I've known about Montaigne and his Essays for a long time but only recently have I gotten around to reading them. It's quite likely that I would have held off even longer had I not picked up a new(ish) book called Shakespeare's Montaigne (NYRB), which points out just how influential Montaigne was on Shakespeare's later plays, particularly King Lear and The Tempest. Stephen Greenblatt makes the argument that Shakespeare probably would have had access to the equivalent of a pre-print copy of the Florio translation of Montaigne's Essayes (originally published in 1603) and points out further examples where it appears Shakespeare is borrowing directly from Montaigne. While he isn't the most faithful of translators, Florio is by far the most influential, since his translation was read by Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Donne and Francis Bacon among many others. In order to understand how these authors experienced Montaigne, the NYRB book reprints key selections taken from the Florio translation.
In addition, I have a more up-to-date Selected Essays translated by J.M. Cohen (Penguin). There is surprisingly little overlap between the two volumes. While I had started with Cohen, I have decided to switch to the Florio for now. In addition, Project Gutenberg has the entire set of Essays translated by Charles Cotton here. I picked out another 10* that looked pretty interesting on top of the 30 or so in the other two books, and that will get me a bit over 40% of all them. I probably will eventually read all the Essays but right now I wanted to get a good sampling of them.
There are a few things that do intrigue me about Montaigne. First, he kept adding to his Essays, even after they were published. In some cases, he even added material that contradicted his earlier arguments. He was a bit of a magpie, borrowing pretty heavily from the Romans and occasionally the Greeks, to shore up his own thoughts. He generally comes across as well-read but not a pedant. There is relatively little that he considered off-limits to write about.** He would have been a natural as a blogger... I am a little sorry not to have read him previously, but better late than never.
It can be a little hard to know just how serious he is at times. Here is Montaigne discussing the education of children (1.25): "If the pupil proves to be of so perverse a disposition that he would rather listen to some idle tale than to the account of a glorious voyage or to a wise conversation, ...I can see no other remedy than for his tutor to strangle him before it is too late, if there are no witnesses. Alternatively, he should be apprenticed to a pastry-cook..." Incidentally, the Cotton translation jumps straight to the apprenticeship option and leaves murder out of it altogether.
* For anyone truly interested, they are Of Sorrow (1.2), Of Fear (1.17), Of Pedantry (1.24), Of Moderation (1.29), Of Solitude (1.38), Of Sleep (1.44), Of Drunkeness (2.2), Of Conscience (2.5), Against Idleness (2.21) and Of Vanity (3.9).
** One of the more astonishing topics is his discussion of performance anxiety-related impotence and how to overcome it!
Sunday, February 24, 2019
Novels of Ideas (Musil)
I suppose virtually all novels start off as one big idea or another, but in at least some novels the characters are representing some specific train of though or strain of philosophy. In a poorly constructed novel, you end up with characters just bouncing ideas off of each other, but in a better novel of this sort, the reader actually cares about the characters and may (or may not) absorb the philosophical message. No question in my mind the Russians take this to extremes - -Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Bulgakov and arguably Turgenev all wrestle with big ideas -- and often the characters do make long, important speeches to each other. While Proust's Remembrance of Time Past is certainly long and has many asides on art (and memory), I'm not entirely sure I would characterize it in the same way. In any event, it does not have all that much plot to speak of. While Gide and Camus wrote more compact novels, I would say they are more successful novels of ideas.
I'm not as sure about writers working in English, but perhaps Iris Murdoch and Nabokov would qualify. In any event, I have started off badly, since I didn't intend to make another long list. I mostly wanted to note that, after many, many years of carting it around, I am finally ready to start reading Musil's The Man Without Qualities.
I actually can't remember where or when I picked this up (and if I actually paid full price, though I hope not).
I had read that Gregor von Rezzori held Musil in very high esteem and actually modelled Abel and Cain upon The Man Without Qualities to some extent. However, I was so disappointed in the first part (The Death of My Brother Abel) that it kind of threw a bit of shade on Musil. I did a bit of a preview of The Man Without Qualities last week and decided that it seemed to have actual characters (that didn't dissolve in postmodern fripperies like von Rezzori's did) and at least some plot elements (not just endless discussions between characters), so I started in on it proper.
I'm not quite sure how long it will take to read. The first volume is 700+ pages and the second is more like 1000 (with 600+ pages of unfinished material!). Under normal circumstances, this would probably take me through April, though I may schedule a train trip to Montreal with the added benefit of being forced to stay in one place (as it were) and get through a large chunk of the second volume. Even though I am enjoying this considerably more than Proust's Remembrance or von Rezzori's The Death of My Brother Abel, it is still highly unlikely I will make it through a second time. I will try to note down interesting passages (and perhaps post them here), so I will feel better about parting with this beast* of a book down the road.
* While it isn't too hard reading this on the train, it is just a bit too cumbersome for reading at the gym, so I am bringing Montaigne's Essays, which I'll discuss in the next post, along for my workouts. At any rate, I definitely feel bombarded by ideas right now...
I'm not as sure about writers working in English, but perhaps Iris Murdoch and Nabokov would qualify. In any event, I have started off badly, since I didn't intend to make another long list. I mostly wanted to note that, after many, many years of carting it around, I am finally ready to start reading Musil's The Man Without Qualities.
I actually can't remember where or when I picked this up (and if I actually paid full price, though I hope not).
I had read that Gregor von Rezzori held Musil in very high esteem and actually modelled Abel and Cain upon The Man Without Qualities to some extent. However, I was so disappointed in the first part (The Death of My Brother Abel) that it kind of threw a bit of shade on Musil. I did a bit of a preview of The Man Without Qualities last week and decided that it seemed to have actual characters (that didn't dissolve in postmodern fripperies like von Rezzori's did) and at least some plot elements (not just endless discussions between characters), so I started in on it proper.
I'm not quite sure how long it will take to read. The first volume is 700+ pages and the second is more like 1000 (with 600+ pages of unfinished material!). Under normal circumstances, this would probably take me through April, though I may schedule a train trip to Montreal with the added benefit of being forced to stay in one place (as it were) and get through a large chunk of the second volume. Even though I am enjoying this considerably more than Proust's Remembrance or von Rezzori's The Death of My Brother Abel, it is still highly unlikely I will make it through a second time. I will try to note down interesting passages (and perhaps post them here), so I will feel better about parting with this beast* of a book down the road.
* While it isn't too hard reading this on the train, it is just a bit too cumbersome for reading at the gym, so I am bringing Montaigne's Essays, which I'll discuss in the next post, along for my workouts. At any rate, I definitely feel bombarded by ideas right now...
Saturday, February 23, 2019
Jackie Shane RIP
I did say that I was going to cut down on memorial posts in the blog, though I decided to make an exception for Jackie Shane due to her strong connections to Toronto. She sang mostly soul
and r & b at local clubs, lighting them up with her electrifying stage presence. Then she vanished
from the scene in 1971, returning to the States, primarily to care for
her mother. While this was far before my club-going time, I actually had been slightly aware of her (due to a relatively recent reissue of her work discussed below) and was somewhat bemused when placards on the TTC discussed her in the context of the "Alternate History of Toronto." The Star has much more about her life and career here, though The Star is moving towards a paywall system unfortunately. This column should be available, however, and has some classic photos of Jackie.
A few years back, Numero Group managed to get in touch in touch with her and released an authorized anthology, Any Other Way, which included a live gig at the Sapphire Tavern. This is still available, including on iTunes* and Spotify. For the last year or so, there were rumours that Jackie would come out of retirement to do a show in Toronto, though sadly this never came to pass.
* Just a while back, I discussed the dilemma of having too much music available at one's fingertips. I've been following Numero Group for many, many years and even managed to get to one of their pop-up sales in Chicago, but I stopped buying their releases a while back (along with pretty much everyone else in the western world). At any rate, it looks like they have made their entire catalog available on iTunes, so it looks like I have an awful lot of catching up to do! Pretty much everything they put out is interesting, and often terrific, but I do have a special weakness for their Eccentric Soul series (though in terms of actual purchases, I tended to get the ones in the Cult Cargo series).
A few years back, Numero Group managed to get in touch in touch with her and released an authorized anthology, Any Other Way, which included a live gig at the Sapphire Tavern. This is still available, including on iTunes* and Spotify. For the last year or so, there were rumours that Jackie would come out of retirement to do a show in Toronto, though sadly this never came to pass.
* Just a while back, I discussed the dilemma of having too much music available at one's fingertips. I've been following Numero Group for many, many years and even managed to get to one of their pop-up sales in Chicago, but I stopped buying their releases a while back (along with pretty much everyone else in the western world). At any rate, it looks like they have made their entire catalog available on iTunes, so it looks like I have an awful lot of catching up to do! Pretty much everything they put out is interesting, and often terrific, but I do have a special weakness for their Eccentric Soul series (though in terms of actual purchases, I tended to get the ones in the Cult Cargo series).
Thinning Ranks
I almost titled this Thinning the Herd, but that has a few too many connotations of a deliberate cull. I've been to two recent TSO concerts where the music was quite good but the audience was incredibly thin - probably not even 40% full. I didn't think the music was all that challenging - Berg's Suite from Lulu and Shostakovich's Cello Concerto 2! But the powers that be are definitely picking up on this and programming less and less challenging music going forward. I am incredibly disappointed in the TSO's 2019/2020 season. They do have Barbara Hannigan coming back through, but only a single date for the one Shostakovich symphony (whereas in previous years this would have been programmed over two nights). Otherwise it is pretty much all safe chestnuts or pops concerts... It's not a shock to me that the only Prokofiev symphony is put on by a visiting orchestra. To some extent, you can only work with the audience you have (and quite frankly the lousy weather is probably keeping the increasing elderly audience from coming downtown). It's not a secret that New York, Chicago and Montreal have a more adventurous audience. It's not that Toronto audiences don't support the New Music Festivals and the like, though these do largely seem to be attended by music school types (who don't come out nearly as often to the TSO), but that's a relatively focused event, whereas for day-in, day-out attendance, the TSO can apparently only count on Beethoven and Handel's Messiah to bring the crowds in.*
It's a bit more surprising that Soulpepper's upcoming season plays it so incredibly safe. Streetcar Named Desire? Really? And Reza's Art? I'd say Shepard's Fool for Love is pretty much middle of the road, but it doesn't really matter, as I don't care enough for Sam Shepard to come out. Pinter's Betrayal is the most interesting of the bunch, but I'll be seeing that at Red Sandcastle in a couple of weeks. So I will not be dropping by Soulpepper at all in the summer and early fall. Too bad. I don't really know if they are playing it so safe because of their aging audience or the new AD is still finding her feet. While Toronto's cultural scene is much improved since the mid 90s, it still doesn't quite have the gravitational pull of New York or Chicago where there is so much going on that it doesn't really matter if a couple of companies play it safe. Here it has a much bigger impact.
* I suppose it is at least worth acknowledging that the outgoing musical director, Peter Oundjian, said that it was somewhat intentional to clear the decks for the next musical director and not continue his new music festival or Decades Project (which were more challenging), though even there if you read between the lines, not that many people turned up...
It's a bit more surprising that Soulpepper's upcoming season plays it so incredibly safe. Streetcar Named Desire? Really? And Reza's Art? I'd say Shepard's Fool for Love is pretty much middle of the road, but it doesn't really matter, as I don't care enough for Sam Shepard to come out. Pinter's Betrayal is the most interesting of the bunch, but I'll be seeing that at Red Sandcastle in a couple of weeks. So I will not be dropping by Soulpepper at all in the summer and early fall. Too bad. I don't really know if they are playing it so safe because of their aging audience or the new AD is still finding her feet. While Toronto's cultural scene is much improved since the mid 90s, it still doesn't quite have the gravitational pull of New York or Chicago where there is so much going on that it doesn't really matter if a couple of companies play it safe. Here it has a much bigger impact.
* I suppose it is at least worth acknowledging that the outgoing musical director, Peter Oundjian, said that it was somewhat intentional to clear the decks for the next musical director and not continue his new music festival or Decades Project (which were more challenging), though even there if you read between the lines, not that many people turned up...
Thursday, February 21, 2019
12th Canadian Challenge - 13th Review - The Doll's Alphabet
Reviewing Camilla Grudova The Doll's Alphabet is a challenge for me. I found most of the stories to be well written, but they left a very bad taste in my mouth. This collection is often described as a cross between Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber. (I would say that in fact quite a number hearken back to the original Grimm fairy tales where terrible things happen all the time, often not only to people who "deserve" them.)
I suppose I should indicate there are plot SPOILERS below.
Most of the stories have extensive surreal moments, such as when a dead man communicates to his wife via letters (he seems most upset that he didn't get a fur-lined coffin) or when a boy's fingers turn into fish. The first story, "Unstitching," sets the tone for the collection where women learn to unstitch their skin and let their inner selves (sort of a cross between a metallic insect and a sewing machine) free. Soon all women are doing this, though men are not able to, as they do not have true secret selves inside. Those that try wound themselves terribly with razors, all to no avail. Most of the other stories feature sewing machines or discuss sewing as something that women do to try to make enough money to enable them to have a baby.
In many of the stories, there is an oppressive social order that is never fully explained. It is just the way things are. "Waxy" has by far the most elaborate set-up, where women work at a Factory of one type or another, supporting the Man in the household, who is supposed to take Exams. Needless to say, a Man who does particularly well on his Exam will often trade up to another woman. This simplified gloss on the story makes it sound like a rip-off of The Handmaid's Tale, though Grudova focuses on a couple where the Man doesn't have official status and can't take Exams. It actually gets considerably darker from there, but I won't go into more details. "The Mouse Queen" also gets quite dark at the end when a woman, abandoned by her fairly useless husband, turns into a wolf and apparently eats up her twin children.
One thing that is quite disturbing is that when women (at least the ones featured in the stories) give birth in these stories, they either give birth to a part of a baby (like an ear) or a horrible quasi-mummified thing, like in David Lynch's Eraserhead, while the most "normal" children get eaten up. In general, the natural order of things is disrupted in these stories, almost as if the whole world has been poisoned and humans are in the last throes of existence. That is certainly my take on "Rhinoceros" where no large animals seem to have survived and zoos stand emptied. On the other hand, in other stories mice and various bugs (moths, ants, cockroaches and especially spiders) still exist, so it isn't like the entire food chain has been eliminated. Nonetheless, in many of these stories, the main things to eat are ancient (and often spoiled) tins of fruit, vegetables or even canned meat, hinting that there has been some large scale disaster in the fairly recent past.
These stories are like little windows into a horrible, decaying world with a secret core, but the secret core is still more corrupted and evil. This reminded me somewhat of Croenenberg's Naked Lunch, though the obsessive observations of bric-a-brac (and the ever-present mechanical sewing machines) with many stories set in or involving antique stores, seemed to parallel the inner world of a Jan Švankmajer film, such as Alice. As should be clear, I didn't like this trip into Grudova's imagination and won't be returning, but of course it might be much more to your taste.
I suppose I should indicate there are plot SPOILERS below.
Most of the stories have extensive surreal moments, such as when a dead man communicates to his wife via letters (he seems most upset that he didn't get a fur-lined coffin) or when a boy's fingers turn into fish. The first story, "Unstitching," sets the tone for the collection where women learn to unstitch their skin and let their inner selves (sort of a cross between a metallic insect and a sewing machine) free. Soon all women are doing this, though men are not able to, as they do not have true secret selves inside. Those that try wound themselves terribly with razors, all to no avail. Most of the other stories feature sewing machines or discuss sewing as something that women do to try to make enough money to enable them to have a baby.
In many of the stories, there is an oppressive social order that is never fully explained. It is just the way things are. "Waxy" has by far the most elaborate set-up, where women work at a Factory of one type or another, supporting the Man in the household, who is supposed to take Exams. Needless to say, a Man who does particularly well on his Exam will often trade up to another woman. This simplified gloss on the story makes it sound like a rip-off of The Handmaid's Tale, though Grudova focuses on a couple where the Man doesn't have official status and can't take Exams. It actually gets considerably darker from there, but I won't go into more details. "The Mouse Queen" also gets quite dark at the end when a woman, abandoned by her fairly useless husband, turns into a wolf and apparently eats up her twin children.
One thing that is quite disturbing is that when women (at least the ones featured in the stories) give birth in these stories, they either give birth to a part of a baby (like an ear) or a horrible quasi-mummified thing, like in David Lynch's Eraserhead, while the most "normal" children get eaten up. In general, the natural order of things is disrupted in these stories, almost as if the whole world has been poisoned and humans are in the last throes of existence. That is certainly my take on "Rhinoceros" where no large animals seem to have survived and zoos stand emptied. On the other hand, in other stories mice and various bugs (moths, ants, cockroaches and especially spiders) still exist, so it isn't like the entire food chain has been eliminated. Nonetheless, in many of these stories, the main things to eat are ancient (and often spoiled) tins of fruit, vegetables or even canned meat, hinting that there has been some large scale disaster in the fairly recent past.
These stories are like little windows into a horrible, decaying world with a secret core, but the secret core is still more corrupted and evil. This reminded me somewhat of Croenenberg's Naked Lunch, though the obsessive observations of bric-a-brac (and the ever-present mechanical sewing machines) with many stories set in or involving antique stores, seemed to parallel the inner world of a Jan Švankmajer film, such as Alice. As should be clear, I didn't like this trip into Grudova's imagination and won't be returning, but of course it might be much more to your taste.
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Paris Comes to Toronto
I had a chance to check out the Impressionist exhibition at the AGO. It was a nice show. I wasn't completely surprised that there were a number of small prints and photos, particularly towards the front end of the show, which definitely threw off the flow of visitors. I knew I'd be coming back several times, so I didn't get too caught up in the smaller works and focused on the main paintings.
Here is a lithograph by Vuillard that I was able to get close enough to view.
There were also three lithographs of the Eiffel Tower, which was part of a series called Thirty-Six Views of the Eiffel Tower by Henri Riviere, who was attempting to bring the spirit of Hokusai to 19th Century Paris. I actually have a reprint of the entire album, and it is pretty neat.
I was pleasantly surprised by the number of Caillebotte paintings on view. I believe there are five, perhaps even six, including one from a private collection that has been on display at the AGO for a while. (I think the hope is that it will eventually be donated. It's certainly not a major work, but Caillebotte is among the rarer museum acquisitions (as he was wealthy enough he didn't need to sell his paintings to make a living), so it would be a bit of a coup to land one.)
This painting, from Geneva, was to me the stand-out work in the whole exhibition.
.
I'd actually seen it previously, in a major Caillebotte retrospective* at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995, but it was great seeing it again.
In addition to some well chosen Pissarros, Sisleys and Monets, there were several paintings by Maximilien Luce, with whom I am much less familiar. While his large painting The Steelworks is very prominent, I particularly liked this smaller painting, Factory in the Moonlight.
The exhibition closed with a row of Monets. One is on loan from the McMaster Museum of Art, which I must admit I have never visited, while the other is from the AGO collection, though I am not certain I have ever seen it before.
The good news is that I will have several more times to see it and these other Impressionist paintings before the exhibit closes in early May. I definitely thought this was time well-spent, almost enough to make up for the lousy weather this Feb.
* For some reason I never got around to picking up this catalog, even though it is one the best monographs on Caillebotte out there. I ordered a copy just the other day (though I had to grit my teeth to pay the extra postage from the US).
Here is a lithograph by Vuillard that I was able to get close enough to view.
 |
| Edouard Vuillard, La Patisserie, 1899 |
There were also three lithographs of the Eiffel Tower, which was part of a series called Thirty-Six Views of the Eiffel Tower by Henri Riviere, who was attempting to bring the spirit of Hokusai to 19th Century Paris. I actually have a reprint of the entire album, and it is pretty neat.
I was pleasantly surprised by the number of Caillebotte paintings on view. I believe there are five, perhaps even six, including one from a private collection that has been on display at the AGO for a while. (I think the hope is that it will eventually be donated. It's certainly not a major work, but Caillebotte is among the rarer museum acquisitions (as he was wealthy enough he didn't need to sell his paintings to make a living), so it would be a bit of a coup to land one.)
This painting, from Geneva, was to me the stand-out work in the whole exhibition.
 |
| Gustave Caillebotte, Le Pont de l'Europe, 1876 |
.
I'd actually seen it previously, in a major Caillebotte retrospective* at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995, but it was great seeing it again.
In addition to some well chosen Pissarros, Sisleys and Monets, there were several paintings by Maximilien Luce, with whom I am much less familiar. While his large painting The Steelworks is very prominent, I particularly liked this smaller painting, Factory in the Moonlight.
 |
| Maximilien Luce, Factory in the Moonlight, 1898 |
The exhibition closed with a row of Monets. One is on loan from the McMaster Museum of Art, which I must admit I have never visited, while the other is from the AGO collection, though I am not certain I have ever seen it before.
 |
| Claude Monet, Charing Cross Bridge, Fog, 1902 |
The good news is that I will have several more times to see it and these other Impressionist paintings before the exhibit closes in early May. I definitely thought this was time well-spent, almost enough to make up for the lousy weather this Feb.
* For some reason I never got around to picking up this catalog, even though it is one the best monographs on Caillebotte out there. I ordered a copy just the other day (though I had to grit my teeth to pay the extra postage from the US).
Monday, February 18, 2019
12th Canadian Challenge - 12th Review - The Penelopiad
While it isn't strictly necessary to have read Homer's Odyssey prior to reading Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad (as she provides a bit of guidance in the introduction, as well as quite a number of asides by Penelope that comment on the main themes of the Odyssey), it is certainly a much richer experience if you are well versed in Odysseus's adventures. I'm going to write the rest of this review assuming you are at least somewhat versed in them as well and thus will not bother with the typical spoiler warnings for a story that is over 2000 years old...
Up until a month ago, I was familiar the overall outline of the Odyssey (and had read Joyce's Ulysses) but had never read the original. Now of course I still haven't read the original Greek, but I've read a couple of solid translations and thus it seemed like a good time to read Atwood's take on Homer.
Atwood focuses generally on the fact that Penelope doesn't do a whole lot in the Odyssey other than fall down on her bed a lot and cry, though she does assist in accelerating Odysseus's plan to rid his palace of the suitors by forging ahead with an archery contest (giving herself up as the first prize). Incidentally, Atwood is hardly the first scholar to suggest that Penelope easily saw through the disguise,* as it would hardly have made sense to give up on waiting for his safe return right after she had just received the most concrete news that he had not died after all. But Atwood focuses quite intently on the fact that Odysseus decided that quite a few of the palace maids were "bad apples," so he had his old nurse point out the worst, and she fingered twelve maids who were loose (having taken some of the suitors as lovers) and talked back. Melantho, the only maid named in the Odyssey, was particularly saucy and had no reverence even for Telemachus. Odyssey says they must all be killed (after they are forced to clean up the enormous, gory mess after the battle with the suitors) and delegates this task to Telemachus. Telemachus ends up hanging all 12 of the maids.
Atwood is really going for two things here. First, she wants to give voice to Penelope, though Penelope mostly tries to justify her general lack of agency (in the Odyssey) by saying that her mother had been a naiad (a water spirit) and had modelled the art of flowing around obstacles and not putting up too much open resistance. Second, she wants to make the case that the maids were actually acting on Penelope's behalf, getting close to the suitors and finding out things about them that Penelope could then use to play them off each other. If a few of them, such as Melantho, fell in love with the role** (and perhaps her suitor as well), that was a risk that Penelope had to run. Given that Penelope was locked away during the slaughter of the suitors (and hadn't been able to fully confide in Odysseus in his beggar garb), her biggest regret is that she didn't tell the nurse, Eurycleia, who might then have interceded to spare the maids. Nonetheless, Penelope still justifies her own actions in saying that she thought Eurycleia was a fairly big blabber-mouth who might have let the cat out of the bag too soon, i.e. at any point over the previous 10 years prior to Odysseus's return.
I should probably mention that all of this is being related as if Penelope is one of the spirits of the dead (just like the ones that Odysseus conjures up in Book XI) and Helen is also around, still tormenting her in various subtle ways. The maids are there as well. Odysseus puts in an appearance now and again, but he gets very upset by the maids, who seem to hold him the greatest blame, though they aren't too pleased with Penelope either. (Unless I totally missed it, Telemachus is just talked about but never really appears in the land of the dead.) While Penelope pleads with the maids to forgive her husband, since it was at least partly her own fault, they haunt him, dancing with their feet just off the ground, driving him slightly mad, so that he drinks of the river Lethe and gets reincarnated, leaving her again and again. (I'm almost certain that Atwood is drawing on Virgil here and not Homer.)
There are quite a few sly asides scattered throughout the book, particularly when Penelope and Helen meet up. She also points out that she doesn't know when or why the shroud that she delayed finishing up became known as Penelope's web (as if she were a spider), which doesn't please her. Basically, she isn't all that happy with her lot, but she also doesn't think that drinking from the river Lethe will necessarily lead to any more happiness (particularly as Atwood posits that after dying for a second or third time, the dead remember their past lives).
One of the more intriguing aspects of this novel is that it was actually turned into a stage play in 2007. I've actually seen it twice - first in Vancouver and then when George Brown put it on in Toronto in 2017. I passed on seeing Hart House do it, and apparently a theatre in London, Ont. just put it on recently. It's got pretty good legs for a relatively recent play, though of course it is by Atwood and has many, many roles for women (in fact, it is normally staged with an all-female crew, with the actors doubling as the maids and then all the other roles, male or female). While I like Enda Walsh's Penelope quite a bit, the focus is on the verbal pyrotechnics of four remaining suitors and Penelope is basically just a silent beacon to them. If anything she has even less agency (and voice) than she does in the Odyssey itself. That said, it doesn't appear Walsh's Penelope has ever played Toronto, and I do hope it does one of these days.
It does seem fitting that the cover of the play version of the Penelopiad focuses on the maids, which is the inevitable outcome when the focus is split away from Penelope to the suffering of the maids. It's not that they don't sing their songs of outrage in the novel, but there is a big difference between reading the words on the page and having 10 or 11 or 12 actors say them in unison!
After comparing the two editions, I would say that Atwood (and the theatre types that helped her whip this into shape) have done an excellent job in distilling the main points. You still have Penelope's discussion of her troubled childhood and her verbal sparring with Helen. There are plenty of sly asides. But the material is considerably tighter. While it is a shame that a couple of amusing stanzas of The Wily Sea Captain song are cut (it goes from 15 stanzas to 7), it is quite possible that the entire song would have just been a bit too much. That said, it is a particularly clever piece of writing in the original novel (it's section xiii), managing to squeeze in almost all of the key elements of the Odyssey, even his being rescued by Nausica and her maids on "laundry day." In the play, the second to last stanza really ought to end in "dodger" or "garage-er" or something. Instead it ends "'Tis she that does send his heart soaring!," which is a fine sentiment but doesn't rhyme with anything else in the song.
There are two sections of the novel that are dropped completely. One is a fabricated anthropology lecture on the significance of the number 12 in the original legend (section xxiv), while the other (section xxvi) is a People's Court trial where Odysseus is going to try to get relief from the plaintiffs (the Maids). While these are both interesting, they do stand out quite a bit from the rest of the novel and are post-modern trappings (which some people enjoy and others loathe). These two sections can fairly safely be excised for a tighter overall narrative. All things considered, the play version may be the best way to experience Atwood's Penelopiad, particularly if you can actually see it in performance.
* Athena had transformed Odysseus into the guise of an old beggar, going so far as to make most of his hair fall out.
** This is a deliberate echo of Jon Sinclair's poem on Thelonious Monk where Monk is accused of falling love with the act (of feigning madness).
Up until a month ago, I was familiar the overall outline of the Odyssey (and had read Joyce's Ulysses) but had never read the original. Now of course I still haven't read the original Greek, but I've read a couple of solid translations and thus it seemed like a good time to read Atwood's take on Homer.
Atwood focuses generally on the fact that Penelope doesn't do a whole lot in the Odyssey other than fall down on her bed a lot and cry, though she does assist in accelerating Odysseus's plan to rid his palace of the suitors by forging ahead with an archery contest (giving herself up as the first prize). Incidentally, Atwood is hardly the first scholar to suggest that Penelope easily saw through the disguise,* as it would hardly have made sense to give up on waiting for his safe return right after she had just received the most concrete news that he had not died after all. But Atwood focuses quite intently on the fact that Odysseus decided that quite a few of the palace maids were "bad apples," so he had his old nurse point out the worst, and she fingered twelve maids who were loose (having taken some of the suitors as lovers) and talked back. Melantho, the only maid named in the Odyssey, was particularly saucy and had no reverence even for Telemachus. Odyssey says they must all be killed (after they are forced to clean up the enormous, gory mess after the battle with the suitors) and delegates this task to Telemachus. Telemachus ends up hanging all 12 of the maids.
Atwood is really going for two things here. First, she wants to give voice to Penelope, though Penelope mostly tries to justify her general lack of agency (in the Odyssey) by saying that her mother had been a naiad (a water spirit) and had modelled the art of flowing around obstacles and not putting up too much open resistance. Second, she wants to make the case that the maids were actually acting on Penelope's behalf, getting close to the suitors and finding out things about them that Penelope could then use to play them off each other. If a few of them, such as Melantho, fell in love with the role** (and perhaps her suitor as well), that was a risk that Penelope had to run. Given that Penelope was locked away during the slaughter of the suitors (and hadn't been able to fully confide in Odysseus in his beggar garb), her biggest regret is that she didn't tell the nurse, Eurycleia, who might then have interceded to spare the maids. Nonetheless, Penelope still justifies her own actions in saying that she thought Eurycleia was a fairly big blabber-mouth who might have let the cat out of the bag too soon, i.e. at any point over the previous 10 years prior to Odysseus's return.
I should probably mention that all of this is being related as if Penelope is one of the spirits of the dead (just like the ones that Odysseus conjures up in Book XI) and Helen is also around, still tormenting her in various subtle ways. The maids are there as well. Odysseus puts in an appearance now and again, but he gets very upset by the maids, who seem to hold him the greatest blame, though they aren't too pleased with Penelope either. (Unless I totally missed it, Telemachus is just talked about but never really appears in the land of the dead.) While Penelope pleads with the maids to forgive her husband, since it was at least partly her own fault, they haunt him, dancing with their feet just off the ground, driving him slightly mad, so that he drinks of the river Lethe and gets reincarnated, leaving her again and again. (I'm almost certain that Atwood is drawing on Virgil here and not Homer.)
There are quite a few sly asides scattered throughout the book, particularly when Penelope and Helen meet up. She also points out that she doesn't know when or why the shroud that she delayed finishing up became known as Penelope's web (as if she were a spider), which doesn't please her. Basically, she isn't all that happy with her lot, but she also doesn't think that drinking from the river Lethe will necessarily lead to any more happiness (particularly as Atwood posits that after dying for a second or third time, the dead remember their past lives).
One of the more intriguing aspects of this novel is that it was actually turned into a stage play in 2007. I've actually seen it twice - first in Vancouver and then when George Brown put it on in Toronto in 2017. I passed on seeing Hart House do it, and apparently a theatre in London, Ont. just put it on recently. It's got pretty good legs for a relatively recent play, though of course it is by Atwood and has many, many roles for women (in fact, it is normally staged with an all-female crew, with the actors doubling as the maids and then all the other roles, male or female). While I like Enda Walsh's Penelope quite a bit, the focus is on the verbal pyrotechnics of four remaining suitors and Penelope is basically just a silent beacon to them. If anything she has even less agency (and voice) than she does in the Odyssey itself. That said, it doesn't appear Walsh's Penelope has ever played Toronto, and I do hope it does one of these days.
It does seem fitting that the cover of the play version of the Penelopiad focuses on the maids, which is the inevitable outcome when the focus is split away from Penelope to the suffering of the maids. It's not that they don't sing their songs of outrage in the novel, but there is a big difference between reading the words on the page and having 10 or 11 or 12 actors say them in unison!
After comparing the two editions, I would say that Atwood (and the theatre types that helped her whip this into shape) have done an excellent job in distilling the main points. You still have Penelope's discussion of her troubled childhood and her verbal sparring with Helen. There are plenty of sly asides. But the material is considerably tighter. While it is a shame that a couple of amusing stanzas of The Wily Sea Captain song are cut (it goes from 15 stanzas to 7), it is quite possible that the entire song would have just been a bit too much. That said, it is a particularly clever piece of writing in the original novel (it's section xiii), managing to squeeze in almost all of the key elements of the Odyssey, even his being rescued by Nausica and her maids on "laundry day." In the play, the second to last stanza really ought to end in "dodger" or "garage-er" or something. Instead it ends "'Tis she that does send his heart soaring!," which is a fine sentiment but doesn't rhyme with anything else in the song.
There are two sections of the novel that are dropped completely. One is a fabricated anthropology lecture on the significance of the number 12 in the original legend (section xxiv), while the other (section xxvi) is a People's Court trial where Odysseus is going to try to get relief from the plaintiffs (the Maids). While these are both interesting, they do stand out quite a bit from the rest of the novel and are post-modern trappings (which some people enjoy and others loathe). These two sections can fairly safely be excised for a tighter overall narrative. All things considered, the play version may be the best way to experience Atwood's Penelopiad, particularly if you can actually see it in performance.
* Athena had transformed Odysseus into the guise of an old beggar, going so far as to make most of his hair fall out.
** This is a deliberate echo of Jon Sinclair's poem on Thelonious Monk where Monk is accused of falling love with the act (of feigning madness).
Saturday, February 16, 2019
Best Laid Last-Minute Plans
I am scaling back this weekend, somewhat despite myself. I still have some set plans, including checking out Elektra at the Canadian Opera Company, and then going to see the Impressionist exhibit at the AGO on Sunday (I've already booked my member tickets). However, I was thinking of checking out the Rhubarb Festival at Buddies in Bad Times after the opera, but the process just looked so cumbersome (you bought a ticket for the evening, not a specific performance, which might or might not be sold out). Given that I only wanted to see a specific show (and not even all that much), I finally decided to bail on the whole thing.
Sunday, I was leaning towards checking out Antibalas at the Horseshoe Tavern, but the show was sold out. I'm pretty sure a day or two ago there were still tickets, but I held off for too long. C'est la vie.
There is a very small chance that I will take the kids to Fort York on Monday for Family Day events, but I'm pretty sure that won't actually happen.
I suppose I really ought to use the "extra" time to straight up a bit, do some reading and maybe finally get back to the long abandoned quilt I was working on.
Actually, even next week something dropped out of the calendar. I was looking at Tafelmusik's Tale of Two Cities and thinking that would be an interesting concert that mixes music of the East and West. Something at the back of my mind was triggered, and I went off and looked through my old emails. Sure enough, I saw this back in 2016! While it was a very interesting event, I don't really feel the need to see it twice. Now I am a little surprised (and disappointed) that the library doesn't have the DVD of the concert. I may eventually order it, but I'm in no particular hurry. (I would be far more likely to order the DVD and then donate it to the library if I was sure it would remain in the collection, but it almost certainly would just end up in their annual book sale...)
Sunday, I was leaning towards checking out Antibalas at the Horseshoe Tavern, but the show was sold out. I'm pretty sure a day or two ago there were still tickets, but I held off for too long. C'est la vie.
There is a very small chance that I will take the kids to Fort York on Monday for Family Day events, but I'm pretty sure that won't actually happen.
I suppose I really ought to use the "extra" time to straight up a bit, do some reading and maybe finally get back to the long abandoned quilt I was working on.
Actually, even next week something dropped out of the calendar. I was looking at Tafelmusik's Tale of Two Cities and thinking that would be an interesting concert that mixes music of the East and West. Something at the back of my mind was triggered, and I went off and looked through my old emails. Sure enough, I saw this back in 2016! While it was a very interesting event, I don't really feel the need to see it twice. Now I am a little surprised (and disappointed) that the library doesn't have the DVD of the concert. I may eventually order it, but I'm in no particular hurry. (I would be far more likely to order the DVD and then donate it to the library if I was sure it would remain in the collection, but it almost certainly would just end up in their annual book sale...)
Friday, February 15, 2019
Nova Explosion
Ok, so a bit of click-bait in the title (and the one before for that matter).
I'm in this weird mood where I'm starting to return to the books I read in my very early 20s. I read a huge amount back then (just a bit under 100 books/year), but, not surprisingly, I don't remember a lot of details of most of the books. One of my major accomplishments of 1993 was reading through all the novels of Saul Bellow, Graham Green and Barbara Pym. In the case of Bellow and Green, there are just a small number of novels that I expect to reread, though I will probably reread most of Pym (although it may be a while before I actually get started).
I recall that during that period I read many of Craig Nova's novels and thought they were quite good, though that's about all I can recall. I probably even owned a fair number of these at one point, but I don't believe I own any Nova any longer. Unlike the other authors mentioned above, he has written a fair bit since the mid 1990s, so I have a fair bit of virgin territory to cover, as it were. It actually looks like he has drifted into science fiction a bit (Wetware) and crime novels (Cruisers), whereas I read far more science fiction in my teens and early 20s and hardly do at all any more.
From the list below, I am fairly sure I read Incandescence through Tornado Alley (and maybe Trombone), though I certainly wouldn't swear to it.
While I have far too many other things to do to just devote my time to rereading Nova, I might alternate between reading a book I think I've read before and one that is clearly new. However, I do think I'm going to skip Cruisers as it just doesn't sound remotely appealing to me (not up my Alley, as it were).* Also, the set-up of The Universal Donor sounds so absurd that I think I will also give this a pass. One of the Goodreads reviewers said it had an unearned happy ending, and from what little I have gleaned, it sounds like it has many of the weaknesses of McEwan's Saturday, which I really didn't care for, regardless of all the hype surrounding it.
I had no idea that Nova lived in North Carolina and taught at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, where my father worked. Had I known, I might have tried to get an autographed copy of one or more of his books.
* I did get about 50 pages into Wetware when I finally gave up on it. It was a combination of the glacial pace of the first few chapters combined with the fact that I didn't care at all about any of the human characters. I'm sure it didn't help that the main plot seemed like a ripoff of much more interesting books about androids with human emotions, and also that the "science" bits were so absurdly far-fetched like being able to develop artificial molecules/genes to generate specific emotional responses in the androids.
I'm in this weird mood where I'm starting to return to the books I read in my very early 20s. I read a huge amount back then (just a bit under 100 books/year), but, not surprisingly, I don't remember a lot of details of most of the books. One of my major accomplishments of 1993 was reading through all the novels of Saul Bellow, Graham Green and Barbara Pym. In the case of Bellow and Green, there are just a small number of novels that I expect to reread, though I will probably reread most of Pym (although it may be a while before I actually get started).
I recall that during that period I read many of Craig Nova's novels and thought they were quite good, though that's about all I can recall. I probably even owned a fair number of these at one point, but I don't believe I own any Nova any longer. Unlike the other authors mentioned above, he has written a fair bit since the mid 1990s, so I have a fair bit of virgin territory to cover, as it were. It actually looks like he has drifted into science fiction a bit (Wetware) and crime novels (Cruisers), whereas I read far more science fiction in my teens and early 20s and hardly do at all any more.
From the list below, I am fairly sure I read Incandescence through Tornado Alley (and maybe Trombone), though I certainly wouldn't swear to it.
- Turkey Hash (1972)
- The Geek (1975)
- Incandescence (1979)
- The Good Son (1982)
- The Congressman's Daughter (1986)
- Tornado Alley (1989)
- Trombone (1992)
- The Book of Dreams (1994)
- The Universal Donor (1997)
- Wetware (2002)
- Cruisers (2004)
- The Informer (2010)
- The Constant Heart (2012)
- All The Dead Yale Men (2013)
While I have far too many other things to do to just devote my time to rereading Nova, I might alternate between reading a book I think I've read before and one that is clearly new. However, I do think I'm going to skip Cruisers as it just doesn't sound remotely appealing to me (not up my Alley, as it were).* Also, the set-up of The Universal Donor sounds so absurd that I think I will also give this a pass. One of the Goodreads reviewers said it had an unearned happy ending, and from what little I have gleaned, it sounds like it has many of the weaknesses of McEwan's Saturday, which I really didn't care for, regardless of all the hype surrounding it.
I had no idea that Nova lived in North Carolina and taught at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, where my father worked. Had I known, I might have tried to get an autographed copy of one or more of his books.
* I did get about 50 pages into Wetware when I finally gave up on it. It was a combination of the glacial pace of the first few chapters combined with the fact that I didn't care at all about any of the human characters. I'm sure it didn't help that the main plot seemed like a ripoff of much more interesting books about androids with human emotions, and also that the "science" bits were so absurdly far-fetched like being able to develop artificial molecules/genes to generate specific emotional responses in the androids.
You're So Wrong
No, not another post about the fake National Emergency to the South...
I was at work listening to a co-worker telling me his tale of woe. He was moving from one cubical to another on the other side of the office, and he had put all his things together and then they were thrown out. This sounded pretty terrible, but when I probed it turned out that he had put everything into the blue recycle bin -- and then left it overnight! He wasn't even sure if he had left it on the floor, or put it on top of his desk.* He was obviously upset and had lost some things he cared about, but I simply could not commiserate, particularly when he said he was trying to file a report against the staff! First off, it isn't really the job of the cleaning staff to understand when things are there to be recycled and when they are "obviously" just resting in the blue bin. He had some elaborate argument that they should have known no one would be recycling perfectly good office supplies, but really what did he think would happen when he left them in the blue bin (for no apparent good reason given that there are other boxes around the office)? And was he that exhausted that he couldn't just make the move that evening, given it wasn't even a partly large or heavy bin? This seems like a clear case of not really thinking things through and then trying to blame others for one's poor decisions.
I'm actually glad I won't have to be around him for a while, since he kept trying to get me on side, and finally I said to his face that he was in the wrong. Pretty uncomfortable...
* One thing about this episode that I regret is that I didn't see his stuff in the blue bin (I suppose he did this after I left work), since I would either have moved it myself or put it into a cardboard box, as I would have known his approach was going to lead to disaster. Oh well. It can't be helped now.
I was at work listening to a co-worker telling me his tale of woe. He was moving from one cubical to another on the other side of the office, and he had put all his things together and then they were thrown out. This sounded pretty terrible, but when I probed it turned out that he had put everything into the blue recycle bin -- and then left it overnight! He wasn't even sure if he had left it on the floor, or put it on top of his desk.* He was obviously upset and had lost some things he cared about, but I simply could not commiserate, particularly when he said he was trying to file a report against the staff! First off, it isn't really the job of the cleaning staff to understand when things are there to be recycled and when they are "obviously" just resting in the blue bin. He had some elaborate argument that they should have known no one would be recycling perfectly good office supplies, but really what did he think would happen when he left them in the blue bin (for no apparent good reason given that there are other boxes around the office)? And was he that exhausted that he couldn't just make the move that evening, given it wasn't even a partly large or heavy bin? This seems like a clear case of not really thinking things through and then trying to blame others for one's poor decisions.
I'm actually glad I won't have to be around him for a while, since he kept trying to get me on side, and finally I said to his face that he was in the wrong. Pretty uncomfortable...
* One thing about this episode that I regret is that I didn't see his stuff in the blue bin (I suppose he did this after I left work), since I would either have moved it myself or put it into a cardboard box, as I would have known his approach was going to lead to disaster. Oh well. It can't be helped now.
False Hope?
Today the sun came out for a bit and some ice broke up. However, for the most part the sidewalks, at least in Riverdale, were still very icy. In some places the ice is still over an inch thick, and one day of thawing won't do much at all. I think tomorrow will hover around freezing, and then Sun-Wed. the temperature drops quite a bit. I suspect we won't actually manage to get these sidewalks cleared in time for them to freeze all over again. Basically, it really does look like we have another week to go before we see any improvement on the weather front.
So disappointing.
Edit: Indeed coming home was even a bit worse than I feared, and I confronted a long stretch of sidewalk that was nothing but ice and came fairly close to wiping out. It may dry off slightly over the next week, but there's nothing that suggests it will melt. I am just so sick of this.
So disappointing.
Edit: Indeed coming home was even a bit worse than I feared, and I confronted a long stretch of sidewalk that was nothing but ice and came fairly close to wiping out. It may dry off slightly over the next week, but there's nothing that suggests it will melt. I am just so sick of this.
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
Wrapping Up Greeks and Romans
I'm finding that I am really tired of reading Greeks and Romans. It definitely did not help that I read two translations* back to back (including for the Aeneid). While the story will probably stick in my mind a bit better (the second time around the meaning was often a bit clearer), there were parts of these epics that I just did not enjoy (particularly the funeral feast games in both the Iliad and the Aeneid) and they really dragged the second time.**
Interestingly, I had someone comment to me, on the subway last night, that the Aeneid was his favourite of the bunch, so we spoke very briefly about it. Honestly, the Aeneid (while the shortest of the three due to Virgil's untimely death) is not very inspiring to me. In many ways, the Aeneid strikes me as a kind of fan fiction, taking significant elements of the Odyssey and the Iliad, but recasting them so that Romans could see themselves linked to the Trojans -- though why they would want to be connected to the losing side is a bit beyond me. Humphries's footnotes are much better than the postscript in the Fitzgerald version in actually making these connections, so it is clear which Roman emperor Virgil is sucking up to. I was pretty astounded that Virgil draws on reincarnation, which I didn't realize was at all part of Greco-Roman thought (it seems to be very much a minority preoccupation) to say that quite a few of the Trojan heroes became famous Romans!
While I realize we wouldn't have Dante's Divine Comedy without Virgil, even though the best bits about torments in the Underworld are already in the Odyssey, I much prefer Dante's roasting of the many figures who had fallen short (in his estimation) to Virgil's sucking up to Caesar Augustus. (I suppose to be fair, Dante does end up putting his patrons into Paradise, but the Paradiso is so much less memorable than the Inferno that it hardly counts...)
I'm still glad that I finally did get around to reading it, even though the odds of me rereading the Aeneid are very, very slim. I'm going to go ahead and read (and review) Atwood's take on Telemachus and the maids in The Penelopiad, though this is one I can read quite quickly, as I've already seen the stage version twice. But it would be good to read it while the source material is so fresh in my head. Then I'm going to switch to something completely different, probably a short novel or two and then Musil's The Man Without Qualities, since if I don't read this while I am still mostly commuting by transit, I will struggle to find the time to read it at all, given it is so long and dense. I may then switch back to Humphries's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, but I'll probably hold off on the rest from the list, like Horace, Juvenal and Lucretius. I'm more likely to tackle Montaigne and/or reread Dante, though I'll get back to the ancient authors eventually.
* While there are certainly nice phrases here and there in Fitzgerald, he always came in second to either Lattimore or Humphries. I honestly wasn't that impressed with Fagles after the first few pages, so didn't bother digging into him the same way.
** I just hit the part of the Aeneid where Virgil spends several pages describing the shield of Aeneas, custom-built for him by Vulcan. Boring! If possible even more boring than the description of the shield of Achilles in the Iliad, since it is so derivative. I'm getting more and more tempted to bail, since the war scenes in the Iliad were pretty intolerable for me, and that is pretty much all that is left in the Aeneid from here on out (we never do get around to the death of Aeneas, which might have been marginally interesting).
Interestingly, I had someone comment to me, on the subway last night, that the Aeneid was his favourite of the bunch, so we spoke very briefly about it. Honestly, the Aeneid (while the shortest of the three due to Virgil's untimely death) is not very inspiring to me. In many ways, the Aeneid strikes me as a kind of fan fiction, taking significant elements of the Odyssey and the Iliad, but recasting them so that Romans could see themselves linked to the Trojans -- though why they would want to be connected to the losing side is a bit beyond me. Humphries's footnotes are much better than the postscript in the Fitzgerald version in actually making these connections, so it is clear which Roman emperor Virgil is sucking up to. I was pretty astounded that Virgil draws on reincarnation, which I didn't realize was at all part of Greco-Roman thought (it seems to be very much a minority preoccupation) to say that quite a few of the Trojan heroes became famous Romans!
While I realize we wouldn't have Dante's Divine Comedy without Virgil, even though the best bits about torments in the Underworld are already in the Odyssey, I much prefer Dante's roasting of the many figures who had fallen short (in his estimation) to Virgil's sucking up to Caesar Augustus. (I suppose to be fair, Dante does end up putting his patrons into Paradise, but the Paradiso is so much less memorable than the Inferno that it hardly counts...)
I'm still glad that I finally did get around to reading it, even though the odds of me rereading the Aeneid are very, very slim. I'm going to go ahead and read (and review) Atwood's take on Telemachus and the maids in The Penelopiad, though this is one I can read quite quickly, as I've already seen the stage version twice. But it would be good to read it while the source material is so fresh in my head. Then I'm going to switch to something completely different, probably a short novel or two and then Musil's The Man Without Qualities, since if I don't read this while I am still mostly commuting by transit, I will struggle to find the time to read it at all, given it is so long and dense. I may then switch back to Humphries's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, but I'll probably hold off on the rest from the list, like Horace, Juvenal and Lucretius. I'm more likely to tackle Montaigne and/or reread Dante, though I'll get back to the ancient authors eventually.
* While there are certainly nice phrases here and there in Fitzgerald, he always came in second to either Lattimore or Humphries. I honestly wasn't that impressed with Fagles after the first few pages, so didn't bother digging into him the same way.
** I just hit the part of the Aeneid where Virgil spends several pages describing the shield of Aeneas, custom-built for him by Vulcan. Boring! If possible even more boring than the description of the shield of Achilles in the Iliad, since it is so derivative. I'm getting more and more tempted to bail, since the war scenes in the Iliad were pretty intolerable for me, and that is pretty much all that is left in the Aeneid from here on out (we never do get around to the death of Aeneas, which might have been marginally interesting).
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
One Storm Too Many
This has been a challenging winter. Not the worst I've ever lived through, that would probably be 2011 (perhaps not coincidentally the last winter before I moved from Chicago to Vancouver). Though in terms of actually having the most trouble getting around, I think it was the ice storm (of 1998?) that shut down the el completely for a day or two (essentially unheard of) and the bus replacement system was not much better.
While it has been extremely cold, and we got a lot of snow all on one day, in general the transportation system should have been able to cope. However, due to the TTC being starved of funding for maintenance, there were many, many signal and track problems that made getting in quite terrible. Anyway, the forecast is for another terrible day with 15-25 cm of snow and freezing rain pellets. Montreal is supposed to get something like 30-40 cm tomorrow!
What's quite astonishing is that the Toronto schools decided to shut down, when they were open a couple of weeks ago when we had an arguably worse day. In fact, this is the first Toronto snow day since 2011. It's possible there was more or less an open rebellion on the part of the teachers who said they weren't coming in. York schools are going ahead, though the school buses aren't running, so I suspect a lot of kids won't make it in in York.
The problem is that it is hard to tell what to do right now. There is no snow at all right now (that is to say none of the predicted new snow), so this is all going to fall throughout the day. But it is also possible that the snow doesn't hit as hard as they are predicting (which happened in 2001 in NYC when "Snowmageddon" never turned up and the forecasters all looked silly). If I go in to work now, it will be a breeze, but I don't really want to get stuck there. If the subway more or less shuts down this evening, then I'll be quite unhappy that I went in. I suppose I probably can make it back on the 72 bus, or even leave early if things start looking dicey. I'm leaning towards going and risking it, though I am not that upset they cancelled school for once. The main way I will cope and adjust is going in a bit early, so I can leave early, and then shifting my regular gym workout* from tonight to Wed. What's completely certain is that I am completely sick of winter...
* I am somewhat proud of the fact that I have kept going to the gym, even through a fairly dreary winter, and it should only get easier starting around March. Ideally, that is also when I will start biking to work again, and I can get more serious about getting in shape (right now I am just maintaining).
Anyway, while the kids probably could have gotten to school and back today before it got really nasty (it was around 5 when the freezing rain started), it's probably not the end of the world for them to have a day off. Now if the schools are shut tomorrow then that will be more of a problem.
While it has been extremely cold, and we got a lot of snow all on one day, in general the transportation system should have been able to cope. However, due to the TTC being starved of funding for maintenance, there were many, many signal and track problems that made getting in quite terrible. Anyway, the forecast is for another terrible day with 15-25 cm of snow and freezing rain pellets. Montreal is supposed to get something like 30-40 cm tomorrow!
What's quite astonishing is that the Toronto schools decided to shut down, when they were open a couple of weeks ago when we had an arguably worse day. In fact, this is the first Toronto snow day since 2011. It's possible there was more or less an open rebellion on the part of the teachers who said they weren't coming in. York schools are going ahead, though the school buses aren't running, so I suspect a lot of kids won't make it in in York.
The problem is that it is hard to tell what to do right now. There is no snow at all right now (that is to say none of the predicted new snow), so this is all going to fall throughout the day. But it is also possible that the snow doesn't hit as hard as they are predicting (which happened in 2001 in NYC when "Snowmageddon" never turned up and the forecasters all looked silly). If I go in to work now, it will be a breeze, but I don't really want to get stuck there. If the subway more or less shuts down this evening, then I'll be quite unhappy that I went in. I suppose I probably can make it back on the 72 bus, or even leave early if things start looking dicey. I'm leaning towards going and risking it, though I am not that upset they cancelled school for once. The main way I will cope and adjust is going in a bit early, so I can leave early, and then shifting my regular gym workout* from tonight to Wed. What's completely certain is that I am completely sick of winter...
* I am somewhat proud of the fact that I have kept going to the gym, even through a fairly dreary winter, and it should only get easier starting around March. Ideally, that is also when I will start biking to work again, and I can get more serious about getting in shape (right now I am just maintaining).
Anyway, while the kids probably could have gotten to school and back today before it got really nasty (it was around 5 when the freezing rain started), it's probably not the end of the world for them to have a day off. Now if the schools are shut tomorrow then that will be more of a problem.
Sunday, February 10, 2019
Duelling Othellos
Intriguing, no?
I'm not quite sure why Hamlet is always the play that gets the special treatment -- two Hamlets or all the gender flipping, etc. Maybe it is so much meatier, or it is simply because Othello is already a bit fraught and ripe for being considered racially insensitive so that no one wants to attempt a version where Othello is white and everyone else is Black (though that would be fascinating) or a female Othello (which also might be quite interesting). And it is all but impossible to imagine a version where there is a calm, self-possessed Othello struggling with a passionate, brutal Othello.
I mean something a bit more straight-forward in that as we were sitting down for Othello (and fortunately the streetcar was more or less on time and we managed to get good seats), I ran into the actor who played Othello in the Driftwood version two summers ago. (This was the one where we had such lousy seats.) He was seated across from us, so we could occasionally check his reactions to the on-stage Othello. Curiously, he was sitting with a friend who seemed to know nothing at all about Othello and was quite horrified at how Iago got away with everything, at least until the very last minute or two of the play. (Interestingly, at Stratford several years ago they somewhat solved the issue of Emilia not speaking up when Othello went on and on about the handkerchief by moving her upstage a bit and perhaps out of earshot. This time, she was just a couple of feet away and should absolutely have spoken up to help set things right.) I couldn't tell if Carly Maga was serious that Othello needs a trigger warning, but this guy could have used a clue or two.
Anyway, this was super intimate Shakespeare, well done and a bit overwhelming (reminding me a bit of the very first time I saw Lear in Vancouver, which was in a similar theatre space). There were a few times it felt a bit "too shouty," but I suspect it is just because we were so close to the action. This may well be the last time I go see Othello, as it just isn't a play I care for all that much, but it was definitely a solid production if it is my last. I think it is one my son will remember for quite some time as well.
Several of the cast members are regulars with Shakespeare BASH'd, though there were a few new faces. I didn't remember where I had seen David Mackett before, but then I looked him up and I had seen him in Fly on the Wall's production of Conor McPherson's Port Authority. And Dylan Evans (who was Cassio) also seemed familiar. It turns out I saw him in Entrances and Exits at the Fringe, but then I also saw him in Picasso at the Lapin Agile a few years back.
This was the last performance (sorry!), but they'll be coming back in April with As You Like It. I probably took my son to see George Brown do this, but I may take him again, as it is one of the lighter plays in the canon.* I'm not thrilled that it is pretty far from my stomping grounds (playing at Junction City Music Hall), but I can probably make it out there.
* Othello is certainly one of the more troubling tragedies. It's generally more typical to start with Romeo and Juliet... In fact, he's also seen King Lear (only mildly gender flipped), which I didn't see live until I was in my 40s! I should be able to take him to Macbeth and Hamlet within the next couple of years, given how often they come around, though I do want them to be fairly standard productions with only modest gender flipping at most. I probably won't take him to The Merchant of Venice. Quite frankly, I feel there is so little worth redeeming in that play that I don't intend to ever watch it again.
I'm not quite sure why Hamlet is always the play that gets the special treatment -- two Hamlets or all the gender flipping, etc. Maybe it is so much meatier, or it is simply because Othello is already a bit fraught and ripe for being considered racially insensitive so that no one wants to attempt a version where Othello is white and everyone else is Black (though that would be fascinating) or a female Othello (which also might be quite interesting). And it is all but impossible to imagine a version where there is a calm, self-possessed Othello struggling with a passionate, brutal Othello.
I mean something a bit more straight-forward in that as we were sitting down for Othello (and fortunately the streetcar was more or less on time and we managed to get good seats), I ran into the actor who played Othello in the Driftwood version two summers ago. (This was the one where we had such lousy seats.) He was seated across from us, so we could occasionally check his reactions to the on-stage Othello. Curiously, he was sitting with a friend who seemed to know nothing at all about Othello and was quite horrified at how Iago got away with everything, at least until the very last minute or two of the play. (Interestingly, at Stratford several years ago they somewhat solved the issue of Emilia not speaking up when Othello went on and on about the handkerchief by moving her upstage a bit and perhaps out of earshot. This time, she was just a couple of feet away and should absolutely have spoken up to help set things right.) I couldn't tell if Carly Maga was serious that Othello needs a trigger warning, but this guy could have used a clue or two.
Anyway, this was super intimate Shakespeare, well done and a bit overwhelming (reminding me a bit of the very first time I saw Lear in Vancouver, which was in a similar theatre space). There were a few times it felt a bit "too shouty," but I suspect it is just because we were so close to the action. This may well be the last time I go see Othello, as it just isn't a play I care for all that much, but it was definitely a solid production if it is my last. I think it is one my son will remember for quite some time as well.
Several of the cast members are regulars with Shakespeare BASH'd, though there were a few new faces. I didn't remember where I had seen David Mackett before, but then I looked him up and I had seen him in Fly on the Wall's production of Conor McPherson's Port Authority. And Dylan Evans (who was Cassio) also seemed familiar. It turns out I saw him in Entrances and Exits at the Fringe, but then I also saw him in Picasso at the Lapin Agile a few years back.
This was the last performance (sorry!), but they'll be coming back in April with As You Like It. I probably took my son to see George Brown do this, but I may take him again, as it is one of the lighter plays in the canon.* I'm not thrilled that it is pretty far from my stomping grounds (playing at Junction City Music Hall), but I can probably make it out there.
* Othello is certainly one of the more troubling tragedies. It's generally more typical to start with Romeo and Juliet... In fact, he's also seen King Lear (only mildly gender flipped), which I didn't see live until I was in my 40s! I should be able to take him to Macbeth and Hamlet within the next couple of years, given how often they come around, though I do want them to be fairly standard productions with only modest gender flipping at most. I probably won't take him to The Merchant of Venice. Quite frankly, I feel there is so little worth redeeming in that play that I don't intend to ever watch it again.
Saturday, February 9, 2019
Sold-Out Weekend
I had mentioned a while back that I had planned on going to the Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale, but it sold out pretty quickly. The Theatre Centre is just too far from where I live for me to shuttle out there and try to get on the wait list.* Too bad.
Interestingly, the two things I am seeing this weekend are sold out - Shaw's You Never Can Tell at the George Brown Theatre School and Othello by Shakespeare BASH'd at the Monarch Tavern. As it happens, You Never Can Tell wasn't actually sold out, or rather many of the students who had been allocated the remaining seats never showed. There were at least 10 free seats. (I'm pretty sure Othello is truly sold out, though that doesn't mean a couple of people won't fail to show up.) It had its moments, particularly during a tense family dinner and some of the mugging by the younger two daughters, but I didn't love it (either the performance and certainly not the script). I would also say that this group seems to be having a bit more trouble remembering lines (compared to past classes). It is possible that is due to the strain of doing two shows in rep. I did think their Caucasian Chalk Circle was quite good.
The broader issue is that I have kind of fallen out of love with Shaw. He is nowhere near as clever as he thinks he is (and nowhere near as witty as Wilde). I also wasn't too impressed when I learned one of the more interesting lines (about a man who says interrogating him would be like breaking a butterfly upon the wheel) was lifted almost word for word from Alexander Pope! I then went ahead and skimmed Don Juan in Hell and found it really dated and boring. I am absolutely not going to attempt to see it (combined with Man and Superman) this year at the Shaw Festival, and quite likely, going forward, will never see any Shaw plays at the Shaw. I did see Saint Joan a couple of years ago, so I already checked that box. I suppose there is a small chance that some day I would check out Heartbreak House or Major Barbara or even Mrs. Warren's Profession, but I'm much more likely to see them if they came here as a UT student production or at a storefront theatre. I'm still very much on the fence for Shakespeare's Henry VIII at Stratford, but I just enjoy visiting Stratford so much more, I'll probably end up going anyway.
It's still quite cold out, which doesn't really help my mood, but it may only be another couple weeks before the chill lifts. Here's hoping.
* I did get an email suggesting that The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale will make a return visit, which would make a lot of sense, so I'll keep my eyes open for that and pounce this time around.
Interestingly, the two things I am seeing this weekend are sold out - Shaw's You Never Can Tell at the George Brown Theatre School and Othello by Shakespeare BASH'd at the Monarch Tavern. As it happens, You Never Can Tell wasn't actually sold out, or rather many of the students who had been allocated the remaining seats never showed. There were at least 10 free seats. (I'm pretty sure Othello is truly sold out, though that doesn't mean a couple of people won't fail to show up.) It had its moments, particularly during a tense family dinner and some of the mugging by the younger two daughters, but I didn't love it (either the performance and certainly not the script). I would also say that this group seems to be having a bit more trouble remembering lines (compared to past classes). It is possible that is due to the strain of doing two shows in rep. I did think their Caucasian Chalk Circle was quite good.
The broader issue is that I have kind of fallen out of love with Shaw. He is nowhere near as clever as he thinks he is (and nowhere near as witty as Wilde). I also wasn't too impressed when I learned one of the more interesting lines (about a man who says interrogating him would be like breaking a butterfly upon the wheel) was lifted almost word for word from Alexander Pope! I then went ahead and skimmed Don Juan in Hell and found it really dated and boring. I am absolutely not going to attempt to see it (combined with Man and Superman) this year at the Shaw Festival, and quite likely, going forward, will never see any Shaw plays at the Shaw. I did see Saint Joan a couple of years ago, so I already checked that box. I suppose there is a small chance that some day I would check out Heartbreak House or Major Barbara or even Mrs. Warren's Profession, but I'm much more likely to see them if they came here as a UT student production or at a storefront theatre. I'm still very much on the fence for Shakespeare's Henry VIII at Stratford, but I just enjoy visiting Stratford so much more, I'll probably end up going anyway.
It's still quite cold out, which doesn't really help my mood, but it may only be another couple weeks before the chill lifts. Here's hoping.
* I did get an email suggesting that The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale will make a return visit, which would make a lot of sense, so I'll keep my eyes open for that and pounce this time around.
Friday, February 8, 2019
Talkin' Škvorecký Blues
I'm about halfway through Josef Škvorecký's The Swell Season, and I decided that it made little sense to review this novel as part of the Canadian Challenge. While Škvorecký escaped from Czechoslovakia in 1968 and lived in Canada for basically half his life, the vast majority of his work is still firmly based in Czechoslovakia, either because he was writing stories and novels about his youth and young adulthood (basically anything involving the character Danny Smiricky) or he was writing detective stories based in Prague (the Lieutenant Boruvka series). In The Engineer of Human Souls, Škvorecký does bring Danny to Canada, where he becomes an instructor at the University of Toronto. Though this is a fairly incredible story, it did all happen to Škvorecký himself.
While in Toronto, Škvorecký and his wife made a major contribution to supporting dissident Czech writers and artists. Much of his own work was published in Czech first (and translated by others), even many years after he had been living in Canada. Indeed, even his final novel, Ordinary Lives, was written and published first in Czech and then translated. I do think the essays on politics and culture in Talkin' Moscow Blues were written in English or at least translated by Škvorecký, though I don't have a copy on hand to check.
Given that so little of his work involves Canada, it really is hard to see him as a Canadian writer. I don't really want to put him into that basket, although of course I will go ahead and review his work if any of his later novels do spend at least as much time in Toronto as they do in Prague. I will track below my progress through his work, as I own quite a bit of it, though I've only read a relatively small portion of the Danny Smiricky saga.
This list is shamelessly cribbed from his Wikipedia page:
Zbabělci (The Cowards), 1958 - DS
O Legenda Emöke (The Legend of Emöke), 1963
O Smutek poručíka Borůvky (The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka), 1966
RO Bassaxofon (The Bass Saxophone), 1967 - DS
O Lvíče (Miss Silver's Past), 1969
Hořkej svět (The Bitter World), 1969
O Tankový prapor (The Republic of Whores), 1969- DS (picked up autographed copy at BMV)
O Mirákl (The Miracle Game), 1972 - DS
O Hříchy pro pátera Knoxe (Sins for Father Knox), 1973
R Prima sezóna (The Swell Season), 1975 - DS
O Konec poručíka Borůvky (The End of Lieutenant Boruvka), 1975
R Příběh inženýra lidských duší (The Engineer of Human Souls), 1977 - DS
O Návrat poručíka Borůvky (The Return of Lieutenant Boruvka), 1980
O Scherzo capriccioso (Dvorak in Love), 1984
Nevěsta z Texasu (The Bride from Texas), 1992
Povídky tenorsaxofonisty (The Tenor Saxophonist's Story), 1993
Povídky z Rajského údolí (Stories from the Valley of Paradise*), 1996
Headed for the Blues: a Memoir with Ten Stories, 1997
Nevysvětlitelný příběh aneb Vyprávění Questa Firma Sicula (An Inexplicable Story, or, The Narrative of Questus Firmus Siculus), 1998
O Dvě vraždy v mém dvojím životě (Two Murders in My Double Life), 1999
Krátké setkání, s vraždou (Brief Encounter, with Murder), 1999
O When Eve Was Naked, 2000
Setkání po letech, s vraždou (Encounter After Many Years, with Murder), 2001
Setkání na konci éry, s vraždou (Encounter at the End of an Era, with Murder), 2001
O Obyčejné źivoty (Ordinary Lives), 2004
I've interspersed the short story collections and the novels. As I become aware of them, I'll add DS if the work features Danny Smiricky prominently. While the Toronto Library has most of the ones I don't own, a handful don't circulate and I'll have to go to Robarts for the rest. It turns out that the rare book collection at UT has quite a bit more by Škvorecký, and I'll have to decide just how deep I want to get into this author.
* These are also referred to as the Edenvale stories, and they appear to be 5 stories about Danny teaching at Edenvale College at UT, so more or less a continuation of The Engineer of Human Souls, but I can't tell if all of them ended up in Headed for the Blues, When Eve Was Naked or another collection, but they don't appear to be published as a stand-alone collection in English.
While in Toronto, Škvorecký and his wife made a major contribution to supporting dissident Czech writers and artists. Much of his own work was published in Czech first (and translated by others), even many years after he had been living in Canada. Indeed, even his final novel, Ordinary Lives, was written and published first in Czech and then translated. I do think the essays on politics and culture in Talkin' Moscow Blues were written in English or at least translated by Škvorecký, though I don't have a copy on hand to check.
Given that so little of his work involves Canada, it really is hard to see him as a Canadian writer. I don't really want to put him into that basket, although of course I will go ahead and review his work if any of his later novels do spend at least as much time in Toronto as they do in Prague. I will track below my progress through his work, as I own quite a bit of it, though I've only read a relatively small portion of the Danny Smiricky saga.
This list is shamelessly cribbed from his Wikipedia page:
Zbabělci (The Cowards), 1958 - DS
O Legenda Emöke (The Legend of Emöke), 1963
O Smutek poručíka Borůvky (The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka), 1966
RO Bassaxofon (The Bass Saxophone), 1967 - DS
O Lvíče (Miss Silver's Past), 1969
Hořkej svět (The Bitter World), 1969
O Tankový prapor (The Republic of Whores), 1969- DS (picked up autographed copy at BMV)
O Mirákl (The Miracle Game), 1972 - DS
O Hříchy pro pátera Knoxe (Sins for Father Knox), 1973
R Prima sezóna (The Swell Season), 1975 - DS
O Konec poručíka Borůvky (The End of Lieutenant Boruvka), 1975
R Příběh inženýra lidských duší (The Engineer of Human Souls), 1977 - DS
O Návrat poručíka Borůvky (The Return of Lieutenant Boruvka), 1980
O Scherzo capriccioso (Dvorak in Love), 1984
Nevěsta z Texasu (The Bride from Texas), 1992
Povídky tenorsaxofonisty (The Tenor Saxophonist's Story), 1993
Povídky z Rajského údolí (Stories from the Valley of Paradise*), 1996
Headed for the Blues: a Memoir with Ten Stories, 1997
Nevysvětlitelný příběh aneb Vyprávění Questa Firma Sicula (An Inexplicable Story, or, The Narrative of Questus Firmus Siculus), 1998
O Dvě vraždy v mém dvojím životě (Two Murders in My Double Life), 1999
Krátké setkání, s vraždou (Brief Encounter, with Murder), 1999
O When Eve Was Naked, 2000
Setkání po letech, s vraždou (Encounter After Many Years, with Murder), 2001
Setkání na konci éry, s vraždou (Encounter at the End of an Era, with Murder), 2001
O Obyčejné źivoty (Ordinary Lives), 2004
I've interspersed the short story collections and the novels. As I become aware of them, I'll add DS if the work features Danny Smiricky prominently. While the Toronto Library has most of the ones I don't own, a handful don't circulate and I'll have to go to Robarts for the rest. It turns out that the rare book collection at UT has quite a bit more by Škvorecký, and I'll have to decide just how deep I want to get into this author.
* These are also referred to as the Edenvale stories, and they appear to be 5 stories about Danny teaching at Edenvale College at UT, so more or less a continuation of The Engineer of Human Souls, but I can't tell if all of them ended up in Headed for the Blues, When Eve Was Naked or another collection, but they don't appear to be published as a stand-alone collection in English.
Monday, February 4, 2019
Switching Things Up
This weekend was a bit mixed up. I had planned on going to the gym Friday, but it was still a bit on the chilly side. I laid down for a bit, and before I knew it is was 9 pm. (I think I am clearly more exhausted than I let on.) It's not that I can't go to the gym that late, but it means I have to go around the long way in the back (which is slightly more dangerous if there are drivers rushing to get to Home Depot before it closes) and I wouldn't have been able to get any groceries on the way back. I ultimately decided to go early to the gym on Sat. and then I would be able to squeeze in a second trip late on Sunday. While I prefer giving myself a full two days to recover between lifting weights, I thought I would be going to SFYS on Monday evening (and my time travel piece was ultimately accepted! though I didn't hear until very late on Sunday) and then a movie at TIFF on Tuesday.
I think this probably was the earliest I've made it to the gym, starting just after 8 am. It's not that I'm not a morning person, but that I just prefer going at the end of the day. I grabbed a few groceries on the way back. I did some cleaning up of my computer files and did a bit more work, then I had to head out and take care of some tasks. I dropped material off at the library and bought some padded grips for my bike. Then I took an extremely slow streetcar to the Ryerson Image Centre to see the new exhibit, True to the Eyes.
Curiously, I thought this Irving Penn photo was one of the better photos, but it wasn't in the catalogue. The catalogue is pretty good, though there are far too many early daguerreotypes for my taste. At the moment, it isn't in any of the local libraries, but I'll keep an eye out. After all this, it was about 4:45! I probably should have just headed over to the AGO (it was actually open until 5:30 this weekend), but it was definitely a lot harder to get around downtown this weekend (the University side of the subway was closed for repairs, so I gave up my idea to check out Hart House and their Night of Ideas).
Sunday I did the rest of the grocery shopping. I had been on the fence about going to see A Perfect Bowl of Pho and Fine China at Factory, but in the end I went.
As it happens, I ended up catching the Bathhurst replacement bus. A couple of blocks away from Factory, I saw a Vietnamese restaurant with a huge mural. It seemed fitting.
However, pho is virtually always made with beef broth and then has either beef or pork in it, so it isn't like I'll be eating any anytime soon.* As I made my way over to Factory, I ran across one of the smallest Mean Bao restaurants in the city (basically a kitchen and one table for eating in), and I grabbed a quick bite.
A Perfect Bowl of Pho was pretty amusing (especially the song "Medium Pho") and I really liked the last song, "Coming Home." It's a weird meta-theatrical musical, with at least a few nods to David Henry Hwang's Yellowface (and indeed a few of the cast members had been in that last season). As it happens, I ended up sitting right behind the guy who had done the musical arrangements and written most of the songs. I overheard him saying that this had been one of the tightest performances yet. The double bill runs for one more week, and if you are interested in seeing up and coming Asian theatre types, you'll probably want to check it out.
I do wish they had tightened it up slightly or cut the intermission a bit more, since the whole thing took just under 2.5 hours. I had really been hoping/counting on 2 hours, since I had wanted to get over to the AGO afterwards. Again, I had trouble getting around, but did catch a crosstown bus. I ended up getting to the doors of the AGO at 5:02. While I probably could have seen the Mickalene Thomas exhibit in under 15 minutes and split, I just didn't want to deal with the guards hustling me out. So I turned right around and walked back to the Spadina streetcar. This took me to work, and I put in another hour or so there, mostly cleaning up my desk, which has become very cluttered lately. (Not going to the AGO was a bit annoying, but the Mickalene exhibit runs through March, so I can definitely go another time, perhaps after checking out the Impressionist exhibit which opens next week.)
I got home just in time to see a minute of two of the very boring halftime show. My whole goal was to avoid the Superbowl on Sunday, so I ate quickly, and then went off to the gym. About halfway there, I realized that the grocery story attached to the mall had cut its Sunday hours back to about 8 pm, though the one across the bridge was still open until 10 pm. That meant I did squeeze down my routine slightly (only 20 minutes of the stationary bike instead of 30), but I was able to run over to the other grocery story before it closed. I made it home just as the last minutes of the game ticked down. Not my very most productive weekend, but I got a fair bit done and am even about 2/3 of the way through the Odyssey. I should wrap this up relatively soon and move on the Aeneid.
* The younger daughter in Fine China was vegetarian and, consequently, found it all but impossible to eat any of the food brought over for her father's funeral feast. How true!
I think this probably was the earliest I've made it to the gym, starting just after 8 am. It's not that I'm not a morning person, but that I just prefer going at the end of the day. I grabbed a few groceries on the way back. I did some cleaning up of my computer files and did a bit more work, then I had to head out and take care of some tasks. I dropped material off at the library and bought some padded grips for my bike. Then I took an extremely slow streetcar to the Ryerson Image Centre to see the new exhibit, True to the Eyes.
 |
| Irving Penn, Cuzco Children, 1948 |
Curiously, I thought this Irving Penn photo was one of the better photos, but it wasn't in the catalogue. The catalogue is pretty good, though there are far too many early daguerreotypes for my taste. At the moment, it isn't in any of the local libraries, but I'll keep an eye out. After all this, it was about 4:45! I probably should have just headed over to the AGO (it was actually open until 5:30 this weekend), but it was definitely a lot harder to get around downtown this weekend (the University side of the subway was closed for repairs, so I gave up my idea to check out Hart House and their Night of Ideas).
Sunday I did the rest of the grocery shopping. I had been on the fence about going to see A Perfect Bowl of Pho and Fine China at Factory, but in the end I went.
As it happens, I ended up catching the Bathhurst replacement bus. A couple of blocks away from Factory, I saw a Vietnamese restaurant with a huge mural. It seemed fitting.
However, pho is virtually always made with beef broth and then has either beef or pork in it, so it isn't like I'll be eating any anytime soon.* As I made my way over to Factory, I ran across one of the smallest Mean Bao restaurants in the city (basically a kitchen and one table for eating in), and I grabbed a quick bite.
A Perfect Bowl of Pho was pretty amusing (especially the song "Medium Pho") and I really liked the last song, "Coming Home." It's a weird meta-theatrical musical, with at least a few nods to David Henry Hwang's Yellowface (and indeed a few of the cast members had been in that last season). As it happens, I ended up sitting right behind the guy who had done the musical arrangements and written most of the songs. I overheard him saying that this had been one of the tightest performances yet. The double bill runs for one more week, and if you are interested in seeing up and coming Asian theatre types, you'll probably want to check it out.
I do wish they had tightened it up slightly or cut the intermission a bit more, since the whole thing took just under 2.5 hours. I had really been hoping/counting on 2 hours, since I had wanted to get over to the AGO afterwards. Again, I had trouble getting around, but did catch a crosstown bus. I ended up getting to the doors of the AGO at 5:02. While I probably could have seen the Mickalene Thomas exhibit in under 15 minutes and split, I just didn't want to deal with the guards hustling me out. So I turned right around and walked back to the Spadina streetcar. This took me to work, and I put in another hour or so there, mostly cleaning up my desk, which has become very cluttered lately. (Not going to the AGO was a bit annoying, but the Mickalene exhibit runs through March, so I can definitely go another time, perhaps after checking out the Impressionist exhibit which opens next week.)
I got home just in time to see a minute of two of the very boring halftime show. My whole goal was to avoid the Superbowl on Sunday, so I ate quickly, and then went off to the gym. About halfway there, I realized that the grocery story attached to the mall had cut its Sunday hours back to about 8 pm, though the one across the bridge was still open until 10 pm. That meant I did squeeze down my routine slightly (only 20 minutes of the stationary bike instead of 30), but I was able to run over to the other grocery story before it closed. I made it home just as the last minutes of the game ticked down. Not my very most productive weekend, but I got a fair bit done and am even about 2/3 of the way through the Odyssey. I should wrap this up relatively soon and move on the Aeneid.
* The younger daughter in Fine China was vegetarian and, consequently, found it all but impossible to eat any of the food brought over for her father's funeral feast. How true!
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