital - and she no longer is tormented by the fact that Buddy seems to want to domesticate her (he says stuff to her, smugly, like, "When we get married, you won't feel like writing poetry anymore...") ... all of that stuff is still going on with Buddy, but Esther just laughs at it now. She doesn't care. Buddy can't "get" her, if she doesn't want to be gotten. She's free. Truly free. That is not to say that she is "back to normal" because that is just the point. "Normal" is too high a bar for some people. And trying to fit into "normalcy" is too much pressure for some people. I'm one of those people. I'm not a wack-job, but I'm not "normal" and I came to terms with that a long time ago. If I tried to "fit in", if I worried about the concerns of others and why don't those same things concern me?? ... I'd be crushed. I still struggle with it ... but I have pretty much won the battle as a whole. Esther is in no way, shape, or form, normal. There's one sentence in the book that suggests Esther has gone on to get married and have a baby - and it totally doesn't work for me. Plath has created a character (let's forget about the autobiographical elements for a minute) who seems like she will NEVER fit in with societal norms, and her journey is such to accept that. So it's inconceivable that she would go on to have some sort of domestic harmony!

One last thing and then I'll get to the excerpt:

I haveThe Bell Jar on tape - read by Frances McDormand - and I HIGHLY recommend it. It was given to me as a gift, years ago, and I remember one day I just put it on and cleaned my whole apartment, listening to it. And sometimes laughing out loud. I had forgotten how funny some of it is! Or - it was revealed to me, by McDormand's line readings, how FUNNY a lot of it is. It's mean humor, all of it is mean observational humor ... but it was great. This was recently, and so yet another level of that book was revealed to me. Like I said - it's a lifelong relationship.

Plath's major work is her poems. As a poet, she ranks among the best of her generation. As a novelist, not so much. It's the poems that really set her free.

And I can't let this post go by without providing a link to Cara Ellison - who read one of my Plath posts in 2006 - and went on a tear. She had never read her before. Cara took obsession to a whole other level, and it's been so fun to watch and read her stuff about Plath.

Here's the excerpt (and a bunch of Plath links right here):

EXCERPT FROM The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath.

"I'm so glad they're going to die."

Hilda arched her cat-limbs in a yawn, buried her head in her arms on the conference table and went back to sleep. A wisp of bilious green straw perched on her brow like a tropical bird.

Bile green. They were promoting it for fall, only Hilda, as usual, was half a year ahead of time. Bile green with black, bile green white white, bile green with nile green, its kissing cousin.

Fashion blurbs, silver and full of nothing, sent up their fishy bubbles in my brain. They surfaced with a hollow pop.

I'm so glad they're going to die.

I cursed the luck that had timed my arrival in the hotel cafeteria to coincide with Hilda's. After a late night I felt too dull to think up the excuse that would take me back to my room for the glove, the handkerchief, the umbrella, the notebook I forgot. My penalty was the long, dead walk from the frosted glass doors of the Amazon to the strawberry-marble slab of our entry on Madison Avenue.

Hilda moved like a mannequin the whole way.

"That's a lovely hat, did you make it?"

I half expected Hilda to turn on me and say, "You sound sick," but she only extended and then retracted her swanny neck.

"Yes."

The night before I'd seen a play where the heroine was possessed by a dybbuk, and when the dybbuk spoke from her mouth its voice sounded so cavernous and deep you couldn't tell whether it was a man or a woman. Well, Hilda's voice sounded just like the voice of that dybbuk.

She stared at her reflection in the glossed shop windows as if to make sure, moment by moment, that she continued to exist. The silence between us was so profound I thought part of it must be my fault.

So I said, "Isn't it awful about the Rosenbergs?"

The Rosenbergs were to be electrocuted late that night.

"Yes!" Hilda said, and at last I felt I had touched a human string in the cat's cradle of her heart. It was only as the two of us waited for the others in the tomblike morning gloom of the conference room that Hilda amplified that Yes of hers.

"It's awful such people should be alive."

She yawned then, and her pale orange mouth opened on a large darkness. Fascinated, I stared at the blind cave behind her face until the two lips met and moved and the dybbuk spoke out of its hiding place, "I'm so glad they're going to die."

"Come on, give us a smile."

I sat on the pink velvet loveseat in Jay Cee's office, holding a paper rose and facing the magazine photographer. I was the last of the twelve to have my picture taken. I had tried concealing myself in the powder room, but it didn't work. Betsy had spied my feet under the doors.

I didn't want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn't know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I'd cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.

This was the last round of photographs before the magazine went to press and we returned to Tulsa or Biloxi or Teaneck or Coos Bay or wherever we'd come from, and we were supposed to be photographed with props to show what we wanted to be.

Betsy held an ear of corn to show she wanted to be a farmer's wife, and Hilda held the bald, faceless head of a hatmaker's dummy to show she wanted to design hats, and Doreen held a gold-embroidered sari to show she wanted to be a social worker in India (she didn't really, she told me, she only wanted to get her hands on a sari).

When they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn't know.

"Oh sure you know," the photographer said.

"She wants," said Jay Cee wittily, "to be everything."

I said I wanted to be a poet.

Then they scouted about for something for me to hold.

Jay Cee suggested a book of poems, but the photographer said no, that was too obvious. It should be something that showed what inspired the poems. Finally Jay Cee unclipped the single, long-stemmed paper rose from her latest hat.

The photographer fiddled with his hot white lights. "Show us how happy it makes you to write a poem."

I stared through the frieze of rubber-plant leaves in Jay Cee's window to the blue sky beyond. A few stagey cloud puffs were traveling from right to left. I fixed my eyes on the largest cloud, as if, when it passed out of sigh, I might have the good luck to pass with it.

I felt it very important to keep the line of my mouth level.

"Give us a smile."

At last, obediently, like the mouth of a ventriloquist's dummy, my own mouth started to quirk up.

"Hey," the photographer protested, with sudden foreboding, "you look like you're going to cry."

I couldn't stop.

I buried my face in the pink velvet facade of Jay Cee's loveseat and with immense relief the salt tears and miserable noises that had been prowling around in me all morning burst out into the room.

When I lifted my head, the photographer had vanished. Jay Cee had vanished as well. I felt limp and betrayed, like the skin shed by a terrible animal. It was a relief to be free of the animal, but it seemed to have taken my spirit with it, and everything else it could lay its paws on.

Don't Bother To Knock; directed by Roy Baker

"I rather think that had she endured, had she come ten years later, maybe it would have been different. But at that time - I mean, she came in at the height of the Hollywood system - and she was not alone feeling debased by the whole thing. It was a common complaint. Like [the way] John Garfield was a terrific actor - yet he did nothing but scream and howl. There was some demeaning aspect to the whole thing. So most of them went with it. They simply adopted the contempt with which they were treated. I think that's what happened. Pretty hard to withstand - a culture of contempt. I think it helped destroy her." -- Arthur Miller on Marilyn Monroe

Seeing Monroe's performance in 1952's Don't Bother to Knock, as Nell, the psychologically shattered and borderline psychotic babysitter in a plush hotel, makes you wonder about all the roads not traveled. It makes you think of her courage in putting up with contemptuous projects like Let's Make Love or The Seven Year Itch (one of the meanest spirited movies she was ever in) ... and wonder what might have happened if she had been allowed to experiment. Now I'm not saying that her work, as it exists, in comedic gems such as Some Like It Hot is somehow lesser, or somehow lacking. I'm already rather annoyed that comedy often takes a backseat to drama with a capital D. It's why Cary Grant was stiffed in the Oscar department. You show me a better performance than what he did in His Girl Friday!

Billy Wilder said this about her (and it rambles a bit - this is a transcription of a conversation he had with Cameron Crowe):

She had a kind of elegant vulgarity about her. That, I think, was very important. And she automatically knew where the joke was. She did not discuss it. She came up for the first rehearsal, and she was absolutely perfect, when she remembered the line. She could do a 3-page dialogue scene perfectly, and then get stuck on a line like, "It's me, Sugar"... But if she showed up, she delivered, and if it took 80 takes, I lived with 80 takes, because the 81st was very good ... She had a feeling for and a fear of the camera. Fright. She was afraid of the camera, and that's why, I think, she muffed some lines. God knows how often. She also loved the camera. Whatever she did, wherever she stood, there was always that thing that comes through. She was not even aware of it.

We all have magic in us. But Marilyn Monroe had movie magic. And, like Wilder said, "...she automatically knew where the joke was." That kind of sensibility cannot be taught. And in the same way that it is rare to find a man as outrageously good-looking as Cary Grant who is also a comedic genius, it's rare to find a bombshell at the level of Marilyn Monroe who can nail jokes in the way she does (even when she is the butt of them)! But she is always the one who comes off smelling like a rose, even in nasty misogynistic pictures like The Seven Year Itch, which tries to make a joke out of her (and women's sexuality, in general). Watch that film and watch how she evades and eludes "capture" - meaning: she somehow, gently, subtly, by being totally innocent and guileless ... evades being the butt of the joke. That takes guts. That takes smarts. Because, believe me, she was being set up in that film. In many of her films, she was being set up.

So I love Marilyn's funniness, it's one of the most spontaneous things about her. But she always yearned to show more of herself, more of what she could do. Nobody wanted to see it. However, Don't Bother to Knock is early Monroe, or relatively early ... her stardom hadn't "hit" yet. So to watch her in this psychological drama (that has elements of a thriller) is astonishing.

Who knows what demons Monroe battled on a daily basis. All I know is that sadness and fear flickers across her face in Don't Bother to Knock in a neverending dance. She seems truly dangerous at times. She never seems to push the emotion, it seems to just happen to her. She (Nell) is not fully control of herself and neither is Marilyn. I don't know if Marilyn was "tapping into" her own wealth of miserable memories, or if it was her talent allowing her the ability to portray such fragility ... it doesn't matter "how" she got there. What matters is the end result. It's a stunning performance, and most often not even mentioned when Marilyn Monroe's career is brought up - which is a shame. She's riveting.

Marilyn Monroe often played either naive breathless girls, easily taken in, a bit dopey, or vaguely trashy showgirls, who somehow have managed to maintain their sweetness. She never played bitter. She never played a wisecracker. That was not her thing. And whatever "experiences" she had had in her life, it had not touched that diamond-bright innocence inside her. Nothing could kill it. You watch her films and it's truly amazing - how it is always there, even in projects that were not worthy of her. But she never played - except in Don't Bother To Knock - a truly damaged woman. I suppose a woman with a body like that and a face like that was made to be a fantasy for audiences and audiences don't really want to see their sex goddesses as damaged. Marilyn knew that better than anyone. She had a love-hate relationship with her beauty. It was her ticket to fame, she knew that, and she was truly grateful for it, and she knew how to use it. She was a master at creating her persona. But it was also what tormented her, and gave her such intense stage fright that she wouldn't come out of her dressing room for sometimes hours, staring at herself in the mirror. What was she looking for? How hard was it for her to drag up that sexy goddess on days when she didn't feel like it? I don't have much sympathy for those who respond to questions like that with, "Oh, boo hoo, cry me a river, she was famous, we all should have such problems!" I think it represents a truly ungenerous and stingy attitude, something that she faced daily, and struggled against. And so she would lock her door, and refuse to come out, terrified of the expectations placed on her, knowing that within her was an abyss of sadness that nobody wanted to see. It had to have been horrible. I can only imagine. I don't have that kind of beauty. I have no idea what that must be like. I think it's indicative that she was often very afraid of directors, who could get impatient with her constant bungling of lines (it is thought that she had undiagnosed dyslexia) ... but absolutely loved the crew, who loved her right back. They were her audience. They were not stingy. She would walk out of her dressing room, all dolled up, after having made everyone wait for hours, and the crew - hanging off their scaffolds - would catcall and whistle, and she ate it up. It was friendly. If you've ever experienced a friendly and appreciative catcall (which is something some people just can't imagine) then you know how nice it can be. It can totally brighten your day. I'm not talking about avoiding a certain block because there's a construction site there and you're fucking sick of having to walk through a goddamn gantlet (who knew?? I sure as hell didn't!), which forces you into a sexualized atmosphere at 9 a.m. when you're just trying to go get a coffee. That's harassment. But some dude calling out at you, "Girl, YOU PRETTY!" like happened to me once ... thank you, sir!! Marilyn was loved by those guys. Because they represented her fan base. Directors loved her too, in spite of themselves - they loved her because, like Billy Wilder said, even if it took 80 takes for her to get a line - if she nailed it on the 81st, it would be the best take ever, and it would be Marilyn Monroe, after all ... so that's why she was paid the big bucks, and that's why you sucked it up and tried not to mind having to wait around for her to get over her stage fright or whatever it was. But the love the crew had for her was simple and unhindered by concerns other than appreciation. Marilyn fed off of them. She played to them.

In Don't Bother to Knock, she plays a resolutely unglamorous part. It's not made into a big deal, like, "Oooh, look at the pretty movie star being plain-ed down" ... It's appropriate for the part. She wears a simple cotton dress, low heels, a little black beret - and when she gets on the elevator for the first time and we see her from behind, her dress is a little bit wrinkled. Like it would be for any woman who had just taken a long subway ride. It's touching. Alex told me last night (she read it in some Photoplay magazine she owns. The woman is insane) that Marilyn had bought the dress herself at a five and dime for the movie. She had seen it, and known that it was Nell's dress. I love the intelligence of that, the intelligence of her choice for the character. It's perfect.

Nell's backstory unfolds slowly. When we first see her come through the revolving doors, we see a pretty woman, who seems unsure. Her step is hesitating. She looks like a raw nerve, everything making an impression on her, like she hasn't been out in public for a long long time (this turns out to be true - but watch how Marilyn is playing it in the first scene, before we know anything about her. That's smart acting. That's building a character.) If we know the rest of Marilyn Monroe's work, we may be forgiven for thinking that Nell is just another one of her naive breathless creations. She meets up with the elevator man, who turns out to be her uncle, who has gotten her a job babysitting for a child of guests in the hotel. The uncle seems solicitous, perhaps overly so. He says, "You won't have any trouble babysitting, will you, Nell?" A bottomless look of sadness battling with fear comes over Marilyn's face. It's startling. This was my first clue that Nell was going to be a little different than Marilyn's other characters. She says, "Of course not. Why would I?" She's not defensive. But unbelievably sad that his question even needs to be asked. It seems to suggest that there might be something ... wrong with her. The movie is full of tiny eloquent moments like that.

Nell is brought into the hotel room, and meets the parents of Bunny, the little girl she will be babysitting. The parents swirl out, leaving simple instructions. Nell reads Bunny a fairy story before she goes to bed. There is something touching here, and also not quite right. Marilyn reads the story in almost a monotone, a dreamy uninflected voice, as though she is trying to imagine herself into the story she is reading. Bunny is riveted.

Once Bunny goes to bed, Nell is left alone in the apartment. She's aimless. When her face is in stasis, and when she is alone, all you see is her sadness. There's no peace on her face. In the introduction to the parents, and in her dealings with her uncle, she tries to keep it together, and put on a social happy expression. But once alone, the mask is off. Marilyn was so rarely without her mask, and so it's amazing to watch.

Another thing that is fascinating about this film, and also singular in Marilyn's career, is that she gets the opportunity to show anger. Rage. I can't think of another film where she truly gets angry, where she asserts herself in that way. It's terrifying.

Meanwhile, another story goes on in the film. Richard Widmark plays Jed, a cynical pilot, who's been dating Lynn, played by Anne Bancroft. Lyn is a lounge singer in the hotel, Jed flies in on the weekends. It's obviously a "friends with benefits" type situation, and Lyn has been okay with that, up until now. She's portrayed by Bancroft as an intelligent and compassionate woman, who is not above having harmless fun, and she's not the type to yearn for domesticity or put the pressure on him to commit. But there are qualities she senses in Jed that disturb her, and she finally has come to the decision that she can't be with him anymore. It's his coldness, the way he treats people ... everything is seen through a cynical snarky lens ... and any act of kindness is assigned a base motive. You can see it in how he treats Eddie, the elevator man, who tries to joke with him. You can see it in the contemptuous way he treats the woman who wants to take their photograph. Richard Widmark (ooomph, he's sexy in this film) only has a couple of specific moments where these qualities can be displayed, and he nails them. We can see Lyn's point. He makes fun of her. She says, "You lack what I need. You lack an understanding heart." They "wrangle" back and forth in the bar of the hotel, and she's pretty certain that she needs to walk away. He's the kind of guy who has a little black book of names, always in his back pocket, but there's something about this Lyn woman that has gotten under his skin. He can't admit it yet. He's too proud. But her calm and reasoned explanation leaves him restless, pissed.

Jed finds himself at loose ends back up in his hotel room, while he can hear the lovely strains of Lyn singing torch songs (or, to say it another way, Anne Bancroft lip syncing) through the radio on the wall, connected to the bar downstairs (a nice omnipresent touch). He pours a drink. He lies on the bed. He throws his black book on the floor. He's cranky. And then he catches a glimpse in the window across the way - of Nell, dressed up in a gown, dancing around. A private moment. It's a haunting image, and Jed is struck dumb. Eventually she notices him, and they begin a conversation across the space in-between. He figures out her room number from the floor plan on the back of the door, and calls her. They sit and talk on the phone, staring at each other from window to window.

Now one of the things that I really love about this film is Richard Widmark's journey through it, and how he treats Nell at first, and then adjusts to the reality before him. Here's the thing: Marilyn was really about 11 years old inside. I think that's one of the reasons why pairing her up with someone like, oh, John Wayne, wouldn't have worked. Wayne required a grown-up. The thing about Marilyn, the captivating and also complicated thing, is that she was a little innocent girl in that sex-bomb of a body. And Richard Widmark's Jed, a guy out for a good time, a guy looking, in this moment anyway, to fuck his loneliness away ... only sees the body at first. But don't we all? I can't judge him for that. It's quite a body. He looks at Nell, and sees ... well ... Marilyn Monroe ... and he thinks: I have hit the jackpot here. There's also a certain passivity in Nell (at first), a certain willingness ... and so Jed, who's not in the mood for a fight, thinks that it will be pretty easy to seduce this one. And that's what he wants right now. No more problems, for God's sake. But over the devastating course of their next couple of scenes, when he invites himself over to her room (not knowing, of course, that it is not her room at all), he begins to realize that something is not right. They kiss, they drink, they flirt ... and something opens up in Nell, something is unleashed. She projects onto him all of her hopes and dreams, which is alarming - and has a kind of Fatal Attraction feel to it. Jed gets that vibe. And instead of ignoring it, and taking what he thinks he deserves anyway (after all, she invited him over - she's in a negligee - she knows what he wants!), he turns her down. And in so doing, becomes a better man. He shows his "understanding heart". He doesn't realize that that is what is happening in the moment, he just knows that seducing this woman would be wrong. Kim Morgan, in her wonderful review of the film, writes:

In real life, most men wouldn't so sensitively resist.

That, to me, is the most moving part of the film: Widmark's growing realization that Nell is sick, and his decision to help her, rather than just add to the hurts she's experienced. I can't think of another film of Marilyn's where she is treated in quite the way that Widmark treats her. She's usually a bombshell, a friendly girlie bombshell, eager, open-eyed, innocent, and yet smokin'. There is never any concern for how she might feel, being treated like a walking-talking blow-up doll. It is assumed that she is on board with it - and, like I said, Marilyn, for the most part, was. She was a movie goddess. We don't want to know that movie goddesses might have contradictory opinions about being ogled over in film after film. Marilyn's power was in strolling through that kind of gantlet and coming out unscathed, and still glowing. She did it in film after film. But in Don't Bother To Knock, she is actually human, and Widmark, at first distracted by the boobs and the face, ends up seeing her as she really is: a damaged sad little girl, trapped in a pin-up model's body. It's incredibly moving to watch that transformation happen in Widmark's face. Marilyn has never been treated so, well, kindly, as she is in this film.

Don't Bother To Knock had a short shooting schedule, and Marilyn actually is not in a hell of a lot of it. It feels like she is, she dominates the film - but the scenes with Widmark and Bancroft take up quite a bit of time as well, and so Marilyn only really shot for 2 weeks. She was so enamored with Anne Bancroft's acting that she would show up on the set to watch Bancroft's scenes being filmed. Bancroft was a "real" actress, and this was at the point in Marilyn's life (with the encouragement of her good friend Shelley Winters) that Marilyn was starting to learn her craft, and taking acting classes at The Actors Studio. Bancroft represented the serious side of the business, the actresses, who got to act, rather than just show their awesome silhouettes, and giggle and simper and wear bathing suits, etc. Marilyn so wanted to be considered a real actress.

And you know, like I said in the beginning, I love her stuff in comedies, musicals, melodramas ... I'm a fan, regardless of the material. She's got "it". What she is able to do in Some Like It Hot is awesome - it's movie magic. And when Marilyn was put in projects like that, projects that were worthy of her talents, she was very happy. She hated some of the stuff she was forced to do (uhm, Let's Make Love, for example), and she hated that she wasn't able, most of the time, to show the full spectrum. Her idols were not other bombshells. Her idols were real actresses.

We are a couple of years away, in Don't Bother to Knock, from Marilyn's famous disappearing act, when she dropped off the face of the earth, and wasn't heard from for a month or so ... until she re-emerged in New York, having moved there to study with Lee Strasberg, and to develop her own projects. She formed a production company. She wanted to do The Brothers Karamazov. It was a hugely rebellious act, and was treated with disdain by the powers-that-be, but it was her way of saying, "I do not like the movies I am being put in. I am taking the reins of my own career." And how was she rewarded? By having a reporter ask her at a press conference, "Do you know how to spell Dostoevsky, Marilyn?"

The guts that woman had. To tolerate such condescension.

And Don't Bother to Knock, although a big flop at the time, and not well-remembered at all, is evidence of the many shades of Marilyn Monroe; it is a nuanced terrifying performance, and her crack-up at the end is shattering to watch. She walks across the hotel lobby, and her arms look stiff and un-usable, she is vaguely unsteady on her feet, as though she is learning to walk all over again, her face is wet with tears, and she blinks up at the lights of the lobby, alarmed, squinting at the glare. She goes down the steps, one step, two step, her body slack and yet also rigid, she cannot move easily. Her psychic pain emanates not just from her face, the ending is not done in closeup, it's a full-body shot ... and her physicality is eloquent. It tells the whole story. Her pain is in her pinky finger, her waist, her calves ... It surges through her and makes it difficult to even walk.

You know who plays a scene that well and with that much specificity and abandon?

A real actress does, that's who.

"Gauntlet" has been changed to "gantlet" throughout. You learn something new every day. Thanks, Kerry!

The Books: "1984" (George Orwell)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

1984, by George Orwell. I covered much of my thoughts about this book in my post yesterday about Animal Farm.

A bit more about Orwell the man (there's so much there): Orwell himself wrote about his youth:

I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts.

His entire life can be seen as a process of "facing" (something that Christopher Hitchens goes into in depth in his book Why Orwell Matters). What does it mean to "face"? To really face? Not just unpleasant facts about outer reality - but unpleasant facts about how you think about things, and where you might be wrong - or just too rigid? I mean, how many people do that? As in: Okay, I can feel I have a bias against such and such ... it's a strong bias ... Can I look at that bias and see where it might be really coming from? Is it just from "the way things are" and I am convinced I am right ... or am I missing something? Am I afraid of something? Am I wrong? Orwell's whole life was about asking such questions about himself. It is truly remarkable. He questioned Empire, racism, Stalinism, Communism, misogyny, anti-Semitism ... he recognized his biases in all of these areas. Some could not be overcome, some were not meant to be overcome, but ALL were "faced" ... and he did it through his writing. A straining questioning curious ruthless sensibility he had. No wonder he intimidates. No wonder he is seen as an enemy by many. Not just for his views (or, I don't think it's just because of his views) ... but because he shames those who refuse to question themselves. He shames the "people of the lie" - those who absolutely refuse to examine themselves, refuse. People have blinders on. People insist that SUCH AND SUCH IS TRUE ... you ask me why it is true? Well, that should be obvious - because I FEEL SO STRONGLY ABOUT IT. Strong feelings are not enough for Orwell. They are just the jumping-off point to ask the tough questions. He is not above having "strong feelings" ... but instead he wonders: Maybe such and such is NOT true ... you ask me why it is not true? Well, that should be obvious ... BECAUSE I feel so strongly about it ... I'm thinking of the raging (loud) homophobic folks - preachers, politicians, whatever - who inevitably are discovered paying some gigolo for gay sex and having a wide stance in a bathroom stall in the midwest somewhere. These people (as far as I know, I don't know them obviously) ... are not questioning themselves. They are not saying: "I have a violent reaction to homosexuals. Where is that coming from? Is it because I REALLY believe that it is wrong? Or is something else going on?" If you really believe it's wrong, that's one thing - I don't respect your position, but I see that it's a sincere belief. But these loudly homophobic anti-gay guys have been revealed, time and time again, as closet cases ... you know, an example of "he doth protest too much". Orwell had his blind-spots, just like everybody else on the planet. He worked at himself. He looked, he examined ... he was not afraid to break with the pack, and he was not afraid to show himself as in process - which I think many people find VERY threatening. I have found it in small doses on my blog - when I write a post that is mainly about questioning or contemplating, or NOT being positional ... overwhelmingly, people show up to tell me what to think, how to react, whatever. The very fact of NOT taking a position, or questioning one's own motives or thoughts ... is seen as contemptible by many. Or - not contemptible. I'm going to stay with the word "threatening". When I see these what seem to be kneejerk reactions to me being in process ... it always makes me think - I don't know ... people get threatened by that. They can't stand it. It makes them nuts.

Sometimes a violent anti-reaction to something is indicative of deeper issues. That's been my experience anyway. Not just in observing others but in observing myself. There have been times in my life (and I'm sure we've all experienced stuff like this) - where I will have a really bad reaction to somebody - like they just rub me the wrong way, they push my buttons ... I find it uncomfortable to be around them, etc. And usually I suffer through the situation, getting annoyed, ranting about it to my friends, writing in my journal, whatever ... But it's happened a couple of times that eventually I have a breakthrough in my thinking about this person. It happened with a woman in an acting class I was in a couple of years ago. She was what I could call an "emotional vampire" ... she was very talented, but her self-deprecating manner was overwhelming and eventually annoying. She would almost bow in front of me, like, "I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy" ... and it made it impossible to have a conversation with her. She latched onto me. She would glance at me during the notes given to her during a scene, seeing how I would respond. It made me so uncomfortable. I could feel she was giving me WAY too much power. Listen, babe, I'm struggling just like you, I'm in the shit just like you ... focus on your own damn self!! She took up a lot of brain space. Like - I thought about her a lot. I bitched about her. I was in a state of unconsciousness - I was just reacting. And I'm not sure what it was that snapped ... but eventually, after all of this, I finally asked myself the question, "Sheila. What is going on with YOU right now? Forget about her - what is happening with YOU?" It was not a comfortable moment. I was so certain that I was "right" in my opinion, I felt harassed by her - she hovered by my side, she over-complimented me, whatever - I felt "right". So to take a step back from that and say, "Wait a second ... why am I so invested in being RIGHT here? What is going on with you??" And I made some realizations. I saw myself in her. (Of course). It's not a part of myself that I am particularly proud of, and it is a part of myself that I work to suppress. The openly insecure person, the one who doesn't feel worthy to be in the same room with tremendously talented successful people, the one who is unable to take a compliment without brushing it off, the one who is so talented - but can't ever own it. Blah blah blah, the list goes on. My anti-reaction to this person was a reaction to those parts of myself that I am ashamed of. That she was just wearing on her sleeve. Jung talks about shadow sides ... the darker side of you, the things you can't admit or won't admit ... This woman was my shadow side. I'm suddenly moved. I'm not sure why. And as I made these realizations, all of my annoyance at her dissolved ... immediately. Never to return again, actually. I was so far removed from being all righteous and annoyed that it was like I was a different person. My birthday was that week, and I was having a huge party at a club in New York. Dear friends, family members, etc. And impulsively - without stopping to examine it - I called her - using the number on the class roster I had in my address book. She answered. When she heard it was me, she did this big "oh my god I can't believe you're calling me" thing - which would have driven me up the freakin' wall a week before - but now, I felt kind towards her. And in being kind towards her, I was being kind to myself. Forgiving of myself. I know that "Oh my God I can't believe you're calling me" feeling. And I invited her and her husband to come to my party. She had three grade-school age kids - so I knew it would be a long-shot that she could come out on a weeknight - but she was so thrilled to be asked - it made me want to cry. I had been withholding something from her, something that was good and kind and soft ... and I was so rewarded when I let go. She basically just wanted to be my friend, for God's sake! She and her husband got a babysitter and came to my party, and they were totally awesome, and we all had the best time. She was terrific! We played ridiculous games. For example, someone had brought a pack of Bubblicious - you know, the kind that has a fortune in the wrapper. And we would do dramatic readings of the fortunes ... or turn them into songs ... we were acting like total retards, and laughing so hard we were crying. It was an awesome night. She and her husband had a BALL. It wasn't the "beginning of a beautiful friendship" - she eventually left that class, and I never saw her again ... but it was a real learning moment for me. The "power of facing unpleasant facts" - not focusing on what was wrong with her, but focusing on what was it in me that was having such a strong negative reaction to her?? And maybe I was a bit "off"? That I was "off" BECAUSE I had such a strong negative reaction to her!

I have strayed far from my topic, but that felt really good to write. And it is relevant, in its way. I have written before about my problem with those who "relish their rightness" and I hope I was clear in my post - that one of my biggest problems with those kinds of people is that it reveals to me my OWN "relishing" of my OWN rightness - and it's a button I don't want pushed ... and I have a hard enough time NOT relishing my rightness ... so I have to actively avoid such people. It's my choice. I do not set myself above or beyond them. It is that I am in process ... and I am trying to NOT be that way anymore. I can certainly go there, and it doesn't mean not having strong opinions ... but there's a huge difference between having a strong opinion and relishing your own rightness. It's a line I walk, and those who do not question their own rightness, who are incapable of seeing that maybe THEY have a little bit of work to do ... I experience them as toxic. Actually toxic.

And so this is one of the main reasons why I find Orwell so, not just refreshing, but exhilarating. He shows me the way. He really does. Bless him!

Hitchens writes about this whole "facing unpleasant facts" thing:

A commissar who realizes that his five-year-plan is off-target and that the people detest him or laugh at him may be said, in a base manner, to be confronting an unpleasant fact. So, for that matter, may a priest with 'doubts'. The reaction of such people to unpleasant facts is rarely self-critical; they do not have the 'power of facing'. Their confrontation with the fact takes the form of evasion; the reaction to the unpleasant discovery is a redoubling of efforts to overcome the obvious. The 'unpleasant facts' that Orwell faced were usually the ones that put his own position or preference to the test.

And that's really the jist of it.

It's an interesting point. Stalinist tyranny required of the Party members to be "self-critical" - meaning: to examine their own thought processes and admit where they were "incorrect". Self-criticisms. But we can see how bogus that really is - that what that brand of "self-criticism" represents is a whittling away of independent thought. And not just independent thought but man's ability to know that he even does think independently. Mikhail Bulgakov has some amazing scenes in The Master and Margarita - where someone realizes, through coercion, double-think, double-speak, and intense psychological pressure, that what they REALLY saw (a huge black cat riding the streetcar, holding onto the rails as though he was a human being) was NOT what they really saw ... they were mistaken. Even though, in their hearts, they KNOW what they saw. (An excerpt from that great book illustrating this point here.) Stalinism required human beings to split themselves. And so with all the damage Stalin wrought - the aftermath of which we still live in today - the psychological damage was the most shattering.

And that's what Orwell addresses so brilliantly in 1984. I have so many favorite sections of this book - but I figured I'd go with the "newspeak" section because it is so chilling. (And highly relevant still.)

Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz (my post about him here) who grew up in Poland - suffering under the Nazis and then under increasingly Stalinist Communism, wrote this about 1984 in 1953:

A few have become acquainted with Orwell's 1984; because it is both difficult to obtain and dangerous to possess, it is known only to certain members of the Inner Party. Orwell fascinates them through his insight into details they know well, and through his use of Swiftian satire. Such a form of writing is forbidden by the New Faith because allegory, by nature manifold in meaning, would trespass beyond the prescriptions of socialist realism and the demands of the censor. Even those who know Orwell only by hearsay are amazed that a writer who never lived in Russia should have so keen a perception into its life.

What a compliment.

EXCERPT FROM 1984, by George Orwell.

"How is the dictionary getting on?" said Winston, raising his voice to overcome the noise.

"Slowly," said Syme. "I'm on the adjectives. It's fascinating."

He had brightened up immediately at the mention of Newspeak. He pushed his pannikin aside, took up his hunk of bread in one delicate hand and his cheese in the other, and leaned across the table so as to be able to speak without shouting.

"The Eleventh Edition is the definitive edition," he said. "We're getting the language into its final shape - the shape it's going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we've finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again. You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We're destroying words - scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the language down to the bone. The Eleventh Edition won't contain a single word that will become obsolete before the year 2050."

He bit hungrily into his bread and swallowed a couple of mouthfuls, then continued speaking, with a sort of pedant's passion. His thin dark face had become animated, his eyes had lost their mocking expression and grown almost dreamy.

"It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take 'good', for instance. If you have a word like 'good', what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well - better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good', what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning, or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words - in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.'s idea originally, of course," he added as an afterthought.

A sort of vapid eagerness flitted across Winston's face at the mention of Big Brother. Nevertheless Syme immediately detected a certain lack of enthusiasm.

"You haven't a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston," he said almost sadly. "Even when you write it you're still thinking in Oldspeak. I've read some of those pieces that you write in the Times occasionally. They're good enough, but they're translations. In your heart you'd prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useful shades of meaning. You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?"

Winston did know that, of course. He smiled sympathetically, he hoped, not trusting himself to speak. Syme bit off another fragment of the dark-colored bread, chewed it briefly, and went on:

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak," he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. "Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050-, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?"

"Except --" began Winston doubtfully, and then stopped.

It had been on the tip of his tongue to say "Except the proles," but he checked himself, not feeling fully certain that this remark was not in some way unorthodox. Syme, however, had divined what he was about to say.

"The proles are not human beings," he said carelessly. "By 2050 - earlier, probably - all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron - they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like 'freedom is slavery' when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."

One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.

La Double Vie de Veronique

Ted writes beautifully about one of my favorite films of all time.

A while back, I wrote a post about it - which, in my editor's cap, I look at and want to re-write ... but whatevs ... here it is. A gorgeous film that has never quite left me.

The Books: "Animal Farm: A Fairy Story" (George Orwell)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Animal Farm: A Fairy Story , by George Orwell.

Nothing like starting off the weekend with a little Orwell. And I am of the mind that we should never forget why Orwell matters ... to borrow a phrase. (That's a wonderful book, by the way. We actually just brought it up yesterday in a conversation over at Jonathan's place. It's one of my favorite kind of blog conversations: it starts out at one place, someone brings something else up, a couple respond to that point, someone chimes in on the original point ... and how did we get from Armond White to Orwell? Who knows. But it's awesome.

Do they still have kids read Animal Farm in 8th grade? That's when I read it first. It's simply told, and if you don't get the allegory - which I probably didn't as an 8th grader - it doesn't really matter - because the story is clear, and tyranny is a concept that at least can be comprehended by an 8th grader. The Iran hostage situation was one of the formative events of my early adolescence - that and the hunger strikes in Belfast (well, and of course the miracle on ice too ... which seemed to encapsulate the entire WORLD at that time) - The hostages and the hunger strikes were the first couple of times that I was really aware of the news as something I could understand and was invested in. I prayed for the hostages. And I prayed for Bobby Sands. I know it sounds stupid, but I did. We were actually in Ireland while the hunger strikes were going on - so it made it even more palpable to me. It made it real. So in junior high I was beginning to understand that much of reality basically sucks for most of the people on the planet, and things happened that were unfair and totally not cool. A sort of elementary revelation to make - but whatever, I was 11. So I'm not saying I read Animal Farm and thought of the Ayatollah Khomeini - I didn't - but my understanding of world events was such that I do remember reading the book and knowing that "the fairy story" part of the title was extremely cynical ... this was no "fairy story" I had ever heard. Animal Farm is SCARY and I knew enough to be scared of it when I read it the first time.

I re-read the book in 2000 ... for the first time since I was an adolescent. This is different from Orwell's other book 1984 which we had to read in 11th grade - and it immediately hooked me in - it was one of those books I had to read that I loved immediately - like The Catcher in the Rye, A Tale of Two Cities (excerpt here), The Great Gatsby (excerpt here). Some of the books we were forced to read (Tess of the D'Urbervilles (excerpt here), Moby-Dick (excerpt here) I hated and saw the reading list as a kind of purgatory. But there were gems that got through - and 1984 was one of them. Also, the book was called 1984 and I read it in 1984 - so there was this whole creepy aspect to it - but also, I remember feeling relieved, like, "Well, Orwell was wrong - we've still got a COUPLE years to go before we have THAT kind of society ..." My American girl response. Because of course that society existed in many nations across the world at that time ... but it didn't exist in MY world, and it was 1984! Phew! Dodged a bullet!

Animal Farm languished on my shelves, however, for decades before I picked it up again. By 2000 I was already into my obsession with Stalin - and so a whole other level of the book revealed itself to me. It almost didn't read as allegory anymore - it almost just felt like journalism. Ha. I know that Trotsky was not, in actuality, a pig like Wilbur ... but all of the events of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath are laid out in no uncertain terms in Animal Farm. It's A to B. The overturning of the old guard. The looting of the farm (like the Bolsheviks looting the Winter Palace). The manifesto released. The intellectual insistence on accuracy of thought. No, you can't think THIS way anymore ... THIS is the correct way to think ... The workings of the farm - and how to pick up where the humans left off. And naturally, there is great waste. The cows are milked by the pigs - and the milk lies in the bucket, and is not distributed and then later when someone goes to get the milk - it's gone, it's been pilfered. Total anarchy.

The system doesn't work at first. And so by sheer force of will Napoleon and Snowball - the two main pigs - begin to re-educate all of the animals. If it doesn't fit with reality, then let's just change the words we say. For example, they come out with commandments at the beginning of the revolution - one of the commandments is: No animal shall sleep in a bed. Later in the book, when the pigs take over the farmhouse - naturally they want to sleep in the beds. But ... oops ... the manifesto - that THEY WROTE - says that No animal shall sleep in a bed. So how to deal with the PAST when it doesn't align with the present? Well, you just change the past then, and you convince everyone that your version of the past is the correct one. "No, no, the commandment said that No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets." A couple of the animals know that that was not really what was said ... but eventually it is agreed upon that it is okay to sleep in a bed as long as it doesn't have sheets.

So there's that kind of obliteration of the past - one of the main weapons in tyranny's arsenal. If you can dominate the past, if you can convince a large group of people to accept your version of the past (and even if they don't accept it - they are afraid to say so) - then you win. You are the alpha dog. Then of course there is Snowball's disappearance - and how he takes on mythical aspects to those left behind. Everything that goes wrong on the farm is blamed on Snowball. A convenient scapegoat, like Trotsky was. If things don't work then Snowball is to blame! He's a saboteur! How convenient, isn't it ... it's almost like it was scripted. If Trotsky hadn't existed, they would have had to invent him. And, essentially, they did. He was a real man, but he was re-invented as Enemy Number One, an omnipresent source of mischief and disaster ... trains crashed. Trotsky was behind it. Not enough grain. Trotsky sabotaged the harvest (even though he wasn't even in Russia at the time. He pulled the strings from abroad). In a way, without Trotsky - it is debatable how successful all of this would have been, at least in terms of dominating and terrorizing the population at large. They NEEDED him. Because for the first 10 years after the Revolution, all hell broke loose. Millions of people died. Millions upon millions. Famine, terror, gulags, exile -

And this is something I've said time and time again in response to those who want to excuse all of this (these are the same people who would NEVER excuse Hitler's actions) because they like the idea of Socialism and so they take the stance of "It was a good idea and who knows what would have happened if Stalin hadn't messed it all up!" (Then, of course, there were those in the West who loved Stalin and were swayed by him - Stalin called them "the useful idiots" - the Beatrice and Stanley Webbs of the world ... bought the lie. Funny thing - in the "witness" sections of the movie Reds, Rebecca West, in her big googly-eyed glasses, said, "You know who was an idiot? Beatrice Webb. She didn't know a thing." Ha! Go, Dame Rebecca!). But to the "it was a good idea messed up by Stalin" folks, I say: No. It's not that it was good idea messed up by Stalin. It was that it was a bad idea in the first place. And actually, I'm not even convinced that there were any "ideas" going on at all in the Russian Revolution - that all of that talk and theory wasn't just a smokescreen for a giant power grab. And Stalin won. That was always the point. (I am thinking now of the "secret book" in 1984 which basically admits that "secret": that it was never about equality, or workers paradise ... it was always about creating an atomized society where one man ruled supreme) You can only think that it was all a good idea if you believe that man himself can change his spots - that he can obliterate his own greed and selfishness. I happen to not believe this. And so I don't think any of that stuff is a good idea, because it doesn't factor in, you know, human nature - which has been in evidence since Eve ate the apple and Cain killed his brother for a totally asinine reason. People are selfish, curious, mischievous, and self-involved. This is and always shall be. (This is my beef, too, with the people who use nostalgia as a political weapon. The people who seem to believe that there was a Golden Age in the past - when everything was BETTER. Yeah, it was better if you were a white straight middle-class male - of course it was ... come on, peeps! Get a grip! Learn your history! There is no mythical perfect past. Maybe things were simpler - yes - but "simpler" often means that much of the ugliness and prejudice and unfairness which does exist was actively repressed. The definitions were "simpler" and sure that might have been comforting - but only if you were in the dominant group. And so no, I am not down with saying that such a time was BETTER. Sorry. You can count me out of your delusion. Thanks. I know this is a post full of links to my own blog but whatever, that is just evidence that I am self-involved and all is right with the world ... It occurs to me that I wrote a bit on this whole "nostalgia" question in my two competing movie reviews: of Pleasantville and Blast From the Past - the two sides of nostalgia, which is not, in and of itself a bad thing - it is when one group wants THEIR version of nostalgia to dominate: OUR version of the good-ness in the past is what everyone should accept! ) So you can blather about "wouldn't it be great if ..." all you want ... it still doesn't change the fact that there is going to be some MORON in your utopia who says, "I don't WANT my house to look like everyone else's ... I want it to be a little bit taller." A benign example, but that's the start of it. (Stephen King shows this in The Stand - excerpt here - with the "new society" created in Colorado ... but ... but ... not everybody cooperates with the rules ... not everybody is on board with the utopia ... and so what is to be done with THOSE folks? Brilliant.)

In the excerpt below, poor little Mollie - the mare - shows us that problem with the mindset, when applied to individuals. She is mainly concerned with the fact that there might be no sugar after the Revolution, and she also doesn't want to have to give up her pretty ribbons in her mane. I mean, she is painted as a ridiculous individual - they're trying to talk about upheaval and social change, and she worries about her sweet tooth. BUT THAT'S THE THING. That's human nature. If you can somehow create a human race who will never say, "But I like sugar - I want to have sugar as a treat every day ..." ... then maybe you can have your perfect society. You can count me out of it, though ... because I'm with Mollie. There are things I WANT, that have nothing to do with the "greater good" ... they are my interests, my individuality expressing itself. Yes, we clump up into packs - human beings are wired that way ... but the individual cannot be crushed. Greed, or ... just the experience of wanting more ... seems to be wired into us. Lots of people just don't LIKE that about the human race and say stuff like, "Wouldn't it be great if people were just satisfied with what they had and didn't want more?" Yeah, well, I think it would be great if I could have a pet centaur - and I would take him on walks past Alexander Hamilton's bust ... and then I would leap on his back and we could fly over the Manhattan skyline singing "Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay" ... but I know that I can't. I don't waste too much time being sad about the fact that centaurs don't exist, and therefore I can't "have" one - because if I did - I think I would have a problem with, you know, reality. And reality is tough enough for me to accept and deal with ... without adding my own fantasy disappointments on top of it. Regardless, this is my view, and it's very hard for some to admit that - people who devoted their lives to defending the Soviet Union - at all costs ... because they believed in the idea. And you can turn yourself inside out, saying: that it was a bastardization of true socialism (which obviously is the case - just talking in terms of the stated ideas now - Orwell makes that point in Animal Farm, with the sort of give and take the animals have with the truth and with their original goals).

In the tyranny of Stalin, what eventually became clear (and Robert Conquest makes the point again and again in his books on Stalin, that the men surrounding Stalin - while brutes and murderers themselves - were not as beyond the pale as Stalin, in terms of conventional morality ... Conquest says, like a refrain: "They didn't understand Stalin yet"), was that the point was not to bring about Socialism. The point, for Stalin, was to never relax the terror ... or, perhaps he would allow it to relax for a couple of years, after big purges - but that would only be a lull, to make people lower their guards - so that he could then re-assert the terror. This kept people on edge. Psychologically, it was devastating. After everyone was dead, all of his comrades, the only guys left around him were the toadies, the sycophantic imbeciles, illiterates - who were brutal enough to do what was necessary and not question why. Kirov is a prime example of one of the higher-ups in the Party who had an independent mind. He and Stalin were good friends and they went way back. But Kirov headed up the Party apparatus in St. Petersburg and Stalin became convinced that it was a kind of fifth column ... and Kirov ... Kirov began to haunt Stalin, haunt his every thought. Kirov was a big deal. A big wig. But he must be made to disappear. And he was. To quote Robert Conquest (from his great book The Great Terror):

This killing [the murder of Kirov] has every right to be called the crime of the century. Over the next four years, hundreds of Soviet citizens, including the most prominent political leaders of the Revolution, were shot for direct responsibility for the assassination, and literally millions of others went to their deaths for complicity in one or another part of the vast conspiracy which allegedly lay behind it. Kirov's death, in fact, was the keystone of the entire edifice of terror and suffering by which Stalin secured his grip on the Soviet peoples.

This is the crazy-making world portrayed in Animal Farm. Orwell is brutal, with no sentimentality. He goes for the jugular. If you go back, back to the world of the 1930s ... the comfortable political labels that we throw around have no meaning. Orwell was a Communist, he fought in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side - he despised imperialism (his experience as a policeman in Burma, under the flag of the British Empire, convinced him of imperialims being a grave sin against humanity) - he believed in freedom of speech, in the artist being able to say what he wanted to say. He believed in democracy. He felt that democracy was the only way to ensure liberty. His word for his beliefs were "Democratic Socialism". Again, there are folks out there today who have such a biased view of the word "Socialism" that they are unable to see the more complex historical realities at work - in the hot and chaotic decade of the 1930s. They write it off. They say stupid things. They are hardened in their understanding of the labels. Things would morph - yet again - after World War II - with the descent of the "Iron Curtain" - but in the 1930s, all of this was up for grabs. It was philosophical in nature - and yet there were those (like Orwell) who were fighting for their "side". Partisans, yes. But Orwell broke with the pack with his anti-Stalinism - Stalin went against everything he believed in, everything he had worked his life for ... If turning a blind eye to Stalin was required of the "Left" (and again, that word has been so changed in its meaning as to be nearly unrecognizable - especially when said by retards like Sean Hannity) ... then Orwell would have no part of it. There were many many awesome writers and thinkers who were in the same boat. Arthur Koestler. Rebecca West. These are giants of the 20th century. Orwell, because of 1984 ... well, it's stupid, but there's a feeling out there that Orwell's book was an endorsement of that kind of tyranny. I mean, people who think such things are nuts, as far as I'm concerned - did they even read the book?? But Orwell is a tough case, man - he's elusive. If you think you have him pinned down, you are wrong. So people get up in arms about him. They love him for his Socialism but then feel betrayed by his anti-Stalinism. They love him for his love of democracy, but then can't stand that he was a Communist. Whatever ... he is indicative of the upheavals of the 1930s, in general.

Here's an excerpt from early on in Animal Farm, a nice little fairy story of the tyranny of the 20th century.

I prefer 1984 to Animal Farm - I think it's a deeper book, more haunting, more of a clearer warning ... it leaves the specific spectre of Stalinism behind (which Animal Farm describes very literally - there is no question of who all the main characters are supposed to be- they each have their correlation in the Russian Revolution story) ... but 1984 goes for a more universal story, and therefore more terrifying. I'm a big Orwell fan. A couple years ago I read a collection of his essays - which range from memories of boarding school life, his time in Burma, a fantastic in-depth 50 page analysis of Charles Dickens (not to be missed!), and his possibly most famous essay about politics and the English language - an eclectic collection. I love the essays.

EXCERPT FROM Animal Farm: A Fairy Story , by George Orwell.

Three nights later old Major died peacefully in his sleep. His body was buried at the foot of the orchard.

This was early in March. During the next three months there was much secret activity. Major's speech had given to the more intelligent animals on the farm a completely new outlook on life. They did not know when the Rebellion predicted by Major would take place, they had no reason for thinking that it would be within their own lifetime, but they saw clearly that it was their duty to prepare for it. The work of teaching and organising the others fell naturally upon the pigs, who were generally recognised as being the cleverest of the animals. Pre-eminent among the pigs were two young boars named Snowball and Napoleon, whom Mr. Jones was breeding up for sale. Napoleon was a large, rather fierce-looking Berkshire boar, the only Berkshire on the farm, not much of a talker, but with a reputation for getting his own way. Snowball was a more vivacious pig than Napoleon, quicker in speech and more inventive, but was not considered to have the same depth of character. All the other male pigs on the farm were porkers. The best known among them was a small fat pig named Squealer, with very round cheeks, twinkling eyes, nimble movements, and a shrill voice. He was a brilliant talker, and when he was arguing some difficult point he had a way of skipping from side to side and whisking his tail which was somehow very persuasive. The others said of Squealer that he could turn black into white.

These three had elaborated old Major's teachings into a complete system of thought, to which they gave the name of Animalism. Several nights a week, after Mr. Jones was asleep, they held secret meetings in the barn and expounded the principles of Animalism to the others. At the beginning they met with much stupidity and apathy. Some of the animals talked of the duty of loyalty to Mr. Jones, whom they referred to as "Master," or made elementary remarks such as "Mr. Jones feeds us. If he were gone, we would starve to death." Others asked such questions as "Why should we care what happens after we are dead?" or "If this Rebellion is to happen anyway, what difference does it make whether we work for it or not?", and the pigs had great difficulty in making them see that this was contrary to the spirit of Animalism. The stupidest questions of all were asked by Mollie, the white mare. The very first question she asked Snowball was: "Will there still be sugar after the Rebellion?"

"No," said Snowball firmly. "We have no means of making sugar on this farm. Besides, you do not need sugar. You will have all the oats and hay you want."

"And shall I still be allowed to wear ribbons in my mane?" asked Mollie.

"Comrade," said Snowball, "those ribbons that you are so devoted to are the badge of slavery. Can you not understand that liberty is worth more than ribbons?"

Mollie agreed, but she did not sound very convinced.

The pigs had an even harder struggle to counteract the lies put about by Moses, the tame raven. Moses, who was Mr. Jones' especial pet, was a spy and a tale-bearer, but he was also a clever talker. He claimed to know of the existence of a mysterious country called Sugarcandy Mountain, to which all animals went when they died. It was situated somewhere up in the sky, a little distance beyond the clouds, Moses said. In Sugarcandy Mountain it was Sunday seven days a week, clover was in season all the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grew on the hedges. The animals hated Moses because he told tales and did no work, but some of them believed in Sugarcandy Mountain, and the pigs had to argue very hard to persuade them that there was no such place.

Their most faithful disciples were the two carthorses, Boxer and Clover. These two had great difficulty in thinking anything out for themselves, but having one accepted the pigs as their teachers, they absorbed everything that they were told, and passed it on to the other animals by simple arguments. They were unfailing in their attendance at the secret meetings in the barn, and led the singing of Beasts of England, with which the meetings always ended.

Now, as it turned out, the Rebellion was achieved much earlier and more easily than anyone had expected. In past years Mr. Jones, although a hard master, had been a capable farmer, but of late he had fallen on evil days. He had become much disheartened after losing money in a lawsuit, and had taken to drinking more than was good for him. For whole days at a time he would lounge in his Windsor chair in the kitchen, reading the newspapers, drinking, and occasionally feeding Moses on crusts of bread soaked in beer. His men were idle and dishonest, the fields were full of weeds, the buildings wanted roofing, the hedges were neglected, and the animals were underfed.

June came and the hay was almost ready for cutting. On Midsummer's Eve, which was a Saturday, Mr. Jones went into Willingdon and got so drunk at the Red Lion that he did not come back till midday on Sunday. The men had milked the cows in the early morning and then had gone out rabbiting, without bothering to feed the animals. When Mr. Jones got back he immediately went to sleep on the drawing-room sofa with the News of the World over his face, so that when evening came, the animals were still unfed. At last they could stand it no longer. One of the cows broke in the door of the store-shed with her horn and all the animals began to help themselves from the bins. It was just then that Mr. Jones woke up. The next moment he and his four men were in the store-shed with whips in their hands, lashing out in all directions. This was more than the hungry animals could bear. With one accord, though nothing of the kind had been planned beforehand, they flung themselves upon their tormentors. Jones and his men suddenly found themselves being butted and kicked from all sides. The situation was quite out of their control. They had never seen animals behave like this before, and this sudden uprising of creatures whom they were used to thrashing and maltreating just as they chose, frightened them almost out of their wits. After only a moment or two they gave up trying to defend themselves and took to their heels. A minute later all five of them were in full flight down the cart-track that led to the main road, with the animals pursuing them in triumph.

Mrs. Jones looked out of the bedroom window, saw what was happening, hurriedly flung a few possessions into a carpet bag, and slipped out of the farm by another way. Moses sprang off his perch and flapped after her, croaking loudly. Meanwhile the animals had chased Jones and his men out on to the road and slammed the five-barred gate behind them. And so, almost before they knew what was happening, the Rebellion had been successfully carried through: Jones was expelled, and the Manor Farm was theirs.

Why I love Kate: 2 reasons

A couple nights ago she texts me from backstage, no preamble, even though we haven't spoken in a couple weeks, and even though our lives are erupting into chaos and change - some good, some bad - LOTS of stuff to talk about and cover ... but she breaks our small silence with this:

Sheila, what's the name of the tv movie w/ scott baio as a gay football player? Girls in dressing room want 2 know. Thought u might know.

Now this particular production she is in is NOT a Moliere, so she is not dressed in an ancien regime manner - but still. I love getting texts from her that are totally unrelated to the fact that she is in the middle of doing a performance and about to go onstage and sing ... she texts me about Scott Baio in a glorified Afterschool Special from the 80s.

I text her back: "I have no idea but Mitchell would know!"

Sadly, Mitchell is strolling through the bazaars of Casablanca at this very moment and so is unable to verify Scott Baio's whereabouts in April of 1986.

Then I get a message from her today, again with no preamble - she probably left it while huddled backstage about to go on and have some big emotional scene:

"I just wanted you to know that the name of the movie in question is The Truth About Alex ... and I thought it was with Ralph Macchio - who I know is part of your celebrity crush thing ... but it was Scott Baio. Okay. Hope you're doing okay. Bye."

The Books: "Wise Blood" (Flannery O'Connor)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Wise Blood, by Flannery O'Connor.

Oh, Flannery, I love thee so. She's another one I came to late - I didn't have to read her in high school or college, which is how I was introduced to most books back then (well, unless it was written by Ellen Emerson White (excerpt here), Norma Johnston (excerpt here), Madeleine L'Engle (excerpt here), or Lucy Maud Montgomery (excerpt here) - THOSE writers I sought out all on my own!) - and so I moved on through my adult life without encountering Flannery. Then Maria and Jean and Brendan collectively found out I hadn't read it and basically (yet again) told me: "YOU HAVE TO READ FLANNERY O'CONNOR!" Maria even took down her copy of Wise Blood, and read a bit of it out loud to me, just to whet my whistle. You know. I come from a family where books are important to us. We love our books. We insist that others read them. We get passionate. We shout. It's all part of the drill. The opening paragraphs of Wise Blood are stunning. They almost dare you not to read further.

Hazel Motes sat at a forward angle on the green plush train seat, looking one minute at the window as if he might want to jump out of it, and the next down the aisle at the other end of the car. The train was racing through tree tops that fell away at intervals and showed the sun standing, very red, on the edge of the farthest woods. Nearer, the plowed fields curved and faded and the few hogs nosing in the furrows looked like large spotted stones. Mrs. Wally Bee Hitchcock, who was facing Motes in this section, said that she thought the early evening like this was the prettiest time of day and she asked him if he didn't think so, too. She was a fat woman with pink collars and cuffs and pear-shaped legs that slanted off the train seat and didn't reach the floor.

He looked at her a second and, without answering, leaned forward and stared down the length of the car again. She turned to see what was back there but all she saw was a child peering around one of the sections and, farther up at the end of the car, the porter opening the closet where the sheets were kept.

"I guess you're going home," she said, turning back to him again. He didn't look, to her, much over twenty, but he had a stiff black broad-brimmed hat on his lap, a hat that an elderly country preacher would wear. His suit was a glaring blue and the price tag was still stapled on the sleeve of it.

The details in those paragraphs open up a world which is often called, in a kind of shorthand, Southern gothic, or "grotesque" - it's an overused term, I think, and can be a distancing technique - a bit condescending - to how powerfully good she really is. Flannery O'Connor herself had some funny things to say about this "grotesque" label:

"Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic."

There's almost a hyper-reality to everything in the book - the dirt, the sunsets, the empty streets, the sense of dread, people are too intense, nobody just sits around and chillaxes. They're all on the edge. Of poverty, sanity, religious hysteria, sexual oblivion - whatever it is. Flannery O'Connor is on the edge. Hazel Motes is one of the great literary creations. Just from that opening sequence you know that something is kind of off about this guy. Even though he's just sitting on a train, can't you sense the violence underneath everything? And her details - the price tag stapled to the arm ... it's like dream logic, hallucinatory. Hazel Motes doesn't believe in Jesus. But everyone keeps telling him he should be a preacher. He so doesn't believe in Jesus that he wants to create a church called "Church Without Christ". He returns to his hometown in Tennessee after the war ... he has no family ... he keeps being mistaken for a preacher (small wonder - the guy's a fanatic - not about Jesus, but his fanaticism could easily be mistaken for evangelical fervor). He meets some people - a blind street preacher and his pre-adolescent (yet sexually knowing) daughter ... and also Enoch Emery - a character whose chapters freak me out. Talk about there being something "off". He's the one with "wise blood". He's 18, 19 years old ... and he's looking for a savior. He begins to have visions - that act as commands ... It's been a while since I read it, but just flipping through the book just now transported me a little bit, like it always does. The book creeps me out, frankly - and I mean that in the best way.

O'Connor herself had a very interesting life. Her literary idols were Hawthorne and Poe - which make total sense when you read her stuff. Hawthorne and Poe were not in vogue at the time (although naturally they were in the canon) - she was writing her stories in the 50s and early 60s. So her stuff is a bit of a throwback, back to the literature of symbolism and terror and Gothic atmosphere. To her, though, those things were real. It wasn't a style so much, as her outlook on life. And that's what her writing feels like to me. It's not a POSE, that writing ... it's her VOICE.

Considering the disease that ravaged her body, it is incredible that she was able to put out so much. Her short stories are among the greatest American short stories ever written.

Oh, and just for fun - here is one of my favorite quotes from Flannery (who, let's remember, came out of the presitigious Iowa Writer's Workshop):

"Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them."

True then, and true now!

Here's an excerpt. I had a hard time picking what I wanted to excerpt - but I decided to go with one of the Enoch sections, because they're just so damn good, and - I find them very frightening as well. It's a completely convincing "voice", as far as I'm concerned. I do not feel a writer here - behind Enoch Emery ... I don't sense O'Connor at all ... He appears to have taken over the narrative all by himself. And God, the bit about the moose in the photograph is genius, I think. Genius.

Great book - If you haven't read it, I will take a page from the book of Maria and Jean and Brendan and scream at you "YOU HAVE TO READ WISE BLOOD!!!"

EXCERPT FROM Wise Blood, by Flannery O'Connor.

Enoch Emery knew now that his life would never be the same again, because the thing that was going to happen to him had started to happen. He had always known that something was going to happen but he hadn't known what. If he had been much given to thought, he might have thought that now was the time for him to justify his daddy's blood, but he didn't think in broad sweeps like that, he thought what he would do next. Sometimes he didn't think, he only wondered; then before long he would find himself doing this or that, like a bird finds itself building a nest when it hasn't actually been planning to.

What was going to happen to him had started to happen when he showed what was in the glass case to Haze Motes. That was a mystery beyond his understanding, but he knew that what was going to be expected of him was something awful. His blood was more sensitive than any other part of him; it wrote doom all through him, except possibly in his brain, and the result was that his tongue, which edged out every few minutes to test his fever blister, knew more than he did.

The first thing that he found himself doing that was not normal was saving his pay. He was saving all of it, except what his landlady came to collect every week and what he had to use to buy something to eat with. Then to his surprise, he found he wasn't eating very much and he was saving that money too. He had a fondness for supermarkets; it was his custom to spend an hour or so in one every afternoon after he left the city park, browsing around among the canned goods and reading the cereal stories. Lately he had been compelled to pick up a few things here and there that would not be bulky in his pockets, and he wondered if this could be the reason he was saving so much money on food. It could have been, but he had the suspicion that saving the money was connected with some larger thing. He had always been given to stealing but he had never saved before.

At the same time, he began cleaning up his room. It was a little green room, or it had once been green, in the attic of an elderly rooming house. There was a mummified look and feel to this residence, but Enoch had never thought before of brightening the part (corresponding to the head) that he lived in. Then he simply found himself doing it.

First, he removed the rug from the floor and hung it out the window. This was a mistake because when he went to pull it back in, there were only a few long strings left with a carpet tack caught in one of them. He imagined that it must have been a very old rug and he decided to handle the rest of the furniture with more care. He washed the bed frame with soap and water and found that under the second layer of dirt, it was pure gold, and this affected him so strongly that he washed the chair. It was a low round chair that bulged around the legs so that it seemed to be in the act of squatting. The gold began to appear with the first touch of water but it disappeared with the second and with a little more and with a little more, the chair sat down as if this were the end of long years of inner struggle. Enoch didn't know if it was for him or against him. He had a nasty impulse to kick it to pieces, but he let it stay there, exactly in the position it had sat down in, because for the time anyway, he was not a foolhardy boy who took chances on the meanings of things. For the time, he knew that what he didn't know was what mattered.

The only other piece of furniture in the room was a washstand. This was built in three parts and stood on bird legs six inches high. The legs had clawed feet that were each one gripped around a small cannon ball. The lowest part was a tabernacle-like cabinet which was meant to contain a slop-jar. Enoch didn't own a slop-jar but he had a certain reverence for the purpose of things and since he didn't have the right thing to put in it, he left it empty. Directly over this place for the treasure, there was a gray marble slab and coming up from behind it was a wooden trellis-work of hearts, scrolls and flowers, extending into a hunched eagle wing on either side, and containing in the middle, just at the level of Enoch's face when he stood in front of it, a small oval mirror. The wooden frame continued again over the mirror and ended in a crowned, horned headpiece, showing that the artist had not lost faith in his work.

As far as Enoch was concerned, this piece had always been the center of the room and the one that most connected him with what he didn't know. More than once after a big supper, he had dreamed of unlocking the cabinet and getting in it and then proceeding to certain rites and mysteries that he had a very vague idea about in the morning. In his cleaning up, his mind was on the washstand from the first, but as was usual with him, he began with the least important thing and worked around and in toward the center where the meaning was. So before he tackled the washstand, he took care of the pictures in the room.

These were three, one belonging to his landlady (who was almost totally blind but moved about by an acute sense of smell) and two of his own. Hers was a brown portrait of a moose standing in a small lake. The look of superiority on this animal's face was so insufferable to Enoch that, if he hadn't been afraid of him, he would have done something about it a long time ago. As it was, he couldn't do anything in his room but what the smug face was watching, not shocked because nothing better could be expected and not amused because nothing was funny. If he had looked all over for one, he couldn't have found a roommate that irritated him more. He kept up a constant stream of inner comment, uncomplimentary to the moose, though when he said anything aloud, he was more guarded. The moose was in a heavy brown frame with leaf designs on it and this added to his weight and his self-satisfied look. Enoch knew the time had come when something had to be done; he didn't know what was going to happen in his room, but when it happened, he didn't want to have the feeling that the moose was running it. The answer came to him fully prepared: he realized with a sudden intuition that taking the frame off him would be equal to taking the clothes off him (although he didn't have on any) and he was right because when he had done it, the animal looked so reduced that Enoch could only snicker and look at him out the corner of his eye.

After this success he turned his attention to the other two pictures. They were over calendars and had been sent him by the Hilltop Funeral Home and the American Rubber Tire Company. One showed a small boy in a pair of Doctor Denton sleepers, kneeling at his bed, saying, "And bless daddy," while the moon looked in at the window. This was Enoch's favorite painting and it hung directly over his bed. The other pictured a lady wearing a rubber tire and it hung directly across the moose on the opposite wall. He left it where it was, pretty certain that the moose only pretended not to see it. Immediately after he finished with the pictures, he went out and bought chintz curtains, a bottle of gilt, and a paint brush with all the money he had saved.

This was a disappointment to him because he had hoped that the money would be for some new clothes for him, and here he saw it going into a set of drapes. He didn't know what the gilt was for until he got home with it; when he got home with it, he sat down in front of the slop-jar cabinet in the washstand, unlocked it, and painted the inside of it with the gilt. Then he realized that the cabinet was to be used FOR something.

Enoch never nagged his blood to tell him a thing until it was ready. He wasn't the kind of boy who grabs at any possibility and runs off, proposing this or that preposterous thing. In a large matter like this, he was always willing to wait for a certainty, and he waited for this one, certain at least that he would know in a few days. Then for about a week his blood was in secret conference with itself every day, only stopping now and then to shout some order at him.

On the following Monday, he was certain when he woke up that today was the day he was going to know on. His blood was rushing around like a woman who cleans up the house after the company has come, and he was surly and rebellious. When he realized that today was the day, he decided not to get up. He didn't want to justify his daddy's blood, he didn't want to be always having to do something that something else wanted him to do, that he didn't know what it was and that was always dangerous.

Witness

A masterpiece is rare. It's like pornography. You know it when you see it.

Witness is a masterpiece. It's a fractal: every part of it replicating the whole, endless repetition - microscopic, telescopic - no matter how close or how far you get - you are still confronted with the same power and emotional truth. It exists in truth and honesty on every level: the crime thriller level, the romance level, the city vs. country level, the rivalry between men level, the atmospheric level (wheat waving, dusk, men hanging over the barn being built) ... and also the small moment-to-moment level (John Book picking up Samuel so that he can see the lineup in the police station - and Book saying, "Big guy!" commenting on his weight. Now: John Book is a big strong HUNK. Samuel is 7 years old. There is no way that picking him up taxes John Book in any way. But it is his way of making Samuel first of all feel comfortable, kind of lightening the mood ... but also, subtextually, letting him know: "You are a big enough boy to handle this situation. You're going to be okay." Harrison Ford plays all of that in that one, "Ooph, you're a big guy!" moment - but the film is full of moments like that!) It exists in the language ("He is going back to his world where he belongs. He knows it .... and you know it, too.") and it exists in the silences (the phenomenal last sequence on the porch ... which apparently had been originally written to be full of words - you know, John Book declaring, 'I will never love a woman like I've loved you ..." and Rachel Lapp declaring, "I love you more than any woman has loved any man ..." etc. ad nauseum exeunt. ... They filmed it a couple of times, and then realized: Nope. You know what? Let's not say ANYTHING. And so they don't. And my God. You could write a novel about what goes on between those two characters in that silent sequence.)

So I think the film is full of indelible moments. The Amish men appearing at the top of the field when Samuel rings the bell for help. The car in the dark barn, lantern gleaming from within. The men at work raising the barn (and the music underneath that scene - go, Maurice Jarre - my post about Jarre here). Rachel sponging herself off. That scene could have been exploitive or gratuitous or soft-core Red Shoe Diaries erotica (not that there's anything wrong with that!). But nope. The way they play it is freakin' ADULT. Her almost challenging gaze. His shame-faced looking away, but then he has to look back. You can feel their hearts beating, you can feel the desire heating up the room. Her nudity is the LEAST erotic thing about that scene. There are SO many good scenes. Let's look at how delicately things are set up in this film - so much so that you don't notice them. John Book has recovered (somewhat) from his wound and Samuel Lapp takes him on a tour of the farm. He shows him the well. ("It goes ... it makes ... it goes ..." so cute) He shows him the silo and tells him how it works. He shows him the trap door. All of this will become crucial in the final scenes, as John Book sneaks around, trying to evade the murderers. But what becomes clear, beautifully, in subsequent viewings - is that it is SAMUEL who showed Book the way. It is SAMUEL who, innocently, gave John Book the tools for survival in those crucial end moments. And so the title of the film takes on even more meaning, more depth. WITNESS. "What's up there?" asks John Book. "Corn," answers Samuel. Notice the grace and simplicity of how that information is imparted. You might not even notice it. A lesser film would have just had John Book figuring out how the silo worked while he was under the gun (which is how so many thrillers operate - they ARE their plots. That's it.) ... but in Witness we are introduced, via Samuel, to "the way things work". And he's excited to show John Book around and to show him the well and also to show him how much he knows. It isn't until later that we realize what Samuel Lapp has done, in that innocent tour.

In all of the great scenes of the film, and all of the piercingly wonderful moments ... it is the scene captured in the screenshot below that is my favorite. It NEVER doesn't work for me. The scene is the linchpin of the Ebert-Siskel review (which you can see here (it makes me really miss Siskel).

The scene is a masterpiece.

I feel confident in saying so because I know it when I see it.

Only a movie star can play a scene like that. And when I say "movie star" I mean people like John Wayne. Humphrey Bogart. John Garfield. Guys who could tell the whole story with no lines, guys who spent the first couple of days of filming cutting their parts down so they would have less and less to say. They knew that it was in action - and in the FACE ... that the story would be told. And what Harrison Ford does in that particular scene with no language is a tour de force. Yes, he is aided by Maurice Jarre's effective score, and by how it is filmed (to quote Siskel: "Hitchcock couldn't have done it better") - but when you get right down to it - it is the actor in the line of fire, it is the actor who has the job of making us believe ... and he can either get it up (to mix a metaphor) or not. Harrison Ford does.

Two photos that wow.

Wow.

Wow.

Senuti Plug

My iTunes library is on a dusty Dell PC that looks like the Millennium Falcon. I have my Mac laptop - but the iTunes Library there is (so far) empty - and I have done all my music stuff on the Dell, mainly because it pre-dates the Mac - but how to get the iTunes from one computer (which has no wireless, no Internet - I've basically kept it around because it has all my damn music on it) to the other.

I wanted to take what was on my iPod and somehow transfer it directly onto my Mac. Anyone who has an iPod knows that it goes the other way around. You make changes on the computer, transfer it over to the iPod, etc.

My iPod was LOCKED, I tell you! I still did what I needed to do on the Millennium Falcon but I yearned to be free! I'm not a big techie, as should be obvious - and frankly I get overwhelmed by technology and sometimes don't even feel that I am asking the right questions. It's the whole "you don't know you don't know it" thing.

So I spoke out loud to two much more savvy friends maybe a month ago, "I just wish that I could transfer what was on my iPod TO my computer ... "

They said, "Try Senuti!" (iTunes backwards, naturally). I finally got around to it last night. You download the application (there are also very handy little videos made for idiots like me who need to SEE what is happening - and have someone go: "See this little doohickey over here on the right hand corner? Click THAT") - and then open up iTunes, but for the love of all that is holy, keep your finger on Control and Option the entire time - and plug in your iPod not letting go of Control and Option, sweet JesusmaryandJoseph, be careful - otherwise you are in danger of "syncing" your iPod up to the computer - which you do not want to do because the iTunes has nothing on it yet!! You'd erase your entire iPod. So I got through all that. Open up the application. There are all my songs. And you just click on each one and click the green "Transfer" button.

It worked. Like a charm.

I was totally impressed with the instructions, the simplicity of the program itself, and how well it has worked. I feel free now.

I'm really into The Puppini Sisters these days, if anyone cares.

I just have this strange relief at having solved the problem - by myself - and it all worked. That almost never happens in my universe. And while I did have a couple of starts and stops - it's all done now.

I can toss the Millennium Falcon into the trash. FINALLY.

** This advertisement for Senuti has been brought to you by me. For free.

The Books: "The Things They Carried' (Tim O'Brien)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien. Fiction? Journalism? Reportage? Memoir? Do we really care? I know I don't. But lots of people seem to reallllllly care about those labels. As we have seen time and time again in the last couple of years with the big-fat-lie "memoir" trend. Here's my view, which has changed over time. I don't like James Frey. I don't like his writing, and I could not stand his persona in interviews. But the shaudenfraud I originally felt with his big huge fall has changed. Now it stands at this:

So James Frey made some shit up. Okay. It was fiction and we thought it was a memoir. (Not to brag or anything, but I called the James Frey thing. I CALLED IT. Way before it came out that the book was made up, I called his phoniness - just from interviews. Didn't believe a word the guy said.) But here, for me, is the question: Was it a good book? Did it move you? Does it make it LESSER because it was made up? Knowing it was made up means it's less good? I did not read the book, full disclosure, although I did read the first chapter and thought it was a piece of shit, and not worth my time. Just not my cup of tea. If I read a memoir it's usually because I am already interested in the topic - like Frank McCourt's, or Joan Didion's stuff - whatever. The addiction memoirs hold very little interest for me - and I wasn't impressed with Frey's writing at all. Just to clarify that I am talking about my taste here. I am under no obligation to think something is good just because the rest of the world thinks it's good, or it's in vogue right now, or whatever.

Fiction can be "truer" than reality - I happen to think that Anne of Green Gables or Ulysses or Cat's Eye or Blood Meridian or A Streetcar Named Desire is SUPERIOR to most non-fiction - FAR superior, and also more true. Or true in a deeper and longer-lasting way. Naturally. Look at how I have chosen to live my life. Makes total sense that I would see things in this light. So give me INVENTION, give me IMAGINATION ... make some shit UP. Go for it. There's some anecdote of a reporter going to interview John Banville (I think) - and she actually had the gall to just ask about the book, and his writing process, and how he worked on it ... She DIDN'T ask him if HE had been molested as a child just like his main character. So so tiresome. Looking for truth only through biography, rather than the merits of the work. John Banville's books seen ONLY as fodder for some salacious interview. Ew. So what does this rant have to do with The Things They Carried? I'm not sure, but it felt really good.

Tim O'Brien was in Vietnam, obviously - and the same guys are featured in most of the stories in The Things They Carried, they're all part of a whole. He calls it a "work of fiction" and much of it reads like fiction - but he also made no bones about it that it's based on truth. He put his own life into words. That's what a writer does. Who cares if it's real? Does it move you? Why is making shit up seen as dishonest? Well, I know why - you can't have people walking around lying all the time - but when you're in the realm of art, making shit up is the name of the game. And whether you upend your own experience, or create from scratch - the question about it all is (or should be, dammit): Is it good? Do you like it? Did it interest you?

To me, The Things They Carried feels almost like a diary, a running sometimes hallucinatory diary, of being in a platoon in Vietnam. Sleep-deprived, hyper-realistic, out of it imagery ... It has some of the horrible poetry of Dispatches, another classic of Vietnam literature - only that is supposed to be seen as "journalism". But if you read Dispatches (excerpt here) it reads sometimes like a novel, or a long tone-poem. So we're in a muddy area here. It's the area that Ryzsard Kapuscinski inhabited (all my posts about him here - journalism as creation, a conjuring act, a snake up out of a basket ... Now this is a very very hot topic, obviously. Can you say Jayson Blair. Can you say Stephen Glass. I know you can. Kapuscinski did NOT always "tell the truth". If you fact-check his books, you're going to get the impression that he was a big fat liar. But he felt no obligation to tell the truth. He was interested in something else: evoking the feeling of tyranny, the little moments that happen in the middle of war, the long stretches of boredom ... He looks at a border gate in Siberia and goes off on a 10 page long tangent about fences and borders, in general. He creates as he goes -that's one of the reasons why his prose is so hypnotic. I think a reader needs to know what he or she is reading, first of all ... Are you going to get frustrated with Dostoevsky because it's fiction and not a true-crime novel? Well, then you really need to look at how you read books, and realize that the problem is not with Dostoevsky, the problem is with you. Fine, don't like Dostoevsky is you don't like him ... but at least know what it is. Kapuscinski's books are historical - reportage - but there are no footnotes, no indices, nothing ... so if you yearn for sources, or back-up quotes - you will not get them. It can be frustrating and there have been times when, yes, I have yearned for an index of some kind - at least a bibliography! But Kapuscinski is under no compulsion to provide ME with what I need. I try to meet him on the ground that HE chooses, because he's an idol of mine. Same with Black Lamb and Grey Falcon - excerpt here - although that one has a massive index). I guess we're in the realm of blurred boundaries ... and that's the realm I like best. My favorite "reportage" is stuff like Robert Kaplan (excerpt here), Rebecca West, Ryzsard Kapusinski, VS Naipaul (excerpt here), all of Solzhenitsyn (excerpt here): highly biased - there's no pretense at all at "objectivity" - what a relief- beautifully written - almost poetic, self-effacting - although all of them do appear in their own books - they are "travelogues" essentially ... although they become highly political when seen in another context.

Tim O'Brien's Vietnam stuff lives in that in-between world. They are short stories, and they could be seen as "just" that (although as I think I have made clear: I hold the attitude that fiction is lesser than non-fiction with contempt) ... but they could also be seen as essays, reportage ... They stand up on their own in multiple genres. No wonder the book struck such a huge chord with people - then and now. It crosses genres, it can't be easily classified. People hooked into it who never read a book like that in their lives. His writing is accessible (terrible word, but applicable) - but also gutsy, fearless, and yes, poetic. People who don't like short stories could get into it because they feel like mini-essays or articles. People who don't like non-fiction could totally lose themselves in the stories told here.

The title story is "The Things They Carried". There's no "plot". I hesitate to even say more about it because if you haven't read it - you really should do yourself a favor and pick it up. The power of it is in experiencing it the first time. O'Brien pulls his vision in to a microscopic level and then pulls it back into a telescope - this is the motion of the entire story, going back and forth - minutia, universal truths ... The platoon troops through the jungle. What are "the things they carried?" Some of it is gear - and O'Brien goes into that in great detail. But of course some of it is NOT gear. Letters from home. Photos of sweethearts. Talismans. And then there are things that have no weight at all. Memories. Hopes. Daydreams.

"The Things They Carried" is a powerful piece of American literature. And it makes the question "But is it true??" that is so in vogue today with similar works seem small and petty. Is Anna Karenina not "true"? Wow. What a limited literal world view. Count me out, thanks. I read a review of The Things They Carried that referred to it as a "testament" - and I think that's pretty darn accurate. I like that a lot.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien.

They carried USO stationery and pencils and pens. They carried Sterno, safety pins, trip flares, signal flares, spools of wire, razor blades, chewing tobacco, liberated joss sticks and statuettes of the smiling Buddha, candles, grease pencils, The Stars and Stripes, fingernail clippers, Psy Ops leaflets, bush hats, bolos, and much more. Twice a week, when the resupply choppers came in, they carried hot chow in green mermite cans and large canvas bags filled with iced beer and soda pop. They carried plastic water containers, each with a two-gallon capacity. Mitchell Sanders carried a set of starched tiger fatigues for special occasions. Henry Dobbins carried Black Flag insecticide. Dave Jensen carried empty sandbags that could be filled at night for added protection. Lee Strunk carried tanning lotion. Some things they carried in common. Taking turns, they carried the big PRC-77 scrambler radio, which weighed 30 pounds with its battery. They shared the weight of memory. They took up what others could no longer bear. Often, they carried each other, the wounded or weak. They carried infections. They carried chess sets, basketballs, Vietnamese-English dictionaries, insignia of rank. Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts, plastic cards imprinted with the Code of Conduct. They carried diseases, among them malaria and dysentery. They carried lice and ringworm and leeches and paddy algae and various rots and molds. They carried the land itself - Vietnam, the place, the soil - a powdery orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces. They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity. They moved like mules. By daylight they took sniper fire, at night they were mortared, but it was not battle, it was just the endless march, village to village, without purpose, nothing won or lost. They marched for the sake of the march. They plodded along slowly, dumbly, leaning forward against the heat, unthinking, all blood and bone, simple grunts, soldiering with their legs, toiling up the hills and down into the paddies and across the rivers and up again and down, just humping, one step and then the next and then another, but no volition, no will, because it was automatic, it was anatomy, and the war was entirely a matter of posture and carriage, the hump was everything, a kind of inertia, a kind of emptiness, a dullness of desire and intellect and conscience and hope and human sensibility. Their principles were in their feet. Their calculations were biological. They had no sense of strategy or mission. They searched the villages without knowing what to look for, not caring, kicking over jars of rice, frisking children and old men, blowing tunnels, sometimes setting fires and sometimes not, then forming up and moving on to the next village, then other villages, where it would always be the same. They carried their own lives. The pressures were enormous. In the heat of early afternoon, they would remove their helmets and flak jackets, walking bare, which was dangerous but which helped ease the strain. They would often discard things along the route of march. Purely for comfort, they would throw away rations, blow their Claymores and grenades, no matter, because by nightfall the resupply choppers would arrive with more of the same, then a day or two later still more, fresh watermelons and crates of ammunition and sunglasses and woolen sweaters - the resources were stunning - sparklers for the Fourth of July, colored eggs for Easter - it was the great American war chest - the fruits of science, the smokestacks, the canneries, the arsenals at Hartford, the Minnesota forests, the machine shops, the vast fields of corn and wheat - they carried like freight trains; they carried it on their backs and shoulders - and for all the ambiguities of Vietnam, all the mysteries and unknowns, there was at least the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry.

Interview with Matt Zoller Seitz

A really nice interview with critic Matt Zoller Seitz who also heads up the fantastic blog House Next Door, which I write for as well. I was lucky enough to meet Matt - we went to a press screening of There Will Be Blood together and then went to a diner and talked for three hours. It was one of those moments where I realized: man. Blogging has changed my life. I do not know this man - this is the first time I am meeting him - but we have none of that social awkwardness, because we have been reading each other for a couple years now, and so all that preliminary stuff is out of the way and we can just get to it. I wrote a bit about that particular bloggers-meeting-phenomenon here.

Matt is a fantastic writer - I can't pick out my favorites (but many of his personal favorites that he lists in the interview are my own) - although I will say that his re-cap of the controversial finale of The Sopranos is magnificent - so it's nice to see him interviewed. He's one of the ones who really gets the confluence of regular media and blogging, especially when it comes to film criticism.

"April hath put a spirit of youth in everything."

Today is (supposedly - at least it's the agreed-upon date) the birthday of William Shakespeare. April 23, 1564.

One of the things I think about when I think about Shakespeare, or one of the things that inevitably comes into my mind, is my late great teacher Doug Moston, who died in 2003 (check out the comments there, too - I don't know any of those people, but they all had worked with Doug at one time or another and found their way to my post. Beautiful). Moston (an awesome awesome teacher) was responsible for getting Shakespeare's first folio (from 1623) published in facsimile. In facsimile, people. So it's basically well-done Xeroxes of the folio's pages. I own it. It's indispensable for actors, I think, but would also be fascinating for anyone interested in Shakespeare in general.

Modern versions of Shakespeare, modern editors ironed out his punctuation, regularizing it, etc. But ... in a lot of cases, the modern editors are looking at these plays as academic texts, works of literature - as opposed to scripts meant for actors to play. If you have the plays in facsimile (ie: how they looked in the first folio) - you can see an even deeper level of Shakespeare's intent as a playwright. Modern editors sometimes have added exclamation points, which I find a bit insulting. An exclamation point is an editorial comment - it says: "Here's how to say this line". It's directorial, mkay? You are saying, with that punctuation: "The emotion behind the line should be THIS." Shakespeare used very little "emotional" punctuation marks in his work. Almost none. He used periods and commas, and that's pretty much it. I don't want some EDITOR to tell me how to play Lady Macbeth.

Let's do a little compare and contrast, shall we?

Awhile back I wrote about what came to be known between me and Michael as the "twixt clock and cock" monologue from Cymbeline which I was working on at the time. I had the folio by me - and I wanted to compare it to the Riverside Shakespeare version - and check it out. Line by line. Fascinating. (And yes - "f" are "s"s in the folio. You get used to it after a while.) Here is how the two stack up, side by side. I'll comment after.

Riverside Shakespeare version:

False to his bed! What is it to be false?
To lie in watch there and to think on him?
To weep 'twixt clock and clock? if sleep charge nature,
To break it with a fearful dream of him
And cry myself awake? that's false to's bed, is it?

Folio version:

Falfe to his Bed? What is it to be falfe?
To lye in watch there, and to thinke on him?
To weepe 'twixt clock and clock? If fleep charge Nature,
To breake it with a fearfull dreame of him
And cry my felfe awake? That's falfe to's bed? Is it?

Let's look at the differences. The first "false to his bed" in the monologue is NOT an exclamation in the folio -although it appears in the Riverside as an exclamation. In the folio it is a QUESTION. Enormous difference, in terms of the playing of it! Also - in terms of the MEANING. What is Imogen DOING here? What is she actually saying?

My interpretation is: when it's a question, she - after reading his letter - is still trying to process what her husband just said to her. She is still in a state of shock, where she must just repeat what she just heard. "False to his bed?" She's stunned, disoriented. She can't believe this has happened. Whereas, with an exclamation mark, like in Riverside - she immediately jumps to the anger and the hurt. She is pissed, and defending herself. "False to his bed!" (Subtext: the NERVE of that guy!)

But no - the folio has it as a question. HUGE difference.

Also, the last line:

In the Riverside, it's all one sentence - with commas added.

"that's false to his bed, is it?"

It's all one thing, one thought. In the folio - it's more choppy. "That's false to his bed? Is it?" Her thought process is still erratic (Olivier was right: the thought is IN THE LINE.) ... so she's asking one question: "That's false to his bed?" Then she realizes she is not done, and questions again: "Is it?"

To me - the folio is MUCH more plain, in terms of emotion. You can feel Imogen's processing of the betrayal - in the punctuation. In the Riverside, it's ironed out a bit - modernized. And so the thought itself has been changed. Tsk tsk tsk.

That's false to his bed? Is it?

I prefer that one.

Let's move on.

In the same way that Shakespeare does not overdo it in terms of exclamation points and emotional punctuation, there are no stage-directions in his plays (as written) except for: Enter and Exeunt. Shakespeare put all of the stage directions INTO the language. Fascinating. If someone needs a torch to see through the darkness, Shakespeare will have the character say something along the lines of, "I can't see. It's too dark. Hand me that torch." The action ("hand me"), the props ("torch"), the motivation ("I can't see"), everything, is all in the language. Modern playwrights would add a stage direction to fill in the blanks: Horatio picks up a torch and squints through the darkness. See the difference? Although it's funny, I knew a playwright once who took the cue from Shakespeare, merely because she had been burned so many times with productions of her plays not being true to her intent. She said, "I have learned that if you want a character to be drinking a cup of coffee during the scene, if you think it is crucial to your plot that your character be drinking coffee - as opposed to tea, or as opposed to not drinking anything at all - you have to have the character say, 'I am going to have a cup of coffee' or something thereabouts. It has to be in the language, not in the stage directions- because then they can't cut it."

Shakespeare's plays, back in the day, were not extensively rehearsed. There wasn't much planning out beforehand. There was a troupe of well-trained actors who could learn things quickly, and knew, basically, how to project their voices, how to fight with swords, and how to play make believe. And because paper was expensive and scarce, they wouldn't be given the whole script - they would only be given their part. Imagine!! So you have to fit it in to the whole, you have to know how to do that. That's where the word "role" comes from: each part was written out on a "roll" of paper, and so you would be handed your "roll" to learn. Moston, as an experiment in classes, would do the same thing ... he would have parts written out on "rolls" and you would have to get up with other actors ... and try to make the scene happen, the way they did back in the day. I mean, people make jokes about Shakespeare's "O! I am slain!"s at the end of sword fights, but if you think about it: that is a stage direction. That is telling the actor (who might not have the whole play at his disposal) Okay. Die now. Those actors at the Globe were pros, man, they knew how to do crap like that ... You see "O I am slain" and you know: Yup. Time to die. Shakespeare doesn't write as a stage direction: Elaborate sword fight. Macbeth eventually dies. Uhm, no. Everything you need to know (as an audience member, and as an actor playing it) is in the language of the play. Marvelous.

The story of the "folio" is an amazing story, and I am so grateful that I studied under Doug Moston, that I worked on Shakespeare, using the folio as opposed to modern versions of the script.

All of this reminds me of something I began on the blog last year and never really followed through with - basically because life happens, and so did Dean Stockwell, and I couldn't keep it going ... but it is on the back burner, as something I would like to continue: read the plays in chronological order - or at least in what is generally agreed-upon to be their chronology - and write posts on each play. I decided to start with Two Gentlemen of Verona - it was either that or Comedy of Errors or the Henrys ... but I went with Two Gents. It was fun - I would like to start that series up again. Many of the plays I have not read in years. There are the old favorites - I read As You Like It and Hamlet for fun, they're plays I dip into all the time - but Richard III? It's been years. Anyway. Just another example of all of my plans and there not being enough time in the damn day.

Came across a very fun article which lets you know only a couple of the phrases (and words) invented (or co-opted) by Shakespeare :

Eaten out of house and home
Pomp and circumstance
Foregone conclusion
Full circle
The makings of
Method in the madness
Neither rhyme nor reason
One fell swoop
Seen better days
It smells to heaven
A sorry sight
A spotless reputation
Strange bedfellows
The world's (my) oyster

And don't forget:

Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

Thanks, Bill, for your greatness. Maybe you were born to it. Maybe you achieved it. Maybe it was thrust upon you. Or maybe Christopher Marlowe wrote all the plays, and you just get all the credit. I doubt it, but who knows. Thanks anyway. And happy birthday.

In honor of the Bard, here is a huge post, made up mostly of excerpts from other people. But first - let's look at what the facsimile looks like, what you will get if you look at the folio:

Awesome!!

I'll start with a wonderful excerpt from the book Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, by Stephen Greenblatt.

Here he discusses Midsummer Night's Dream. One of the cool things about Midsummer is that, of all of his plays, it is the one where scholars have been unable to find a souce for it. Shakespeare did not invent plots, he used stories that were already in existence. But scholars believe that Midsummer may very well be the only one of his plays directly from his imagination.

By 1595, Shakespeare clearly grasped that his career was built on a triumph of the professional London entertainment industry over traditional amateur performances. His great comedy [Midsummer] was a personal celebration of escape as well as of mastery. Escape from what? From tone-deaf plays, like Thomas Preston's A Lamentable Tragedy, Mixed Full of Pleasant Mirth, Containing the Life of Cambises, King of Persia, whose lame title Shakespeare parodied. From coarse language and jog trotting meter and rant pretending to be passion. From amateur actors too featherbrained to remember their lines, too awkward to perform gracefully, too shy to perform energetically, or, worst of all, too puffed up with vanity to perform anything but their own grotesque egotism. The troupe of artisans who perform "Pyramus and Thisbe" -- the weaver Nick Bottom, the bellows-mender Francis Flute, the tinker Tom Snout, the joiner Snug, the tailor Robin Starveling, and their director, the carpenter Peter Quince -- are collectively an anthology of theatrical catastrophes.

The laughter in act 5 of A Midsummer Night's Dream -- and it is one of the most enduringly funny scenes Shakespeare ever wrote -- is built on a sense of superiority in intelligence, training, cultivation, and skill. The audience is invited to join the charmed circle of the upper-class mockers onstage. This mockery proclaimed the young playwright's definitive passage from naivete and homespun amateurism to sophisticated taste and professional skill. But the laughter that the scene solicits is curiously tender and even loving. What saves the scene of ridicule from becoming too painful, what keeps it delicious in fact, is the self-possession of the artisans. In the face of open derision, they are all unflappable. Shakespeare achieved a double effect. On the one hand, he mocked the amateurs, who fail to grasp the most basic theatrical conventions, by which they are to stay in their roles and pretend they cannot see or hear their audience. On the other hand, he conferred an odd, unexpected dignity upon Bottom and his fellows, a dignity that contrasts favorably with the sardonic rudeness of the aristocratic spectators.

Even as he called attention to the distance between himself and the rustic performers, then, Shakespeare doubled back and signaled a current of sympathy and solidarity. [Note from Sheila: It occurs to me that this is what Christopher Guest accomplished in Waiting for Guffman. Anyone who has been an actor has suffered through shows like that one. Most of us have done loads of community theatre. You can scoff at it, and scorn it ... and there's a lot to scorn. But Christopher Guest approaches it with affection. Which is why I think that movie is so wonderful. Yes, we laugh at those people, but we love them too. Okay, back to Will.] As when borrowing from the old morality plays and folk culture, he understood at once that he was doing something quite different and that he owed a debt. The professions he assigned the Athenian artisans were not chosen at random -- Shakespeare's London theatre company depended on joiners and weavers, carpenters and tailors -- and the tragedy they perform, of star-crossed lovers, fatal errors, and suicides, is one in which the playwirght himself was deeply interested. In the period he was writing the "Pyramus and Thisbe" parody, Shakespeare was also writing the strikingly similar Romeo and Juliet; they may well have been on his writing table at the same time. A more defensive artist would have scrubbed harder in an attempt to remove these marks of affinity, but Shakespeare's laughter was not a form of renunciation or concealment. "This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard," Hippolyta comments, to which Theseus replies, "The best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst are no worse if imagination amend them." "It must be your imagination, then, and not theirs," is her rejoinder (5.1.207-10) -- the spectators' imagination and not the players' -- but that is precisely the point: the difference between the professional actor and the amateur actor is not, finally, the crucial consideration. They both rely upon the imagination of the spectators. And, as if to clinch the argument, a moment later, at the preposterous suicide speech of Pyramus --

Approach, ye furies, fell.
O fates, come, come,
Cut thread and thrum,
Quail, crush, conclude and quell
(5.1.273-76)

-- Hippolyta finds herself unaccountably moved: "Beshrew my heart, but I pity the man" (5.1.279).

When in A Midsummer Night's Dream the thirty-year-old Shakespeare, drawing deeply upon his own experiences, thought about his profession, he split the theatre between a magical, virtually nonhuman element, which he associated with the power of the imagination to lift itself away from the constraints of reality, and an all-too-human element, which he associated with the artisans' trades that actually made the material structures -- buildings, platforms, costumes, musical instruments, and the like -- structures that gave the imagination a local habitation and a name. He understood, and he wanted the audience to understand, that the theatre had to have both, both the visionary flight and the solid, ordinary earthiness.

That earthiness was a constituent part of his creative imagination. He never forgot the provincial, everday world from which he came or the ordinary face behind the mask of Arion.

I think that's kind of a beautiful analysis of that play. Mitchell - (a friend who just played Puck in Indiana Rep's production of Midsummer): what say you?

Additionally, I'm going to post a couple of quotes from a book I positively adore: Michael Schmidt's Lives of the Poets.

This was a book recommended to me by the doppelganger, and I tore through it ferociously. If you like poetry, I highly recommend you pick it up. What's really great about this book (a survey of English-language poets, from Richard Rolle of Hampole to Les Murray - quite a wide span of time) - but what's great about it is that Michael Schmidt is not an academic. He has nothing to do with academia. He is a publisher, and a reviewer. He is a poetry fan. He doesn't write from the dusty halls of a university, and he is not trying to impress. He chooses poets he loves, and tells us why he loves them and why he thinks so-and-so is important. It's a wonderful book, really accessible.

How he deals with Shakespeare is especially interesting. Because this book spans so much time, Shakespeare is just another name on a long long long list ... and yet ... of course ... he overshadows pretty much everything. His shadow even goes backwards, so that the poets that came just before him don't stand a chance either. It's very interesting.

In Michael Schmidt's view, the poet whose legacy suffers the most is Ben Jonson. Here is what he has to say about that:

Jonson suffers one irremediable disability: Shakespeare. Alexander Pope underlines the point in his Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1725): "It is ever the nature of parties to be in extremes; and nothing is so probable, as that because Ben Jonson had much the more learning, it was said on the other hand that Shakespeare had none at all; and because Shakespeare had much the most wit and fancy, it was retorted on the other, that Jonson wanted both. Because Shakespeare borrowed nothing, it was said that Ben Jonson borrowed everything."

In the plays the proximity of Shakespeare does Jonson the most harm, though he writes plays so different from his friend's that they seem distinct in kind and period. Part of that difference is Jonson's poetic balance, deliberate artistry: he knows what he wants to say and has the means of saying it, no more or less. He speaks for his age, while Shakespeare speaks for himself. Jonson's art is normative, Shakespeare's radical and exploratory. In Jonson there's structure and gauged variegation, in Shakespeare movement and warmth. Coleridge disliked the "rankness" of Jonson's realism and found no "goodness of heart". He condemned the "absurd rant and ventriloquism" in the tragedy Sejanus,staged by Shakespeare's company at the Globe. At times Jonson's words, unlike Shakespeare's, tend to separate out and stand single, rather than coalesce, as though he had attended to every single word. His mind is busy near the surface. He is thirsty at the lip, not at the throat....

Dryden's criticism is telling at one point: Jonson "weaved" the language "too closely and laboriously" and he "did a little too much Romanise our tongue, leaving the words he translated almost as much Latin as he found them." Dryden ends with the inevitable verdict: "I admire him, but I love Shakespeare."

The following excerpts are from Schmidt's chapter on Shakespeare.

When drama began to be printed, blank verse was an ugly medium. Printers did their best to set it out prettily but got little enough thanks for their labors. Not wholly unconnected with this, some of my predecessors harbored bad feelings about William Shakespeare. About the work and the way it broke upon the world. Not about the man, born in the same year as Marlowe yet somehow seeming his junior an dhis apprentice. The great painter William Turner once said of Thomas Girtin, who died at twenty-seven, "Had Tommy Girtin lived, I should have starved." But Girtin died, Marlowe died; and Turner lived, Shakespeare lived. Laurels are awarded accordingly.

Poems vs. the plays - here's what Schmidt has to say:

The greatest poet of the age -- the greatest poet of all time, for all his corruptions -- inspires in publishers and in other writers a kind of vertigo. For Donald Davie Shakespeare represents "a vast area of the English language and the English imagination which is as it were 'charged', radio-active: a territory where we dare not travel at all often or at all extensively, for fear of being mortally infected, in the sense of being overborne, so that we cease to speak with our own voices and produce only puny echoes of the great voice which long ago took over that whole terrain for its own." This is true of the plays. But had Shakespeare produced only the epyllia, the Sonnets and the occasional poems, we'd have a much more proportioned view of him, smaller in scale than Jonson, Donne, Spencer and Marlowe. The poems are excellent, but it is the language and vision of the plays that dazzles. The slightly absurd scenario of Venus and Adonis, the excesses of Lucree and the unevent brilliance of the Sonnets would not by themselves have changed the world. Venus and Adonis was, it's true, Shakespeare's most successful poem. By the time he died, ten editions had been published, and six followed in the two decades after his death. There was money in that large, bossy, blowsy goddess almost eating alive the pretty lad. Nowadays it is read because it is by Shakespeare. And Lucree, with its cruel eloquence, its harsh tracing of one of the most brutal tales of rape in the classical repertory, while better balanced and constructed, touches unreflectingly on matters that require a less restrained psychology than the poet can provide...

This is a story about poetry, not drama or literal prostitution; the plays I'll leave to someone else. I'm concerned with "the rest", a handful of works that the poet took most seriously; the epyllia Richard Field published, the 154 Sonnets and "The Phoenix and the Turtle". I could add songs from the plays, but once you dip into a drama, where do you stop? A monologue is like an aria, a description can be like a whole pastoral or satire. And which songs are Shakespeare's, which did he pull out of Anon.'s bran tub? Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Lavours Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venic, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Measure for Measure, Cymbeline, A Winter's Tale and The Tempest all include detachable songs, but the plays snared them and that's where they belong.

Shakespeare is so much at the heart -- is the heart -- of this story that even by skirting around him we take his measure. Apart from his genius, Shakespeare had some real advantages. The world for him was new, as it had been for Chaucer. There were the navigators' discoveries, there was the rising power of the monarch, new industry, new learning.

Here Schmidt talks about the mystery hidden within the Sonnets:

The Sonnets have attracted a critical literature second in vastness only to that on Hamlet, and so various that at times it seems the critics are discussing works entirely unrelated. They contain a mystery, and the critic-as-sleuth is much in evidence. Unlike sonnets by his contemporaries, none of these poems has a traced "source" in Italian or elsewhere; most seem to emerge from an actual occasion, an occasion not concealed, yet sufficiently clouded to make it impossible to say for sure what or whom it refers to. Setting these veiled occasions side by side can yield a diversity of plots: a Dark Lady, a Young Man, now noble, now common, now chaste, now desired, possessed, and lost. All we can say for sure is that desire waxes and wanes, time passes. Here certainly, the critic says, are hidden meanings; and where meanings are hidden, a key is hidden too. Only, Shakespeare is a subtle twister. Each sleuth-critic finds a key, and each finds a different and partial treasure. A.L. Rowse found his key, affirming that Shakespeare's mistress was the poet Emilia Lanyer (1569 - 1645), illegitimate daughter of an Italian royal musician and also an intimate of the astrologer Simon Forman, who gives a brief picture of a brave, cunning operator. Her 1611 volume of poem includes ten dediocations and cleverly celebrates the Dowager Countess of Cumberland, the poet's particular quarry, in company with Christ and biblical heroines. The words she attributes to Eve are the first clear glimmer of English feminism in verse. Eve may -- almost innocently -- have handed Adam the apple, but Adam's sons crucified, in the bright light of day and reason, Jesus Christ. "This sin of yours hath no excuse, or end."

There is a further mystery: Who is "the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets Mr. W.H." to whom the poet (or the publisher?) wishes "all happiness and that eternity promised by our ever-living poet"? The T.T. who signs the dedication is Thomas Thorpe, publisher-printer in 1609 of the poems: W.H. may have been his friend, who procured the manuscipt, or Shakespeare's lover, or a common acquaintaince - William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke? Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton (dedicatee of the two epyllia)? William Hervey, Southampton's stepfather, getting the poet to encourage his stepson to marry? Much passionate energy is expended on a riddle without a definitive answer. Thomas Thorpe was a mischievous printer. I suspect he knew what he was doing: no title page in history has been more pored over.

You can tell Schmidt is a publisher, right?

Here's more on the Sonnets:

There is not a linear plot to the sequence of the sonnets. Ther are "runs", but they break off; other "runs" begin. Is it a series of sequences, or a miscellany of them? Some editors reorder the poems without success. Sonnets 1 - 126 are addressed to a young man or men; the remainder to a Dark (-haired) Lady. There may be a triangle (or two): the beloveds perhaps have a relationship as well. The poems are charged with passionate ambiguities.

Those who read the poems as a sonnet sequence were for a long while baffled. The Sonnets were neglected, or virtually so, until 1780, when they were dusted down and reedited. They did not immediately appeal, but gradually, during the 19th century, they caught fire -- fitfully, like wet kindling. Wordsworth, Keaths, Hazlitt, and Landor failed to appreciate them. Those who love them properly are fewer than those who enjoy them. Those who love them properly are fewer than those who enjoy arguing about them. W.H. Auden argues (credibly) that "he wrote them ... as one writes a diary, for himself alone, with no thought of a public." T.S. Eliot suggests that like Hamlet they are "full of some stuff that the writer could not drag to light, contemplate, or manipulate into art. And when we search for this feeling, we find it, as in the sonnets, very difficult to localise." Now the public clambers over them, prurient, with several dozen authoritative guides.

And now (you can sense reluctantly) Schmidt talks about the plays.

Drama could be profitable: this discovery coincided with "the coming into the field of the first pupils of the new grammar schools of Edward VI", men who did not resent or distrust commerce and entrepreneurship. A new class of "mental adventurers", the classically educated sons of merchants, made the running. Marlowe was the son of a cobbler, Shakespeare of a prosperous glove maker of Stratford-on-Avon, where the poet was born in 1564. Both were provincials, one educated at the grammar school at Stratford, the other at King's School, Canterbury. They were harbingers of the social change that would culminate in the Commonwealth.

One of Shakespeare's advantages was an apparent disadvantage. He was not university-trained. "When Shakespeare attempts to be learned like Marlowe, he is not very clever." That is part of the problem with his epyllia. But Ford Madox Ford reminds us that he had "another world to which he could retire; because of that he was a greater poet than either Jonson or Marlowe, whose minds were limited by their university-training to find illustrations, telles quelles, from illustrations already used in the Greek or Latin classics. It was the difference between founding a drawing on a lay figure and drawing or painting from a keen and delighting memory."

Sidney advises: "Look in thy heart and write." In the Sonnets, Shakespeare takes Sidney's counsel without the platonizing the great courtier intended. The heart he looks into is singularly complex and troubled, and the poems he writes from this impure "I" are as full of life as the plays.

I'll let Puck's words that end Midsummer close this post. They seem appropriate:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

The Books: "Going After Cacciato" (Tim O'Brien)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

Going After Cacciato, by Tim O'Brien.

Jean was the one who turned me on to Tim O'Brien - or, should I say, she demanded in no uncertain terms that I read Going After Cacciato and The Things They Carried. She basically screamed in my face, "YOU HAVE TO READ THIS!" My dad loves those books, too. Actually, come to think of it, Going After Cacciato is akin to Catch-22 in the collective O'Malley Book Shelf: Everyone - cousins, aunts, uncles, siblings - everyone has read Catch-22 and everyone loves it. God forbid an O'Malley would read Catch-22 and say, "I found the book kind of ... meh." We would not know how to handle such a person. We would wonder if they were adopted. Reading Catch-22 is an O'Malley rite of passage - and even if you don't FEEL like reading it, you had best read it - so that you at least can pick up on the jokes at Thanksgiving, or the references thrown around to Major Major Major Major. You'll be in the dark if you don't read it! Anyway, Going After Cacciato isn't quite as important to the O'Malleys as a whole, but it is close.

Ironically, I think Jean came to Tim O'Brien outside the family circle - I think she had to read it for a class in college - and she went apeshit for him. Just nuts. So naturally I had to pick up the books as well. I'm starting with Going After Cacciato because, in its own way, The Things They Carried knocked me even more on my ass and I feel like I need to sneak up on it.

Going After Cacciato won the National Book Award in 1979 and is now considered a classic of Vietnam War literature. Private Cacciato, who appears in the book almost as a shadow, a nonentity, puts down his rifle and walks away. But he doesn't return. He vanishes into the jungle. Into ... where did he go? The book blends fantasy and reality, daydreaming and nightmares ... sometimes we aren't sure if we are actually seeing what Cacciato is doing (he's going to walk to Paris, going west, from Vietnam ... okay, so that's a long way ...) or if we are seeing what his buddies in the platoon are imagining him doing. Cacciato takes on almost mythical proportions. His journey becomes something they all invest in, they live it vicariously - even though ... it's not like Cacciato sends postcards, saying, "Hey guys - made it to Tibet! Wish you were here!" No. Cacciato vanishes. And so he becomes the symbol on which everyone can project their longings, their hopes, fears ... He is more important not there than he was when he was there. Paul Berlin, the lead character (oh my god, i love him so much) "goes after Cacciato" ... but as you read the book, it becomes hallucinatory at points. I think it's wonderful writing ... Most of the men are sleep-deprived, they've smoked a bunch of weed, they're disoriented, and exhausted. Sometimes things get un-real, or hyper-real, when you are in that state. The book reads like that, at times. Almost overly clear ... and you wonder: Is this a dream? Or is this really happening? Are they really spending Christmas in Tehran, as they "go after Cacciato"? Or ...

Tim O'Brien is a wonderful writer. He rips your heart out. He doesn't overdo anything - and don't even get me started on The Things They Carried ... he dives into the details, the sensory details of the experience - the mud, the rain, the whites of eyeballs, the cigarette smoke, whatever ... His writing to me sounds like a voice. At least in Going After Cacciato. Wait - let me edit that thought. Here is how the book opens. It's a "voice". You can totally hear it:

It was a bad time. Billy Boy Watkins was dead, and so was Frenchie Tucker. Billy Boy had died of fright, scared to death on the field of battle, and Frenchie Tucker had been shot through the nose. Bernie Lynn and Lieutenant Sidney Martin had died in tunnels. Pederson was dead and Rudy Chassler was dead. Buff was dead. Ready Mix was dead. They were all among the dead. The rain fed fungus that grew in the men's boots and socks, and their socks rotted, and their feet turned white and soft so that the skin could be scraped off with a fingernail, and Stink Harris woke up screaming one night with a leech on his tongue. When it was not raining, a low mist moved across the paddies, blending the elements into a single gray element, and the war was cold and pasty and rotten. Lieutenant Corson, who came to replace Lieutenant Sidney Martin, contracted the dysentery. The tripflares were useless. The ammunition corroded and the foxholes filled with mud and water during the nights, and in the mornings there was always the next village, and the war was always the same. The monsoons were part of the war. In early September Vaught caught an infection. He'd been showing Oscar Johnson the sharp edge on his bayonet, drawing it swiftly across his forearm to peel off a layer of mushy skin. "Like a Gillette Blue Blade," Vaught had said proudly. There was no blood, but in two days the bacteria soaked in and the arm turned yellow, so they bundled him up and called in a dustoff, and Vaught left the war. He never came back. Later they had a letter from him that described Japan as smoky and full of slopes, but in the enclosed snapshot Vaught looked happy enough, posing with two sightly nurses, a wine bottle rising from between his thighs. It was a shock to learn he'd lost the arm. Soon afterward Ben Nystrom shot himself through the foot, but he did not die, and he wrote no letters. These were all things to joke about. The rain, too. And the cold. Oscar Johnson said it made him think of Detroit in the month of May. "Lootin' weather," he liked to say. "The dark an' gloom, just right for rape an' lootin'." Then someone would say that Oscar had a swell imagination for a darkie.

That was one of the jokes. There was a joke about Oscar. There were many jokes about Billy Boy Watkins, the way he'd collapsed of fright on the field of battle. Another joke was about the lieutenant's dysentery, and another was about Paul Berlin's purple biles. There were jokes about the postcard pictures of Christ that Jim Pederson used to carry, and Stink's ringworm, and the way Buff's helmet filled with life after death. Some of the jokes were about Cacciato. Dumb as a bullet, Stink said. Dumb as a month-old oyster fart, said Harold Murphy.

In October, near the end of the month, Cacciato left the war.

So that's the voice. It's weary, it's specific, it's over it ... and then, there are moments of high philosophy, a sweeping sense of spiritual truth, of Man being with Himself ... an acute awareness of what it is to be alive.

The excerpt I chose today has Paul Berlin going through a night-watch. He's tired, so tired that he's not sure what he's seeing is real. And time appears to have literally stood still. Cacciato has already left, which changes everything in the platoon. Everyone gets disoriented. Especially because there is never a word from him again. Where did he go? Everyone's mind becomes unhinged, as they follow Cacciato.

It's a great American book.

EXCERPT FROM Going After Cacciato, by Tim O'Brien.

Spec Four Paul Berlin tilted his wristwatch to catch moonlight. Twelve-twenty now - the incredible slowness with which time passed. Incredible, too, the tricks his fear did with time.

He wound the watch as tight as it would go. Facing east, out to sea, he counted to sixty very slowly, breathing with each count, and when he was done he looked at the watch again. Still twelve-twenty. He held it to his ear. The ticking was loud, brittle-sounding. The second hand made its infinite sweep.

Maybe it was the time of night that created the distortions. Middle-hour guard, it was a bad time. First-hour guard was better; the safest time, and surest, and once it ended you could sleep the night through. Or last-hour guard. Last guard was all right, too, because there was the expectation of dawn coming upon the sea, and you could watch the water turn to color as if paint had been poured into it at the horizon, and the pretty colors helped sustain pretty thoughts.

Sure, it was the hour. Things shimmered silver in the moonlight, the sea and the coils of wire below the tower, the sand winding along the beach. The night was moving now. He tried not to look at it, but it was true - the night moved in waves, fluttering. The grasses inland moved, and the far trees. Middle-hour guard, it was a bad time for keeping watch.

Kneeling, he lit a cigarette, cupping it in his hand to hide the glow, then he stood and leaned against the sandbagged wall and looked down on the sea. The sea helped. It protected the back and gave a sense of distance from the war, a warm washing feeling, and a feeling of connection to distant lands. His mind worked that way. Sometimes, during the hot afternoons beneath the tower, he would look out to sea and imagine using it as a means of escape - stocking Oscar's raft with plenty of rations and foul-weather gear and drinking water, then shoving out through the first heavy breakers, then hoisting up a poncho as a sail, then lying back and letting the winds and currents carry him away - to Samoa, maybe, or to some hidden isle in the South Pacific, or to Hawaii, or maybe all the way home. Pretending. It wasn't dreaming, it wasn't craziness. Just a way of passing time, which seemed never to pass.

He could make out the dim outlines of Oscar's raft bobbing at anchor in the moonlight. They used it mostly for swimming. Sometimes, when boredom got the best of them, they would take it out to deeper water and fish off it, spend the whole day out there, separating themselves from the daily routine.

He watched the sea and the bobbing raft for a long time. Then he checked the watch again. Twelve twenty-two.

He tried to remember tricks for making time move.

Counting, that was one trick. Count the remaining days. Break the days into hours, and count the hours, then break the hours into minutes and count them one by one, and the minutes into seconds.

He began to figure it. Arrived June 3. And now it was ... What was it? November 20, or 25. Somewhere in there. It was hard to fix exactly. But it was November, he was sure of that. Late November. Not like the old-time Novembers along the Des Moines River, no lingering foliage. No sense of change or transition. Here there was no autumn. No leaves to turn with the turning of seasons, no seasons, no crispness in the air, no Thanksgiving and no football, nothing to guage passing by. Inland, in the dark beyond the beach, there were a few scrawny trees, but these were mostly pines, and the pines did not change whatever the season.

November-the-what?

Oscar's birthday had been in July. In August, Billy Boy Watkins had died of fright - no, June. That was in June. June, the first day at the war. Then, in July, they'd celebrated Oscar's birthday with plenty of gunfire and flares, and they'd marched through the sullen villages along the Song Tra Bong, the awful quiet everywhere, and then, in August, Rudy Chassler had finally broken the quiet. That had been August. Then - then September. Keeping track wasn't easy. The order of things - chronologies - that was the hard part. Long stretches of silence, dullness, long nights and endless days on the march, and sometimes the truly bad times: Pederson, Buff, Frenchie Tucker, Bernie Lynn. But what was the order? How did the pieces fit, and into which months? And what was it now - November-the-what?

He extinguished the cigarette against his thumbnail and flipped it down to the beach.

Stepping over the sleeping men, he moved to the tower's west wall and faced inland.

He tried to concentrate on the future. What to do when the war was over. That was one happy thought. Yes - when the war ended he would ... he would go home to Fort Dodge. He would. He would go home on a train, slowly, looking out at the country as it passed, recognizing things, seeing how the country flattened and turned to corn, the silos painted white, and he would pay attention to the details. At the depot, when the train stopped, he would brush off his uniform and be certain all the medals were in place, and he would step off boldly, boldly, and he would shake his father's hand and look him in the eye. "I did okay," he would say. "I won some medals." And his father would nod. And later, the next day perhaps, they would go out to where his father was building houses in the development west of town, and they'd walk through the unfinished rooms and his father would explain what would be where, how the wiring was arranged, the difficulties with subcontractors and plumbers, but how the houses would be strong and lasting, how to took good materials and good craftsmanship and care to build houses that would be strong and lasting.

The night was moving. He concentrated hard, squinting, trying to stop the fluttering ...

He would go to Europe. That's what he would do. Spend some time in Fort Dodge, then take off for a tour of Europe. He would learn French. Learn French, then take off for Paris, and when he got there he would drink red wine in Cacciato's honor. Visit all the museums and monuments, learn the history, sit in the cafes along the river and smile at the pretty girls. Take a flat in Montmartre. Rise early and walk to the open market for breakfast. He would eat very slowly, crossing his legs and maybe reading a paper, letting things pass by, then maybe he'd walk about the city and learn the names of places, not as a tourist but as a man who comes to learn and understand. He would study details. He would look for the things Cacciato would have looked for. It could be done. That was the crazy thing about it - for all the difficulties, for all the hard times and stupidity and errors, for all that, it could truly be done.

Movie night: guess the movie?

Had a long conversation with my parents tonight. It was really nice. We talked about books, and life, and food, and everything ... and I am in a place right now where every second I am grateful for. Every moment is filled with gratitude. It can be totally awful, but it's also great, and to quote Babs at the end of What's Up Doc, "Listen, kiddo, ya can't fight a tidal wave."

I came home after going shopping at the Pathmark in the next town. Side note. You only realize what a ghetto-ass 'hood you live in until you go to a grocery store OF THE SAME CHAIN in another area. I felt like Boris Yeltsin! No.... Not a drunken Russian standing on a tank in Red Square. But Boris Yeltsin visiting a supermarket in Houston - excerpt - kind of - here - and being absolutely overwhelmed by the choices, the hand-decorated cakes, fresh produce, bread ... Here he had grown up with the belief that the West was evil. But looking at that abundance in Houston, he was like: What we are doing does not work. They are doing something right. Anyway. It is one of my favorite historical anecdotes of all time - and I went to the Pathmark 5 towns north of me today and basically I felt like Boris Yeltsin in Houston. And I seriously wonder if anyone else on the planet but me would ever make such a comparison or would ever even know what the hell I meant.) Anyway. I was gobsmacked at the variety. I had a field day. I went nuts.

I came home. I took a long walk at dusk. I came home and cooked dinner. Well, because I'm me - I cooked a shitload of stuff that I will now put in Tupperware containers and dole out to myself for the rest of the week. I don't enjoy cooking on a daily basis. I seriously wish I did!! But obviously I like to have food in the fridge (duh) and I really enjoy preparing stuff for myself - I don't know how that works out, but whatever, it does ... Meaning: I'm not against the Weight Watchers frozen dinners (the new chicken and picante one is my new favorite) and stuff like that, but I really like cooking stuff myself, packing it away, and knowing I'll be eating it for the next week. I'm weird. I get it all out of the way in one fell swoop.

And now it's movie night.

Time for a favorite. Recommended to me by blog-readers a couple years ago - for which I am truly grateful (again with the gratitude). I had missed it somehow - and now I can't imagine my life without it. It's a go-to place for me, in terms of comfort, humor, satisfaction - I love every second of this film.

See if you can guess what it is, just from this one bit of the credits.

If you know the movie, it'll be a no-brainer. But still. There's something about that particular screen of names that pleases me to my core.

The Books: "Desolation Island" (Patrick O'Brian)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

Desolation Island , by Patrick O'Brian.

And now I come to the end (so far) of my experience with the M&C series. I finished Desolation Island last week, and am now re-reading James Salter's A Sport and a Pastime (post about it here) ... but I will eventually pick up the next in the series. I am, how you say, hooked. I love them. I love every word. I know I have a long way to go to actually finish the series, with much ahead of me - but I'll say this, from my experience of having read the first five - Desolation Island is, so far, my favorite in the series. There are a couple of set-piece events which absolutely knocked me on my ass and I had a really hard time picking which excerpt I wanted to do today. There is the scene where the ship hits the iceberg. Terrifying. It's a misty day and visibility is bad and suddenly - towering above the masts - is a wall of ice. Brilliantly written. There is the outbreak of plague on the boat which kills hundreds of people, and runs Maturin ragged - tryiing to contain it. There is the frantic pumping and bailing out scene after hitting the berg - trying to save the ship ... and those who want to bail, and those who want to stay. Panic growing. Factions erupting. There is the section on Desolation Island itself, with the surly American ship - and the growing threat of war between the two countries. And then there is the unbeLIEVABLE battle between the Leopard and the Waakaamheid (that excerpt won out - or at least part of it - since the battle goes on for more than 10 pages) - I seriously felt like I was actually transported reading that battle. I may have been sitting on the bus reading it, but I wasn't actually there. I was on the Leopard - climbing the mountains of water, descending into the troughs - looking over my shoulder for the ship pulling up behind us - sometimes blocked by a wall of water - and then - oh look - there it is - on the top of the mountain behind us ... Trying to outrun the ship in the middle of a hurricane with Perfect-Storm-like conditions. I could see it. It was excruciating to read. How to time the shots fired - so that they might hit their mark - even while going wildly up up up and then wildly down down down ... God. Kudos.

There was just something about the particular brand of desperation expressed in this book that really spoke to me. How people behave when they are panicking: sometimes it brings out the best (the relentless night-and-day pumping) and sometimes it brings out the worst (the chaos and looting as people decided to jump into lifeboats). Nobody is ONLY noble. We all have demons within us. Sometimes they win out. I just found that aspect of the book totally fascinating.

Like I said, the set-piece battle is spectacular - some of the best writing in the series so far. It's the only battle in the whole book (if I'm remembering correctly - I honestly think I'm reading these books too fast!! Sometimes details are lost - but I just can't seem to slow myself down). The rest of the book has to do with the perils of life at sea, and it also goes into the details of intelligence work with much more depth than in the other books. At least that is my impression. There is a female prisoner on board the boat - who is also a spy (and not a very adept one) - and there is her lover, a stowaway. Maturin plays them off each other, and has to hide his motivations, and make it seem like much of what is going on is purely accidental. There are deeps in Stephen Maturin - I feel like I am just getting to know the man.

But what I am really left with from Desolation Island is the battle in the middle of the hurricane, and the ship striking the iceberg.

O'Brian outdoes himself.

If you haven't read the books, and you plan to, and you do not want to know how the battle ends in Desolation Island, then skip this excerpt! It has the most powerful ending of a chapter yet! And it reveals the true character of Jack Aubrey. Spectacular.

EXCERPT FROM Desolation Island , by Patrick O'Brian.

They cast loose the guns, removed the wing deadlights, and looked out on to a soaring green cliff of water fifty yards away with the Leopard's wake trace down its side. It shut out the sky, and it was racing towards them. The Leopard's stern rose, rose: the enormous wave passed smoothly under her counter, and there through the flying spume lay the Waakzaamheid below, running down the far slow. 'When you please, Mr Burton,' said Jack to the gunner. 'A hole in her foretopsail might make it split.' The larboard gun roared out and instantly the cabin was filled with smoke. No hole: no fall of shot either. Jack, to starboard, had the Dutchman in his dispart sight. A trifle of elevation and he pulled the lanyard. Nothing happened: flying spray had soaked the lock. 'Match,' he cried, but by the time he had the glowing end in his hand the Waakzaamheid was below his line of sight, below the depression of the gun. From down there in the trough she fired up, a distant wink of flame, and she got in another couple of shots before the grey-green hill of water parted them again.

'May I suggest a cigar, sir?' said Moore. 'One can hold it in one's mouth.' He was acting as sponger and second captain, and his face was six inches from Jack's: he was encased in oilskins and there was nothing of the Marine about him but his fine red face and the neat stock showing under his chin.

'A capital idea,' said Jack, and in the calm of the trough, before the Waakzaamheid appeared again, Moore lit him a cigar from the glowing match in its tub.

The Leopard began to rise, the Dutchman appeared, black in the white water of the breaking crests high up there, and both nine-pounders went off together. The guns leapt back, the crews worked furiously, grunting, no words, sponged, loaded, and ran them out again. Another shot, and this time Jack saw his ball, dark in the haze of lit water, flying at its mark: he could not follow it home, but the line was true, a little low. Now they were on the crest, and the cabin was filled with wind and water mingled, unbreathable: the gun-crews worked without the slightest pause, worked through and through.

Down, down the slope amidst the white wreckage of the wave, the guns run out and waiting. Across the hollow and up the other side. 'I believe I caught his splash,' said Moore. 'Twenty yards short of our starboard quarter.'

'So did I,' said Burton. 'He wants to knock our rudder, range along, and give us a broadside, the bloody-minded dog.'

The Waakzaamheid over the crest again: Jack poured the priming into the touch-hole with his horn, guarding it with the flat of his hand, the cigar clenched between his teeth and the glow kept bright; and this bout each gun fired three times before the Leopard mounted too high, racing up and up, pursued by the Dutchman's shot. On and on: an enormous switchback, itself in slow, majestic motion, but traversed at a racing speed in which the least stumble meant a fall. Alternate bursts of fire, aimed and discharged with such an intensity of purpose that the men did not even see the storm of flying water that burst in upon them at each crest. On and on, the Waakzaamheid gaining visibly.

Here was Babbington at his side, waiting for a pause. 'Take over, Moore,' said Jack, as the gun ran in. He stepped over the train-tackle, and Babbington said, 'She's hit our mizzen-top, sir, fair and square.'

Jack nodded. She was coming far too close: point-blank range now, and the wind to help her balls. 'Start the water, all but a ton; and try the jib, one-third in.'

Back to the gun as it ran out. Now it was the Waakzaamheid's turn to fire, and fire she did, striking the Leopard's stern-post high up: a shrewd knock that jarred the ship as she was on the height of the wave, and a moment later a green sea swept through the deadlights.

'Good practice in this sea, Mr Burton,' said Jack.

The gunner turned his streaming face, and its fixed fierce glare broke into a smile. 'Pretty fair, sir, pretty fair. But if I did not get home two shots ago, my name is Zebedee.'

The flying Leopard drew a little way ahead with the thrust of her jib, a hundred yards or so; and the switchback continued, the distances the same. It was the strangest gunnery, with its furious activity and then the pause, waiting to be fired at; the soaking at the crest, the deck awash; the intervening wall of water; the repetition of the whole sequence. No order; none of the rigid fire-discipline of the gun-deck; loud, gun-deafened conversation between the bouts. The dread of being pooped by the great seas right there in front of their noses, rising to blot out the sun with unfailing regularity, and of broaching to, hardly affected the cabin.

A savage roar from Burton's crew. 'We hit her port-lid,' cried Bonden, the second captain. 'They can't get it closed.'

'Then we are all in the same boat,' said Moore. 'Now the Dutchmen will have a wet jacket every time she digs in her bows, and I wish they may like it, ha ha!'

A short-lived triumph. A midshipman came to report the jib carried clean away - Babbington had all in hand - was trying to set a storm-staysail - half the water was pumped out.

But although the Leopard was lighter she felt the loss of the jib; the Waakzaamheid was coming up, and now the vast hill of sea separated them only for seconds. If the Leopard did not gain when all her water was gone, the upper-deck guns would have to follow it: anything to draw ahead and preserve the ship. The firing was more and more continuous; the guns grew hot, kicking clear on the recoil, and first Burton and then Jack reduced the charge.

Nearer and nearer, so that they were both on the same slop, no trough between them: a hole in the Dutchman's foretopsail, but it would not split, and three shots in quick succession struck the Leopard's hull, close to her rudder. Jack had smoked five cigars to the butt, and his mouth was scorched and dry. He was staring along the barrel of his gun, watching for the second when the Waakzaamheid's bowsprit should rise above his sight, when he saw her starboard chaser fire. A split second later he stabbed his cigar down on the priming and there was an enormous crash, far louder than the roar of the gun.

How much later he looked up he could not tell. Nor, when he did look up, could he quite tell what was afoot. He was lying by the cabin bulkhead with Killick holding his head and Stephen sewing busily; he could feel the passage of the needle and of the thread, but no pain. He stared right and left. 'Hold still,' said Stephen. He felt the red-hot stabbing now, and everything fell into place. The gun had not burst: there was Moore fighting it. He had been dragged clear - hit - a splinter, no doubt. Stephen and Killick crouched over him as a green sea gushed in: then Stephen cut the thread, whipped a wet cloth round his ears, one eye and forehead, and said, 'Do you hear me now?' He nodded; Stephen moved on to another man lying on the deck; Jack stood up, fell, and crawled over to the guns. Killick tried to hold him, but Jack thrust him back, clapped on to the tackle and helped run out the loaded starboard gun. Moore bent over it, cigar in hand, and from behind him Jack could see the Waakzaamheid twenty yards away, huge, black-hulled, throwing the water wide. As Moore's hand came down, Jack automatically stepped aside; but he was still stupid, he moved slow, and the recoiling gun flung him to the deck again. On hands and knees he felt for the train-tackle in the smoke, found it as the darkness cleared, and tallied on. But for a moment he could not understand the cheering that filled the cabin, deafening his ears: then through the shattered deadlights he saw the Dutchman's foremast lurch, lurch again, the stays part, the mast and sail carry away right over the bows.

The Leopard reached the crest. Green water blinded him. It cleared, and through the bloody haze running from his cloth he saw the vast breaking wave with the Waakzaamheid broadside on its curl, on her beam-ends, broached to. An enormous, momentary turmoil of black hull and white water, flying spars, rigging that streamed wild for a second, and then nothing at all but the great hill of green-grey with foam racing upon it.

'My God, oh my God,' he said. 'Six hundred men.'

Moose Murders: "the standard of awfulness against which all Broadway flops are judged"

This great NY Times article by Campbell Robertson made me laugh out loud. Moose Murders, a play that ran on Broadway for one night only (not counting 2 weeks of disastrous previews), garnered some of the worst reviews in recorded theatrical history - they're even worse than the reviews for, oh, Waterworld ... ... and the show has now passed into theatre mythology. It was the biggest flop ever - not so much monetarily but because of the vitriol it spawned. People wonder: "Was it really that bad??" Since no one saw it but that first night audience, who can tell? It's now just part of the oral history of Broadway. Anyway, it's a wonderful article - where they track down the original players, and talk about what, exactly, it was that went so wrong.

I mean, listen to the opening lines of Frank Rich's original review in 1983:

From now on, there will always be two groups of theatergoers in this world: those who have seen ''Moose Murders,'' and those who have not. Those of us who have witnessed the play that opened at the Eugene O'Neill Theater last night will undoubtedly hold periodic reunions, in the noble tradition of survivors of the Titanic. Tears and booze will flow in equal measure, and there will be a prize awarded to the bearer of the most outstanding antlers. As for those theatergoers who miss ''Moose Murders'' - well, they just don't rate. A visit to ''Moose Murders'' is what will separate the connoisseurs of Broadway disaster from mere dilettantes for many moons to come.

Holy crap! Even THEN people seemed to know that they had witnessed something historic! There are lots of flops, sure, but only a precious few become historic flops. I got one word for you. Ishtar. Or no, how 'bout two words. Heaven's Gate. I know it probably wasn't funny at ALL to be in such a play - but still, some of Rich's language here is hilarious:

This loathsome trio is quickly joined by a whole crowd of unappetizing clowns.

Wow.

Frank Rich wrote another piece about Moose Murders, with a bit more distance (oh, say, a MONTH) - it's a rumination on the "particular pleasure" of seeing "a legendary flop". Only a month had passed since Moose Murders had closed and it had already passed into legend. Now that is a bad show.

Rich writes:

What makes certain bombs into legends? It's hard to say, precisely - they don't wear fur coats. Once it was a mark of distinction for a play to close in one night, but in these troubled times even that phenomenon is a sad commonplace. Some theater people define legendary bombs by the amount of money that went down the drain, or the high caliber of talent expended, or the extravagant foolhardiness of the esthetic mission. Others let Joe Allen, the theater district bistro, be the final arbiter: that restaurant has a whole wall bedecked with posters from a select group of famous turkeys. Whatever the definition, it can't be quantified - a flop just must have a certain je ne sais quoi to rise to legendary status. But what I do know is this: the only Playbill I've saved thus far in this decade is the one from ''Moose Murders.''

But now, with over 20 years having gone by, the stories of Moose Murders have grown and it has now become a badge of honor to have been in the damn things. Which I think is so hysterical as well. Campbell Robertson writes:

The reviews, which were not helped by the man reeking of vomit who sat in the third row during a press preview, made the 14 performances of “Moose Murders” legendary in theater history. Cast members trumpet their involvement in Playbill biographies. The number of people who claim to have seen the show, at the Eugene O’Neill Theater, seems to have multiplied beyond physical possibility, like those who claim to have seen the Beatles at Shea Stadium or Game 5 of the 1956 World Series.

Reading the kind of grimly humorous present-day comments from everyone involved - what a delight. Arthur Bicknell, who wrote Moose Murders, was asked if the play was really that bad! He replied, “Was it really that bad? The simple answer is yes.” One critic at the time suggested that Bicknell change his name, that was the only way he would survive such a disaster.

Holland Taylor had replaced Eve Arden after a preview - because Eve Arden had basically said, "Fuck this, I'm outta here." Holland Taylor was reached for comment for the present article and she said that stepping into that nightmare was quite an experience.

“There were things that I put my foot down about and changed,” she said in a telephone interview. “But there were things I couldn’t change. Like the play.”

I love her.

Taylor said that the play was “a misshapen thing at an almost Shakespearean level" (I'm laughing out loud) - but that it also taught her a lot. You always learn more from the bombs than from the successes.

Dammit.

I so wish I had been there.

Great article (read the whole thing). Kudos to the writer for getting such great quotes from everyone, and kudos to all the original players who were so forthright in their memories about such a colossal bomb.

UPDATE: Just found another eyewitness account.

So when people ask me if I saw Moose Murders, I have to answer: "Yes and no." For I lasted--I mean this--11 minutes, still the shortest time I've ever spent at a show. Had I known the play would become infamous and not just another quick closer, I might have stayed on. But I'd been on a business trip, had schlepped my luggage to the theater, was sweaty and hungry and not in the mood to have my intelligence insulted any more than it had to be. So I missed the second-act scene that I heard about later, where the quadriplegic magically bolted from his wheelchair and kicked a moose-suited man below the belt.

And June Gable, who was in the show, is quoted as saying:

"You know, thank God, I have very little memory of the show. It was an outrageous experience and it was one reason why I left the business shortly afterwards. I actually went to India and spent a year there searching for the meaning of life."

The Circle; director, Jafar Panahi

Jafar Panahi's 2000 film The Circle is a shattering piece of work portraying the restrictions on the lives of women in Iran. Panahi's most recent project was 2006's Offside, a comedic film about a group of tomboys in Tehran dressing up as boys and trying to get into a soccer game (my review here). In Offside, Panahi treats the restrictions (women not being allowed to go into a soccer stadium) with humor, pointing out how unbelievably absurd it all is, even laughable. The tone of Offside is light, frantic, and hilarious. Sometimes the best resistance to a stupid rule is to laugh at it. It may not change the rule, but it certainly takes the edge off.

In The Circle, that hilarious atmosphere is gone. Panahi pulls no punches, from the first devastating scene to the last devastating image. But, in true Panahi fashion, the issues are not presented in a maudlin manner. They don't need to be. The tendency to be "maudlin" is for the privileged, those who have space and freedom to feel self-pity. In Iran, there is no need for such indulgences. Panahi launches us into the chaotic loud streets of Tehran, using handheld cameras, which circle the participants in the drama (there are very few hard edges in the film, very few angles, something to take note of when you're watching it: look for all of the circles and curves in the camera movements and set-ups). It appears that the film crew is just grabbing shots, filming their actors in the midst of a real-life busy street, and indeed, as always, Panahi uses mostly non-professional actors for most of the roles. Panahi is not interested in detailed character analysis, he says as much himself. He is more interested in "types". Characters are drawn in bold primary color strokes, and we can recognize them within moments: the crybaby, the bitter one, the sassy one ... Panahi casts based on looks alone, a bold and courageous move, because often people who look right can't act for shit. Panahi has great confidence in himself as a director. He does exhaustive casting sessions, casting a wide net, and he also has been known to just approach a woman he sees in the park, who has the perfect look - and asks if she would be willing to do a screen test. (This was how he found the wonderful Nargess Mamizadeh, one of the main characters in The Circle. She's the one in the poster. She's not an actress - at least not professionally, but her looks - her scrunched-up beautiful face, with thick eyebrows, was just what he was looking for for that character). She has a black eye throughout the entire film, and it is never explained. It gives an unspoken backstory to the character, and makes us wonder from the get-go: Where did she get that? What is she running from?) Panahi only used two professional actors in The Circle, the rest were people he found who had the right "look". It's quite amazing, because everyone is great in the film. There are no weak links. There isn't a huge gap between the non-professionals and the professionals. Granted, Panahi is not looking for big cathartic scenes or delicate character development - something that is best in the hands of professionals. He's going for the message, and for the hyper-realistic atmosphere. And also, the pace. As with most Panahi films, the pace is breakneck.

The women of The Circle tear their way through the streets of Tehran, hurtling up against obstacles, hiding in alleys, crouching behind cars: the sense of being hunted is palpable. The women are right to be afraid.

There is not just one narrative in The Circle, we get many. Sometimes they intersect: we're following one group, and then suddenly another woman walks by and we find ourselves following her, and she takes up the storyline. Panahi's points are clear: this is not just about one individual woman. It's about Women^(TM) and the circle of restrictions that make up all of their lives.

The film opens starkly. The screen is black, credits rolling. Throughout, we hear the sounds of a woman in labor. She's screaming and grunting and howling, and the nurse and doctor say encouraging things. In the last moment of the credits, there's a pause, and we then hear what we have been waiting to hear: the indignant yowls of a newborn baby.

Next thing we see is a blinding white wall, with the back of a woman's head standing there, she's draped in the full black chador. You can hear the screaming newborns behind the wall. There's a tiny slot in the door that can be opened by the nurses and our chador-ed figure knocks on the slot. A nurse's head peeks out. The black chador asks for the status of Solmaz's baby. The nurse says, "It's an adorable little girl!" Black chador has no response. Says again, "A girl?" Nurse says, "Yes!" and closes the slot. Black chador doesn't move. She stands there, still, a domed black figure.

She knocks on the window again. A different nurse opens it. "Yes?" Black chador says, "I'm here for Solmaz ... I know she had her baby but I don't know what kind ... could you check?"

A chill went through me at that moment. If you ask enough times eventually you'll get a different answer? Suddenly a girl will become a boy if you ask a different nurse?Apparently the ultrasound said it would be a boy, and everyone had heaved a sigh of relief in the family. Phew! A boy!! (I won't go into how despicable I find that attitude, in any culture.) But now, with the baby being a girl, it is valid grounds for divorce, the in-laws will be furious, the black chadored lady is the woman's mother, and for her, there is no joy at being a grandmother.

In one simple moment, Panahi indicts his entire culture. De-valuing women is a national concern.

As Panahi's film goes on, fast and furious, with girls in chadors running through bus stations, yearning for a smoke, huddled in doorways peeking out, hiding, terrified, trapped, you begin to see another side to the "Oh no, it's a girl" phenomenon. It is quite subversive, and really comes to fruition in the heartbreaking story of the single mother planning to abandon her 3-year-old daughter on the streets of Tehran. She says she hopes that her daughter will be adopted by a rich family who might take her away from Iran: "How can she have a future here? What is there for her in this life?" The woman had tried to abandon her child 3 times before getting up the guts. It rips her heart out. Watching her scenes made me go back in my mind to that first scene, with the open dismay at the baby being a girl. The critique is circular, as well as the structure of the film. With the world welcoming your birth with disappointment, what chance does a girl have? A baby absorbs love. Why wouldn't a baby absorb that other unwelcoming attitude as well? We may be horrified and pissed at the attitude, but by the time we get to the woman abandoning her daughter, we have to admit: we see her point.

The Circle is not a soap opera-ish litany of complaints, and the fact that I even have to make that clear is just evidence of how privileged I am. 5 or 6 women skulk through the streets of Tehran. They are unconnected (or so we think). It becomes clear that all of them have one thing in common: they have spent time in prison. The repercussions of such a stain on your life are long-lasting (in this country and in others!) Only in the world of The Circle, you can't be sure that these women didn't do hard time for, you know, hitchhiking, or letting their scarves fall off their heads, or driving in a car with a man who is not a relative. These aren't people who've murdered someone.

A couple of them have just got out. A couple of them broke out of prison with a larger group and are now on the run. One was in prison, but she is now a nurse, and married to a Pakistani man who has no idea of her past, and he can never know. He doesn't know why she won't go to Pakistan to visit his family, but she knows she will be stopped at the border.

These are women who are on their own, even when they are married, and the restrictions of their society makes it nearly impossible for them to survive and be self-sufficient. They need to travel with IDs at all times. They cannot travel alone. They cannot board a bus without a male companion who is also a relative. They cannot check into a hotel by themselves. It is outrageous. The Circle is titanically angry. The pace of the film is frantic. Nobody has time to reflect, or cry tears for themselves. Things are urgent. The police are everywhere.

One of the women comes home once she gets out of prison and it is clear that her brother means to do her harm because of the shame she has brought upon her family. She flees. But where can she go? She has no money. She can't check into a hotel. She can't jump on a bus and move to another town. To make matters worse, she is pregnant, and not married. She wants to have an abortion. This is presented with no euphemism, no judgment. Her lover was executed. What is this now-homeless woman supposed to do? Her family members are just as dangerous as the authorities. She has nowhere to turn. The baby must be gotten rid of.

One woman spent 2 years in prison and when she got out found that her husband had taken a second wife. She is grateful to the second wife, because the second wife took care of her kids while she was inside, and we meet the second wife, and she seems like a nice woman. But the betrayal is clear. NOWHERE is safe.

Meanwhile, it appears that everyone in Tehran is getting married on that particular day (Panahi's ironic sense of humor coming into play). Cars decorated with flowers and streamers meander by, in a long happy parade, we see a nervous groom spilling water on his nice shirt, we get a brief glimpse of a veiled bride in the back seat.

What is there in marriage that can offer sanctuary? This question is not asked overtly in the film, but it doesn't need to be asked. All we need to see is the procession of blushing veiled brides in the backseats of cars, viewed by women on the sidelines who have nowhere to turn. Even when they are married. Marriage is no protection.

One of the things that Panahi is so good at, (and I noticed this in Offisde as well), is that on an individual level - person to person - things aren't so bad all the time. Man and woman can greet one another without all of those restrictions between them. The sales guy in the shop in the bus station, who helps Nargessa with her purchase, teasing her about her boyfriend, and doesn't she know what size he is? The bantering is good-natured, easy, friendly. In Offside we had the characters of the guys hired to guard the girls, and we watch as the girls slowly break down the guards' authority, and finally the guys just succumb to the fact that this is a stupid rule, and we're all soccer fans, and Iran just won, hooray!! The girls did not cower in fear at the sight of the males. They basically thumbed their noses at them. Even the spectre of the morality police and their scary van doesn't dim the girls' spirits. Or if it does, it is just because now they can't hear what's happening in the game in the stadium.

So tyranny - and a "regime" - can never so atomize a population that human beings cannot connect. The regime may try, and boy, they do - and perhaps in extreme cases like North Korea, the totalitarian atmosphere has gone down into a cellular level, hard to know, but Panahi, in his subtle way, shows how the restrictions are not just bad for women, but bad for men, too. Because aren't we all just human beings? And aren't women our sisters, mothers, wives, sweethearts? Don't we, as men, love some women? How can we let them be treated like this? Women aren't a scary "other" - not face to face. They're just people we either like, want sexually, love, or are indifferent to. But the regime cannot let this freedom of thought stand, and so morality itself is policed. And of course morality means (in Iran, and elsewhere, like her): "How Women Behave". That's it. That's all morality is. If women would just act like LADIES, and keep their LEGS CLOSED, and did what they were TOLD, so that no man would ever be confronted with his own desires and have to actually negotiate them, and NAVIGATE them responsibly, as opposed to denying them outright, we wouldn't have such problems in our society! Because sex is at the heart of the morality issue, women are the focal point. They bear the brunt of the responsibility. It's been true since Eve took the fall. In Iran, women can't be allowed to drive in cars with men they aren't related to. What would happen next? Open anarchy!

But like I said, Panahi is not a black and white kind of guy. He messes with our assumptions and preconceived notions. In this wonderful interview with Panahi (highly recommended), Stephen Teo writes:

Like the best Iranian directors who have won acclaim on the world stage, Panahi evokes humanitarianism in an unsentimental, realistic fashion, without necessarily overriding political and social messages. In essence, this has come to define the particular aesthetic of Iranian cinema. So powerful is this sensibility that we seem to have no other mode of looking at Iranian cinema other than to equate it with a universal concept of humanitarianism.

When a woman's hair tumbling out of her headscarf becomes a national problem, it concerns all of us. And so while the men in The Circle are few and far between, they also are omnipresent. The women are either running from men who want to trap them and punish them, or mourning men who have also been persecuted by the regime. The circle continues.

The evolution of the film's journey is clear. We begin with a black and white image: black chador against white wall. Quiet and still. No movement. But soon we are out on the streets, and then we have nothing but movement, for most of the film. People running and waiting anxiously and hiding and whispering and hugging. At the end of the film, we meet a girl who has been arrested for prostitution (probably), although it is made to sound like she was just hitchhiking. We have never seen her before. She's a brand-new character. She's been hauled out of the car and is made to wait for the morality van to show up. She's kind of a hottie, truth be told, with sassy red lipstick. She calls the cop "honey", in a contemptuous way.

The van arrives, and she takes a seat. She goes to light a cigarette and she is told there is no smoking in the van. The issue of smoking is an ongoing theme throughout the film. Everyone wants to smoke, but nobody can, for this or that reason, and she, at the very end, is the only one who actually gets to the point where she can light up. I saw an interview with Panahi and he was laughing, saying, "In the West, of course, smoking is seen as dangerous - but here, in this film, smoking is seen as the ultimate freedom." The one other prisoner in the van is a man, and he cajoles the guards to let him smoke. They cave, say "Sure". All the men light up. The girl glances around her (oh, so it's okay that they smoke, and it's not okay that I smoke?), and with a "Fuck this" expression, she lights up. For the rest of the drive, the camera is on her. The men all talk to each other, bantering, laughing, whatever, it's unimportant the topic or subject matter. She has a flowered headscarf on, her face is impassive, she stares out the window, and smokes. It's a long scene. It struck me, as I watched it this last time, how quiet and still the film got at the very end. As still as the scene that started it off. She's a statue in profile. Her situation is frozen. Stasis.

What will be next?

Panahi says in that interview:

Coming back to your first question: why is Iranian film so beautiful? When you want to say something like this and then you add an artistic form to it, you can see the circle in everything. Now our girl has become an idealistic person and thinks that she can reach for what she wants, so we open up a wide angle and we see the world through her eyes, wider, we carry the camera with the hand and we are moving just like her. When we get to the other person, the camera lens closes, the light becomes darker and it becomes slower. Then we reach the last person, there's no other movement; it's just still. If there's any movement, it's in the background. This way, the form and whatever you are saying becomes one: a circle both in the form and in the content.

An important film. Banned in Iran (naturally), but "it" got out. The Circle got out and found its audience worldwide. Because of bootleg DVDs and illegal satellite dishes, everyone in Iran has seen The Circle. In reference to one of Panahi's other films, Offside, there were protests outside of soccer stadiums last year, with women holding up signs saying "WE DON'T WANT TO BE OFFSIDE", demanding that they be allowed into the game.

Obviously the authorities are right, in their warped world view, to ban Panahi's films. They are subversive, in the truest and best sense of the word. Movies like this have the potential to change the world. "How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world."

So perhaps The Circle is like a message in a bottle. A time-traveler. A flashlight in the darkness (a little candle throwing his beams far!), saying to future generations who hopefully will not have the same struggles, "Here is how we lived back then. Here is how it was for us." Panahi bears witness. He bears witness.

A Sport and a Pastime, by James Salter

It's been years since I read this classic novel, but it's been on my radar again - ever since Larry wrote an evocative post about reading James Salter's memoir (I mention Larry's post here - sadly, the link to his site no longer works). Anyway. Haven't written much (at all) about James Salter - I came to him late, and I didn't come to him through A Sport and a Pastime, his most well-known book. The first of his I read was Light Years and I was very young when I read it, early 20s - and it sounded some kind of chord in me that made me DEEPLY uneasy. It's definitely a middle-aged kind of book - with all its resignations and disappointments and echoey silences- and I think I'm hesitant to pick it up now. But I will never forget my first reading of the book. I felt literally uneasy.

It's hard to describe what he does as a writer, and why it is so good and so singular ... maybe I'll look around for some reviews to see if I can clarify it, if someone else managed to say it perfectly. Even to say "he's a good writer" is absurd. It would be like saying, "Cormac McCarthy can write, bro!" Well, yeah. But ... Methinks we need to create a different definition of "writer" for guys like McCarthy and Salter. Comparing the two may seem rather insane - because there is really nothing similar about them ... McCarthy catapults us into the genocidal American past, and Salter evokes a gentle dying world in the present. Where events happen that form us - but so quickly that they are gone in a second ... leaving us marked, but also somewhat dazed ... did that really happen? But I feel now like I would recognize a Cormac McCarthy sentence if I bumped into it in a dark alley - and the same with Salter's language. I read Salter and there are times when I get that same feeling I got when I was reading Blood Meridian: Oh God ... this is too deep, too deep ... I can't slow down enough to really contemplate it ... must keep moving ...

And then by the end of the book you find yourself flattened. LIKE A BUG. SMUSH. Never to recover 100%. Writers like that sneak up on you. They work their magic subtly. It's not that they do not want to be noticed: their writing is nothing if not startlingly attention-getting. It's that they do not want to be congratulated. Their concentration lies somewhere else entirely.

I read Light Years a million years ago (uhm, light years ago) - and immediately picked up A Sport and a Pastime which is another book that made me almost uneasy. They're quiet books, no noise or chaos ... but there is something at the heart of them that is unbearably sad. I think it was the sense of looking back on a time when you were most alive ... looking back from a more dim drab present ... the sense of loss ... of unrecoverable vitality ... I'm making him sound bleak, and that's about right, but the language is so beautiful, and so simple - so simple - that the bleakness almost feels like a betrayal when it comes. He describes a snowfall so perfectly that you are transported into its beauty and then he jujitsus you with some bleak empty sentiment. Never too proud of himself, never elaborating, always simple and clear. That's the key to his genius. Most of his sentences are short.

My friend Jon wrote in the comments section of my blog:

First of all, "Light Years" is probably one of the best books I've read in the past five years--and is certainly on my "Top Something" list. I was a wreck after reading that. The scene where Ned comes back to his empty house after seeing Ibsen's "The Master Builder?" I think I had a slight heart attack while reading that. Unbelievably powerful. That whole book is like a column of light, each sentence almost literally like a tiny, multi-faceted diamond, shining such focused rays in eternal directions. And I've been meaning to read more of him ever since--can't believe how long I've gone without actually doing it. Onward.

And I responded:

I am so thrilled to read you were as blown over by Light Years as I was. There were quiet moments in the book (like at the end, with the turtle in the woods) where I felt so ... Basically what I want to say is: the book stunned me, and sometimes it was a barely pleasant sensation ... Like, it affected me PERSONALLY. I'm almost afraid to read it again. He is SUCH a good writer.

So I decided to go back and re-read A Sport and a Pastime (I still don't feel ready to look at Light Years again, especially now when my equilibrium is hanging by a thread on a moment-to-moment basis - but if you're reading me, and you like book recs, etc. - all I can say is: READ Light Years. My God!!)

And I come across passages of such simplicity and beauty that I want to grab Salter by the collar and say, "DIVULGE YOUR SECRETS." I wish I could write like this.

A Sport and a Pastime takes place in provincial France ("the real France" as the main character keeps saying) in the 1960s. A Yale dropout hooks up with a French girl. That's it. No big plot machinations. But the imagery, the language ... Again, I can feel myself skimming the surface of it ... it's almost TOO good ... too good to absorb in one sitting. He's deceptively simple. In almost the manner of Hemingway. If you just skim the surface, you'll miss most of it. But Hemingway doesn't let you off the hook, and divulge the subtext ... or when he does? You'll know it. Salter is the same way. He's describing a soccer stadium here. That seems to be all that is going on. But no no no. The deeps he sounds in his writing ...

Four in the afternoon. The trees along the street, the upper branches, are catching the last, full light. The stadium is quiet, some bicycles leaning against the outer wall. I read the schedule once again and then go in, turning down towards the stands which are almost empty. Far away, the players are streaming across the soft grass. There seem to be no cries, no shouting, only the faint thud of kicks.

It is the emptiness which pleases me, the blue dimensions of this life. Beyond the game, as far as one can see, are the fields, the trees of the countryside. Above us, provincial sky, a little cloudy. Once in a while the sun breaks out, vague as a smile. I sit alone. There are the glances of some young boys, nothing more. There's no scoreboard. The game drifts back and forth. It seems to take a long, long time. Someone sends a little boy to the far side to chase the ball when it goes out of bounds. I watch him slowly circle the field. He passes behind the goal. He trots a while, then he walks. He seems lost in the journey. Finally he is over there, small and isolated on the sideline. After a while I can see him kicking at stones.

I am at the center of emptiness. Every act seems purer for it, easier to define. The sounds separate themselves. The details all appear. I stop at the Cafe St. Louis. It's like an old school room. The varnish is worn from the curve of the chairs. The finish is gone from the floor. It's one large, yellowing room, huge mirrors on the wall, the same size and position as windows, generous, imperfect. Glass doors along the street. Wherever one looks, it seems possible to see out. They're playing billiards. I listen without watching. The soft click of the balls is like a concert. The players stand around, talking in hoarse voices. The rich odor of their cigarettes ... They're never there in the daytime. It's very different with the morning light upon it, this cafe. Stale. The billiard table seems less dark. The wood is drawing apart at the corners. It's quite old, at least a hundred years I should think, judging from the elaborate legs. Beneath the pale green cloth which is always thrown over it, the felt is worn, like the sleeves of an old suit.

"Monsieur?"

It's the old woman who runs the place. False teeth, white as buttons. Belonged to her husband probably. I can hear them clattering in her mouth.

"Monsieur?" she insists.

Exquisite. Just perfect.

And then there's this bit of observational genius:

The three or four gilded youths of the town, too, slouched on the divans. I know them by sight. One is an angel, at least for betrayal. Beautiful face. Soft, dark hair. A mouth like spoiled fruit. Nothing amuses them - they don't talk until somebody leaves, and then they begin little laughing cuts, sometimes calling over to the barman. The rest of the time they sit in boredom, polishing the gestures of contempt. The angel is taller than the rest. He has an expensive suit and a tie knotted loosely at the neck. Sometimes a sweater. Soft cuffs. I've seen him on the street. He's about seventeen, and he seems less dangerous in the daylight, merely a bad student or a boy already notorious for his vices. He's ready to start seductions. Perhaps he even says it's easy, and that women are simple to get. To believe is to make real, they say. A chill passes through me. I recognize in him a clear strain of assurance which has nothing to imitate, which springs forth intact. It feeds on its own reflection. He looks carefully at himself in the mirror, combing his hair. He inspects his teeth. The maid has let him undress her. She hates him, but she cannot make him go. I try to think of what he's said. He has an instinct for it. He is here to hunt them down, to discover the weaklings. I don't know what he feels - the assassin's joy.

The less said about such writing the better, I think. To analyze it or point out elements that work would be to ruin it. It's perfect, as is. And I'm thinking: A chill ran through you?? A chill runs through me, Mr. Salter, every time I pick up one of your damn books!

It's been almost 20 years since I read this book and I'm still just stunned by it.

Car Movies

Kim Morgan tells us about her new writing gig (perhaps the best writing gig ever, actually - just guessing here!) ... and gives us an added (and related) bonus: 10 greatest examples of car cinema! And do yourself a favor: don't just skim the titles she picks. Kim's an awesome writer!

Bathing Beauties montage

An embarrassment of riches. I can't even pick out my favorites although the first photo and the seventh photo come pretty darn close.

Happy birthday, Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë was born on this day, in 1816. Here is perhaps the most famous image of the Brontë sisters - a portrait done by their dissipated (and, some say, more of a genius than all of them) brother Branwell:

In honor of Charlotte Brontë, a writer I have always adored, here are a couple of excerpts from her letters, and quotes about her work, etc:

I love this one. This is a letter Charlotte wrote to a good friend. The friend had written to her, asking her for a recommended reading list. Here is Charlotte's reply. For some reason, this letter completely delights me.

"You ask me to recommend you some books for your perusal. I will do so in as few words as I can. If you like poetry, let it be first-rate; Milton, Shakespeare, Thomson, Goldsmith, Pope (if you will, though I don't admire him), Scott, Byron, Campbell, Wordsworth, and Southey. Now don't be startled at the names of Shakespeare and Byron. Both these were great men, and their works are like themselves. You will know how to choose the good, and to avoid the evil; the finest passages are always the purest, the bad are invariably revolting; you will never wish to read them over twice. Omit the comedies of Shakespeare and the Don Juan, perhaps the Cain, of Byron, though the latter is a magnificent poem, and read the rest fearlessly; that must indeed be a depraved mind which can gather evil from Henry VIII, from Richard III, from Macbeth, and Hamlet, and Julius Caesar. Scott's sweet, wild, romantic poetry can do you no harm. Nor can Wordsworth's, nor Campbell's, nor Southey's -- the greatest part at least of his; some is certainly objectionable. For history, read Hume, Rollin, and the Universal History, if you can; I never did. For fiction, read Scott alone; all novels after his are worthless. For biography, read Johnson's Lives of the Poets, Boswell's Life of Johnson, Southey's Life of Nelson, Lockhart's Life of Burns, Moore's Life of Sheridan, Moore's Life of Byron, Wolfe's Remains. For natural history, read Bewick and Audobon, and Goldsmith, and White's History of Selborne. For divinity, your brother will advise you there. I can only say, adhere to standard authors, and avoid novelty."

More quotes and thoughts about Charlotte Brontë below the jump!

Here is what one of my favorite authors, Lucy Maud Montgomery (all my posts about her here), wrote about Charlotte Brontë in her journal quite a bit. Here is one of her comments:

It is customary to regret Charlotte Brontë's death as premature. I doubt it. I doubt if she would have added to her literary fame. Resplendent as her genius was, it had a narrow range. I think she reached its limit. She could not have gone on forever writing 'Jane Eyres' and 'Villette's' and there was nothing in her life and experience to fit her for writing anything else...

There was a marked masochistic strain in Charlotte Brontë -- revealing itself mentally, not physically. This accounts for Rochester. He was exactly the tyrant a woman with such a strain in her would have loved, delighting in the pain he inflicted in on her. And this same tendency was the cause of her cruelty to Lucy Snowe -- who was herself. She persecutes Lucy Snowe all through 'Villette' and drowns her lover rather than let the poor soul have a chance at happiness. I can't forgive Charlotte Brontë for killing off Paul Emmanuel. I don't know whether I like Lucy Snowe or not -- but I am always consumed with pity for and sympathy with her, whereas Charlotte delights in tormenting her -- a sort of spiritual vicarous self-flagellation.

Fascinating analysis.

Here is another excerpt from Lucy Maud Montgomery's journal. She loved the Brontë sisters' books, and wrote out her impressions through many re-readings over her lifetime.

Charlotte Brontë only made about 7,000 by her books ... It seems unfair and unjust. What I admire most in Charlotte Brontë is her absolute clear-sightedness regarding shams and sentimentalities. Nothing of the sort could impose on her. And she always hewed straight to the line. I have been asking myself, 'If I had known Charlotte Brontë in life - how would we have reacted upon each other? Would I have liked her? Would she have liked me?' I answer, 'No.' She was absolutely without a sense of humor. She would not have approved of me at all. I could have done her whole heaps of good. A few jokes would have leavened the gloom and tragedy of that Haworth Parsonage amazingly.

People have spoken of Charlotte Brontë's 'creative genius'. Charlotte Brontë had no creative genius. Her genius was one of amazing ability to describe and interpret the people and surroundings she knew. All the people in her books who impress us with such a wonderful sense of reality were drawn from life. She herself is Jane Eyre, Lucy Snowe. Emily was Shirley. Rochester, whom she did create, was unnatural and unreal. Blanche Ingram was unreal. St. John was unreal. Most of her men are unreal. She knew nothing of men except her father and brother and the Belgian professor of her intense unhappy love. Emmanuel was drawn from him, and therefore is one of the few men in her books who is real.

Yet another entry in LM Montgomery's journal. In it, she writes about a biography of Charlotte Brontë she just finished, written by EF Benson. The issues of the "Bronte myth" were alive and well even back then.

I do not think Charlotte was in the least like the domineering little shrew he pictures her, anymore perhaps than she was like the rather too saintly heroine of Mrs. Gaskell's biography. I do not put any faith in Beson's theory that Branwell wrote parts of 'Wuthering Heights' and inspired the whole. There is no foundation in the world for it beyond the assertion of two of Branwell's cronies that he read the first few chapters of it to them and told them it was his own. They may have been telling the truth, but I would not put the least confidence in any statement of Branwell's. He was entirely capable of reading someone else's manuscript and trying to pass it off as his own. No doubt he was more in Emily's confidence than Charlotte ever knew and had got possession of her manuscript in some way. Benson blames Charlotte for her unsympathetic attitude to Branwell. I imagine that an angel would have found it rather difficult to be sympathetic. Benson cannot understand a proud sensitive woman's heart. I love Charlotte Brontë so much that I am angry when anyone tries to belittle her. But I will admit that she seemed to have an unenviable talent for disliking almost everyone she met ... And the things she says about the man she afterwards married!

And finally, some compiled quotes from Charlotte Brontë herself:

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.

Amen, sister!!

And

It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

I like this one:

Look twice before you leap.

And:

There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.

And finally: the opening paragraphs of Jane Eyre:

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.

I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.

Her books have always been a grand comfort to me, comforting in various stages of my development, because her insights are so wise, she seems to light the way ahead. But they are also exciting books, because so unexpected. You can't get any more unexpected than Jane Eyre. Nothing can prepare you for Mr. Rochester. And the plot that intertwines Jane Eyre's fortunes with his. No matter how many times I have read Jane Eyre, I am still startled by it. The final chapter, where Jane Eyre has that unexplained moment of what could be called astral travel, or ESP, or communication across many miles - she hears him cry out to her - remains one of the most moving chapters of a book I have ever read. And until that moment, it is not clear how things will go. You have given up, you have given up hope, as a reader ... It is quite quite sad. But then, this strange midnight miracle occurs ... The heart lifts up out of the chest in response.

Charlotte Brontë was a good writer but she didn't have Jane Austen's impeccability with language. No, Charlotte's writing is messier, more passionate, more urgent. People behave in incomprehensible ways in her books. Life is very very dark. People are cruel, they are vicious, they are barely civilized. (Her sister Emily went way further in this regard with Wuthering Heights. In Wuthering Heights it is not apparent that civilization or society has ANY bearing on people whatsoever. A terrifying vision of chaos. Charlotte had some at least SOME overlay of civilization, but not too much. Not too much.) And so over and over again, I respond to her books. They do not become predictable, even at the 4th or 5th reading.

Cheers, Charlotte. Thanks for the books you managed to complete before you died. A good life indeed.

The Books: "The Mauritius Command" (Patrick O'Brian)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

The Mauritius Command, by Patrick O'Brian

The fourth book in the Aubrey-Maturin series. While all of the books could be called historical fiction - this one is based on actual events (or so says O'Brian's preface). Captain Jack Aubrey is ordered to sail to the Cape of Good Hope - and from there try to take the two islands Mauritius and La Reunion, held by the French. It's a daunting mission - the French are well-entrenched, and Aubrey also has his hands full with his captains on the ship - many of whom are, well, nightmares. Or emotional vampires. Or too competitive. Whatever the case may be. They have their own psychological things they are trying to work out (subconsciously) and it makes them tiresome companions and not very good captains. O'Brian, like I said before, is just so awesome in this realm - the best, really: when breaking down a man's personality, when observing what it is that makes him tick (even if he can't see it himself) - observing him in different situations, which is usually very revealing ... you know, the whole warp and weft of humanity thing. No man is just one thing. Not even Jack Aubrey. He's not just a good commander, and great at manning a ship. He's also a kind of exhausted husband, he's a bit touchy when it comes to questioning of authority (and of course he is - that's the rules of the game - but Stephen Maturin is always there to make some comment about how authority corrupts everyone ... so it gives him pause) - he's a generous and open friend, he's good with the young kids on the ship, showing them the ropes - he sometimes always wants it HIS way - even when he is NOT in the position of ultimate authority, and he is also prone to fits of sentimentality which Stephen, as an Irishman, finds incredibly boring. Jack Aubrey is made up of a million different impulses and pieces - just like all of us. O'Brian gives us everyone - pretty much every character - in a three-dimensional guise. I love his analysis of personality. He's a psychologist of the highest order.

That's what the excerpt is today.

EXCERPT FROM The Mauritius Command, by Patrick O'Brian

This 'time out', this happy interval with a straightforward and agreeable task in hand, sailing through warm seas with winds that, though often languid, were rarely downright contrary, sailing southwards in a comfortable ship with an excellent cook, ample stores and good company, had its less delightful sides, however.

His telescope was a disappointment. It was not that he could not see Jupiter: the planet gleamed in his eyepiece like a banded gold pea. But because of the ship's motion he could not keep it there long enough or steadily enough to fix the local time of its moons' eclipses and thus find his longitude. Neither the theory (which was by no means new) nor the telescope was at fault: it was the cleverly weighted cradle slung from the maintopgallantmast stay that he had designed to compensate for the pitch and roll that did not answer, in spite of all his alterations: and night after night he swung there cursing and swearing, surrounded by midshipmen armed with clean swabs, whose duty it was to enhance the compensation by thrusting him gently at the word of command.

The young gentlemen: he led them a hard life, insisting upon a very high degree of promptitude and activity; but apart from these sessions with the telescope, which they loathed entirely, and from their navigation classes, they thoroughly approved of their captain and of the splendid breakfasts and dinners to which he often invited them, although on due occasion he beat them with frightful strength on the bare breech in his cabin, usually for such crimes as stealing the gunroom's food or repeatedly walking about with their hands in their pockets. For his part he found them an engaging set of young fellows, though given to lying long in their hammocks, to consulting their ease, and to greed; and in one of them, Mr Richardson, generally known as Spotted Dick, because of his pimples, he detected a mathematician of uncommon promise. Jack taught them navigation himself, the Boadicea's schoolmaster being incapable of maintaining discipline; and it soon became apparent to him that he should have to keep his wits as sharp as his razor not to be outstripped by his pupil in the finer points of spherical trigonometry, to say nothing of the stars.

Then there was Mr Farquhar. Jack esteemed him as an intelligent, capable, gentlemanlike man with remarkable powers of conversation, excellent company for the space of a dinner, although he drank no wine, or even for a week; but Mr Farquhar had been bred to the law, and perhaps because of this a little too much of his conversation took the form of questioning, so that Jack sometimes felt that he was being examined at his own table. Furthermore, Mr Farquhar often used Latin expressions that made Jack uneasy, and referred to authors Jack had never read. Stephen had always done the same (indeed, it would have been difficult to refer to any author with whom Jack was acquainted apart from those who wrote on fox-hunting, naval tactics, or astronomy), but with Stephen it was entirely different. Jack loved him, and had not the least objection to granting him all the erudition in the world, while remaining inwardly convinced that in all practical matters other than physic and surgery Stephen should never be allowed out alone. Mr Farquhar, however, seemed to assume that a deep knowledge of the law and of the public business embraced the whole field of useful human endeavour.

Yet Mr Farquhar's vastly superior knowledge of politics and even for his more galling superiority at chess would have been as nothing if he had had some ear for music: he had none. It was their love of music that had brought Jack and Stephen together in the first place: the one played the fiddle and the other the 'cello, neither brilliantly, yet both well enough to take deep pleasure in their evening concerts after retreat; they had played throughout every voyage they had made together, never interrupted by anything but the requirements of the service, the utmost extremity of foul weather, or by the enemy. But now Mr Farquhar was sharing the great cabin, and he was as indifferent to Haydn as he was to Mozart; as he observed, he would not give a farthing candle for either of them, or for Handel. The rustling of his book as they played, the way he tapped his snuffbox and blew his nose, took away from their pleasure; and in any case, Jack, brought up in the tradition of naval hospitality, felt bound to do all he could to make his guest comfortable, even to the extent of giving up his fiddle in favor of whist, which he did not care for, and of calling in the senior Marine lieutenant as the fourth, a man he did not much care for either.

Their guest was not always with them, however, for during the frequent calms Jack often took the jolly-boat and rowed away to swim, to inspect the frigate's trim from a distance, and to talk with Stephen in private. 'You cannot possibly dislike him,' he said, skimming over the swell towards a patch of drifting weed where Stephen thought it possible they might find a southern variety of sea-horse or a pelagic crab related to those he had discovered under the line, 'but I shall not be altogether sorry to set him down on shore.'

'I can and do dislike him intensely when he pins my king and a rook with his lurking knight,' said Stephen, 'At most other times I find him a valuable companion, an eager, searching, perspicacious intelligence. To be sure, he has no ear at all, but he is not without a tincture of poetry: he has an interesting theory on the mystic role of kings, founded upon his study of tenures in petty serjeanty.'

Jack's concern with petty serjeanty was so slight that he carried straight on, 'I dare say I have been in command too long. When I was a lieutenant, messing with the rest, I used to put up with people far, far more trying than Farquhar. There was a surgeon in the Agamemnon that used to play 'Greensleeves' on his flute every evening, and every evening he broke down at exactly the same place. Harry Turnbull, our premier - he was killed at the Nile - used to turn pale as he came nearer and nearer to it. That was in the West Indies, and tempers were uncommon short but no one said anything except Clonfert. It don't sound much, 'Greensleeves', but it was a pretty good example of that give and take there has to be, when you are all crammed up together for a long commission: for if you start falling out, why, there's an end to all comfort, as you know very well, Stephen. I wish I may not have lost the way of it, what with age and the luxury of being post - the luxury of solitude.'

The new things

In all their kind of dim and dark glory.

I love my table so much. I can't stop staring at it. Or sitting at it.

New towels

New coffee mugs

The lamp

The chair

The table at the window

The Books: "H.M.S. Surprise" (Patrick O'Brian)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

H.M.S. Surprise, by Patrick O'Brian

The third book in the Aubrey-Maturin series.

In this book, we find the two men back in business - after running from debt - and they sail around the tip of Africa, on their way to India. Their personal problems, however, follow them. Diana Villiers, the woman Stephen and Jack competed for, is in India - she had fled England with a man as her protector - it is clear that she has not married him, and she has left a wake of scandal and heartache behind her. Stephen, in particular, is consumed by Diana. O'Brian does not belabor the point ... and the Indian subcontinent is a huge place ... but Maturin knows that the odds of him running into Diana are pretty high, and how does he feel about that? There's something bewitching about that woman. She's cruel to Stephen. Yet she also counts him as one of her best friends. She's blatantly open with him, even when she knows it will hurt him. I'm not sure if she will continue to be a major player in the rest of the books (don't tell me!!) - but she fascinates. I can see why Stephen is so mesmerized by her. And of course Jack is now courting Sophia, a much more conventional young woman - which seems to suit him much better. But enough of these personal romantic concerns. Somewhere in the Indian Ocean is a fleet of ships sent by Napoleon ... and I'm not recalling all the details, but I know that Jack is obsessed. Where are they? If he captured them, there would be a huge prize - and it's all about the prize-money. (I'm learning so much about how the Royal Navy worked - I had no idea!) Aubrey is the underdog in this particular fight - and some of the details are lost right now (I think maybe I'm reading these books too fast, but I can't help it!) ... he is trying to rebuild his career after the devastation of being on the run from debt. He takes what he can gets, in terms of a command. And he is eager, perhaps even voracious, to prove himself again. Not to mention the fact that Sophia's terrible mother would never approve of her daughter marrying a debt-ridden out-of-work captain. Aubrey has huge stakes here. But that's one of the best things about the character, in general: his stakes are always high. Whether it's running the conversation around the captain's table, or dealing with disciplinary issues on the ship, or fighting a battle ... This is a man who lacks the indifferent gene. He really does.

And, as always, the relationship between the two men is really what hooks me in. And because Stephen Maturin is a bit of an outsider - to sea life, anyway - not to mention being Irish - he's our way in to this world. The other sailors on the ships kind of gently make fun of him, his dumb questions, his lack of sea legs, and yet they also totally respect him because he's such an amazing surgeon. They trust him with their very lives. Seeing the world of the ship through Stephen's eyes is tremendously helpful and illuminating ... because we're new to it too.

Now.

There is a description of some major weather and waves - in this book - as the ship shrieks down the coast of Africa. I could barely get through it it was so terrifying. SO well written. My God. My nightmares often run to tidal waves - and have done so since I was a little kid. I think of a 10 story wave coming at me ... I mean, I can't imagine that anyone would find that a cozy thought, so I know I'm not alone ... but waves like that haunt my dreams. Maybe it's growing up in "the Ocean State", and I've certainly seen some weather, I've certainly seen waves big enough that I thought: "All righty then, I'm not going swimming TODAY thankyouverymuch ..." Perhaps it's that there is some basis for comparison in my head. Having seen dauntingly big waves where they close the beach is one thing - add 7 or 8 or 9 STORIES to those waves I've already seen ... and I can try to picture what the sailors deal with. I just never want to see a wave that big, basically. In December, 2004, I had a dream about a tidal wave. You know how you have regular old dreams where, you know, you're naked in church, or you're trying to run and your legs won't work - or run of the mill anxiety dreams ... No biggie. But sometimes a dream comes along that changes everything. I call them (unimaginatively) "those dreams". I've had a couple in my lifetime. Myabe 2 or 3. Where my subconscious or whatever you want to call it was forced to be so damn clear to me, so specific ... that I wake up very slightly altered. The tidal wave dream was like that. I wrote more about it here. And let us please not dwell TOO much on the fact that I wrote a post called "The Tidal Wave: Let It Come" on December 22, 2004. It freaks me out to even think about it. I know I didn't cause the damn tsunami, but still - to put out a huge call to tidal waves, telling them to come ... and then ... uhm ... to have one obey, and to have it be the deadliest damn thing in recorded history ... I don't know. Just don't want to think about those things too much. Anyway. Back to Patrick O'Brian. His description of the sea - in the middle of that storm - the mountains of water ... I swear to God, it put a chill in my heart just to read it. I just hope I never ever fucking see anything like that in my life.

Again, we're seeing it through Stephen's astonished eyes - which makes it even worse. Jack's used to bad weather. All sailors are. Stephen THOUGHT he knew what bad weather was until he saw this.

Wonderful writing.

Excerpt below.

EXCERPT FROM H.M.S. Surprise, by Patrick O'Brian

South and south she ran, flanking across the west wind, utterly alone under the grey sky, heading into the immensity of ocean. From one day to the next the sea grew icy cold, and the cold seeped into the holds, the berth-deck and the cabins, a humid, penetrating cold. Stephen came on deck reflecting with satisfaction upon his sloth, now a parlour-boarder with the Irish Franciscans at Rio, and a secret drinker of the altar-wine. He found the frigate was racing along under a press of canvas, lying over so that her deck sloped like a roof and her lee chains were buried in the foam; twelve and a half knots with the wind on her quarter - royals, upper and lower studdingsails, almost everything she had; her starboard tacks aboard, for Jack still wanted a little more southing. He was there, right aft by the taffrail, looking now at the western sky, now up at the rigging. 'What do you think of this for a swell?' he cried.

Blinking in the strong cold wind Stephen considered it: vast smooth waves, dark, mottled with white, running from the west diagonally across the frigate's course, two hundred yards from crest to crest: they came with perfect regularity, running under her quarter, lifting her high, high, so that the horizon spread out another twenty miles, then passing ahead, so that she sank into the trough, and her courses, her lower sails, sagged in the calm down there. In one of these valleys that he saw was an albatross flying without effort or concern, a huge bird, but now so diminished by the vast scale of the sea that it might have been one of the smaller gulls. 'It is grandiose,' he said.

'Ain't it?' said Jack. 'I do love a blow.' There was keen pleasure in his eye, but a watchful pleasure too; and as the ship rose slowly up he glanced again at the topsail-studdingsail. As she rose the full force of the wind laid her over, and the studdingsail-boom strained forward, bending far out of the true. All the masts and yards showing this curving strain: they all groaned and spoke; but none like the twisting studdingsail-booms. A sheet of spray flew over the waist, passing through the rigging and vanishing over the larboard bow, soaking Mr. Hailes the gunner as it passed. He was going from gun to gun with his mates, putting preventer-breechings to the guns, to hold them tighter against the side. Rattray was among the booms, making all fast and securing the boats: all the responsible men were moving about, with no orders given; and as they worked they glanced at the Captain, while he, just as often, put out his hand to test the strain on the rigging, and turned his head to look at the sky, the sea, the upper sails.

'This is cracking on,' said Joliffe.

'It will be cracking off, presently,' said Church, 'if he don't take in.'

For a glass and more the watch on deck had been waiting for the order to lay aloft and reduce sail before the Lord reduced it Himself: yet still the order did not come. Jack wanted every last mile out of this splendid day's run; and in any case the frigate's tearing pace, the shrill song of her rigging, her noble running lift and plunge filled him with delight, a vivid ecstasy that he imagined to be private but that shone upon his face, although his behaviour was composed, reserved, and indeed somewhat severe - his orders cracked out sharp and quick as he sailed her hard, completely identified with the ship. He was on the quarterdeck, yet at the same time he was in the straining studdingsail-boom, gauging the breaking point exactly.

'Yes,' he said, as though a long period of time had not passed. 'And it will be more grandiose by half before the end of the watch. The glass is dropping fast, and it will start to blow, presently. Just you wait until this sea gets up and starts to tumble about. Mr Harrowby, Mr Harrowby, another man to the wheel, if you please. And we will get the flying jib and stuns'ls off her.'

The bosun's pipe, the rush of feet, and her tearing speed sensibly diminished. Mr Stanhope, clinging to the companion-ladder, cruelly in the way, said, 'It is a wonder they do not fall off, poor fellows. This is exhilarating, is it not? Like champagne.'

So it was, with the whole ship vibrating and a deep bass hum coming from the hold, and the clean keen air searching deep into their lungs: but well before nightfall the clean keen air blew so strong as to whip the breath away as they tried to draw it in, and the Surprise was under close-reefed topsails and courses, topgallantmasts struck down on deck, running faster still, and still holding her course south-east.

During the night Stephen heard a number of bumps and cries through his sleep, and he was aware of a change of course, for his cot no longer swung in the same direction. But he was not prepared for what he saw when he came on deck. Under the low grey tearing sky, half driving rain, half driving spray, the whole sea was white - a vast creaming spread as far as eye could see. He had seen the Bay of Biscay at its worst, and the great south-west gales on the Irish coast: they were nothing to this. For a moment the whole might have been a wild landscape, mountainous yet strangely regular; but then he saw that the whole was in motion, a vast majestic motion whose size concealed its terrifying dreamlike speed. Now the crests and troughs were enormously greater; now they were very much farther apart; and now the crests were curling over and breaking as they came, an avalanche of white pouring down the steep face. The Surprise was running almost straight before them, east by south; she had managed to strike her mizzentopmast at first light - anything to diminish the wind-pressure aft and thus the risk of broaching-to -- and man-ropes were rigged along her streaming deck. As his eye reached the level of the quarterdeck he saw a wave, a green-grey wall towering above the taffrail, racing towards them - swift inevitability. He strained his head back to see its top, curving beyond the vertical as it came yet still balancing with the speed of its approach, a beard of wind-torn spray flying out before it. He heard Jack call an order to the man at the wheel: the frigate moved a trifle from her course, rose, tilting her stern skywards so that Stephen clung backwards to the ladder, rose and rose; and the mortal wave swept under her counter, dividing and passing on to smother her waist in foam and solid water, on to bar the horizon just ahead, while the ship sank in the trough and the shriek of the rigging sank an octave as the strain slackened.

'Seize hold, Doctor,' shouted Jack. 'Take both hands to it.'

Stephen crept along the life-line, catching a reproachful look from the four men at the wheel, as who should say 'Look what you done with your albatrosses, mate,' and reached the stanchion to which Jack was lashed. 'Good morning, sir,' he said.

'A very good morning to you. It is coming on to blow.'

'What?'

'It is coming on to blow,' said Jack, with greater force. Stephen frowned, and looked astern through the haze of spray; and there, whiter than the foam, were two albatrosses, racing across the wind. One wheeled towards the ship, rose to the height of the taffrail and poised there in the eddy not ten feet away. He saw its mild round eye looking back at him, the perpetual minute change of its wing-feathers, its tail; then it banked, rose on the wind, darted down, and its wings raised high it paddled on the face of an advancing cliff of water, picked something up and shot away along the valley of the wave before it broke.

Taste of Cherry; dir. Abbas Kiarostami - The Taboo of Suicide

Suicide is (and always has been) a cross-cultural taboo. No religion is indifferent to it. I think the ancient Egyptians might have been a culture that thought it was a valid way to go, if you wanted to escape this life and move on into the next (I think I learned that in my humanities class a billion years ago) ... but in general, suicide is a big fat no-no. Everywhere. I'm not talking about political suicide - ie: kamikaze pilots and suicide bombers. That's something different, although, in its own way, it totally upends the natural order and sends those facing it into total chaos and fear. Who would do that?? Who would make that choice?? Etc. If you choose to commit suicide, then you basically don't get into heaven.

Due to the openness of our society, we can debate these things. No one is indifferent, but the word itself can be spoken and acknowledged. This is not the case in Iran - and so Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry, in a which a suicidal man drives around a giant construction site - trying to find a laborer who would be willing to bury him after he committed suicide - is a brave and almost political film. It's weird - perhaps Iranians would not agree with this, but I am an outsider: It seems that most films, even domestic dramas, are political, when seen in the light of the theocratic society they live in. The role of women, the strict morality rules, all of that top-down mullah stuff ... which affects the lives of everyday people to such an extraordinary degree ... That's REALLY what "the personal is political" means. So again, I'm an outsider and I think I might read a lot more into these things than might be there ... but I'm not quite convinced of that. Taste of Cherry was a massive international hit, and won the Golden Palm at Cannes in 1997. It was a HUGE deal. Kiarostami was allowed to attend the premiere at Cannes, which was also a huge deal - again, with the political implications in even things like movie premieres ... He was given a standing ovation by the very tough crowd there, who won't hesitate to boo you off the stage if they don't like what you've done (just ask Vincent Gallo!!). Taste of Cherry is an enormous feather in the cap of the Iranian film industry.

I read some of the reviews at the time and wondered if those folks had seen the same film I had. I'm a fan of Iranian film, as should be obvious by now - but Taste of Cherry left me a little bit cold. And for me, just the fact that Kiarostami was addressing a hugely taboo subject in his culture, is not enough for me to give the film a pass. I think the context is interesting, don't get me wrong, and I will watch pretty much anything that Iran generates - but films must also be judged on their own merits. Does it work as a story? I think about a film like Fireworks Wednesday (my review here) - and how much it works, just being itself - good story, good characters - Or a simple story like Children of Heaven - which is one of my favorite movies of all time ... and it just works as a story, first and foremost. The details of the story - the sibling relationship, the lower-class family's financial worries, the way the kids hide their plan from their parents, how clever they are in trying to get away with it ... just every bit works. It's funny, it's touching, it's suspenseful, it's poignant, and it ends with a running race through Tehran that is so exciting that the audience I saw it with at The Angelika (with Kate) burst into cheers periodically - as our hero surged ahead, straining to come in second. He is the best runner in his age group - but in order for his plan to work - he has to come in second. How on earth would you make that happen?? God, I love that movie. It's one of the best "family films" I've ever seen.

Taste of Cherry reminds me of reading a stilted translation of Hafiz or Rumi, Iran's major poets. The poems come off as almost treacly. Trite. I have pretty good translations of both poets, and I can kind of get why they are national heroes ... but it wasn't until I went to a Persian poetry reading at Bowery Poetry Club a couple years ago - and heard the folks there recite Hafiz and Rumi in Farsi (by heart, mind you) - that I could actually hear the poetry. And I didn't understand a word they were saying!! But it sounds gorgeous - in a way that it just canNOT when translated into English.

So I'm wondering if outsiders projected onto Taste of Cherry something that was not actually there. That's my experience of it, anyway - and it looks like Roger Ebert felt the same way. He writes:

Defenders of the film, and there are many, speak of Kiarostami's willingness to accept silence, passivity, a slow pace, deliberation, inactivity. Viewers who have short attention spans will grow restless, we learn, but if we allow ourselves to accept Kiarostami's time sense, if we open ourselves to the existential dilemma of the main character, then we will sense the film's greatness.

But will we? I have abundant patience with long, slow films, if they engage me. I fondly recall ``Taiga,'' the eight-hour documentary about the yurt-dwelling nomads of Outer Mongolia. I understand intellectually what Kiarostami is doing. I am not impatiently asking for action or incident. What I do feel, however, is that Kiarostami's style here is an affectation; the subject matter does not make it necessary, and is not benefited by it.

Mr. Badii, the lead, played by Homayoun Ershadi, drives around, peering out his window at the various laborers he sees - quizzing them on their financial status, do they want to make some extra money?

There's something creepy about how this is played, and I do think that part of it is effective. Until we know what he wants, he either seems like a sex offender or a serial killer. He comes off as totally nosy. Some of the guys he talks to say to him, "Buzz off." Others get sucked in, because they're curious about what the job would be, and they need the money. He finally reveals his plan - to a young Kurdish soldier he picks up. They're parked on a mountain of earth in the industrial wastelands of Tehran - and Mr. Badii gets out of the car and points to a grave he has already dug on the side of a hill. He wants the soldier to drop him off there, and come back at 6 the next morning. He wants the soldier to then call out his name twice. "If I answer, help me out of the hole. If I don't answer, shovel earth on top of me." He has sleeping pills, which he will take. His plan is to die in the earth. The grave is already dug - he just needs the burial. Naturally, he runs into some resistance when he tells this plan. The Kurdish soldier (played by a non-actor - wonderful) balks. "I can't shovel earth onto someone," he says. Mr. Badii assures him that he will be dead - he won't be burying him alive! No, no, no ... the Kurdish soldier flees, running down the mountain of earth, away from Mr. Badii and his wack-job proposal. I don't blame him.

The film is made up of 4 or 5 of these proposals - to different folks ... and in between Mr. Badii circles through the dirt, driving, staring out the window, looking for someone who will agree. The scenery is monotonous - not just because of the monochromatic desert color-scheme - but also because it's the same spot, seen over and over and over again. I thought the film itself was shot beautifully, with long views of Mr. Badii's car, driving along with piles of dirt towering up over him. There are flocks of crows which take flight in front of his car, cawing indignantly. Mr. Badii stares up at them.

The symbolism is a bit heavy-handed and trite. There are no buildings where Mr. Badii drives. Just mountains of earth and a dirt road cut into the side of it. Mr. Badii is surrounded by earth. The scenery looks like one giant grave. There's even one shot where he stands on the side of the road, watching a huge tractor dump earth into a giant hole - and his shadow is seen against the other side of the hill, with the shadow of the falling dirt projected beside him. A gorgeous shot, but so obvious I thought - Come ON.

But my main issue with the film was in the performance of the lead. He is mainly seen in profile, as he drives along - and I just didn't feel the underlying despair at all. We are never given a reason for why he is suicidal. We don't know anything about Mr. Badii, and I'm not saying I needed it spelled out for me ("My wife died. Therefore I am suicidal") - but give me something. And if you're not going to tell me why, then the actor playing the part had better make me believe that he has a damn good reason. That he means business. I am thinking of Sissy Spacek's haunting performance in 'Night Mother - where she announces, in the first 5 minutes of the film, "I'm going to kill myself at the end of the night, Mother ... and I'd really like to enjoy our last night together." ???!!! Anne Bancroft, as the mother, of course goes apeshit. The thing that is chilling about that script is that the daughter does not give a reason. She's epileptic, if I remember correctly, she is divorced, she can't hold down a job, she lives with her mother - she has social problems. You know, she's had a shit hand dealt to her - but nothing outrageously out of the ordinary. She is not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. She's not even really that unhappy. As a matter of fact, having made the decision to commit suicide cheers her up, she feels a lightness, a sense of purpose. She is happy with her choice. Her mother begs her - why? why? why? What can we do to change it? What are you unhappy about? Let's make it better! The daughter is basically like, "Nothing needs to be changed. I'm just opting out of life, that's all." She is calm, happy, and ready. She's done. She's done with life. So there's an example of how you don't need to have an A to B set-up, you don't need to bash me over the head with motivation or Freudian impulses, or childhood trauma. But give me SOMEthing. Mr. Badii seems pretty indifferent. His main concern is to get someone to bury him - and yes, I totally got his growing desperation to find someone to take on that task. That was quite real. But since we are given no background information about him - nothing - we don't know if he has a wife, kids, what he does for a living ... NOTHING. And the actor isn't revealing a deep chord of either despair or intense joy (like: I've made my decision to die, and I feel good about it) - He is not looking for advice, he doesn't want a lecture ... His performance left me cold. I wanted to tap into his experience, I wanted to have a more complex response to him ... but I just didn't. He's not a whiner, he doesn't over-act, he doesn't gnash his teeth or weep and wail. What I saw was a man driving around in circles, looking out his window, occasionally talking to people on the side of the road. That's it. If the actor had been actually playing something ... something that I got, anyway ... it might have been a different film for me. But he didn't appear to be playing anything. It's my opinion that he's gay and can't deal with it. I'm not just making this up out of thin air, there are clues along the way - and I've got to believe that Kiarostami knew what he was doing in that regard. When he sets off to go kill himself, we see him in his apartment - through the window. He's in silhouette. He walks around, washing his face, putting his coat on, ready to go. There is no wife, no children - at least not that we see. He lives alone. Why? What's going on? Then, there is the opening sequence with the Kurdish solider - before we know what Mr. Badii wants - and there is definitely an impression given that he has picked up the soldier and will pay him for sex. He is vague about his intentions, purposefully so - and Kiarostami allows the ambiguity to just sit in the air for a while ... until we learn more. The soldier tries to get more information out of Mr. Badii - what kind of job is it, what does he want him to do - and Mr. Badii replies, "It's your hands I want. Not your tongue." If this is an accidental bit of subtext, then boy, that's some accident. Obviously he's saying, "I don't need a lecture, I don't want you to talk ... I just want you to pick up a spade and shovel some earth..." Perhaps it's a matter of faulty or inaccurate translation, but I honestly don't think so. I honestly believe that that impression is given for a reason. Mr. Badii never divulges what his problem is (and of course, in Iran, being gay is even more unspeakable than being suicidal) ... but I'm going with the gay theory, and I'm sticking to it.

He eventually picks up a guy who works as a taxidermist at the National Museum. Kiarostami is known for working with non-professional actors and children - and many of the people picked up by Mr. Badii show Taste of Cherry as their only credit. They did not try to act. Sometimes there is awkwardness - like they speak over each other, and have to repeat themselves - the way it is in real conversations - but stuff like that is usually edited out. Here it is not. It actually didn't bother me. I liked it. The passengers he picks up (the Kurdish soldier, the seminary student from Afghanistan, and the Persian taxidermist) are, on the whole, played in a lovely, understated, truthful way. They don't seem like amateur actors. They seem like real people.

So the taxidermist is not an actor, but he has a giant monologue as Mr. Badii drives him through the mountains of earth. There is a trite-ness to the sentiments expressed here, but the down-to-earth way in which he plays it - makes the monologue worth the price of admission.

Taxidermist: I'll tell you something that happened to me. It was just after I got married. We had all kinds of troubles. I was so fed up with it that I decided to end it all. One morning, before dawn, I put a rope in my car. My mind was made up. I wanted to kill myself. I set off for Mianeh. This was in 1960. I reached the mulberry tree plantations. I stopped there. It was still dark. I threw the rope over a tree but it didn't catch hold. I tried once, twice, but to no avail. So then I climbed the tree and tied the rope on tight. Then I felt something soft under my hand. Mulberries. Deliciously sweet mulberries. I ate one. It was succulent, then a second and third. Suddenly I noticed that the sun was rising over the mountaintop. What sun, what scenery, what greenery! All of a sudden I heard children going off to school. They stopped to look at me. They asked me to shake the tree. The mulberries fell and they ate. I felt happy. Then I gathered some mulberries to take them home. My wife was still sleeping. When she woke up, she ate mulberries as well. And she enjoyed them too. I had left to kill myself and I came home with mulberries. A mulberry saved my life. A mulberry saved my life.
Mr. Badii: You ate mulberries, so did your wife, and everything was fine.
Taxidermist: No, it wasn't like that. But I changed. Afterwards, it was better, but I had, in fact, changed my mind. I felt better. Every man on earth has problems in his life. That's the way it is. There are so many people on earth. There isn't one family without problems. I don't know your problem - otherwise I could explain better. When you go to see a doctor, you tell him where it hurts. [Long pause.] Excuse me, you're not Turkish, are you? [Mr. Badii shakes head] Here's a joke. Don't feel offended. A Turk goes to see a doctor. He tells him: "When I touch my body with my finger, it hurts. When I touch my head, it hurts, my legs, it hurts, my belly, my hand, it hurts." The doctor examines him and then tells him: "You're body's fine, but your finger's broken!" My dear man, your mind is ill, but there's nothing wrong with you. Change your outlook. I had left home to kill myself but a mulberry changed me, an ordinary, unimportant mulberry.

Near the end of the film, we suddenly see the film crew filming earlier sections of the movie - the soldiers running by on drills, stuff like that. We see the camera guys setting up, it is as though we are watching a video monitor, we see Kiarostami standing by his camera man, we see the lead actor hand a cigarette to Kiarostami ... Nothing in the film has set us up for this kind of commenting-on-the-fact-that-we-are-making-a-film style. Nothing. It's fine if you comment on the fact that you're making a film - it's very much in vogue!! - but this? It doesn't fit, and seems to serve no purpose. What we are being told is: It's only a movie. What you just saw was a movie. To say that this approach does not work in this particular film is a vast understatement. To my mind, it's a cop-out and a huge error. The film collapses in on itself immediately, when we are pulled out of it. Kiarostami should have stuck to his guns, and just ended the damn thing, on its own merits. I was left hanging in the wind, by that ending, and it doesn't serve the film at all (regardless of what interpretation or spin you put on it).

The last shot of the film is self-explanatory, I suppose, but it's baffling to me why Kiarostami made that choice. Much of Taste of Cherry has to do with distance - so I get that part of it. We get long long vistas, of Mr. Badii standing on a dusty dirty hill, staring into the smoggy panorama of Tehran. We see FAR in this film. Even when we're in deep close-up with Mr. Badii driving, out of his window you can see vistas and dirt-mountains ... Nothing is claustrophobic or urban here. There's lots of building going on, but there are cliff-faces and you can see across ravines - and the people look like miniature figures, the cars like Matchbox cars. Sometimes we just get a long long shot of Mr. Badii's car circling the dirt cliffs - and we hear the conversation going on in the car from that remove. Much is seen via long long distances.

So there's obviously a style being used here, an approach - which doesn't serve the film, in my opinion, although it is quite beautiful to look at (screenshots below. Just gorgeous). And so to suddenly get a meta-moment when we are reminded that this is a film we are watching, and we see the director in sunglasses, and hear the walkie-talkies buzzing ... it's jarring. It doesn't work. At all.

The more distant we get from Mr. Badii, the more we realize the hollow performance at the center of Taste of Cherry.

If you're interested in Iranian cinema, and you don't know much about it, then you really have to see Taste of Cherry - it has its place in the history books, just because of the brou-haha surrounding its tour of the festivals - the fact that it was so honored (and that Tarantino is such a fan-boy about Kiarostami) is a big deal, a groundbreaking moment in the late 90s which catapulted Iranian film into the world limelight. And rightly so. Kiarostami is one of the major players in Iran, and his work needs to be dealt with on its own terms - because he's that good. I love Ten - and it has a gimmick to it as well (much of Kiarostami's films are gimmicks, experiments) - but in that case, it works. The gimmick is set up from the start, and it ends up serving the film as a whole, instead of detracting. So to me, Taste of Cherry falls short, for Kiarostami - even though it is the film that he is most known for. I applaud any addressing of a taboo subject. I applaud any courageous confrontation with censorship. Taste of Cherry has all of that. But, in the end, it did not have the courage of its convictions. It reassures us: It's only a movie, it's only a movie.

I know that. I know it's only a movie. Pointing it out to me adds nothing.

And I just wish I cared more!

Peter Gatien incarnate ...

This is hilarious to me: Look who's on the first page of Google image searches when you put in "Peter Gatien".

If you didn't actually know me and you kept running into me on Google Image Searches where I was impersonating someone else (Edie Sedgwick, Sean Young) you might think I had a little identity problem. Which actually might be true.

I just think it's hilarious that if you search for Peter freakin' Gatien (and believe me, people do - check out the comments to that original post!!) ... you get my stupid mug on the first page of Search results - taken when my Mac laptop was brand new and I couldn't stop putting on costumes in my spare time and taking pictures of myself. It's hysterical.

I have this thing about things

I get all weird and obsessive about them. I am not materialistic. In fact, I'm kind of a cheapskate. Money makes me nervous. I like having it, but I prefer hoarding it. And then I spend hundreds of dollars on books when I'm in a fugue state at 2 in the morning. But then sometimes I get so into things - like this table I bought that is arriving today. I literally cannot wait for its arrival so I can gloat over it for a couple of hours. And yesterday I drove to Pier 1 and bought a chair for the table - an absolutely gorgeous chair which was basically part of a dining room set, but I ripped it away from its siblings and it will stand alone. I also went to Target and bought two towels that are so fluffy and beautiful (deep brown on one side, and a pale pale blue on the other side) that I feel I might weep. I bought a little lamp for my table - which has a colored glass shade, and the thought of it makes me feel almost nervous it is so beautiful. And I also bought 2 coffee mugs (like, Sheila: do you need any more coffee mugs?) But these I couldn't pass up. They're kind of square - and they have brown interiors and a soft blue exterior with a painting of a butterfly on it. It sounds ugly but they just called to me from the shelf.

And so I sit and gloat over my things.

And I realize (weird) that I guess it's a theme. It's everywhere. I mean, I knew that - that's the whole point of the book I wrote - but it's really striking me now. I was unaware of the fact that I was writing about myself, even though that writing is MY creation, I did that, I made that up. But there's something about things. And I always knew that - which is one of the reasons why I wrote that novel that sits in my drawer. I wanted to write about things (meaning: objects). There's something potent there - more to do, more to do. Much to think upon. And the next time I write about it, I'll be sitting AT MY TABLE WHICH IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING IN THE WORLD.

Album release: Siobhan O'Malley

So my beautiful and talented sister Siobhan has some big news. Her second album is finally available. Long story - the label went under, her tracks were trapped in the netherworld ... but finally: IT'S OUT. I'm thrilled for her.

You can download the tracks on her Myspace page - and I guess if you're a CD type (you dinosaur!!) - a CD will also be available eventually. But for now - you can get all the songs in mp3 form there. Her first album Permanent Markers was self-produced - and for this one, she had a producer - so the sound is much bigger - there's a band, freakin' HORNS, I think someone plays a harpsichord at one point - you know, studio musicians!! - it's thrilling. You can hear one of the tracks when you open her Myspace page.

Congrats, Siobhan! I'm so proud and so psyched!!

The Books: "Post Captain" (Patrick O'Brian)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

Post Captain , by Patrick O'Brian

Second in the Aubrey Maturin series. The book spends much of its time on land (and I'm jumping ahead of myself, but whatevs - ) One of the reasons I am LOVING this series is because it is always a surprise. The characters are the same. But what is going on (so far) has changed RADICALLY from book to book. Patrick O'Brian is not afraid to shake things up a bit. There may be readers who are only in it for the war battles. That's great - but Patrick O'Brian isn't writing ONLY for them (It's kinda like The Sopranos viewers who were pissed when there weren't any "whackings" in an episode) ... Desolation Island (which I am almost done with) has only one battle. The series is not monotonous. Each book has its own thread. The thread of Post Captain is basically Jack Aubrey being on the run from debt - hiding out at Stephen's house - war breaking out all around them ... Oh yes, and suddenly there are GIRLS in the book - and romances start popping up. Naturally because we're talking about Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, their romances are rather complicated (especially Stephen's, poor guy). These are vibrant difficult sometimes prickly men - who have overriding passions for other things (the sea, medicine, music) - and so to see them putting these elements of themselves aside to go courting is FASCINATING. I'm already just hooked in to the psychologies of these men - so it's just so much fun to see them in all different kinds of situations. There's a family of women (with a terrifically awful mother) - and she's trying to marry them all off. There's a cousin - named Diana Villiers - who is a widow, although she's very young - and she's kind of the black sheep. Gorgeous, too. And not like a woman, or not like a coy simpering 19th century kind of woman. She's sassy. She gallops her horse. She speaks frankly. Both Jack and Stephen start pursuing her - much to the chagrin of the family of women who treat Diana as though she's a wild animal. The fact that Jack and Stephen are both interested in the same girl puts a little kink in their relationship and suddenly there are things they cannot talk about. It's agony. You just yearn for them to be good friends again. One of the daughters in the family is Sophia, a sweet gentle girl - who also is "in the running" for the affections of the two men ... she starts to read up on war and ships and the sea, so she can seem educated when she talks to Jack. And etc. There's just SO much happening in the book. Not to mention the fact that Stephen becomes an intelligence agent. Post Captain is a rich detailed book, and the women are drawn with just as much sensitivity and specificity as the men. O'Brian is a master. A master of the human element. He can describe the ebbs and flows of a conversation, the jostling for position, the underlying motivations - better than anyone else I can think of. You just "get it" - and sometimes what he is describing is so subtle, something that is never spoken or acknoweldged - but that we all know, we've all experienced. So I'll read some passage and think, excitedly, "YES. That is exactly what it is like when you are talking to such a person ..." Oh, and as a woman - I very much appreciate the fully drawn female characters - who are just as full of potential for nastiness, or selfishness, or idiocy as the men ... They are not cardboard cutouts, O'Brian doesn't just stay on the surface with them - telling us what they DO - he examines them, in the same way everyone is examined - even minor characters. Diana comes to life. Mrs. Whatshername (it escapes me right now - the awful mother) TOTALLY comes to life. She's a silly horrid woman, but she is totally real. Sophia comes to life - and is vibrantly different than Diana. I don't mean to belabor this point but so many male authors can't write women, or they THINK they can but no - I am here to tell them they cannot. It's annoying. And disappointing. Because it pulls me out of the story, and I also experience such things as a betrayal, a little bit. That might be silly, but whatever, it's true. I don't like to experience my gender, my entire gender, as a caricature. It's annoying. But O'Brian never falters. He remains, at all times, specific, true, clear, and precise. Insightful. How did he do it?? He just had a damn good eye, first of all - he could see people.

Here is an excerpt. Jack and Stephen are hiding out in a cottage. They are roommates. How will THAT go? I picked this excerpt because I absolutely adore Stephen's thoughts about Jack and music. It's stuff like that that hooks me in to these books, over and over and over. Almost every page has a jewel on it ... like the one below about why "there was no greater proof of their friendship" .... Yes, yes, yes. I know JUST what he is talking about there.

EXCERPT FROM Post Captain , by Patrick O'Brian

At present they were lodging in an idyllic cottage near the Heath with green shutters and a honeysuckle over the door - idyllic in summer, that is to say. They were looking after themselves, living with rigid economy; and there was no greater proof of their friendship than the way their harmony withstood their very grave differences in domestic behaviour. In Jack's opinion Stephen was little better than a slut: his papers, odd bits of dry, garlic'd bread, his razors and small-clothes lay on and about his private table in a miserable squalor; and from the appearance of the grizzled wig that was now acting as a tea=cosy for his milk-saucepan, it was clear that he had breakfasted on marmalade.

Jack took off his coat, covered his waistcoat and breeches with an apron, and carried the dishes into the scullery. 'My plate and saucer will serve again,' said Stephen. 'I have blown upon them. I do wish, Jack,' he cried, 'that you would leave that milk-saucepan alone. It is perfectly clean. What more sanitary, what more wholesome, than scalded milk? Will I dry up?' he called through the open door.

'No, no,' cried Jack, who had seen him do so. 'There is no room - it is nearly done. Just attend to the fire, will you?'

'We might have some music,' said Stephen. 'Your friend's piano is in tolerable tune, and I have found a German flute. What are you doing now?'

'Swabbing out the galley. Give me five minutes, and I am your man.'

'It sounds more like Noah's flood. This peevish attention to cleanliness, Jack, this busy preoccupation with dirt,' said Stephen, shaking his head at the fire, 'has something of the Brahminical superstition about it. It is not very far removed from nastiness, Jack - from cacothymia.'

'I am concerned to hear it,' said Jack. 'Pray, is it catching?' he added, with a private but sweet-natured leer. 'Now, sir,' - appearing in the doorway with the apron rolled under his arm - 'where is your flute? What shall we play?' He sat at the little square piano and ran his fingers up and down, singing,

'Those Spanish dogs would gladly own
Both Gibraltar and Port Mahon

and don't they wish they may have it? Gibraltar, I mean.' He went on from one tune to another in an abstracted strumming while Stephen slowly screwed the flute together; and eventually from this strumming there emerged the adagio of the Hummel sonata.

'Is it modesty that makes him play like this?' wondered Stephen, worrying at a crossed thread. 'I could swear he knows what music is - prizes high music beyond almost anything. But here he is, playing this as sweetly as milk, like an anecdote: Jesus, Mary and Joseph. And the inversion will be worse ... It is worse - a sentimental indulgence. He takes pains; he is full of good-will and industry; and yet he cannot make even his fiddle utter anything but platitudes, except by mistake. On the piano it is worse, the notes being true. You would say it was a girl playing, a sixteen-stone girl. His face is not set in an expression of sentimentality, however, but of suffering. He is suffering extremely, I am afraid. This playing is very like Sophia's. Is he aware of it? Is he consciously imitating her? I do not know: their styles are much the same in any case - their absence of style. Perhaps it is diffidence, a feeling that they may not go beyond certain modest limits. They are much alike. And since Jack, knowing what real music is, can play like a simpleton, may not Sophia, playing like a ninny-hammer ...? Perhaps I misjudge her. Perhaps it is a case of the man filled with true poetic feeling who can only come out with ye flowery meads again - the channels blocked. Dear me, he is sadly moved. How I hope those tears will not fall. He is the best of creatures - I love him dearly - but he is an Englishman, no more - emotional, lachrymose. Jack, Jack!' he called out. 'You have mistook the second variation.'

'What? What?' cried passionately. 'Why did you break in upon me, Stephen?'

'Listen. This is how it goes,' said Stephen, leaning over him and playing.

'No it ain't,' cried Jack. 'I had it right.' He took a turn up and down the room, filling it with his massive form, far larger now with emotion. He looked strangely at Stephe, but after another turn or two he smiled and said, 'Come, let's improvise, as we used to do off Crete. What tune shall we start with?'

'Do you know St. Patrick's Day?'

'How does it go?' Stephen played. 'Oh, that? Of course I know it: we call it Bacon and Greens.'

'I must decline to improve on Bacon and Greens. Let us start with Hosier's Ghost, and see where we get to.'

The music wove in and out, one ballad and its variations leading to another, the piano handing it to the flute and back again; and sometimes they sang as well, the forecastle songs they had heard so often at sea.

Come all you brave seamen that ploughs on the main Give ear to my story I'm true to maintain, Concerning the Litchfield that was cast away On the Barbary shore by the dawn of the day.

'The light is failing,' observed Stephen, taking his lips from the flute.

'On the Barbary shore by the dawn of the day,' sang Jack again. 'Oh, such a dying fall. So it is but the rain has let us, thank God,' he said, bending to the window. 'The wind has veered into the east - a little north to east. We shall have a dry walk.'

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year.

On the night of April 18, into April 19, in 1775, Paul Revere made his famous ride.

The spring of 1775 was a tense time. Prominent Bostonians were under constant threat of arrest from the British, and many of them - to avoid this - moved their families to outlying communities. However, two of the main patriotic leaders (Benjamin Church and Joseph Warren) stayed in Boston. Paul Revere did as well, and kept a close eye on British movements through that spring. Revere was trusted as a messenger, he knew everybody.

In mid-April, Revere started to notice some ominous signs: mainly that the British ships were taken out of the water, to be worked on, repaired. He could sense that something was coming. He felt the British were preparing for some kind of attack.

Revere went to Concord on April 16 (most of the weaponry was stored there) and warned the leaders of that community that the British were preparing something, they were up to something, and if they were going to strike, they would most definitely try to seize the weapons stash in Concord. So the people of Concord went to work, hiding their store of weapons in barns, cellars, swamps, etc. (Like I mentioned: Paul Revere was trusted. He knew everybody. If you're interested, read the excerpt I posted of Malcolm Gladwell's fascinating analysis of Paul Revere - and Gladwell's comparison with the far less successful messenger on that very same night - William Dawes.)

So. April 16. Revere returned to Boston from Concord, and met with other revolutionary leaders, and that is when they came up with the "one if by land, two if by sea" warning system. Revere knew they needed a way to have some advance warning about which route the British were going to take when they finally did attack.

By land? Or by sea?

So, Revere set up the system: Signal lanterns would be placed in the belfry of Old North Church (the steeple can be seen across the Charles River). If two lanterns were hung, then the British would be crossing the Charles by boat. If one lantern was hung, then the British would choose to attack using a land route.

"One if by land, two if by sea."

The plan was put in place just in time. On April 18, in the early evening, a stable boy came to Paul Revere, telling him that he had overheard some British soldiers discussing the upcoming attack, and that it was planned for early the next morning. The stable boy knew who to bring this information to, and that was Paul Revere. (Again, check out Gladwell's analysis of Paul Revere's personality. Really interesting.)

Revere, on receiving this urgent piece of information, knew he had to get the warning out (and that he especially had to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams who, at that time, were hiding out in Lexington).

So off he went on his now legendary ride (here's a cool map of the route he took). Revere took the water route out of Boston, rowed across the Charles, and galloped through the communities north of Boston sounding the alarm. (Medford, Charlestown, Lexington, Concord.) Because of Paul Revere, the British had completely lost the element of surprise. When they came to attack, they found the rebellious colonists waiting for them everywhere, ambushing them left and right, from behind stone walls, hiding behind trees ...

An interesting tidbit (this is why I love this time in American history - yeah, the events themselves are really cool ... but it's details like the following one that really have me hooked, like a crack addict):

In his hurry to depart, Revere forgot to bring along pieces of cloth to wrap the oars of his boat. The purpose of the cloth would be to muffle the sound of the oars cutting through the water. The Somerset (the British man-of-war) was at anchor, right there in the harbor. Paul Revere had to row right by them, and so any sound at all would have alerted the crew, and if Revere was busted, the whole jig would be up. Revere was in a bit of a pickle ... standing by his boat, trying to figure out how he could improvise ... could he take off his stockings? Tie them around the end of the oars?

One of the boatmen involved in helping Revere make this crossing came to the rescue. He ran to his girlfriend's house and asked her for her petticoat. One can only imagine her startled response to the nighttime demand at her door from her beau: "Please, dear. It's 10 pm, and I need you to take off your petticoat, give it to me, and don't ask me ANY questions about it!!" But apparently, this girl, whoever she was, complied - took off her petticoat, handed it over, and Revere used it to wrap up the ends of his oars.

I love that woman, whoever she is.

So. In honor of this great moment in American history -here is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's celebrated poem "Paul Revere's Ride". And below that, I am posting an old essay I wrote about babysitting Cashel - which is relevant to this date in history. A couple years ago, I read the Cashel piece on a radio program, which was a pretty cool experience - and reading over the piece today makes me nostalgic for when Cashel was so little!!

But back to the poem: I know large swaths of it by heart ... I grew up hearing it. I'm an East Coast girl, most of my family is from Boston. So all of these places in the poem are places I had been to many times as a child, and not just a tourist ... but just because we lived near them. That piece of history felt very real to me. The poem is thrilling to me - because of the story it tells, of course, but also because of its rollicking perfect rhythm, you can feel the suspense, you can feel the urgency, the whole thing ends up sounding like the clatter of horses hooves galloping through the night. It's meant to be read out loud. Try it for yourself!! The last stanza is beyond compare. "For borne on the night-wind of the Past ..." I mean, come ON!!

April 18, 1775. A great day in American history. "The fate of a nation was riding that night." One of my personal favorite stories of the American revolution.

Paul Revere's Ride

- by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,--
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm."

Then he said "Good-night!" and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend through alley and street
Wanders and watches, with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,--
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town
And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,--
A line of black that bends and floats
On the rising tide like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse's side,
Now he gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns.

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer's dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, black and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadow brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the British Regulars fired and fled,---
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard wall,
Chasing the redcoats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,---
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

Paul Revere himself wrote of that time:

In the Fall of 1774 and Winter of 1775 I was one of upwards of thirty, cheifly mechanics, who formed our selves in to a Committee for the purpose of watching the Movements of the British Soldiers, and gaining every intelegence of the movements of the Tories.

We held our meetings at the Green-Dragon Tavern. We were so carefull that our meetings should be kept Secret; that every time we met, every person swore upon the Bible, that they would not discover any of our transactions, But to Messrs. HANCOCK, ADAMS, Doctors WARREN, CHURCH, and one or two more.

About November, when things began to grow Serious, a Gentleman who had Conections with the Tory party, but was a Whig at heart, acquainted me, that our meetings were discovered, and mentioned the identical words that were spoken among us the Night before. . . . We removed to another place, which we thought was more secure: but here we found that all our transactions were communicated to Governor Gage. (This came to me through the then Secretary Flucker; He told it to the Gentleman mentioned above). It was then a common opinion, that there was a Traytor in the provincial Congress, and that Gage was posessed of all their Secrets. (Church was a member of that Congress for Boston.) In the Winter, towards the Spring, we frequently took Turns, two and two, to Watch the Soldiers, By patroling the Streets all night. The Saturday Night preceding the 19th of April, about 12 oClock at Night, the Boats belonging to the Transports were all launched, and carried under the Sterns of the Men of War. (They had been previously hauld up and repaired). We likewise found that the Grenadiers and light Infantry were all taken off duty.

From these movements, we expected something serious was [to] be transacted. On Tuesday evening, the 18th, it was observed, that a number of Soldiers were marching towards the bottom of the Common. About 10 o'Clock, Dr. Warren Sent in great haste for me, and beged that I would imediately Set off for Lexington, where Messrs. Hancock and Adams were, and acquaint them of the Movement, and that it was thought they were the objets. When I got to Dr. Warren's house, I found he had sent an express by land to Lexington—a Mr. Wm. Daws. The Sunday before, by desire of Dr. Warren, I had been to Lexington, to Mess. Hancock and Adams, who were at the Rev. Mr. Clark's. I returned at Night thro Charlestown; there I agreed with a Col. Conant, and some other Gentlemen, that if the British went out by Water, we would shew two Lanthorns in the North Church Steeple; and if by Land, one, as a Signal; for we were aprehensive it would be dificult to Cross the Charles River, or git over Boston neck. I left Dr. Warrens, called upon a friend, and desired him to make the Signals. I then went Home, took my Boots and Surtout, and went to the North part of the Town, Where I had kept a Boat; two friends rowed me across Charles River, a little to the eastward where the Somerset Man of War lay. It was then young flood, the Ship was winding, and the moon was Rising. They landed me on Charlestown side. When I got into Town, I met Col. Conant, and several others; they said they had seen our signals. I told them what was Acting, and went to git me a Horse; I got a Horse of Deacon Larkin. While the Horse was preparing, Richard Devens, Esq. who was one of the Committee of Safty, came to me, and told me, that he came down the Road from Lexington, after Sundown, that evening; that He met ten British Officers, all well mounted, and armed, going up the Road.

I set off upon a very good Horse; it was then about 11 o'Clock, and very pleasant. After I had passed Charlestown Neck, and got nearly opposite where Mark was hung in chains, I saw two men on Horse back, under a Tree. When I got near them, I discovered they were British officer. One tryed to git a head of Me, and the other to take me. I turned my Horse very quick, and Galloped towards Charlestown neck, and then pushed for the Medford Road. The one who chased me, endeavoring to Cut me off, got into a Clay pond, near where the new Tavern is now built. I got clear of him, and went thro Medford, over the Bridge, and up to Menotomy. In Medford, I awaked the Captain of the Minute men; and after that, I alarmed almost every House, till I got to Lexington. I found Messrs. Hancock and Adams at the Rev. Mr. Clark's; I told them my errand, and inquired for Mr. Daws; they said he had not been there; I related the story of the two officers, and supposed that He must have been stopped, as he ought to have been there before me. After I had been there about half an Hour, Mr. Daws came; we refreshid our selves, and set off for Concord, to secure the Stores, &c. there. We were overtaken by a young Docter Prescot, whom we found to be a high Son of Liberty. I told them of the ten officers that Mr. Devens mett, and that it was probable we might be stoped before we got to Concord; for I supposed that after Night, they divided them selves, and that two of them had fixed themselves in such passages as were most likely to stop any intelegence going to Concord. I likewise mentioned, that we had better allarm all the Inhabitents till we got to Concord; the young Doctor much approved of it, and said, he would stop with either of us, for the people between that and Concord knew him, and would give the more credit to what we said. We had got nearly half way. Mr Daws and the Doctor stoped to allarm the people of a House: I was about one hundred Rod a head, when I saw two men, in nearly the same situation as those officer were, near Charlestown. I called for the Doctor and Daws to come up;—in an Instant I was surrounded by four;—they had placed themselves in a Straight Road, that inclined each way; they had taken down a pair of Barrs on the North side of the Road, and two of them were under a tree in the pasture. The Docter being foremost, he came up; and we tryed to git past them; but they being armed with pistols and swords, they forced us in to the pasture;—the Docter jumped his Horse over a low Stone wall, and got to Concord. I observed a Wood at a Small distance, and made for that. When I got there, out Started Six officers, on Horse back, and orderd me to dismount;—one of them, who appeared to have the command, examined me, where I came from, and what my Name Was? I told him. He asked me if I was an express? I answered in the afirmative. He demanded what time I left Boston? I told him; and aded, that their troops had catched aground in passing the River, and that There would be five hundred Americans there in a short time, for I had alarmed the Country all the way up. He imediately rode towards those who stoppd us, when all five of them came down upon a full gallop; one of them, whom I afterwards found to be Major Mitchel, of the 5th Regiment, Clapped his pistol to my head, called me by name, and told me he was going to ask me some questions, and if I did not give him true answers, he would blow my brains out. He then asked me similar questions to those above. He then orderd me to mount my Horse, after searching me for arms. He then orderd them to advance, and to lead me in front. When we got to the Road, they turned down towards Lexington. When we had got about one Mile, the Major Rode up to the officer that was leading me, and told him to give me to the Sergeant. As soon as he took me, the Major orderd him, if I attempted to run, or any body insulted them, to blow my brains out. We rode till we got near Lexington Meeting-house, when the Militia fired a Voley of Guns, which appeared to alarm them very much. The Major inquired of me how far it was to Cambridge, and if there were any other Road? After some consultation, the Major Rode up to the Sargent, and asked if his Horse was tired? He answered him, he was--(He was a Sargent of Grenadiers, and had a small Horse)—then, said He, take that man's Horse. I dismounted, and the Sargent mounted my Horse, when they all rode towards Lexington Meeting-House. I went across the Burying-ground, and some pastures, and came to the Revd. Mr. Clark's House, where I found Messrs. Hancok and Adams. I told them of my treatment, and they concluded to go from that House to wards Woburn. I went with them, and a Mr. Lowell, who was a Clerk to Mr. Hancock. When we got to the House where they intended to stop, Mr. Lowell and my self returned to Mr. Clark's, to find what was going on. When we got there, an elderly man came in; he said he had just come from the Tavern, that a Man had come from Boston, who said there were no British troops coming. Mr. Lowell and my self went towards the Tavern, when we met a Man on a full gallop, who told us the Troops were coming up the Rocks. We afterwards met another, who said they were close by. Mr. Lowell asked me to go to the Tavern with him, to git a Trunk of papers belonging to Mr. Hancock. We went up Chamber; and while we were giting the Trunk, we saw the British very near, upon a full March. We hurried to wards Mr. Clark's House. In our way, we passed through the Militia. There were about 50. When we had got about 100 Yards from the meeting-House the British Troops appeard on both Sides of the Meeting-House. In their Front was an Officer on Horse back. They made a Short Halt; when I saw, and heard, a Gun fired, which appeared to be a Pistol. Then I could distinguish two Guns, and then a Continual roar of Musquetry; When we made off with the Trunk.

As I have mentioned Dr. Church, perhaps it might not be disagreeable to mention some Matters of my own knowledge, respecting Him. He appeared to be a high son of Liberty. He frequented all the places where they met, Was incouraged by all the leaders of the Sons of Liberty, and it appeared he was respected by them, though I knew that Dr. Warren had not the greatest affection for him. He was esteemed a very capable writer, especially in verese; and as the Whig party needed every Strenght, they feared, as well as courted Him. Though it was known, that some of the Liberty Songs, which We composed, were parodized by him, in favor of the British, yet none dare charge him with it. I was a constant and critical observer of him, and I must say, that I never thought Him a man of Principle; and I doubted much in my own mind, wether He was a real Whig. I knew that He kept company with a Capt. Price, a half-pay British officer, and that He frequently dined with him, and Robinson, one of the Commissioners. I know that one of his intimate aquaintances asked him why he was so often with Robinson and Price? His answer was, that He kept Company with them on purpose to find out their plans. The day after the Battle of Lexington, I met him in Cambridge, when He shew me some blood on his stocking, which he said spirted on him from a Man who was killed near him, as he was urging the Militia on. I well remember, that I argued with my self, if a Man will risque his life in a Cause, he must be a Friend to that cause; and I never suspected him after, till He was charged with being a Traytor.

The full letter can be read here.

ONE IF BY LAND
We colored for a while. As we waited for the pizza to arrive. Cashel commanded me to draw a house. So I did. Cashel was basically the architect and the interior designer. Telling me what he wanted to see.

"Put a playroom in the attic."

"But Auntie Sheila -- where are the stairs??"

I drew the bathroom, and the mere sight of the toilet caused Cashel to dissolve into mirth. Yes. Toilets are hilarious.

I drew a spiral staircase which blew Cashel away. "That's so COOL." Then I drew the living room. I said, "I think there needs to be a picture on the wall. Or a portrait. Whose picture should be on the wall, you think?"

Cashel said bluntly, "Einstein."

Okay, then. Einstein. So I drew this little cartoon of Einstein, with the crazy hair coming up, and Cashel said seriously, with all of his knowledge, "That really looks like Einstein."

We ate our pizza together, talking about stuff. Star Wars, Ben Franklin. Cashel informed me, "Ben Franklin discovered lightning."

Cashel is a wealth of information. Randomly, he told my parents that Vincent Van Gogh never sold a painting while he was alive, but that after he died, he became famous.

I read him a story. It was from the book of "Disney stories" which I had given him for his birthday. He loves it. He pulled it out of the bookshelf, and I said, "Oh! I gave that to you!" Cashel said, a little bit annoyed, "I know that."

He had me read the story of the little mouse who hung out with Ben Franklin, and basically (in the world of Disney) was the inspiration for all of Ben Franklin's famous moments. Cashel would shoot questions at me. "Why is Ben Franklin's hair white?" "Well ... he's old now. But also, in those days, men wore powdered wigs." Cashel's little serious face, listening, sponging this all up. Probably the next day he informed his friends that men in the olden days wore powdered wigs. He's that kind of listener, that kind of learner.

Then he put on his Obi Wan Kenobi costume which Grandma Peggy made him for Christmas. A long hooded brown cloak ... and he hooked his light saber into his waist, and galloped off down the hall. A mini Jedi knight.

I had him pick out three stories to read before bedtime. He sat beside me, curled up into me, looking at the pictures as I read to him. The last one we read was Longfellow's poem "Paul Revere's Ride". This poem was a favorite of ours, when we were kids. My dad would read it to us, and even now, when I read the words, I hear them in my father's voice. A magical poem. The way my dad read it to us (along with Longfellow's help) made us SEE it. The clock tower, the moon, the darkness ... the sense of anticipation, of secrecy, of urgency. It was thrilling. So I love that this is being passed on to Cashel! I've never read the poem outloud before, so I had one of those strange moments of the space-time continuum bending, me stepping into my father's shoes, Cashel 5 years old beside me, feeling the ghost of my own 5 year old self listening.

I also remember how Brendan and I used to chime in gleefully: "ONE IF BY LAND, TWO IF BY SEA!" And Cashel did the same thing. I paused before that moment in the poem, glanced down at him, and he screamed out, "ONE IF BY LAND, TWO IF BY SEA!"

There was also a subtlety of understanding in Cashel. For example, I read this part:

And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns.

And Cashel exclaimed, in a sort of "Uh-oh" tone, "They're comin' by sea!!" Now the words don't actually SAY that, but he remembered the "one if by land two if by sea" signal, and puts it all together. That's my boy!

I remembered the first lines from memory:

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

Again, those are just words on the page. But to me, they are filled with the echoes of my father's voice.

Cashel and I, as we went through the poem, had to stop many times for discussions.

There was one illustration of all the minute-men, hiding behind the stone walls, with a troop of Redcoats marching along, walking straight into the ambush. Cashel pointed at it, and stated firmly, "That's the civil war."

"Nope. Nope. That is actually a picture from the American Revolutionary War."

Cashel pondered this. Taking it in. Then: "The minute-men were in the civil war." But less certain. Glancing up at me for explanation.

"Nope. The minute-men were soldiers in the American Revolution. Do you know why they called them that?"

"Why?"

"Cause they were farmers, and regular people ... but they could be ready to go into battle in a minute."

Again, a long silence. Cashel filed this away for safekeeping. He forgets nothing.

"So ... Auntie Sheila ... what is the difference between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War?"

Woah. Okay. This will be a test. How to describe all of that in 5-year-old language. I mean, frankly, Cashel is not like a five-year-old at all. But still. Everything must be boiled down into its simplest components.

"Well. America used to be a part of England, and the American Revolutionary War was when America decided that it wanted to be free ... and Americans basically told the Brits to go home." Uh-oh. Brits? This is an inflammatory term. I corrected myself. "America told Great Britain that it wanted to be its own country. And the Civil War ... " Hmmm. How to begin ... what to say ... I know it was about more than slavery, but I decided to only focus on that one aspect. Economic theory and regional cultural differences would be too abstract. "In those days, Cashel, black people were slaves. And it was very very wrong. Can you understand that?"

He nodded. His little serious face.

"And the people in the South wanted to keep their slaves, and the people in the North said to the people in the South that they had to give up their slaves. And they ended up going to war. And eventually all the slaves were free."

Cashel accepted this explanation silently. Then he pointed back to the Paul Revere poem. "Read." he commanded.

The Books: "Master & Commander" (Patrick O'Brian)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

Master and Commander, by Patrick O'Brian.

I came to these books late. As in, RIGHT NOW. Master & Commander was the last book I read in 2007 - and I am now nearly finished with Desolation Island, the fifth in the series. I will certainly read all of them. I find them addictive - which was a surprise to me. I'm not sure what I was expecting but acute psychological observations filling page after page was not on the list. I expected the gripping war scenes (which are SO well written - you can actually see what is going on - and that is no small thing, especially for a landlubber reader like myself) - and I expected the evocations of the sea in all its different moods - but what I really really LOVE about these books is how psychological they are. The dissection of a man's character (or a woman's, too, actually) - what he is hiding, what he uses to cover up his soul/flaws/whatever, how he navigates social situations, his secret griefs and how they come to the surface - just all of that ... O'Brian is so so good at putting our fellow man on display, in all his different guises - and seeing how he operates. I just love that. He has SUCH a good eye for personality and motivation. Not to mention, of course, how well he immerses us in that world and that time. Never once do I feel an anachronism - because, of course, not only is the technology different in the early years of the 19th century - but man is different too. I mean, not totally, of course - things like love, anger, fear, competition - we all have all of that in us, and we always have and I believe we always will. But Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin (and all the other characters) feel like 19th century people to me. Not that I know any 19th century people, but you know what I mean.

I just LOVE hanging out with these characters and I am so thrilled that I have so many more books to go, so I can just linger on in them ... it's an embarrassment of riches.

Master & Commander starts with Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin meeting for the first time in a small concert at a private house. I love that O'Brian chooses to introduce us to both of them in the context of music - which is so important to both of the main characters, and one of their main bonds of friendship. Some of my favorite bits of writing in these books is when Aubrey and Maturin meet up at evening in the captain's quarters, and Aubrey plays his violin and Maturin plays his cello - It is a silent communion of friendship - and it is how they can be truly intimate with one another. They're outside the realm of language and social niceties - they are communicating, freely and without barriers - delving themselves into Mozart, Bach, whoever. God, it's just marvelous how O'Brian brings us to that particular scene again and again - and you know, each time it's different. Because different things are being communicated. Sometimes it's loneliness, sometimes it's hope ... sometimes it's a long breath of fresh air after a weary day ... It's like they allow themselves to sink into their own personal experiences - after so much pure ACTION during the day. They can step back, and let the music do the talking for them. Wonderful stuff.

I also love Stephen Maturin's diary entries. Terrific writing, first of all, on O'Brian's part ... I can hear Stephen's voice. And his psychological and intellectual observations are like blood to a vampire for me. I can't get enough.

So that's the excerpt I chose from this book - one of his diary entries.

And one last thing. The main gift of these books (for me) is that I have truly come to love these people. I love Jack Aubrey, and I love Stephen Maturin. Maturin's my favorite - and his journey, over the course of the books, has been so pleasing to me to read ... his laudanum addiction, his intellectual and scientific curiosity, his observations, his love affair (Ouch!), his intelligence work, his hatred of tyranny and authority of any kind, his medical work and his devotion to it, his friendship with Aubrey ... He has quickly become one of my favorite literary characters ever. I adore Jack Aubrey, too, but Stephen Maturin is my main man.

I LOVE THESE BOOKS.

EXCERPT FROM Master and Commander, by Patrick O'Brian.

It was an enchanting house for meditation, backing on to the very top of Mahon's cliff and overhanging the merchants' quay at a dizzy height - so high that the noise and business of the harbour was impersonal, no more than an accompaniment to thought. Stephen's room was at the back, on this cool northern side looking over the water; and he sat there just inside the open window with his feet in a basin of water, writing his diary while the swifts (common, pallid and Alpine) raced shrieking through the torrid, quivering air between him and the Sophie, a toy-like object far down on the other side of the harbour, tied up to the victualling-wharf.

'So James Dillon is a Catholic,' he wrote in his minute and secret shorthand. 'He used not to be. That is to say, he was not a Catholic in the sense that it would have made any marked difference to his behaviour, or have rendered the taking of an oath intolerably painful. He was not in any way a religious man. Has there been some conversion, some Loyolan change? I hope not. How many crypto-Catholics are there in the service? I should like to ask him; but that would be indiscreet. I remember Colonel Despard's telling me that in England Bishop Challoner gave a dozen dispensations a year for the occasional taking of the sacrament according to the Anglican rite. Colonel T-, of the Gordon riots, was a Catholic. Did Despard's remark refer only to the army? I never thought to ask him at the time. Quaere: is this the cause for James Dillon's agitated state of mind? Yes, I think so. Some strong pressure is certainly at work. What is more, it appears to me that this is a critical time for him, a lesser climacteric - a time that will settle him in that particular course he will never leave again, but will persevere in for the rest of his life. It has often seemed to me that towards this period (in which we all three lie, more or less) men strike out their permanent characters; or have those characters struck into them. Merriment, roaring high spirits before this: then some chance concatenation, or some hidden predilection (or rather inherent bias) working through, and the man is in the road he cannot leave but must go on, making it deeper and deeper (a groove, or channel), until he is lost in his mere character - persona - no longer human, but an accretion of qualities belonging to this character. James Dillon was a delightful being. Now he is closing in. It is odd - will I say heart-breaking? - how cheerfulness goes: gaiety of mind, natural free-springing joy. Authority is its great enemy - the assumption of authority. I know few men over fifty that seem to me entirely human: virtually none who has long exercised authority. The senior post-captains here; Admiral Warne. Shrivelled men (shrivelled in essence: not, alas, in belly). Pomp, an unwholesome diet, a cause of choler, a pleasure paid too late and at too high a price, like lying with a peppered paramour. Yet Ld Nelson, by Jack Aubrey's account, is as direct and unaffected and amiable a man as could be wished. So, indeed, in most ways is JA himself; though a certain careless arrogancy of power appears at times. His cheerfulness, at all events, is with him still. How long will it last? What woman, political cause, disappointment, wound, disease, untoward child, defeat, what strange surprising accident will take it all away? But I am concerned for James Dillon: he is as mercurial as he ever was - more so - only now it is all ten octaves lower down and in a darker key; and sometimes I am afraid in a black humour he will do himself a mischief. I would give so much to bring him cordially friends with Jack Aubrey. They are so alike in so many ways, and James is made for friendship: when he sees that he is mistaken about JA's conduct, surely he will come round? But will he ever find this out, or is JA to be the focus of his discontent? If so there is little hope; for the discontent, the inner contest, must at times be very severe in a man so humorless (on occasion) and so very exigent upon the point of honour. He is obliged to reconcile the irreconcilable more often than most men; and he is less qualified to do so. And whatever he may say he knows as well as I do that he is in danger of a horrible confrontation: suppose it had been he who took Wolfe Tone in Lough Swilly? What if Emmet persuades the French to invade again? And what if Bonaparte makes friends with the Pope? It is not impossible. But on the other hand, JD is a mercurial creature, and if once, on the upward rise, he comes to love JA as he should, he will not change - never was a more loyal affection. I would give a great deal to bring them friends.'

An O'Malley Cousin In Paris

Congrats to my dear cousin, Kerry O'Malley, for replacing Erin Dilly in the world premiere of An American in Paris in Houston at The Alley (Announcement here.) If you live in the Houston area, you definitely must check it out - Kerry is so so wonderful. Premiers April 26, and opens for realz on May 18. You can order tickets here.

The Books: "At Swim-Two-Birds" (Flann O'Brien)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

At Swim-Two-Birds, by Flann O'Brien.

It's kinda hard, as an O'Malley, to talk about this book in a normal book-report kind of way. I think I even sort of believed, as a child, that Flann O'Brien might have been related to us. Or something. There must be SOME personal connection. And O'Brien is my grandmother's maiden name. So it was possible! I didn't even read the book until after college - but the title - At Swim-Two-Birds - was already in my life and consciousness (forever) by, oh, age 4? I don't know. I can't remember a time when I wasn't aware that there was a man named Flann O'Brien and he had written a book with a mysterious title called At Swim-Two-Birds. My first blog's URL was atswimtwobirds.blogspot.com. And then, of course, there was my first published essay - if you go here and scroll down, you can see that they excerpted my essay on the back cover and it's called "Two Birds". It's not even a book to me, for God's sake. It's basically the story of my family, my childhood, everything. I have no idea why. It's one of the weirdest books ever written. I write about the book a bit here - and link to a terrific John Updike article about Flann O'Brien (one of his many monikers). I might be repeating myself a bit from that post, but here goes:

At Swim-Two-Birds anticipates the experimental meta-literature of today - Dave Eggers, for example, owes a great debt to At Swim-Two-Birds, with his narrator that suddenly steps forward, looks right at the reader, and starts addressing us directly. The goofiness, the non-literal structure ... things have no real substance, everything is malleable. The book is really about a young Holden Caulfield type narrator - a college student, who lives with his uncle, and basically lies around in his room smoking all day, dreaming up the great novel he will write. And then occasionally he goes out with his buddies and gets absolutely wasted. His uncle is pretty much horrified at what a loser his nephew is. The book also, fantastically, becomes about the entire history of Ireland - its myths, legends, old tales come back to life in a modern context. The novel the narrator is writing is about Finn McCool - or, he's one of the characters - and also Mad King Sweeney - the dude who turned into a bird - and the narrator keeps writing outlines of what he wants to write - the whole book is broken up into headings and sub-headings, as though it itself is the outline for another book ... and at some point, the narrator loses control of his own characters. They start to behave in ways he finds incomprehensible, they say and do whatever the hell they want - and he is struggling to rein back them in, to take charge again. But once Pandora's box is opened ... Finn McCool and Mad King Sweeney stroll the modern streets of Dublin. They're out. Flann O'Brien also directly references Joyce - especially in one section that is set up exactly like the famous ithaca episode in Ulysses (excerpt here) - with the call-and-response ... James Joyce casts a giant shadow. Irish writers struggle to either be compared TO him or defined AGAINST him ... Either way, he can't be ignored. Even when an Irish writer comes out and says, "You know what? I hate Joyce!" - it's still evidence of the fact that Joyce dominates the landscape still, to this day. Flann O'Brien doesn't wrestle with Joyce in private, he brings it on out into the open, and puts it all in his book. He doesn't worry about structure or narrative. He lets Irish history - fanciful and literal - be unleashed ... Ireland, so consumed by its own past (one of the things Joyce found so annoying and why he looked elsewhere for inspiration) - here in At Swim-Two-Birds the past has come to life. It's not a tale in a dusty book. It's real people, stepping out of the pages of a manuscript ... despite the author's intentions.

I have to say, too, that At Swim-Two-Birds is laugh-out-loud funny - although perhaps it's very specific humor. I would imagine if Catch-22 (excerpt here) made you laugh out loud, At Swim-Two-Birds would, too. There is a laboriousness to some of the descriptions - that just go on forever - and it gets funnier and funnier, the more specific Flann O'Brien gets. Like this. The elaborate sentence goes against what he is talking about - a most base human experience - and that just makes it funnier. There are also about 20 more words in the sentence than there "needs" to be, and that just makes it funnier too:

Notwithstanding this eulogy, I soon found that the mass of plain porter bears an unsatisfactory relation to its toxic content and I became subsequently addicted to brown stout in bottle, a drink which still remains the one that I prefer the most despite the painful and blinding fits of vomiting which a plurality of bottles has often induced in me.

Like, that is RIDICULOUS. But soo funny to me. This formal intricate sentence basically saying, "I love beer, even though it makes me barf." And then there's the even more ridiculous first sentence of the book, which is a masterpiece of self-consciousness:

Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression.

See, I've read the book a couple of times and that kind of sentence is STILL funny to me. It's ridiculous. It's observant. It's hugely overwritten. You want to say to him, "Oh, get OVER yourself!!" Who describes their own behavior that way?? But that's why it's funny.

I can't really talk more about the book - it's very weird, with 25 page long discourses on Irish history - with poems and songs and Finn McCool tromping through the pages ... but it's one of the all-time great Irish books. And it's funny: its influence is enormous. He is the precursor of the self-conscious looking-in-mirror-at-self literature we see in vogue today. It feels very very modern, this book - when you read it now. At the time it was published, it was unlike anything else out there - and in a way, it still is unlike anything else. But his experimentation with form, and content matching form, was hugely influential.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM At Swim-Two-Birds, by Flann O'Brien.

That same afternoon I was sitting on a stool in an intoxicated condition in Grogan's licensed premises. Adjacent stools bore the forms of Brinsley and Kelly, my two true friends. The three of us were occupied in putting glasses of stout into the interior of our bodies and expressing by fine disputation the resulting sense of physical and mental well-being. In my thigh pocket I had eleven and eightpence in a weighty pendulum of mixed coins. Each of the arrayed bottles on the shelves before me, narrow or squat-bellied, bore a dull picture of the gas bracket. Who can tell the stock of a public-house? Many no doubt are dummies, those especially within an arm-reach of the snug. The stout was of superior quality, soft against the tongue but sharp upon the orifice of the throat, softly efficient in its magical circulation through the conduits of the body. Half to myself, I said:
Do not let us forget that I have to buy Die Harzreise. Do not let us forget that.

Hazreise, said Brinsley. There is a house in Dalkey called Heartrise.

Brinsley then put his dark chin on the cup of a palm and leaned in thought on the counter, overlooking his drink, gazing beyond the frontier of the world.

What about another jar? said Kelly.

Ah, Lesbia, said Brinsley. The finest thing I ever wrote. How many kisses, Lesbia, you ask, would serve to sate this hungry love of mine? - As many as the Libyan sands that bask along Cyrene's shore where pine-trees wave, where burning Jupiter's untended shrine lies near to old King Battus' sacred grave:

Three stouts, called Kelly.

Let them be endless as the stars at night, that stare upon the lovers in a ditch - so often would love-crazed Catallus bite your burning lips, that prying eyes should not have power to count, nor evil tongues bewitch, the frenzied kisses that you gave and got.

Before we die of thirst, called Kelly, will you bring us three more stouts. God, he said to me, it's in the desert you'd think we were.

That's good stuff, you know, I said to Brinsley,

A picture came before my mind of the lovers at their hedge-pleasure in the pale starlight, no sound from them, his fierce mouth burying into hers.

Bloody good stuff, I said.

Kelly, invisible to my left, made a slapping noise.

The best I ever drank, he said.

As I exchanged an eye-message with Brinsley, a wheezing beggar inserted his person at my side and said:

Buy a scapular or a stud, Sir.

This interruption I did not understand. Afterwards, near Lad Lane police station a small man in black fell in with us and tapping me often about the chest, talked to me earnestly on the subject of Rousseau, a member of the French nation. He was animated, his pale features striking in the starlight and his voice going up and falling in the lilt of his argumentum. I did not understand his talk and was personally unacquainted with him. But Kelly was taking in all he said, for he stood near him, his taller head inclined in an attitude of close attention. Kelly then made a low noise and opened his mouth and covered the small man from shoulder to knee with a coating of unpleasant buff-coloured puke. Many other things happened on that night now imperfectly recorded in my memory but that incident is still very clear to me in my mind. Afterwards the small man was some distance from us in the lane, shaking his divested coat and rubbing it along the wall. He is a little man that the name of Rousseau will always recall to me. Conclusion of reminiscence.

Happy birthday, John Millington Synge

Today is the birthday of Irish playwright John Millington Synge - born on this day in 1871. He was author of The Playboy of the Western World, Riders to the Sea, and more - not to mention his wonderful book about his time on the Aran Islands, called, coincidentally, The Aran Islands. Playboy is now in the history books, not only for being a wonderful play, and part of the theatrical revolution going on in Ireland at the time (the creation of the Abbey Theatre, etc.) - but also because of the riots that broke out when it opened (they are now known as "The Playboy Riots"). Things got so out of hand that a police squad had to stand along the edge of the stage during the performance, so that the actors wouldn't get hurt or mobbed. If I had a time machine, I would LOVE to go back and be there on the opening night of that play.

Synge wrote:

Ireland, for a few years more, we have a popular imagination that is fiery and magnificent, and tender; so that those of us who wish to write start with a chance that is not given to writers in places where the springtime of the local life has been forgotten, and the harvest is a memory only, and the straw has been turned into bricks.

Synge's time out on the Aran Islands, off the wild west coast of Ireland, gave him the nuggets of inspiration for many of his plays. Out there the "native language" was still spoken, out there he could encounter the real Ireland.

Synge had spent a lot of time in Europe, taking courses in French literature, immersing himself in different cultures, reading Baudelaire, writing poems, chasing girls ... You know, all La Boheme stuff. He remained interested in his own country, his own heritage - but there wasn't really a place for him there. (Interesting: NOW it's hard to imagine Ireland without Synge, but he had to TAKE that ground, he had to claim it - it didn't exist before he came along.) Yeats' whole nationalistic literary (and theatrical) movement (in broader terms - the Irish literary revival) drew Synge back to his home country - the Abbey Theatre was formed - things were HAPPENING in Ireland. In retrospect, it all seems inevitable. Of course Synge would not only come back to be part of that movement, but he would end up defining that movement.

Yeats gave Synge a piece of now legendary advice (and this is a direct quote):

Give up Paris, you will never create anything by reading Racine, and Arthur Symons will always be a better critic of French literature. Go to the Arran Islands. Live there as if you were one of the people themselves; express a life that has never found expression.

In the middle of what was, essentially, an Irish cultural revival, Yeats (having been out to the Aran Islands) recognized that there was something untouched out there, a primitive life, Irish language still spoken, the culture not corrupted. Yet. It was a race against time.

The leaders of the cultural movement in Ireland at that time all had the same idea: Inspiration lay in the West of Ireland. Go west. Go west to find the real Ireland. (Interesting, to think of the final paragraphs of Joyce's The Dead (excerpt here).

So Synge took Yeats' advice and went west.

The story of his four trips out to the Islands make up his book The Aran Islands, a wonderful rich travelogue, a classic of the genre. I highly recommend it!! He sits around turf fires with the various storytellers, and listens, and writes the folktales and anecdotes down later. These stories contain the germs of Playboy, the germs of Shadow of the Glen, the germs of Riders. Yeats was right. With all of Yeats' airy-fairy Celtic frippery, he understood that a powerful culture lay beneath the surface, a culture that had never been shown to the world, never been expressed.

Not surprising, then, that Playboy of the Western World would cause such an uproar.

Here is an excerpt from Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh's marvelous book The Splendid Years: Recollections of Máire Shiubhlaigh as told to Edwa, which is the story of the Irish National Theatre. Máire was an actress, highly involved with the cultural revival of the time, and a member of the Abbey Theatre. Her memories of Synge (and also her memories of the "Playboy riots") are fascinating. Here she speaks of Synge:

John M. Synge who came to us with his play direct from the Aran Islands, where the material for most of his later works was gathered, was born near Dublin in 1871, graduated at Trinity College, and shortly afterwards left Ireland for the Continent, living alternately in Germany and France, where he made a rather precarious livelihood as a violinist and contributor to literary magazines. Yeats had discovered him in Paris in about 1897 and, recognizing the quality of his writings, had brought him back to Ireland, where he introduced him to Aran, prophesying that in the beautiful lyrical prose of the western peasant he would find an original vehicle for dramatic composition. He was right. Synge went to Aran for a month, and stayed there, on and off, for a matter of years. He drew his inspiration from the hearths of the tiny whitewashed cabins and the harsh rocks of the western seaboard, gathering tales and expressions from the old and the young of the most picturesque portion of Ireland. In a short life -- he died at the early age of 38 -- he wove them into sombre dramatic tapestries, embroidered with the rhythmic language of the Irish peasant. His prose, highly musical and enriched with flashes of the most beautiful poetry, he devised simly by transcribing direct from the Gaelic of the islands. It is most difficult for an actor to master; most effective if delivered correctly.

She's got that right. I did a scene from Playboy in a class in graduate school, and while my scene partner and I had a hell of a lot of fun working on it, it was DAMN difficult to get that language right. Not just the language, but the rhythm, the tone. It doesn't matter if you get the words all correct, and remember all your lines, if you say them in the wrong rhythm. Rhythm is everything.

Back to Synge.

He was a gentle fellow, shy, with that deep sense of humour that is sometimes found in the quietest people. His bulky figure and heavy black moustache gave him a rather austere appearance -- an impression quickly dispelled when he spoke. His voice was mellow, low; he seldom raised it. But for his quiet personality he might have passed unnoticed at any gathering. During rehearsals of his play, he would sit quietly in the background, endlessly rolling cigarettes. This was a typical gesture, born more of habit than of any desire for tobacco -- he gave away more cigarettes than he smoked. At the first opportunity, he would lever his huge frame out of a chair and come up on to the stage, a half-rolled cigarette in eaach hand. Then he would look enquiringly round and thrust the little paper cylinders forward towards whoever was going to smoke them. In later years he became the terror of fire-conscious Abbey stage-managers. He used to sit timidly in the wings during plays, rolling cigarettes and handing them to the players as they made their exits.

He didn't set out to revolutionize Irish theatre. He didn't set out to be a genius, or to write great plays. He just wrote down what he knew. That was the ONLY way this guy could write. And it turned everything upside down.

Here is Máire's description of some of the objections to Shadow, just to give you an idea of what was going on, and to also set the stage for the "Playboy riots". Synge was, indeed, ahead of his time. The world is rarely kind to those born ahead of their time.

The piece was "un-Irish" wrote some reviewers, an "insult" in fact to the peasant women of Ireland whom Nora Burke was taken to typify. There was an immense verbal furore about it. A number of writers claiming that Synge was slyly attacking the institution known as the "made marriage", and attributing it solely to Ireland, raised all sorts of objections. Others wrote of the character of Nora Burke: "Nora Burke is a lie". Of the play they said: "It is no more Irish than the Decameron. It is a staging of the old-world libel on womankind -- the Widow of Ephesus."

Now, I do not propose to analyse the extraordinary attitude adopted towards the play. Indeed, the attacks were launched so suddenly that few of us were even able to gather what they were all about. Perhaps it was that the Irish play-going public of that time was so used to the "genteel" comedy of the established theatre which I mentioned earlier -- the entertaining but not very realistic stuff that was time and again put before it -- that it couldn't swallow a credible satire. In those days if an actress played an unpleasant part, then it followed that she was an unpleasant person. Similarly, if a dramatist wrote a nasty play he was a nasty fellow. Then, of course, there was the fact that Ireland was on the threshold of a renaissance. Everybody, writer, politician, artist, was at pains to eulogise over the beauty of the Irish character. The advent of a comparatively unknown writer who painted an unpleasant if realistic picture of the peasantry at such a time was, to say the least, unwelcome. The Dubliners who raised the loudest objections could not accept In the Shadow of the Glen as a play. They refused to be entertained.

In 1907, the Abbey Theatre produced Playboy of the Western World. Máire, who was there, writes:

The "Playboy Riots", as they came to be known, indicate very clearly some of the difficulties that the Abbey was called upon to face during its first years -- and they show how the theatre, under Yeats, managed to surmount them. When this play is produced in Dublin now it is recognised and enjoyed as a work of art. In 1907 it drove a number of people into such a frenzy that they nearly wrecked the Abbey. I am in rather a good position to describe the riots because I was in the audience during some of them. Curiosity had taken me into the theatre, as it had taken many another person that week.

It was about the end of 1906 that Synge finished the Playboy ... Yeats later mentioned that Synge took considerable trouble over the piece and scrapped a number of earlier versions before he fixed on the one which was eventually produced...Yeats never tired of recounting the care which Synge lavished on the piece. This, indeed, may have been indirectly responsible for the reception accorded the play by some sections of the public, whose main argument against it was that it was "a slander on the peasantry of Ireland". As in the case of The Shadow of the Glen, its realism gave offence. The only differnce between it and any other play that did not take was that the public, instead of showing its lack of interest in the accepted way -- by its non-attendance -- displayed its disapproval by rioting in the theatre throughout the play's run. The most unusual feature of the affair was that although the players appeared on the stage and acted their parts for a whole week, the uproar caused by the audience was so great that the play was never really heard on any night but the first, and those who took part in the demonstrations on subsequent occasions were dependent on opinions of the firstnight audience and a few rather hysterical newspaper reports. As the week progressed, the trouble instead of lessening, increased, and before the run of the play was half over, the management felt compelled to call for the assistance of the police to preserve order.

The explanations put forward by the rioters during the week were many and varied and it is worth remarking that no two people appeared to base their objections on exactly the same thing. Some objected to the piece because "it made a hero out of a murderer" (the play deals in part with the welcome accorded by a West of Ireland village to a weak-willed boy who believes he has just killed his father); others claimed that the language used was too strong; more contented themselves by saying that the play was "vicious, untrue, and uncalled for" -- a "hideous caricature" in fact; while a considerable number based their objections on the assumption that the piece was a deliberate attack by Synge on Ireland in retaliation for the manner in which The Shadow of the Glen and The Well of the Saints had been received.

(All of this makes me think of what Joyce said, when it became apparent that no Irish publisher would go near The Dubliners and he would have to look outside his own country for a publisher: "It is not my fault that the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs round my stories. I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilization in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass."

Máire describes what it was like in the theatre, on the opening night of Playboy of the Western World, January 26, 1907.

The first act went well. There was laughter at the right places and the correct degree of solemnity was maintained when it was demanded. But during the second act I began to feel a tenseness in the air around me -- I was sitting in the pit -- and there were murmurs from the stalls and parts of the gallery. Before the curtain fell it was obvious that there was going to be some sort of trouble. Faint calls and ejaculations like "Oh, no! Take it off!" came from various parts of the house and the atmosphere gradually grew taut. In the third act things really came to a head and those around began to stamp the floor and shout towards the stage, the noise gradually increasing until the voices of the players were drowned. People stood up in their seats and demanded the withdrawal of the play, and when it became clear that the cast was determined to see the thing out to the end, tempers began to fray. The auditorium became a mass of people pulling and pushing in all directions. By the time the curtain fell on the last act, the crowd was arguing and fighting with itself. People in front leaned over the back of seats and demanded quiet -- a lot of people seemed to be doing this -- and those at the back responded by shouting and hissing loudly. The crowd which eventually emerged into the street was in an ugly mood.

Despite vicious and hysterical reviews the play went on. One of the objections was that the word "shift" appeared in the play (meaning: "chemise", or "slip", whatever you want to call it). Christy - the lead character in the play - says - in what is now acknowledged to be a fine piece of dramatic literature, and one of the classic monologues of the stage: "It's Pegeen I'm seeking only, and what'd I care if you brought me a drift of chosen females, standing in their shifts itself, maybe, from this place to the eastern world?" This was seen as a shock and an outrage.

The Press and the public called for the play to be closed, the hysteria mounted, but the Abbey refused to capitulate. Obviously, Synge had struck a nerve. But things were getting out of hand, it was a violent atmosphere in the audience ... and so Yeats tried to quell this fire. Máire describes:

On the third night Yeats addressed the audience before the curtain rose. If anyone had anything to say against the piece they would be welcomed at a debate which he would be glad to arrange in the theatre at some other time. He was interrupted several times. He asked the interrupters to at least listen to the play so that they would know what it was they were objecting to.

It is just like those idiots who protested Scorsese's Last Temptation without even seeing it. I have no patience and no tolerance for people like that. I'm pretty open-minded, you know "live and let live", but everyone has their limits, everyone has their thing that they cannot endure - and I cannot bear people like that. I don't want to listen, or try to "understand where they're coming from". That's the thing. I DO understand where they are coming from, and that is why I have contempt for them. My contempt comes directly FROM understanding. Their sense of themselves is so fragile that it's a house of cards. Even the fact that Scorsese's movie EXISTED threatened their entire world view. Fine. Go home then and read only the Bible and close the blinds and don't let the big bad nasty world touch your precious house of cards, and let those of us who actually want to SEE the movie decide for ourselves.

Such people have always existed. Their complaints are always the same. As a matter of fact, without the idiots, there would have been no such thing as "The Playboy Riots" - which catapulted Irish theatre onto an international stage. So I suppose we should be grateful in a way! Nothing like someone screaming, "NO ONE SHOULD SEE THIS" to make something into a big giant hit.

Back to the Playboy Riots:

As on the first night, the opening passages were listened to quietly, and even evoked a little laughter. Halfway through the second act, however, a murmur arose in the pit and a man a few rows away stood up and, without any apparent reason, hit the person beside him. A gasp ran around the whole house and the lights went up. All around him the crowd was breaking into disorder.

Within minutes, the audience in the pit and stalls was completely disorganised, and the crowd in thte back and side galleries was almost as bad. Almost everyone was standing. The noise was deafening. Yeats appeared on the stage and pleaded with the sensible members of the audience to remain quiet. His voice was drowned by catcalls, cheers, much stamping of feet, and from somewhere at the back ,the notes of a toy trumpet which came from the centre of a group of young men who looked like university students. He continued to speak, but his words were apparently objected to by those in front, for a howl of protest went up from the stalls and parts of the side gallery, which increased in volume as those behind joined in or tried to cheer the protest down. On the stage the players stood in little knots, discussing the occurrences amongst themselves.

As the noise increased and several arguments broke out around the theatre, Yeats left his place on the stage. A few minutes later the doors into the auditorium opened and to the horror and surprise of most of those present, a body of police entered. At the same time the curtain came down and a semblance of order was restored -- partly due to the sight of the uniforms ...

After a brief speech by Yeats, and the ejection of the more truculent members of the audience, peace was partially restored, and everyone sat down again. At this stage it would have been impossible for anyone to get out. After everyone had been quietened and the greater part of the audience reseated, it would have been dangerous for anyone to stand up. Those who did so were immediately surrounded by hefty policement and shepherded, not too gently, in the direction of the vestibule.

Meanwhile, the orchestra, a recent addition to the theatre, began to play. The music seemed to help matters somewhat, and things almost returned to what they were before the play began. There was much discussion and gesticulation going on however. The affair was still far from settled.

After some time the orchestra retired, the lights were lowered and the curtain went up. Almost immediately the audience reverted to what it had been before the arrival of the police. Not a word of the play could be heard. The cast eventually gave up speaking altogether and went through the piece in pantomime. [Note from Sheila: God, I wish I had been there to see this. It must have been extraordinary.] As the play progressed the noise increased. Men and women stamped the floor, banged the backs of their seats with their fists, shouted and sang alternately. On the stairs from the stalls a man stood, dramatically addressing no one in particular.

The players courageously went through the whole piece. During this time several arrests were made and the police were kept busy operating between the doors and the hall. Just before the play ended I saw an opportunity to escape and took it. Almost everyone in the row where I had been sitting had vanished. I was able to make a dash for the door at the rear of the pit while the police were busy in the front of the house. My last impression of the scene was the sight of a figure standing on a seat somewhere about the centre of the stalls and the sound of a few bars of God Save the King, which were quickly stifled as someone pulled the singer down.

Amazing. The play continued to be performed, and continued to generate riots and protests, garnering the attention of the world. "What is going on over in Ireland right now? What exactly are they protesting??"

Synge died an early death, in 1909, but he left an indelible mark - not only on Ireland, but on theatre as a whole.

I'll end this post now, with a quote from Synge's beautiful book The Aran Islands (and I will post a photo, too, of Synge staring out into the Atlantic, from one of the Islands).

In the following excerpt, he describes leaving the Arans after a couple months' stay ... and returning to the bustle of Galway:

I have come out of an hotel full of tourists and commercial travellers, to stroll along the edge of Galway Bay, and look out in the direction of the islands. The sort of yearning I feel towards those lonely rocks is indescribably acute. This town, that is usually so full of wild human interest, seems in my present mood a tawdry medley of all that is crudest in modern life. The nullity of the rich and the squalor of the poor give me the same pang of wondering disgust; yet the islands are fading already and I can hardly realize that the smell of the seaweed and the drone of the Atlantic are still moving round them.

God is in the details

I'm sure this is news to no one, but I like to point it out anyway.

In the first scene in Titanic where we see old Rose at her pottery wheel... And I just like to notice her earrings. It's the kind of detail I love in film-making ... a connection made, no lines ... a whole story in the detail, without any text being devoted to it ... and it's there for you to contemplate, should you get it. It is something you would never ever get, upon seeing it the first time - it wouldn't mean anything ... but maybe the second time you would notice it. I just like the quietness of the detail ... and I like to think about her seeing those earrings - who knows when - recently? Or when she was in her youth? Maybe a couple of years after she got back to America? Who knows when she saw them - in a glass case in a shop somewhere, but I can just see her stopping immediately in her tracks, and thinking: I must have those.

My friend Alex, the clown

I recently got an email from Mitchell from Istanbul and now Alex might be going to Romania to teach acting for a week (that's an amazing essay, by the way). I love how suddenly, at the very same moment in time, two of my best friends are making jokes about being trapped in Midnight Express, and having to, you know, show their boobs to their loved ones through plate-glass prison windows.

But like Alex said (and it's a difficult thing for people to "get" about her sometimes):

“I know it doesn’t make any sense, but you have to remember that everything that’s happened to me in my life has happened by complete accident. I never really wanted all these adventures. I really didn’t. All I wanted was a spouse, a nice condo with a view, and a covered parking garage.”

Also, Alex - what the hell about the " two articles of the original gender’s original clothes underneath the opposite gender’s clothes." WTF? So you can wear a jock strap underneath your lace thong? Is that the idea?

Basically I want you to go to Romania just so I can read your blog posts about it. Thank you.

The Books: "Girls In Their Married Bliss" (Edna O'Brien)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

Girls In Their Married Bliss, by Edna O'Brien. Girls In Their Married Bliss, with its obviously sarcastic title, is the final book in Edna O'Brien's famous "Country Girls Trilogy".

Here's my post about The Country Girls Trilogy as a whole, and Edna O'Brien as a writer. And here's my post about The Lonely Girl, the second book in the trilogy. Things get pretty damn bleak in Girls In Their Married Bliss - marriage is obviously seen as no great shakes. As a matter of fact, it's a nightmare in some ways. BUT we do get a bit of relief - because the narrators have switched. The other two books were narrated by Kate who is a bit more earnest and naive. Baba is her best friend, and Baba is a bit wild, and she knows about things like sexy underwear, and how to order a fancy cocktail, and she has a bit of irreverence for things that Kate holds sacred. She's a wonderful character - and her no-nonsense voice is totally different from Kate's voice ... which is kind of a relief. My favorite of all of the trilogy is the first one, when they are teenagers, and just starting out. Girls In Their Married Bliss is just depressing! It was published in 1964 - which, in terms of Ireland - but also in terms of the world in general - was a much more conservative time, much more like the 50s than the late 60s. So the book needs to be seen in its proper context. It was early to be writing a book which is so vicious about marriage - and women's roles in particular - which is why, yet again, Edna O'Brien found her book banned in her native country. It's kind of like reading Margaret Atwood's earliest books - like The Edible Woman (excerpt here) and Surfacing (excerpt here. Those were published in the late 60s, and have nothing like the power and beauty and horror of her later books (although they are still good) - and her views on marriage and women and men were shocking, at the time. Now books like that are a dime a dozen (although perhaps not written so well). Girls In Their Married Bliss is a brutal examination of marriage, and being trapped in it, of making bad choices in a man because you don't know you have more agency in your life, and also - how women could get lost in marriage. Even down to the fact that you lose your last name. You disappear. Kate definitely disappears. She marries Eugene - the dude from The Lonely Girl - he finally gets a divorce. And he gets Kate pregnant. And they have a shotgun wedding. Very scandalous. The Catholic Church wouldn't bless a marriage like that. But Baba was always more practical. Kate believed in love. She was looking for love. Baba always just wanted a bit of a laugh, maybe some sex, and a comfortable life where she could buy things. Her standards were much lower. And she also lacked the earnestness of her best friend Kate ... she is not as easily hurt. Here's an excerpt from where Baba meets the guy she will eventually marry. Again, seen in the context of that time - especially in Ireland - all of this was quite shocking - I mean, birth control!!, and nobody wanted to hear it. (Well, everybody wanted to hear it ... but the powers-that-be freaked out. You can't say that!!!) Well, yes she could, and did.

EXCERPT FROM Girls In Their Married Bliss, by Edna O'Brien.

His name was Frank and he was blowing money around the place and telling jokes. I'll repeat one joke so as you'll have an idea how hard up I was. Two men with fishing tackle have an arm around an enormous woman and one says to the other, "A good catch." When people are drunk they'll laugh at anything, provided they're not arguing, or hitting each other.

Anyhow, he drove me home and offered me money - he has a compulsion to offer money to people who are going to say no - and asked if I thought he looked educated. Educated! He was a big, rough fellow with oily hair, and his eyebrows met. So I said to him, "Beware of the one whose eyebrows meet, because in his heart there lies deceit." And sweet Jesus, next time we met he'd had them plucked over his broken nose. He's so thick he didn't understand that the fact they met was the significant thing. Thick. But nice, too. Anybody that vulnerable is nice, at least that's how I feel. Another dinner. Two dinners in one week and a bunch of flowers sent to me. The first thought I had when I saw the flowers was, could I sell them at cut rates. So I offered them to the girls in the bed-sits above and below, and they all said no except one eejit who said yes. She began to fumble for her purse, and I felt so bloody avaricious that I said, "Here's half of them," so we had half each, and when he came to call for me that evening, he counted the number of flowers that I'd stuck into a paint tin, for want of a vase. And you won't believe it, but didn't he go and ring the flower shop to say they'd swindled him. There he was out on the landing phone, yelling into it about how he'd ordered three dozen. Armagh roses and what crooks they were, and how they'd lost him as a customer, and there was I in the room with a fist over my mouth to smother the laughter. "You may not be educated," said I, "but you're a merchant at heart. You'll go far." It ended up with the flower shop saying they'd send more, and they did. I was driven to go out to Woolworth's and buy a two-shilling plastic vase because I knew the paint tin would topple if one more flower was put in.

He didn't propose bed for at least six dinners, and that shook me. I didn't know whether to be pleased or offended. He was blind drunk the night he said we ought to, and my garret was freezing and far from being a love nest. The roses had withered but weren't thrown out, and I had this short bed so that his feet hung out at the bottom. I lay down beside him - not in the bed, just on it - with my clothes on. He fumbled around with my zip and of course broke it, and I thought, I hope he leaves cash for the damage, and even if he doesn I'll have to go to a technical school to learn how to stitch on a zip, it's that complicated. I knew the bed was going to collapse. You always know a faulty bed when you put it to that sort of use. So he got the zip undone and got past my vest - it was freezing - and got a finger or two on my skin, just around my midriff, which was beginning to thicken because of all the big dinners and sauces and things. I reckoned I ought to do the same thing, and I explored a bit and got to his skin, and the surprising thing was, his skin was soft and not thick like his face. He began to delve deeper, very rapacious at first, and then he dozed off. That went on for a while - him fumbling, then dozing - until finally he said, "How do we do it?" and I knew that was why he hadn't made passes sooner. An Irishman: good at battles, sieges, and massacres. Bad in bed. But I expected that. It made him a hell of a sight nicer than most of the sharks I'd been out with, who expected you to pay for the pictures, raped you in the back seat, came home, ate your baked beans, and then wanted some new, experimental kind of sex and no worries from you about might you have a baby, because they liked it natural, without gear. I made him a cup of instant coffee, and when he went to sleep I put a quilt over him and put the light out. I sat on the chair, thinking of the eighteen months in London, and all the men I'd met, and the exhaustion of keeping my heels mended and my skin fresh for the Mr. Right that was supposed to come along.

I knew that I'd end up with him, he being rich and a slob and the sort of man who would buy you seasick tablets before you traveled. You won't believe it but I felt sorry for him, the way he worried about not being educated, or being fooled by florists, or being taken for an Irish hick by waiters. Never mind that they're Italian hicks. I could tell them all to go to hell because I had a brazen, good-looking face and was afraid of none of them, not even afraid whether people liked me or not, which is what most people are afraid of, anyhow. I know that people liking you or not liking you is an accident and is to do with them and not you. That goes for love, too, only more so.

Speaking of Marilyn Monroe ...

(oh were we??) -

The wonderful Kim Morgan has a piece up about Don't Bother to Knock - with Marilyn Monroe and Richard Widmark (rest in peace) - I remember Alex telling me I HAD to see this movie - somehow I had missed it, although I had seen most of Marilyn's other stuff ... I very much liked Kim's comment here, it really resonates with me:

But, why? Why must women have to be so normal? Though suffering from deep seated psychological problems, I sense that it’s this type of "normal" pressure making her crack (the punishing and smarmy Cook Jr. doesn't help either). Monroe portrays these ideas beautifully, so much so, that I wondered how much of her real life was seeping into her performance, it plays so real. I kept wishing that she could just get out of that hotel, doll herself up and have some fun with a man who might understand her. Widmark isn't really the one, even though underneath his smirk and swagger, he’s essentially a good heart.

Don't Bother to Knock is actually on my queue right now - but apparently I am trying to see every Iranian film I haven't yet seen in as short a time as possible - so Don't Bother to Knock got pushed down. I put it on the queue when Richard Widmark died - wanting to see it again ... and now, after reading Kim's piece, I feel quite urgent about it! She writes so well. (Great and insightful comment in the comments section too).

John Ford

Jonathan Rosenbaum's 10 Underappreciated John Ford Films is a must-read.

"The most ill-natured interview ever"

... with Evelyn Waugh... available at last. Marvelous!!

One quote of many:

I clearly can’t make myself understood. There is no such thing as a man in the street. There is no ordinary run of mankind, there are only individuals who are totally different. And whether a man is naked and black and stands on one foot in Sudan or is clothed in some kind of costume in a bus in England, they are still individuals of entirely different characters.

He is asked what faults he would excuse in others. He replies:

"Drunkenness." Any others? "Em [long pause] ... anger. Lust. Dishonouring their father and mother. Coveting their neighbour's ox, ass, wife. Killing. I think there's almost nothing I can't excuse except perhaps worshipping graven images. That seems to be idiotic."

I ADORE him. I still count reading Scoop as one of the funnest (and funniest) reading experiences I have ever had. I remember sitting on the bus, going home, surrounded by people, and I started snorting, tears of laughter streaming - yes, streaming! - down my face, and I could no longer see the page and had to put the book down for a bit, to just guffaw like a maniac, all by myself.

From Baroque in Hackney.

Speaking of Evelyn Waugh, here is Ted's review of Bright Young Things.

Hoboken train and ferry station

It's a phenomenal structure - and I finally went and got some pictures of it.

The interior

In the parking lot - there are cobblestones - and an old pair of tracks - just ends, right there.

The exterior

The famous St. Paul's - downtown

(A brief history of this extraordinary church here). Some photos from this past Sunday.

The Books: "The Lonely Girl" (Edna O'Brien)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

The Lonely Girl, by Edna O'Brien.

Here's my post about The Country Girls Trilogy as a whole, and Edna O'Brien as a writer. The Lonely Girl is the second book in this famous trilogy - it was published in 1962. And again, like the first in the trilogy, it was banned. This one is even more shocking - because Caithleen, the main character, the "I" of the book, has an affair with a married man. And there's sex and stuff, and sex vs. religion - all of the hot Catholic topics. Eugene is the name of Caithleen's love - and if I'm recalling correctly (it's been a while since I've read the book), the romance blossoms for quite some time before it is revealed that he has a wife. The wife, I believe, is in California. Caithleen discovers a letter from her, I think. Sorry so vague - it's been years. And there's also a child in the picture, which complicates things even more. Eugene, obviously, is not presented as a prince among men ... but he's also not a blackguard villain. Life is a bit more complicated than that, and Caithleen gets sucked into a domestic drama, and because Eugene is her first and all that - she has no perspective. She can't be like Baba, her more worldly best friend, and stroll away saying, "Oh well!! Lesson learned!" Caithleen's family somehow finds out about the situation, and pretty much kidnap her. She is trapped at her house out West, and she is harangued, and harassed - her letters are opened, she is not allowed to go anywhere without a chaperone - a priest is called in for an intervention ... Caithleen, more than anything, yearns for an escape. Who might be looking for her? If someone called the house, would she get the message? How will she get out of here? Edna O'Brien has made no secret about the fact that her family was pretty awful - not just ignorant but openly malevolent towards her and who she actually was. Literature itself was seen as suspect - so, oh well. That means they can't have a relationship with their daughter, since literature is all she cares about. O'Brien really delves into the flash points of culture and sex and religion in The Lonely Girl - and, again, found herself in trouble. Her book banned, everyone furious at her ... But here we are today, talking about The Lonely Girl, and Edna O'Brien is still writing, so I suppose revenge is sweet.

Here's an excerpt from the "kidnapping" section of the book. I love the bleakness of her imagery ... and how she totally captures the brown and grey desolation of the west of Ireland. She writes simply, there aren't a hell of a lot of extra words or flowery passages - but it's still so evocative, I think.

EXCERPT FROM The Lonely Girl, by Edna O'Brien.

I had been thinking of some way of escaping, but the thought of their chasing me made me frightened.

"This vale of tears," my aunt said desolately. Burying the calf had saddened her. Death was always on her mind. Death was so important in that place. Little crosses painted white were stuck up on roadside ditches here and there to mark where someone had been killed for Ireland, and not a day seemed to pass but some old person died of flu, or old age, or a stroke. Somehow we only heard of the deaths; we rarely heard when a child was born, unless it was twins, or a blue baby, or the vet had delivered it.

"Th' evenings will be getting long soon," I said to my aunt to cheer her up, but she just sighed.

We ate dinner in the kitchen. We had salty rashers, a colander of green cabbage, and some potatoes reheated from the previous day. While we were eating in silence, a car drove up and around by the side of the house. My aunt blessed herself as she saw a stranger help my father out.

"Grand evening," my father said as he came in and handed her a brown paper parcel of meat soggy with blood. The stranger had had some drinks but did not stagger.

"You're settling down!" he said to me. I tried to ignore him by concentrating on peeling a cold potato.

"I met Father Hagerty over in the village, he wants to have a chat with you," he said.

My heart began to race, but I did not say anything.

"You're to go and see him."

I put butter on the potato and ate it slowly.

"D'you hear me?" he said with a sudden shout.

"There, there, she'll go," my aunt said, and she linked him into the back room. The stranger hung around for a few minutes until she came out, and then asked for a pound. We had no money, but we gave him three bottles of porter which had been hidden in a press since Christmastime.

My aunt put them in a paper bag and he went off, swearing. We had no idea where he came from.

We sat by the cooker and listened for my father's call. At about nine o'clock he cried out and I ran in to him.

"I think I'm going to die," he said, as his stomach was very sick. The news cheered me up no end - I might get away - so I gave him a dose of health salts.

We went to bed early that night. I slept in the room opposite my aunt's, and when I had closed the door I sat down on the bed and wrote a long letter to Baba, for help. I wrote six or seven pages, while the candle lasted. I had already written a postcard, but had no answer. It occurred to me that maybe they had told the postmistress to keep my letters.

A wind blew down the chimney, causing the candle flame to blow this way and that. There was electricity in the house, but we were short of bulbs. I hid the letter under the mattress and undressed. The sight of my purple brassiere made me recall with longing the Sunday morning Baba and I had dyed all our underwear purple. Baba read somewhere that it was a sexy color, and on the way home from Mass we bought five packets of dye. Sneaky old Gustav must have been peeping through the keyhole of the bathroom, because suddenly Joanna had rushed upstairs and pushed the door in.

"Poison color in the basin," she shouted as she burst in.

"You might have knocked, we could have been doing something very private," Baba said.

"Poison water," Joanna said, pointing to the weird-colored water in the basin. Our underwear turned out very nice, and some boy asked Baba if she was a cardinal's niece.

I kept a jumper on in bed. We were short of blankets. I had only an ironing blanket over me and a quilt that my aunt had made. The candle had burned right down to the saucer as I lay on my side and closed my eyes to think of Eugene. I remembered the night he asked me to do some multiplication for him. He knew all about politics, and music, and books, and the insides of cameras, but he was slow to add. I totted up the amount of money he should get for one hundred and thirty-seven trees, at the rate of thirty-seven and six per tree. He had sold some trees to a local timber merchant, because the woods needed thinning. There were blue paint marks on the "sold" trees, but he said that at night the timber merchant had sent a boy along to put paint marks on extra trees.

"Nearly three hundred and fifty pounds," I said, reckoning it roughly first, the way we were taught to at school, so that we should know it if our final answer was wildly wrong.

"And out of that he'll make a small fortune," Eugene said, detailing what would happen to the tree from the time it was felled until it became a press or a rafter. I could see planks of fine white wood with beautiful knots of deeper color, and golden heaps of sawdust on a floor, while he fumed about the profit which one man made.

I went to sleep wondering if I would ever see him again.

In the morning my aunt brought me tea and said that the priest had sent over word that he was expecting me. I dressed and left the house around eleven. My father had stayed in bed that morning and Mad Maura ran to the village for a half-bottle of whiskey, on tick.

Always when I escaped from the house I felt a rush of vitality and hope, as if there was still a chance that I might escape and live my life the way I wanted to.

It was a bright windy morning, the fields vividly green, the sky a delicate green-blue, and the hills behind the fields smoke-gray.

It's nice, nice, I thought as I breathed deeply and walked with my aunt's bicycle down the field toward the road.

I did not go to the priest's house. I was too afraid, and anyhow, I thought that no one would ever find out.

I went for a spin down by the river and with the intention of posting Baba's letter in the next village.

The fields along the road were struck into winter silence, a few were plowed and the plowed earth looked very, very dead and brown.

If only I could fly, I thought as I watched the birds flying and then perching for a second on thorn bushes and ivied piers.

I cycled slowly, not being in any great hurry. It was very quiet except for the humming of electric wires. Thick black posts carrying electric wires marched across the fields and the wires hummed a constant note of windy music.

At the bottom of Goolin Hill I got off the bicycle and pushed it slowly up; then halfway I stood to look at the ruined pink mansion on the hill. It had been a legend in my life, the pink mansion with the rhododendron trees all around it and a gray gazebo set a little away from the house. A rusted gate stood chained between two limestone piers, and the avenue had disappeared altogether. I thought of Mama. She had often told me of the big ball she went to in that mansion when she was a young girl. It had been the highlight of her whole life, coming across at night, in a rowboat, from her home in the Shannon island, changing her shoes in the avenue, hiding her old ones and her raincoat under a tree. The rhododendrons had been in bloom, dark-red rhododendrons; she remembered their color, and the names of all the boys she danced with. They had supper in a long dining room, and there were dishes of carved beef on the sideboard. Someone made up a song about Mama that night and it was engraved on her memory every after.

Lily Neary, swanlike
She nearly broke her bones
Trying to dance the reel-set
With the joker Johnny Jones.

"Who was Johnny Jones?" I used to ask.

"A boy," she would say dolefully.

Happy place

I love this photo. I have it on my bulletin board.

Deserted Station, dir. Alireza Raisian

Deserted Station is a haunting quiet (at times too quiet) film based on a story by Iranian great Abbas Kiarostami, and directed by Alireza Raisian, it tells the story of a husband and wife (the wife is played by the wonderful Leila Hatami, who starred in Leila - my thoughts on that film here), on a pilgrimage to Mashad (presumably from Tehran). They bicker a bit in the car. She tries to tell him a story about the nastiness of their neighbor, and he brushes it off. She says, "You don't understand the poisonous darts women can throw at each other." The anecdote has something to do with having children, being pregnant. We get the sense that there might be trouble in that arena, for this couple. He is a photographer. He continually stops the car to shoot the scenery, and when his wife takes a nap, he takes pictures of her sleeping.

It's never expressly said (because things are rarely expressly said in Iranian films) that the husband is kind of useless - but the impression is given that he's intellectual, distant, always looking at the world (and his wife) through a camera lens. And then when their car breaks down, he is unable to fix it, and has to go for help.

it is as much about the windy desert landscape as anything else. The scenery does not need to be editorialized, or shot in a specific way - it is just there - the salt plains, the mountains, the towns cut out of the rocks ... All Raisian needs to do is place his characters in that context, and feelings are evoked.

The town is full of women and children - no men. All of the men work in the cities as laborers, and the kids never see their fathers. Maybe once a year. Many of them dont have mothers either. Mahmood wanders around, for a while, asking for help, but the women keep walking by, many of them struggling under heavy loads. We see him dwarfed by the landscape. He is a solitary black-clad figure, surrounded by bleached tan rocks, crumbling doorways, strange unearthly rock formations.

Finally one woman stops, and she tells him to go find Feizollah - he should be able to help. She asks him where he was headed. He tells her to Mashad, on a pilgrimage. She looks at him and says, with no provocation, "You were not called then." Meaning: it's meant to be that you would break down here. The saint did not call you. Mahmood doesn't quite like that comment, you can see him balk. There's trouble in paradise. What does it mean to 'not be called'? Feizollah is found. He's a great character. The only man left in the town, he has taken it upon himself to set up a school for the village children. He has procured notebooks. He teaches classes in history, dictation, mathematics. He also cuts the children's hair and nails (which is what he is doing when we first meet him). He takes care of these kids. Many of them are staying with relatives. They have been forgotten. "Deserted", to coin a phrase. But Feizollah gives them structure to their days. There is recess. Class. He also is a mechanic. And he also ran for office - for a city council seat or something like that. Mahmood gets the story there, and sees the campaign photos that Feizollah has circulated - tells him that the photos are amateurish, he should get new photos done - and Mahmood would be happy to help. This gives Feizollah a launching-off place for a diatribe about politics, which - seen in the context of Iran's political landscape at this time, the censorship, journalists in jail, random crackdowns on students, etc. - is breathtakingly courageous. "The people don't want 'real'," says Feizollah. It's all about the "spin", and the image. Feizollah and Mahmood ride to where the car is broken down on Feizollah's motorbike. The situation is more complicated - Feizollah will need to dismantle the truck, go for parts, etc. etc. He suggests that Mahmood and his wife go catch a nearby train to Mashad, and come back later for their vehicle. They don't want to do that. Eventually, it is decided that the wife (who has no name, not that I can remember, anyway) will go back to the little town - and be a substitute teacher for a day - Feizollah is worried about leaving the kids unattended. She will do that - while Mahmood and Feizollah deal with the broken-down car.

So that's what happens. The wife finds herself surrounded by children (and God. You just love all of them. They're typical for Iranian films - which often have to do with children. They are scrappy, real, rambunctious - and don't seem like actors. They probably aren't actors. They are a GANG, these kids. Awesome).

There's one little girl who is deformed, she can't walk, and she is at the head of her class. The other kids in the class take turns carrying her around in a little backpack. They're all quite casual about it.

We don't know, at first, what is going on with the wife, although we know that she is sad. Something's wrong. We got that from the first conversation with her husband, when she was trying to make him understand how much the neighbor gets under her skin. Near the end of the film, she says to her husband (a great line): "I don't know myself yet. Don't tease me, Mahmood." He gives her a look, suddenly gentle, and backs off. Okay. I won't tease. Mahmood is so self-involved that he can't really fathom what his wife is going through (we learn that she has had two miscarriages, and is pregnant yet again, but of course filled with fear that this one will end as well). He confides in Feizollah about the situation, and brushes it off, like, "You know how women get worked up about these things." Feizollah is much more of a philosopher about things. He beams with happiness when he tells Mahmood he's been married 10 years. He says that having a daughter has taught him patience, and that is a good thing. He also knows that life is possible without having children - children aren't everything. Mahmood seems kind of cut off from this type of conversation. It's not that Mahmood is arrogant, or openly a dick. It's just that he's detached. He hides behind his work and his intellectualizing of emotional events.

In the town there is a sheep in labor - she has been in labor for two days. Feizollah is worried about it - because it is his sheep, and his animals is how he scrapes out a living from the land. The women take over caring for the sheep. There is also a hugely pregnant woman in the town, and it is feared that she will give birth at any moment as well. The wife is surrounded by birth and impending birth. Everyone assumes that she must have an entire brood of children - she's married, after all! She hides her pain about her fertility within her, but it starts to take over the whole film.

The film switches back and forth between the two men - and the wife back with the children - and there's a bit of monotony in this structure that doesn't quite serve the story. It drags. It's meant to drag, I know that - this is not about its plot - it's really just a day in the life ... but it's important to stick it out, to tolerate the draggy sections - in order to get to, first of all, the rawly beautiful end sequence (wow. I was surprised by how moved I was - beautiful use of music, too. Beautiful.)

And second of all, to a section where the kids are playing hide and seek with her - in two deserted trains which sit on an unused section of track. It's where they play. The trains sit silent, open, and they are falling apart, rapidly being eaten up by the desert. The windows are broken, the doors and steps are rusted - there are compartments, old-fashioned North by Northwest compartments - lots of great places for kids to hide. The trains sit side by side. There are no kids in sight. But you can hear them calling to the wife, their voices echoing creepily - "Over here!" "Look over here!" "We're behind you!" The great thing about the story-telling style of Iranian films is how they avoid, at all costs, saying anything on the nose. They do not lead you by the hand. I suppose part of this is because of having to deal with censors - the film-makers try to get away with as much as they can, without ever saying "Here is what this is about." Sometimes that leads to opaque or rather boring stories - you wait for the crisis, or the conflict ... but it doesn't come, or it is so buried in symbols that you can't even "get it" (although most Iranians would probably get it immediately). There are sections of Deserted Station where all that seems to be going on is the wife giving dictation classes to the students, and then letting them go off and have recess. There does not seem to be any urgency. We are not sure what we are looking at. But the hide-and-seek in the trains section is absolutely gorgeous - it's like a poem, so yes - its language is symbols, metaphors. What we are looking at is a grown woman, walking between two deserted trains, as all the kids hide in the trains, calling out to her tauntingly. The scene goes on for much longer than we would expect, and there is no resolution. She doesn't break down, she doesn't speak out what she is thinking. We just see her wandering around, no kids in sight, but they are heard in the air, coming from every direction ... and we already know her pain about children ... so her search for the kids, her fruitless search through the empty dilapidated trains, is excruciating. There's a moment near the end of the scene when she walks into an empty compartment and sits down. We aren't sure what is happening. At that moment, we can see out the window - a train hurtling by - on the working tracks 100 yards away. The sound of the movement fills the air, and slowly, the camera closes in on her face. She sits there, still, and her eyes are closed. But Leila Hatami is such a good actress that I could feel her melancholy and her psychic pain vibrating on the surface of her skin. The eyes are so important for actors. Here, she does not use them, and she does not need them. Her sadness about children radiates out of her face, as the train shrieks by in the distance.

It's a stunning sequence. Strangely powerful, and it retains much of its mystery. It's hard to talk about. Because I want to talk about "what it's about" ... but that's not really the point with a movie like Deserted Station.

The film has stayed with me.

Only Angels Have Wings: the atmosphere in the first 10 minutes of the film

Only Angels Have Wings is not just a great movie because of the marvelously macho (and almost unbearably cranky) performance of Cary Grant. It's not just great because of the scintillating sexy romance between Cary Grant and Jean Arthur. It's not just great because of all of the spectacular (to this day) flying sequences. It's not just great because of the supporting cast, full of classic character actors - Thomas Mitchell, Richard Barthelmess, in a comeback - and then a young and wonderful Rita Hayworth in one of her first major roles.

All of these things do, of course, make the film great.

But if you watch the first 10 minutes, when the ship pulls into the port of Barranca - and you are immersed in the crazy third-world environment of some Latin American country (unnamed, of course) - it is the details and the reality that Howard Hawks puts into those first 10 minutes that elevates the film from something that could be either mawkish, cliched, or over-the-top, into an almost-documentary film milieu.

Hawks has said that all of those pilots were based on people he once knew. Howard Hawks flew planes (his brother was killed flying a plane). Hawks knew these people. He did not populate this film with extras from "Central Casting". He seemed to actually find Mexican and Latin peasants to populate the crowd scenes. There's a bustle and unselfconsciousness to the extras in this film (the kind of thing which is way ahead of its time). It's like Lumet's use of extras, it's a very modern sensibility, where people look like real people, of the actual ethnicities being portrayed.

Jean Arthur, the showgirl, gets off the boat - staring around her at the chaos - the bunches of bananas going by, the girls dancing, the little kids begging, the tables with tacos for sale, things she can't even interpret yet ... and she starts wandering, not realizing (at first) that two guys are following her. We learn very soon that they are two of the "fliers" who work at Cary Grant's small airport - and so they are reckless, and fearless, and macho - just like all of those guys were (and had to be). But before she realizes she is being followed, she just wanders around. And Hawks appears to let his camera just sit ... and people appear to be just behaving as they would if there were no camera there - and let me tell you - with huge crowd scenes, full of extras, that is no small feat. Only Angels Have Wings works on a documentary-level, and even though you know that what you are looking at is a set - and that those people are paid to be in the movie ... it doesn't seem like it. The illusion is total and complete. Hawks starts it out in the streets, and so we always feel the entire world that is surrounding these guys - we always feel the jungle pressing in on them - and also how ODD they are, in that environment. They were daredevils, they died every other day trying to deliver the mail via plane thru mountain passes, they were completely "other", in comparison to the townsfolk around them. The first 10 minutes sets that up perfectly. It sets up everything. Jean Arthur's "game"-ness - she's not a silly woman, a girlie-girl, who needs protection. She can take care of herself. She peeks into saloons, and stares around her, grinning like crazy, loving it.

The film would not work without the first 10 minutes. If the film started with Jean Arthur's first entrance into Dutchie's bar - without that prelude of her wandering the streets - we would not feel that we were looking at a world, rather than a movie.

The Books: "The Country Girls" (Edna O'Brien)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

The Country Girls Trilogy, by Edna O'Brien.

Published in one volume, the three books known as "The Country Girls Trilogy" - were what put Edna O'Brien on the map. Her first novel was "The Country Girls", published in 1960. True to Irish tradition, her book was banned. Not just that book - but all the subsequent Country Girls books, as well as many of her other books. O'Brien just wasn't "playing nice" with Irish sensibilities, and wrote openly about sex and the life of Dublin girls, and marriage, and religion - and so stepped right into hot water. As a young girl, Edna O'Brien read James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and it changed her life. She didn't know what she wanted to do - but it had to be something to do with literature. She recently wrote a biography of Joyce (one of my favorite quotes from it: "He would carry his work 'like a chalice' and all his life he would insist that what he did 'was a kind of sacrament.' Father, Son and Holy Ghost along with Jakes McCarthy informed every graven word. On a more secular note he liked blackberry jam because Christ's crown of thorns came from that wood and he wore purple cravats during Lent."), and I believe at one point she also wrote a book about the marriage of James and Nora Joyce. Her artistic mentor, the star she followed. There's a funny line in The Country Girls - Kate and Baba, the two best friends, hang out in Dublin in pubs (and this is 1950s Dublin) - and at one point Baba pulls Kate aside and says, "Stop asking the boys if they're read James Joyce's Dubliners." Like - that is NOT a good courtship technique!

Edna O'Brien has been asked (of course) if the books are autobiographical. It's about two girls from the country, who go away to a convent school together, before moving to Dublin - as single girls - to get jobs, and have love affairs, and eventually get married. These experiences make up the whole trilogy. Edna O'Brien was born in County Clare (to a family who sounds horrendous, frankly - judgmental, rigid, lots to rebel against) - and she also went to a convent school before moving to Dublin where she got a job in a pharmacy. She eventually became a pharmacist. She also got married, to a writer - who (according to my dad) was jealous of his wife's burgeoning gift with the pen ... a nightmare ... O'Brien published her first book ("The Country Girls") in 1960. So anyway. Of course she is asked repeatedly if the book is autobiographical. In one interview she replied, "The novel is autobiographical insofar I was born and bred in the west of Ireland, educated at a convent, and was full of romantic yearnings, coupled with a sense of outrage."

The books are not long litanies of how horrible the men in the country girls' lives are - but there is definitely a sense of isolation, and separation of the genders - which makes intimacy nigh on impossible. Men and women cannot connect. There's the whole sex thing, too. The girls are, of course, Catholics, and have been raised in a homogenous rigid world, where the Church dominates everything - their education, their emotional lives, everything. But when sex starts to come up, all of their teachings are thrown into a tizzy ... can it be reconciled? Kate and Baba don't just want to get married in order to solve the sex problem. They try to struggle it out, in affairs which are pretty terrible at times - questionable - married men, awful people sometimes ... but there is the struggle between living your own life FIRST, and then "settling down" ... can you be a happy individual in a marriage? Remember, this is the late 40s, early 1950s - when choices were much more limited - and those who were NOT just yearning to get married had a helluva time making their way. Square pegs in round holes. The books are now seen as high works of feminist art (although I hesitate to label them because it might turn someone off - but hey, I'm just reporting the facts here - and the fact is that these books are hailed as major events in the history of 20th century feminism) - although many feminists had a problem with Edna O'Brien's stuff because the main focus of the characters in the books was usually on men. So as you can see, Edna O'Brien doesn't completely please anyone. She seems ornery enough that that would make her happy. If you please everyone, you certainly can't be an artist of any import. She grew up in an environment where her mother found a book of Sean O'Casey's plays in Edna's bag, and burned it. Okay? So her mother was an ignorant ridiculously rigid and awful person - who must have been horrified at the free spirit she had given birth to. Sorry, I don't know them - but Edna has spoken about that upbringing herself. And so to fight against that, to fight against family, church, tradition ... well. I'm thinking of Joyce here, right? The age-old Irish artist's fight. To live freely, and write what they want.

O'Brien has said that she wrote her first novel The Country Girls- the first in the trilogy - like a bat out of hell. She just sat down and it streamed out of her. The book reads that way, too. A confident beautiful detailed personal stream of prose - exquisitely rendered at points - events moving us on, things happening, things halting ... Kate and Baba in the country, in the convent ... Who really cares if it's autobiographical or not? What ever happened to just getting into the story? I like the first of the trilogy the best - with Kate and Baba as teenagers and young women, making their way. To me, it is most evocative. The writing!! When they end up getting married, life becomes a drag ... and so do the books a bit. But still: it's a major Irish work, controversial to this day (and you have to wonder: why? It must be seen in the context of the time to get how controversial it was - girls talking about their breasts, and sex, and money ... going behind closed doors to hear what girls talk about when no men are around.) I mean, I won't trivialize it by calling it Sex and the City Dublin-style - because there's way more going on here - but there is a level of everyday reality, the ins and outs of life, the pubs, the dates, the dances ... that seems pretty tame in comparison to coming-of-age stories nowadays. BUT. This is about girls. Coming-of-age stories about boys can have their controversies as well (as James Joyce found out) ... but girls are always a more touchy matter, especially in a patriarchal conservative society. So Kate and Baba - who are not in any, way, shape or form - slutty girls ... have experiences, nonetheless (with married men, with birth control, with sex) - that must have been tremendously shocking at the time. Knowing Edna O'Brien's family situation, it is clear that writing, for her, was a blazing act of rebellion - and it shows. This isn't maudlin "Yellow Wallpaper" stuff - or that terrible story about the woman who drowns herself at the end (I read that book and thought on, oh, about page 2 - "Jeez, hope this lady drowns herself soon. She's a drip.") ... The Country Girls is vibrant slice-of-life stuff, with writing that verges on poetry.

I highly recommend these books to anyone interested in good writing. Also anyone interested in landmark moments in Irish literature.

Edna O'Brien said recently in an interview:

"I wrote The Country Girls in three weeks having blown the 50 quid advance. I was young, married with two small children, and whenever I met people, I was spouting poetry. I had this thing that writing was real – I mean other people's writing – literature, great literature, not rubbish. There's so much rubbish written now, so much garbage, and it's extolled. But writing was to me animate; it was real; it was as real as the people I knew.

"I only thought of one thing – the country, the landscape, my mother, the people I had left. Now I was dying to leave, this is not nostalgia, and I feel permanently, in life, quite isolated. I both belong very intensely to that place where I come from and I'm running from it still. So when I sat down to write, I was extremely emotional and yet the language is not emotional; it just came out. I didn't have to call on memory. To use the cliché – it wrote itself. And that is sometimes true for a first book.

"I knew there'd be a storm. I was accused of betraying my country, my locality, my sex. The nuns in my convent went bonkers with rage. But the books survived. I suppose that's what counts."

Here's an excerpt from The Country Girls, the first in the trilogy. As you can see, it's a simple tale, told simply ... but it broke new ground nonetheless, and paved the way for a more honest and true depiction of Irish womanhood. Edna O'Brien was a trailblazer and it's never easy for such people!! They always get the brunt of the criticism! But she's right - "the books survived" and "that's what counts".

EXCERPT FROM The Country Girls, by Edna O'Brien.

"Will you fit on the brassiere, Miss Brady?" the shopgirl asked. Pale, First Communion voice; pale, pure, rosary-bead hands held the flimsy, black, sinful garment between her fingers, and her fingers were ashamed.

"No. Just measure me," I said. She took a measuring tape out of her overall pocket, and I raised my arms while she measured me.

The black underwear was Baba's idea. She said that we wouldn't have to wash it so often, and that it was useful if we ever had a street accident, or if men were trying to strip us in the backs of cars. Baba thought of all these things. I got black nylons, too. I read somewhere that they were "literary" and I had written one or two poems since I came to Dublin. I read them to baba and she said they were nothing to the ones on mortuary cards.

"Good night, Miss Brady, happy Easter," the First Communion voice said to me, and I wished her the same.

When I came in they were all having tea. Even Joanna was sitting at the dining-room table, with tan makeup on her arms and a charm bracelet jingling on her wrist. Every time she lifted the cup, the charms tinkled against the china, like ice in a cocktail glass. Cool, ice-cool, sugared cocktails. I liked them. Baba knew a rich man who bought us cocktails one evening.

There were stuffed tomatoes, sausage rolls, and simnel cake for tea.

"Good?" Joanna asked before I had swallowed the first mouthful of crumbly pastry. She was a genius at cooking, surprising us with things we had never seen, little yellow dumplings in soup, apple strudel, and sour cabbage, but how I wished that she didn't stand over us with imploring looks, asking, "Good?"

"Tell jokes, my tell jokes?" Herman asked Gustav. He had taken a glass of wine, and always after a glass of wine he wanted to tell jokes.

Gustav shook his head. Gustav was pale and delicate. He looked unemployed, which of course was proper, because he did not go to work. He suffered from a skin disease or something. I was never sure whether I liked Gustav or not. I don't think I liked the cunning behind his small blue eyes, and I often thought that he was too good to be true.

"Let him tell jokes," Joanna said; she liked to be made to laugh.

"No, we go to pictures. We have good time at pictures," Gustav said, and Baba roared laughing and lifted her chair so that it was resting on its two back legs.

"There no juice at pictures," Joanna said, and Baba's chair almost fell backward, because she had got a fit of coughing on top of the laughing. She coughed a lot lately, and I told her she ought to see about it.

"No juice" was Joanna's way of saying that the pictures were a waste of money.

"We go, Joanna," Gustav said, gently nudging her bare, tanned arm with his elbow. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up and his jacket was hanging on the back of his chair. It was a warm evening and the sun shone through the window and lit up the apricot jam on the table.

"Yes, Gustav," Joanna said. She smiled at him as she must have smiled when they were sweethearts in Vienna. She began to clear off the table and warned us about the good, best china.

"Ladies come nightclub with me?" Herman asked jokingly.

"Ladies have date," Baba said. She lowered her chin onto her chest, to let me know that it was true. Her hair was newly set, so that it curved in soft black waves that lay like feathers on the crown of her head. I was raging. Mine was long and loose and streelish.

"More cake?" Joanna asked. But she had put the simnel cake into a marshmallow tin.

"Yes, please." I was still hungry.

"Mein Gott, you got too fat." She made a movement with her hand, to outline big fat woman. She came back with a slice of sad sponge cake that was probably put aside for trifle. I ate it.

Upstairs, I took off all my clothes and had a full view of myself in the wardrobe mirror. I was getting fat all right. I turned sideways and looked around so that I could see the reflection of my hip. It was nicely curved and white like the geranium petals on the dressmaker's window ledge.

"What's Rubenesque?" I asked Baba. She turned around to face me. She had been painting her nails at the dressing table.

"Chrissake, draw the damn curtains or they'll think you're a sex maniac." I ducked down on the floor, and Baba went over and drew the curtains. She caught the edges nervously between her thumb and her first finger, so that her nail polish would not get smudged. Her nails were salmon pink, like the sky which she had just shut out by drawing the curtain.

I was holding my breasts in my hands, trying to gauge their weight, when I asked her again, "Baba, what's Rubenesque?"

"I don't know. Sexy, I suppose. Why?"

"A customer said I was that."

"Oh, you better be it all right, for this date," she said.

"With whom?"

"Two rich men. Mine owns a sweets factory and yours has a stocking factory. Free nylons. Yippee. How much do your thighs measure?" She made piano movements with her fingers, so that the nail polish would dry quickly.

"Are they nice?" I asked tentatively. We had already had two disastrous nights with friends that she had found. In the evenings, after her class, some other girls and she went into a hotel and drank coffee in the main lounge. Dublin being a small, friendly city, one or the other of them was always bound to meet someone, and in that way Baba made a lot of acquaintances.

"Gorgeous. They're aged about eighty, and my fellow has every bit of himself initialled. Tiepin, cufflinks, handkerchief, car cushions. The lot. He has leopards in his car as mascots."

"I can't go then," I said nervously.

"In Christ's name, why not?"

"I'm afraid of cats."

"Look, Caithleen, will you give up the nonsense? We're eighteen and we're bored to death." She lit a cigarette and puffed vigorously. She went on: "We want to live. Drink gin. Squeeze into the front of big cars and drive up outside hotels. We want to go places. Not to sit in this damp dump." She pointed to the damp patch in the wallpaper, over the chimneypiece, and I was just going to interrupt her, but she got in before me. "We're here at night, killing moths for Joanna, jumping up like maniacs every time a moth flies out from behind the wardrobe, puffing DDT into crevices, listening to that lunatic next door playing the fiddle." She sawed off her left wrist with her right hand. She sat on the bed exhausted. It was the longest speech Baba had ever made.

"Hear! Hear!" I said, and I clapped. She blew smoke straight into my face.

"But we want young men. Romance. Love and things," I said despondently. I thought of standing under a streetlight in the rain with my hair falling crazily about, my lips poised for the miracle of a kiss. A kiss. Nothing more. My imagination did not go beyond that. It was afraid to. Mama had protested too agonizingly all through the windy years. But kisses were beautiful. His kisses. On the mouth, and on the eyelids, and on the neck when he lifted up the mane of hair.

"Young men have no bloody money. At least the gawks we meet. Smell o' hair oil. Up the Dublin mountains for air, a cup of damp tea in a damp hotel. Then out in the woods after tea and a damp hand fumbling up your shirt. No, sir. We've had all the bloody air we'll ever need. We want life." She threw her arms out in the air. It was a wild and reckless gesture. She began to get ready.

We washed and sprinkled talcum powder all over ourselves.

"Have some of mine," Baba said, but I insisted, "No, Baba, you have some of mine." When we were happy we shared things, but when life was quiet and we weren't going anywhere, we hid our things like misers, and she'd say to me, "Don't you dare touch my powder," and I'd say, "There must be a ghost in this room, my perfume was interfered with," and she'd pretend not to hear me. We never loaned each other clothes then, and one worried if the other got anything new.

One morning Baba rang me at work and said, "Jesus, I'll brain you when I see you."

"Why?" The phone in the shop and Mrs. Burns was standing beside me, looking agitated.

"Have you my brassiere on?"

"No, I haven't," I said.

"You must have; it didn't walk. I searched the whole damn room and it isn't there."

"Where are you now?"

"I'm in a phone booth outside the college and I can't come out."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm flopping all over the damn place," and I laughed straight into Mrs. Burns's face and put down the phone.

"Oh, darling, I know how popular you must be. But tell your friends not to phone in the mornings. There might be orders coming through," Mrs. Burns said.

That night Baba found the brassiere mixed up in the bedclothes. She never made her bed until evening.

We got ready quickly. I put on the black nylons very carefully so that none of the threads would get caught in my ring and then looked back to see if the seams were straight. They were bewitching. The stockings, not the seams. Baba hummed "Galway Bay" and tied a new gold chain around the waist of her blue tweed dress.

I was still wearing my green pinafore dress and the white dancing blouse. They smelled of stale perfume, all the perfume I had poured on before going to dances. I wished I had something new.

"I'm sick o' this," I said, pointing to my dress. "I think I won't go."

So she got worried and loaned me a long necklace. I wound it round and round, until it almost choked me. The color was nice next to my skin. It was turquoise and the beads were made of glass.

"My eyes are green tonight," I said, looking into the mirror. They were a curious green, a bright, luminous green, like wet lichen.

"Now mind - Baubra; and none of your Baba slop," she warned me. She ignored the bit about my eyes. She was jealous. Mine were bigger than hers and the whites were a delicate blue, like the whites of a baby's eyes.

There was nobody in the house when we were leaving, so we put out the hall light and made sure that the door was locked. A gas meter two doors down had been raided and Joanna warned us about locking up.

We linked and kept step with one another. There was a bus stop at the top of the avenue, but we walked on to the next stop. It was a penny cheaper from the next stop, to Nelson's Pillar. We had plenty of money that night, but we walked out of habit.

"What'll I drink?" I asked, and distinctly somewhere in my head I heard my mother's voice accusing me, and I saw her shake her finger at me. There were tears in her eyes. Tears of reproach.

"Gin," Baba said. She talked very loudly. I could never get her to whisper, and people were always looking at us in the streets, as if we were wantons.

"My earrings hurt," I said.

"Take them off and give your ears a rest," she said. Still aloud.

"But will there be a mirror?" I asked. I wanted to have them on when I got there. They were long giddy earrings, and I loved shaking my head so that they dangled and their little blue-glass stones caught the light.

"Yeh, we'll go into the cloaks first," Baba said. I took them off and the pain in the lobes of my ears was worse. It was agony for a few minutes.

We passed the shop where I worked; the blind was drawn, but there was a light inside. The blind wasn't exactly the width of the window; there was an inch to spare at either side and you could see the light through that narrow space.

"Guess what they're doing in there," Baba said. She knew all about them, and was always plying me with questions - what they are and what kind of nightgowns were on the clothesline and what he said to her when she said, "Darling, I'll go up and make the bed now."

"They're eating chocolates and counting the day's money," I said. I could taste the liqueur chocolates Mr. Gentleman had given me long ago.

"No, they're not. They're taking a rasher off every half pound you've weighed before going up to confession," she said, going over and trying to see through the slit at the corner. I saw a bus coming and we ran to the stop thirty or forty yards away.

"You're all dolled up," the conductor said. He didn't take our fares that night. We knew him from going in and out of town every other evening. We wished him a happy Easter.

Under-rated movies #16: The Rapture

The Rapture, written and directed by Michael Tolkin, and starring Mimi Rogers in a stunning (and unprecedented, for her) performance, is a must-see film. It's low-budget, there is much of it that is "fudged" - but that adds to its gritty brutal atmosphere. There isn't money to spare here. If there were more money, perhaps the special effects would be more elaborate, but you don't need it. It would take away, perhaps, from the raw relentless fearless performance at the center of it. It's one of the best pieces of acting I have ever seen, and it's astonishing to me that her career didn't "take off", in the aftermath of it. She ripped her own heart out in this film (metaphorically, of course) and showed us her humanity - in all its frailty and stubbornness and beauty and madness ... She holds nothing back. It is excruciating to watch. Beautiful beautiful work.

The Rapture is Tolkin's first directing job. He was finding his way. Rogers has said that she and Tolkin did a two month "emotional intensive" before shooting. They would meet in a big warehouse space, and Tolkin would give her acting exercises - playing snippets of music and having her react, with her body - no forethought, no planning - just go. He wanted her stripped down to her essentials. He also sensed in her, the person, a kind and caretaking impulse - and he wanted her to get past that in order to play the character. Mimi Rogers, in real life, is a person with good manners, who is always consumed with making the other person feel comfortable. Tolkin and she would go out to breakfast together and he would say to her, "I want you to see what it feels like to not say 'please' or 'thank you' when you are talking to the waiter." Rogers found it so painful. But she gave it a try. The private work they did before filming pays off, and tenfold.

Sharon, the character, is a woman who negotiates her empty life with an almost agonizing buzz of pain at the heart of every moment. Her life is about narcotizing that pain - through random sex, cigarettes, booze, pushing herself further and further into experiences - orgies, swinging ... because she is unable to feel anything. Something in her has been cauterized. From the beginning. Knowing that Mimi Rogers is not actually like that, in real life, makes her performance even more astonishing. There are hard edges to Sharon, a coldness, a detached amusement at the foibles and follies of her fellow man. She has no compassion. Mimi Rogers said a very interesting thing, "You know how it is when you're in great pain. People who are in great pain are very selfish - it's so difficult to look around and see other people and realize what they might be going through when you're in so much pain ..." So that was how she approached Sharon, in the first half of the film.

I don't want to say too much about the film, because watching it unfold is part of its horror and power. Sharon is a telephone operator, who spends her nights cruising the streets of Los Angeles with her corrupt "boyfriend", looking for couples to seduce. In this way she meets an aimless yet kind of sweet guy named Randy (played by David Duchovny, in one of his first major roles). The sex is graphic in the beginning of this film. Graphic and yet totally un-erotic. Sharon barely enjoys herself. She can't get "lost" in sex, because there's nothing really in her that COULD get lost. She is a shell of a person. So the orgy goes on, and at the heart of it is Sharons' barely-hidden contempt for everyone and everything. Interspersed with these lush disturbing sex scenes, are scenes of the cold clinical bank of cubicles, where Sharon sits, redirecting calls, monotonously. The juxtaposition fills you, the audience member, with emptiness. Sharon's apartment is all beige, with really nothing in it. No pictures on the wall, the kitchen looks unused, it's not a lived-in space. All of the spaces in this film have an eerie unearthly look to them - and perhaps that was partly due to the lack of money for big-time set decoration and production design - but it ends up working. Sharon is not IN this world. She is lost.

Randy (Duchovny) is lost, too. He confesses to her one night that he once killed a man for a thousand dollars. This is a key scene.

Sharon is incapable of connection - not just with her fellow man, but with herself. Randy wonders if we would think that murder was wrong if we were not taught that murder was wrong. It's a level of conversation Sharon finds irritating. It demands too much. Watching Mimi Rogers deal with Duchovny in this scene is to watch an actress who is not "acting". She IS Sharon, reacting as Sharon would react - and therefore it is unpredictable, without cliches, and brutal.

Through a couple of haunting encounters and overheard conversations, Sharon begins to feel like something is coming. Some event. She hears things. Something about "the pearl", something about "the boy". What is it? What does it mean? She wonders if maybe she is missing out. She wants to be a part of the group, the group that whispers together in the lunch room. Two men in ties show up at her door to tell her about the final days, and that she needs to be prepared.

The film goes into a realm that few films go into (at least effectively, or noncondecendingly) and it is astonishing to watch. It takes the Book of Revelations literally, and because of that - the characters do not come off (as they usually do in movies) as caricatures. No, because we see them from Sharon's point of view. She scoffs at their message (which is not, let's remember - a message of love - it is a message of "repent or else ...") and yet she keeps engaging them in conversation. Something in her wants to know. These scenes are amazing - you keep waiting for the judgmental caricatures to arise, you keep waiting for the filmmaker to start making fun of these people ... but nope. Tolkin is up to something else here. It's disorienting at first, and I remember my first reaction to the film - it so upended convention that I wasn't sure where I was for the first hour of it. I'm not a literal Biblical fundamentalist by any means, but it was riveting to see a film that took them at their word. The film is not outside. And so the proselytizers who show up at her door are not fire-breathing dragons. They are quite gentle, and understanding ... One of them looks at Sharon and says (without condescension), "I used to be like you." Sharon snorts with contempt. "I doubt it." It is the lack of snotty condescension that moves this film into another realm - a realm of actual exploration and examination, rather than judging or condemning.

Sharon experiences a conversion. It is total and complete.

I hesitate to say more.

For me, the film is, when you get right down to it, about Mimi Rogers' face. Its transformations, its naked pain, its fearless openness. At times it is hard to look at her.

She experiences the love of God for the first time, and her entire life transforms. She turns a corner. Nothing fits anymore. And you can see the change in her face. You see softness there, joy. She sits at her telephone operator cubicle - and tries to spread the good news to the poor folks looking for the number of the ASPCA in Oakland. She is supposed to spend a maximum amount of 15 seconds on each call. Her calls are now averaging 7 minutes. Her boss calls her into his office to reprimand her. Now. For me, this was the most important scene in the film, or one that is so deftly handled - so delicately set up - that its power is so subtle you might miss it. Like Rogers says about this scene, "Your vulnerability blossoms when someone shows you kindness." We all know what the cliche is. Gruff boss man who has no understanding tells his employee to knock the shit off. And to some degree, yes, that is how the scene begins. But The Rapture coudn't be less interested in cliches. Mimi Rogers does not play Sharon simply. She isn't suddenly on her high horse, shouting, "I'm saved and you're not!" She does not judge her fellow man. No. Just like the gentle man who showed up at her door and said, "I used to be like you ..." she now knows that she holds a precious gift that needs to be shared. It is quite urgent. Not just the message of God's love but the message of the final days. These are difficult things to play, man. Mimi Rogers does not take the easy way out. There is not one moment of "attitude" (which is what a college acting professor used to call cliched acting. "Get rid of the 'attitude'," he'd say to an actor who was taking the easy way out - by going with a caricature rather than something real). Rogers is almost pleading with her boss. Watch how he responds. And watch how she responds in turn. THAT is why this film is difficult and awesome. THAT scene.

The religion depicted in the film is literal. The Book of Revelations reads as a set of instructions. Never once does Tolkin condescend or step outside saying, "Heh heh, look at these nutbags ..." He takes them at their word. He follows events to their most logical conclusion. And it's not pretty. This is not an easy film. For anyone. It's infuriating. I found it nearly unwatchable at times, it made me so mad and edgy. It's confrontational. Good. Films SHOULD be confrontational. If you're the type of person who snickers at people who are religious, who sees all religions as a kind of cult, who writes people off who believe in such things - then this film will be totally confrontational, because you will never get a break. Tolkin never winks at you, saying, "Don't worry ... I'm with you ..." I have no idea what Tolkin believes, and I couldn't be less interested. In this story, in this movie, the Book of Revelations is literal, and so he follows that path. If you're the type of person who believes wholly in a God of love and compassion, who doesn't think too much about the final days, and who believes that good works are just as important as faith - then this film will drive you up the fucking wall. Because it's relentless. It has no interest in your hippie-dippie concerns. We're in an Old Testament world here, and Tolkin decides to believe that they mean what they say. Whether or not he believes it is irrelevant. His film examines what it would be like if you believed it. I suppose too if you're one of those "I'm saved and you're not" people, you would also find the film deeply confrontational - because Sharon's journey has nothing to do with snotty pride or putting herself above others. None of the believers in the film have that snottiness, or any Jesus Camp kind of craziness. They are quiet, firm, and gentle. If you believe, they know. It is an "elect" club, no question about it - Tolkin doesn't pull his punches - but again, we are inside that world, not outside looking in.

And there comes a moment, late in the film, when Sharon realizes that God doesn't pull his punches either. That He meant what He said. He's not fucking around. The Bible is literal. Can she do it? Can she do what He asks?

It's shattering. A shattering film.

Tolkin wrote the novel The Player - and he also wrote the screenplay for the Robert Altman film of the same name - another cold clinical excavation of a world, and an insular mindset, that might seem foreign to those not a part of it. You're either in that world, or you're out of it. If you live in Los Angeles you know that there is only one business. When people say "the business", they are not talking about construction or plumbing or education. It's "THE business". It is an exclusive world, and only the elect get to join. Some odd similarities, if you think about it, even though the people in The Rapture are part of a very different club. And Tolkin, in The Player doesn't chicken out at the end - although you think he might. Griffin Mill is a product of Hollywood. He behaves accordingly. He is hollow, like that world is hollow, and any question of art has been long forgotten. He commits a murder. But in Griffin Mill's world, he could get away with it. He could "spin" it.

It's one of the most cynical movies ever made.

Tolkin wrote The Rapture too, and while I would not call it cynical - I would call it brutal. There is no rest. There is no peace. There is just a price that must be paid. And can she pay it? Can any of us?

Mimi Rogers is something else in this film. It's one of the all-time great performances, as far as I'm concerned. I'd put her on a level with Gena Rowlands here - and I don't put anyone on the level with Gena Rowlands. No director has come along and made Mimi Rogers his muse - in the way John Cassavetes made Gena Rowlands his muse ... and so Rogers' career has stagnated (although it was wonderful to see her in the nearly wordless and totally nude scene in Door in the Floor ... I watched her stand there, full frontal nudity - she's older than I am - maybe 10 years older than I am - and she stands there, nude, with Jeff Bridges staring at her critically ... and there's no soft light, it's an unforgiving shot - not sexual, but objectifying, and awful ... and when I saw her there, and realized it was her, I thought again of The Rapture, and her boundless courage, and thought: "Damn. That woman is fearless. Why isn't she, to coin a phrase, more of a 'player'? She's not on the list of 'great actresses' when people talk about the greats of today ... but damn, she fucking should be.")

It's not a perfect film, by any means - and on some level, it might not even be a very good film. The little girl playing Mimi Rogers' daughter is pretty awful (and it's a crucial part, terribly important ... so it might seem mean to criticize a little girl, but her performance threatened to pull me out of it ... which, in a film like this, just can't happen). There are some special effects that make you wince, it's like we're going almost into Ed Wood-land here.

But it'll get you talking, that's for sure.

The reason to see it is Mimi Rogers. Her acting in The Rapture is as good as it gets. Not many actresses (or people, for that matter) are that honest with themselves, that fearless in showing us their ugliness and pettiness and fear ... and perhaps fame is its own jail ... making actresses more cautious in their choices, more protective. You see it time and time again. At the time of The Rapture, Mimi Rogers had nothing to lose. And she tosses herself ferociously into that part with an abandon that puts other actresses to shame.

More in my Under-rated Movies Series:

This post covers 5: Ball of Fire, Only Angels Have Wings, Dogfight, Zero Effect and Manhattan Murder Mystery

Four Daughters

In a Lonely Place

Searching For Bobby Fischer

Joe vs. the Volcano

Something's Gotta Give

Truly, Madly, Deeply

Mr. Lucky

Eye of God

Love and Basketball

Kwik Stop

(And thanks to Joe Valdez of the wonderful This Distracted Globe for the gentle push to write more of these reviews.)

Under-rated movies series, plus some mustard

I am about done with my 16th "under-rated movie" review (the other 15 are here) - I just have to put the finishing touches on the latest and upload the photos and crap like that. I love talking about why I appreciate a film or a certain actor, trying to get my thoughts together, and put it into words. It's my favorite kind of writing to do, I think. Well, and I like to write about boys I've kissed and bedroom windows and stuff like that, too. Look for the under-rated movie review later tonight.

For now, I have to go get my haircut, buy a spring coat, have some lunch, see my sister, buy the next in line in the Master & Commander series - because I'm almost done with Desolation Island and I MUST HAVE THE NEXT ONE READY TO GO SHOULD I WANT TO PICK IT UP IMMEDIATELY.

Oh, and yesterday I bought a table. I am strangely thrilled about my table. It makes me want to jump up and down. I do not have a huge house - as a matter of fact I have a ROOM ... and recently I got rid of a desk because it had just become a storage unit and it was driving me insane. I never sat at it. But I have this big open window - measuring about 10 or 12 feet across - it's a big window - that looks out onto the yard in back - and I recently moved some crap around so that now that entire window is empty underneath. And the thought of sitting at a table/desk while looking outside - is pleasingly feng shui-ish and makes me REALLY happy. I went to my furniture store, where I always go, and talked to Chris, who I always talk to, found something in my price range and arranged to have it delivered next week. Why am I so excited? Why do I feel like my whole life will change? I don't know, but I just do. I get so excited about the littlest things.

Another thing that excites me to no end: My favorite mustard of all time is difficult to find - and for the last year or so I was under the impression that that flavor had been discontinued. The company still made OTHER mustards - but they were NOT what I wanted. I like my mustard to be sweet AND hot, thankyouverymuch ... not just sweet, and not just hot. So suddenly - the sweet AND hot mustard disappeared from every condiment shelf in America. Not that I checked, but you know. Okay, fine, it disappeared from the shelves of the Pathmark down the street from me, and also disappeared from the other Pathmarks in surrounding towns (because yes, I went on pilgrimages to check, because mustard is important to me - right Meredith?? grey Poupon?? - and getting just the right mustard is no easy thing for a picky eater such as myself.) Anyway. That mustard was gone. I have been slogging along in doom and gloom using other mustards for over a year now. And yesterday, after going to see the Trinidadian (yes, he has a name - I just like calling him that ... I call him that to his face, too - so it's not like I'm being sneaky) - I stopped off at a tiny deli near his apartment. A deli run by a stoic Chinese family who are ALWAYS there. I browsed, to get some fixins for dinner - and holy shit - a whole shelf of my mustard!

My dear sweet AND hot mustard
How I have missed thee!!!

I bought the entire shelf, I don't mind telling you. I'm not taking any chances. I need to stock up. I bought 8 jars of the mustard. And, I got so excited about it that I accidentally knocked over a nearby display of soup packets. I actually got flustered at the sight of the mustard, and went ballistic, swooping them all into my basket with one gesture. I made a racket. I knocked shit over. It is a very small deli. I need to calm down. And I stalked up to the cash register, almost afraid that, I don't know, the KGB of sweet and hot mustard would suddenly swoop down and demand to see my permission slip that says, "I am allowed to buy 8 jars of mustard." But no! Success!! I now have more mustard than I know what to do with. Enough to last me at LEAST until 2009. And I have a new table coming. Which will change my life in some indefinable way.

I write about this because I am noticing everything these days. Everything. It exhausts me. And I notice, in almost a detached manner, how I am still capable of excitement over tiny things. Even though I occasionally wreak havoc in small Chinese delis. And for that I am grateful. Also proud. It's not easy to hold on to the ability to have joy in simple things. I am barely aware of it myself. Anyway.

Master & Commander.
Table.
Haircut. (Mohammed? Are you there?)
Sister.
Coat.
New under-rated movie review....
With extra mustard.

An anecdotal film review

What is an anecdotal film review? Jonathan explains what he wants to try to do:

I'm going to review films by relating a story. Nowhere in the story will be any mention of the film whatsoever. It's up to you, the reader, to interpret the story with the film any way you wish but hopefully, if you've seen the movie or even if you haven't, you'll understand why the story connects to the movie for me. But more than that, I do not intend this as a gimmick. I intend it as a legitimate way to review a movie. I don't see it as something many others would want to do, but I like the idea of it. I'll hope you'll agree.

His first anecdotal review is up. He reviews AI, but never mentions the film. Jonathan tells such a terrific story that I forgot about the film review part of it. The last line of the post is just perfect. (Actors, theatre students, directors of plays - anyone who has been or is any one of those things - will eat that post up - with its view of a college acting environment - I just so recognized it!!). It's an intriguing idea, the anecdotal film review, and I might have to try my hand at it.

The Books: "The Time Traveler's Wife" (Audrey Niffenegger)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

This is not my kind of book. I never would have picked it up on my own, for multiple reasons:

1. It's "popular fiction" - and for a while there the book was EVERYWHERE, and usually I don't like books like that (Nicholas Sparks, Tuesdays with Morrie, and etc. etc. - although I have been ringingly wrong in this department before, and am not afraid to admit it. But, in general, if it's so popular that everyone is reading it, it is usually not my cup of tea.

2. It's a first novel by the author. In general, I stay away from first novels - unless it's an author who has proved him/herself with a bunch of other books and then I go BACK to check out the first novel. Now, there are exceptions of course to this - here, or here - and thank God I read Nancy Lemann's first novel (and I read it first of all of her books) - because her books and her writing and her outlook on life have become SO important to me now .... in the warp and weft, as it were. But in general. I don't read first novels.

3. It seemed too soulmate-y. This is obviously totally subjective (but duh - why on earth would anyone look for "objectivity" -whatever that means - on a personal website??) - and I just am not into that stuff. It seemed like it might go the way of Nicholas Sparks' stuff - which is not just boring but horribly written. Or maybe it would be well-written ... but too much about love conquering all, and timeless soul-time continuums, and meeting in the space-time ether, and souls communing ... I was into that stuff once upon a time, but now I find it almost unbearable. My mega-essays on soulmates and Richard Bach are here, here, and here. Again, if you're into soulmate stuff, then please do not get defensive. It is ridiculous to get defensive when someone is expressing her subjective opinion. It shouldn't touch your opinion at all, unless you're interested in having it be touched. So. Okay. I'm against that soulmate stuff.

Now. I've talked about my reasons for resisting the book.

Then something kind of extraordinary happened. A dear friend of mine told me I had to read the book. And here's the thing: my friend has never recommended a book to me in her life. She doesn't really read. Or - she reads for information - you know, job applications, and health books, and stuff like that ... but to sit down and read for pleasure is just not her thing. So it was stunning. She had gone on a vacation all by herself, to the Cape - and someone had left a copy of The Time Traveler's Wife behind in the motel room - so what the hell, she was all alone, she picked it up - and read it. All the way through. That was all she did for about 3 days. She'd lie in bed reading. She'd sit on the beach reading. I know my friend very well - and just the way she told me this story, I could tell what a HUGE deal it was. Reading?? For pleasure??? You?? She has a lot of guilt about free time and stuff like that, always feels like she needs to be doing something and reading doesn't count. But she got lost in The Time Traveler's Wife. And she couldn't WAIT to talk to me about it - because there are epigraphs through the book - and one of them was from Possession and she knew how much I loved Possession, so she thought maybe I would like this book. Anyway, I have friends who recommend me books all the time. It's a give and take thing. My siblings, David, Allison, Kate, Mitchell, Ted ... but this friend? She would NEVER have recommended me a book - so it was a big deal. And she actually had bought me a copy so that I could read it. Well. I dropped whatever I was reading, and picked up Time Traveler's Wife - not so much because I suddenly ached to read it - but because this was a big moment ... a moment when a friend was asking to share something with me, and it was not at all casual ... a singular moment ... It was important to me to respond immediately. I don't feel like I'm describing what a big deal it was for this particular friend to recommend a book to me and why I felt obligated (terrible word - think about "obligation" in the beautiful sense of the word, and you will know where I was at) to read it immediately - even though I didn't think it was my cup of tea.

NOW. ONTO THE BOOK. FINALLY.

I absolutely LOVED it. I loved the writing, I loved the story, I loved the Chicago setting, I loved the humor of it (the book REALLY gets what it's like to be in Chicago when you're in your 20s), and I also loved more than anything its lack of sentimentality. Niffenegger uses sentimentality very sparingly, and I so appreciated it. It's not a "this was my great love once upon a time and let us all weep for what I have lost" kind of thing ... it's not suffused with bittersweet melancholy, or a kitsch version thereof. It's about a guy who - for some unknown reason - has the ability to leap through time. He's been doing it since he was a kid. So imagine Sam Beckett of Quantum Leap leaping through time on his own - and then returning home - knowing the future, the past, what's going to happen - and then leaping out again. He never knows where he's going to land (although, like Quantum Leap, it's always within his own lifetime. Also, just to throw a wrench into the works - a horrible wrench - whenever he leaps, he finds himself stark naked in the new time and place. Naked! He could land in the middle of Michigan Avenue during a big shopping day - NAKED. So he becomes expert at how to handle this - he knows where every thrift store is in the city, he knows how to rummage through garbage for a coat, shoes - he knows what to do first. And during one of his leaps - Henry meets a little girl named Clare. She is curious about him. She runs into her house to get him clothes from her father. Henry is a grown man when he first meets Clare - although in reality they are closer to the same age. So it's this weird time-wrinkle thing ... where Henry is a little boy, and he leaps into himself at age 35 or whatever ... and he knows the end. He knows that he and Clare eventually get married. And they have problems. They have a deep love. There is much to struggle against and work out ... but he still, with all this prior knowledge, has to go through with the courtship, the romance ... he loves her dearly. But the time travel thing is so much a part of his life and he can't count on it, or plan for it ... sometimes he returns to their apartment, and he's lying in the hallway, battered and bloody from something that happened back there in the past. Clare has to accept this part of him. She is "the time traveler's wife". The story is told from both points of view - we leap back and forth from Henry to Clare - and the story is broken up into the dates and the ages - which gives you a dizzying sense of travel, and disorientation, the way it must be for Henry. Like: April 12, 1984. Henry is 36, Clare is 12. So you start to ache for them to "catch up" with each other, to bridge the gap ... to have Henry come closer in time to Clare's age ... so they can actually connect. It's a huge burden on Henry. To know the future. It gives him a great sadness that hovers around him. He's an odd guy. And Clare is wonderful.

I think the book is maybe 100 pages too long ... that's my only complaint - BUT - the ending packed such a huge punch that I almost had to go lie down. It ended so perfectly, on such a resonant symmetrical note - I thought: Yes. Of course. That's where we have been going all this time ... Of course.

It's a helluva first novel, I have to say. Niffenegger writes with great confidence, sweeping her characters through the landscape - and I just loooove the FEEL of Chicago she gets into the book. Clare is in Chicago, in her mid-20s - during the mid-1990s - which is when I lived there, and the age I was when I lived there. The clubs mentioned - Berlin! Aragon! - Niffenegger is obsessed with Chicago, and it becomes another character in the book. I could SEE every scene - the intersections, the specific place-names - Ann Sather, etc. It's got a great sense of place. Clare and Henry, to me, feel very Chicago-ish. They are locals. It's obvious.

Loved the book. I was nervous when I heard they were making a movie of it - scared that it might be ruined - or made too maudlin or treacly - but then I heard that Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana were starring - and I thought: Well. Now I can't WAIT to see it.

The book is so episodic and almost frantic in its pace - that I found a hard time picking an excerpt. I decided to go with the following. One of the best things about it is that it displays Niffenegger's sense of WHIMSY - how romance is so often silly and whimsical - that couples have private jokes, a way of being with each other - that is not lovey-dovey ... but simple enjoyment ... I love that about the book, and the way she writes it.

EXCERPT FROM The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

March 1994 (Clare is 22, Henry is 30)

CLARE: And so we are married. At first we live in a two-bedroom apartment in a two-flat in Ravenswood. It's sunny, with butter-colored hardwood floors and a kitchen full of antique cabinets and antiquated appliances. We buy things, spend Sunday afternoons in Crate & Barrel exchanging wedding presents, order a sofa that can't fit through the doors of the apartment and has to be sent back. The apartment is a laboratory in which we conduct experiments perform research on each other. We discover that Henry hates it when I absentmindedly click my spoon against my teeth while reading the paper at breakfast. We agree that it is okay for me to listen to Joni Mitchell and it is okay for Henry to listen to the Shaggs as long as the other person isn't around. We figure out that Henry should do all the cooking and I should be in charge of laundry and neither of us is willing to vacuum so we hire a cleaning service.

We fall into a routine. Henry works Tuesdays through Saturdays at the Newberry. He gets up at 7:30 and starts the coffee, then throws on his running clothes and goes for a run. When he gets back he showers and dresses, and I stagger out of bed and chat with him while he fixes breakfast. After we eat, he brushes his teeth and speeds out the door to catch the El, and I go back to bed and doze for an hour or so.

When I get up again the apartment is quiet. I take a bath and comb my hair and put on my work clothes. I pour myself another cup of coffee, and I walk into the back bedroom which is my studio, and I close the door.

I am having a hard time, in my tiny back bedroom studio, in the beginning of my married life. The space that I can call mine, that isn't full of Henry, is so small that my ideas have become small. I am like a caterpillar in a cocoon of paper; all around me are sketches for sculptors, small drawings that seem like moths fluttering against the windows, beating their wings to escape from the tiny space. I make maquettes, tiny sculptures that are rehearsals for huge sculptures. Every day the ideas come more reluctantly, as though they know I will starve them and stunt their growth. At night I dream about color, about submerging my arms into vats of paper fiber. I dream about miniature gardens I can't set foot in because I am a giantess.

The compelling thing about making art - or making anything, I suppose - is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid there, a thing, a substance in a world of substances. Circe, Nimbue, Artemis, Athena, all the old sorceresses: they must have known the feeling as they transformed men into fabulous creatures, stole the secrets of the magicians, disposed armies: ah, look, there it is, the new thing. Call it a swine, a war, a laurel tree. Call it art. The magic I can make is small magic now, deferred magic. Every day I work, but nothing ever materializes. I feel like Penelope, weaving and unweaving.

And what of Henry, my Odysseus? Henry is an artist of another sort, a disappearing artist. Our life together in this too-small apartment is punctuated by Henry's small absences. Sometimes he disappears unobtrusively; I might be walking from the kitchen into the hall and find a pile of clothing on the floor. I might get out of bed in the morning, and find the shower running and no one in it. Sometimes it's frightening. I am working in my studio one afternoon when I hear someone moaning outside my door; when I open it I find Henry on his hands and knees, naked, in the hall, bleeding heavily from his head. He opens his eyes, sees me, and vanishes. Sometimes I wake up in the night and Henry is gone. In the morning he will tell me where he's been, the way other husbands might tell their wives a dream they had: "I was in the Selzer Library in the dark, in 1989." Or: "I was chased by a German Shepherd across somebody's backyard and had to climb up a tree." Or: "I was standing in the rain near my parents' apartment, listening to my mother sing." I am waiting for Henry to tell me that he has seen me as a child, but so far this hasn't happened. When I was a child I looked forward to seeing Henry. Every visit was an event. Now every absence is a nonevent, a subtraction, an adventure I will hear about when my adventurer materializes at my feet, bleeding or whistling, smiling or shaking. Now I am afraid when he is gone.

HENRY: When you live with a woman you learn something every day. So far I have learned that long hair will clog up the shower drain before you can say "Liquid-Plumr"; that it is not advisable to clip something out of the newspaper before your wife has read it, even if the newspaper in question is a week old; that I am the only person in our two-person household who can eat the same thing for dinner three nights in a row without pouting; and that headphones were invented to preserve spouses from each other's musical excesses. (How can Clare listen to Cheap Trick? Why does she like the Eagles? I'll never know, because she gets all defensive when I ask her. How can it be that the woman I love doesn't want to listen to Musique du Garrot et de la Farraille?) The hardest lesson is Clare's solitude. Sometimes I come home and Clare seems kind of irritated; I've interrupted some train of thought, broken into the dreamy silence of her day. Sometimes I see an expression on Clare's face that is like a closed door. She has gone inside the room of her mind and is sitting there knitting or something. I've discovered that Clare likes to be alone. But when I return from time traveling she is always relieved to see me.

When the woman you live with is an artist, every day is a surprise. Clare has turned the second bedroom into a wonder cabinet, full of small sculptures and drawings pinned up on every inch of wall space. There are coils of wire and rolls of paper tucked into shelves and drawers. The sculptures remind me of kites, or model airplanes. I say this to Clare one evening, standing in the doorway of her studio in my suit and tie, home from work, about to begin making dinner, and she throws one at me; it flies surprisingly well, and soon we are standing at opposite ends of the hall, tossing tiny sculptures at each other, testing their aerodynamics. The next day I come home to find that Clare has created a flock of paper and wire birds, which are hanging from the ceiling in the living room. A week later our bedroom windows are full of abstract blue translucent shapes that the sun throws across the room onto the walls, making a sky for the bird shapes Clare has painted there. It's beautiful.

The next evening I'm standing in the doorway of Clare's studio, watching her finish drawing a thicket of black lines around a little red bird. Suddenly I see Clare, in her small room, closed in by all of her stuff, and I realize that she's trying to say something, and I know what I have to do.

Happy birthday to Christopher Smart

Christopher Smart - a poet born on this day in 1722 - spent over 10 years of his life in mental institutions (which at that time in history were even more horrific than they are today). He suffered from a form of religious hysteria - he would drop to his knees in public and pray to God. Seems a rather harmless form of madness to me. He was a highly educated man - and his poems have a Blakean ecstasy to them - and are very difficult to pin down or even talk about. While "inside" - he wrote the poem below to his cat Jeoffry. It is one of my favorite poems of all time. I never get tired of it. Can't you just see Jeoffry? Isn't his cat-ness just perfectly captured? And isn't the glory of God so often seen in the innocent creatures of the earth? That was Smart's whole bag. I love it, though, because I can SEE that cat ... from the 1700s. It could be any cat today. Beautiful.

Allen Ginsberg counted Smart as one of his main influences - which shows you how far Smart's verse was able to travel. The guy wasn't just ahead of his time. He was timeless. I've put some quotes about him below his poem. I LOVE Christopher Smart.

For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having consider'd God and himself he will consider his neighbour.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he's a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in Europe.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.
For the dexterity of his defence is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he is of the Lord's poor and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually--Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.
For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music.
For he is docile and can learn certain things.
For he can set up with gravity which is patience upon approbation.
For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.
For he can jump over a stick which is patience upon proof positive.
For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
For he can jump from an eminence into his master's bosom.
For he can catch the cork and toss it again.
For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.
For the former is afraid of detection.
For the latter refuses the charge.
For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.
For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.
For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.
For he killed the Ichneumon-rat very pernicious by land.
For his ears are so acute that they sting again.
For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.
For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived God's light about him both wax and fire.
For the Electrical fire is the spiritual substance, which God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.

"Christopher Smart wrote A Song to David in a lunatic asylum, and when his collected poems were published in 1791, it was omitted as 'not acceptable to the reader'. This poem is formally addressed to David - Smart knew that he was no madder than King David had been, and a tradition survives that he scrabbled the verses with a key on the wall of his cell." -- Robert Graves

"I do not think he ought to be shut up. His infirmities were not noxious to society. He insisted on people praying with him; and I'd as lief pray with Kit Smart as anyone else. Another charge was that he did not love clean linen, and I have no passion for it." -- Dr. Johnson

"It is not impossible that when Smart is judged over the whole range of his various productions - conventional in form as well as unconventional, light and even ribald as well as devotional, urbane or tender as well as sublime - he will be thought of as the greatest English poet between Pope and Wordsworth." -- Donald Davie

"Pope's 'Messiah' is not musical, but Smart's 'Song to David', with its pounding thematic words and the fortissimo explosion of its coda, is a musical tour de force." -- Northrop Frye

"Smart goes where Gray could not: enthusiasm and vaticism overflow from a full if troubled spirit. He is not an imitator even in his translations, which hold the original in a form and language that make no concessions. He feels and conveys the force of the poetry he admires. His intuition is attuned to a broad tradition, not caught in the rut of convention. Marcus Walsh calls Smart's mature style 'mannered, religiose, and self-conscious' - and each becomes a positive critical term, for together they produce a 'homogenous' style that 'unifies' - the crucial word - 'a number of divergent influences.' It is the paradoxical combination of influences, biblical and classical, and the disruptions his imagination registers, that make him outstanding and eccentric. Learning and accidents of biography deliver him from the bondage of Augustan convention into the sometimes anarchic, vertiginous freedom of Jubilate Agno and the originality of the Song to David. He has few heirs". -- Michael Schmidt

More on this fascinating poet here.

The Books: "Ahab's Wife" (Sena Jeter Naslund)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves: Even the title kind of embarrasses me, there's a lot that is embarrassing about this book - however I read it, and loved it (and also retained almost NONE of it - which says a lot) - anyhoo, whatevs: Ahab's Wife: Or, The Star-gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund. Also: Sena Jeter Naslund? Can you have a more high-maintenance name??

OKAY. Here's the deal. Normally I despise even the idea of such books (although Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West is a ringing exception - that was beautifully conceived, wonderfully written - and obviously struck a huge chord) - and when I see the Pride and Prejudice sequels that line the shelves - that take us into Elizabeth and Darcy's bedroom and stuff - I see red. Like: can't you just leave it? Or ... can't you just write fanfic on Livejournal like any normal person?? Do you have to try to compete with Jane freakin' Austen in the marketplace? I know it's a tribute, blah blah, it's the writer saying, "I loved those books so much and I just want MORE." I actually don't happen to think that that is a valid reason to write a book ... sometimes "wanting more" is the whole point of the original book. I close Jane Eyre and I will never stop wondering what marriage between jane and Mr. Rochester will be like. What on earth do they talk about at the dinner table? Do they have children? What the hell???? But that is part of the beauty of a stand-alone book like Jane Eyre. It is itself. It is singular. We are not meant to know more. Charlotte Bronte actually meant it when she said "The End".

All that being said, let me throw a wrench into all of it: I am a huge fan of fanfic and have actually written some myself - because it pleases me. The following is mortifying to admit, but whatever, that's why I'm here - to admit mortifying things and have other people say, "You did that?? I did that, too!!" - In 6th grade, I was so in love with Han Solo that I wrote stories about Han and how he had a younger sister - very similar in character to him - she was feisty, obnoxious, aggressive, and, hmmm, she was 11 years old, and looked incredibly just like me!! I inserted her into the regular Star Wars stories - like Han Solo was trying to dodge her in Tatooine - he needed to get this transport job, and fly off in the Millennium Falcon and not have to have his stupid little sister tagging along - but she somehow stowed herself on board ... and then uh-oh, they are now warp-speeding away ... and it is revealed that she is a stowaway and Han is pissed but what can he do?? And of course Han Solo's sister - I can't remember the name I gave her now - is courageous, fierce with her laser guns, and refuses to be pushed aside - just because she's only 11 years old!! I had a ball writing this stuff. I was imagining myself into that epic, I loved those movies so much that I basically wanted to be IN them. Not as an actress, but as a character ... Anyway, you get the point. I found it greatly satisfying. There is a place for such fanfic - and I know that Star Wars has its own cottage industry of "other stories" that you can read ... and I suppose the domestic drama of Han Solo and, er, his younger sister ... could be placed in that canon. So I'm not saying I don't get the impulse - and I think in some respects the Star Wars offshoot stories are in a different realm than the Pride and Prejudice sequels. I'm not sure why one makes me pissed off and one doesn't. Such as we are made.

Now that my rant is over, let's talk about Ahab's Wife. In Moby-Dick(one of my excerpts of the book here) - there is one paragraph where Ahab, alone on deck, brooding over his revenge, remembers his new wife back home - something about her head denting the pillow. We learn that that "sweet resigned girl" had had a child by him ... and that's pretty much it. From those two lines of text, Sena Jeter Naslund (sorry. I know it's unfair but her name pisses me off) - has created an entire book about the wife of Captain Ahab.

First off, let me just say: Read Moby Dick if you haven't already. Don't just read Ahab's Wife and think that you have somehow gotten close to that other tale. No. You won't be let off the hook that easy.

Secondly: I don't know, after all my thrashing about here - I have to say that I enjoyed Ahab's Wife, for what it was. It's not badly written, first of all (although there are some major problems - which I'll get to in a minute) - and it's written in a way (at least structure-wise) that mirrors Moby Dick: short chapters with evocative poetic titles, a narrative that is not quite linear, sudden philosophical ramblings in the middle of the plot, etc. Also - my copy of the book is illustrated with woodcuts, and it gives a really nice "old-fashioned" feel to the whole thing. Yes, it's kitsch, to some degree - but I got no beef with kitsch if it's well done, and somehow fits into a greater whole. I never for one second forgot that it was a modern woman writing this book - but the format of the book is pleasingly old-fashioned, and nobody can say that Naslund doesn't adore and revere Moby Dick - and so that I appreciate. Ahab's Wife is not about crashing Ahab off of his pedestal (although why that madman would be on a pedestal is beyond me) - it's not just about humanizing him and showing another side to him (the husband) - it's about the life of the wives of sea captain's at that time, living on Nantucket mostly, walking the widow's walk, staring out to sea. Now that's a good story - and it has NOT been told ... and so that aspect of it is fascinating. This is a story (the story of going to sea in the 19th century) that does involve both genders - the women who stayed home ran things, they didn't see their husbands for years on end - they flourished, they had far more independence and power than other women, just from the fact that there was no man in the picture, and etc. etc. So I actually found that side of the book really interesting and well done.

One of the problems here, though (besides the problem of: why do you even need to write this book? Isn't Moby Dick enough?) is that the only bad thing that really happens to "Ahab's Wife" is the fact that her husband goes mad and comes back from that one voyage missing a leg and raving like a lunatic for his revenge. Other than that? The world is full of good and helpful people, everyone has a benevolent side, there is almost no conflict (at least this is how I remember it) ... Ahab's wife has many experiences (pre-marriage, and then as a married woman) - and for the most part, everything turns out okay in all of them. I don't know. It's not good novel-writing. You need conflict. You need things to NOT work out. You need to not love your character so much that you can't bear anything bad happening to her. That's what I feel has gone on here with Ahabs wife. I feel like Derek Jeter Nasboot loves her main character so much that she just wants her to keep living and loving and growing and changing ... with almost no interference from the universe. Well, I have lived long enough to know that the universe always interferes. So that element of the book is tiresome - dare I say amateurish??

However, I wish I would write such an amateurish book and have it be a New York Times bestseller for weeks on end.

There are indeed some set-piece events in the book that have sticked with me. A particularly harrowing river crossing where the characters have to step from ice block to ice block. A storm at sea.

I looked up the NY Times review of the book and much of it made me laugh out loud. First of all, the review is entitled "Call me Una". And the subheading reads: According to his wife, Ahab was a decent guy (and good in bed) until that whale came along. hahahaha That pretty much sums up the trajectory of the book. The review is quite interesting - here it is - and I almost feel bad of making fun of a book with such good and earnest intentions. But you know, great novels are not written with good and earnest intentions. I'm not saying that See-no-evil Jeter Naslund was trying to write a great novel - and that's one of the reasons I feel a bit bad - because she obviously is an enormous fan of Moby Dick and wrote her book with a great deal of research and passion behind it. So it's hard to "review" it, in a way. D'Erasmo, the reviewer, writes:

Naslund, Ahab-like, has taken on an overwhelming quarry in pursuing Melville, but, true to her maternal, liberal philosophy, she does not harpoon the master so much as harness his force to her own. That Naslund is unstintingly reasonable, empathetic and kind should not, however, blind one to the fact that she is, in the most nonaggressive way, rewriting American history, revising American literature and critiquing traditional masculinity. On the froth and foam and rage of ''Moby-Dick'' Naslund lays a cool hand, as if to say: ''There, there. Such a fuss about a fish.''

Yup. Which is rather ironic considering Melville's towering misogyny, in general.

D'Erasmo praises the writing itself - and that's true - the book is beautifully written, and doesn't read in a modern manner - it feels like the 19th century. But the critique there is my critique: the world of Una is so gentle and loving - everyone she meets so kind and good ... that it's a bit of a yawn at times, and you yearn to get back out on the ocean, where all the men are, to see how they are faring against that great white whale. Life is NOT kind and good. Nature is red in tooth and claw, Derek Jeter, come on - you can't ignore that! Women, of all people, should know that best! Women bringing life into the world - often died in that very moment - it was a given that their chances were not good. And the chances of the baby living to adulthood was even worse ... so the whole thing is cruel, risky, horrifying, and yet - hey, it's what we do. But that element does not exist in Naslund's universe. And that's the main problem with the book.Another good sentence from that review: "IN this respect, ''Ahab's Wife'' is sometimes reminiscent of a Marge Piercy or Marilyn French novel, circa 1976, minus any anger." Ha. Yes, exactly.

So I cannot find it in me to be really angry about this book, because I did enjoy much of it - even the yawn-inducing happiness throughout ... It is by no means a replacement for Moby Dick and her version of Captain Ahab doesn't at all touch the one that Melville created, or the one that lives on in my head. Her book just isn't that powerful. (Wicked IS that powerful ... I can't think about the Wicked Witch of the West now without at least considering the question: What on earth happened to her to make her like that? Some people don't find that an interesting question at all - or they just find it annoying. I remember a while back I wrote a post about the musical Wicked and some jagoff drive-by made a comment that it was a "blue state version of the story - the witch isn't evil, she's just misunderstood". Oh for Christ's sake.How difficult is it for you to walk around carrying that giant CHIP on your shoulder? Go away. Kinda like the eejit who read a post I wrote about a big red moon - and decided to tell me, in the most condescending way possible, how "out of touch" I was with reality, because of my one comment (a joke!) in the post about immigration. "You obviously are so out of touch with reality that you are not aware that such and such and such and such about immigration and what a problem it is and how INS is full of shit and how our country is being overrun by illegal aliens and how such and such is a huge issue ... you obviously are such an idiot." I write a post about a big red moon and you show up ranting about immigration and then you call ME an idiot? Pathetic. CHILL.

I actually think it's interesting - to re-think things ... there's a series of books out now with modern authors writing their own versions of Greek mythology and they are fantastic - I'm making my way through all of them. Margaret Atwood wrote one, Jeanette Winterson wrote one about Atlas - it's my favorite thing of hers she's written in years ... I like it: stories are meant to be re-told, re-thought, re-worked - at least the good ones are ... ) But here, with Ahab's Wife we aren't in that realm. I think if we heard the story through, say, Starbucks point of view - or Queequeg's - we might have something a bit more resonant.

I feel like this review is all over the place. I enjoyed the book, as I said - at least the writing of it - she's a very beautiful writer.

But, for me, the serious problems with the narrative (mainly how everyone in the book is good) is what I am left with.

Here's the excerpt. For me, it's the main event I remember in the book (although the context is lost): Ahab's wife (who has just given birth) is helping Susan - a slave woman, escape. They come to a river Susan must cross - and there is no bridge - only floating huge ice floes. I think Nasboot-Jeter-Prenup's writing cannot be denied. It's good.

EXCERPT FROM Ahab's Wife: Or, The Star-gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund.

That night, Susan and I stood on the banks of the river, which was moving blackly with its load of white ice floes. The floes were flat on the top and big as the floor of my cabin. Some were as big as a river barge. They all moved downstream in a ghostly procession, separated by jagged black lines where the water was bare. The edges crunched when they touched and hissed when they swept by. In the center of the river, where the current ran swifter, a band of floes moved, much more quickly than those near the sides.

The moon was full, which would make the footing easier for Susan, for she must jump from floe to floe to cross the river. We stood alone - hand in hand at the edge of the water, our skin separated by the wool of our mittens. No other eyes, no other soul, would watch her go. Silence, stillness, cold. They chimed about us as one snowy chord.

Susan and I had fashioned her a coat from a quilt, and called it a Joseph's coat, because it was truly of many colors, and I had given her my own knitted cap and, under the patchwork coat, an oat-colored sweater. In a cloth bag, she carried some cooked potatoes and johnnycake and a pair of my mother's shoes. She wore another pair of Mother's shoes, and we had driven nails from the inside so that the soles would prick into the slippery ice and keep her feet from sliding. Around her neck, in a tiny gathered bag, she carried a lock of my baby's hair, for he was born with hair and it was red as flame. I have a lock of it, too, intertwined with one of Susan's, but I do not have a lock of my mother's hair. I'd given Susan my red mittens; I wore the new black ones. We loosened our grip on one another's hand.

When I saw Susan step upon the ice, I bit my lower lip till the blood flowed down my chin and crusted in the cold. Here the riverbank was no higher than a step, as from house to yard. In the moonlight, new snow like sugar glittered atop the sheet of ice lying along the bank. Behind her, in a lengthening path, Susan's footprints indented the sparkling snow. She moved toward the center of the river as calmly as though crossing a broad moonlit road cut through the crush and trees of the wilderness.

When she came to the first black edge, she stepped across the open water as though it were a mere stream. The next floe was smaller, and the next even smaller; they dipped or tilted slightly when she stepped onto them. The spans of open water between them seemed wider and wider, and sometimes she waited for the current to bring the ice rafts closer together. Then she leapt the narrowed fissure and walked on.

It seemed to me Susan was walking on clouds in a black sky. There were clouds in the sky, but they stayed far from the moon and did not block her benevolent light. I blessed the moon that held up her lantern for us. Over the water, from seeming cloud to cloud, some silvery, some gray, some white and bright as mirrors for the moon, Susan stepped across the black water.

As the current accelerated and the spaces between floes widened, Susan ran and jumped from raft to raft; my heart hung in the air with her. In the center of the river, the swifter current zipped the ice rafts downstream, with Susan standing on one of them. Her arms fluttered once for balance, twice.

I began to walk downstream and then to run to keep up with the central river as it swept Susan's floe downstream. She never turned to look at me, nor did I want to distract her, and I never called any words of encouragement except as the mind blazes out messages brighter than a lighthouse.

Fly! Fly! as she leapt and landed, the floe she landed on already taking her downstream.

At last the treacherous midsection of the river was traversed. She was far from me now - a dark upright using the flatness: flying and landing, running and leaping, from floe to floe. I saw shapes in the ice rafts, mostly like enormous animals, flat, not like a natural swan or bear but flat as a cookie animal or a tin weathervane. Near the other side, approaching a bend, she had to wait for her floe to come close to the bank. Holding the stitch in my side, I continued walking as rapidly downstream as I could till I came to a high but tangled shoreline that thwarted me. Soon the current would sweep Susan's floe beyond my sight. O, carry her close, carry her close, now, I prayed to the ice, and I prayed that Susan would not feel herself passing beyond my sight and take the risk of trying to jump ashore when the gulf remained too great. The floe that wheeled her toward the far shore was like the palm of a hand, open and presentational.

Patient Susan! Her ice raft nudged the shore, and she jumped. Even as her shoes landed on the snowy bank, she turned and looked exactly where I stood. Together we lifted our arms, blowing each other a kiss across the water, for we had not kissed on parting, saving it till she should be safe, and trusting the sweet air to be our go-between. And then one shout, though it was small from the distance, from Susan: Freedom!

On John McGahern

Me: "He didn't write many books, did he?"
Dad: "No. He spent all his time paring them down, cutting out everything that didn't fit. There's no fat in his books."

Amen. Finished The Pornographer today in a rowdy Irish pub, got my beer and a book ... found myself in tears at the end. He's sneaky, that McGahern. He doesn't overdo it. He doesn't overstate it. But when he makes his point, you are stripped bare of any defenses, and left naked, shivering, resentful, and yet grateful.

So no. He didn't write that many novels. He was too busy cutting the fat out of them. How many many writers I can think of who could learn from his example.

Thank you, Dad.

The Pornographer, by John McGahern

I'm tearing through The Pornographer, a novel by John McGahern. I posted about it yesterday. I am mortified by the book. Not the frank sex scenes, which I love - he writes them quite well (not to mention the interesting subtle differences between the "real life" sex scenes and the erotic stories written by our narrator ... You know, the difference between sex as performed by gymnasts and sex as performed by regular people with issues and problems and inhibitions, etc.) - but the character of Josephine - the woman Michael becomes involved with (pretty much against his will) is pushing ALL MY BUTTONS. Josephine! My God! The thing is is that I know she is pushing my buttons because I see myself in her, a dark mirror ... and I do not like what I see. I would never ever behave like Josephine behaves, I have far too much coldness and steel in me - and I would rather walk away from a situation than debase myself by asking for what I need (you can see the dysfunction - this is why pride is a sin, people) ... but the desire to behave like Josephine behaves, my experience of rejection (and not even rejection - but potential rejection) - is all out in the open with this woman, and it is excruciating to read. Excruciating!! I find myself siding with Michael repeatedly. I am as cold as he is. Cut this lady loose, Michael. Cut her loose. You were honest with her, and she chose not to listen. So she's an idiot. Get rid of her. Do it quick, like ripping off a Bandaid. Because Michael, lemme tell you, the woman is a nightmare. RUN FOR THE HILLS.

But it is not that simple, of course it isn't. And my response to Josephine, and Michael's response to her ... perhaps might be indicative of our own personal truths, our own sense of boundaries, etc ... but I imagine that McGahern is going for a deeper point here. About intimacy and the inability to connect. Sex feels like connection, and it actually is connection. But when two people are having two separate experiences -during the act of making love - then that's a problem. Actually to call it "making love" is a misnomer. If one person is "making love" and the other person is "having sex" you're gonna have some issues. Josephine is 38 years old, and a virgin. She is highly competent at her job, and she loves it. Michael writes porn stories for a magazine, and hides that fact from everyone. When she discovers the truth, at first she is intrigued. But as they get deeper involved, and he starts pushing her away, she becomes convinced that it is the writing of the porn that has ruined his soul for love. He needs to give it up. And looking at Michael's coldness, his ability to detach - regardless of the consequences - I don't know, maybe Josephine has a point. Michael doesn't sit back and write his porn stories with detachment, they work him up ... as they are meant to work the reader up. But what is he ultimately left with? McGahern does not take a judgmental stance towards porn, or those who love it. He is quite egalitarian, which I like. He's a male writer who can write about women (not all of them can, many of the great male writers suck at trying to write women) ... Women are not monolithic to McGahern, they are not "other" (that's my main beef with a lot of male writers and how they write about women - I'm looking at YOU, Don DeLillo) ... they may be mysterious to the gentlemen involved with them, but they are not so completely beyond the pale in terms of their life experience. Josephine is a nightmare to read - the story, after all, is totally from Michael's point of view. We only feel his increasing sense of entrapment (and this chick sets her sights on him instantly ... I guess that's what happens when you take a 38 year old virgin's virginity ...)

She's pushy. She's demanding. She is immediately in love with him. Michael senses the danger, he senses that Josephine's power 'comes from outside' - meaning: there is a hollowness there, and when he rejects her, as he WILL do, she will be destroyed, because she has built him up as her only reason for being. Michael can sense, from afar, how Josephine is creating a relationship with him out of wholecloth - even though he only wants to take her to pubs, and go back to his place. Doing "date" things, like going to the movies, or doing things during the day ... he's not into that. She keeps pushing him. I ache for her. I ache with embarrassment for her. I want to tell her to back off. She mentions her two friends, two American girls, and Michael can sense the HOURS of girl-talk that has been devoted to him. Michael's no dummy. He knows how women operate. He knows how they make shit up because they want it to be true.

But he got more than he bargained for with Josephine, who will not disappear so easily. This isn't a Fatal Attraction story. She doesn't go off the rails (at least not yet) ... but it's hypnotic, in the fact that I can't wait for her to disappear, I can't wait for Michael to go back to his real life, which consists of doing nothing but writing porn, wandering the streets aimlessly on his days off, picking up girls, having sex, moving on ... Like: why do I want him to go back to that? And yet - I certainly couldn't "approve" of him accepting Josephine - it couldn't work! His coldness amazes even me, and I actually think it's something to be proud of. He does not lead her on. He says straight off, "I am attracted to you, and I want to have sex with you. That's not love." She doesn't understand that at ALL. He reiterates the point. He knows he has to break it off. She gets all excited when she's with him, she can't stand it when he needs "a day off" - like, she wants to be with him all the time. Meanwhile, Michael is in the middle of a family crisis - with his beloved aunt dying, and all of that stuff going on ... he needs SPACE. "I'll see you this weekend," he says to Josephine, after their date on Tuesday. She is dismayed. "All that time without seeing you?"

Frankly, I want to slap her upside the head.

But let me be clear: I want to slap her upside the head because I'm embarrassed, yes, and I want her to protect herself more, play it cool, not be so openly needy ... but then I look at my life, where I have played it cool to such an extent that I am alone, I have hidden my neediness from men so well that they think I don't need them or even really like them, frankly. So who is better? Should Josephine go MY way? Why, cause it's been such a ringing success for me?? Honestly.

What button is being pushed by reading about a woman actually saying, "I love you. I want to be with you. I want to be IN your life ... i don't want to just be the girl you get a drink with and then go home and screw ... I want to be part of your life ..." ?

I don't know, but SOME button is being pushed.

At the same time, I think Michael has been perfectly clear with her - and if any guy ever says to me, "I think we need to take a break" I will know what that means, and I will walk away, and never look back. But that's not Josephine. She will not give up so easy. She fights for it. She is annoying, yes, and we see her through Michael's eyes - which is a distortion ... but I admire the fight.

Be careful what you wish for? Yes, but also the maxim could be: Be careful who you sleep with ... you might awaken a monster. I said that to the doppelganger, lo, those many years ago, in the horrible 2002 aftermath: "Guess you just flirted with the wrong girl, huh. Lesson learned." He gave me the weirdest look, almost like I had slapped him, and nodded and said, "Yeah. I guess so."

And yet I never lose sight of Michael's journey, too - in the book. I yearn for his freedom, I yearn for her to just ... go away. Life (and love) is never that simple.

Bravo, Mr. McGahern.

Here's a killer excerpt. The last paragraph knocked me on my ass. I still haven't gotten up.

"We only know each other a few weeks, and things are happening far too fast for me. I'm fond of you," I could hear the lie slithering on the surface of thin ice. "But I'm not in love with you. I want us to call a halt, for a time anyhow, to these regular meetings."

"I see you have it all worked out, just like one of your plots."

"I haven't it all worked out, but I want to give it a rest. We'll drop it for a month or so and see how we feel then. And for that time both of us are free."

"But I love you ...."

"If you love me, then surely you can do that much for a month."

"You're letting nothing through and you can really swing them."

"Swing what?"

"Reasons. Figures. You have it all figured out, haven't you? There's hardly need to even talk."

"I want to rest it for a month," I said doggedly.

"It'll be no different in a month."

"We'll see."

"I feel I have enough love for the both of us to begin with. It's that horrible stuff you're writing that has you all twisted and unnatural. I'd care so much for you. There's so many other decent natural things you could do."

"I suppose I could run a health food shop or a launch on the Shannon River," I said angrily.

"You don't understand. I love you. I only want the best for you."

'Well then, the best for me is that we agree not to see one another for a month."

"I don't suppose there's any use suggesting that we go back to your place and talk about it."

"No. There's no use. You know what that'll lead to, and we'll be only deeper and deeper in."

"There was a time when you were anxious enough for that," it was her turn to be angry.

"We both were. I'll get a taxi for you or I'll walk you home. Whichever you prefer."

"Walk me home," she said.

"I'm grateful, even flattered by your love. But you can't do the loving for the both of us," I said to her at the gate.

"O boy," she said bitterly. "I waited long enough to sure pick a winner," and I shook her hand and left before she began to cry.

I too had stood mutilated by another gate, believing that I could not live without my love; but we endure, as the first creature leaving water endured, having first tried to turn back from the empty land. Having drunk from the infernal glass we call love and knowing we have lived our death, we turn to love another way, in the ordered calm of each thing counted and loved for its impending loss. We learn to smile.

Today in history: April 10, 1912

A certain ship set sail from Southampton, England.

And a certain young lady in financial stress meets a certain young gadabout artist who steals her heart (even though she is "a spoiled brat" and "no picnic") and changes her life forever.

April 10, 1912

A mere five days later:

The Books: "The Discovery of Heaven" (Harry Mulisch)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelf:

The Discovery of Heaven, by Dutch author Harry Mulisch.

It seems to me that the book's Wikipedia page is full of editorial comments, which is rather annoying and has no place in Wikipedia ("albeit shallow" "written with humor", etc. - Thanks for the "review", nerdy jagoff at the keyboard - who do you think you are, Manohla Dargis?) - but there is some very good information there about the history of the book there - and here is Mulisch's page - he is a fascinating guy. A legendary figure in Dutch literature - one of those great towering intellectual figures who is rather omnipresent - he wrote novels, essays, op-ed columns, plays - you know, the works.

Now. Discovery of Heaven. To be perfectly frank, I remember nothing about the book (or, almost nothing) - but due to the amount of markings on the pages, I know I had an interesting time reading it. I remember being fascinated by the intellectual sweep of the book. It's kind of a Da Vinci Code for intellectuals. There are tablets hidden under the tabernacle - made of sapphire - the tablets with the 10 commandments on them - or, there is a rumor that they are still hidden there - and finding them will release the human race from its bondage ... (Please forgive me, I honestly don't remember much of the book - but I do remember the tablets and that they are VERY important). Mulisch seems to find the convergence of mathematics, architecture and religion to be extremely important. The famous architects, and their understanding of space, seem to have something to do with God - with a visual expression of God here on earth. And the tablets are somehow ... relevant ... in a world-shaking way that I cannot recall.

The book is a "novel of ideas" - every review says so! I read this book in my very spare spare time while I was in grad school, it was the kind of thing I could just pick up and read a couple pages, and put down - and pick it back up again a week later, and not feel behind. The characters are not "the thing" here. It's the ideas. That took some getting used to. Mulisch kills a character off early on. Someone who is, you know, a main guy. BOOM. He's dead. It's a plot device. And it's obviously a plot device. That's the whole thing. It's a meta moment. But it was jarring for me! I hadn't really come to "care" about the character, because these aren't really real people - but it still was a bit jarring to have him disappear like that. But once I got used to Mulisch, I stopped looking for in-depth characters and subconscious motivations - and I got into the story, the ideas, what the book was trying to say - about the three major religions all grouped in Jerusalem, how they could speak to one another - if they would shut the fuck up for one second and listen - how mathematics has glimpses of God in it ... and ... I'm not sure what else. That's all I really remember. I do remember the long treatises on geometry and the vanishing point - reminiscent of my Humanities classes in high school when we learned about all that stuff. These are Mulisch's obsessions.

If you want an invigorating intellectual read - with tons of ideas thrown around, I highly recommend The Discovery of Heaven, by Harry Mulisch. Looking at all of my feverish underlining makes me want to read the book again, when I am not so distracted by other things.

I picked an excerpt for today based SOLELY on how many underlines and exclamation points I have added to the pages. Hahaha I seriously don't remember much of the book, in terms of why the hell the tablets come up, and how they all get to Jerusalem, and what all of that has to do with the vanishing point - but I do remember loving it. So I'm picking an excerpt that I cannot preface, or give context to - since my memory is so sparse - but I obviously found it important at the time! I re-read it just now and still found it interesting. It may be malarkey - like I said, this very well could be Da Vinci Code for intellectuals, but whatever, I loved The Da Vinci Code, I recognize it is malarkey, and I loved it anyway (excerpt here). I read it in about 6 hours or something like that. Couldn't put it down. The Discovery of Heaven isn't as much a thriller - as it is a 700 page pondering of ideas, although it does leap from country to country, in pursuit of ... the secrets about those tablets, and what the architecture has to say about all of this.

In the following excerpt, someone goes to talk to someone else about something.

But read on! I have no idea what is happening (and I read the damn book) but I still find the conversation VERY interesting.

EXCERPT FROM The Discovery of Heaven, by Harry Mulisch.

"Well, QuQu ..." he said. "Times change. How old are you now?"

"Sixteen."

"Sixteen already ..." He focused on the oak beams in the ceiling. "When I was sixteen, it was 1927. In that Lindbergh was the first person to fly nonstop across the Atlantic - I can remember precisely. I was living in Haarlem then, close to the flea field, as we called it; I used to hang around there a lot with my friends. It was an extended grass field opposite a great white pavilion from the end of the eighteenth century, with columns and an architrave and everything that you're crazy about." Quinten could see that he was seeing it again, although he could only see the ceiling. "It was so grand, it didn't fit into the bourgeois surroundings of Haarlem at all." He looked at Quinten. "I myself was much more interested in the New Architecture, in the de Stijl, the Bauhaus, and so on. I always find your preferences rather strange for such a young boy, but shall I tell you something? You're really modern with your Palladio and your Boullée and those people."

"How do you mean?"

Mr. Themaat raised his hand for a moment, perhaps to brush his face, but a moment later he dropped it, trembling.

"I haven't kept up with the literature for quite some time, but after classicism and neoclassicism, all those classical forms are coming back for the third time. By the year 2000 the world will be full of them - you mark my words, you'll see. At the beginning I thought it was just a whim of fashion but it goes much deeper. You'll be proved right, and I'm not sure if I'm pleased about that. In the visual arts and literature and music, it might be the end of modernism, and in politics as well. Gropius, Picasso, Joyce, Schönberg, Lenin - they determined my life. It looks as though soon it will all be in the past."

"Freud and Einstein, too?" asked Quinten. At home he had always heard those names in that kind of list.

"It wouldn't surprise me. The last few years I've felt like a champion of the Gothic must have felt at the rise of classicism. All those magnificent cathedrals had suddenly become old-fashioned. Are you still interested in that kind of thing?"

Quinten had the feeling that Themaat was not quite sure who he was talking to. It was though he were regarding Quinten as a retired professor like he himself was.

"I've never been interested in that way."

"In what way, then?"

Quinten thought for a moment. Should he tell him about the Citadel of his dreams? But how could you really tell someone about a dream? When you told someone about a dream, it always sounded stupid, but while you were dreaming it, it wasn't stupid at all - so when you tell a dream precisely, you are still not telling the person what you dreamed. Telling someone about a dream was impossible.

"Well, I was just interested," he said. "I don't know. I think you've told me everything that I wanted to know."

Themaat looked at him for a while, then turned his legs laboriously off the sofa and sat up, with his back bent, two flat white hands next to his thighs.

He closed his eyes and opened them again. "Shall I tell you one thing that you may not know yet?"

"Yes, please."

"Perhaps you'll think it's nonsense, just the chatter of a sick old man, but I want to tell you anyway. Look, how is it that that ideal Greco-Roman architecture and that of the Renaissance could turn into the inhuman gigantism of someone like Boullée? And how couldd it later, with Speer, even degenerate into the expression of genocide?"

"You once said that it had something to do with Egypt. With the pyramids. With death."

"That's right, but how could it have had anything to do with that?"

"Do you know, then?"

"I think I know, QuQu. And you must know too. It comes from the loss of music."

Quinten looked at him in astonishment. Music? What did music suddenly have to do with architecture? It seemed to him as though a vague smile crossed the mask of Mr. Themaat's face.

The humanist architects, like Palladio, he said, were guided in their designs not only by Vitruvius's discovery of the squared circle, which determined the proportions of the divine human body, but also by a discovery of Pythagoras in the sixth century before Christ: that the relationship between the harmonic intervals was the same as that between prime numbers. If you plucked a string and then wanted to hear the octave of that note, then you simply had to halve its length - the harmony of a note and its octave was therefore determined by the simplest ratio, 1:2. With fifths, it was 2:3 and with fourths, 3:4. The fact that the fantastic notion 1:2:3:4, which was as simple as it was inexpressible, was the basis of musical harmony, and that the whole of musical theory could be derived from it, gave Plato such a shock 150 years later that in his Dialogue "Timaeus" he had a demiurge create the globe-shaped world according to musical laws, including the human soul.

Fifteen hundred years later, that still found an echo in the Renaissance. And in those days the architects realized that the musical harmonies had spatial expressions - namely, the relationships of the length of strings, and spatial relationships were precisely their only concern. Because both the world and the body and soul were composed according to musical harmonies by the demiurge architect, both the macrocosm and the microcosm, they must therefore be guided in their own architectural designs by the laws of music. In Palladio that developed into an extremely sophisticated system. And subsequently that Greek divine world harmony also became connected with the Old Testament Jahweh, who had ordered Moses to build the tabernacle according to carefully prescribed measurements - but he could no longer remember the details. He'd forgotten.

"The tabernacle?" asked Quinten.

"That was a tent in which the Jews displayed their relics on their journey through the desert."

"Did it have to be square or round?"

"Yes, you've put your finger on it. That was precisely the obstacle to reconciling Plato and the Bible. There were also squares involved, if I remember correctly, but nothing round. The whole tent must be oblong."

"Oblong? Greek and Egyptian temples were oblong too, weren't they - like beds?" Quinten's eyes widened for a moment, but he wasn't given the opportunity to pursue his thoughts, because Themaat came to a conclusion.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, he said, at the birth of the new age, when modern science originated, it had all been lost. The view that musical theory should be the metaphysical foundation of the world, of body and soul and architecture, was rejected as obscurantist nonsense - and that led directly to Boullée and Speer. The harmonic relationships of course did not automatically change when the elements were enlarged a hundredfold; but the dimensions of the human body, as the measure of all things, remained unchanged - that is: it became proportionately a hundred times smaller, thus ultimately disturbing all harmony and eliminating the human soul in an Egyptian way.

Slowly, as though he were lifting something heavy, Mr. Themaat raised an index finger. "And what you see at the moment, QuQu, is the unexpected return of all those classical motifs, all those stylobates and shafts and capitals and friezes and architraves - fortunately on a human scale again, but also in a totally crazy way. It's just as though somewhere high in space the classical ideal exploded and the fragments and splinters are now falling back to earth, all confused, distorted, broken and out of their equilibrium. Here," he said, and took hold of a large, thick book, which he had obviously laid out ready. "Catalog of the Biennale in Venice. Four years ago there was an architecture exhibition there, which made me first see what was brewing. 'The Presence of the Past' was the theme. Look," he said, and opened the book where he had laid a bookmark. "The Acropolis in a distorting mirror." With half-closed lids, he handed the book to Quinten.

Was it a view of the Citadel? Quinten's eyes began to shine. How splendid! They were photos of a fantastic street, indoors, consisting of a covered hallway: huge pieces of scenery consisting of gables, designed by different architects, all the gables differing totally from each other and yet belonging together, while each gable also consisted of elements that didn't belong together and yet formed a whole. While Themaat said that Vetruvius would have a heart attack if he saw that and that Palladio would kill himself laughing, Quinten looked at a paradoxical portico with four standing columns very close together: the first was a bare tree trunk,t he second stood on a model of a house, the third was only half built - the upper half, which floated in the air and still pretended to support the architrave - the fourth was a hedge cut in a form of the column; the architrave was indicated by a curved strip of blue neon. Everything had a fairy-tale paradoxical quality, the disharmony as harmony. Mr. Themaat might meanwhile maintain that it was classical language, but with all the words wrongly spelled and the syntax turned into an Augean stable, such as toddlers wrote, it gave him an overwhelming feeling of happiness.

"I thought you'd like it, QuQu," said Mr. Themaat, dabbing the corners of his mouth with a handkerchief. "For me it's an end, a kind of fireworks to conclude the great banquet, which once began in Greece. But then you had the balanced world view of Ptolemy, with the earth resting in the center of the universe; according to humanism you got that from Copernicus, with the sun resting in the middle; afterward you got the infinite universe of Giordano Bruno, which no longer had any center at all. All those universes were eternal and unchanging, but recently we have been living in the explosive, violent universe of your foster father, which suddenly has a beginning. Then you get a postmodern sort of spectacle; then everything bursts into pieces and fragments. Everything's exploding at the moment, up to and including the world population, and that's all because of the crazy development of technology. Suddenly a whole new age has dawned, which fortunately I won't have to experience."

Quinten looked out of the window thoughtfully. "But a beginning is also some kind of fixed point, isn't it? What is more fixed than a beginning? You really ought to see that as progress after the previous universe, which had no center anymore."

"Yes," said Themaat. "You could look at it like that."

"Anyway, I suddenly remember what Max once said: that human beings are smaller than the universe in approximately the same proportion as the smallest particle is smaller than the human being."

For a few seconds Mr. Themaat fixed his great staring eyes on him. "So it is true after all? So is man in the middle after all? They should have known that."

"Who?"

"Well, Plato, Protagoras, Vitruvius, Palladio - all those fellows."

Groaning a little, he lay down again, and there was a moment's silence. "For the last few weeks I've found myself thinking of music all the time, QuQu. The Platonic harmony of the spheres has disappeared from the world since Newton, and harmony disappeared from music itself with Schönberg, in Einstein's time. But just like those wretched columns in the catalog, tonality is making a comeback at the moment - except that in the meantime music has become a bane instead of a boon. Here it's still relatively quiet - here it's just dogs barking - but in the city there's no escaping it anymore. There's music everywhere, even in the elevators and the bathrooms. Music comes out of cars, and on the scaffolding every building worker has his portable radio on as loud as it will go. Everywhere is like it only used to be at the fair. But all that harmonic music now together forms cacophony, compared with which Schönberg's relativist twelve-tone system was nothing. And that ubiquitous cacophony is what the new-fangled cacophonous architecture expresses. That bomb that you once talked about, Quinten, has exploded. That's what I wanted to tell you, but perhaps you should forget it again at once. Anyway, I've gotten tired. I think I'm going to close my eyes for a minute."

"I hear ya, troopah! Wipe your wicked ass!"

In honor of Jackie's birthday - which is today: Random quotes, each with a whole story behind it:

-- "Where is the delivery boy with that fabric morgue??"

-- "I had to wear 40 fuckin' corsets on that shoot. 40 fuckin' corsets."

-- "I was married to that Nazi bastid for 30 years and I got NOTHIN'."

-- Tequila shots and Caroline

-- The famous M., my old flame, calls my house - Jackie picks up. What I love about this exchange, is that they just both went with the game. Ba-dum-ching.
Jackie: "Hello. Tony's Pizza Palace."
M.: "I'd like a Sheila to go."
Jackie: "And what would you like on that?"
M.: "Nothing."

-- "Beneath the bad haircut and the 2 dollar jeans beats a heart of gold."

-- "Are those .... your tents? Tell 'em Mrs. Baaaaarney sent ya...... They'll know." (I seriously need to write up the story of Mrs. Barney one day. It is humor on an almost apocalyptic level.)

-- We did a production of My Cup Ranneth Over (excerpt from play here) - one of my favorite college productions I ever did. And, like, 40 people saw it. Major great memories working with Jackie.

-- At an open mike with her in Chicago. We sang as a duo. A fuse blew - and the entire bar was plunged into darkness. We were there with M., my guy - my grumpy curmudgeonly guy. There were all these musicians there, with guitars that needed to be plugged in, the microphones didn't work - no electricity - so the open mike came to a stop - Mayhem ensued. M. yelled thru the dark at the organizer, "Hey, there's an a capella group over here!!!" Being helpful. I had a MAJOR heart-crack. So Jackie and I made our way to the stage - PITCH BLACK - the place was packed - people were still drinking - the cash register happened to be an old-fashionied manual one - so you could hear the pounding of the keys - and Jackie and I sang our entire repertoire, a capella, until the lights came back on. One of the most magical nights of my entire time in Chicago. You could have heard a pin drop in that place while we were singing.

-- Jackie and I worked in a factory after college. We had to be "on the line" at 6 am. Which meant Jackie had to come and pick me up every morning at 5:15. The headlights of her car pulling into the drive. Coffee in the darkness. Grim silence between us. We sat on the assembly line all day. We met up by the lunch truck on our breaks, to commiserate, share our misery. We made references to Officer and a Gentleman to try to lighten the mood.

-- Our Sunday night dates when I first moved to Chicago: We would walk down the street to My Pie (only the "pie" was spelled with the sign for Pi) - and we would have a mug of beer each, and share a pizza. My favorite pizza joint in Chicago. Then we would walk back to her place and pull the TV out of the closet (she kept it in there for the majority of the time) - to watch Life Goes On - a show we were completely addicted to.

-- "He ripped my brown wool leg-wraps."

-- Oh. The carnage we caused.

-- All the men we dated. The HOURS of conversation about them. Meeting up for coffee, or drinks .. to talk about this or that man. Supporting each other. Laughing. Crying. Whatever. Just there for each other. I was there on the day she kind of "discovered" that she loved the man who is now her husband. A magical freezing day. They weren't even dating yet ... but something shifted that day. Something shifted.

-- I sang at their wedding.

-- Jackie and Mitchell came to a Halloween party dressed as Jackie's grandparents, Chester and Millie. (Click below the fold to see the image.) Chester and Millie were FAMOUS to all of us - as well as beloved. That is one of my favorite photos of my friends EVER. TAKEN. There is so much that is delicious about it. Look at the anxiety in Mitchell's eyes. Like ... Chester doesn't know WHAT is going on, and he feels a little bit out of his comfort zone. He is frightened. And look at Jackie's face. Her mouth is open. Her hand pats Chester's arm comfortingly. WHAT IS SHE SAYING TO HIM? It's hilarious. She is so obviously soothing Chester. "It's all right, dear, it's all right ..."

-- There was one infamous day in Chicago when I had double-booked myself. I had a date in the afternoon with one guy, a date in the evening with another guy, and I was stressing out. I was talking with Jackie about it on the phone, and in the middle of the conversation, I got another call and it was a THIRD man calling me up to ask me out for the NEXT day. I am not bragging - seriously, it was actually not even a pleasant experience. I felt like: ARGH, all on one weekend? I don't even LIKE dates!! I hung up with Third Guy and clicked back over to Jackie, and filled her in. "That was Third-Guy. He wants to go out tomorrow." There was a short pause and Jackie said in a flat emotionless voice, "You are a burning icon in the Chicago sky."

-- Photo booth at Lounge Ax - I love that picture of Jackie.

-- One night Jackie and I decided to walk to the beach, in Rhode Island, to see the sunrise. It was a 7 mile walk. This is a story I NEED to write as an essay. It's an entire novel, what happened on that damn walk.

-- We were the first to come upon a drunk driving accident once, on a lonely country road, at midnight. We saw a car on its side. It had obviously been coming from the opposite direction, came into our lane, went up on the field embankment, and flipped. It was freaky to be the first ones there. We clearly heard someone moaning in the car. Jackie went running up to one of the dark houses ... and banged on the door, shouting for them to call for an ambulance. Within minutes, the entire fire department, police department, and EMT staff came screaming out of the country dark.

Jackie and I ended up standing up on a nearby grassy knoll, watching the entire thing. There was a wasted fat gentleman standing up in the car - which was on its side. So he was standing, with his feet on the passenger window, banging against the driver-window which was now above his head. His belly was protruding and hard - a serious beer gut. He looked like he was trapped in a fish tank. He could have not only fucking killed someone, but he could have killed US. If we had come around that corner 15 seconds earlier, he would have smashed right into us. So I have no sympathy for him. He's lucky he's alive. Another car came along, and decided to stop and watch - because the whole road was blocked off. Two really cute and friendly college guys stood and watched, and ended up joining Jackie and I on the grassy knoll. MUCH flirting then occurred. We were shamelessly flirting at the scene of a drunken car accident. Jackie and I roared about this later. The EMTs finally got the guy out of the car - and he put up a struggle - A policeman scolded him, saying, "You need to do what we say, sir." And fat-drunk man uttered these now-mythic words - "I hear ya, trooper!" He said it in a jolly tone, a cooperative tone, a buddy-buddy tone. Also, let's add on the Rhode Island accent. "I heah yah, troopah!" To this day, Jackie and I still use "I heah ya, troopah" in normal everyday conversation. "I mean, I'm just really upset right now ... do you hear what I'm saying?" "I heah yah, troopah."

-- We got to have an enormous stage fight that opened the show of Edwin Drood. I actually got to flip Jackie over a ledge, and she plummeted down through the air. (A mattress was placed at the bottom - out of sight of the audience - for her to land). Can I tell you how fun it was to have a raging FIGHT with Jackie? We rolled down stairs together. We stamped on each other's feet. We shouted obscenities - in thick Cockney accents. We chased each other up and down the aisles. We pulled each other's wigs. It has to be the most fun I've ever had on stage. And the ending was always the best. When I just grabbed onto her (in a highly rehearsed way, of course) and flipped her over the ledge. Also, we were dressed up in mid-19th century Music Hall get-ups - with huge feathers coming out of our heads, and flashy petticoats, and heaving bosoms, and sillks and taffetas - slutty-looking (those Music Hall girls were often prostitutes) and yet - with some of the charm of the era. Not showing EVERYthing. We were circus horses. So the two of us - in our Music Hall outfits, and outlandish makeup - beating the crap up out of each other. GLORIOUS!!!

-- "Jeremy, wipe your wicked ass." No way can I ever explain that quote - give context - how it came about. It is unexplainable. But I am STILL laughing about it. It needs to be said in a nasal priggish voice, vaguely British: "Jeremy, wipe your wicked ass." The words "wicked ass" must be RELISHED, too - give them more emphasis than the other words. You judge the ass as being "wicked" - yet you also find the "wicked"-ness of the ass strangely titillating.

-- "Oo say drak."

-- Morning after a wine-drenched debauched night in college. Jackie, Brooke and I lay in my bed. Aching with our hangovers, not talking, We were HURTING. Jackie slowly opened her eyes, perceived her condition for a silent moment, and then stated, flatly, "You could tap my liver and feed communion to a small Catholic church."

I love you, Jackie!!! Happy birthday!

Chester and Millie

In April alone, I have:

-- 2 press screenings of new films, with reviews to write
-- flow of writing submissions to magazines and journals (nobody biting yet, damn them all to hell)
-- brunch with agent
-- mixer at the 92nd Street Y
-- book-launch at Trinidadian embassy, with Ye Olde Trinidadian friend whose company continues to be a source of comfort and lowering blood pressure in my life

I look at that list and I wonder why I insist on believing that I have "nothing" going on. Why I feel paralyzed sometimes by the thought that I am a failure. Why I can't see the larger picture, and accept it for what it is. As something good.

Then there was a glorious sleepover last Saturday with Allison. We re-connected and caught up, and I realized, for the 100th time, how much she means to me.

Last week I had a long wonderful dinner with Ted at Cafe Noir, with tapas, wine, talk talk talk.

A couple days ago my mother gave me a pep talk using the phrase "Because he MUST" from Blast From the Past, a favorite of mine - for more reasons than one.

This Friday I have my women's group. We haven't met in a couple of months. It will be so good to see everyone.

My parents stayed up until midnight (unhead of) watching Slings & Arrows: The Complete Collection that I sent to them. I'm so happy they like it!

In the last week I have gotten kind and loving emails from both of my sisters, and had a nice phone conversation with my brother. I am blessed.

So "April is the cruellest month"? Yes, perhaps it is. I would say every month has the potential to be the cruellest. But I step back a bit and look (not at how I FEEL, but at what I am DOING) ... I can see that it is good.

The Pornographer, by John McGahern

I'm reading The Pornographer, a novel by John McGahern. I read his By the Lake last year (excerpt here), and his Amongst Women is one of my favorite books (excerpt here) - so I decided to go back and fill in the blanks in the McGahern canon, including his memoir All Will Be Well.

Here's an interesting post about McGahern, thoughts about who he was as a writer, and what he meant.

Anne Enright, winner of the Booker Prize last year for The Gathering said about McGahern, and Irish writers in general:

I find being Irish quite a wearing thing. It takes so much work because it is a social construction. People think you are going to be this, this, and this. I can't think of anything you might say about Irish people that is absolutely true. John McGahern was an immensely angry, dangerous, and subversive writer. But he was domesticated by the Irish academy incredibly fast. There's the idea of the "authentic Irish" that he keys into.

Subversive not like peep-show subversive. But subversive as in revolutionary. He said what nobody wanted him to say. Which was the truth, as he saw it, about life on the ground in Ireland. He was sacked from his job. His first novel was banned in Ireland. Eventually, they came around - and he was more famous in Ireland than he ever was abroad (although, in the wake of his death, that has much changed). He is one of Ireland's greatest all-time writers. His stuff is haunting. He uses a gentle pen - nothing firebrand-ish about him. You lose track of where you are when you are reading his books, the atmosphere is so all-encompassing. And for the most part, it seems like he is just describing what happened ... The depths of his books are not immediately apparent. He does not make a big obvious deal about his themes. But they are there, and they resonate in the reader long long after you finish the book. I mean, the silence of that house in Amongst Women was deafening - and it seems like I can hear it still. And the characters he creates leave an indelible mark. He's one of the best. And yes, you might miss how angry he is, and how courageous. Nobody thanked him at the time, for just telling the truth, as he saw it, about the Church, and sex, and politics in Ireland. He was pilloried. I guess he could take comfort that he was in good company (ie: Joyce, another writer who was run out of town on a rail after telling the truth about Dublin and Dubliners). He has the last laugh, I suppose - any list of great Irish novelists usually has him in the top 5, and small wonder. He is a very local writer - which I wonder is one of the reasons why his fame did not spread much further outside Ireland? But his very local-ness reminds me of two quotes:

Thomas Hardy, who was also accused of being "provincial" - and writing about the same 10 square miles of ground - had this to say:

"A certain provincialism of feeling is invaluable. It is the essence of individuality, and is largely made up of that crude enthusiasm without which no great thoughts are thought, no great deeds done."

And then a quote from photographer Henri Cartier Bresson, who had this to say about photographing Marilyn Monroe:

She's American and it's very clear that she is - she's very good that way - one has to be very local to be universal.

Both of these quotes seem to me to be applicable to John McGahern, and his particular and specific power as a writer. He is Irish. His books could not take place anywhere else. You can hear the brogues in his language (much more than you can in, say, Banville's stuff). McGahern writes in a brogue. And yet by being "very local" he has become "universal". And his stuff, which has a "certain provincialism" also becomes "the essence of individuality". You cannot remove his people into other lands, and have them retain the same sense of truth. Ireland is a character in his books, although it is rarely mentioned. LIke I said, he does not dwell, he does not use a giant hammer to make his points ... and in that way, he is the most subversive writer of them all. Because it is hard to pinpoint exactly what it is he is doing or saying - and so he drove the officals mad! "We KNOW this is subversive, dammit ... but we don't know WHY!! He's up to no good, that's clear!"

I mean, sometimes it is obvious why - he was very open about sex and writing about sex - and just look at the title of this book!! Hugely confrontational! The Pornographer? In 1970s Ireland? What are you, nuts? You can't say that!!

But he does.

In The Pornographer we meet Michael, a quiet man who makes his living writing erotic stories for an underground magazine. He writes trash. He is given the names of the characters by the editor of the mag - "Okay, so this one will be about The Colonel and a little tart named Mavis ..." and off he goes. He doesn't even have to worry about plot - that is given to him as well. But the sex is all his to write. It's graphic stuff. "Fuck me fuck me O Jesus fuck me" cries poor Mavis as she humps the Colonel in Majorca. Michael lives a rather aimless life, it seems (I'm early on in the book) - and is, at the moment, taken with caring for his aunt, who is dying in a nearby hospital. Her husband won't come to visit her. The book opens with Michael taking his uncle (his aunt's brother) to see his sister in the hospital. His uncle is a country man, a working man - a true McGahern type, rural, rough, nobody's fool, and highly practical. He makes appointments with a couple of different distributors in Dublin, to get machinery parts, while he's there. There's this absolute stunner of a sentence:

My uncle saw his own state as the ideal, and it should be the goal of others to strive to reach its perfect height. For me to disturb its geometry with any different perspective would be a failure of understanding and affection.

Wow.

Michael tells no one what he does for a living. It's vague. He's a "writer". He had a failed love affair which seems to have made an impact. He asked her to marry him, she said no. And now he is left in the lonely quiet aftermath.

Here's an excerpt - a connection being made between the ritual of the mass and the ritual of sitting down to write. Of course, sitting down to write porn. Ah, McGahern. I love your subversive self.

There was no sound when I opened the door of the house and let it close. Nor was there sound other than the creaking of the old stairs as I climbed to the landing. I paused before going into the room but the house seemed to be completely still. I closed the door and stood in the room. Always the room was still.

The long velvet curtain that was drawn on the half-open window stirred only faintly. A coal fire was set ready to light in the grate. The bed with damaged brass bells stood in the corner and shelves of books lined the walls. Books as well were piled untidily on the white mantel above the coal grate, on the bare dressing table. Beside the wardrobe a table lamp made out of a Chianti bottle lit the marble tabletop that had been a washstand once, lit the typewriter that rested on a page of old newspaper on the marble, lit an untouched ream of white pages beside it. I reflected as I always did with some satisfaction after an absence that the poor light of day hardly ever got into this room.

I washed and changed, combed my hair, and washed my hands again a last time before going over to the typewriter on the marble, and started to leaf through what I had written.

We used to robe in scarlet and white how many years before. Through the small window of the sacristy the sanded footpath lay empty and still between the laurels and back wall of the church, above us the plain tongued boards of the ceiling. It seemed always hushed there, motors and voices and the scrape-drag of feet muffled by the church and tall graveyard trees. Kneelers were no longer being let down on the flagstones. The wine and water and hand linen had been taken out onto the altar. The incessant coughing told that the church was full. The robed priest stood still in front of the covered chalice on the table, and we formed into line at the door as the last bell began to ring. When it ceased the priest lifted the chalice, and we bowed together to the cross, our hearts beating. And then the sacristy door opened on to the side of the altar and all the faces grew out of a dark mass of cloth out beyond the rail. We began to walk, the priest with the covered chalice following behind.

Among what rank weeds are ceremonies remembered, are continued. I read what I had written, to take it up. My characters were not even people. They were athletes. I did not even give them names. Maloney, who was paying me to write, effectively named them. "Above all the imagination requires distance," he declared. "It can't function close up. We'd risk turning our readers off if there was a hint that it might be a favourite uncle or niece they imagined doing these godawful things with"; and so Colonel Grimshaw got his name and his young partner on the high wire joined him as Mavis Carmichael.

This weekend the Colonel and Mavis were away to Majorca.

"Write it like a story. Write it like a life, but with none of life's unseemly infirmities," Maloney was fond of declaring. "Write it like two ball players crunching into the tackle. Only feather it a little with down and lace."

I am not sure what is to come - I'm really looking forward to the book.

The Books: "Hopeful Monsters" (Nicholas Mosley)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelf: This will be my fourth excerpt from Hopeful Monsters, by Nicholas Mosley.

First excerpt

Second excerpt

Third excerpt

Max takes over the narrative in Chapter 4. He and Eleanor have met, and then he went back to England, to go to college at Cambridge. They have exchanged addresses and yes, they begin to write letters - and often the letters are frustrating - because how can you put such a feeling into words? So what they do is - they talk about what they are studying, and they talk about what has been on their minds. Max becomes very interested in the mathematics of Paul Dirac - and shares some of his theories with Eleanor. Eleanor returns the letter, pondering the theories - making conjectures, connections ... In the meantime, life goes on. Max is in college. The Labour Government in England collapses - the stock market in America crashes and the fallout goes round the world. The Nazis are gaining power in Germany, becoming omnipresent and there are strange rumblings about what is going on in Russia. Max is very aware of all of this, because it seems connected, somehow with Eleanor, and it also is becoming hard to ignore that the world is about to explode. Eleanor is struggling, in Germany, to keep it together. She is going the route of her mother, and becoming more and more involved in left-wing politics, which is quite a dangerous activity, given the crack-downs. But she thinks it is the only way. She has been studying the manuscripts of Karl Marx with Bruno. Cambridge, as of now, is still relatively protected from that - but not for long. Max continues his studies, and becomes very interested in not only Dirac but Wittgenstein, who is also at Cambridge at that time. Max befriends a kind of horrible person named Melvyn - a queeny bitchy type, who snarks about everything and everyone - and Melvyn introduces Max to Mullen, who is studying Russian art - Mullen will be a very important figure later in the book. What is going on in Russia? What is Stalin really doing? Max would love to know. Max also meets a young girl named Suzy, whose father is a professor at Cambridge - and they start to date. Dating someone else doesn't seem to threaten what he feels for Eleanor, not at all. But he does wonder how all of this will play out. So much of what Max thinks is fate - is how you deal with whatever comes up. Max takes a summer job in a small working-class community, to help them build a community center. It used to be a shipbuilding community, but now there are no more ships being built, and the economic depression is acute. Capitalism has crumbled. While Max is working in the community (and having some sort of strange intense relationship with Peter Reece, the local priest - who is in charge of the building project) - he gets a letter from Eleanor. She will be coming to England with a group of her Marxist revolutionary friends - they are going on a pilgrimage to all of the important places in Karl Marx's life, and are taking a bus through England. Can she see Max? It becomes increasingly complicated for them to hook up again. Major forces seem against them. Eleanor has to make her entire tour bus of revolutionaries go hours out of their way so she can see a boy she only talked to for half an hour once upon a time. What is going on here? And they end up missing each other anyway.

Max writes this chapter in an increasingly frustrated voice - continuously talking to Eleanor - saying "Oh my beautiful German girl ..." He wishes all obstacles could be swept away. But since they cannot, in the meantime, there is Suzy ... who is young and sexy and silly. He enjoys her. They sleep together. Melvyn is jealous, and makes snarky comments ... Max doesn't tell Eleanor about Suzy. There are other side-plots, having to do with Max befriending (basically) a homeless family in the working-class town where he works ... and saving the youngest daughter from the clutches of her own father. He's not sure how to save her, or why he is doing so, but he knows she needs help.

There is always a child - between Max and Eleanor ... the end of Chapter III saw Max and Eleanor helping a child down from the rioting audience outside the theatre ... they look at each other, wonderingly ... Is this our child? Isn't this absurd that we have only just met and now we have a child?

This is an ongoing theme.

Here we are, though, early on in the chapter - as Max sets up the themes ... And now, it is interesting - I find that I myself am embodying one of the main themes of the book: how difficult (nearly impossible) it is to put certain things into words. And how you should be quite careful when trying to articulate certain things ... because some things disappear when you name them. I feel that writing down "the plot", as it were, does this great book a huge disservice - although if you've been reading the excerpts, you will be able to tell that there is way more here than just "what happens". If you just hear "what happens" it sounds like a big chaotic mess. When really what it is is a treatise on the interconnectedness of all things - how politics and science and love and war intersect - and how each can inform the other, or - no, that's too polite. How each informs the other, whether we can see the connections or not ... they are there ... and Max and Eleanor, struggling to just survive the early 1930s in Europe, are also trying to see beneath surface events - to see what is really going on.

And when there are elements such as Nazis and Stalin and Hitler and world-wide economic depression running amok - it is important to talk about what might be really going on.

EXCERPT FROM Hopeful Monsters, by Nicholas Mosley.

I remember that we talked about politics, you and I: were you not closer to Communism at that time than you remember? (You imagined you had got away from your mother?) You certainly showed your antipathy to those Nazi boys: I suspected at first that you did not go down to the performance of the play in the evening because your friends had joined up with them - or was I even then being too modest? You showed some antipathy to me when I suggested that in the cannibal-race of the Western world these Nazis might play the part of scavengers, garbage-collectors, to clean the mess up. But then was not this the sort of thing that was being said by the Communist friends of your mother's?

In Cambridge before 1930, it is true, we did not know much of either Communism or Fascism. It was the fashion, I suppose, to say about Russia 'Of course, the experiment might go either this way or that.' And about Italy 'At least Mussolini makes the trains run on time.' Reactions amongst students were influenced by the contempt we had for what we saw and read of politicians at home. These seemed to be like dinosaurs already half fossilised in rock: we thought - Hurry on, ice-cap, come down from the pole.

I would say to my mother 'Freud doesn't seem too optimistic about the chances of improvement.'

My mother would say 'Truth after all does not depend upon the chances of improvement.'

I said to my father 'But if there is no guiding principle in evolution, then why should one form of behaviour be at better than another.'

My father said 'Science and ethics belong in different worlds.'

I would think - But might not this attitude be like that of the dinosaurs just before they were caught by the cold?

But then I would think of you, my beautiful German girl, whose legs as they moved within your skirt were like the clappers of a bell, the memory of whose mouth still sometimes took me by the throat so that it was as if I could not breathe. I thought - There are connections here beyond the reach of our scientific world; sailors are lured to rocks by sirens; rocks are where fishes and humans crawl out on to a new land.

In Cambridge, young men put their heads into the sand of scrums on football fields. OId men stood and watched them as if they themselves would leap in and be blind.

Oh yes, I felt as if I were an agent in occupied territory. But what was the agency? What was it for? Who were the other agents? (Of course, you.)

Indeed one should not stay too long in the company of someone whom one feels is a fellow agent: there is such work to be done!

"Where everybody knows your name ..."

This post about Cheers from the always-insightful and emotionally illuminating Marisa made me cry.

I loved that show, too.

New York movies

... a wonderful retrospective.... which demonstrates why David Edelstein is one of my favorite critics writing today (I put him on my list here).

For me, it's never just about agreeing with a critic's opinion - it's about how the critic writes, how they choose to express what is good or what is bad in a film. Simple plot synopsis holds no interest for me. But an illuminating look at what works, what doesn't, and WHY - That's the hook for me. I disagree with Edelstein quite a bit - but I read every word he writes. He gives each of these New York-based films one paragraph only - and just boils each one down to its essence. It would be a good exercise for me, to try to "sum up" movies in one paragraph.

Example from Edelstein's piece - the paragraph about The French Connection:

Pauline Kael wrote that on-location shooting had ushered in a new age of “nightmare realism,” with New York as “Horror City.” Here was Exhibit A: trash, horns, gore, Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle slapping suspects around, and a chase scene yet to be equaled for suspense and public endangerment.

Read Edelstein's whole piece here.

Picture by yours truly

The Sea, by John Banville

Another excerpt from The Sea, by John Banville. I am beginning to realize the essential bleakness at the heart of the book. I think I resisted it, although it was apparent that it would not be a laugh-riot. This is a man grieving for his dead wife, and also haunted by some event in his childhood - that, frankly, it is taking him forever to reveal. I'm on page 145 with only 50 pages to go and I still don't know what it was that happened back then that had such an impact. I know it's coming ... but he's only giving it to me in drips and drabs. He had a crush on Mrs. Grace ... and then transferred his love to the daughter, Chloe. They were 11 years old and were "going out". Nothing earth-shattering ... but you can tell that, on some level, time stopped for Max Morden - NOT when his wife died, but long long ago, in childhood. As he says in the first paragraph of the book "They departed, the gods, on the day of the strange tide." The Grace kids were "the gods". They had the same chaotic power of the Gods of old, the same dominating aspects ... the same mix of benevolence and cruelty. So I don't know what happened back there - the book goes back and forth (sometimes 3 times in one sentence) between Max now - who has moved to the town where he holidayed as a young kid, the scene of whatever it was that happened with the Graces ... He has moved back here because he is at a loss at what to do after the death of his wife. But he also needs peace and quiet to work - and it is inconceivable that he could get anything done at his home, where he lived so long with his wife. But it is also apparent that he has moved back here to come to terms with ... whatever happened back then. The day the gods departed. He is bombarded by sensations - the past as he remembers it bucking up against the reality before him (there was a kitchen here in this house back then? I have no memory of that ...) ... He is also, without saying it, achingly lonely for his wife. He doesn't seem to have been terribly in love with her - as a matter of fact, he seemed a bit afraid of her, there was something in her that was cold and clear and beyond him ... but without her he is a mess. He is a hypochondriac, and an insomniac - two things which have been made worse tenfold by the death of his wife. He stays in a boarding house in the summer town - the house where the Graces used to live. It is changed now. It is run by a woman named Miss Vavasour (great name) - and there are only two people living there - Max, and an old Colonel. The Colonel has been living there forever, and is ancient. He is obsessed with his own bodily functions, which is understandable - since he is so old. He kind of resents Max's presence, and there's a bit of jostling for position between them, but Max doesn't have energy for a fight. He tries to settle in ... but there is something ultimately unbearable about his life. I mean, he bears it, but it is unbearable nonetheless.

The following excerpt made me say "Wow" out loud when I finished it. Wow.

After dinner Miss Vavasour clears the table in a few broad fanciful passes - she is altogether too good for this kind of menial chore - while the Colonel and I sit in vague distress listening to our systems doing their best to deal with the insults with which they have just been served. Then Miss V. in stately fashion leads the way to the television room. This is a cheerless, ill-lit chamber which has a somehow subterranean atmosphere, and is always dank and cold. The furnishings too have an underground look to them, like things that subsided here over the years from some brighter place above. A chintz-covered sofa sprawls as if aghast, its two arms flung wide and cushions sagging. There is an armchair upholstered in plaid, and a small three-legged table with a dusty potted plant which I believe is a genuine aspidistra, the like of which I have not seen since since I do not know when, if ever. Miss Vavasour's upright piano, its lid shut, stands against the back wall as if in tight-lipped resentment of its gaudy rival opposite, a mighty, gunmetal-grey Pixilate Panoramic which its owner regards with a mixture of pride and slightly shamed misgiving. On this set we watch the comedy shows, favouring the gentle ones repeated from twenty or thirty years ago. We sit in silence, the canned audiences doing our laughing for us. The jittering coloured light from the screen plays over our faces. We are rapt, as mindless as children. Tonight there was a programme on a place in Africa, the Serengeti Plain, I think it was, and its great elephant herds. What amazing beasts they are, a direct link surely to a time long before our time, when behemoths even bigger than they roared and rampaged through forest and swamp. In manner they are melancholy and yet seem covertly amused, at us, apparently. They lumber along placidly in single file, the trunk-tip of one daintily furled around the laughable piggy tail of its cousin in front. The young, hairier than their elders, trot contentedly between their mothers' legs. If one set out to seek among our fellow-creatures, the land-bound ones, at least, for our very opposite, one would surely need look no further than the elephants. How is it we have allowed them to survive so long? Those sad little knowing eyes seem to invite one to pick up a blunderbuss. Yes, put a big bullet through there, or into one of those huge absurd flappy ears. Yes, yes, exterminate all the brutes, lop away at the tree of life until only the stump is left standing, then lovingly take the cleaver to that, too. Finish it all off.

You cunt, you fucking cunt, how could you go and leave me like this, floundering in my own foulness, with no one to save me from myself. How could you.

"A chintz-covered sofa sprawls as if aghast" ...

Wow.

My other post about The Sea is here.

UPDATE: I just finished the book. I didn't see the Miss Vavasour connection coming AT ALL. Has anyone else read the book? Did you guess? I literally said, "Oh my God" out loud when the information was revealed.

And then there is the mystery of what was going on with the twins, on the "day the gods departed". Minor spoilers here: Did they say anything to one another while sitting for a moment together on the beach? Banville doesn't say. It appears that they just sit quietly, and then stand up and walk into the ocean. Why? What happened? Do they truly believe they are "gods" - not of this earth?

But it was the Rose thing that really knocked me on my ass.

Sad. Sad book. Not just because of Chloe and Myles but because of what eventually will become of Max. And the nasty undertones to his relationship with his daughter ... I had thought that that was maybe just a man being honest about his daughter's failings. But no. He sensed the threat. He knew that eventually it would be her or him. Someone had to win.

Sheesh. Sad.

The perfect library

110 best books ...

Of course the thing with these lists is people get uppity and pissed, either by what is left off (My first uppity question is: "where the hell is Harriet the Spy??") or by the bias shown by the list-maker ("He's such a snob!" - Or - "what the hell is such-and-such doing on that list?? THAT INVALIDATES THE WHOLE LIST.") Etc. You know, people go apeshit. But it's really just because they want us to know who THEY are, and the books THEY would choose. And they express themselves in a defensive manner. They get angry at the elitism in lists, they get angry at what they feel is the lack of respect for their perfect library. I get annoyed with such people, mainly because I get annoyed when people get angry for no reason. Don't get so pissed off: Tell me YOUR perfect library then, but without the chip on your shoulder, how 'bout? I understand you want to be heard. And seen. I get that. We all want to be known. And to book lovers, it IS by our books that we are known. Some lists are ridiculous and snotty, and some do reveal the bias of the list-maker, and all that - but I still think they are interesting jumping-off points for conversation. I mean looking at that list, I can honestly say that The Beauty Myth did not change MY world - as a matter of fact I have some pretty strong negative feelings about Naomi Wolf (Ahem) - and so that shows the bias of the list-maker, but I choose not to discount the list entire because of stuff like that. Bias is interesting. So apparently - to that list-maker, it was a book that changed his/her world ... how fascinating. I wouldn't have it on my list, but it's interesting to see it there nonetheless. I have many of the books on the list, naturally - many I do not have and feel I should get - I had forgotten all about The Railway Children - I LOVED that book when I was little, loved loved loved it ... and now I realize I have been separated from it for FAR too long!

Some view of my library - which is far from perfect, but which gives me great pleasure:

The list - which is supposed to make up a "perfect library" reminds me of two things - a letter Charlotte Bronte wrote, where she recommended books to a friend (a female friend) - and also a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote, where he listed, exhaustively, the books every gentleman should have in his library. It's worth printing both of these in full:

CHARLOTTE BRONTE:

"You ask me to recommend you some books for your perusal. I will do so in as few words as I can. If you like poetry, let it be first-rate; Milton, Shakespeare, Thomson, Goldsmith, Pope (if you will, though I don't admire him), Scott, Byron, Campbell, Wordsworth, and Southey. Now don't be startled at the names of Shakespeare and Byron. Both these were great men, and their works are like themselves. You will know how to choose the good, and to avoid the evil; the finest passages are always the purest, the bad are invariably revolting; you will never wish to read them over twice. Omit the comedies of Shakespeare and the Don Juan, perhaps the Cain, of Byron, though the latter is a magnificent poem, and read the rest fearlessly; that must indeed be a depraved mind which can gather evil from Henry VIII, from Richard III, from Macbeth, and Hamlet, and Julius Caesar. Scott's sweet, wild, romantic poetry can do you no harm. Nor can Wordsworth's, nor Campbell's, nor Southey's -- the greatest part at least of his; some is certainly objectionable. For history, read Hume, Rollin, and the Universal History, if you can; I never did. For fiction, read Scott alone; all novels after his are worthless. For biography, read Johnson's Lives of the Poets, Boswell's Life of Johnson, Southey's Life of Nelson, Lockhart's Life of Burns, Moore's Life of Sheridan, Moore's Life of Byron, Wolfe's Remains. For natural history, read Bewick and Audobon, and Goldsmith, and White's History of Selborne. For divinity, your brother will advise you there. I can only say, adhere to standard authors, and avoid novelty."

I mean, honestly.

And are you ready for Thomas Jefferson's "gentleman's library"? I never look at this without feeling bad about myself, and woefully uneducated.

Thomas Jefferson to Robert Skip with a List of Books, Aug. 3, 1771

I sat down with a design of executing your request to form a catalogue of books to the amount of about 50 lib. sterl. But could by no means satisfy myself with any partial choice I could make. Thinking therefore it might be as agreeable to you I have framed such a general collection as I think you would wish and might in time find convenient to procure. Out of this you will chuse for yourself to the amount you mentioned for the present year and may hereafter as shall be convenient proceed in completing the whole. A view of the second column in this catalogue would I suppose extort a smile from the face of gravity. Peace to its wisdom! Let me not awaken it. A little attention however to the nature of the human mind evinces that the entertainments of fiction are useful as well as pleasant. That they are pleasant when well written every person feels who reads. But wherein is its utility asks the reverend sage, big with the notion that nothing can be useful but the learned lumber of Greek and Roman reading with which his head is stored?

I answer, everything is useful which contributes to fix in the principles and practices of virtue. When any original act of charity or of gratitude, for instance, is presented either to our sight or imagination, we are deeply impressed with its beauty and feel a strong desire in ourselves of doing charitable and grateful acts also. On the contrary when we see or read of any atrocious deed, we are disgusted with it's deformity, and conceive an abhorence of vice. Now every emotion of this kind is an exercise of our virtuous dispositions, and dispositions of the mind, like limbs of the body acquire strength by exercise. But exercise produces habit, and in the instance of which we speak the exercise being of the moral feelings produces a habit of thinking and acting virtuously. We never reflect whether the story we read be truth or fiction. If the painting be lively, and a tolerable picture of nature, we are thrown into a reverie, from which if we awaken it is the fault of the writer. I appeal to every reader of feeling and sentiment whether the fictitious murther of Duncan by Macbeth in Shakespeare does not excite in him as great a horror of villany, as the real one of Henry IV. by Ravaillac as related by Davila? And whether the fidelity of Nelson and generosity of Blandford in Marmontel do not dilate his breast and elevate his sentiments as much as any similar incident which real history can furnish? Does he not in fact feel himself a better man while reading them, and privately covenant to copy the fair example? We neither know nor care whether Lawrence Sterne really went to France, whether he was there accosted by the Franciscan, at first rebuked him unkindly, and then gave him a peace offering: or whether the whole be not fiction. In either case we equally are sorrowful at the rebuke, and secretly resolve we will never do so: we are pleased with the subsequent atonement, and view with emulation a soul candidly acknowleging it's fault and making a just reparation. Considering history as a moral exercise, her lessons would be too infrequent if confined to real life. Of those recorded by historians few incidents have been attended with such circumstances as to excite in any high degree this sympathetic emotion of virtue. We are therefore wisely framed to be as warmly interested for a fictitious as for a real personage. The field of imagination is thus laid open to our use and lessons may be formed to illustrate and carry home to the heart every moral rule of life. Thus a lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity that ever were written. This is my idea of well written Romance, of Tragedy, Comedy and Epic poetry. -- If you are fond of speculation the books under the head of Criticism will afford you much pleasure. Of Politics and Trade I have given you a few only of the best books, as you would probably chuse to be not unacquainted with those commercial principles which bring wealth into our country, and the constitutional security we have for the enjoiment ofthat wealth. In Law I mention a few systematical books, as a knowledge of the minutiae of that science is not neces-sary for a private gentleman. In Religion, History, Natural philosophy, I have followed the same plan in general, -- But whence the necessity of this collection? Come to the new Rowanty, from which you may reach your hand to a library formed on a more extensive plan. Separated from each other but a few paces the possessions of each would be open to the other. A spring centrically situated might be the scene of every evening's joy. There we should talk over the lessons of the day, or lose them in music, chess or the merriments of our family companions. The heart thus lightened our pillows would be soft, and health and long life would attend the happy scene. Come then and bring our dear Tibby with you, the first in your affections, and second in mine. Offer prayers for me too at that shrine to which tho' absent I pray continual devotions. In every scheme of happiness she is placed in the foreground of the picture, as the princi-pal figure. Take that away, and it is no picture for me. Bear my affections to Wintipock clothed in the warmest expressions of sincerity; and to yourself be every human felicity.

Adieu.

FINE ARTS.

Observations on gardening. Payne. 5/
Webb's essay on painting. 12mo 3/
Pope's Iliad. 18/
------- Odyssey. 15/
Dryden's Virgil. 12mo. 12/
Milton's works. 2 v. 8vo. Donaldson. Edinburgh 1762. 10/
Hoole's Tasso. 12mo. 5/
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Telemachus by Dodsley. 6/
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Dryden's plays. 6v. 12mo. 18/
Addison's plays. 12mo. 3/
Otway's plays. 3 v. 12mo. 9/
Rowe's works. 2 v. 12mo. 6/
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Young's works. 4 v. 12mo. 12/
Home's plays. 12mo. 3/
Mallet's works. 3 v. 12mo. 9/
Mason's poetical works. 5/
Terence. Eng. 3/
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CRITICISM ON THE FINE ARTS.

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The Books: "Hopeful Monsters" (Nicholas Mosley)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelf: This will be my third excerpt from Hopeful Monsters, by Nicholas Mosley.

First excerpt

Second excerpt

It's been a couple years since I've read Hopeful Monsters and I'm really enjoying leafing through the book, reminding myself of it ... my favorite sections and events. This book has the potential to remind me of what is important to me, my essence, what matters ... much of it is 100% cerebral, but so am I, most of the time. What are my intellectual concerns? How do I see the world? What is the role of chance? Do I experience life as random chaos or is there a pattern? Mosley is all about that. His characters are scientists, researchers - they look for patterns in the chaos. And who knows what might mean something and what might not ... This scientific level of inquiry is used in the experience of personal life as well, love, and friendship, and competition. And so through the book great themes of connection are woven between all of these elements - love, socialism, philosophy, college life, physics, theatre (yes! even theatre!) - and Max and Eleanor revolve through it, entering and re-entering each other's lives ... but why? Why is there a connection? What happens when they first meet? And why is it so important?

In the third chapter of the book Eleanor takes over the narrative. This is a long chapter, with many different sections to it. She's basically filling Max in on what happened to her in the couple of years before they met for the first time. Eleanor goes to school. She becomes best friends with a giggly crazy girl named Trixie (how I love Trixie) and a snarky funny boy named Bruno, who is probably gay. They are three peas in a pod. They have all kinds of adventures - some that border on illegal. It's the mid 20s in Berlin. The world Christopher Isherwood described so well. Decadence, unbridled. The three teenagers decide to have an adventure - so Trixie and Eleanor dress up, so they will look older, and go to a bar frequented by fat cats and prostitutes - a bar where there is a phone at each table, so you can call up someone you are interested in, and make a proposition. Eleanor and Trixie are "acting". Acting like they are grownups. Just for the fun of it. There is a love between them, too. They drink too much, and sit at their table and suddenly start kissing each other. This, naturally, gets the attention of someone who calls their table. But Eleanor and Trixie are not prepared to go "all the way" - they were just in it for the laughs. There are a couple of episodes of such shenanigans. Eleanor, Trixie, and Bruno hover on the edge of the abyss - that is Germany before the 1930s. There is something unleashed in the air - they all can feel it ... nobody is sure what is coming, but everyone knows something is. And yet, life goes on. Nothing has stopped yet. And childhood is gone. Eleanor loses her virginity to Bruno. She then goes off to university - the University of Freiburg. Sometimes Trixie and Bruno come to visit her, but things have changed. Their old careless intimacy is different now. Eleanor gets caught up in the world of the fraternities at the university - there are German fraternities and Jewish fraternities - and these groups of guys are always fighting duels - a way to let off steam, I suppose, but also a way to express the underlying tension between the two groups. Eleanor thinks it is all foolish, but at the same time she recognizes that these duels are rituals, and man obviously needs rituals. She befriends and has a crush on a girl named Minna, a German girl like an Amazon, who has no fear. Minna is a nudist in her spare time. The students have campfires and Minna takes off all her clothes and dances around. Eleanor also befriends and has a crush on a German guy named Franz (a marvelous character who will end up being very important later). Franz is suicidal. Eleanor tries to save him. They have long conversations about the meaning of life. And what it is they all are really doing. What is life, what is love ...

Around this same time, Eleanor becomes interested in the work of Heidegger - who I believe is at the University at the same time she is studying there. His philosophy revolves around silence - and the fact that "certainty cannot be put into words". In the same way that Einstein, in the first chapter, provided the basis for how Eleanor experienced and interpreted her life ... so Heidegger, and his theories, provide the basis for Eleanor here. When is there a value in silence? When are words inadequate? All around her is chatter - people arguing and fighting and discussing. But it's meaningless. It's just noise. When is it important NOT to say anything?

The Nazis have already begun their rise. It is the late 20s. They are not yet omnipresent, but occasionally Eleanor runs into a group of them. She talks about it with her father. Her father and mother have split up, by the way. Her father has moved to Heidelberg, and her mother stayed in Berlin to continue on her work in left-wing political circles. Eleanor says:

I had not come across Nazis much at this time. Hitler's first attempt to get power in 1923 in Munich had failed: he had gone to jail. Afterwards not much was heard of him till the first Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg in 1927. Then I had said to my father 'But what is it that makes them different from other right-wing groups?'

My father had said 'They are the only political party who are honest about what they want.'

I had said 'What do they want?'

He had said 'To kill everyone who is not like them.'

I had said 'But what are they like?'

He had said 'They are like people who want to kill everyone who is not like them.'

I had said 'But then surely other people will kill them first.'

My father had said 'No, because they are politicians and no one believes them.'

Franz, Minna, Bruno and Eleanor go to the big youth conference in the Black Forest. It is filled with young German kids, setting up camp, having sing alongs, putting up tents. There are certainly Nazi groups, but they are not the only ones. Bruno and Franz get into philosophical arguments over the campfire. Bruno is Jewish. Franz is German. Bruno demands of Franz why he isn't a Nazi. Franz says "Because on the whole I would rather be dead." Minna is the goddess around whom they all circle. Bruno wants to sleep with her. Franz wants to sleep with her. Eleanor wants to sleep with her. Minna remains vaguely oblivious of all of this, like every good goddess.

There is a play that is going to happen at an old castle in the Forest. Goethe's Faust - part 1 and part 2. Part 1 on one night, Part 2 on another night. Mosley's description of that play - and how it was put on - and what it meant to Eleanor, watching ... is extraordinary. One of my favorite sections in the whole book. It makes me wish I was there. Eleanor realizes that what she is seeing on the stage is a reflection of all of humanity ... and that all of us are looking for something, our counterpart, our mate ... she feels that the actors, when they turn to the audience, are saying, inside, "Is it you? Is it you?"

And so, of course. It is in between Part 1 and Part 2 when Max (who is also there at the youth conference - he came with Hans, the young German exchange student who had stayed with his family) and Eleanor finally meet.

Here is that excerpt. Notice how once the conversation begins, Eleanor stops calling him "the boy" and switches to "you". She's talking to Max, reminiscing about their first encounter. And as they speak, they realize that they have the same set of symbols, thought-processes ... they have come to them separately, this is their first meeting ... but they realize they think in exactly the same way. And what can be said about that? How can it be put into words?

EXCERPT FROM Hopeful Monsters

Back in our camp, Franz collected firewood and Bruno made the fire and Minna and I prepared food we had got earlier in the village. In the camp next door the two boys who spoke English seemed to have had a quarrel. The younger one, who was like a faun, had walked away and had come and sat with his back against a tree between his camp and ours. I thought -- There is a painting like this: a girl is lying on the ground; there is a faun at her head: I have the impression that I should be part of this painting.

The other boy, who was like a large white dog, came and knelt by the boy who was like a faun. He said in English but with a German accent 'You are angry with me because of what I told you about your mother.'

The boy who had his back against the tree said 'I don't care a damn about you and my mother. What I am bored with is Faust. In fact I think you and my mother are quite like Faust.' Then he turned and looked at me.

I thought -- Hullo, it is as if you remember me?

The boy said 'Oedipus is boring, Faust is boring, Mephistopheles is boring. And Nazis and Jews are boring. If we think them evil, we only encourage them. Nothing is going to change unless we think such things are boring.'

The boy who was like a dog said 'Come and have supper.'

The boy who was looking in my direction said 'Seen any good child-murders lately?'

The other boy said 'Be quiet, people will hear you.'

The boy who was looking at me said 'That is why I am speaking English, lest people might understand and be saved.'

I thought I might say -- I understand you.

The boy who was kneeling said 'You asked me to talk about your mother.'

The boy who was like a faun said 'What would be interesting would be a play about the people who are sitting and watching and loving that sort of stuff. Then at the end they could go off, yes, happy, and blow themselves up.'

I thought I might say - But it would still be boring to have to watch them blowing themselves up.

Then you said to me 'Do you understand English?'

I said 'Yes.'

After a time the boy who was like a dog stood up and went back to his fire.

You were sitting with your back against that tree. There were millions of pine-needles on the ground like forks in pathways. I thought -- We can pick them up; move them this way or that. After a time you looked away.

I said 'But it would still be boring to have to watch them blowing themselves up.'

You said 'Yes.'

I said 'So what would you do?'

You said 'Something quite different, I suppose.'

You were staring in front of you as if you were expecting to be shot with your back against the tree.

I said 'What?'

You said 'I've thought it would be something to do with just what turns up.'

I said 'I've thought it would be to do with what you're talking about and what is happening, happening at the same time.'

You said 'But there would have to be some sort of code.'

I said 'Why?'

You said 'Because otherwise it would go away.'

I said 'But if you know the code, you would know the message.'

You said 'We should know the message. We don't have a code.'

People from our two camps were calling us to come to supper. They were saying that there were only a few minutes before we would have to leave for the performance of the second part of the play.

I said 'Do you want to see the second part of Faust?'

You said 'No.' Then -- 'I think what is happening now and what we are talking about is the same.'

I thought -- Also there is indeed this that has turned up: we are sitting beneath the trees.

I said 'What is your name?'

You said 'Max.' Then -- 'What is yours?'

'Eleanor.'

You said 'Helena?'

I said 'Eleanor.'

You said 'This is absurd.'

The others were saying that they were setting off to see the play; we could join them later if we liked.

We seemed to sit for a long time in silence beneath our trees.

I said 'You mean, there is some pattern in what turns up?'

You said 'I have thought sometimes that it would be like being in the inside of a painting.'

I said 'Yes, this is absurd.'

You said 'Why?'

I said 'Because I have thought that it would be like --' Then -- "But I suppose if I say it, it will go away.'

You said 'I see.'

It was as if we were on some plane that might at any moment tip over: if I moved towards you, you might go away; if you moved towards me, I might fall.

I said 'How old are you?'

You said 'Nearly eighteen.'

'I'm nineteen.'

'You are at a university?'

'Freiburg.'

'I am going to Cambridge next year.'

'What are you studying?'

'Biology or physics.'

'I am studying medicine.'

You said 'You see, this is almost unbearable, unless there is a code.'

I said 'Unbearable for ourselves?'

You said 'Oh, and for others!'

I thought - But, I mean, we have got some sort of code.

Then - We are like two people stuck on a rock-face connected by rope: cut the rope and one of us dies; don't cut the rope and both of us may die, or live.

I said 'Are you staying here long?'

You said 'We go tomorrow.'

I said 'Will you give me your address, so that I can write to you?'

You said 'Yes, and will you give me yours?'

I said 'I will put it on a piece of paper; then I can swallow it.'

You said 'Or you can put it down the lavatory. Or in a bottle to float on the sea.'

There was the faint sound of people acting, orating, further down the valley. I thought - You mean, other people might hurt us: we might hurt ourselves?

I said 'You know the image of Plato's about the two halves of something, that look for each other?'

You said 'Yes.'

I said 'That is too obvious--'

You said 'I can't think of anything better to say.'

There was the sound of clapping from further down in the valley. I thought - Perhaps it would be easier if one of us took a short walk. Perhaps it would be easier if we were in circumstances of danger.

I said 'What happens to Faust and Helena in Part II, do you know?'

You said 'They have a child.'

I said 'What happens to the child?'

You said 'It flies too close to the sun. It falls into the fire.'

I said 'I don't think I should have a child.'

You said 'You don't think you should have a child?'

I said 'Do you?'

After a time you said 'There are enough in the world.'

You seemed to have been listening to the sounds that were coming up from the valley.

I said 'But what is it that makes Faust finally say "Stop!"?'

You said 'I thought he never did. I thought he only said "If I were to say 'Stop!--"'

I said 'I thought it was when he was reclaiming a new bit of land from the sea.'

You said 'Well perhaps we are reclaiming a new bit of land from the sea.'

I said 'I suppose what is interesting is what Faust said to those terrible beings when he got to heaven.'

You said 'Well what shall we tell them.' Then - 'I suppose we are in heaven.'

I said 'Sh!'

We began laughing.

You left your tree and crawled towards me. It was as if you were pulling yourself along by a rope. To preserve balance, it seemed, I had to stretch out toward you. When we met, it was as if we had to become enfolded.

You said 'It's like a line in a play - "I've got to go in the morning!"'

I said 'But we might just stick it out till then.'

It was as if we were on - not exactly a tightrope: rather a pole that was balancing the earth which itself was on a tightrope: we had moved to the centre of the pole and had to stay very still; to hold on tight, or the earth would tip over.

I said 'Are you comfortable?'

You said 'Yes, very.'

I said 'Do you think this is by chance?'

You said 'Oh, I think chance might be to do with heaven.'

We got into a position like that of a circle divided into two shapes like tadpoles: these fit into each other to make the circle whole. I thought - Or the world is on the back of an elephant, the elephant is on a tortoise, the tortoise is on the sea.

I said 'I am older than you.'

You said 'I know you are older than me.'

I said 'Hold on tight.'

You said 'Or we shall go over.'

When the others came back up the hill from the valley they were having their arguments about the meaning of the scenes from Faust, Part II: why was Faust saved? was it just because of his ceaseless striving? And what of Helena, who had appeared and disappeared; what was the point? People were talking about these things as if there might be answers in words.

We had been lying very still. Oh yes, of course, we had from time to time used more words.

When the others were back I said 'You've got my address?'

You said 'Yes.'

I said 'And I've got yours.'

I thought - I suppose we have to go down, like angels, do we, to the cities of the plain.

Franz and Bruno and Minna had been joined by the boys who had been with you; also by a few of the Nazi boys. They all came and sat round our fire. They bobbed to and fro; they drank wine and beer.

You said 'We have to leave very early.'

I said 'That does not matter.'

You said 'No.'

The people round the fire were not paying much attention to us. I thought - We are too embarrassing: we have been into and out of the fire.

- Do not look at us and we are there: look at us and I suppose we go away.

Bruno was encouraging Minna to take off her clothes. The Nazi boys were clapping. I thought - She is like that child of Faust and Helena: she may be destroyed by the fire.

One of the Nazi boys put an arm round Franz's shoulders. Franz looked at me. Then, when I looked at him, he looked away.

You had gone back to your camp and were sitting on your own by your fire.

I thought - Oh strange and terrible world, you should not be destroyed! There are people whom you can love: who love you -

- Just let us know, every now and then, what might be an ark.

One of the Nazi boys picked a flaming stick out of the fire and held it towards Minna. The stick seemed slightly to burn her. Minna was half naked, dancing round and round the flames.

Bruno called out 'Nellie, come and join us!'

I thought - Oh but I am happy sitting here with my head in my hands, my cage -

- Or am I a child in a pram looking up towards the leaves, the sunlight?

The next morning you and your group had gone. I did not know whether or not I had heard you leaving. I had been having a dream. We were in the courtyard of a castle. There were ladies and gentlemen on the grass. Then the ground flipped over, and there were huts and watchtowers.

I thought - The dream leaves the dreamer: what is left to the dreamer of the dream?

I had the piece of paper with your name and address on it.

Happy place

Maybe the happiest place of all for me, even though he (the character) has a sad end.

And lastly. This image, to me, is a work of art.

I've never really written about 2002, not specifically anyway, not what happened or who I became. I've approached it from the side, from time to time. And here's a post directly about Moulin Rouge - which comes closer to talking about the horror of 2002. I've read posts where people scoff those who say "That movie saved my life! Reading that book saved my life!" And I suppose if every other thing appears to have "saved your life", then you might not be taken seriously. Or maybe those who scoff have never been so saved or changed by a movie or a book, and they would rather scorn you - than try to understand. Whatever the case may be. In 2002, Moulin Rouge (and I hadn't seen it in the movie theatre - for some reason, I missed it) saved my life. It was not pretty. And I had a roommate at the time, and whenever she brings up 2002 now, she gets kind of tentative, like she doesn't know what to say. I don't blame her. I started my blog in October of 2002, which was my true re-entry into the human race again. But that would never have happened without Moulin Rouge. And when I look at that last photo in my post, I remember. I have tears in my eyes right now, remembering. I remember where I was back then, and what it was like for me inside my head, and then I remember staring at the television, watching Moulin Rouge, and feeling, vaguely, like a bell from a distant mountaintop, like maybe I was going to be okay. Someday. Not now. But someday. That's what watching that movie was like for me.

To me, it's not a movie at all. I haven't read one review of it, I have no opinions about it, I have nothing to say. I haven't listened to any of the director's commentary on the copy of it I have. It is sheer experience, and it contains health, mental health, to me. Truly phenomenal - I wonder if Baz Luhrman would ever know or understand that THAT is what his movie gave me.

Who knows. Look at that last image. It looks like what love should feel like. Or - what love actually is.

All other Sheila "happy places" here!!

The Sea, by John Banville

It was difficult to decide what to read after the sweeping majesty and horror of Blood Meridian: - but I decided to pick up The Sea, by the great John Banville. It won the Booker, causing much brou-haha in literary circles (some of his comments in re: the Booker are almost laugh-out-loud funny) - and of course I just finished Christine Falls - the noir crime novel by John Banville (writing under the name Benjamin Black - post about that here). I have been hearing about Banville for years, since he is one of my father's favorite writers - but I am (as usual) late to the party. I own all of his books, but they have been sitting on the shelves forever. And now I am ready. I'm in a fiction mode these days - it's been a couple of years since my interest lay in that direction ... and it's been a lot of fun. I'm on a roll now. I've only just begun The Sea, and there have been moments, already, where I almost put it down. It's hitting too close to the bone. I think: Do I really want to go there right now? I think maybe I should pick up the next book in the Master & Commander series - books which transport and elevate and make me think ... but certainly don't dive right into the heart of what I am experiencing at this moment in time. But I am going to stick with it. The Sea is the story of Max Morden, a 50-something man whose wife has just died. In the year following her death, he decides to move back to a town where he used to go on holiday, when he was a little boy. And something obviously happened way back then, in his childhood, that was definitive. Something having to do with the Grace family, who also were there on summer vacation - mother father, kids ... I am not sure yet what happened but I have a feeling it wasn't good. So Max, dealing with the loneliness in the wake of becoming a widow, is now regressing, reverting ... although Banville makes the point that Max has always had those tendencies ... he has always looked for comfort, warmth, coziness ... and so going back to childhood is a natural escape - even if horrible things happened back there.

It's interesting. Blood Meridian made such an impact (post about it here, here and here). It made an enormous crater in my brain, and the language of that book still buzzes through me, in its awful bloody omniscence, and mythic enormity.

But here, in The Sea, we are in more traditional territory. Wonderfully written, acute, sensitive, perceptive - he's SUCH a good writer ... but I have had to adjust to the fact that I am now in the world of minutia, of objects, of what things smell like, look like, sensory moments that transport you back ... the typical business of writers. Now a bad writer will make such moments (seeing something that reminds you of something else) insufferable. Banville is a master. He is nothing less than absolutely specific. And he is skirting on the edges of some big stuff here: mortality, death, loss ... but also, you can feel that the book will also be about loss of innocence. Something was lost, back there in his childhood ... and the 50 something years in between have been just him marking time. Now that's an eerie thought, one that has kept me up at night in my white-knuckle moments. But I have had to let Blood Meridian go in order to get into this book. It makes me realize, again, just how dominant Cormac McCarthy really is, just how much he has taken over the landscape. Extraordinary.

Max has a daughter, Claire. There is something about how Banville writes about her that really touches me. Also, in very few words, he sketches an entire life ... seen through the eyes of her father, of course (the book is first-person). I "get" Claire. Banville is so so good in this arena. Listen:

Claire, my daughter, has written to ask how I am faring. Not well, I regret to say, bright Clarinda, not well at all. She does not telephone because I have warned her I will take no calls, even from her. Not that there are any calls, since I told no one save her where I was going. What age is she now, twenty-something, I am not sure. She is very bright, quite the blue-stocking. Not beautiful, however, I admitted that to myself long ago. I cannot pretend this is not a disappointment, for I had hoped that she would be another Anna. She is too tall and stark, her rusty hair is coarse and untameable and stands out around her freckled face in an unbecoming manner, and when she smiles she shows her upper gums, glistening and whitely pink. With those spindly legs and big bum, that hair, the long neck especially - that is something at least she has of her mother - she always makes me think, shamefacedly, of Tenniel's drawing of Alice when she has taken a nibble from the magic mushroom. Yet she is brave and makes the best of herself and of the world. She has the rueful, grimly humorous, clomping way to her that is common to so many ungainly girls. If she were to arrive here now she would come sweeping in and plump herself down on my sofa and thrust her clasped hands so far down between her knees the knuckles would almost touch the floor, and purse her lips and inflate her cheeks and say Poh! and launch into a litany of the comic mishaps she has suffered since last we saw each other. Dear Claire, my sweet girl.

That is heartbreakingly good. It's difficult, to hear a father talk about his daughter like that, but Banville is nothing if not unafraid to say difficult things.

And then of course there is the opening paragraph of the book, which is a stunner:

They departed, the gods, on the day of the strange tide. All morning under a milky sky the waters in the bay had swelled and swelled, rising to unheard-of heights, the small waves creeping over parched sand that for years had known no wetting save for rain and lapping the very bases of the dunes. The rusted hulk of the freighter that had run aground at the far end of the bay longer ago than any of us could remember must have thought it was being granted a relaunch. I would not swim again, after that day. The seabirds mewled and swooped, unnerved, it seemed, by the spectacle of that vast bowl of water bulging like a blister, lead-blue and malignantly agleam. They looked unnaturally white, that day, those birds. The waves were depositing a fringe of soiled yellow foam along the waterline. No sail marred the high horizon. I would not swim, no, not ever again.

Sometimes has just walked over my grave. Someone.

The Books: "Hopeful Monsters" (Nicholas Mosley)

Second excerpt from Hopeful Monsters, by Nicholas Mosley. My first excerpt, and my post about the book itself and what it means to me is here.

It's difficult to talk about the book (although I did manage to post 17,000 words about it) - and Ted is my main partner-in-crime in terms of this book - although it is nice to know many more people love this book. It did win prizes, but I suppose it is not a book "for everyone" - It's not a book I would recommend to just anyone. It has to be someone who I think would already like a book like this. Because it's challenging, daunting, and isn't immediately accessible. It's a workout. And I've read it maybe 10 times? And it's always daunting. But I find myself lulled into the gentle persistent questioning mode of the narrative ... and slowly I find my brian opening up to the implications, the questions being asked ... It's a contemplative intellectual read, with moments of searing violence and fear - the world is falling apart, dictators are on the loose, Europe is in flames. But it's not a "cold" book. It's not unemotional.

There's another book, which I will get to shortly, by Harry Mulisch - called The Discovery of Heaven - and it is a purely intellectual exercise, that book. It has a ton of interest to me - thoughts on mathematics, religion, the convergence of religions in Jerusalem - and there are three main characters who do not really "live", or come to life ... The book is about the intellectual side of it. It's fascinating, don't get me wrong - but I can't remember one of the characters' names, and I had to let go of my idea that I was supposed to care primarily about them as I read it. No. I had to care about the ideas in the book. And I do.

Hopeful Monsters is different. Although it is a book about ideas (as they are encapsulated in war, physics, genetics, anthropology, myth, psychoanalysis, politics, revolution) - it is also a book about Max and Eleanor, two characters who, like I mentioned before, split up the chapters, taking turns ... but there is not a discernible difference between their two voices. They have separate interests/questions - but eventually, they converge - and you realize they've been asking the same questions, just in different fields. They are two halves of a whole. The questions Eleanor was asking about Einstein's theories reflect the questions Max has about genetics in the next chapter. They haven't even met yet. It will be a couple of chapters before Max and Eleanor meet. But they are already talking to each other, and sometimes they do so directly - saying, "You were wondering this about Einstein? Well, and so I was wondering this about such and such ..." It's not a tricky book. It's not trying to reveal itself slowly, or not play its cards, or hide things from the reader ... It's all out there, at once. The point is not to figure it out, and wait for something to happen ... The point is to let yourself fall into the prose, with its questions and theories ... and to take on the ideas put forth in the book. You don't need to sign up with anything, you don't need to 'agree' ... Just take the ideas on, see what that does for you.

Max and Eleanor are all about fate masquerading as coincidence. There are some moments of stunning coincidence in the book (one, in particular, that takes place at some palatial dinner in Spain in the middle of the Spanish Civil War - always brings tears to my eyes, no matter how many times I have read it) - and Max and Eleanor, in their pursuit of one another, stop being surprised by coincidence - although sometimes it is unbearable. "It is everything making sense that is so unbearable" one of them says at one point. I don't want to make this sound like a highbrow Richard Bach book because it's not (although right now I am reminded of this excerpt). Max and Eleanor are scientists, both ... (well, they're not in the opening chapters of the book because they're just kids or teenagers - but later on) ... and they look for chance openings in their work, random connections that might not be so random, a "coincidence" that leads to a giant transformation ... the things of scientific inquiry. And why should not that play itself out in our personal lives? And also in world politics and war? Max and Eleanor, racing around Europe and Russia - trying to continue their work, while avoiding the war which appears to be breaking out everywhere, they cannot escape - ask those questions repeatedly. If something appears to be a coincidence ... might there be something else going on underneath? But what??? That is the question.

The first chapter begins with Eleanor asking the question:

If we are to survive in the environment we have made ourselves, may we have to be monstrous enough to greet our predicament?

She writes that from the perspective of being a German-Jewish girl in the early 1920s, the beginning of the decadent Weimar decade - and all its nasty uneasy undertones. She is overwhelmed by the thought that something, something monstrous, might be around some corner ... she just can't see it yet.

The next chapter, Max takes over the narrative, and he begins with a reply to Eleanor's original question:

If we are talking about an environment in which the acceptance of paradoxes might breed, then this can happen in an English hot-house, I suppose, as well as in a melting-pot of Berlin streets.

Then the products might come together, as a result of what it seems you call 'gravity'?

Max is two years younger than Eleanor, and he grows up in Cambridge - "the centre of the intellectual and cultural life of England" at that time. His father is a biologist, whose main interest is genetic inheritance. And Max's mother grew up "on the fringes if what was even then known as the Bloomsbury group". She is a troubled woman, with no boundaries - she emasculates her young son, she is overly close with him, mainly because her husband is a prick who doesn't pay attention to her. She sits around reading fairy tales and books on Freudian analysis. In the same way that Eleanor's father's interests in physics and Einstein seep down into Eleanor's consciousness - the questions of genetics as well as Freud and the use of myth and fairy tale in our lives - seeps down into Max's consciousness. Max writes:

There was a good deal of controversy in the area as he grew up; orthodox Darwinists were under attack; it was difficult for them to explain how evolution could have occurred simply through chance mutations and natural selection. There seemed to be too many coincidences required for the emergence, by these means, of complex organic forms.

So there it is. "Too many coincidences required."

During the time of Max's childhood, a Viennese biologist named Kammerer comes to study at the University. He studies Lamarckian inheritance - which will become very important in later chapters, when Max goes to Russia to study for a semester - and the biology department of the university is all ablaze with the ideas of Lysenko (if you've studied Stalinist Russia, you know about him). So there are connections here - Kammerer was discredited - and committed suicide (an event which comes up in Hopeful Monsters). Max has many moments with Kammerer, who comes to visit their house in Cambridge - and he becomes very interested in creating an experiment of his own - having to do with salamanders. Kammerer was able to keep his salamanders alive under unnatural conditions far longer than his colleagues - and this was cause for great resentment. Max wonders about this. Max's father and mother have a lot of stress about Dr. Kammerer. Max's father thinks he's an asshole, and says derogatory things about him at the dinner table. Max's mother appears to have a crush on Kammerer, and defends him. It is obvious, from these exchanges, that Max's parents' marriage is not just bad - but toxic. Max is naturally aligned with his mother - his father is too much of an asshole to side with, also he's gone a lot on lecture tours ... so Max decides (for all kinds of reasons he doesn't understand) to try to duplicate one of Kammerer's experiments, with salamanders. He wants to see if he can keep the salamanders alive, too. Max's mother is all into the Freudian stuff ... and Max, even as a young boy, realizes that, in some way, he is in competition with his father for his mother's love - and maybe he will beat his father, if he "wins" at the salamander experiment. But also, you can feel the budding biologist here. Max is only 11, 12 years old ... but he is devoted to his experiment. Max wonders if perhaps Kammerer could keep the salamanders alive because he loved them. Was that the difference? Is that why he was so ridiculed? Max isn't sure. But is love what makes the difference, even in something like natural selection? Okay, so you can see where Mosley is going here.

There are other forces at work here, too. It is 1925, in England. Scientists from Germany have been flocking out of the country, perhaps feeling which way the wind is going there. Many of them wash up on the shores of Britain. So already there is a thin thread of connection between Max in Cambridge and Eleanor in Berlin. A German exchange student named Hans stays with Max's family for a while. It is obvious that he is fucking Max's mother. He also makes a pass at Max. Max finds it all vaguely ridiculous and embarrassing. His main concern is his salamanders - and also "getting" his father, who is a horrible man. Max begins to wonder about Lamarck - which is what will (4 chapters from now) get him to Russia - where his ideas are still in favor. But Hans ends up being the connection with Eleanor - it is through Hans that the two finally meet. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Max sets up his salamander experiment. Here is the excerpt. Some important themes established here - not to mention the introduction of the idea in the title of the book itself. The bit about creating a framework "in which love could operate" kills me. That's what I'm trying to do right now in my life and man. It is not easy.

EXCERPT FROM Hopeful Monsters, by Nicholas Mosley.

I discovered that my mother had kept her own small heap of newspaper cuttings about Kammerer: they were in a drawer of her desk: she seemed to have got some psychoanalyst friend to send her them from Vienna. Some of them gave details of Kammerer's private life (I could put to good use here the German I had learned from Hans). The cuttings referred to Kammerer as a Don Juan, a Byron, a Lothario: he ahd left his wife, married a painter, and then later his wife had taken him back. There were innumerable women, the writer suggested, who were dying for the love of Kammerer: how terrible it was to let oneself be loved thus by women!

I thought - Well, what is all this about death instinct; life instinct, was it not Kammerer's salamanders that had been able to stay alive, and other people's that were dying?

I tried to talk to my mother about this. I could not let her know that I had been going through the drawers of her desk.

'Did you ever see Dr Kammerer again?'

'No, why do you ask that?'

'I expect a lot of people fall in love with him, don't they --'

'Why do you say that too--'

'I remember your saying that you thought his salamanders must love him.'

'What I think I said, surely, was that he must love them.'

'What do you think he does to make things love him?'

'Perhaps he just makes people think he loves them!'

'But then why do people talk about dying for love --'

'Hey, hold on, what have you been reading --'

My mother had become dreamy again; glowing, as if she was listening to music round some corner.

I thought - Dr Kammerer himself couldn't have sent her those cuttings from Vienna?

Then suddenly - She couldn't have been meeting Dr Kammerer in London?

She said 'Perhaps what you think is love isn't true. Or perhaps sometimes you love, or want to love, and then there is no set-up, or framework, in which you can.'

I said 'I see.' Then -- 'Can't you make a framework?'

She said 'How?'

I said 'I don't know.' Then -- 'Do you think Dr Kammerer made one?'

She said 'For whom?'

I said 'For his salamanders.'

That autumn, in my evenings and weekends away from school, I set about preparing my experiment with my salamanders. My idea was: how can animals be expected to live - let alone reproduce; let alone be recipient of a chance mutation - if they are kept in glass boxes like those which contain sandwiches in a railway station. Kammerer had perhaps loved his salamanders: but what was love? I wanted to provide for my salamanders a suitable setting. Was it not something like this that my mother's psychoanalysis books were suggesting too - that settings are important, but human beings for the most part are no good at providing settings for love: they liked running things down, displaying jealousy and envy. Well perhaps I did too: but if I saw this, could I not provide at least my salamanders with some setting in which love could operate?

I obtained materials from Miss Box and constructed a glass case that was larger than the ones in which she and my father had kept their salamanders. I went out each evening to gather objects which would be fitting for my salamanders' setting. I found clean white sand and stones shining with crystals: I picked out sticks that were shaped and polished like ivory. I put on the sand some shells and even a starfish. I thought - Why should not landlocked salamanders have a glimpse of something outlandish from the sea? I collected red earth, and alpine plants, and one or two very tiny and expensive trees: I made a shelter of wire and bark and moss and leaves and coral. I constructed a mountain stream out of Plasticine and silver paper and a hidden electric motor and a pump: I bought (with money borrowed from my mother) a lamp that shone like the sun. I was aiming to produce for my salamanders a setting that would be surpassingly etherial and strange. I looked down on my creation from above. I thought - I think I am God, and this is my Garden of Eden.

The two salamanders that I was going to pick up when my garden was ready were another breed of lowland salamanders, known as Salamandra salamandra, or Fire Salamanders: their usual habitat was dark and damp woods. They stayed for the most part during the day under rotting bark or leaves; they came out in the evenings to get food. I learned what I could about them from books lent to me by Miss Box: my father, when he overheard me talking to Miss Box, would smile and look away (I thought - His feelings about Miss Box are what are called 'paradoxical'?) My plan had been originally to make for these lowland salamanders something that could be called an alpine setting. But my enthusiasm had now gone beyond this: I wanted to make for them something beautiful like a setting for jewels, or the inside of a painting. Then I would see how my salamanders might stay alive! The inside of a painting, it seemed to me, was to do with what is immortal.

The breeding habits of these lowland salamanders were that they mated in the spring and then fifty or more tadpole-like larvae were born in water the following year. I had been told by Miss Box that the two salamanders designated for me had been together for some time. I did not know if they had mated: I assumed they were male and female. The point of my experiment had at one time been to see whether these lowland salamanders, in their new setting, might produce offspring in the manner of alpine salamanders - which was to give birth not to larvae but to two fully formed offspring. But this was what I had put out of my mind: my plan now was not to expect, but just to let things occur on their own. I thought - Things grow, develop on their own, don't they; once you have provided a setting.

The day came when my garden (in the books it was called an 'aquaterrareum') was ready: I bicycled in to Miss Box to pick up my salamanders. They were two small bright lizards about six inches long: their skin was mainly black but had golden patches and hoops. They seemed to sit, or lie, or stand, completely still, even when I was transporting them in a cardboard box on my bicycle from the laboratory. And then, when they were in the bright fair world that I had constructed for them, they were, yes, like jewels! they were so beautiful.

I had set up my aquaterrareum in my bedroom: I wanted it here rather than in the room with my chemistry set next door because I wanted to be with my salamanders at night. I do not know why I felt particular about this. Perhaps I felt - What strange influences, chances, flit about beneath the moon at night.

My salamanders sat or stood or lay sometimes parallel, sometimes apart, something with their noses close together like an arrow. I hardly ever saw them move. They would be, yes, on the silver sand, by the stones like gold or diamonds, like things made immortal by a painting.

My mother came up to look at my aquaterrareum. She had that expression on her face that my father sometimes had when it was as if he could not make up his mind whether to be deprecating or impressed. She said 'That's beautiful!'

I said 'Yes.'

'What are they called?'

'Adam and Eve.'

'What good names!'

I said 'I think they might also be what are called "hopeful monsters".'

She said 'What are hopeful monsters?'

I said 'They are things born perhaps slightly before their time; when it's not known if the environment is quite ready for them.'

She said 'So you have made an environment that might be ready for them.'

I said 'Yes.'

She put her arms round me and hugged me. She said 'You are my hopeful monster!'

I thought I might say - But hopeful monsters, don't you know, nearly always die young.

-- Because the Gods love them?

Then -- But was God ever with his mother, by that garden, looking down?

Leila, (director: Dariush Mehrjui) - Marriage and infertility in modern-day Iran

Dariush Mehrjui, director of Leila, is a figure who embodies the entire 20th journey of Iranian film. Check out his stunning bio here. His films have often been festival favorites, garnering great international acclaim. His journey as a film-maker is a personal one (as can be said about most Iranian directors - they make what pleases them, and hopes it will pass muster with the regime) - he tackles issues that matter to him (the struggle of post-revolutionary Iran to find its way) - and also the always-thorny issue of women in Iran. He is fearless, when you know what he is up against. In Leila he brings up the unspeakable, and examines it, delves into it, lets the events play themselves out - without too much intervention on his part. The implications are enormous, his critique implicit.

Leila (played by Leila Hatami) and Reza (played by Ali Mosaffa) are newlyweds. (Also, I just love that these two actors are married in real life. The rapport you see between them is genuine.) And on Leila's birthday she discovers that she is infertile. So begins a year of testing, and medical consultations, and increasing desperation. Reza tries to assure Leila that he did not marry her for babies. He doesn't even really like kids. He loves her. But unfortunately, his family feels otherwise. Reza is the only son in a family of daughters, and it is not just inconceivable (bad pun) that he will not bring forth a child (preferably a boy) but not an option. This is a modern-day story - these are not peasants, or illiterate third-world people. They live in luxury. They have cars and good jobs. But Reza's mother (a horrifying woman, a true Medusa, everyone turns to stone when they look at her - she's played with a relish by Jamileh Sheikhi) insists that Reza WILL have a child, and he must take a second wife. It is this journey, the fight over the second wife (which implies the fight in Iran between tradition and modernism), that makes up the true story of the film. So not only does Leila have to deal with the fact that she cannot get pregnant, an issue that most women have strong feelings about - regardless of their culture - she has to deal with the fact that Reza's family believes she needs to be put aside, for other concerns. She will be "first wife", everyone reassures her, but there will, indeed, be a second wife. Reza has all kinds of feelings about this, too - because his match with Leila is a true love match. She is the only woman for him. But the family will not be denied. And so Leila and Reza find themselves in an upside-down world, a world that sometimes is horrifying, insensitive, and yet what are they to do? They fight, they make up, they find the humor in the situation (which is truly amazing to watch - and makes you ache for them ... because you can feel their love, the fact that they can crack up about how absurd it all is) ... but in the end, what is there to do? Should they run away? Where no one knows them, where they can just live without the pressure of their families to be a certain way? Leila and Reza return from the infertility doctor with the bad news, and are at odds with one another. They don't know where to look, what to say. We have already seen them previous to this scene, laughing and talking and making fun of things ... so their silence is deafening, and we feel the loss of their earlier comradeship. Leila says to Reza, "What should we do tonight?" Reza opens the fridge and looks in, contemplating, and replies, "We could stay home, whip up something to eat, moon over each other ... and then maybe watch a movie?' Just that one line alone ensures that I will be invested in this relationship and what happens to it. I love them both.

The movie has an overall impression of lightness, even with the scenes of deep grief and solitude. There are countless scenes of Leila and Reza (husband and wife) driving the highways - we see out the front windshield - sometimes it is blaring sunlight, we see the mountains to the north of Tehran, the bustling city streets around them ... and sometimes it is dusk, the sky a deep dark blue, the streetlamps at the edge of the highway stretching off into the distance. Reza and Leila's heads silhouetted against the landscape, as they chat about what happened during the day, the various "second wives" they have interviewed. It's chillingly normal.

There is a great heaviness in their world, events have moved beyond their control, and both of them are caught up in it - to family obligations, to their own sense of truth, to their desire to make the other happy (which is one of the major fault-lines of the film) ... but the look of the film, the feel of the montages, the way characters fade in and out as they walk down hallways, showing the disorientation at the heart of grief, that you literally do not know where you are at times, you lose substance, you become like air ... is all very light. You yearn for someone (other than Reza's monstrous mother, that is) to put a foot down, to say, "No. Here is where we stop. Here is the ground beneath our feet, and we will go no further." But what happens when your desire to please overrides all other considerations? What happens when depression - deep and acute - fogs your vision? Where does happiness lie? In yourself? In your spouse? Can one spouse be happy when the other is in despair? How do we stay connected, in the midst of our shared loss?

Leila and Reza try to fight it out. But at times they are working at cross purposes. And in the world depicted in Leila, a young married couple is never alone. Their families are chattering in their ears at all times, whatever is going on in the relationship is everyone's business, the phone rings off the hook throughout the film. You cannot say No to your family. You cannot screen your calls. There would be hell to pay. The atmosphere is suffocating. At times I wanted to say to Reza or Leila, as they sat in their house, mourning, fighting, silently enduring - and the phone kept ringing - I wanted to say, "Let the machine pick up! Don't answer!" But no. They can't.

In their world, their parents - and aunts and uncles - all have a right to intervene, to interject themselves, to ask nosy questions, to talk incessantly about sperms and eggs and Leila and Reza's sex life- as though it is anybody's business! Leila and Reza are not given a chance to interpret their own experience and figure out what they want to do, with the news that she is infertile. It is a raw wound. For both of them. Terrible news, painful, shatteringly so. But the way it is treated by their families (not all members, but certainly the most vocal) as a problem to be solved, with no sensitivity, everyone barges right into the center of the action, discussing Leila's "barren womb" and Reza's frustrated sperm, no holds barred. An infertile woman is public property. A family crisis.

It's a painful film, but with many moments of great joy ... and I was left, at the end, with hope. But then again, I'm certifiable.

Leila and Reza are happy. We see a series of moments in their lives, shot Cassavetes-style, with very little editorializing. We just see moments, out of context, but they add up to a whole, an impression more than a factual representation ... a montage-effect of an entire relationship. We see Leila and Reza having a candlelight dinner at home, and cracking each other up over nothing. She bursts out laughing, he wants to know what is funny, she can barely speak, which starts him laughing, which makes her lose it all over again. They enjoy each other.

We move on. Moments are not dwelt upon or analyzed. Reza shows up at the door of their lovely house with random ridiculous gifts, the sole reason behind them to make her howl with laughter. Which she does.

In these simple scenes, we see that both members of this couple are devoted to pleasing the other. Even if it means being silly. One of their favorite things to do is to make shish kebab, grilling it outside in their backyard. They chop up the vegetables and meat together, Reza mans the grill, Leila mixes the yogurt sauce, and it's nighttime, cool, they are alone, in their love and their simple pleasures of marriage.

Again, we don't get many scenes of this - just 3 or 4 at the beginning - and that is all we need. The relationship is set up. The love between them is established (without anyone ever saying, "I love you.") Most of what they do together is laugh. They like to go out to eat. They like Japanese food. You know. Regular newlywed stuff.

You do get the sense of their families hovering on the outskirts. It's a loud noisy gossipy world, of busybodies and nosy questions. Leila and Reza, before they get the bad news, treat it all with humor and tolerance. Within a week of their getting married, everyone asks when they will get pregnant. The film opens with Leila's birthday - and Leila and Reza going to parties - first at his family's house, and then at her family's house. We can see the differences between the two families: Reza's family is a bit austere, they live in a towering marble mansion, with elegant green walls, and artwork everywhere, a bit chilly. Reza's mother and his aunt run everything - they remind me a bit of Regan and Goneril from King Lear. Reza has three sisters, formidable women in their own right, married themselves - and they end up becoming important allies later on. Reza's poor father is henpecked and overrun, he says things like, "I have no idea what is going on in this house" as the women race around, chattering and making plans ... as he retreats to his study.

But he is nobody's fool, as we discover later. It is just that he has learned the power of silence and withdrawal. But when he does speak? Wow. You better listen. Not only does he hold a part of himself separate from his overbearing wife, but he maintains a slow still pool of kindness and compassion, within him. It is a cruel world, and Leila and Reza will be overrun by it ... but Reza's father sits back, and looks at Leila, with kindness. He can see what she is going through. He can see her pain, and he feels for her. And you realize that that is no small thing. That compassion is actually everything.

But what is, essentially, so chilling about Reza's family - and I think the house Mehrjui chose to place them in is indicative of a larger point he was making - is that they are the ultimate in privileged. They have great wealth. They have cell phones and also social power (any young girl would be thrilled to be a "second wife" marrying into such a family). And yet, when push comes to shove, this ancient and cruel tradition of polygamy emanates from his family. Not Leila's, who are more traditional, certainly not as wealthy. Leila's family, when they find out about the second wife, are horrified, and furious. We might think (in our mistaken preconceived notions) that it would be opposite - that Leila's family, their lower class status - would be the ones clinging to "the old ways". That modernism and technology, in and of themselves, bring enlightenment, and represent a break with the past. But no, that would be too easy - and Mehrjui is not interested in the easy way out. We make assumptions. And Mehrjui shows us where we are wrong (but again, without a heavy hand. All of this is implied - you just have to look at Reza's parents house in comparison to Leila's parents ... the difference is right there).

At Leila's birthday party, Reza's mother - who reminds me of a fat black widow "s" - with her big bug-eyed glasses and cooing dominating smile - comes up to the camera, which we are to understand is Leila's point of view - and whispers that Reza needs to have a son, and soon.

Or Reza's older sister walks up to the camera and whispers that Leila needs to make sure Reza doesn't get too fat, that she needs to feed him such and such ...

Anything that has to do with Reza is up for conversation. He is the King, the golden child, the beloved son who has been babied and pampered by a houseful of domineering women. The fact that Reza has any balls at all (and he does, he really does) is amazing. His main goal is to make his wife happy, and to be a good husband. But this one goal ends up butting against his mother's goals for him. And Reza is caught.

At first, I didn't like the convention of actors talking right to the camera, it seemed too obvious ... but by the end of the film, as it used again and again, it took on a different aspect. It is always the women who speak directly to Leila ... and their comments and "gentle suggestions" (which are actually commands) begin to add up to an overriding sense that Leila is not alone in her own head. She cannot make up her own mind ... the voices of the others take over. Sometimes Mehrjui puts an echo on those voices, to show that there is a reverb. And eventually, all these black-veiled women end up feeling like a Greek chorus, prophesiers of doom or revelation. And Leila can't ignore their whisperings. She lies in bed, by herself, and hears them still.

You can tell, in these early scenes, despite the fact that Leila and Reza obviously have an open and loving relationship, that man is King. Reza is the beloved only son. Leila is just a conduit for his seed. It is her job to produce. Get crackin', dear.

We move on from the party at Reza's parents house to the party at Leila's parents house. This house is a more traditional Middle Eastern house - one-story - with a tall gate blocking the garden and house from public view. The tables are low to the ground, and everyone sits on the floor. The kitchen bustles with activity, and the men in the family sit around eating, laughing, making dirty jokes, and teasing the women. One of the men plays a guitar (or a Persian version of such) ... accompanying the raucous family gathering with music. The walls are lined with books (how I yearned to browse those shelves!). Leila has a younger sister, who is mischievous and still single, she is Leila's best friend and confidante. There is also an uncle (played by Mohamad Reza Sharifinia) who is one of my favorite characters in the film - Uncle Hossein. He wears a long robe, he has a flowing beard, he is single, and makes huge pronouncements about what his wife should be, and everyone laughs in response. "She should be beautiful and educated and rich ... but she also shouldn't talk too much!" Everyone howls, and says, "Who would have you, Hossein??" There's a nice easy feeling here, with these people. They cook together, eat together, sing together, and Reza is accepted as a beloved member of the family.

That man right there is Uncle Hossein. He is a breath of fresh air.

The honeymoon is soon over. Leila and Reza have not gotten pregnant, and so they go to see a doctor. The hospital is cold, clinical, and empty. We see Leila and Reza walking down a hall together, and they look so small, dwarfed not only by the building, but by their new circumstance. The doctor is female, glamorous, unsmiling, with a gauzy white chador. She is from another world, the world of medicine, and certainty, where words like "ovum" and "progesterone" and "ovaries" are thrown around, as though they are not knives, cutting deeply into someone's personal experience. It's not her fault. She's a doctor. But Leila and Reza sit and listen to her, realizing what is ahead of them - fertility treatments, maybe artificial insemination, a long road ... and the doctor's voice goes into an echo, leaving the two of them disoriented, and alone.

Tests are done. Leila and Reza are not even able to wait in peace, their phone rings off the hook - Reza's mother and his witch-like aunt - wanting to know what the prognosis is. They continuously sound the same refrain, to Leila: "It can't be Reza's problem. We've never had such a problem in our family. Reza is fine, it must be you who is the problem." Leila shows amazing forbearance, listening to all of this. Reza is starting to break free from his family, in the face of all of this, you can feel it. He ceases caring (at least openly) about having a child. What he wants is to be with Leila, and to have a happy marriage. He insists he doesn't care about having kids, and you know what? I believe him. Not that he wouldn't welcome children, but he's certainly not about to divorce Leila if the problem is hers. That would be unthinkable. Through the course of the film, one of the things that becomes apparent is that, for Reza, there is only one woman in the world. And that is Leila. If she departs, then so does his chance for happiness. I am sad for Leila, and what she has to go through. But in many ways, I am sadder for Reza. He is the one who is truly caught, and he is the one who is going to lose. Ali Mossafa, the actor playing Reza, is wonderful. Infertility happens to both parties in a marriage. And he is willing to give up the dream of children to have a happy wife again. He says to her once, the saddest line in the film, "I want the old you back."

They learn that it is Leila who is infertile. So commences a year of exhausting upsetting tests and medication and ovulation and herbal remedies ... Leila and Reza visit an orphanage, just to see what the process would be for adoption. They're not sure if it's what they want to do, but they are weighing all the options. Children play outside like maniacs and Leila wanders among them, looking at them, laughing, sometimes not laughing, taking them all in, trying to see how it would feel to her to take one of them, not her own, home. As she wanders through the children, Reza stands off to the side, watching her. I'm not sure what I would say that I see on his face. It's not just one thing.

Love for her. Sadness for her. Sadness for himself. Trying to gain strength for whatever they have to face. Trying to reconcile his dreams for himself with the reality in front of him. It's a lovely moment.

And the pressure is growing, from Reza's side of the family. At a family picnic, Reza's mother takes Leila aside and says that it is time to start thinking about Reza taking a second wife. Leila wouldn't be so selfish as to deny her her posterity, would she? The second wife would merely be a baby-maker, she wouldn't usurp Leila's position ... Leila must think about it, and must also convince Reza that this is the right step. As a person living in America, that scene is the most difficult to handle. It's foreign, it seems cruel and savage, it seems that Leila is not being considered, that her pain is not being taken seriously. Her pain is selfish. Stop whining about being infertile - what is important is that Reza procreates. Leila tries to say to her mother-in-law, "Reza doesn't really care for children ..." and Reza's mother pooh-poohs this. Of course he does. He is just saying that so Leila won't feel bad.

She's a horrible woman. Insinuating, undercutting, dominating ... Leila "owns" what Reza's mother says to her. She begins to look at Reza in a new way, and wonders if it is true ... is he just placating her? Will he regret staying with her? Will he regret having no children? Will he grow to hate her? Reza's mother assures her that this is her future. Leila begins to lose her grip on herself, and her own sense of her relationship. Even though Reza says to her, in private, "Don't listen to my mother. She's bossy and full of shit. I don't care about kids. I love you. I want you. I don't want a second wife."

There are heart-aching scenes of Leila praying by herself. Sometimes there is a voiceover, her quiet voice saying, "God, why are you punishing me? Have I sinned?" Other times, there is just silence, with the echoing of the muezzins in the distance, calling people to prayer. Leila, though, prays alone. It is her own grief. She feels cursed by God.

And on a superficial note, Leila Hatami is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen, and the camera adores her face, caressing its curves, mulling upon her chin dimple, she's got a face made for the movies - gorgeous, evocative, yet asymmetrical, and totally itself. When she cracks, and starts to weep, it is even more terrible, because her beauty is so singular and serene, so attention-getting in and of itself.

And so begins the battle, the main battle of the film, which has multiple tentacles. There is the growing pressure from Reza's mother and aunt, to start interviewing second wives. There is the increasing strain between Leila and Reza. Reza makes himself clear - he does not want a second wife. He would rather be alone with Leila, childless. A baby (ie: sex) without love is meaningless to him. Leila begins to sway to the other side, she begins to put the pressure on Reza to start thinking about a second wife. It is mainly so that she can X herself out of the picture, and martyr herself. Her pain is so huge that she feels it cannot be born any other way. Again, this may be incomprehensible to us, in this society - but Mehrjui makes the point here that it should be incomprehensible to anyone with a caring heart. In his way, his film is a revolutionary document. A clarion call for equal rights and for compassion. Leila's response to the savagery is understandable in that context. Who could bear it? She cannot bear seeing Reza unhappy and she wonders if Reza might be happier with a child. Reza begins to cave. He is overrun by women (as usual). He is furious about this. There's a great scene where Leila and Reza fight and Reza explodes, "Why hasn't anyone asked me MY opinion about this? Why doesn't anyone care what I am going through?" It's a valid question.

There's a tragic scene where Leila and Reza sit at home, drinking tea. Suddenly Reza picks up his empty cup and looks down at the tea leaves and begins to read his fortune out loud. "There is a man who is so in love with a woman that he will do anything to make her happy. The man wants to run away with her, where they can be alone in their love." Leila picks up her cup, and reads her fortune. "There is a woman who only wants her love to be happy. She will do anything for him."

But by this point, Leila and Reza have different definitions of what will make the other happy. Leila, even in her misery, thinks that what Reza's mother says is true. And that what will make Reza happy will be to have a second wife, who will bear him a child. Reza thinks that what will make Leila happy is to turn her back on all of the whisperings from his family, and re-enter their lives together, as a couple, childless or no.

Reza's sisters, who, up until this point, have been a mystery, descend upon Leila one afternoon. There are three of them. They clomp up the walk, chadors billowing, and they look vaguely terrifying. I think it was Guy de Maupassant who described fully veiled Arab women as looking like "death out for a walk". To me, that's what Reza's sisters (even though they are not Arab) look like as they tramp loudly and seriously towards Leila's door.

But then ... amazingly ... they sit Leila down, talk right to her (to the camera) and tell her to get a backbone. She needs to say to their mother, "Take a hike, lady." They warn her that if she accepts the proposition of taking another woman into her home, she will lose Reza forever. They bring forth arguments - valid ones. A man can't help but fall in love with a woman he makes love to. Especially if she bears him a child. Could you let Reza fall in love with someone else? Reza is a man - but he is dominated by his mother - don't let her run all over you! Stand up for yourself, say NO - tell her in no uncertain terms that the second wife thing is OFF. Reza is depending on YOU to stand up for yourself and for your marriage! He is only succumbing because he thinks YOU want it!!

So suddenly, "death out for a walk" becomes a welcome collective voice of humanity and sanity. I love those women. They had kept quiet, out of deference to their mother and Reza for a while - but finally decided: You know what? This is nuts. Let's go talk to Leila.

But they do not convince her. Leila says she has "turned to stone". She becomes annoyingly passive, and hands the reins over to Reza's mother. Reza says things to Leila like, "I wish you would scream at me and tell me that you would never accept a second wife ... I wish you would stamp your feet and say No!" But she doesn't. In a sense, she leaves him alone in it. A very selfish act. But understandable, nonetheless. Her guilt is huge. She looks at his sad worried face and knows that it is because of her.

So Reza's mother and aunt begin to propose possible women as second wives. Leila is bound to secrecy and told not to tell her family. Which is so unethical and sneaky, and of course only what we should expect from Reza's bitch of a mother (who, in the end, gets what's coming to her - in one of the funniest shots in the whole film. I laughed out loud and clapped when I saw it, thinking, "Ha! Serves you right, lady!!")

Reza and Leila drive around Tehran, to go on these ghoulish "interviews". Leila is dropped off in a public place, and she wanders the streets, or in the park ... waiting for Reza to come back from his interview and pick her up. It's all so absurd. Leila can hardly believe what is happening to her. Reza is not enthusiastic about any of it. He makes it clear that any possible second wife must be "cleared" by Leila first. Otherwise, no go. But you can sense Reza's dread. He drives off, leaving Leila alone.

And the funniest and most wonderful things start to happen on their long drives home, as Leila asks Reza about each woman he had to meet. These are my favorite scenes in the film, these drives. Leila asks for a report - "Okay, so tell me everything. What was she like?" And Reza starts to regale her with stories - about one woman's facial tick, and one woman's cheeky rude manner, how one of them was pissed that he planned on staying in Iran, how one never spoke but her father grilled Reza on his financial situation ... how one of the women blurted out, "So your wife can't have kids, right? You should divorce her, and marry me ..." ... All of these crazy stories, and they are not told in a gloomy way, but as ridiculous comedic set-pieces. Leila listens, and laughs hysterically - saying stuff like, "Did she really say it like that?" Or "Come on, you're exaggerating ..." In a creepy way, not totally explainable, Leila and Reza become closer during those drives, making fun of these poor prospective second wives. I love that! It's not "rational", and it's a bit beyond the pale ... but don't we, as humans, sometimes behave in the weirdest of ways, especially under duress? Reza does an imitation of the bitchy mother of one of the girls, and Leila cracks up. It's like they're in it together. They're in it together. I cling to that, watching the film ... still feeling that somewhere, beneath all of it, they are holding hands, maintaining that original bond. A lovely touch, those scenes.

I love the one dinner scene, at home, when Leila starts to tell Reza about one of the prospective women that Reza's mother wanted him to meet. She says, "Her father is a colonel in the army." Reza glances up, deadpan, and says, "A colonel in the army?" Like: my second wife will be a colonel in the army? His joke takes Leila by surprise, and she starts cracking up - and then begins a long goofy scene of the two of them making this prospective wife more and more grotesque: "Maybe she will be bald." "I wonder if she will have an artificial eye." "I think she might have two artificial limbs." By the end, they are both crying with laughter.

You rarely need to have actors say the words "I love you" in order to convince us in the audience that they are in love. In fact, it is better to NOT have them say "I love you". The "Maybe she'll be a gimp" and the "I bet she will have a big gold buck tooth" scene says, clearer than any other kind of language: "I love you, dear." "And yes, I love you."

And what wonderful film-making that is.

I will not tell you how the film ends. All I can say is that it is a searing unforgiving examination of a situation that affects the lives of millions of people - and also a window into a world that remains somewhat mysterious to those of us on the outside. But Leila is not opaque. It is not the closed walls of the Middle Eastern houses, with private life safely ensconced beyond view. Mehrjui takes us back there, into that world, into the lives of these people, struggling to do the best they can, to be their best selves, and to cope with the cards that God has dealt them.

Rest in peace, Charlton Heston

My brother Brendan and I watched The Ten Commandments on the night before Easter, and expressed amazement, for the 100th time, how incredible Heston is, how inevitable. I mean, how silly could that entire undertaking have been? Come to think of it, there is something supremely silly about Edward G. Robinson running around in a toga. It's awesome! But even today, lulled to sleep by CGI effects, there is something stunning and terrifying about the Red Sea parting, well done! - but none of it would matter a whit if it weren't for Heston's commanding (pun) performance. He had no fear. He embodied courage, and was able to portray it larger than life. This is something NO actors have today - NONE - it is no longer the "style" of acting, and no longer in vogue. And that's fine. Things don't have to stay the same forever. But at least we could look back at one of the greats and say, "Ah. There. That is how it was done. That is how it should have been done." His performances do not date themselves. I also liked him very much in the otherwise somewhat ridiculous Any Given Sunday. Seeing him show up in that plush skybox, with his cynical mutterings, and leering undeniable gravitas - was like suddenly seeing reality show up in that over-produced mess. And watching Cameron Diaz try to act with the man was like watching a flea try to compete with a gorilla. Nice shot, dear. Try again. She wasn't bad in that movie, she was perfectly cast, I thought ... but Heston walking in that room made everyone around him seem transparent, insubstantial.

When Charlton Heston first announced that he had the onset of Alzheimer's, an outpouring of tributes emerged. A wonderful thing - I do hope he read them, and got a chance to understand, before the disease got his brain, how much he still meant to so many.

The most stunning tribute of all, it takes my breath away to this day, is Richard Dreyfuss' tribute. He wrote it for National Review - obviously a publication with political leanings that has nothing to do with who Richard Dreyfuss is, and how he votes. But, as I have said repeatedly on my blog, as I have chased people away from my site who seem constitutionally unable to play by my rules, as I have stated in my comment policy: when you are dealing with art, and the appreciation thereof, politics must take a backseat. At least if you want to have a worthwhile conversation. And then there are those who say, "I liked Charlton Heston's acting BECAUSE of his politics" and that is just as idiotic. His work transcends. He was an actor, first and foremost, a "great pretender". So talk about his work, please - there is plenty there to keep us chatting for 100 years at least! Nobody "owns" Charlton Heston. Nobody "owns" John Wayne. The most flaming liberal in the world could appreciate and love Red River, and those who put politics at the forefront are completely missing the point. What we are talking about here is love. And these actors who touch us, who get beneath our skins, who create something indelible ... transcend all of that. The editors at National Review knew that, and so did Richard Dreyfuss.

His tribute of Charlton Heston is what I first ran to, today, when I heard the news that Charlton Heston had passed away. Bless Dreyfuss for putting it so eloquently into print.

And rest in peace, great American icon. You will not be forgotten.

He’s Not Moses, but He’s Something Else
My tribute to Charlton Heston.

By Richard Dreyfuss

I am shy around movie stars. True, if odd. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth and all I can think to say is I loved you in ... So it is with Charlton Heston.

In his presence I seem to nod idiotically like one of these doggies in the back of rear windows of cars. He always tries to make my agonies a bit smaller since he is such a gentleman. We've talked about children and gun control but usually it's hopeless and I just end up trying not to stare.

It's a serious and silly business, acting. Grown people running around pretending the clothes they're wearing are their own, pretending the words they're saying are their own, pretending that they're not pretending. That stuff can really make you feel silly if you're not careful. A thousand times more silly if you're wearing a toga or staring offstage at a burning bush that isn't there. But as silly as it might be at times, acting has awesome power to mirror our reality and give shape to our best and most noble pictures of ourselves.

When I was a kid and yearning to act, there were scads of actors whose work I admired and tried to emulate: (Spencer) Tracy and (Charles) Laughton, Paul Muni, Irene Dunne, and Jimmy Cagney. There were also Errol Flynn and John Wayne and Charlton Heston.

I thought, being cocky, that I could be something like Tracy, something like Cagney, something like Laughton (well maybe not Laughton). I watched them all. I knew I would never be as sexy as Flynn, never as heroic as Wayne, never as mythic as Heston. I never thought for a minute I could be like Heston.

There are some performances that could not possibly be acted by anyone other than who played them. Even though we hear stories about (Ronald) Reagan being cast in Casablanca, we know in our gut it just couldn't be right, couldn't happen. God gave Bogart the role. God gave John Wayne Red River. And God cast Charlton Heston as Moses. And Ben Hur. God I think cast Heston as God, because (if I'm not mistaken) his voice is the voice of God in the Ten Commandments, playing against himself. They say Cecil B. DeMille did the voice, but it sounds like Heston to me. I believe it anyway. Makes a better story.

Millions of Jewish kids grew up with the confusion that A) Charlton Heston was Moses B) Charlton Heston was not Jewish. I believe that films like Ben Hur were conceived because Heston was there to make them. He allowed these stories to be told because he was there to play the parts. Ben Hur starring Robert Montgomery. (Please.) Tyrone Power as Moses. (I don't think so.) With all due respect, and I have loads of that, Heston is inescapable. He was necessary. There would be no Chariot Race worth its salt without him. I would never watch Heston on TV because he was too big. It would be like watching the promos to the Incredible Hulk, with the giant bursting through his shirt. He was too big for television. TV is small, it's manageable, it's less. Heston was almost too big for the 20th century, let alone TV. But in the darkened mysterioso of the movie theatre, Charlton Heston was "just right."

When I saw Charlton Heston as a kid, he took me far, far away, to places few actors could go. The only other American actor so comfortable outside of this era was Wayne, and Heston could time travel farther. Both held the magical alchemy that made me forget the commonplace of here and now completely. John Wayne allowed us into our American past. Heston, because of his perfectly male face, the depth of his voice, the measured almost antique rhythm of his speech, the oddly innocent commitment that allowed him to dive without looking into the role, took me farther, before the common era, as they say.

Somehow he was able to cut the myriad strings that connect us to our current lives, so he could inhabit our imagined past and imagined future so perfectly. So well did he do this that his discomfort was obvious when he played in the Now (actually, make that my discomfort, because he more than likely had a ball in the rare instances when he played something current). If it wasn't the past it was the future. I could never have gotten to Ancient Rome without him, nor Ape City.

Is so and so a great actor? A good actor? A bad actor? Speaking as an expert it's a stupid question. The actor either gets you to where you have to go, or not. Heston did; priceless. He could portray greatness, which is no longer an artistic goal; he could portray a grandeur that was so satisfying. What he was able to personify so perfectly for us was a vision of ourselves called heroic. Is this out of favor? Out of step? Antique? Yes, antique as in gorgeous, incredibly valuable, and not produced anymore but this is a critique of the world, not him (hopefully we will one day come back to all that).

As someone who has seen Ben Hur two million times I am totally grateful.

Self-consciousness is the anticipation of being silly and often is the spoiler for many actors. Charlton Heston had no such problem. He would dive into the story with what I can only call measured abandon and make me believe. And it was fun watching him.

It has become fashionable to characterize his politics; almost as if his politics were a separate thing, like Diana's popularity. People are either defensive or patronizing (if not contemptuous). I can only say I wish all the liberals and all the conservatives I knew had the class and forbearance he has. Would I be as patient or serene when so many had showed me such contempt, or tried to make me feel stupid or small? I doubt it, truly I do. This is dignity, simply and completely. A much more important quality than political passion at the end of the day, and far more lacking, don't you think?

It is a terrible, terrible, terrible thing that Charlton Heston is going through this (earlier this month, Heston announced he had been diagnosed with symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's disease), but I confess that there is a part of my heart where I am grateful for the opportunity to let him know what he's meant to me.

It will make him smile that I'm writing this on National Review's website (among other publications). Come to think of it, it is kind of funny.

And here's a nice tribute from The Onion's AV Club. I particularly liked this part:

Above all, Heston was an actor. His performances never let viewers forget this. He had little use for subtlety but a great flair for operatic emotions. Few have equaled him for this. Heston was already a man out of time in an era that had begun to favor the nuance of Method performers but he had a gift for command that made the shift in fashion seem irrelevant, if not wrongheaded. Other actors could have cursed the skies and damned mankind for destroying itself at the end of Planet Of The Apes. But try to picture anyone else bringing Heston's ferocity and conviction to the moment and you'll probably draw a blank.

Amen. Rest in peace.

The Books: "Hopeful Monsters" (Nicholas Mosley)

I emailed Ted this morning, because it was time to pick up Hopeful Monsters, by Nicholas Mosley, for my Daily Book Excerpt - and this was the next book on my adult fiction shelves and I was freaked out. Ted is the only other person I know who read this book - no, that's not right ... maybe Bren read it? I know my father read it, on my recommendation - and it's a dense HUGE book - and I remember my dad joking, "Don't ever give a book to me again" because it took him so long to get through it. But bless him, he finished it!! I have mentioned the book many times on the blog:

Contemporary must-read fiction

Cherished objects

10 books I couldn't live without

although it has never gotten its own post. I find it daunting, not sure how to begin to talk about a book that means so much to me.

It feels as though Hopeful Monsters is actually expressing, in novel-form, my own beliefs and worldviews. I have never before encountered a book that I took so personally. Never. I have responded to books, I have loved the writing, the story, the characters - but this is more of a philosophical treatise, which speaks exactly to how I see the world. And so it is tremendously specific. Most books don't reflect my own experience directly. And this one obviously doesn't - it's the dual story of a German-Jewish girl and a British boy - in the years between World War I and World War II ... It has nothing to do with me, my life, what my life looks like. But the thoughts it ponders (and the whole book is a pondering - there are no answers, just insistent questions, over and over and over ... I am sure the prose would drive some people nuts - but me? I eat this shit UP.) It's not that the book told me what to think, it's not that the book revealed to me a way of thinking that I responded to ... No. It expressed how I already feel and think. In a way I have never seen before. So I suppose one way you could look at all of this is that I am an unbelievable narcissist. Of course I am. But I don't just read to be entertained, or for escape - although often that is why I go to books. Other times, I read to stretch, to think, to grow, to deal with issues in my own life - but Hopeful Monsters stands alone, as a great and surging expression of truths and questions ... like Rilke says, "Live the questions." That's what the book is about. Living the questions. Ted emailed me back this morning and said, "How do you write about a book that is about everything?" It is. It is about everything. It takes as its topic everything. War, politics, science, sex, religion, genetics, physics, Stalinism, agriculture, art, literature, socialism, the Spanish Civil War, Freudian psychoanalysis, the rise of Hitler, the upheavals of the 20th century - in all of these areas ... and how the upheavals surge through the main characters' lives. It goes from Germany to England to Spain to Russia to Africa to America, following events ... one thing after another ... It has a singular voice - a persistent questioning repetitive voice - Hopeful Monsters wants to know why. Hopeful Monsters wants to look beneath surface events and see what we are really saying. What are we really doing? It's not that there are no easy answers. Sometimes the answers are quite easy - but knowing the answers does not make our lives easier. Sometimes truth is the most difficult thing of all. How to live with truth? How to live with the knowledge beneath things? How does one see so much and still just survive? How do you get through life without burning up? There's a line in the book, something like: "It is the everything making sense that is so unbearable."

It's amazing to me, too, that the book is so obscure. Nicholas Mosley is so obscure that there is a literary prize with his name attached to it - and explanatory notes have to be given out to the press to explain who Nicholas Mosley is. Nicholas Mosley is the son of English fascist Oswald Mosley, who was married to Diana Mitford (my post about the Mitfords here). What a background. And to grow up to write such a book - with such an implicit indictment of his father's ideas running through the book ... Mosley (the son) has made no secret of his feelings about his father's political opinions. As a matter of fact, Hopeful Monsters - with its sweeping course of intellectual inquiry and individualism and freedom - could be seen as the ultimate in a reply to his father.

The scariest thing is that I picked it up on a whim. I had just finished Possession (excerpt here) - another book that seemed to capture something very specific about my own life experience that had never quite been captured before: the challenge a cerebral person finds in falling in love. Love is not easy, especially when you are overloaded with context and literature and "this reminds me of that ..." associations. Love is never just love. It is the history of love, and that poem, and that literary character, etc. Many people wouldn't even understand what I'm talking about - and that's fine - I suppose that's why books that tackle such a challenge are few and far between. I felt named by Possession. I felt seen and recognized. I wasn't ready to let it all go. I needed another big reading experience. And so I browsed in a Barnes & Noble. And for whatever reason (thank you, God, for leading me to this book!) I picked up Hopeful Monsters. I had never heard of it. I read the back cover:

Hopeful Monsters is a tour de force of intellect and eros - one in which Albert Einstein taunts a lecture hall full of Nazis and Ludwig Wittgenstein is an awkward guest at an English garden party. Like A.S. Byatt's Possession, it is a love story, in which a young English physicist and a German-Jewish anthropologist pursue each other across landscapes that range from Hitler's Germany to Los Alamos on the eve of the atomic age. Like the works of John Fowles and Umberto Eco, it is also a pyrotechnically accomplished novel of ideas, in which communism, psychoanalytic theory, uncertainty, and relativity attain visceral emotional force and help us understand the cataclysms of our century.

Can you say sign me up? First of all, there was the comparison with Possession, the book I had just read. So that had it in its favor. Also the phrase "novel of ideas" - which is such a turn-on for me, when it is done well.

And then, most superficially, there was the cover. Sadly, I cannot find any image of the cover of my copy of the book online. There are now new covers - and the book is pretty hard to find, in general. It's rarely in book stores. And when it is, it doesn't have the cover of the Vintage International copy I have. The cover has a photograph on it, a kind of blurry black-and-white photo of a statue, a female - her head raised to the sky - her hands placed in front of her - on her breast, and one held up in a gesture of, what, supplication? Resistance? (See, I'm writing like Nicholas Mosley now) It's a stark image, mysterious - and when you read the book, it is not directly applicable. I love Vintage's book covers - they come up with some awesome artistic ideas (the cover of Possession is a perfect example). They are not literal. And the cover of Hopeful Monsters called to me, for some reason. Even more so than the back cover description, and the comparison with Possession. It was the cover. It said to me, "This is big. A big book. Are you ready?" There have been times when I have literally shivered at the thought that it was a book cover that made me buy the book - it seems so ephemeral, so whimsical ... to have discovered such a book by chance??

Of course, thinking about the plot of the book - it is only perfect that I would have discovered it by chance. Of course chance would have brought the book to me. That would be the only possible way.

There are two narrators in the book: Eleanor Anders, a German-Jewish girl and Max Ackerman, a British boy. They split the book up, chapter by chapter - telling their version of events. Most of the time they are apart, and so much of their story has to do with filling each other in, through the writing: "Here is what it was like for me before you came along ..." "Here is what I did during that summer we never saw each other ..." They talk to each other, too, referring back to the other's chapters: "You said that such and such was going on with you at this time. Well, don't you know that such and such was going on with me, too?' Their encounters are few and far between, but soul-stirring. It is not about love. It is about recognition. You know when you are in the presence of a kindred soul. And sometimes, when that happens, it is best to just keep quiet. Don't make any quick moves, don't startle the universe ... it hangs in the balance in such moments. The images are of Max and Eleanor, on opposite ends of a tightrope wire. Meanwhile, the world is exploding around them.

Eleanor grows up in Berlin. Her father is a philosophy professor at Berlin University, but he is most passionate about physics - especially the theories of Albert Einstein, who was at the University at that time. Her mother is a left-wing politician, who spends all of her time trying to organize the socialist revolution that is supposed to follow upon the heels of the world war (the first world war). Eleanor is 8 or 9 years old when WWI ends. She tries to interpret the events around her, her parents, their struggles. Her mother aligns herself with Rosa Luxemburg (the book is full of cameos: Einstein, Luxemburg, Hitler, Lysenko, Wittgenstein). Eleanor gets the sense that her father agrees with her mother's opinions but disagrees in the manner in which she is going about it all. There is stress and strain. The first chapter takes place in the late teens and early 1920s. Eleanor describes, as from a great distance, her childhood at this time. We don't know who she is talking to - but we know it is someone specific (Max doesn't enter this chapter at all, he is having his own childhood over in England). The book opens with this stunner of a sentence:

If we are to survive in the environment we have made ourselves, may we have to be monstrous enough to greet our predicament?

There are multiple connections here, and Eleanor is not sure yet how it will all fit together: Communists, socialists, world war, the outrageous inflation in Germany, and the anti-Semitism which pierces to the surface now ... and then, of course, there is Einstein's work, the publishing of his special and general theories - and how her father gets totally caught up in it, and tries to explain it to his young daughter. Eleanor's mother, more and more obsessed by her socialist political work, feels left out of this duo, and she resents it. She thinks every moment should be a fight. Then, of course, Rosa Luxemburg is murdered. And everything starts to fall apart. Eleanor is taken to see a lecture of Einstein's - where he was heckled and booed by the audience. Eleanor's father is German. Eleanor's mother is Jewish. This will obviously have enormous implications in later chapters, the 1930s chapters. Eleanor's mother is not "well". She becomes obsessed, and unwell. She must live on her own, in a soup kitchen, and devote her life to politics. But she can't seem to shake the feeling that something has gone wrong. Eleanor's father, a philosopher at heart, loves his wife, but is too detached from such passions to take them seriously. Or no, that's not right. It's just that he thinks the lingo, the dogmatic political lingo thrown around by everyone in her group, is a way of hiding. Hiding what they are really doing, what they really want. This is my main beef with political junkies and partisan fanatics: they use a shorthand, code words, and it's obvious what they mean ... but if you want to talk about the underlying substance, those code words will come up short. Eleanor's father cannot talk to Eleanor's mother anymore. The lingo has taken hold, the language has hardened ... and that, he, a man of questions and contemplation, cannot abide. But again: when Hitler takes power, all of this becomes academic.

It is also so important to remember (and learn, if you didn't know) the context of those times - in Germany and elsewhere - when communists were seen as the only way to defeat Hitler - and world decisions were made because of this - and of course Hitler then went about crushing the communists - but it's important to remember that in that particular moment, NOTHING was a done deal. Nobody could see the future. And Communism at that time did not equal Stalinism ... (the book addresses that - when Max travels to Russia to study for a semester, the year of the famine in the Ukraine ...) In Germany people were taking wheelbarrows of worthless money to buy a bottle of milk. Capitalism had seemed to have failed. And Hitler was a thug who needed to be crushed. They put up a damn good fight. In the post above about the Mitfords, someone showed up and made the following comment, about the ideological fight between Unity (the fascist MItford) and Decca (the communist Mitford):

The irony is that, at least in practice, that communism and facism aren't really that far apart (both are authoritarian and socialist in nature.). Unity and Decca weren't that far apart in their thinking (anymore than Stalin and Hitler were)....

My response to that comment was:

Of course - but you are saying that with the benefit of retrospect. We know this NOW. At the time, except to a few who remained above the fray, those similarities were not at all clear.

The Mitford parents were Hitler supporters because he had crushed the Communists in Germany - suppressed them and persecuted them - and the Mitfords were all for that. The Communists at that time were extremely attractive for those who wanted to fight against everything Hitler represented. Hitler was the enemy. The Communist Parties (at least those not in Russia - Russia who was experiencing Stalin's purges at that very moment and knew where all this communistic stuff led) were alternatives to what Anne Lindbergh called "the wave of the future" - which was fascism. The end result did end up being the same - but again - on the ground-level, in the middle of the whirlwind, as World War II approached, esPECIALLY for the British, this was not at all clear.

If the distinctions were oh-so-clear, then why did folks like Orwell and Arthur Koestler (post about him and his Darkness at Noon here) famously switch sides? You must incorporate history in, well, history - otherwise you are just another boring hack with an axe to grind.

Mosley writes about that particular moment in time - the convergence of ideologies and war and politics - the personal, the political, the scientific - the world of his actual father and his stepmother ... all seen through the eyes of a 9 year old girl.

Trying to talk about what this book is about is difficult ... and trying to list plot-points feels insane to me.

It is more like a wave, the tide rolling in, submerging you, and then rolling out, leaving the shore exposed, rolling back in, rolling back out. Max and Eleanor do not have different voices. Their lives are different - but they speak with one voice. And their paths converge - much later - and then separate - for many years - and then converge again ... endlessly ... and you know, as I grow older, and move further away from my past ... Hopeful Monsters is more and more how I experience life. The past is never really past. It flows alongside us, maybe an alternate universe (Eleanor and her father love sci-fi comic books, all about time travel, and wondrous monstrous other worlds - they imagine that the sofa they sit on is an "airship", and they can float above these other worlds, looking down, curious, on how other creatures live ...) ... we can dip into it, we can re-visit it ... or we can say, "You know what? No thanks." Either choice. It's up to us.

I will need to do a couple excerpts from this one.

When all is said and done, I think it might be the most important book I have ever read. It is always near me. It never makes it up onto the shelf, where it sits on its place for years before I pick it up again. It is always out, on a table, in my bag, on my dresser ... I see different things in it, every time I read it. Sometimes it is about the hopelessness of love. Yet the essential-ness of the experience. Sometimes it is about the clash between communism and capitalism, and what that meant for the individuals involved in the crucial years of th 1930s. Sometimes it is about scientific inquiry - as applied to love - which man, I relate to! It's always different. When that "what 5 books would you bring if you were stranded on a desert island" question comes up - sometimes I choose one book over another, sometimes I realize, "Oh no, I have to bring THIS book - how could I have forgotten it??" - but I NEVER forget Hopeful Monsters. It is always Numero Uno on the "desert island" question.

In Hopeful Monsters, Nicholas Mosley writes:

I thought - oh strange and terrible world, you should not be destroyed! There are people whom you can love and who love you - Just let us know, every now and then, what might be an ark.

To me, Hopeful Monsters is its own ark. It is my ark. It has everything in it that I need, and will ever need.

I was dreading writing about Hopeful Monsters, but I find it didn't come out so bad. Let's get to the excerpt. This is from Eleanor's first chapter - the "childhood in Berlin" chapter.

EXCERPT FROM Hopeful Monsters, by Nicholas Mosley

It is relevant to put in here (relevant I mean in the way that this comes up in memory, relevant in the way that these occurrences were roughly coincidental in fact) what I remember of the conversations I used to have with my father when we were not reading stories: these conversations having begun around the time when the group with Rosa Luxemburg came looking for a hiding-place in our apartment; their subject also being to do with what my father talked to the young man and girl about at supper.

Sometimes when I sat with my father on the sofa in his study and he had been reading to me stories or articles about science from children's magazines, I would, at the end of whatever voyage of discovery or imagination we had been on (I was, I suppose, quite a precocious little girl) ask my father about the work he was doing at the university. He told me something of his regular work of lecturing and teaching, but I do not remember much about this. Then he told me of the work that really interested him at this time, which was outside his regular curriculum, and was to do with his efforts to understand, and to put into some intelligible language, the theories that were being propounded about physics at this time by one of his colleagues at the university - a Professor Einstein. I do not think that my father knew Einstein very well, but he venerated him, and he was enough of a mathematician to be able to try to grapple with some of his theories. I, of course, could have comprehended little of the substance of what my father said: but because of his enthusiasm it was as if, on some level, I was caught up in his efforts. I had a picture of Professor Einstein as some sort of magician: there was a photograph of him on the chimney-piece of my father's study which was a counter-balance to my mother's photograph of Karl Marx on the chimney-piece of the dining-room. Professor Einstein's head, set rather loosely on his shoulders, seemed to have a life of its own: Karl Marx's head seemed to have been jammed down on to his shoulders with a hammer. I would say to my father as we sat above the wonders of the world in our airship "What is it that is so special about the theories of Professor Einstein?"

My father said 'Shall I try to explain?'

I said 'I like hearing you talk. It doesn't matter if I don't understand.'

This was the time - the winter of 1918-19 - when Einstein had recently published his paper concerning the General Theory of Relativity (the papers concerning the Special Theory had been published some years previously), but the conjectures put forward in the General Theory had not yet been verified. Nothing in these theories had yet much caught the public imagination: people seemed not to be ready for such images as they might evoke. But my father had become obsessed with trying to make intelligible an interpretation of the General Theory: it was this, he said, that should alter people's ideas about the universe and about themselves.

My father said 'All right, I'll try to tell you. I'm not sure, anyway, just what it means to understand.'

I think my father had already tried to explain - usually more to himself in fact than to me - the Special Theory of Relativity. I remember the phrases about there being no absolute space nor absolute time: my space is my space; your time is yours; if I am travelling at a certain speed in relation to you it might as well be you who are travelling at a certain speed in relation to me; the only thing that is absolute is the speed of light. The speed of light is constant no matter if it arises from this or that travelling hither or thither: if there seem to be contradictions, these are because the measuring devices themselves get bigger or smaller and not the speed of light. I do not suppose I grasped the latter idea: but I do not think I found it difficult to see the idea of each person, each observer or group, having his or her or its own world: was not this, after all, what I had come to feel about the people in the streets, my mother's friends, her cousins in the country? I felt sometimes that I understood even about the absoluteness of the speed of light - was not this something that my father and I felt ourselves in touch with as we looked down on all these separate worlds from the superworld of our airship?

I said 'You are going to tell me about the new thing, the General Theory.'

My father said 'Ah!'

There are two or three particular and personalised images that stick in my mind from my father's efforts to explain to me, aged nine, Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. These images arose from the conjecture that light itself had weight, so that it could be bent or pulled in the proximity of matter by what used to be called 'gravity': that if there is enough matter in the universe (which Einstein thought there was) then space itself would be bent or curved - and it would be just such curvature that could properly be called gravity. The particular images suggested by my father that have stuck in my mind are, firstly, of a small group of people standing back to back on a vast and lonely plain; they are looking outwards; they are trying to see something other than just their surroundings and themselves. But they can never by the nature of things see anything outside the curve of their own universe, since gravity pulls their vision back (my father drew a diagram of this) so that it comes on top of them again like falling arrows. The second image is that of a single person on this vast and lonely plain who has constructed an enormously powerful telescope; by this he hopes to be able to break at last out of the bonds of his own vision; he looks through it; he sees - what appears to be a new star! Then he realises that what he is looking at is the back of his own head - or the place where his head now is billions of years ago, or in the future, or whatever. Anyway, here he is now with the light from him or to him having gone right round the universe and himself never being able to see any further than the back of his own head. But then there was a third image that my father gave me, different in kind from the others: which is of gravity being like the effect of two people sitting side by side on an old sofa so that the springs sag and they are drawn together in the middle: and there were my father and I sitting side by side on the sofa in his study.

I would say to my father 'But is this true?'

My father said 'Mathematically, it seems to be true.'

'But is it really?'

'Ah, what is really!'

I would think - But together, might not my father and I get beyond the backs of our heads in our airship?

Sometimes when my father and I had our arms around one another sitting like this my mother would put her head round the door of his study and say 'Are you coming?'

My father would say 'Coming where?'

'To supper.'

"Ah yes, supper.'

Then my mother would perhaps advance into the room and say 'What have you two been doing?'

'Talking.'

'It didn't sound like talking to me!'

'Thinking then.'

'Do you have to sit like that when you think?'

And I would think - Oh do let us get through, yes, into some other dimension!

It was such conversations I had with my father that seemed relevant to the evening when the group of people round Rosa Luxemburg had been in our apartment (they being like the people on the vast and lonely plain) and when the young man and the girl stayed for supper.

My mother had gone to argue with Magda in the kitchen. Helga was banging plates down on the sideboard in the dining-room. My father had said to the girl, who was quite pretty, 'What is your subject?' The girl had said 'Physics.' My father had said 'Then we will have a lot to talk about!' And I wondered why my father was not talking more to me.

My father said to the young man 'What do you do?'

The young man said 'My subject is philosophy but at the moment I am occupied in politics.'

My father said, as he so often said 'Ah.'

During supper my father sat at the head of the table: I sat on one side of him and the young man on the other: the girl sat next to the young man. I remember the atmosphere, the style, of this supper quite well - perhaps because it was almost the first time I had been allowed up so late; out of deference, I suppose, to the tensions of the evening. Whoever remembers the exact words of conversations? but I imagine I can recreate the style, the attitudes of my father.

He said to the girl 'What do you know of the theories of Professor Einstein?'

The girl, who had a scraping voice that did not go with her soft squashed face, said 'I understand they have not been verified.'

My father said 'What do you think might count as verification?'

The girl said 'I understand verification is unlikely.'

My father turned to the young man who had small steel pince-nez from which a black ribbon hung down. My father said 'And what is the opinion of a philosopher or a politician on these matters?'

The young man said 'I think these are matters for scientists and mathematicians.'

My father said 'Should not a philosopher have ideas or opinions about what might be called reality?'

The young man said 'It is the job of philosophers to clarify concepts. IT is the job of scientists to uncover facts.'

My father said 'But are not concepts seen to be of the same nature as facts?'

The young man said 'And it is the job of politicians to separate practical sense from nonsense, which is the tool of exploitation.'

My father said 'I see.' He used to say 'I see' when he was disappointed; this was slightly different from when he said 'Ah!'

At some such moment in this conversation my mother came in; she banged plates about with Helga or Magda at the sideboard. She said 'It might make more sense to talk about the practical difficulties of getting the materials for this soup.'

The young man said 'Indeed.'

The girl said 'I'm sorry.'

My mother said 'It is not your fault.'

My father raised his eyebrows; he seemed to be hoping he might take off, as if he were a rocket.

My mother sat down at the other end of the table. Helga handed round the soup. After a time my mother said 'Some people do not seem to realise that even at this moment there are people being killed in the streets.'

My father picked up his napkin, put it down, looked at the girl, looked at the young man, looked at me. I thought - Well, you did not put your arms around me: what am I supposed to do alone in our airship?

Then my father said to my mother 'But haven't you been looking forward to the time when people would be killed in the streets? Haven't you said that the revolution could not come until there were people being killed in the streets?'

My mother said 'That is an insult!' She banged her knife and fork down on the table.

I thought I might now join in by saying - But didn't you want my father to protect this young man and the girl by saying that they were two of his students at the university?

My mother went out of the room. We could hear her talking, or crying, with Magda in the kitchen.

The girl said to my father 'Don't you care?'

My father raised his eyebrows; gazed at a corner of the ceiling.

The young man said 'In my opinion, the scientific reality is that there is this repression of the masses.'

My father said 'I see.'

After a time the girl said 'Excuse me, I will go and see if your wife is all right.' She left the room.

We sat at the table and drank our soup - my father, the young man with the pince-nez and myself. I thought - Oh yes, our various visions, like arrows, are going out and coming crashing round on to the backs of our own heads.

Then - But it is true that my mother must have had difficulty in getting the materials for the soup?

After a time the young man said 'But the masses have the real power according to the iron laws of history.'

My father said 'Then for God's sake join them.'

The young man stood up and bowed and went out - presumably to join my mother and the girl and Helga and Magda in the kitchen.

I thought - So now, yes, my father and I are alone in our airship.

My father sat staring at a corner of the ceiling. I thought - But it is all right, it is all right, even if there are things one does not understand and cannot say: is not this what you have taught me?

Eventually a bed was made for the young man in the drawing-room; the girl was to sleep on the floor of my room.

Sometimes during the night people did in fact come knocking at the door of our apartment; I heard my father going to answer the door; he was calm, authoritative; after a time the people who had knocked went away. What my father had said was that there was no one in the apartment except his family and servants; he could give his assurance on this point on the authority of his position at the university. I was in my bed with the girl beside me on a mattress on the floor. I was thinking - Well what does one understand? What is truth? What is authority? What is caring for others, in this lonely business of our airship?

"Leila" - a Movie within a movie

Screenshot below.

Iranian married couple - Leila (played wrenchingly by Leila Hatami) and her husband Reza (played by Ali Mosaffa - I love this actor and this performance - and these two are now married in real life) - sit and have dinner one night at home, after learning they cannot have children, and they watch Dr. Zhivago. They do not speak. They sit silently and watch Omar Sharif run through the ice house and smash the window to watch the sleigh disappear. As the scene goes on, slowly, Leila turns to look at Reza. And just as slowly, he turns to look back at her. No words. A marvelous silent scene of private domestic life, a moment of shared grief and loss - the news is new, and disorienting, what will it mean now that they cannot have children ... and how watching a movie can inform and reflect and distort your own experience - either by reiterating what you have and appreciate, or by highlighting what you lack. I loved this wordless scene. You can see Omar Sharif reflected in their glass table, and the expressions on their faces says it all. Up until this moment in the film, they were a pair, giggling, laughing, talking, a real team. Now they are separated, each in their own individual pool of darkness ... with possibly the biggest international Middle Eastern star glimmering up at them bluely from below. Beautiful. You don't need words.

I'll write more about Leila, directed by Dariush Mehrjui, icon and legend of Iranian cinema, later. But I just wanted to get this out now, while it was fresh in my mind.

Fire escapes

I'm a little bit obsessed with them.

Blood Meridian - The Judge

I finished Blood Meridian last night. My only regret is that someone wasn't there to hold me when it was all over.

I didn't know what to do with myself. I couldn't just sit there, living in the implications of the book, all by myself. So I had a glass of wine and watched Blue Crush, which is how I normally deal with existential anxiety, gloomy ruminations of mortality, and contemplations of the nature of evil.

Ahhhhh .. I feel better, and more innocent, just looking at that!

The last 50 pages of Blood Meridian read like a bat out of hell. The rest of the book, with its startling sudden rushes of violence, and its long long sections of journeying, of weather, of food and water, and horses hooves, and campfires, and mirages ... works like a hypnotic drug. It's like you are also lulled into the rhythm of the journey, the jostling mules, the constant hunger and thirst ... and then when violence comes, it feels out of nowhere, and you no longer have the reserves to deal with it, or be ready for it - but that doesn't matter - because here it comes anyway ... and after the slaughter, everything slows down again, and the men move on. The individuality of the participants is not the main focus. For the most part (with notable exceptions), they all blend together. The book starts with following in the footsteps of "the kid", a 16 year old sharpshooter who joins up with the mission ... but soon "the kid" falls away. The narration is more of a Biblical ominiscence - than a personal journey. But, by the end, we realize that all of that omniscence has just been a respite. A very long bloody genocidal respite. And we realize, by the end, that it is the Kid who has been leading us all along. It is the kid who is the key to the entire story. He seems indistinct for most of it. Other characters (like Jackson, the black man - and the expriest, and Glanton - and, of course, the Judge) have more vibrancy and specificity. We remember them. We forget that it is through the kid's eyes we are seeing them.

The similarity to Moby Dick here is intense. Ishmael begins that book, openly first-person - "Call me Ishmael." (Which is fascinating in and of itself. It's a simple sentence, but it contains worlds of mystery. Call you Ishmael? Is that not your real name?) It is his journey, his thoughts and feelings and responses that get us into that story. We don't just meet Queequeg, we meet Ishmael's version of Queequeg ... Ishmael's impression of him. We don't see anything that Ishmael doesn't see (at first). But then, once on the ship, once the land recedes - all of that changes. Ishmael fades into the background, and Captain Ahab emerges. Captain Ahab rarely comes on deck. He's not a Jack Aubrey type of Captain, omnipresent, working alongside his men. No. Captain Ahab stays in his cabin, brooding over his revenge. So there is no way that Ishmael would know about Ahab's private moments - his nighttime walking on the deck ... and yet we hear about it anyway, as though we are privy to the inner workings of Ahab's mind. Ishmael has disappeared. He does reappear from time to time, and he wrenches the narration back into his voice ... but it's intermittent now. It's not "his" story.

We meet "the judge" in Blood Meridian very early on. The kid goes to a revival meeting, before he joins up with the mission. And suddenly this man busts into the tent and begins to harangue everyone who is there - that the preacher is not a real preacher, he's a con-man, a schister - wanted in 3 states, whatever ... and all hell breaks loose. It is "the judge". We don't realize how important he will be later, although we know that McCarthy is working on something with this character. He is described in detail. His big bald head, his lash-less eyes ... It's an attention-getting debut, to say the least.

The judge shows up later ... he always shows up. He remains a mystery, to some degree (in the same way that Captain Ahab remains a mystery - madness has gotten him. He has no personality - he is just a desire. He is just a need, a want).

If you haven't read the book and you plan on doing so, then stop reading now! The slow illumination of the judge's character, and who he is - is one of the great thrulines of the book ... and to know ahead of time what's going on with him, and the role he will play - would ruin the book for a newcomer. I can only speak for myself. All David said to me was, "The judge! Holy shit!!" And so as I read the book, as I participated in the genocide, and followed the men westward ... my experience of the judge, and how I put him together (because Cormac McCarthy doesn't show his hand, not until the very end ... although we do get clues along the way) - was the main conduit of dread and hope that, for me, makes up Blood Meridian. And, in the end, it is my OWN response that I want to talk about here ... because I think it's interesting. It's not just the book - it's what the book did to me that I really want to discuss right now. So the following is only for those who have read the book.

The judge. He seems to have a moral center. His first entrance into the book speaks to a sense of honesty and outrage that I latched onto. He recognizes hypocrisy in the preacher and he is unafraid to put a stop to it. In such a brutal amoral world, such honesty is refreshing. You can be lulled into a sense of complacency. You feel that perhaps the judge will protect the innocent. Ha. That is only my own failure of imagination and privileged 21st century life that would make me think such a thing. That's what I mean when I say it is my own response that most interests me at this moment. I don't think of myself as a shallow person or as a person who needs happy endings. And I obviously was not "looking for" a happy ending in Blood Meridian. But I did find myself looking for hope. For meaning. For reassurance that human beings didn't just deserve to be wiped off the face of the planet. There's got to be SOMEONE who "gets it" - who sees the insanity of what is going on ... and has the foresight to say, "We should stop this." And so I looked to the judge. Slowly, I began to realize my grave error. I had put my trust in this man. And he is a monster. But not an anomaly. It's not like he's so much badder than anyone else, or more violent, or more bloodthirsty ... why he is truly a monster is that he intellectually "gets it" ... He knows what he is doing, he knows what the human race is doing, and he understands the reasons why. He seems, at first, like a reasonable man - educated, curious, interested in ritual and narrative - telling stories around the campfire. Quite different from the toothless illiterate drunken bunch of rapists who make up the rest of the group. And so I gravitated towards the judge. From the first moment. Anyone who busts up a phony preacher's con-game is okay by me. It was only later that I slowly realized how wrong I was. How I had lulled myself into a state of complacency - even in the midst of the horror. I was sure that someone, somewhere, knew that what was happening was terrible and wrong. I assumed it was the judge.

It is not until the last 50 pages of the book that you realize: No. It was the kid.

And the judge saw that in the kid. Even though we, the reader, are not privy to it. The judge saw the kid's soul - he didn't even need to have an overt action of rebellion on the part of the kid ... he saw into the kid's soul, and saw something there that must be killed.

And you gotta wonder: he has a brief encounter with "the kid" at the revival meeting. Was it "the kid" driving the judge along all along? McCarthy doesn't say, at least not right away. Did the judge sense something in the kid that made him track him down, follow his footsteps ... keep the kid always in his sights? The thought is chilling, when you think of the end of the book. But the judge is like Captain Ahab. In his mind exists worlds of connections and recognitions ... he forgets nothing. He puts things together in his mind into a grand and terrible conspiracy of connections. You realize, at the end of the book, that the judge sensed a "clemency" in the kid (and there is nothing in the book that overtly suggests this - this is McCarthy's genius. The kid doesn't refuse to shoot someone, he doesn't turn down a mission, he has receded into the group - they act as one ...) But the judge, as has been established, has better eyes than anybody else. He looks at you, and he sees. He sees your soul in all its weakness and frailty. He knows his way "in" - with everyone he meets. That is a great power. I have had acting teachers and mentors who have such a power of seeing - only they use it for good, and for help. The judge? He is on another plane. In a way, he is the greatest source of truth in the book, and that is why he is so terrifying. McCarthy doesn't let us off the hook. Not for one second does he let us off the hook. You know why? Because that would be a lie. The judge knows it's a lie. He knows that man is a monster. And that killing is what he does.

BUT. The character of the judge is revealed slowly, inevitably, over hundreds of pages. At first we just see what he does. We see him taking out a sketchbook and doing little drawings of the bugs and small animals and flowers and grass that he sees. He appears to be a curious man. Someone who looks at the remnants of the ancient Indian culture all around them and has some curiosity about it. Great cities were once on the plain, inhabited by sophisticated people ... all gone now. The rest of the men in the company have no interest in any of that. They are mercenaries. They are in this for the money. They are beyond the pale of regular society, and they know that. What they are good for is killing. They don't look around at the world and find beauty in it. But the judge seems to. He sits at the campfire at night, and expansively tells stories - parables ... and discussions ensue. The judge is self-contained. He does not grapple for position. He doesn't need to. Even in his singularity, he is the most alpha male of the group. And everyone defers. He's not the most macho. Glanton, their commander, is that. And he has killed so much that he has gone mad. The judge has killed, too. But he has not gone mad. And why not? How can someone experience what those men experienced and come out unscathed? Well, that is not possible. McCarthy shows us that again and again - it almost becomes monotonous. The riders move into a town, and their bodies are draped in necklaces of scalps and human ears ... and they take over the town, like the bloodied savages that they are. They shoot up the place, they rape young girls, they shoot dogs because they bark wrong ... Look, these men have been living in the wilderness for months on end, massacring whatever is in their way. How are they then supposed to put on a tie and go to a governor's dinner and dance a minuet with a pretty little lady with curls down the side of her head? They have X-ed themselves from the world. They have been paid by the government, yes ... so they are legitimate ... but they do not fit anymore in civilization. The kid knows this. His journey at the end of the book shows us that clearly. I was so moved by the section near the end where he sits, no longer a teenager - in his late 20s - watching a herd of sheep being jostled by on the plain. And some of the young cowboy types comes up to talk to him. The time of genocide is already passing. The Kid wears his necklace of human ears, and the young cowboys ask him questions about it - and you already feel the savagery of that world is passing. The kid is beyond the pale. He knows it.

And he also knows ... that he is just biding his time. Until the judge appears again. Because now he knows that of course the judge will find him. There is unfinished business, and with someone like the judge - that cannot stand. Captain Ahab can't say to himself, "Ah, whatever ... the white whale took my leg ... it sucks ... but let me move on with my life." No. Revenge becomes his over-arching purpose. He has no other inner life. It all circles around this one vortex. There are those people who cannot allow "unfinished business" to stand. Stalin comes to mind. Stalin had, like the judge has, two qualities - when put together are the most dangerous of all: patience, and ruthlessness. Most dictators only have the ruthlessness. They are impatient, and their impatience brings about their downfall. Stalin was a slow-moving rather lazy man, who was able to tolerate long long periods of inaction, of nothing much happening, of him being on the sidelines. The point for him was not to take credit for things (which is what most dictators want - which leads to their impulsiveness - their grabbing for too much too soon) ... Stalin just wanted to be the last man standing. And so he was. He stands to this day. Look at Central Asia and the craziness that exists. That's Stalin's handiwork. But he moved stealthily, slowly - he set up grandiose complex structures of plausible deniability ... he was the invisible puppeteer. And he could tolerate silence, stillness, and waiting. Patience + ruthlessness? Look out.

The judge is finally revealed, in all his horrifying glory, as the most ruthless and the most patient. And he has "seen" the kid. And the kid knows he has been seen. And so the 10, 15 years that pass ... after the judge moves out of his life ... seem unreal. The kid knows he's just waiting. Waiting for the judge to show up again. Because it is an inevitability. Stalin was able to wait sometimes 10 years to exact his revenge. This is unheard of in a dictator. But Stalin was able to do it. And there is a deep eternal mystery at the heart of such a creature.

Because the judge seems to have more recognizable humanity than the other fellows in the group ... I found myself hoping. Maybe he's just interested in bugs and flowers! Maybe he sees himself as a chronicler. He knows he is living in extraordinary times and he wants to capture it. I lulled myself into thinking - perhaps he's one of those "what a work of art is man" types ... and who knows why he would choose to be a killer - but money does strange things to us all. Maybe he needs the money. But there he is, sketching the cave drawings they come upon - sometimes prying a piece of rock off of the cliff wall - so that he can have the drawing. He presses flowers in the pages of his journal. He sits off to the side of the group, sitting on a rock, sketching. Who is he? Why is he here? Is he just amazed at all he is seeing? The thunder, the desert, the constellations? He has traveled farther than most men who lived at his time. He has seen a lot.

But then comes the moment of reveal.

To me, it's one of the most frightening moments of the book. Even with all the slaughter, and blood, and horror. THIS scares me the most. It scares me not just because it's a scary sentiment, and if you ever met someone in real life who harbors such feelings, your best bet would be to run in the other direction as quickly as possible. It also scares me because I realized how much I had been looking to the judge for answers. He seemed like he knew something. He seemed like he had held on to some essence in the midst of all of that. He was nobody's fool. He saw the preacher's hypocrisy and called it out. I liked that in him. I had hopes. I had hopes for the judge. And then comes this:

He pressed the leaves of trees and plants into his book and he stalked tiptoe the mountain butterflies with his shirt outheld in both hands, speaking to them in a low whisper, no curious study himself. Toadvine sat watching him as he made his notations in the ledger, holding the book toward the fire for the light, and he asked him what was his purpose in all this.

The judge's quill ceased its scratching. He looked at Toadvine. Then he continued to write again.

Toadvine spat into the fire.

The judge wrote on and then he folded the ledger shut and laid it to one side and pressed his hands together and passed them down over his nose and mouth and placed them palm down on his knees.

Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.

He looked about at the dark forest in which they were bivouacked. He nodded toward the specimens he'd collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest crumb can devour us. Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men's knowing. Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth.

What's a suzerain?

A keeper. A keeper or overlord.

Why not say keeper then?

Because he is a special kind of keeper. A suzerain rules even where there are other rulers. His authority countermands local judgements.

Toadvine spat.

The judge placed his hands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation.

Toadvine sat with his boots crossed before the fire. No man can aquaint himself with everything on this earth, he said.

The judge tilted his great head. The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.

I don't see what that has to do with catchin birds.

The freedom of birds is an insult to me. I'd have them all in zoos.

That would be a hell of a zoo.

The judge smiled. Yes, he said. Even so.

And so. He is revealed. For the first time. On page 198.

The veil was ripped from my eyes, and I realized I had been putting my hope in a moral monster (but not a rare monster ... no, no ... it's just that he is conscious of what he is doing. Very few people on this earth are conscious of what they are doing. But he is.) I had been hoping he was a true herbalist (I know, I'm so naive) - an amateur scientist - a man whose curiosity about the natural earth contradicted and also informed his pursuit of the Indians. Yes, he was paid to kill as many as possible. But oh, what a grand people they once were ... No. That's not what is going on with him at all. Anything that exists without his knowledge exists without his consent.

And so he looks at the kid. And he sees something there that exists without his consent.

He will "capture" that thing - and smush it between the pages of his sketchbook, if it is the last thing he does.

In the final standoff between the judge and the kid, in the sanddunes, the judge says:

There's a flawed place in the fabric of your heart. Do you think I could not know? You alone were mutinous. You alone reserved in your soul some corner of clemency for the heathen.

The judge's devotion to his actions are so much more intense than those of the mercenaries, who are in it for the money, or who are so war-crazed that war is all they can do. The judge is beyond everyone - we realize that now.

Only too late. I had gotten caught up in the judge - I had invested in him, and had been duped by him ... and found myself trying, desperately, to extricate myself for the remaining 200 pages of the book. No, no, no, get away from me ... you monster ... you scare me! But he already had trapped me. I was like the kid. I had harbored some corner of clemency and the judge could see me too.

The judge says, near the very end of the book, when he finally meets up with the kid again:

One could well argue that there are not categories of no ceremony but only ceremonies of greater or lesser degree and deferring to this argument we will say that this is a ceremony of a certain magnitude perhaps more commonly called a ritual. A ritual includes the letting of blood. Rituals which fail in this requirement are but mock rituals. Here every man knows the false at once. Never doubt it. That feeling in the breast the evokes a child's memory of loneliness such as when the others have gone and only the game is left with its solitary participant. A solitary game, without opponent. Where only the rules are at hazard. Don't look away. We are not speaking in mysteries. You of all men are no stranger to that feeling, the emptiness and the despair. It is that which we take arms against, is it not? Is not blood the tempering agent in the mortar which bonds? The judge leaned closer. What do you think death is, man? Of whom do we speak when we speak of a man who was and is not? Are these blind riddles or are they not some part of every man's jurisdiction? What is death if not an agency? And whom does he intend toward?

Reading the last chapter of the book made me feel an increasing sense of entrapment. My rationality kept wanting to intervene, to say, "Judge, look ... just chill ... " and wanting to tell the kid, "Either run for your life, or shoot the motherfucker."

But McCarthy is getting at something deeper here, obviously. And my response, my yearning for things to make sense in the midst of chaos, is part of it - a huge part of it. The Judge would understand that completely. He would see it.

The judge says:

That man there. See him. That man hatless. You know his opinion of the world. You can read it in his face, in his stance. Yet his complaint that a man's life is no bargain masks the actual case with him. Which is that men will not do as he wishes them to. Have never done, never will do. That's the way of things with him, and his life is so balked about by difficulty and become so altered of its intended architecture that he is little more than a walking hovel hardly fit to house the human spirit at all. Can he say, such a man, that there is no malign thing set against him? That there is no power and no force and no cause? What manner of heretic could doubt agency and claimant alike? Can he believe that the wreckage of his existence is unentailed? No liens, no creditors? That gods of vengeance and of compassion alike lie sleeping in their crypt and whether our cries are for an accounting or for the destruction of the ledgers altogether they must evoke only the same silence and that it is this silence which will prevail?

Mr. McCarthy, I bow before you.

The final exchange between the judge and the kid is chilling. As I read it, I felt I was encountering a great and awful truth. I wanted to hide from it, and talk it away, and maybe argue with it a bit. Instead, it just sat there with me. And it's sitting here with me still.

I tell you this. As war becomes dishonored and its nobility called into question those honorable men who recognize the sanctity of blood will become excluded from the dance, which is the warrior's right, and thereby will the dance become a false dance and the dancers false dancers. And yet there will be one there always who is a true dancer and can you guess who that might be?

You ain't nothin.

You speak truer than you know. But I will tell you. Only that man who has offered up himself entire to the blood of war, who has been to the floor of the pit and seen horror in the round and learned at last that it speaks to his inmost heart, only that man can dance.

Even a dumb animal can dance.

The judge set the bottle on the bar. Hear me, man, he said. There is room on the stage for one beast and one alone. All others are destined for a night that is eternal and without name. One by one they will step down into the darkness before the footlamps. Bears that dance, bears that dont.

I will never forget the judge. I wish I could, but I can't. No amount of watching Blue Crush will erase him from my memory.

It's going to take me some time to shake off Blood Meridian.

The Books: "Birds of America" - 'Terrific Mother' (Lorrie Moore)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves:

Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore. Excerpt from the story 'Terrific Mother' - the last story in the collection.

'Terrific Mother' opens with a scene of such horror that it is hard to believe the rest of the story is (at times) so HILARIOUS. Lorrie Moore has just the perfect touch here. We must somehow survive events ... or no, we don't HAVE to, we can always commit suicide ... and Adrienne, the main character, does not go the suicide route. But she is forever changed. She is beyond the pale. She is filled with a sense of wrongness, and persecution ... as though everyone knows what she did. And she has no right to expect happiness anymore, she has no right to look for a good life and satisfaction. She should be on the rack forever. At a garden party, a friend of hers asks her to hold her baby. Adrienne is 35, and single ... and has started to feel nervous and weird around babies, because she doesn't have one, and she doesn't think she will ever have one. Moore has a sharp pen, I tell ya - listen to this:

She had entered a puritanical decade, a demographic moment - whatever it was - when the best compliment you could get was, "You would make a terrific mother." The wolf whistle of the nineties.

This could not be more accurate. I've lived it. It's right on. Adrienne, in a moment of awkwardness while holding the baby, twists her ankle, loses her balance and drops the baby - whose head cracks open on the pavement. The baby eventually dies. And Adrienne cracks up, too. She will never forgive herself. Life, though, has moved on, with or without Adrienne. Again, the opening of the story is so horrifying that you almost want to put it down. I can't read any more! Adrienne shuts down, almost completely. Yet somehow, after a bunch of time, she meets (and eventually marries) a man named Martin - who knows what happened, and forgives her. But Adrienne knows she can't be forgiven. She does not accept forgiveness. Martin is a good man (I love him) - and he treats Adrienne with a rough honesty that she can hardly bear. She is not "fit" for normal life, after what she did. But Martin says stuff to her like, "I'm going to marry you. I'm going to marry you until you puke." He loves her. She is far far away, though. I can't even say that Adrienne is 'doing her best' because she really isn't. A huge part of her is deeply in hiding, cringing in the shadows of her unconscious, living that awful moment over and over and over and over ... It is always with her. Martin sometimes forgets that.

The two of them go to a conference in the Alps - for scholars, artists, etc. You can go, and you have your own cabin - and you also have your own workspace - to paint, or write your book, or work on your PhD or whatever. People from all over the world are in attendance. And you can bring your spouse. Martin is the one going to the conference - and Adrienne goes as "the spouse" -which becomes a joke later. It's almost like "the spouses" are second-class citizens in such a heady atmosphere ... people will look across the room at a woman and murmur, "She must be one of the spouses." Adrienne was a painter once. So she tries to work. Martin is consumed with his own work, and not really super-aware of what is going on with his wife. He has other things on his mind. This is all exacerbated by the fact (and it is used to SUCH comedic perfection) that every night at the communal dinner - the seating arrangment is different ... you are assigned seats, and every night you sit somewhere different, with different people on either side ... so Adrienne's various conversations with people at dinner are sprinkled throughout the story -and they are laugh out loud funny. Adrienne is not even trying to bond with these people. And no matter what she says to them, they reply in some bizarre way. And when she tries to assert herself, they will say, "You're one of the spouses, aren't you?"

Adrienne eventually goes into the nearby town and starts to get massages from a masseuse everyone recommends. Now it's not that "healing" begins for her ... you just know she's beyond considering that ... but somehow a space opens up inside her. Almost against her will. A space where she can actually live with what she did. I don't know how to write about it ... you just have to experience it in the story. Adrienne expects very little from life. Yet she has managed to snag this terrific guy, Martin - who is patient with her weirdness, loves her in spite of herself, and also leaves her alone when necessary. The masseuse is a major element of the story, and Adrienne at times feels like she is having an affair ... and when Martin goes to see the masseuse one day (secretly, he doesn't tell Adrienne - but when he returns she can smell the massage oil) - Adrienne feels almost jealous. LIke she is being cheated on.

I am not sure how Lorrie Moore has pulled this off - it's a hat-trick, this story ... but she does. It's my favorite in the collection.

It is not about something simplistic, like Adrienne being redeemed, or getting pregnant herself, or "healing", or forgiving herself. It's about her trying to get through this conference without biting someone's head off ... and by the end, we realize that the whole thing is really about Martin. Like - what's been going on with HIM through all of this?

And then there are hilarious moments like this one, Adrienne trying to make conversation with a new seatmate at dinner:

When she asked him how he liked it here so far, she received a fairly brief history of the Ottoman Empire.

Now come on. That's funny.

Here's an excerpt:

EXCERPT FROM Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore. Excerpt from the story 'Terrific Mother'

They were met at Malpensa by a driver who spoke little English but who held up a sign that said VILLA HIRSCHBORN, and when Adrienne and Martin approached him, he nodded and said, "Hello, buongiorno. Signor Porter?" The drive to the villa took two hours, uphill and down, through the countryside and several small villages, but it wasn't until the driver pulled up to the precipitous hill he called "La Madre Vertiginoso," and the villa's iron gates somehow opened automatically, then closed behind them, it wasn't until then, winding up the drive past the spectacular gardens and the sunny vineyard and the terraces of stucco outbuildings, that it occurred to Adrienne that Martin being invited here was a great honor. He had won this thing, and he got to live her for a month.

"Does this feel like a honeymoon?" she asked him.

"A what? Oh, a honeymoon. Yes." He turned and patted her thigh indifferently.

He was jet-lagged. That was it. She smoothed her skirt, which was wrinkled and damp. "Yes, I can see us growing old together," she said, squeezing his hand. "In the next few weeks, in fact." If she ever got married again, she would do it right: the awkward ceremony, the embarrassing relatives, the cumbersome, ecologically unsound gifts. She and Martin had simply gone to city hall, and then asked their family and friends not to send presents but to donate money to Greenpeace. Now, however, as they slowed before the squashed-nosed stone lions at the entrance of the villa, its perfect border of forget-me-nots and yews, its sparkling glass door, Adrienne gasped. Whales, she thought quickly. Whales got my crystal.

The upstairs "Principessa" room, which they were ushered into by a graceful bilingual butler named Carlo, was elegant and huge - a piano, a large bed, dressers stenciled with festooning fruits. There was maid service twice a day, said Carlo. There were sugar wafers, towels, mineral water, and mints. There was dinner at eight, breakfast until nine. When Carlo bowed and departed, Martin kicked off his shoes and sank into the ancient tapestried chaise. "I've heard these 'fake' Quattrocentro paintings on the wall are fake for tax purposes only," he whispered. "If you know what I mean."

"Really," said Adrienne. She felt like one of the workers taking over the Winter Palace. Her own voice sounded booming. "You know, Mussolini was captured around here. Think about it."

Martin looked puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"That he was around here. That they captured him. I don't know. I was reading the little book on it. Leave me alone." She flopped down on the bed. Martin was changing already. He'd been better when they were just dating, with the pepper cheese. She let her face fall deep into the pillow, her mouth hanging open like a dog's, and then she slept until six, dreaming that a baby was in her arms but that it turned into a stack of plates, which she had to juggle, tossing them into the air.

A loud sound awoke her - a falling suitcase. Everyone had to dress for dinner, and Martin was yanking things out, groaning his way into a jacket and tie. Adrienne got up, bathed, and put on panty hose, which, because it had been months since she had done so, twisted around her leg like the stripe on a barber pole.

"You're walking as if you'd torn a ligament," said Martin, locking the door to their room as they were leaving.

Adrienne pulled at the knees of the hose but couldn't make them work. "Tell me you like my skirt, Martin, or I'm going to have to go back in and never come out again."

"I like your skirt. It's great. You're great. I'm great," he said, like a conjugation. He took her arm and they limped their way down the curved staircase - Was it sweeping? Yes! It was sweeping! - to the dining room, where Carlo ushered them in to find their places at the table. The seating arrangement at the tables would change nightly, Carlo said in a clipped Italian accent, "to assist the cross-pollination of ideas."

"Excuse me?" said Adrienne.

There were about thirty-five people, all of them middle-aged, with the academic's strange mixed expression of merriment and weariness. "A cross between flirtation and a fender bender," Martin had described it once. Adrienne's palce was at the opposite side of the room from him, between a historian writing a book on a monk named Jaocim de Flore and a musicologist who had devoted his life to a quest for "the earnest andante." Everyone sat in the elaborate wooden chairs, the backs of which were carved with gargoylish heads that poked up from behind either shoulder of the sitter, like a warning.

"De Flore," said Adrienne, at a loss, turning from her carpaccio to the monk man. "Doesn't that mean 'of the flower'?" She had recently learned that disaster meant "bad star", and she was looking for an opportunity to brandish and bronze this tidbit in conversation.

The monk man looked at her. "Are you one of the spouses?"

"Yes," she said. She looked down, then back up. "But then, so is my husband."

"You're not a screenwriter, are you?"

"No," she said. "I'm a painter. Actually, more of a printmaker. Actually, more of a - right now I'm in transition."

He nodded and dug back into his food. "I'm always afraid they're going to start letting screenwriters in here."

There was an arugula salad, and osso buco for the main course. She turned to the musicologist. "So you usually find them insincere? The andantes?" She looked quickly out over the other heads to give Martin a fake and girlish wave.

"It's the use of minor seventh," muttered the musicologist. "So fraudulent and replete."

"If the food wasn't so good, I'd leave now," she said to Martin. They were lying in bed, in their carpeted skating rink of a room. It could e weeks, she knew, before they'd have sex here. " 'So fraudulent and replete,'", she said in a high nasal voice, the likes of which Martin had heard only once before, in a departmental meeting chaired by an embittered interim chair who did imitations of colleagues not in the room. "Can you even use the word replete like that?"

"As soon as you get settled in your studio, you'll feel better," said Martin, beginning to fade. He groped under the covers to find her hand and clasp it.

"I want a divorce," whispered Adrienne.

"I'm not giving you one," he said, bringing her hand up to his chest and placing it there, like a medallion, like a necklace of sleep, and then he began softly to snore, the quietest of radiators.

Last night, Canal Street

I glimpsed something extraordinarily exciting.

The Books: "Birds of America" - ''People Like That Are the Only People Here'' (Lorrie Moore)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves:

Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore. Excerpt from the story 'People Like That Are the Only People Here'.

It's interesting that a story with a title suggesting huge generalizations ("people like that") is also a story where the main characters have no names. They are known by their roles in life: Mother. Husband. (Interesting that he is not known as "Father"??) Baby. Surgeon. Etc. A couple folks they meet later do have names - but they do not. It's a device, obviously - in a way, it's a distancing technique. You read something about "The Mother did this or that" ... and she has no defining characteristics, we don't know what she looks like ... we only know what she does. You can't really relate, and that is exactly Lorrie Moore's point. "People Like That Are the Only People Here". How can you relate to "people like that"? How can you see yourself in them? You can't! They're "people like that". This is a bone of contention between the Mother and the Husband ... the Husband has befriended many of the parents in the hospital, in similar situations - he knows their life story, he knows about their kids ... the Mother has no interest whatsoever in "commiserating" with others in her shoes ... "People like that"? No. She is too involved in surviving her own tragedy to try to relate to "people like that". The Mother does not recognize her own life. The horror is so huge she cannot even begin to comprehend it, or even be with it. Baby has cancer. He is in the hospital. Mother and Husband still have not been able to process the diagnosis before this all begins. They are disoriented, freaked out - the Husband tells the Mother to "take notes" (which becomes a running motif in the story - her notes) ... sometimes the Mother falls apart, sometimes the Husband does ... And, at the bottom of the whole thing, is the knowledge that words cannot even BEGIN to describe their experience. Of looking at their sick son in his crib. Of facing the loss of him. The story is a fantastic evocation, I think, of the kind of disorientation that you can feel when faced with a huge loss. Something that yes, may happen to others, may happen to "people like that", but when it happens to you ... all you can do is look around you, baffled, and say, "How on earth did I get here?" There's no weeping or wailing, nobody responds in a cliched manner ... It makes me think a bit of Joan Didion's unbelievable memoir about the year following her husband's death - The Year of Magical Thinking.

It is not so much a memoir of grief - but of disorientation. "Magical thinking". Things do not always hit us right away, or in the same manner. Didion finds herself staring around her, honestly believing that if she keeps thinking about the moment he fell over in their living room - if she keeps going over it - she could somehow reverse time. He can't be dead. Her mind refuses to accept it. And yet then she has moments of searing loss and grief, when the realization that he is gone burns through her. But what I admire so much about that book is her fearlessness in describing how confusing grief can be. How lost you can be in the wake of a tragedy. It's not what you think. It's not ever what you think it will be.

'People Like That Are the Only People Here' is a book about that kind of disorientation. The Mother obsesses about weird things. Like - why all the other mothers of sick boys wear sweat pants ... she doesn't even own a pair. Should she get a pair? The Husband throws the book What to Expect When You're Expecting across the room, shouting at the book - "Why isn't the word 'chemotherapy' in that book? Why didn't they write about THAT?" The Mother takes notes on everything the Surgeon says. The baby lies in his crib, covered in tubes, and he reaches up to his Mother - as if to say Take me! Take me!

The story is freakin' heartbreaking - BUT it is written in a light almost hilarious manner (as the excerpt below will show). Lorrie Moore knows that "hilarity" has its uses in life, and often it shows up at the most inopportune time (laughing in church, etc.) Also - we like to THINK we will be charitable to others, especially when we are in our lowest moments ... but of course we know that much of that is just a fantasy, how we would LIKE to be (I am thinking of Susan Sarandon and Nick Nolte in Lorenzo's Oil - going to "support groups" and looking around them at all the other parents as though they are crazy ... who CARES if you're having problems in the bedroom since the diagnosis? Who cares if you yourself are feeling lonely or bad? What about the research? What about the new studies? Let's talk about THAT.) Lorrie Moore's "Mother" does not want to bond with the other parents. The horror goes too deep for that. Instead she wonders about sweat pants and she scribbles down meaningless notes in her notebook. Like - she's not just taking notes about what the doctor says. She's going off on linguistic tangents ... scattered, fragmentary, random questions that have nothing to do with her son's cancer ... her mind wandering. She does not know how to be like the other mothers. It's extrememly disorienting - to be so far outside your own life.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Birds of America by Lorrie Moore - excerpt from 'People Like That Are the Only People Here'

Take Notes.

Is fainthearted one word or two? Student prose has wrecked her spelling.

It's one word. Two words - Faint Hearted - what would that be? The name of a drag queen.

Take Notes. In the end, you suffer alone. But at the beginning you suffer with a whole lot of others. When your child has cancer, you are instantly whisked away to another planet: one of bald-headed little boys. Pediatric Oncology. Peed Onk. You wash your hands for thirty seconds in antibacterial soap before you are allowed to enter through the swinging doors. You put paper slippers on your shoes. You keep your voice down. A whole place has been designed and decorated for your nightmare. Here is where your nightmare will occur. We've got a room all ready for you. We have cots. We have refrigerators. "The children are almost entirely boys," says one of the nurses. "No one knows why. It's been documented, but a lot of people out there still don't realize it." The little boys are all from sweet-sounding places - Janesville and Appleton - little heartland towns with giant landfills, agricultural runoff, paper factories, Joe McCarthy's grave (Alone, a site of great toxicity, thinks the Mother. The soil should be tested).

All the bald little boys look like brothers. They wheel their IVs up and down the single corridor of Peed Onk. Some of the lively ones, feeling good for a day, ride the lower bars of the IV while their large, cheerful mothers whiz them along the halls. Wheee!

The Mother does not feel large and cheerful. In her mind, she is scathing, acid-tongued, wraith-thin, and chain-smoking out on a fire escape somewhere. Beneath her lie the gentle undulations of the Midwest, with all its aspirations to be - to be what? To be Long Island. How it has succeeded! Strip mall upon strip mall. Lurid water, poisoned potatoes. The Mother drags deeply, blowing clouds of smoke out over the disfigured cornfields. When a baby gets cancer, it seems stupid ever to have given up smoking. When a baby gets cancer, you think, Whom are we kidding? Let's all light up. When a baby gets cancer, you think, Who came up with this idea? What celestial abandon gave rise to this? Pour me a drink, so I can refuse to toast.

The Mother does not know how to be one of these other mothers, with their blond hair and sweatpants and sneakers and determined pleasantness. She does not think that she can be anything similar. She does not feel remotely like them. She knows, for instance, too many people in Greenwich Village. She mail-orders oysters and tiramisu from a shop in SoHo. She is close friends with four actual homosexuals. Her husband is asking her to Take Notes.

Where do these women get their sweatpants? She will find out.

She will start, perhaps, with the costume and work from there.

She will live according to the bromides. Take one day at a time. Take a positive attitude. Take a hike! She wishes that there were more interesting things that were useful and true, but it seems now that it's only the boring things that are useful and true. One day at a time. And at least we have our health. How ordinary. How obvious. One day at a time. You need a brain for that?

This April:

Anne of Green Gables turns 100 years old.

Even with all of this I feel like I haven't scratched the surface of what Anne of Green gables means to me (and actually - it's larger than that - it's Lucy Maud Montgomery who is the obsession, not just her most famous book). I will be obsessed with Lucy Maud Montgomery until I die. The fact that her journals have been published are a great great gift - and this October a biography is coming out (written by the editor of the journals - I've corresponded with her, lovely woman). Her success is something an author can only dream of. She was successful during her lifetime - Anne was a huge hit - but nothing could have prepared her for the posthumous MANIA of today.

Margaret Atwood has written about her fellow Canadian's work on the dawn of this important centennial anniversary here.

An excerpt from the piece that made me cry - and made me think: Yes. Yes. THAT is the magic of the book ... THAT is what, after so many readings, still gets me:

There's another way of reading Anne of Green Gables, and that's to assume that the true central character is not Anne, but Marilla Cuthbert. Anne herself doesn't really change throughout the book. She grows taller, her hair turns from "carrots" to "a handsome auburn", her clothes get much prettier, due to the spirit of clothes competition she awakens in Marilla, she talks less, though more thoughtfully, but that's about it. As she herself says, she's still the same girl inside. Similarly, Matthew remains Matthew, and Anne's best chum Diana is equally static. Only Marilla unfolds into something unimaginable to us at the beginning of the book. Her growing love for Anne, and her growing ability to express that love - not Anne's duckling-to-swan act - is the real magic transformation.

I can barely get through that paragraph without sobbing.

Oh, and 2 days ago I was contacted by someone at Nowpublic - asking them if they could use one of my photos (the poster for Anne of Green Gables on the wall in the college theatre where I went to school - and played "Anne" when I was there) in their tribute page to Lucy Maud Montgomery and the anniversary of Anne of Green Gables' publication. I said of course!!

Slideshow of images here

Here's the post I wrote about Anne of Green Gables - and just from the tone in the comments you can tell how much that fictional character is loved.

And so. Happy birthday Anne with an E.

The writing of "Blood Meridian":

It speaks for itself. But Jesusmaryandjoseph, I don't even know how to process it. It comes so quickly at you, the reader ... and you have to either put the book down and just think HARD about it (which I have been doing periodically) - or just keep going, letting it wash over you, through you ... or, also - go back and re-read sentences, twice, three times ... questioning: "Okay, is that as profound as it first seems?" And yes. It IS as profound. But it's almost disorienting to read. The prose reflects the disorienting nature of the landscape - the endlessness of the plain, the lack of verticals altogether, the flatness, the sameness of it all ... the shimmering mirages ... I mean, how does a man know who he is without context, without surroundings? We know who we are by association. That's one of the reasons why, for me, the images in 2001 Space Odyssey - or an astronaut unmoored from the ship, floating off into the void - are so nightmarish. Nothing to hold onto, nothing, there is no ground, there is no air ... You are still alive, of course ... but who are you, with no surrounding context? No grips? No hooks? The men in Blood Meridian are in a similar situation. The brutality of the landscape is relentless. One mess-up and you will die. Not to mention the genocidal mission they're all on. The judge is emerging. I don't even want to talk about him yet. I'm not sure what to say. He's unbelievably compelling.

The expriest turned and looked at the kid. And that was the judge the first ever I saw him. Aye. He's a thing to study.

The kid looked at Tobin. What's he a judge of? he said.

What's he a judge of?

What's he a judge of.

Tobin glanced off across the fire. Ah lad, he said. Hush now. The man will hear ye. He's ears like a fox.

What's he a judge of?

Who knew that such a simple sentence could send such a chill down my spine.

Like I said earlier, I don't know how to talk about McCarthy's writing here. It is so majestic, so profound ... Speaking of John Banville, he reviewed the book for The Independent and is quoted on the back cover: "The book reads like a conflation of the Inferno, the Iliad, and Moby Dick ... an extraordinary breathtaking achievement." I think that's about right. I know I find it hard to talk in any rational way about Moby Dick (although I gave it my best shot here)- it is so ITSELF, it is so singular ... it is hard to even "get in there" with the book, and try to pick it apart to look at its mechanisms. Blood Meridian has that almost forbidding quality. Pick it apart at your peril.

Here are some excerpts that show what I mean:

Page 65

They descended the mountain, going down over the rocks with their hands outheld before them and their shadows contorted on the broken terrain like creatures seeking their own forms.

Page 75:

All lightly shimmering in the heat, these lifeforms, like wonders much reduced. Rough likenesses thrown up at hearsay after the things themselves had faded in men's minds.

Page 86:

The jagged mountains were pure blue in the dawn and everywhere birds twittered and the sun when it rose caught the moon in the west so that they lay opposed to each other across the earth, the sun whitehot and the moon a pale replica, as if they were the ends of a common bore beyond whose terminals burned worlds past all reckoning.

Page 88:

They did not noon nor did they siesta and the cotton eye of the moon squatted at broad day in the throat of the mountains to the east and they were still riding when it overtook them at its midnight meridian sketching on the plain below a blue cameo of such dread pilgrims clanking north.

"the throat of the mountains"??? Can't you just SEE that? It is perfection. A bafflingly perfect image.

Page 96:

Someone snatched the old woman's blindfold from her and she and the juggler were clouted away and when the company turned in to sleep and the low fire was roaring in the blast like a thing alive these four yet crouched at the edge of the firelight among their strange chattels and watched how the ragged flames fled down the wind as if sucked by some maelstrom out there in the void, some vortex in that waste apposite to which man's transit and his reckonings alike lay abrogate. As if beyond will or fate he and his beasts and his trappings moved both in card and in substance under consignment to some third and other destiny.

Page 105:

The sun to the west lay in a holocaust where there rose a steady column of small desert bats and to the north along the trembling perimeter of the world dust was blowing down the void like the smoke of distant armies. The crumpled butcherpaper mountains lay in sharp shadowfold under the long blue dusk and in the middle distance the glazed bed of a dry lake lay shimmering like the mare imbrium and herds of deer were moving north in the last of the twilight, harried over the plain by wolves who were themselves the color of the desert floor.

"crumpled butcherpaper mountains". Wow.

Page 106:

Here beyond men's judgements all covenants were brittle.

And then this spectacular bit of imagery - I couldn't believe it AS I was reading it:

By the time the animals were secured and they had thrown themselves on the ground under the creosote bushes with their weapons readied the riders were beginning to appear far out on the lake bed, a thin frieze of mounted archers that trembled and veered in the rising heat. They crossed before the sun and vanished one by one and reappeared again and they were black in the sun and they rode out of that vanished sea like burnt phantoms with the legs of the animals kicking up the spume that was not real and they were lost in the sun and lost in the lake and they shimmered and slurred together and separated again and they augmented by planes in lurid avatars and began to coalesce and there began to appear above them in the dawn-broached sky a hellish likeness of their ranks riding huge and inverted and the horses' legs incredibly elongate trampling down the high thin cirrus and the howling antiwarriors pendant from their mounts immense and chimeric and the high wild cries carrying that flat and barren pan like the cries of souls broke through some misweave in the weft of things into the world below.

Page 119:

At dusk they halted and built a fire and roasted the deer. The night was much enclosed about them and there were no stars. To the north they could see other fires that burned red and sullen along the invisible ridges. They ate and moved on, leaving the fire on the ground behind them, and as they rode up into the mountains this fire seemed to become altered of its location, now here, now there, drawing away, or shifting unaccountably along the flank of their movement. Like some ignis fatuus belated upon the road behind them which all could see and of which none spoke. For this will to deceive that is in things luminous may manifest itself likewise in retrospect and so by sleight of some fixed part of a journey already accomplished may also post men to fraudulent destinies.

Un-real. That writing is UNREAL.

Music and movies and mood

A really interesting post from the always-interesting Jonathan.

John Banville/Benjamin Black

An absolutely wonderful interview with Irish author John Banville in The Village Voice. I love his humor, and I have always loved his ego. It's towering, and it makes no friends. But then he always ends up by saying something self-deprecating which takes the edge off. It's so Irish. John Banville has been writing novels for years - he's one of my father's favorite writers ... and recently he began writing books under another name - Benjamin Black ... there was no secret about it, though. In the "Benjamin Black" books, there are author photographs of Banville, so it's clear that he wrote the books ... it's just that he's interested in working on something else at the moment, at NOT writing a "John Banville" book. It's an alter ego.

I love this, he says:

Benjamin Black writes very quickly indeed. . . . I'd never written like this before. March of 2005, I went to Italy to stay with a friend of mine. She gave me a room, and I sat down at nine one Monday morning and I thought: I don't know whether I'll be able to do this or not. But by lunchtime I'd written 1,500 words, which for John Banville would have been absolutely unheard of. If I write 1,500 in a week as John Banville, I'm doing very well. I discovered in myself a facility for this kind of writing.

Wonderful! I totally understand the uses of personae ... I used to do way more of that ... it would help me deal with little Sheila-isms that hold me back (shyness, insecurity) ... I would choose who I would want to be for a night, and my clothes would reflect that. It's a way of hiding, sure, but hiding is WAY under-rated - you just have to be good at it, so that you don't seem like you're hiding. Choosing a persona is a way to step out into the light. Maybe only artists behave this way ... because, for the most part, we are social misfits. I'm shy, introverted, and very weird. Most of my friends are the same way. But the way we behave can be outrageous - because that's who we are, how we express ourselves. If I just walked around as myself all the time ... Jeez, what's the fun in that? Also, I would get NOTHING done, because my natural tendency is towards a hermit-like monastic existence. Mitchell and I would be getting ready to go out, and I'd be picking out an outfit - and one night he said to me, "Your clothes aren't clothes, you know. They're costumes." And that's so true! I would say, "Tonight I'm going for a kind of Natalie Wood in Rebel Without a Cause thing ..." as I put on my leather jacket and wrapped a long filmy red scarf around my neck. Or, "I think tonight I'm Ann Margaret" as I put on my black bustier, my long flowing pants, and I made my hair HUGE - a bouffant to end all bouffants. Sometimes Mitchell would call it. He'd look at me and say, oh, "You look like a disaffected spoiled member of some defunct royal family." (I don't know, I think he's right!) It's a joke now to say "It is better to look good than to feel good ..." but for me there is certainly a lot of truth in that. Anyway, I've always felt freer, more uninhibited, more my TRUE self, when I'm onstage, saying somebody else's words, acting like I am somebody else.

And Banville is kind of speaking to that ... how he was freed up when he was writing as Benjamin Black - even though he's the same guy! How wonderful!

Banville also says:

I'm having much too much fun as Benjamin Black. I'll have to pay for it. I'm Irish. This is what we do—guilt.

Now you're speakin' my language.

I read Christine Falls, his first Benjamin Black book, in one sitting, while I was waiting in O'Hare for 10 hours ... to get on a flight - ANY flight - going ANYwhere vaguely near New York City. Some thoughts on the book here. If you like crime novels, then this is one you do not want to miss. It's a noir - with the murky almost muffled atmosphere of any classic noir. Big grand secrets are hiding behind the damask tablecloths, the thick drawn curtains of Dublin's Georgian-era houses. And it is Quirke - the unlikely hero - the alcoholic haunted coroner - who finds himself obsessed by the murder of Christine Falls ... there's something "off" about it, he can almost smell the cover up ... but why? Dead girls are not unusual to a coroner. But this one is different. Banville evokes the quiet intense atmosphere of Dublin in the 1950s - way before the Celtic Tiger came into existence ... and you can almost smell the wet wool drying on the clanging radiators, you can hear the stillness of the Sunday mornings, when the town is shut down and everyone is in church ... and you can taste the stale whiskey on a hungover morning. It's terrific writing. But the book is also a page-turner of the first order. Whodunit? And why? Powerful people are implicated. Quirke is struggling to even get through the day, he has his own torment to deal with ... but he's like a dog with a bone. He can't let it go.

The sequel just came out - The Silver Swan - same characters, different case - and I can't wait to read it.

The Books: "Birds of America" - 'Agnes of Iowa' (Lorrie Moore)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves:

Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore. Excerpt from the story 'Agnes of Iowa'. One of the most powerful stories of the collection. I'm not sure why it is so effective - there are the themes of loss, and letting go of youth, and accepting that life has not turned out the way you wanted it to ... there's that ... but then there are other elements that add to its power: the imagery, the characters (Agnes talking to her one black student - trying to convince her not to write about vampires anymore but to write about her own childhood - the black student is like, "Oh HELL to the No! I LIVED my childhood, I don't want to write about it! I want to write about vampires!) - Agnes' sad and vaguely grumpy husband Joe ... the visiting Afrikaner poet who comes to speak at the college - and Agnes is at first all pissed off that the college would be supporting someone who, in essence, was benefiting from apartheid - but her encounters with the poet show a different story. Agnes is another of those Lorrie Moore creations: the woman who is always trying to crack jokes, keep things light - but who also always manages to say the wrong thing. People get embarrassed for Agnes. Agnes had lived in New York for 10 years before she got married - she was a writer. It had been a crazy time, she had had no money, had gone to crazy parties - you know, lived the life of a young artist struggling in New York. And then, as so often happens, she had a crisis in her late 20s, early 30s - where she felt like time was suddenly running out on her, and she got nervous ... so she moved home to her native Iowa. She got a job teaching writing. She married Joe. And at first she doesn't experience her choice as some giant compromise that she will later regret. It was the right thing to do. She and Joe fell passionately in love/lust ... and they got married. After 6 years of trying to have a baby (where their relationship is basically ruined - all romance sucked out of it in the trying to make a baby thing) ... and now, realizing they will not have a baby ... and they are basically stuck with each other ... fills them with something like horror. Things have become awkward, strained. They don't know what to say, do, and the future yawns before them, empty and awful. But Agnes still is doing the best she can. Trying to teach, trying to ingratiate herself with the head of her department ... trying not to get lost. But she finds herself, suddenly, yearning for New York again ... looking back on her chaotic days there as something wonderful that is now lost forever. There is something terrible about realizing: wow, that was the best time of my life, and I didn't even know it then!

Agnes of Iowa is a masterpiece.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore - excerpt from the story 'Agnes of Iowa'

When Agnes first met Joe, they'd fallen madly upon each other. They'd kissed in restaurants; they'd groped, under coats, at the movies. At his little house, they'd made love on the porch, or the landing of the staircase, against the wall in the hall by the door to the attic, filled with too much desire to make their way to a real room.

Now they struggled self-consciously for atmosphere, something they'd never needed before. She prepared the bedroom carefully. She played quiet music and concentrated. She lit candles - as if she were in church, praying for the deceased. She donned a filmy gown. She took hot baths and entered the bedroom in nothing but a towel, a wild fishlike creature of moist, perfumed heat. In the nightstand drawer she still kept the charts a doctor once told her to keep, still placed an X on any date she and Joe actually had sex. But she could never show these to her doctor; not now. It pained Agnes to see them. She and Joe looked like worse than bad shots. She and Joe looked like idiots. She and Joe looked dead.

Frantic candlelight flickered on the ceiling like a puppet show. While she waited for Joe to come out of the bathroom, Agnes lay back on the bed and thought about her week, the bloody politics of it, how she was not very good at politics. Once, before he was elected, she had gone to a rally for Bill Clinton, but when he was late and had kept the crowd waiting for over an hour, and when the sun got hot and bees began landing on people's heads, when everyone's feet hurt and tiny children began to cry and a state assemblyman stepped forward to announce that Clinton had stopped at a Dairy Queen in Des Moines and that was why he was late - Dairy Queen! - she had grown angry and resentful and apolitical in her own sweet-starved thirst and she'd joined in with some other people who had started to chant, "Do us a favor, tell us the flavor."

Through college she had been a feminist - basically: she shaved her legs, but just not often enough, she liked to say. She signed day-care petitions, and petitions for Planned Parenthood. And although she had never been very aggressive with men, she felt strongly that she knew the difference between feminism and Sadie Hawkins Day - which some people, she believed, did not.

"Agnes, are we out of toothpaste or is this it - oh, okay, I see."

And once, in New York, she had quixotically organized the ladies' room line at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. Because the play was going to start any minute and the line was still twenty women long, she had gotten six women to walk across the lobby with her to the men's room. "Everybody out of there?" she'd called in timidly, allowing the men to finish up first, which took awhile, especially with other men coming up impatiently and cutting ahead in line. Later, at intermission, she saw how it should have been done. Two elderly black women, with greater expertise in civil rights, stepped very confidently into the men's room and called out, "Don't mind us, boys. We're coming on in. Don't mind us."

"Are you okay?" asked Joe, smiling. He was already beside her. He smelled sweet, of soap and minty teeth, like a child.

"I think so," she said, and turned toward him in the bordello light of their room. He had never acquired the look of maturity anchored in sorrow that burnished so many men's faces. His own sadness in life - a childhood of beatings, a dying mother - was like quicksand, and he had to stay away from it entirely. He permitted no unhappy memories spoken aloud. He stuck with the same mild cheerfulness he'd honed successfully as a boy, and it made him seem fatuous - even, she knew, to himself. Probably it hurt his business a little.

"Your mind's wandering," he said, letting his own eyes close.

"I know." She yawned, moved her legs onto his for warmth, and in this way, with the candles burning into their tins, she and Joe fell asleep.

Peter Weir

A 5 for the day in honor of Peter Weir, one of my favorite directors. Really insightful observations. Well done.

The Grey Dog (restaurant)

I've only been to the one on University Place - but today the one on Carmine Street is the focus of NY Daily Photo (still one of my favorite sites ever). The Grey Dog has quickly become one of my favorite places to eat, hang out, sit and read, whatever ... It is bustling, and crazy ... but here's what Brian has to say about the place, and I think it's right on:

And once you've settled in, the mayhem recedes as you focus on your meal. You start thinking - this place is not that bad once you staked out your territory. What was annoying starts feeling like exuberant festiveness. Everyone seems happy and life is good.

How rare it is to find a restaurant like that, especially here in New York. This place feels very New England-ish to me, with the exposed brick and the pictures of dogs, etc. And it is true: the mayhem recedes once you settle in. I love it there. You can sit and nurse a cup of cappucino and sit typing on your laptop, or you can have a couple beers with your friend before running to a movie, or you can have a full meal. The staff is laidback yet attentive (and no waiter service! You order at a counter - but there's alcohol and wine, too - a very odd and nice combination). The food is dee-lish. It's an awesome place to convene, and I remember sitting there before going to see Rambo, and the snow was falling pretty heavily, and it was night, but where I was was warm and safe. The pipes are exposed above, there were some people who were quiet and alone (like me), others who were on dates (it's a great date place), and others who came in big groups. But not one group dominates ... somehow the atmosphere is flexible enough for all.

New Yorkers should definitely check it out.

Oh, and in keeping with National Poetry Month, poet Frank O'Hara lived in the apartment next door to the Grey Dog on University Place, once upon a time. The apartment building has a bright red old-fashioned door, and there is a plaque on the door, telling us a bit about O'Hara and what he was working on during his time living there.

National Poetry Month: W.H. Auden

April is National Poetry Month. I'll lead off here with my favorite poem, one I come back to again and again and again ...At times, it's been a life raft. I'm sad right now. I'm sad about so many things. I'm sad for other people in my life and what they are going through, I am sad for myself and what I am going through. I woke up at 4 am this morning weeping. I was having a really really sad dream, I guess. I am not looking for a life raft right now, because the sadness is too acute. But reading over "the More Loving One' this morning ... well. What it says is very difficult. It is not an easy truth. It is not pat, or facile, or easy. It is the hardest truth of all to grasp. When one is in the darkness, how on earth do you learn to love it? Or accept it enough that it seems normal? I don't have the answer to that. The poem never fails to knock me on my ass. I hate Auden for it. I want to punch him in the face and say, "The dark will be sublime? How DARE you say that? How dare you? " But there's a gentleness to Auden, a kindness. That kindness is all in the last line of the poem. If that last line weren't there, the message would be too much to handle, I think. When life is sad, you don't want be to told, "This too shall pass." Everyone's sadness is singular. It's a dark tunnel. We all have to go through it. But the last line of his poem gives us breathing room. Says, "It's okay. It won't happen now ... maybe not tomorrow or even next year ... it will take a little time ... it will take a little time ..." I have ranted before about the idiots who say "Time heals all wounds". I am convinced that those who say such stupid things have never really been wounded, otherwise they wouldn't spout such moronic pablum. People ARE marked by events. We may heal, we move on, but we are MARKED. Every event leaves a scar of some kind. It heals, but not completely. And ALL wounds? Really? Time heals ALL wounds? Oh, really? ALL wounds? Every single one? Tell that to mothers who had to watch their babies heads get bashed against the wall by some SS guard in line at Auschwitz. Don't even get me started.) And, to me, Auden's poem expresses that ambiguity, that darkness. That knowledge that you will NOT go back to who you were before. The stars will not return. THAT would be time healing completely - to have the heavens reappear, as they used to be. But no. The challenge for us, as living thinking evolving beings, is how to find the "total dark" sublime. It seems impossible. Especially at 4 in the morning when things get too hard, when the darkness is so total. But Auden is gentle, as I mentioned before. And lines 7 and 8 are words to live by. I try. I really do.

Below the poem I've posted a compilation of quotes about and by Auden. (The anecdote described by Edward Mendelsohn moves me terribly. It approaches explaining why it is that Auden is so important to me. He's not just a wonderful writer - but there are times when he teaches me how to live. Or at least gives me guide posts.) This is why one keeps a "commonplace book" - so you can grab quotes easily when you need them. Last year I did a post a day about different poets through National Poetry Month - and because it's only a month long I had to leave out some of my favorites. I'll be doing more of that this month, as the spirit moves me.

But first, the most important thing.

The poem.

The More Loving One by WH Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

W.H. Auden

"The subject of his poetry is the struggle, but the struggle seen, as it were, by someone who whilst living in one camp, sympathises with the other; a struggle in fact which while existing externally is also taking place within the mind of the poet himself, who remains a bourgeois." - Edgell Rickword, "Auden and Politics"

"I think of Mr. Auden's poetry as a hygiene, a knowledge and practice, based on a brilliantly prejudiced analysis of contemporary disorders, relating to the preservation and promotion of health, a sanitary science and a flusher of melancholia. I sometimes think of his poetry as a great war, admire intensely the mature, religious, and logical fighter, and deprecate the boy bushranger." -- Dylan Thomas

"One Sunday afternoon in March 1922, a friend suggested that I should [write poetry]: the thought had never occurred to me." -- WH Auden

"For more than a year I read no one else." -- WH Auden - on Thomas Hardy

"Never write from your head, write from your cock." -- WH Auden, in a letter to a friend

"The need to find an expression for his homosexuality was the first technical obstacle to check the torrential course of Auden's unprecedented facility. A born master of directness was obliged straightaway to find a language for indirection, thus becoming immediately involved with the drama that was to continue for the rest of his life - a drama in which the living presence of technique is the antagonist." -- Clive James

"Auden: great poet or great representative poet? A poet or a 'classic of our prose'? He overhsadows the poets of his generation. He is Chaucer to the Gower of Betjeman and the Langland of MacNeice." -- Michael Schmidt

"Then, in June 1933, Auden experienced what he later called a 'Vision of Agape'. He was sitting on a lawn with three colleagues from the school where he was teaching, when, he wrote, 'quite suddenly and unexpectedly, something happened. I felt myself invaded by a power which, though I consented to it, was irresistible and certainly not mine. For the first time in my life I knew exactly - because, thanks to the power, I was doing it - what it meant to love one's neighbor as oneself.' Before this, his poems had only been able to celebrate moments of impersonal erotic intensity, which he called 'love'. Now, in the poem 'Out on the lawn I lie in bed,' prompted by his vision, he had praise for everything around him." -- Edward Mendelson (More on that poem and the moment that inspired it here)

More information on Auden here.

Cassavetes and Garland

A great photo.

Thank you, Kerry

Another National Anthem clip. Brought tears to my eyes. I love how the girl in the middle never moves her left hand, no gestures, nothing - it's sort of frozen in a little attitude, she's focused on her singing. Brava.

The Books: "Birds of America" - 'Community Life' (Lorrie Moore)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves:

Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore. Excerpt from the story 'Community Life'.

Lorrie Moore has a way of skewering certain pretensions ... she pulls no punches, and yet somehow it doesn't come across as vicious, or agenda-driven. It just seems amusing. The way you suddenly find yourself in the midst of a group of people who REALLY take themselves seriously ... and sure, sometimes it's enraging ... but most of the time (at least for someone like myself) - its more AMUSING than anything else. I suppose that's because I love the human animal, in all its bizarre forms - and everything is fodder. If you get into a constant state of rolling your eyes in contempt at your fellow man ... well, that might make YOU feel better, and superior - but then you become part of the problem. A bigger problem, in my opinion. I refer fondly to such types as "blights upon the earth", but let's move on. My point is: Lorrie Moore definitely does not sugarcoat these issues, and she doesn't hold back from making fun of people ... it's her touch that I appreciate. It's not what I would call a light touch ... but somehow it doesn't have that underlying viciousness that so turns me off. What happens in this story - 'Community Life' - is that Olena is a Romanian woman, who is now living in Vermont. She's not a recent immigrant, although she still speaks Romanian ... and doesn't quite understand what it is driving the people around her. She is dating a guy named Nick - who is an activist. Doesn't matter for what cause. He's a professional activist. He is on committees, and neighborhood boards, he goes to meetings, he talks about "issues" - it's all very Vermont-ish. Lorrie Moore obviously has opinions about people who spend all their time trying to make OTHER people's lives better ... she's one of the LEAST earnest writers I know. She's more selfish. Like most artists. She's interested in the subjective. And so she looks at people, the do-gooders, I guess you'd call them - and she doesn't despise them, or have contempt for them ... it's just that her characters don't "get" it. They aren't "on board". Olena goes to meetings with her boyfriend, and finds herself in the midst of all this busy-ness, this "activisim" - and feels like a total foreigner. She has other concerns. Like her problems with her boyfriend. Other things. This sense of "community life" - you know, that everything has to be put up for a vote, everything must be discussed and hashed over in an exhaustive manner ... Olena thinks everyone is nuts. She cracks jokes. Someone comes up to her and makes some earnest comment, and Olena responds with a stupid pun, or a corny joke. She is not accepted - because one of the primary concerns of this kind of "community" is that everyone take themselves seriously, and everyone must be serious about the "issues". Olena is a librarian. An intellectual. An introvert. Not really into sitting around in big groups, dealing with "community life" on a daily basis.

The following is an excerpt that perfectly shows Moore's "touch" here. Like I said, it's not a light touch - notice how she comments on what there is to eat at such meetings ... I mean, come ON!! - but somehow the overall effect is comedic. And I'm not quite on Olena's side, because I don't quite know her yet ... but I do know that I am interested in her response, her baffled response to the earnest community. Nothing worse than being earnest and having the feeling that someone might be making fun of you for it. Olena looks around at all this participatory democracy stuff, and feels exhausted by it. It's hysterical.

EXCERPT FROM Birds of America, from the story 'Community Life'.

The fund-raiser was in the upstairs room of a local restaurant called Dutch's. She paid ten dollars, went in, and ate a lot of raw cauliflower and hummus before she saw Nick back in a far corner, talking to a woman in jeans and a brown blazer. She was the sort of woman that Nick might twist around to look at in restaurants: fiery auburn hair cut bluntly in a pageboy. She had a pretty face, but the hair was too severe, too separate and tended to. Olena herself had long, disorganized hair, and she wore it pulled back messily in a clip. When she reached up to wave to Nick, and he looked away without acknowledging her, back toward the auburn pageboy, Olena kept her hand up and moved it back, to fuss with the clip. She would never fit in here, she thought. Not among these jolly, activist-clerk types. She preferred the quiet poet-clerks of the library. They were delicate and territorial, intellectual, and physically unwell. They sat around at work, thinking up Tom Swifties: I have to go to the hardware store, he said wrenchingly.

Would you like a soda? he asked spritely.

They spent weekends at the Mayo Clinic. "An amusement park for hypochondriacs," said a cataloger named Sarah. "A cross between Lourdes and The New Price Is Right," said someone else named George. These were the people she liked: the kind you couldn't really live with.

She turned to head toward the ladies' room and bumped into Ken. He gave her a hug hello, and then whispered in her ear, "You live with Nick. Help us think of an issue. I need another issue."

"I'll get you one at the issue store," she said, and pulled away as someone approached him with a heartily extended hand and a false, booming "Here's the man of the hour." In the bathroom, she stared at her own reflection: in an attempt at extroversion, she had worn a tunic with large slices of watermelon depicted on the front. What had she been thinking>

She went into the stall and slid the bolt shut. She read the graffiti on the back of the door. Anita loves David S. Or Christ + Diane W. It was good to see that even in a town like this, people could love one another.

"Who were you talking to?" she asked him later at home.

"Who? What do you mean?"

"The one with the plasticine hair."

"Oh, Erin? She does look like she does something to her hair. It looks like she hennas it."

"It looks like she tacks it against the wall and stands underneath it."

"She's head of the Bayre Corners Neighborhood Association. Come September, we're really going to need her endorsement."

Olena sighed, looked away.

"It's the democratic process," said Nick.

"I'd rather have a king and queen," she said.

The following Friday, the night of the Fish Fry Fund-raiser at the Labor Temple, was the night Nick slept with Erin of the Bayre Corners Neighborhood Association. He arrived back home at seven in the morning and confessed to Olena, who, when Nick hadn't come home, had downed half a packet of Dramamine to get to sleep.

"I'm sorry," he said, his head in his hands. "It's a sixties thing."

"A sixties thing?" She was fuzzy, zonked from the Dramamine.

"You get all involved in a political event, and you find yourself sleeping together. She's from that era, too. It's also that, I don't know, she just seems to really care about her community. She's got this reaching, expressive side to her. I got caught up in that." He was sitting down, leaning forward on his knees, talking to his shoes. The electric fan was blowing on him, moving his hair gently, like weeds in water.

"A sixties thing?" Olena repeated. "A sixties thing, what is that - like 'Easy To Be Hard'?" It was the song she remembered best. But now something switched off in her. The bones in her chest hurt. Even the room seemed changed - brighter and awful. Everything had fled, run away to become something else. She started to perspire under her arms and her face grew hot. "You're a murderer," she said. "That's finally what you are. That's finally what you'll always be." She began to weep so loudly that Nick got up, closed the windows. Then he sat down and held her - who else was there to hold her? - and she held him back.