July 31, 2008
The Book Inscriptions Project
I know I've posted a link to this site before, but here it is again. I love everything about it. It makes me aware of the fragility of the moment, of our ties to one another, but it also is one of those wonderful sites that celebrate the evidence we leave behind. I have a ton of books from my first boyfriend - and we would always leave notes of significance in the front pages. These act as ghost-stories now ... they almost seem written in code. I've lost the key. But at the time, they were potent. I also love the images of the book covers. I have bought books because of the inscriptions (this one is probably my most treasured - mainly because it is the oldest) - but I love them all. Fragments of relationships, gifts, private messages ... captured in the first pages of a book, and now captured in the Book Inscriptions Project. What also strikes me - when I flip through the archives, reading them all - is the generosity of everyone. The need to give something to someone: "here, you might like this", "read this and thought of you", "this book reminded me of you ..." Note after note after note. It's a really special site.
The Books: "By Myself" (Lauren Bacall)
Farewell, fiction bookshelves! Actually, there are already many fiction books I have bought since I started the excerpts that I didn't include because I hadn't read them yet (but now I have) ... so the book excerpt thing I do on my blog is one of those things that will keep on giving. I'll swoop back around and do my fiction bookshelves again at some point, picking up the ones I didn't feature before. But for now - we reached the end. There's still so much to do and it makes my OCD self really happy!! I decided to totally switch it up and move to my shelf that has biographies and autobiographies of famous entertainers - actors, directors, writers ... Should be fun! As should be obvious by now, I don't have a lot of random books on my shelves that I am either indifferent to or I haven't read. Most books I own I have read, and most books I am keeping for a reason.
My "entertainment biography" bookshelf is a goldmine. I dip into it all the time. For my film reviews, for my writings on specific actors or directors - I cross-reference events (oh, so Howard Hawks said that shoot was THIS way, what did Katharine Hepburn say?) - it's a true library, and I cherish it. Almost as much as I cherish my US Presidents/US history library.
So, onto the first book on my "entertainment biography" shelf:
By Myself
The first of her three autobiographies. She wrote every word. You can tell. You can hear her voice. This is my favorite of the three. Lauren Bacall grew up in a Jewish family in New York, with a powerful mother - lots of powerful women in the family - and very early on, it was discovered she had an aptitude for this acting thing. She was obsessed with movies, Bette Davis in particular (and there are VERY funny stories of her and a girlfriend cutting class to go sit in the balcony of a movie theatre to watch a Bette Davis movie, and they would sit up there and "cry and smoke".) There is also a very funny story of how she basically stalked Bette Davis, and ended up alone with her in an elevator, quaking in her shoes. Now things happened quickly for "Betty" Bacall - after all, she made her debut (perhaps one of the most spectacular movie debuts of all time) at 19 in To Have and Have Not. There's a sense of destiny about it. Bacall was studying dancing and acting, she was in class with Kirk Douglas - a young hottie - (I love, too, how boy-crazy Lauren was - and still is ... she loves men ... but it's also amazing, when you see that performance in To Have and Have Not, and all its subtle sexy knowingness - to know that it was a virgin playing that role. An untouched teenager. What?? Howard Hawks really COACHED her ... and so did Bogie ... but lots of people are "coached" and the results come out stilted, they look coached. That role looks natural. She was an amazing study.) Bacall did some modeling, nothing big, mainly trying on clothes for people in private rooms in Loew's and things like that - and somehow she came to the attention of the powerful and innovative Diana Vreeland. Vreeland put Bacall on the cover of Harper's Bazaar:
Pretty striking, isn't it? That cover was what caught the attention of Slim Hawks, gorgeous elegant wife of director Howard Hawks, out in Hollywood. Slim Hawks said, "You need to look at this girl." She knew the "type" of girl Howard liked, and that sullen-eyed red-lipped girl was it. Look at that cover. If you know the style of the day, the magazine cover style, then it will be immediately apparent that the Bacall cover of Harper's Bazaar was something different entirely. The photo was about HER and the flat look in her eyes - a look that predicts the "runway walk" expression of models today (but not at all models then). That photo is way ahead of its time. Models, then, were more often than not personality-less. Supermodel-mania was far in the future ... but Vreeland took Bacall and brought out her personality ... It wasn't about showcasing the CLOTHES ... it was about the face, and the look in Bacall's eyes. Bacall never felt she was any good as a model, because she was too skinny. But Vreeland wasn't interested (in that cover anyway) in having a bodacious girl in a push-up bra showing off the latest fashions. There stood teenager Betty Bacall, staring directly at you, shadowy figures behind the glass wall, serious, doing something else other than run-of-the-mill modeling. Without that Harper's Bazaar cover, none of her career would have been possible. Howard Hawks took notice. He wanted to be a Svengali - he wanted to 'create' his type of woman (more on the "Howard Hawks woman" here) and he wanted to do so from scratch. If he could pluck someone from obscurity, and tell her how to dress, how to walk, how to react ... he could then have the ideal woman for his very specific pictures about the male-female dynamic. Lauren Bacall was the one. Hawks contacted her, flew her out to Hollywood (she was, what, 17?? Never been away from home - it was a huge deal) - met with her, had her spend time with his wife Slim (because he basically wanted Bacall to BE his wife), and did some screen tests with her. Howard Hawks put Lauren Bacall under contract with him. He OWNED her. So no, she didn't immediately go to work at the studios, playing small parts, or walk-ons, or bit roles - like every other starlet. Hawks held her back, until the time was right. He had her try on clothes, he had her work on her speech, he manipulated EVERYTHING about her. Bacall barely knew what hit her. Hawks was thinking, thinking, thinking ... what male would be good to pair his new creation with? What actor would showcase her perfectly? He said to Bacall, "I am thinking of putting you in a movie with either Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart." Bacall, ever the boy-crazy teenager, thought to herself feverishly, "Oh please let it be Cary Grant!!" We don't always know what's best for us.
To Have and Have Not is based on an unsuccessful Hemingway novel - and one drunken afternoon in Florida, Hemingway had said to Hawks, "I bet you can't make a movie from my worst novel!" Hawks, always a gambler, said, "You're on." Hawks engaged the services of William Faulker to do the screenplay (so that makes To Have and Have Not the only film where two Nobel Prize winners are listed as the authors) ... To Have and Have Not was the result. Hawks switched up the original story, placed it in a different setting, punched up the romance ... you know, basically took all the elements and made them "Hawks"-ian. And he cast Lauren Bacall as "Slim" (huh! Her name is Slim in the flim - imagine that!!) - the hustler stranded on the island, who ends up involved with Steve, played by Humphrey Bogart. "Slim" is a woman on her own, with a shady past, we aren't clear why she is in that hotel - but we do know she can't leave, because she has no money. So she strolls through the piano bar, chatting up men, and stealing their wallets. It would be difficult to overstate what a "good girl" Lauren Bacall was, in real life. I love that performance of hers - because it is so striking, so specific - and it is NOTHING like who she is in real life. It's "acting". Terrific performance.
Humphrey Bogart was married at the time, to a hellcat named Mayo Methot - and the relationship was volatile, with the two of them beating the crap out of each other (literally) on a nightly drunken basis. It was a notorious relationship, and she sounds truly unstable, probably as a result of alcoholism. It was his third marriage, so Bogart obviously did not have a good track record.
Lauren Bacall, obsessed as she was with pleasing Mr. Hawks, did not at first consider Bogart as anything other than a giant movie star - who was very kind to her on her first big picture. But soon ... very soon ... as the filming went on, other things began to creep into their relationship. Bogart was much older than she, she was basically untouched - maybe she had kissed Kirk Douglas as a kid, because they went to high school together and dated a bit ... but the difference between Bogart and Bacall was enormous. That was probably part of the attraction for Bogart, trapped as he was in a marriage with a used-up bitter woman. Who was this fresh-faced skinny kid? This funny fabulous girl from New York? He was from New York, too. Who knows. Anyway. They began a romance, Bogart began divorce proceedings - and they were married soon after To Have and Have Not and the rest is history.
Bacall's book details her life, through these ups and downs, with an emotional clarity and immediacy that I found compulsively readable. She can write. It's not just a "tell all" ... she doesn't reveal too much, she keeps some things private - which I very much respect ... and the snapshots she gives of all of these people I have heard so much about, Hawks, Slim Hawks, Bogart ... make indelible impressions. The book was a smash success - it won a National Book Award in 1980. Bacall, with her reverence for writers, said that that award meant more to her than any of her acting accolades put together. Brava.
Here's an excerpt. It involves the shooting To Have and Have Not.
EXCERPT FROM By Myself
One day a couple of weeks before the picture was to start, I was about to walk into Howard's office when Humphrey Bogart came walking out. He said, "I just saw your test. We'll have a lot of fun together." Howard told me Bogart had truly liked the test and would be very helpful to me.
I kept Mother up to date on developments, sending lists of people to call with the news - Diana Vreeland, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Nicky de Gunzburg, Tim Brooke - with instructions to keep it to themselves. I couldn't write to anyone - only Mother!
Call Fred Spooner - tell him I saved $48 this week and will try to do the same next week. Had to spend $20 on a new clutch for my car ... Send me slacks ... Send me this - that - everything ... Sat opposite Bette Davis in the Greenroom the other day - she stared at me - maybe she thought I looked familiar - Ha! Ha! Went to dinner and to see Casablanca! - watching Bogie [whom I barely knew]. The picture isn't scheduled to start until Tuesday now - but frankly I don't think it'll begin until a week from tomorrow [that would be the next Monday]. They have to change the locale from Cuba to Martinique. Political difficulties, because as it stands now, characters and story don't reflect too well on Cuba. Have been working hard at the studio every day. I think I'm going to do my own singing! [I'd been having singing lessons every day.]
The picture didn't begin until the following Tuesday. I had tested the wardrobe - hair - makeup. Sid Hickox had photographed them with Howard present, experimenting as he went, as Howard wanted me to look in the movie.
Walter Brennan had been cast in a large part, Marcel Dalio, Walter Surovy (Rise Stevens' husband), Sheldon Leonard, Dan Seymour - of course Hoagy. I went into the set the first day of shooting to see Howard and Bogart - I would not be working until the second day. Bogart's wife, Mayo Methot, was there - he introduced us. I talked to Howard, watched for a while, and went home to prepare me for my own first day.
It came and I was ready for a straitjacket. Howard had planned to do a single scene that day - my first in the picture. I walked to the door of Bogart's room, said, "Anybody got a match?", leaned against the door, and Bogart threw me a small box of matches. I lit my cigarette, looking at him, said, "Thanks," threw the matches back to him, and left. Well - we rehearsed it. My hand was shaking - my head was shaking - the cigarette was shaking. I was mortified. The harder I tried to stop, the more I shook. What must Howard be thinking? What must Bogart be thinking? What must the crew be thinking? Oh, God, make it stop! I was in such pain.
Bogart tried to joke me out of it - he was quite aware that I was a new young thing who knew from nothing and was scared to death. Finally Howard thought we could try a take. Silence on the set. The bell rang. "Quiet - we're rolling," said the sound man. "Action," said Howard. This was for posterity, I thought - for real theatres, for real people to see. I came around the corner, said my first line, and Howard said, "Cut." He had broken the scene up - the first shot ended after the first line. The second set-up was the rest of it - then he'd move in for close-ups. By the end of the third or fourth take, I realized that one way to hold my trembling head still was to keep it down, chin low, almost to my chest, and eyes up at Bogart. It worked, and turned out to be the beginning of "The Look".
I found out very quickly that day what a terrific man Bogart was. He did everything possible to put me at ease. He was on my side. I felt safe - I still shook, but I shook less. He was not even remotely a flirt. I was, but I didn't flirt with him. There was much kidding around - our senses of humor went well together. Bogie's idea, of course, was that to make me laugh would relax me. He was right to a point, but nothing on earth would have relaxed me completely!
The crew were wonderful - fun and easy. It was a very happy atmosphere. I would often go to lunch with HOward. One day he told me he was very happy with the way I was working, but that I must remain somewhat aloof from the crew. Barbara Stanwyck, whom he thought very highly of - he'd made Ball of Fire with her, a terrific movie - was always fooling around with the crew, and he thought it a bad idea. "They don't like you any better for it. When you finish a scene, go back to your dressing room. Don't hang around the set - don't give it all away - save it for the scenes." He wanted me in a cocoon, only to emerge for work. Bogart could fool around to his heart's content - he was a star and a man - "though you notice he doesn't do too much of it."
One day at lunch when Howard was mesmerizing me with himself and his plans for me, he said, "Do you notice how noisy it is in here suddenly? That's because Leo Forbstein just walked in - Jews always make more noise." I felt that I was turning white, but I said nothing. I was afraid to - a side of myself I have never liked or been proud of - a side that was always there. Howard didn't dwell on it ever, but clearly he had very definite ideas about Jews - none too favorable, though he did business with them. They paid him - they were good for that. I would have to tell him about myself eventually or he'd find out through someone else. When the time came, what would happen would happen, but I had no intention of pushing it.
Howard started to line up special interviews for me. Nothing big would be released until just before the picture, and everything would be chosen with the greatest care. Life, Look, Kyle Crichton for Collier's, Pic, Saturday Evening Post. Only very special fan magazines. Newspapers. I probably had more concentrated coverage than any beginning young actress had ever had - due to Hawks, not me.
Hoagy Carmichael had written a song called "Baltimore Oriole". Howard was going to use it as my theme music in the movie - every time I appeared on screen there were to be strains of that song. He thought it would be marvelous if I could be always identified with it - appear on Bing Crosby's or Bob Hope's radio show, have the melody played, have me sing it, finally have me known as the "Baltimore Oriole". What a fantastic fantasy life Howard must have had! His was a glamorous, mysterious, tantalizing vision - but it wasn't me.
On days I didn't have lunch with Howard, I would eat with another actor or the publicity man or have a sandwich in my room or in the music department during a voice lesson. I could not sit at a table alone. Bogie used to lunch at the Lakeside Golf Club, which was directly across the road from the studio.
One afternoon I walked into Howard's bungalow, and found a small, gray-haired, mustached, and attractive man stretched out on the couch with a book in his hand and a pipe in his mouth. That man was William Faulkner. He was contributing to the screenplay. Howard loved Faulkner - they had known each other a long time, had hunted together. Faulkner never had much money and Howard would always hire him for a movie when he could. He seldom came to the set - he was very shy - he liked it better in Howard's office.
Howard had a brilliantly creative work method. Each morning when we got to the set, he, Bogie, and I and whoever else might be in the scene, and the script girl woudl sit in a circle in canvas chairs with our names on them and read the scene. Almost unfailingly Howard would bring in additional dialogue for the scenes of sex and innuendo between Bogie and me. After we'd gone over the words several times and changed whatever Bogie or Howard thought should be changed, Howard would ask an electrician for a work light - one light on the set - and we'd go through the scene on the set to see how it felt. Howard said, "Move around - see where it feels most comfortable." Only after all that had been worked out did he call Sid Hickox and talk about camera set-ups. It is the perfect way for movie actors to work, but of course it takes time.
After about two weeks of shooting I wrote to my mother - she'd read one or two things in newspapers about my not having the first lead opposite Bogart -
Please, darling, don't worry about what is written in the newspapers concerning first and second leads. You make me so goddamn mad - what the hell difference does it make? As long as when the public sees the picture they know that I'm the one who is playing opposite Bogart. Everything is working out beautifully for me. Howard told Charlie the rushes were sensational. He's really very thrilled with them. I'm still not used to my face, however. Bogie has been a dream man. We have the most wonderful times together. I'm insane about him. We kid around - he's always gagging - trying to break me up and is very, very fond of me. So if I were you, I'd thank my lucky stars, as I am doing and not worry about those unimportant things. The only thing that's important is that I am good in the picture and the public likes me.
July 30, 2008
I kinda can't even express ...
... how much I am looking forward to reading this book. I am frothing at the mouth.
(Also, gotta say: I'm in heaven. Evelyn Waugh is EVERYWHERE now. Have you noticed?? Not a day goes by that there isn't SOME op-ed or article or book review about him. Thrilling!)
Yeah, whatevs.
I'm just chillin'. I don't know what's so out-of-the-ordinary about that. I don't know why you have to point that THING at me so incessantly when all I am doing is taking my 11th nap of the day!
Alex and Chrisanne:
The earthquake story - a relationship in microcosm.
I was racing around the house like the Road Runner.“Hide between the coffee table and the couch, Meep Meep! Hide between the coffee table and the couch, Meep Meep!”
I tend to panic in life threatening situations.
In my defense, this was a quote from a letter we received only months ago from my Aunt and Uncle who live in Huntington Beach on “How To Survive An Earthquake And Not Die”. Chrisanne, of course, not only read this thing from top to bottom, but since that day has packed the trunk of the car with supplies: water, canteens, sleeping bags, blankets, tool kits, and if I’m not mistaken, a mechanic named Tony. We’re not only set for an earthquake, we’re set for a trip to the Himalayas.
The Books: "The Bonfire of the Vanities" (Tom Wolfe)
Unbelievably, Bonfire of the Vanities is my last book on my adult fiction shelf. I have been working on "this shelf" since April 9, 2007 - when I started off with Hitchhiker's Guide. April 9, 2007! What - am I nuts? Where the hell did the time go?? And now I've gone through the alphabet and I am at the last book of this particular "genre". Which shelf will we go to next? Will it be memoir? Poetry? Biography? Literary analysis? Acting textbooks? Wouldn't you like to know.
For now: Next book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:
The Bonfire of the Vanities
It's a rare book that is an event. I remember when Bonfire of the Vanities came out - I remember reading it with my boyfriend, neck and neck - I remember everyone - EVERYONE - talking about it. It was an event. A zeitgeist moment. A truth-telling bolt from the heavens, truths that lots of people didn't want to hear. It appeared to tell us what was happening as it was happening ... Lots of books try to do that, and some books do do that but don't hit the public in the sweet spot that turns it into an event. Bonfire of the Vanities hit the sweet (tender, angry, overly sensitive, paranoid) spot. I can't think of another book in recent years that has done such a thing. At least not a fiction book. It was one of those events that, at the time, i just felt I had to participate in. Whether or not I liked the book was irrelevant. If everyone - and I mean EVERYONE - was talking about it, then I had to get in on the action. To be honest, Bonfire of the Vanities is not really my cup of tea, in terms of fiction. But at the time of its release, personal preference also became irrelevant. I had to read it. It was about "how we live now".
New York City has always been in my life. I have always known people who lived here, and as a kid would take trips down to visit my aunt. This was the late 70s. New York in the late 70s was not the mall-ed out Disneyfied New York that you see now, set up to make tourists feel comfortable and cozy. New York was the wild west. I saw my first penis on one of those trips, because a homeless man walked right up to me and whipped it out. Yeah, I'm 10 years old, douchebag, get the fuck away from me. The subways were covered in grafitti - which gave them a strangely violent and anarchic look - God, remember that? The lunatics had taken over the asylum. People jumped the turnstiles all around you. If you were in New York in the 70s, then you know this is true, and how widespread it was. You'd go up to the turnstiles with your token and all around you people were hurdling through the air over them. There was no police presence that you could feel. If you followed the rules and DIDN'T jump the turnstiles, it was only because you were determined to maintain your OWN sense of morality, in the midst of a crime-ridden atmosphere. I could totally have jumped the turnstiles myself (or crawled under them, as a 10 year old). 8th Avenue was lined with peep shows and hookers and live go-go dancers. When I moved to New York, in 1995, 42nd Street was still in the grip of that past ... The Lion King hadn't moved in yet (although it was about to), and that theatre, the building of that theatre by Disney, was going to change everything. In 1995, the buildings were baroque, cobbled together, many of them boarded up, because the peep shows were already being zoned out of the neighborhood. But nothing had come in to replace them yet. So 42nd Street. A major tourist attraction. Looked like a deserted movie set on some dusty backlot. Imagine that. I try to imagine the throngs of tourists on 42nd Street today, going into the Applebee's that is there (gross), or the Chevy's ... I try to imagine them dealing with that urban desolation that had no interest whatsoever in making THEM feel comfortable. That's the New York I grew up with. I still loved it. In fact, I loved it BECAUSE it felt dangerous. Yeah, whatever, I'll pay lip service to cleaning up the streets, but I didn't move here to live in Disneyland. I miss the hookers, frankly. I miss the smut. (Thank God I was able to capture the last gasp of it before it was torn down - one of my favorite buildings on 8th Avenue). As a kid, I didn't understand the smut - I just knew that "ladies" were on the street barely wearing any clothes. But of course I didn't hang out on 8th Avenue. My aunt took me to Broadway shows, we went to the Metropolitan Museum, she took me to Central Park. All of THOSE areas were fine for a child to be in, but on the fringes, was an obviously criminal element - which threatened to overrun the social order. You could feel it. Like I said: the subways were COVERED in grafitti, much of it spectacularly sophisticated art. Beautiful. But that wasn't art sponsored by some corporation. That wasn't art that came out of some city-wide initiative. That was done on someone's own time, with their own materials, in the dead of night. Even as a kid, you could just sense that.
The Bonfire of the Vanities is not so much about the New York of the 70s, but the New York of the flush materialistic 80s - HOWEVER: the fringes of the 70s still existed, which is what made New York during that decade so freaky. In the 70s, everyone was broke. But in the 80s came the "yuppies", and the new money - but 8th Avenue remained the same (and the folks on 8th Avenue probably made a nice buck too, because people had MORE money to spend on hookers and peep shows). So there was this huge weird gap - and if you were in New York in the 80s, you'll know how strange it was. All bubbles burst. And that was a huge bubble - unreal, with its own rules, not meant to last. The Central Park jogger incident happened in 1989 - 2 years after Wolfe's book came out -and that was an event, too, that told the lie about how "safe" New York had become - New York "seemed" safe (although it never ever seemed safe to me, still doesn't) - but it "seemed" safe to those who didn't know better - It "seemed" safe because Wall Street was doing great, and MBAs from around the country were now flocking there, fresh-faced and full of senses of entitlement. The Central Park jogger case was the end-moment of that Zeitgeist - 1989 was the beginning of that bubble bursting ... and Wolfe was writing about the mid-80s, the true insanity of a world living by its own rules, the enormous gap between the Sherman McCoys and the folks hanging around the courtroom in the Bronx ... It was a third world kind of gap. Insane. Like I said, you could FEEL it when you were there at the time. In many cities, the segregation (not racial, but economic) is so acute that sometimes you are unable to sense where the hell all the poor people are. In New York, you always knew.
Tom Wolfe deserves a more in-depth post but for now, I'll just leave it at that. I like knowing he's around. I like knowing what he's thinking about. I also like the fearless truth-telling in the book, whether it's in the racist epithets thrown around by, uhm, mostly everybody - the casual misogyny at the higher levels of society - the observations of the beginning of the tabloid frenzy that was taking over the national consciousness - and the fact that everybody hates everybody else. BUT: somehow, even with all that, the social order is maintained. Wops, spics, Kikes, we all manage to get along, even if we hate each other, because this is America, and whatever, we can't legislate being an ASSHOLE out of existence. It is only when Sherman McCoy, Master of the Universe, meets his destiny on a dark scary night on the Cross Bronx Expressway - that the hatreds are given an opportunity to express themselves, and become irreconcilable. The fans flamed higher and brighter by opportunists like the Al Sharpton-type character ... there are those who have a vested interest in all of us NOT getting along. Because if we all decided to 'get along' (even though we fucking hate each other deep down) - then that person would be out of a goddamn job.
It's a cynical book. There is no hope or redemption (which is why the movie, with its casting of Morgan Freeman as the judge - was so cautious and fearful. Nope. The second you cast HIM as the judge, just admit that you aren't doing Tom Wolfe's book. I don't know what the hell you're doing, but it's not THAT). Nobody is exempt. Tom Wolfe is an equal-opportunity hater, like Jonathan Swift. Any time you think he's about to make some point that lets someone off the hook - any time you think you can relax and go, "Oh, okay, he's saying MY side is LESS of an asshole" he'll pull a jujitsu move, leaving you high and dry. It's a coincidence that the following entry ends with a praise of Irish courage. With Tom Wolfe, you can never relax. Besides, he's ALSO saying that the Irish are animals. So seriously, if you think that's "praise", you're nuts.
I haven't read this book since it first came out. Many of the scenes are emblazoned in my brain forever. It's just that kind of book. The characters are archetypes - in their own weird way - and stand, immobile, as the forces of the late 20th century whirl around them, knocking them this way, that.
I wanted to pick a section of the book that highlighted Tom Wolfe's ear for dialogue, New York-ese in particular. So here it is.
EXCERPT FROM The Bonfire of the Vanities
Kramer and Andriutti were of the new generation, in which the terms triceps, deltoids, latissima dorsae, and pectoralis major were better known than the names of the major planets. Andriutti rubbed his triceps a hundred and twenty times a day, on the average.
Still rubbing them, Andriutti looked at Kramer as he walked in and said: "Jesus Christ, here comes the bag lady. What the hell is this fucking A&P bag, Larry? You been coming in here with this fucking bag every day this week." Then he turned to Jimmy Caughey and said, "Looks like a fucking bag lady."
Caughey was also a jock, but more the Triathlon type, with a narrow face and a long chin. He just smiled at Kramer, as much as to say, "Well, what do you say to that?"
Kramer said, "Your arm itch, Ray?" Then he looked at Caughey and said, "Ray's got this fucking allergy. It's called weight lifter's disease." Then he turned back to Andriutti. "Itches like a sonofabitch, don't it?"
Andriutti let his hand drop off his triceps. "And what are these jogging shoes?" he said to Kramer. "Looks like those girls walking to work at Merrill Lynch. All dressed up, and they got these fucking rubber gunboats on their feet."
"What the hell is in that bag?" said Caughey.
"My high heels," said Kramer. He took off his jacket and jammed it down, give-a-shit, on a coatrack hook in the accepted fashion and pulled down his necktie and unbuttoned his shirt and sat down in his swivel chair and opened up the shopping bag and fished out his Johnston & Murphy brown leather shoes and started taking off his Nikes.
"Jimmy," Andriutti said to Caughey, "did you know that Jewish guys - Larry, I don't want you to take this personally - did you know that Jewish guys, even if they're real stand-up guys, all have one faggot gene? That's a well-known fact. They can't stand going out in the rain without an umbrella or they have all this modern shit in their apartment or they don't like to go hunting or they're for the fucking nuclear freeze and affirmative action or they wear jogging shoes to work or some goddamn thing. You know?"
"Gee," said Kramer, "I don't know why you thought I'd take it personally."
"Come on, Larry," said Andriutti, "tell the truth. Deep down, don't you wish you were Italian or Irish?"
"Yeah," said Kramer, "that way I wouldn't know what the fuck was going on in this fucking place."
Caughey started laughing. "Well, don't let Ahab see those shoes, Larry. He'll have Jeanette issue a fucking memorandum."
"No, he'll call a fucking press conference," said Andriutti.
"That's always a safe fucking bet."
And so another fucking day in the fucking Homicide Bureau of the Bronx Fucking District Attorney's Office was off to a fucking start.
An assistant D.A. in Major Offenses had started calling Abe Weiss "Captain Ahab", and now they all did. Weiss was notorious in his obsession for publicity, even among a breed, the district attorney, that was publicity-mad by nature. Unlike the greaet D.A.s of yore, such as Frank Hogan, Burt Roberts, or Mario Merola, Weiss never went near a courtroom. He didn't have time. There were only so many hours in the day for him to stay in touch with Channels 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, and 11 and the New York Daily News, the Post, The City Lights, and the Times.
Jimmy Caughey said, "I was just in seeing the captain. You shoulda--"
"You were? What for?" asked Kramer with just a shade too much curiosity and incipient envy in his voice.
"Me and Bernie," said Caughey. "He wanted to know about the Moore case."
"Any good?"
"Piece a shit," said Caughey. "This fucking guy Moore, he has a big house in Riverdale, and his wife's mother lives there with 'em, and she's been giving him a hard time for about thirty-seven fucking years, right? So this guy, he loses his job. He's working for one a these reinsurance companies, and he's making $200,000 or $300,000 a year, and now he's out a work for eight or nine months, and nobody'll hire him, and he don't know what the hell to do, right? So one day he's puttering around out in the garden, and the mother-in-law comes out and says, 'Well, water seeks its own level.' That's a verbatim quote. 'Water seeks its own level. You oughta get a job as a gardener.' So this guy, he's out of his fucking mind, he's so mad. He goes in and tells his wife, 'I've had it with your mother. I'm gonna get my shotgun and scare her.' So he goes up to his bedroom, where he keeps this 12-gauge shotgun, and he comes downstairs and heads for the mother-in-law, and he's gonna scare the shit out of her, and he said, 'Okay, Gladys,' and he trips on the rug, and the gun goes off and kills her, and - ba-bing! - Murder Two."
"Why was Weiss interested?"
"Well, the guy's white, he's got some money, he lives in a big house in Riverdale. It looks at first like maybe he's gonna fake an accidental shooting."
"Is that possible?"
"Naw. Fucking guy's one a my boys. He's your basic Irish who made good, but he's still a Harp. He's drowning in remorse. You'd think he'd shot his own mother, he feels so fucking guilty. Right now he'd confess to anything. Bernie could sit him in front of the videocamera and clean up every homicide in the Bronx for the past five years. Naw, it's a piece of shit, but it looked good at first."
Kramer and Andriutti contemplated this piece a shit without needing any amplification. Every assistant D.A. in the Bronx, from the youngest Italian just out of St. John's Law School to the oldest Irish bureau chief, who would be somebody like Bernie Fitzgibbon, who was forty-two, shared Captain Ahab's mania for the Great White Defendant. For a start, it was not pleasant to go through life telling yourself, "What I do for a living is, I pack blacks and Latins off to jail." Kramer had been raised as a liberal. In Jewish families like his, liberalism came with the Similac and the Mott's apple juice and the Instamatic and Daddy's grins in the evening. And even the Italians, like Ray Andriutti, and the Irish, like Jimmy Caughey, who were not exactly burdened with liberalism by their parents, couldn't help but be affected by the mental atmosphere of the law schools, where, for one thing, there were so many Jewish faculty members. By the time you finished law school in the New York area, it was, well ... impolite! ... on the ordinary social level ... to go around making jokes about the yoms. It wasn't that it was morally wrong ... It was that it was in bad taste. So it made the boys uneasy, this eternal prosecution of the blacks and Latins.
Not that they weren't guilty. One thing Kramer had learned within two weeks as an assistant D.A. in the Bronx was that 95 percent of the defendants who got as far as the indictment stage, perhaps 98 percent, were truly guilty. The caseload was so overwhelming, you didn't waste time trying to bring the marginal cases forward, unless the press was on your back. They hauled in guilt by the ton, those blue-and-orange vans out there on Walton Avenue. But the poor bastards behind the wire mesh barely deserved the term criminal, if by criminal you had in mind the romantic notion of someone who has a goal and seeks to achieve it through some desperate way outside the law. No, they were simpleminded incompetents, most of them, and they did unbelievably stupid, vile things.
Kramer looked at Andriutti and Caughey, sitting there with their mighty thighs akimbo. He felt superior to them. He was a graduate of the Columbia Law School, and they were both graduates of St. John's, widely known as the law school for the also-rans of college academic competition. And he was Jewish. Very early in life he had picked up the knowledge that the Italians and the Irish were animals. The Italians were pigs, and the Irish were mules or goats. He couldn't remember if his parents had actually used any such terms or not, but they got the idea across very closely. To his parents, New York City - New York? hell, the whole U.S., the whole world! - was a drama called The Jews Confront the Goyim, and the goyim were animals. And so what was he doing here with these animals? A Jew in the Homicide Bureau was a rare thing. The Homicide Bureau was the elite corps of the District Attorney's Office, the D.A.'s Marines, because homicide was the most serious of all crimes. An assistant D.A. in Homicide had to be able to go out on the street to the crime scenes at all hours, night and day, and be a real commando and rub shoulders with the police and know how to confront defendants and witnesses and intimidate them when the time came, and these were likely to be the lowest, grimmest, scurviest defendants and witnesses in the history of criminal justice. For fifty years, at least, maybe longer, Homicide had been an Irish enclave, although recently the Italians had made their way into it. The Irish had given Homicide their stamp. The Irish were stone courageous. Even when it was insane not to, they never stepped back. Andriutti had been right, or half right. Kramer didn't want to be Italian, but he did want to be Irish, and so did Ray Andriutti, the dumb fuck. Yes, they were animals! The goyim were animals, and Kramer was proud to be among the animals in the Homicide Bureau.
July 29, 2008
John Banville's alter ego
Amazing interview with John Banville in The Washington Post.
Banville fans know him well (he has passionate fans), and know that he also has been having a sort of catharsis - writing crime-noir books under the name Benjamin Black. Meanwhile, in his John Banville serious Irish literary persona, he won the Booker prize for The Sea in 2005. Since then, he has been writing noir thrillers under the name Benjamin Black and seems to be having a ball. FASCINATING. I am loving his journey - and all the interviews with him are very illuminating (he meditates for sometimes years over his "Banville books" - choosing every word, carefully ... he writes his Benjamin Black books in sometimes a couple of months). He's found it freeing.
I can't WAIT to read the two new Benjamin Black books. I loved Christine Falls
But the best thing about being a reader and a fan of his writing is that I don't have to choose. He is free to have a preference. But I get to eat it ALL up and that makes me happy.
It's rare that a writer comes along who actually excites. It all began with my dad's regard for Banville - Banville has always been on my radar because of his continuous presence on the bookshelves of my parents' house, and basically ... once you start paying attention, you will see that the name "John Banville" is everywhere. It was that way with my journey, too.
Here are a couple of my favorite excerpts from Wash Post article:
"You know, artists don't really have all that much experience of life. We make a huge amount out of the small experience that we do have."
I guess I just found that so ... encouraging. I've been having a lot of problems lately. I won't go into it. My life has been upended, and there are areas in my life where I have become paralyzed. To know that I can "make a huge amount out of the small experience" that I do have ... It just helped me to stay strong and know that I was (am) doing the right thing.
(Oh, and I LOVED his story about getting Dubliners
And here he is talking about The Sea
"It seems to me to be packed with plot," Banville says. "I don't know what they want in the way of plot. I really don't."
I'm with him on that one. What on earth do these people THINK is plot? Car crashes? Torrid love affairs? Political intrigue? To say that The Sea has "no plot" is to completely misunderstand what the damn word "plot" means.
Then, here he is on his "Benjamin Black persona" and how much he loves "being" Benjamin Black ... I don't know, this quote makes me laugh. It strikes me as particularly Irish, it's something I completely get:
"This, of course, is worrying. To enjoy writing is deeply worrying. I must be doing something wrong."
Keep on doing that wrong thing, Mr. Banville/Black. I'll follow you whereever.
Some of my posts on John Banville:
Excerpt from The Sea, by John Banville
John Banville:
Benjamin Black:
It's so hard to know what to do ...
... when the toy that has been tormenting you psychologically from all over the apartment, the toy you have been chewing on, batting about, chasing, ambushing ... is suddenly sitting there, ominously, BEHIND YOU.
How DARE that little ball just SIT THERE STARING AT ME like that? What nerve! What arrogance!
I will make it pay for its behavior.
I don't know how yet, but I will. Its days are numbered. But for now. I remain still. Coiled. Alert. Keeping that dastardly toy in my sight at all times because you just don't know WHAT will happen next in such a situation.
The Books: "Lighthousekeeping" (Jeanette Winterson)
Next book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:
Lighthousekeeping
After about a decade of reading books by Winterson that were a bit of a yawn, I tore through Lighthousekeeping like a crazy person. I read it WAY too fast ... much of it was lost to me ... But I couldn't contain myself. I was so excited. Here was a story that WASN'T the story of a love triangle (man, woman, redheaded woman) ... it was something different altogether. It did not (on the whole) get good reviews, and many of the criticisms are ones I have made myself. There is something repetitive about Winterson's work. She only has a couple of themes, and she keeps hashing them out. She is not, say, John Irving, or Annie Proulx - people who are interested in creating other human beings. Winterson doesn't do that. When she's at her best, she creates other memorable worlds and realities, set-pieces that stick in the brain and imagination. When she's at her worst, she drones on and on in overly poetic prose that can't ever be pinned down. Her books can feel like upended poems, fragments of verse - clipped together. It can be quite tiresome. Don't be mistaken: I don't look for Winterson to write a big novel like John Irving does, or Michael Chabon. That's not her thing. But sometimes I read her stuff and I wonder what it must have been like to have success come so early. To hit it as huge as Winterson did, so early on. Maybe she really does only have one story to tell. Who knows.
But I found Lighthousekeeping to be captivating. Here's the stunner of an opener, classic Winterson:
My mother called me Silver. I was born part precious metal part pirate.I have no father. There's nothing unusual about that - even children who do have fathers are often surprised to see them. My own father came out of the sea and went back that way. He was crew on a fishing boat that harboured with us one night when the waves were crashing like dark glass. His splintered hull shored him for long enough to drop anchor inside my mother.
Shoals of babies vied for life.
I won.
I lived in a house cut steep into the bank. The chairs had to be nailed to the floor, and we were never allowed to eat spaghetti. We ate food that stuck to the plate - shepherd's pie, goulash, risotto, scrambled egg. We tried peas once - what a disaster - and sometimes we still find them, dusty and green in the corners of the room.Some people are raised on a hill, others in the valley. Most of us are brought up on the flat. I came at life at an angle, and that's how I've lived ever since.
I don't know, I think that's pretty damn marvelous.
The orphaned girl of Lighthousekeeping is named Silver (same name as the heroine in Tanglewreck - excerpt here ... See, that's what I mean about the same-ness of Winterson's work ... she even repeats lines from story to story ... and it doesn't seem just like a personal lexicon. It sometimes feels like she has run out of invention. To me, "what you risk reveals what you value" BELONGS in The Passion (excerpt here), where it first appeared. It probably appears in 5 out of 6 of her books after that. Like: no, Jeanette! Don't do that! You're weakening it!!) Sorry, tangent: Silver is orphaned. She goes to live with a blind man named Mr. Pew who keeps a lighthouse. Mr. Pew tells the little girl stories of a man named Babel Dark, an 19th century clergyman - and the story flows back and forth from the present-day at the lighthouse (which never feels like the present-day - it is a grim and bleak existence) back to the mid 1800s when Babel Dark lived. Babel Dark's journey becomes intertwined with Silver's, and - as usual - we aren't sure what is "real" and what is imagined.
I really liked the book. I liked the worlds she presented to me. I love the house built into the cliff, where groceries fall out of the cupboards, and Silver has to be strapped into her hammock so she won't fall out and go plummeting down the house. I just love stuff like that. It truly IS inventive.
But please, Jeanette: no more "what you risk reveals what you value", okay? You said it once and it really meant something. It still does. Just let it be!!
Here's an excerpt.
EXCERPT FROM Lighthousekeeping
The Pews have been lighthousekeepers at Cape Wrath since the day of the birth. The job was passed down generation to generation, though the present Mr. Pew has the look of being there forever. He is as old as a unicorn, and people are frightened of him because he isn't like them. Like and like go together. Likeness is liking, whatever they say about opposites.
But some people are different, that's all.
I look like my dog. I have a pointy nose and curly hair. My front legs - that is, my arms, are shorter than my back legs - that is, my legs, which makes a symmetry with my dog, who is just the same, but the other way round.
His name's DogJim.
I put up a photo of him next to mine on the notice board, and I hid behind a bush while they all came by and read our particulars. They were all sorry, but they all shook their heads and said, 'Well, what could we do with her?'
It seemed that nobody could think of a use for me, and when I went back to the notice board to add something encouraging, I found I couldn't think of a use for myself.
Feeling dejected, I took the dog and went walking, walking, walking along the cliff headland towards the lighthouse.
Miss Pinch was a great one for geography - even though she had never left Salts in her whole life. The way she described the world, you wouldn't want to visit it anyway. I recited to myself what she had taught us about the Atlantic Ocean ...
The Atlantic is a dangerous and unpredictable ocean. It is the second largest ocean in the world, extending in an S shape from the Arctic to the Antarctic regions, bounded by North and South America in the West, and Europe and Africa in the East.
The North Atlantic is divided from the South Atlantic by the equatorial counter-current. At the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, heavy fogs form where the warm Gulf Stream meets the cold Labrador Current. In the North Western Ocean, icebergs are a threat from May to December.
Dangerous. Unpredictable. Threat.
The world according to Miss Pinch.
But, on the coasts and outcrops of this treacherous ocean, a string of lights was built over 300 years.
Look at this one. Made of granite, as hard and unchanging as the sea is fluid and volatile. The sea moves constantly, the lighthouse, never. There is no sway, no rocking, none of the motion of ships and ocean.
Pew was staring out of the rain-battered glass; a silent taciturn clamp of a man.
Some days later, as we were eating breakfast in Railings Row - me, toast without butter, Miss Pinch, kippers and tea - Miss Pinch told me to wash and dress quickly and be ready with all my things.
'Am I going home?'
'Of course not - you have no home.'
'But I'm not staying here?'
'No. My house is not suitable for children.'
You had to respect Miss Pinch - she never lied.
'Then what is going to happen to me?'
'Mr Pew has put in a proposal. He will apprentice you to lighthousekeeping.'
'What will I have to do?'
'I have no idea.'
'If I don't like it, can I come back?'
'No.'
'Can I take DogJim?'
'Yes.'
She hated saying yes. She was of those people for whom yes is always an admission of guilt or failure. No was power.
A few hours later, I was standing on the windblown jetty, waiting for Pew to collect me in his patched and tarred mackerel boat. I had never been inside the lighthouse before, and I had only seen Pew when he stumped up the path to collect his supplies. The town didn't have much to do with the lighthouse anymore. Salts was no longer a seaman's port, with ships and sailors docking for fire and food and company. Salts had become a hollow town, its life scraped out. It had its rituals and its customs and its past, but nothing left in it was alive. Years ago, Charles Darwin had called it Fossil-Town, but for different reasons. Fossil it was, salted and preserved by the sea that had destroyed it too.
Pew came near in his boat. His shapeless hat was pulled over his face. His mouth was a slot of teeth. His hands were bare and purple. Nothing else could be seen. He was the rough shape of human.
DogJim growled. Pew grabbed him by the scruff and threw him into the boat, then he motioned for me to throw in my bag and follow.
The little outboard motor bounced us over the green waves. Behind me, smaller and smaller, was my tipped-up house that had flung us out, my mother and I, perhaps because we were never wanted there. I couldn't go back. There was only forward, northwards into the sea. To the lighthouse.
Pew and I climbed slowly up the spiral stairs to our quarters below the Light. Nothing about the lighthouse had been changed since the day it was built. There were candleholders in every room, and the Bibles put there by Josiah Dark. I was given a tiny room with a tiny window, and a bed the size of a drawer. As I was not much longer than my socks, this didn't matter. DogJim would have to sleep where he could.
Above me was the kitchen where Pew cooked sausages on an open cast-iron stove. Above the kitchen was the light itself, a great glass eye with a Cyclops stare.
Our business was light, but we lived in darkness. The light had to be kept going, but there was no need to illuminate the rest. Darkness came with everything. It was standard. My clothes were trimmed with dark. When I put on a sou'wester, the brim left a dark shadow over my face. When I stood to bathe in the little galvanised cubicle Pew had rigged for me, I soaped my body in darkness. Put your hand in a drawer, and it was darkness you felt first, as you fumbled for a spoon. Go to the cupboards to find the tea caddy of Full Strength Samson, and the hole was as black as the tea itself.
The darkness had to be brushed away or parted before we could sit down. Darkness squatted on the chairs and hung like a curtain across the stairway. Sometimes it too on the shapes of the things we wanted: a pan, a bed, a book. Sometimes I saw my mother, dark and silent, falling towards me.
Darkness was a presence. I learned to see in it, I learned to see through it, and I learned to see the darkness of my own.
Pew did not speak. I didn't know if he was kind or unkind, or what he intended to do with me. He had lived alone all his life.
That first night, Pew cooked sausages in darkness. No, Pew cooked the sausages with darkness. It was the kind of dark you can taste. That's what we ate: sausages and darkness.
I was cold and tired and my neck ached. I wanted to sleep and sleep and never wake up. I had lost the few things I knew, and what was here belonged to somebody else. Perhaps that would have been all right if what was inside me was my own, but there was no place to anchor.
There were two Atlantics; one outside the lighthouse, and one inside me.
The one inside me had no string of guiding lights.
July 28, 2008
Oh, say can you see ...
Actually, you can't at this moment, because it hasn't happened yet - but it will tonight!
My wonderful cousin Kerry will be singing the National Anthem this evening at Fenway Park before the Red Sox-Angels game. She's an old-hand at this by now ... Here she is singing the anthem before a Celtics game ...
But still: it's kind of thrilling. Kerry is one of the most fanatic Red Sox fans I know, so what a thrill to sing in such a setting!!
And Jean and Pat will be there!
OH FOR A TELEPORTING MACHINE.
Go, Kerry and Go Sox!!
Camouflage
Although Hope may appear benign in this photo, she is about to bust out a can of Whup-ass on my receipt from Barnes & Noble. She lies on my rug, blending into its colors, making her body all flat and terrifying ... staring down that receipt. Staring it DOWN. The receipt doesn't stand a chance. It is about to be ripped to SHREDS. It should be AFRAID FOR ITS LIFE. Because there's a new Sheriff in town, and she is a bad-ass, and she also has the ability to subtly blend into her surroundings, so that you never ever see her coming.
The Books: "Tanglewreck" (Jeanette Winterson)
Actually, this book is a book for kids - but in the interest of keeping an "author together" - I have shelved it with Winterson's adult books. So: Next book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:
Tanglewreck
This is Jeanette Winterson's first book for kids.There is much here to praise - a fast-paced story, with time travel, and little kids on the run, and evil villains ... A lot of it feels quite derivative, however. It's obviously Winterson's voice but unlike her other books - which I barely can compare to anything else - this is full of things that reminded me of other books. Wrinkle in Time, Harry Potter ... It doesn't quite work. A great children's book is also a great book for adults. I count something like Good Night Moon in that. There is such a thing as perfection - and it's the same for kids as it is for adults. Good Night Moon wouldn't hold up as an adult NOVEL, of course - but the standard of excellence is the same, as far as I'm concerned. Madeleine L'Engle said a great thing once: "You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children." LOVE that. That's why her books are so transportive. I never get sick of them. Tanglewreck is a wee bit too didactic ... but in this case it feels sneaky, like Winterson is trying to sneak in a message in such a subtle way that the kids won't be bored - but she's trying to get her point across. I rolled my eyes at some of these. Winterson is a big environmentalist. Nothing wrong with that. But she tried to put that into the book ... and again: nothing wrong with that, but it felt sneaky, like she was trying to get away with it, and I didn't like that. Kids don't like to be condescended to. If you have a message, then find an inventive way to weave it into the book so that it is inevitable, rather than snuck in. Compare that to Madeleine L'Engle's Ring of Endless Light (excerpt here here) - perhaps my favorite of all of her books (I fluctuate) ... and its vision of a summer working at a marine biology lab, and hanging out with dolphins - in captivity and also in the wild ... The things learned about dolphins that summer transcend marine biology concerns, and makes the book about (on some level) the necessity of ongoing scientific research - that science that has a practical GOAL is not the only kind of science ... There's way more ... but in general, it's about the importance of dolphins, and how they should be protected, studied, loved, whatever. But do you ever catch Madeleine L'Engle trying to preach ANY of that to us? Do you ever catch her trying to sneak in her message, hoping we won't notice? Or, no - it's not "hoping we won't notice" ... Winterson tries to sneak in her message hoping it will work on the kids in a subconscious way ... that the kids will be swayed to her point of view through osmosis. Something about that did not sit well with me, reading Tanglewreck. It is obvious L'Engle's love for dolphins, and her belief that preserving dolphins, and studying them, and protecting them, should be a priority. But she only does that through telling the story of Vicky and Adam working in the lab. L'Engle isn't trying to sneak anything past us! Winterson also assumes that her audience will all feel the same way about America, so her main villain is American, a representative of a huge multi-national corporation, and the most ambitious person in the galaxy. Winterson relies on a shorthand here (American = bad, not to be trusted) that feels very "right now" to me. Yeah, I know, the world has always hated us (but whatever, when you all want to escape the tyranny in your own lands, where do you go?? Yeah. I thought so.) Back to my point: I know "anti-Americanism" is nothing new. I mean, if you go back and read some of the things George III said about us, way back when, when the US was first starting out, you can see the contempt. Nothing has changed. It's been there since the beginning for us. (So to imagine we could "go back" to a time when we were universally admired ... Yeah, uhm, so when would that be? Learn your history, people.) But a children's book needs to be, on some level, universal. If you want kids to read it not just in this generation but others. I can feel the world of 2006 and 2007 in Tanglewreck, even though that's not what it's about at all. I can feel the global warming debate, I can feel the Iraq war, I can feel the anger at America's power, I can feel the "green" movement ... all in a book that has nothing to do with any of that. I guess what I'm saying is: Winterson is not at the top of her game here. Frankly, I don't think she would have tried to "get away" with any of this if it were a book for adults - and THAT is why the book sometimes feels condescending. Winterson has NEVER come across as didactic to me ... she's too much of a free spirit. But here she does.
However, on the flip side: The classic Winterson imagination is at work here, and I very much liked the weaving of truth with fantasy. Like, we're in this magical story where "Time Tornadoes" have sprouted up all over England, ripping people into the past, future, whatever ...but there are certain things that still ground us to reality. I liked that.
Silver lives in a big 500 year old house called Tanglewreck. Her parents and little sister disappeared one day. She now lives with an evil aunt, who stays with her at Tanglewreck, and doesn't take good care of Silver at all. Silver has to fend for herself. She loves her house, it feels alive to her. These Time Tornadoes start to swoop through London, and suddenly, things start to shift and change. A man named Abel Darkwater shows up at Tanglewreck, talking about a specific clock that was left in her parents hands - an essential clock called The Timekeeper ... Mr. Darkwater, a clock fanatic, and an ambitious man, knows that whoever has this Timekeeper will control Time. Something has happened to disturb Time. Huge forces begin to converge on Tanglewreck ... there is a Timekeeper hidden there ... it goes back centuries ... and Silver needs to hand it over. Silver has no memory of any Timekeeper. She is 11 years old. Just a kid. Abel Darkwater takes her to his house in London, but she escapes - and eventually joins up with a tribe of people who live in the tunnels beneath the city ... They call themselves "The Throwbacks". For whatever reason, they are immortal. Time has somehow "forgot" them ... most of them were inmates in Bedlam, the famous mental hospital of old in London, and are scarred forever by the experience. Turns out Abel Darkwater, too, is immortal ... and his connection with the Throwbacks is an unhappy one, and goes way back. But they save Silver - and they realize the urgency of keeping the Timekeeper out of Abel Darkwater's hands ... and so begins a chase - not just across England but across the galaxy ... to, first of all, find the Timekeeper, and to then hide it from people who would use it for ill.
It's a quick read. The slight annoyances didn't stop me from enjoying it. It just didn't have that "oomph" that great children's books need to have. I guess I felt a bit of distance from it. It feels like a lot of Winterson's other intellectual exercises ... ruminations on quantum physics and Schrodinger's cat and Einstein ... all fascinating stuff, and I ate it up here ... but I do wonder if a kid would be bored by it all.
Just to prove my point from yesterday about some of her more rabid fans: One of the reviews on Amazon (I think for the British version of the book) states that she feels she knows Winterson so well that "if we were to meet we would be on a first-name basis". Okay. First creepy clue. Then she goes on to list her problems with the book (and many of them were my problems as well) - but finally she is MOST disappointed in the fact that Silver, an 11 year old girl, appears to "fall in love" with Gabriel, a young Throwback BOY ... and that particular reader was SO disappointed that Winterson chose to have it be a heterosexual thing and missed an opportunity "to teach kids it's okay to be gay." Oh, great: let's add one MORE didactic message to the book! Why are you looking to Winterson, an artist, to "teach kids it's okay to be gay"?? In a book that has nothing to do with that? Winterson struggles with that kind of thing - people expect her to be a mouthpiece for them, rather than herself. Tanglewreck has no obligation to be anything other than itself. To look for it to show "kids it's okay to be gay" when ... it has nothing to do with that, you would never put such a pressure onto another writer - you only put the pressure on Winterson because she is gay - but that's the kind of narrow-minded thinking Winterson has always fought against. Do NOT label her as a gay writer. Or, whatever, go ahead and label her - but just know: that by labeling her, you limit her. It reminds me of Ted's story about directing Virginia in Chicago and being told on a radio interview that he wasn't qualified to direct a play about Virginia Woolf because he was a man. It also reminds me of the recent (and ongoing) kerfluffle between Clint Eastwood and Spike Lee about Eastwood's film about Charlie Parker and how Spike Lee thinks only a black man should have directed that film. Clint Eastwood was like, "But nobody else did it! I did! Get over yourself." I like Spike Lee a lot, but that kind of nonsense is ... well, nonsense. This is a level of art that I cannot stand. Where group identity politics trumps artistic considerations and imagination. Oh, so only a deaf actor can play someone who is deaf? Personal experience trumps imagination? Well, sorry, but that goes against everything I believe in. You don't need to be a prince to be able to imagine yourself into Hamlet - and to put that kind of literal consideration onto any artist is fucking stupid. Winterson is gay - therefore she can only write about gay things? How boring! Thank God Winterson appears to be easily bored, and continues to try new things, not listening to those who need her to be some posterchild for gay rights. Winterson obviously, with Tanglewreck, wanted to write a story about the things that interest her (and always have): quantum mechanics, space, transformation, alchemy ... To read her book and be disappointed that it doesn't have a gay person in it, is to be moronic. It makes me sad. It makes me hope that Winterson just keeps on keeping on ... writing what SHE wants to write. Every book may not be successful - and that's, actually, one of the most interesting things about Winterson. Even her failures are interesting. She does not play it safe. Or - no, that's not right. I feel she DID play it safe in books like Gut Symmetries (excerpt here) and The PowerBook (excerpt here) - same ol' same ol'. I suppose the fans who only want one thing out of her were tremendously pleased by those books. Those books validate THEM. I don't look for Winterson to validate me. I want her to follow her star, and I will always be right behind. Wherever she goes. When she plays it safe, she gets boring. So when she tries something new (Art & Lies (excerpt here), Tanglewreck) - sometimes it doesn't completely work - but I find that just as fascinating, and admirable. It takes guts to fail. It takes guts to put yourself out there, to know you might be out of your element ... but to understand that being out of your element is exactly where you need to be. To quote Winterson herself: "What you risk reveals what you value." And then, sometimes, she takes a risk (like with Weight - her story of Atlas and Heracles - excerpt here) - and she triumphs. That's what's exciting. Not to mention the fact that her first three books - Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (excerpt here), Sexing the Cherry (excerpt here) and The Passion (excerpt here) - are all HUGE risks ... and she knocked them out of the park. So keep taking risks, Winterson. Keep trying to please yourself - not those who have something specific they need of you ... and I'll always be a reader.
Well, I'll always be a reader, regardless. I'm no fair-weather fan! And I suppose - like the woman on Amazon - I have certain "needs" of Winterson, too. I am always curious as to what the hell she is getting up to (she has a new book out - The Stone Gods - a sci-fi book, and I haven't read it yet ... I'm not a big sci-fi fan, but I can't wait to read it ... just to see what she's doing) ... and I hope that my expectations of her are not unfair, or limiting. I know when I'm bored, and I trust that response ... but I also know that Winterson is a wild card. She's made her name on being unpredictable. I'm a fan for life, that's just the way it goes.
So although Tanglewreck is not quite a success, I do admire it because of the risk she took in writing it. She had to know people would be displeased. She wrote it anyway. Awesome! It is only by doing what she wants to do ... that she will continue to grow and flourish as an artist. She has the money. Her books are huge successes. She can please herself. That's what I like about following her career. I never know where she will go next.
Here's a section where Silver sits in the tunnels beneath London with the tribe called The Throwbacks. She is on the run from Abel Darkwater.
EXCERPT FROM Tanglewreck
Gabriel began to teach Silver how to find her way through the labyrinths, and where to come Upground. They told each other stories about their lives, and Silver promised Gabriel that whatever happened, one day she would take him to Tanglewreck.
'I should be glad to see the place that you love,' said Gabriel. 'Nothing matters but those things that matter, Micah says.'
And Silver thought she understood.
In the timeless, ageless space of the Throwbacks, Silver felt happy again, happier than she had been for years. She remembered that with her parents and Buddleia at Tanglewreck, every day had stretched into every day, and she had been free, just like this. She started to sleep on her back, instead of curled up in a ball. She had no sense of how much time was passing - perhaps all of it. Perhaps none.
One day, finding Micah on his own in the Chamber, smoking his pipe, she asked him what he had meant by the 'Experiments'. His face grew dark.
'They be alchemists - him and Maria Prophetessa.'
'That's the beautiful woman called Regalia Mason?'
'Yes.'
'Is an alchemist a sort of magician?'
'Yea, in sort.'
And Micah explained how hundreds of years ago, science and magic were nearly the same thing. Nobody studied physics or chemistry, they studied mathematics or astronomy, and they studied alchemy. Astronomers were also astrologers, who predicted what would happen by measuring the movement of the stars. Even Isaac Newton, who studied mathematics, and discovered gravity, was an astrologer.
'And Isaac Newton, he be a member of a secret society called Tempus Fugit.'
'Time Flies!' said Silver. 'Abel Darkwater's shop!'
'Yea,' said Micah. 'Many of the alchemists spent all their lives labouring to turn metal into gold, but some, like Isaac Newton, and Abel Darkwater, and Maria Prophetessa, and a very powerful magician called John Deem they laboured to make Time.'
'You can't make TIme,' said Silver, thinking, even as she said it, how grown-ups were always saying they had to make time, usually for their children.
' 'Tis why he be alive and not dead in the earth,' said Micah.
'But you are all alive too,' said Silver.
'Yea,' said Micah. 'He experimented on us in the lunatic asylum in ways that would curdle your heart, but when we escaped we discovered that we be not dying as Updwellers do. Have you not noticed something about Abel Darkwater?'
Silver thought about his marble eyes, his round body, his shadowy face ...
'He be like us who don't want the light. If our kind do go in the light, as Updwellers do, we die. Abel Darkwater is cleverer than we; he don't die in the light, but he can't be in the light for long. The dark slows death down, like hibernation. Like animals who sleep all winter.'
'What else slows it down?' asked Silver.
'Cold,' said Micah. 'You put a piece of meat in your cold safes - fridges, you call them. Yea, in the cold safe it does not decay. In the sun it decays.'
'Dark and cold,' said Silver.
'Yea,' said Micah. 'Dark and cold. Come.'
Micah hoisted Silver up on to the warm shaggy back of a bog pony and led her through a short maze of tunnels.
Silver hung on to the pony's thick mane, and felt his warmth on her fingers. Now she understood why Abel Darkwater's house was so cold. It wasn't because it was an old house like Tanglewreck; it was to keep him alive. That was why he had no electric lights, and that was why Mrs Rokabye complained a lot, even for her. Silver didn't feel the cold much. They had hardly any heat or electricity at Tanglewreck because their parents couldn't afford it. Only Mrs Rokabye had electric fires and electric blankets, and even an electric headscarf that she wore in the winter.
'Behold!' said Micah.
They had come to a round corral where half a dozen cattle were contentedly munching hay. The temperature was freezing, and a haze of cold hung over the cows.
Silver shivered and wrapped her legs round the pony. She looked up and saw that the opaque natural light and the steaming cold were coming from a perfectly round sheet of what looked like frosted glass. But it was perhaps fifty metres in diameter.
'In thine own world that be an ice-skating pond,' said Micah. 'A great marvel, for it remains frozen the whole of the year, and through your four season.'
'It's an ice-rink,' said Silver.
'We depend on it for our cattle. These cattle be bred by Abel Darkwater in 1805. We keep them in calf for milk, and we eat the calves for meat.'
'When will they die?' asked Silver.
'I know not. None of us knows when we shall die. But that is true of thine own world too.'
Silver and Micah made their way back to the Chamber.
'Why are you still afraid of Abel Darkwater?' said Silver.
'For the chains and the beatings and the blood-lettings and the faintings, and the dissections and anatomies he performed, and the great cold he kept us in, and the darkness where we dwelled before we be made different by him and her, and that he was my Master. He could destroy us still. He does not destroy us for reasons of his own, but I know them not.'
'Why does he want the Timekeeper?'
Micah stopped as he was walking. 'Abel Darkwater never must find the Timekeeper. If truly you know where it be ...'
'I don't know where it be, I mean, where it is,' said Silver.
'He must not become Lord of the Universe, for that is his wish, and his many lifetimes' work,' said Micah, his face grave.
'How can we stop him?' asked Silver.
'He cannot do it without the clock.'
'But he says I will lead him to the clock.'
Micah was silent. 'It may be that you must dwell with us for the remainder of your days.'
Silver gasped at this. 'What, and never see Tanglewreck again?'
'It may be. If you be the Keeper of the Clock, it be your duty to keep it safe.'
'But I DON'T KNOW WHERE IT IS!'
'That may be the means of keeping it safe,' said Micah.
July 27, 2008
Man on Wire
Lauren Wissot gets a wonderful interview from documentary filmmaker James Marsh and Philippe Petit (the highwire artist subject of Man On Wire) - One brief excerpt from the interview:
Philippe Petit: Everything I do I feel is completely honest, completely felt, completely generous and sincere. At the same time I have to seduce, I have to steal, I have to lie, I have to convince, I have to acquire things, I have to force, I have to impose. This is what an artist should do regardless of the rules, if he has a pure heart and wants to do something beautiful.
I can't wait to see it. I've been hearing amazing things about it.
The Books: "Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles" (Jeanette Winterson)
Next book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:
Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles
Part of the ongoing Myths Series from Random House (which I adore) - Winterson takes on the myth of Atlas and Heracles. I mentioned in another post that I think Winterson could definitely be a kind of post-modern Edith Hamilton. I have always felt that her strength, as a writer, lay in the evocation of magic and myth and fairy tale in the middle of more straightforward narratives. It's what I most love about her. Because even with all her invention and unconventionality - she actually is one of the most traditional of writers. Meaning: she respects tradition. She ADORES it. It lives and breathes around her, and she finds new ways to put those traditions and old tales into her stories - because they mean that much to her. It's not an act or a gimmick (having read her book Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery
Her imagining of the myth of Atlas and Heracles is marvelous - and is representative of what I am talking about her. I really get the sense, with this book, that Winterson was able to retreat to a private space (in her mind, I mean) - where she is most creative, most in touch with her dreams and her thoughts, and wrote from that place. Sometimes Winterson's work is self-conscious. Nothing wrong with that. Virginia Woolf was a self-conscious writer. James Joyce was a self-conscious writer. Being aware of you, the artist, in the act of creation is part of the 20th century literary tradition. Winterson can sometimes go off the deep end with it, and the references become lost - it becomes a truly private work, not accessible to me, the reader - but here, with the myth of Atlas and Heracles, she is in true storyteller mode. She is sitting around the fire with members of her tribe, telling a tale they all know well, but never get tired of hearing about. Because there are lessons in it for all ... Winterson has truly thought about this myth, and its larger metaphors ... and so she goes for it.
I had been vaguely disenchanted with Winterson's books for a couple of years. Burnt by Art & Lies
More than anything, I just got the sense that Winterson had a BALL writing this. Like she could have kept writing forever, it was that fun and satisfying to her. It's a really fun book - I highly recommend it. If you're into Greek and Roman mythology, then the "Myths Series" is something you should definitely check out. I haven't read all of them - just Winterson's and Atwood's - but what a great idea, I think.
EXCERPT FROM Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles
The war between the gods and the Titans was a war we had preferred to avoid. There are several versions of this war. One thing is certain; what began as just cause became just excuse. We fought for ten years.
Some say that my father was Uranus and that my brothers and I, especially Cronus, plotted to attack him and castrate him. It is certain that Cronus cut off the genitals of Uranus, and then took power himself. It is certain too, that Cronus bore a child, Zeus, who likewise dethroned his father and gained control of the heavens. Zeus had two brothers, Hades and Poseidon, and while Zeus became Lord of the Sky, Poseidon had his kingdom in the waves, and Hades was content with what lies beneath. The earth was left to mankind.
It was mankind who attacked quiet Atlantis, and Zeus who helped them to destroy my people. I escaped, and joined the revolt against the heavens. I was the war-leader, the one who had lost most and little to fear. What can a man fear with nothing to lose?
In the long fighting, most of us were killed, and my mother, out of her secret nature, promised victory to Zeus. What Titans were left were banished to Britain, where the cold inhospitable rocks are worse than death. I was spared for my great strength.
In a way I was allowed to be my own punishment.
Because I loved the earth. Because the seas of the earth held no fear for me. Because I had learned the positions of the planets and the track of the stars. Because I am strong, my punishment was to support the Kosmos on my shoulders. I took up the burden of the whole world, the heavens above it, and the depths below. All that there is, is mine, but none of it in my control. This is my monstrous burden. The boundary of what I am.
And my desire?
Infinite space.
It was the day of my punishment.
The gods assembled. The women were on the left and the men were on the right. There's Artemis, worked muscle and tied-back hair, fiddling with her bow so that she doesn't have to look at me. We were friends. We hunted together.
There's Hera, sardonic, aloof. She couldn't care less. As long as it's not her.
There's Hermes, fidgety and pale, he hates trouble. Next to him lounges Hephastus, ill-tempered and lame, Hera's crippled son, tolerated for his gold smithy. Opposite him is Aphrodite his wife, who loathes his body. We've all had her, though we treat her like a virgin. She smiled at me. She was the only one who dared ...
Zeus read out his decree. Atlas, Atlas, Atlas. It's in my name, I should have known. My name is Atlas - it means 'the long suffering one'.
I bent my back and braced my right leg, kneeling with my left. I bowed my head and held my hands, palms up, almost like surrender. I suppose it was surrender. Who is strong enough to escape their fate? Who can avoid what they must become?
The word given, teams of horses and oxen began to strain forward, dragging the Kosmos behind them, like a disc-plough. As the great ball ploughed infinity, pieces of time were dislodged. Some fell to earth, giving the gift of prophecy and second sight. Some were thrown out into the heavens, making black holes where past and future cannot be distinguished. Time spattered my calf muscles and the sinews in my thigh. I felt the world before it began and the future marked me. I would always be here.
As the Kosmos came nearer, the heat of it scorched my back. I felt the world settle against the sole of my foot.
Then, without any sound, the heavens and the earth were rolled up over my body and I supported them on my shoulders.
I could hardly breathe. I could not raise my head. I tried to shift slightly or to speak. I was dumb and still as a mountain. Mount Atlas they soon called me, not for my strength but for my silence.
There was a terrible pain in the seventh vertebra of my neck. The soft tissue of my body was already hardening. The hideous vision of my life was robbing me of life. Time was my medusa. Time was turning me to stone.
I do not know how long I crouched like this, petrified and motionless.
***
At last I began to hear something.
I found that where the world was close to my ears, I could hear everything. I could hear conversations, parrots squawking, donkeys braying. I heard the rushing of underground rivers and the crackle of fires lighted. Each sound became a meaning, and soon I began to de-code the world.
Listen, here is a village with a hundred people in it, and at dawn they take their cattle to the pastures and at evening they herd them home. A girl with a limp takes the pails over her shoulders. I know she limps by the irregular clank of the buckets. There's a boy shooting arrows - thwack! thwack! into the padded hide of the target. His father pulls the stopper out of a wine jar.
Listen, there's an elephant chased by a band of men. Over there, a nymph is becoming a tree. Her sighs turn into sap.
Someone is scrambling up a scree slope. His boots loosen the ground under him. His nails are torn. He falls exhausted on some goat-grass. He breathes heavily and goes to sleep.
I can hear the world beginning. Time plays itself back for me. I can hear the ferns uncurling from their tight rest. I can hear pools bubbling with life. I realise I am carrying not only this world, but all possible worlds. I am carrying the world in time as well as in space. I am carrying the world's mistakes and its glories. I am carrying its potential as well as what has so far been realised.
As the dinosaurs crawl through my hair and volcanic eruptions pock my face, I find I am become a part of what I must bear. There is no longer Atlas and the world, there is only the World Atlas. Travel me, and I am continents. I am the journey you must make.
Listen, there's a man telling a story about the man who holds the world on his shoulders. Everybody laughs. Only drunks and children will believe that.
July 26, 2008
And then sometimes
... after a long day, and an even longer night, in the middle of a heat wave, with feet that hurt because you've been on them all day, you slog your way through the 42nd Street subway station, dripping in sweat, wishing you could teleport yourself back into your cool bed, after a long cold shower ... and suddenly:
you see an angel.
And your mood changes. It really does.
