Saturday, January 17, 2015

Quick Jan. update post

Friday was a tough day.  My daughter decided to be Bartleby the Schoolgirl and just would not get ready for school.  Then she blamed it on being sooo tired because I was out so late at the Cracker show, and thus she couldn't sleep properly.  Even the threat of no computer, no TV, no talking on the phone with friends and no ice skating this weekend would not move her.  Anyway, the upshot is that I am not going to take her to Harbourfront this weekend.  (As it happens some of the art exhibits there open up next weekend, so I'll see if next Sat. works (if I am not at some real estate open house) and we'll go down.)

This weekend may thus be a little bit empty, and I'll probably drop in at the AGO and put in a few hours of work.  I see that this is the last week of the Winter Fringe.  While part of me thinks I really ought to go, I just wasn't that interested in their offerings.  The one that keeps popping up (following me around...) is "Big Shot," which is about a shooting on a TransLink train, but I didn't want to see that in Vancouver and I don't want to see it here.  The only one that vaguely appeals to me is a sketch comedy thing.  Unfortunately, it runs today at 9 and tomorrow at 6.  If the times were reversed, I probably would go today, but I don't really want to go back out for a second time tonight.

Now speaking of winter theatre festivals, Harbourfront is running a few shows in Feb-March and I may go to one or two.  I just have to see how it works into everything else I am hoping to do in these dark winter days.

I have made more progress on my own writing, and I should have my entry ready for Feb.'s Sing for Your Supper in just a few more days.  It's actually a short extract from my novel turned into a play or rather a scene, but I think it works.  It's a particularly "talky" chapter, so that helps.  Basically, the main character ends up talking with his "wife" and her girlfriend in the kitchen, and the wife is going on (and on) about the lesbian undercurrents in Elizabeth Bowen's work.  She's a grad. student and is working on a term paper.  Her girlfriend is not particularly impressed and says that when she does read fiction she prefers the lesbian context to be overt, as in Angela Carter.  I don't want this to go on for too long, as it is too inside baseball, but I'll probably return to the literary trope thing from time to time (in the novel).

As it happens, I did recently read To the North by Bowen, and while the lesbian traces are faint, they are there.  Supposedly, they are a bit stronger in The Hotel (Bowen's first novel), and I happen to have it checked out of the library, so I will read it, somewhat out of sequence.  And I just wrapped up Carter's Nights at the Circus.  This is a novel I've carted around for years, meaning to read it, and I finally did.

(Oops, almost forgot -- SPOILERS)

The first 2/3rds of the book are pretty good, and the middle section (where this reporter runs off to join the circus to find out the trust about their star attraction -- a winged woman) is quite Felliniesque* (though it is possible it is even more directly influenced by Bergman's Sawdust and Tinsel).  The last third, set in Siberia, kind of drags for me where there is an entire chapter about a women's prison set up as a panopticon -- it's straight out of Foucault with a dash or two of Dostoevsky.  Then there is a prison break and the wardens (all female) run off with the prisoners to set up a utopia without men somewhere in the Russian wilderness.  All obviously catnip to graduate students (particularly in women's studies) but not as entertaining for those who liked the circus section.  The reporter, stunned out of his wits by a train crash, ends up in a village adopted by a shaman and starts wondering if his previous life was all in some dreamworld.  I didn't particularly care for this part either, and then found the actual chapter where the reporter reunited with the bird-woman to be pretty anti-climatic.  And I have mixed feelings about the budding Marxist personal assistant (and former whore) also being a witch.  I think Carter kind of got bogged down and made this too literally into a fable (something that she has certainly explored in the past).  It's a shame, as this was on track to be another of the top ten books of 2015, but I do feel let down by the last third of the novel.  Maybe I'll feel differently about it in another month or two.  Anyway, this means I have only two more books left on my Russian list (from back in August).  It's thrilling in a small way.

I guess those are the main updates.  I liked the first CD (Berkeley) from the new Cracker album a lot, so if nothing else, going to the show introduced me to some really great new music (but, boy, most of the folks at that show drank like fish...).  Now I am debating more strongly whether I should go see Tragically Hip in February.  I half-suspect it conflicts with one of the plays at Harbourfront.  Anyway, it is still freaking cold out there, and I am somewhat procrastinating before I get going.  So I guess it is time to wrap this up.

* Edit: Actually that reminds me that after I heard the news about the passing of Anita Ekberg, I feel motivated to finally watch all of La Dolce Vita (I'm ashamed to say I've never made it all the way through, but that's the case for a great many classics, even ones that I own).  I'll see if I can make it through this, then Iriku again and then back to some Bergman that I've meant to see.  If only there was enough time for everything...

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