— I had a couple hours to kill in the train station – waiting to go down to Philadelphia – and so I bought The Da Vinci Code<\/i> – which I have not read. I had read the first page of it 2 years ago, and rolled my eyes at the breathless almost-constantly italicized prose. I knew I wanted to read it – because it’s a phenomenon and I want to be up to date but I decided to wait for it to come out in paperback. Ahem. YEARS WENT BY. No paperback. Unbelievable!!!! Well, finally – they have released it in paperback – just in time for the movie coming out – so I bought it. And I started to read it. And I finished it a day and a half later. I could not put the thing down. It is complete BALDERDASH but I still could not put it down. I had NO idea what would happen … although I guessed that Teabing was too good to be true (not immediately – but when he turned out to be a bad guy, I realized I had been waiting for that moment) … Anyway. My first assessment of the prose, based on the first page, was accurate. Everything is italicized. Everything is a cliffhanger. But … but … you MUST turn the page. YOU MUST. It’s obvious why it is such a crazy bestseller. I just HAD to find out what would happen. And at the end – at Rosslyn – I even got a little misty with the whole family reunion thing. It is not high art, and it is not great literature – but it so works in its own little genre that I have just got to tip my hat. I don’t read books like that – I just don’t – give me Bronte or Dickens or Joyce, please, I get impatient with modern fiction. Especially runaway bestsellers. It’s just not my taste. I like WRITERS who can WRITE. Ian McEwan, John McGahern, Michael Chabon, AS Byatt. The writing hooks me in. And Dan Brown is not a good writer. But this? This … story? This … phenom? I. Could. Not. Put. It. Down. And I had really long days in Philadelphia. I would wake up at 5 am – walk across the street to the Dunkin Donuts in the dark dawn – get a coffee – go back to my motel room (Please ……. Shirts & Shoes Required) – set myself up at the little table, and do some of my work – for an hour or so … and then … my fingers itching, the book radiating a magnetic force … I would open Da Vinci Code<\/i>. Hats off, Dan Brown. Couldn’t put the damn thing down, balderdash and all!!<\/p>\n
— Watched all of Greys Anatomy<\/i> – the first season – none of which I had seen before. I have honestly just become a HUGE fan of this show. It’s so DIFFERENT from other “hospital shows” and I can’t quite pinpoint the difference. Perhaps it’s because it’s really about the inner emotional life of “Grey” herself … with her perceptive and melancholy voiceovers opening and closing the show. It’s about her growth as a human being, her journey. And also – it seems that the REAL theme of the show has nothing to do with medicine. The REAL theme is relationships – and even more than that: unrequited love. That feeling you get when you love someone so much that you ache … but you can’t have them … and because you are an adult and not a kid, you have to suck it up, and be a good sport about it, and life moves on, and I’m okay, and we can both behave like adults … but the reality is is that it ACHES. There’s something very sad and very bittersweet flitting around on the outskirts of this show. The music choices, the voiceovers, the way certain situations are resolved (I am thinking of the one show where Izzy is angry at her mother, she never speaks to her mother … and yet she spends the entire show trying to make cupcakes like her mom did … and they aren’t coming out right, yet she won’t call her for the missing ingredient … The cupcakes are a side plot … and yet they keep coming up, in a recurring way, throughout the episode – so the last moment of the show, when we see Izzy pick up the phone, and say, “Hi Mom … it’s Cricket …” – it just packs a huge punch.) The show really EARNS its weekly catharsis. Catharsis is actually easy to come by – and lots of shows generate fake drama in order that the audience will be on the edge of their seats. The show Third Watch<\/i> was one long extended fake drama. Yuk. But Grey’s Anatomy<\/i> seems to really invest in each and every one of those characters … they are all REAL … so that when the end of each episode comes, we in the audience are actually left with some real feelings about them. Whatever response they get from us is EARNED.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
— I had a couple hours to kill in the train station – waiting to go down to Philadelphia – and so I bought The Da Vinci Code – which I have not read. I had read the first page … Continue reading