14th Canadian Challenge - 1st Review - The Edible Woman

I've been vacillating on whether I would attempt the 14th Canadian Challenge, given what a terrible funk I've been in for the last 14 months...).  Now I've sort of backed myself in a corner, and I'll more or less have to complete a review every other day.  I've read 3 novels, and I suspect I have read 10 books of poetry already, though I'll have to tabulate them somewhere else.  But it will certainly be an imbalanced set of reviews.  (Actually now that I think about it, Malcolm Lowry spent so much of his life in BC (and the Consul and Yvonne in fact fantasize about escaping to Canada), but it may be too much of a stretch to consider Under the Volcano a Canadian novel, even if it was mostly rewritten while he lived in BC.  Too bad.)

I read Atwood's The Edible Woman many years ago. I don't think it was for my Canadian literature class, though I may be wrong. It is largely about two unmarried women who are sharing rooms in a house somewhere north of the Annex.  (I seem to think she is up around Dupont, but maybe I am thinking of where their hippyish friends, Clara and Joe, live.)  The narrator, Marian, is fairly conventional at the start of the novel, whereas her flatmate, Ainsley, announces fairly early on that she wants to seduce a man in order to become a single mother, which would have been almost unheard of in the mid to late 60s, when the novel is set.  Marian doesn't seem entirely satisfied with her boyfriend Peter, but agrees to marry him after driving home from a very awkward party.  I believe it's right around this point in the novel that the novel switches to third person perspective and Marian experiences a bit of a mental breakdown.  For those that haven't read the novel, I'll add a SPOILER warning.

SPOILERS

Marian stops eating meat, which causes some awkwardness, particularly when eating out or going to parties, as vegetarianism was still fairly faddish (as indeed it srill was about a decade later when I went vegetarian).  As various things upset her or trigger her, she stops eating eggs and then other kinds of foods.  At some point, she finds it all but impossible to eat anything (taking it even further than the Jainists because even the vegetables had a right to be undisturbed).  Clearly, this state can't be maintained for long, for obvious reasons.  For whatever reason, she decides to bake a huge woman-shaped cake and feed it to Peter, since he is "devouring her" in spirit.  This is typically interpreted as the point at which she fully loses any connection to her body and externalizes it in this cake.  It certainly spooks him off, as the cherry on the cake of her unusual behaviour.  I can't recall if he formally breaks off their engagement at that moment, but it certainly seems inevitable.  It's less clear to me if she slept with this oddball, Duncan, to steel herself to break up with Peter (or even to convince herself she wasn't "worthy" of him any longer) or maybe to have something to throw in his face if he didn't drop her after the cake gambit.  At any rate, after Peter leaves, she decides it's only cake and starts eating, apparently reconciling with her body.  Duncan stops by in the final chapter, though it doesn't appear they will become a romantic couple, which is surely for the best.

The writing is quite amusing and sly in places, particularly when Marian focuses on her job (and co-workers!) at a market research company.  I have to say I think Peter tends to get a bad rap.  There is no question he is very conventional and a bit in love with his gadgets/toys (mostly cameras), but he doesn't seem to do anything particularly outrageous or demeaning to Marian.  If anything, Duncan is the more overtly selfish character, though I think Atwood is positing him as sort of a transitional figure, allowing Marian to find her freedom through her connection to him.  I'm probably just thinking about this too conventionally, but Ainsley's plans strike me as deeply unwise.  And I found Joe and Clara to be simply too negligent in their parenting duties.  So I suppose I am not really convinced by the options that Atwood seems to be proposing as an alternative to the too constricting, conventional relationship that Marian rejects.  That's not to say I don't find a lot to like in The Edible Woman, but I certainly wouldn't use it as a guide (or a recipe!) to a more fulfilling life.  That said, maybe Atwood should have included a cake recipe at the back of the book.  Here's a whole page of sheet cake recipes to try out.

Missing Fawlty?

It's so odd.  I simply don't recall seeing the endings of several Fawlty Towers episodes.  Did I just suppress them, as I found them pretty excruciating?  I think I had seen The Corpse and the Kipper, but don't recall Basil's escape in the basket.  And I'm not recalling seeing any of The Anniversary.  I mean the guy just never learns.  He deliberately twits his wife and then is surprised when she leaves in a huff?  It really does keep ramping up and up between the various episodes, and you wonder just how they can top the last one.  I'm still not entirely sure Basil the Rat is the most outrageous ending (from what I can remember), but I guess I'll find out on Monday.

Losing Interest

I think the ever-changing deadlines for reopening have finally broken my spirit.  I get a bunch of emails each week about audio plays or other on-line arts, but I am basically no longer interested.  I've decided to pass on whatever they ultimately put on in High Park, though I suppose if something goes up in Withrow Park I'd probably go.  Once in a while I'll order a ticket for some streaming concert at the Village Vanguage, and I still have a subscription for the VSO, but I just have lost interest in pretty much everything else (except for SFYS of course, which looks like it will be happening on June 14).  I think it's pretty unlikely it will be taken, as they really wanted to prioritize new voices (i.e. non-white male authors), so I didn't spend much time on he submission, but Outside the March was asking for audio plays and I submitted the outline of Double Sabbatical as a possible radio play.  (Sometime I do sabotage my own chances with half-assed submissions, but they made it awfully clear that they were looking for other, new exciting voices.  When I am ready, I'll put together a much more impressive cover letter for my poetry anthology pitch.)

Maybe I'll be more interested in August when at least a few in-person things will be on offer.  The AGO will probably have a Warhol exhibit in the late summer and presumably a Picasso exhibit in the late fall.  I'm still very much on the fence regarding a Rembrandt exhibit in Ottawa.  It's closer than Montreal but still a bit further than I'd like to be on the train.  On the other hand, I've had one shot (and the whole family should have their first shot by next week).   I'll think about it again in another month and think about renting a car as well, though I don't really want to do that.

I thought I was going to barbecue over the long weekend, but I cooked something else instead.  I may break out the grill on Thurs. if it doesn't rain.  I thought we'd get to The African Queen but it was not to be.  Instead we watched Playtime and Our Man in Havana.  There is one weird goof in Havana where Alec Guiness's character somehow magically gets turned around and gets the drop on his assailant.  I wish that could have been edited more convincingly, but it was a small flub.  (Same way I feel there is one extraneous scene in Gilda, which may have been inserted by a studio exec to explain the plot.  Oh well.)  As I was reading up on the movie, I learned that it was in fact shot largely in Cuba right after the revolution, and Castro insisted on edits to make the Batista regime look even worse!

We also got through the "Waldorf Salad" episode from Season 2 of Fawlty Towers.  I think I've seen parts of this one, but I didn't recall the ending where an American guest and then most of the British guests tell Basil, to his face, he is one of the worst hotel owners in England.  It's kind of hard to watch but more to the point it's had to imagine him fully recovering from this.  Wouldn't this have made a better finale?  At any rate, it just reminds me that Cleese often pushes the tension much higher than I really appreciate. Sometimes it works but sometimes the situations go too far.

Sore Arms

It was sort of amusing.  The pharmacist was a bit overworked and was having trouble remembering left from right, but she wanted to be sure I saw the empty needle after I had been stuck with it.  She said a fair number of patients didn't think they had been vaccinated because they didn't feel much.  My advice is don't worry -- you'll feel it the next day...  I don't have any other symptoms (lethargy, nausea, a rash, arm falling off...), so I feel pretty fortunate.  I expect I'll feel pretty much back to normal tomorrow, but certainly with more peace of mind, though I am aware it takes about 2 weeks for the antibodies to build up.  It looks like this weekend, Canada passed an important milestone with 50% of the total population and 50% of the Ontario population vaccinated with at least one shot.  Yukon  and the other Territories are doing much better in terms of first and second shots, but anyway solid progress.

The pharmacy said they would be in touch to schedule the 2nd dose, so I cancelled the Provincial appointment.  I do hope I can switch to a downtown Shoppers.  Getting to Yorkdale was a drag.  I had to stand on the subway until St. George.  Then I got to Yorkdale and the escalators were out of service and you were squeezing by people on the stairs.  The passage between the TTC and the GO Bus station was out of service so we had to go up and down more stairs.  Then Yorkdale had completely closed off the nearest mall entrance.  I had to walk the long way around to the front of the mall (where all the parking is and where all the curbside pickup is as well) to find the security guard to let you into the mall if you have a good reason.  I haven't been in a situation where transit riders were so clearly treated as third-class citizens in a long time.

Then it was completely mixed up at the Shoppers.  There was some major glitch with the computer system interfacing with the Provincial system, so they had to enter everything by hand.  I guess that wouldn't have been so bad if there was someone there to explain things, but they were inside the store and you lost your place in line when you tried to find anyone to talk to!  On the whole, the communication was pretty appalling.  I would have completely lost my shit if they had sent me home to come back tomorrow.  As it was, I got my shot an hour late, but I did get it, so mission accomplished.

In a few days we can sign the kids up, and we have a pretty good lead on a pop-up clinic* that will be running next Sat., so that is the next goal.  And after that, we wait for 2nd shots --and to see how quickly the Province opens up.  Quite gradually, from the looks of it.  

* It's about 50-50 with the new pop-up clinics whether they are taking kids that are 12-17.  On Sunday, Nathan Phillips Square had a pop-up that included kids, and then today there was one near the Victoria Park TTC station.  My son biked over and got his shot.  We're still planning on going next Sat. with my daughter.  Just hoping the line isn't too long as/or that they run out of vaccines before her turn, but she's get her shot sooner or later. 

Tunnel Just Getting Longer Every Day

There is light at the end, but the tunnel just stretches on and on.  I'm having Wifi issues again, which makes me extremely irritable, being forced to work from home.  It looks like some outdoor recreation will be allowed this weekend, which won't matter much to me but will be good for general mental health in the province.  I'm actually quite confused whether Phase 1 starts June 2 or basically a week later.  Phase 1 is still extremely locked down, though I guess non-essential retail will be allowed at 15% and presumably Dollarama can go back to selling everything in the store, and maybe small groups get to eat outdoors on patios.  What annoys me is that they are being extremely vague about going back to work n offices (on a voluntary basis), though it generally seems that falls into Phase 2, which won't be until early July at the very earliest.  I think barbers/hair salons get to reopen in Phase 2 with very limited capacity, which will thrill my wife.  It looks like outdoor theatre can go forward in Phase 2 (and probably private art galleries can open up), though the issue is that if they can't rehearse in Phase 1, they probably will be in no position to actually open.  I know the Fringe already bailed on the summer, going all digital and the Bard's Bus Tour has also cancelled for the second summer in a row.*  Most indoor activities get to start in Phase 3, including gyms and museums, and for sure offices should be open at the same time.  This will likely be August, assuming new cases are still coming down and the vaccinations uptake remains strong.  So August may just begin to feel a bit more like normal, and there are a very few more things to do in July, but June is simply going to suck.  For sure, I am going to feel more crimped and cramped than last summer, which is just so incredibly disappointing.

But I do want to end on a positive note.  I was quite surprised to have a text this morning saying that Shoppers had a shot for me ready on Friday, whereas my appointment in the Provincial system wasn't until June 12.**  Now I had hoped this would be downtown, but the appointment was at Yorkdale!  I thought about it and decided the risk of taking the subway was pretty small compared to the advantage of getting my first shot a few weeks early, so I am heading over around 1.  This will be only the fourth time I've been on transit since the crisis really hit (14 months and counting).   I've been biking instead, though one evening I had a flat and had to take the subway home (with the bike).  I wouldn't say I am actually nervous about the trip (I'll bring Don Quixote along to distract me), but I have been avoiding transit where possible.

My wife was a bit put out and decided to go to a pop-up clinic in East York.  Then toward late afternoon she got a text from Rexall for an appointment downtown...  I'd say that the supply has finally stabilized to the point that adults 40+ can get vaccinated without as much trouble, though we are still lagging the States (or at least blue states...).  Hopefully, the kids can get a first shot by the end of June and ideally the 2nd shot fairly early in September.  That would ease a lot of anxiety for returning to the classroom for sure.  And the broader return to the office as well, though at this point I am more than willing to take the risk even without being fully vaccinated.

* As far as I can tell, in a fit of wokeness, Shakespeare in the Ruff has decided to dismantle itself because putting on Shakespeare simply reifies whiteness, so there may be next to nothing on offer in Withrow Park this summer, aside from the farmer's market.  Sad.

** And of course I will cancel this, freeing up a shot for someone else, but only after I actually have my first dose in my arm!

More Movie Progress

I suspect I really would need at least 4 lifespans to read all the novels and science/ social science books I own plus keep going regularly to the theatre (whenever that reopens) and watch the great movies and stay on top of the worthy TV series (only a small fraction of what is out there but it still adds up).  For the moment, I am redirecting some of my spare time to movies on the weekend and Britcoms, and it seems an acceptable trade-off for the moment.

We've now watched all of the movies in the Pierre Etaix Criterion box set (all of which were new to me) and rewatched about half of Tati's films (with Playtime on deck probably in early June).  I admit that I didn't care much for Playtime on my very first time through, as it is close to plotless, but it grows on you.  (I wonder when Tiff Lightbox will program it again, or indeed if the original longer cut will ever resurface.)

Last weekend we watched Laura.  It worked better for me this time around, and I agree that it is one of the best noirs.  I watched Huston's Under the Volcano (by myself) and I'll likely also watch Huston's Wise Blood by myself next month.  If I can find my copy, I'll show my son The Dead (based on the James Joyce story), which was Huston's final film, though there is no real hurry.

In general we've settled in with the Fawlty Towers, enjoying it a bit more, though I found Communication Problems to be pretty excruciating as the guest with the hearing aid is just so over-the-top awful.  I find there is still a streak of cruelty in Fawlty Towers that always rubs me the wrong way.  To be honest, I am looking forward to Father Ted and The IT Crowd more.

I'm not entirely sure what we'll watch this long weekend, but perhaps Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player, The Sweet Smell of Success (or The Apartment) and then The African Queen (or Gilda).  As ever, just so many great movies to watch, so little time...  Well, at least I can't say I have nothing to do.

Can't Stop at Just One

I try to not get caught up in following too many comics or TV shows, as I generally am a completist, wanting to read all the titles or watch all the episodes (ideally in their proper order).  Fortunately, I am not an obsessive completist, trying to track down cover variants, etc., as I consider this a cynical scam played on fans.  

It has taken a while, but I now have all the issues in the four main titles that make up Mr. X (fortunately I picked up most of them before postal rates went crazy).  I am waiting on Dean Motter to gather up his latest material into a trade paperback (maybe in 2022 or 2023), and I'll get that also, but he has slowed down a lot on this title.  While I have read the 1st series a few times, I don't recall getting around to the 3rd and 4th series, though I did just sit down and go through the whole series earlier in the year.

Futurama the comic ended just a few years back (outlasting the on-again, off-again TV show), and I have a complete run now, though I am sure there are a few I haven't actually read.  I have all the episodes on DVD, of course, though I have apparently misplaced disc 2 from Season 8, which is super annoying.  I'll have to go through a few piles of  DVDs to see if it will turn up.  Oddly enough I never did watch the extra-long specials that are essentially Season 5, but I will this time around.

As I mentioned previously, it appears that thee were a few Monty Python episodes I had missed growing up, and I'm fairly sure I hadn't seen several episodes of Blackadder IV (until watching them with my son).  So going through them in order has been a bit revelatory. I think it's likely that I have seen all of Fawlty Towers and all of Father Ted (perhaps missing out on one), but I have most of Season 2-3 to go for Black Books and Season 4 for The IT Crowd, so a lot to look forward to.

But there are some things I know better than to even start, like Dr. Who or the X-Men comics and it's many, many spin-offs. That way madness lies...

I actually held off for the longest time from reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman (in part because there was so much to get caught up with), but I recently went through the main saga (the initial 75 episodes).  I thought it was very well done and was impressed at how various myths and legends were interwoven.  It's fairly high-brow for a comic series.  I was a little disappointed but not that surprised that Gaiman and others have occasionally done spin-off series, though I don't think there is any indication that the whole thing will be rebooted.  I'm less likely to pick up any of the spin-offs but you never know.

I follow Girl Genius regularly (and indeed Phil Foglio from way back when he was doing his What's New strip in Dragon Magazine!) and bought all of the individual books (even the Secret Blueprints issue) prior to the whole shooting match moving over to the web and going digital.  It's been 20 years now, and I don't think they are much further along than 2/3 of the main story arc.  (This is the sort of thing that makes me feel really old --- that I have comic books (that I bought new not vintage) older than my son.)  I even have almost all of Foglio's Buck Godot episodes in print, and then just ordered the new digital versions of these titles, with the The Gallimaufry pages redone in color.  The individual books or a bundle with all three titles can be found here. 

My current obsession is The Venture Brothers.  I've seen several episodes from the first two seasons, but certainly not all of them and not in the proper sequence.  It looks like Cartoon Network has this weird thing, where they just stream them in a continual loop but there is no way to know where you are in the overall series.  That's a bit too random for me.  This is a case where I really wish that Netflix stuck to its original business model of sending out actual DVDs (even from most TV series), but those days are long gone.  It looks like the Vancouver Public Library has Seasons 1-3, but the Toronto Public Library and even Chicago Public Library don't have any (though TPL does have a fairly complete collection of Criterion DVDs so it's not like I don't have anything to watch).  I do find that I am watching 2 or even 3 episodes at a time.  Perhaps I will break down and get the DVDs (though for the later series the Blu-Rays aren't that much more expensive).  There is one other option I will explore next month, however, which is there is a Bay St. Video that is still in operation.  I will email them about Venture Bros. and see if they are planning on renting out any of the discs or only selling them.  Given that the series was recently cancelled at the end of Season 7 (though supposedly with a forthcoming special movie on HBO Max to wrap up the series), it isn't quite as much of an investment as some TV series.  Though it is true almost any US series ends up being 2-3 times as many overall episodes as a Britcom (with Red Dwarf (another series I followed) being a partial exception, and indeed a 90 minute Red Dwarf special has just been released which I will order at some point in the near future).

Edit (5/22): I just learned that today and probably through the long weekend, there is a sale on iTunes to get each season of The Venture Bros. for $9.99 (even including seasons 6 and 7).  This offer is good in the US and Canada but not sure of other regions.  I'll have to reset my password as it is so rare I actually buy something on iTunes instead of just streaming it, but this should be worth it.  The one drawback is that there are a couple of special episodes that really should have been made part of the Season packages or at least as stand-alone episodes.  Well, a relatively minor annoyance.

Done with the Volcano

It's rare that the movie version of the book will cause me to re-evaluate the book itself, but that is the case for Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano.  Indeed, this may be the only case I can recall that it has happened.  It is a bit less rare that I appreciate the movie more than the book, but I'd say that is also the case here. John Huston has done an incredible job in distilling down the important points of the book and making certain sections more clear.  I'll go into more details, but this will involve SPOILERS.

SPOLIERS ahead.

First, there are a few changes that Huston introduced, most of them not too significant.  First, there is no German attaché that the ex-British consul meets and basically insults.  I presume this was Huston's way of foregrounding the political situation that contemporary readers of the novel would have grasped a bit sooner.  I'll return to this theme a bit later, but it actually helped me connect some dots.  Second, Firmin is represented as more out of control at a gathering of the Red Cross, going on about the Mexican railways making huge amounts of money from corpses being transported on trains only if accompanied by a first class passenger.  Huston is using this to underline the political situation (and to drive home the point about Firmin being an alcoholic), but in the book Firmin is talking to Yvonne (right after her return) about one child in a coffin on a train (and not hordes of coffins) and this actually sets up the scene later when the Consul complains about his wife refusing to have children with him.  It should probably be mentioned that Huston cuts the first chapter completely, which establishes that the Counsel died the previous year -- and the rest of the book is a flashback!  This structure is reasonable for a novel but probably wouldn't work for a film, though I guess you could argue Citizen Kain is also all flashback.  I could mention that I expected that the Consul literally drunk himself to death, but this was more figurative than literal, as his alcoholism led him to make poor decisions around shady characters and indeed to frequent the worst dives in the region (and on more than one occasion since he managed to leave his letters behind in the Farolito).  Huston streamlines in other ways.  Dr. Virgil makes an appearance, but I believe the character of M. Laruelle (a film maker who had an affair with Yvonne!) is cut completely out of the film, effectively cutting Yvonne transgressions in half.  When Yvonne returns home with the Consul, their house is still a bit of a wreck but her cat is alive, though the neighbour Quincey threatens to strangle it, whereas in the novel, Firmin's neglect is more extreme and all their cats are dead, but at some point he watches Quincey's cat torturing insects.  The bull fight at Tomalin is a more tawdry affair in the book than in the film, and in fact Hugh rides the bull a bit rather than has a triumphant turn as a bullfighter as in the film.  Finally, Huston has Hugh and Yvonne go to the correct bar and find traces of Firmin (leaving only when confronted with evidence Firmin is with a whore) whereas they take the wrong path and wander around.  The missed connection has greater resonance in the book, and it might not have workers that well in the film.  Huston also reorders the timing of deaths.  Yvonne dies at the end of Chapter 11, trampelled by the horse that apparently is recaptured by the local "police" and brought to the Farolito during the course of chapter 12.  In the movie, it is the shooting of Firmin that spooks the horse that then escapes and tramples Yvonne.  It's definitely a bit of a short cut but the linkage/reordering seems to make sense.  However, Lowry probably would have preferred the irony of them dying separately without the possibility of reconciliation, however faint, that Huston offers.

In terms of instances where the movie made certain plot points more clear, the most important was I didn't even realize Yvonne died at the end of chapter 11 (my weak defense is that I was mostly reading this late in the evenings and was tired).  Huston also makes it more clear that Firmin is impotent and cannot perform with Yvonne when they are in the house together, before Hugh's return.  What is much less clear is whether this is a direct result of his drinking or had emerged as a problem after he learned of her infidelities -- or indeed just possibly it predated her infidelity and might have been a trigger.  It's also unclear exactly when the Consul became a heavy drinker -- early in the marriage, after the infidelity was discovered or only after he regretted pushing her out of his life.  Was the Consul ever any good at his job, or indeed was he just stuck in a remote part of Mexico that held little interest for Britain to keep him out of the way due to the scandal surrounding his WWI exploits?  I will note that Huston implies that the Consul is somewhat haunted by the German submarine officers killed under his watch (more than I got from the book), and it is perfectly plausible to imagine someone with such a heavy conscience to become a heavy drinker and thence a poor husband.  But that is fairly speculative.  It is ambiguous in the book whether Firmin actually has sex with the prostitute in the Faolito, though I would say it is unlikely, whereas in the film, the probabilities run the other way.

I will say that the characters didn't interest me very much in the novel and the chapters largely devoted to Yvonne's and Hugh's inner thoughts weren't all that compelling (and the film was better in not covering their back stories).  Tragic drunks (and particularly the people who try to reform them) are just not my cup of tea, which definitely put me off the novel.  The crushing need for intoxication/inebriation doesn't really have to be examined at such length in my view.  Of course there are people who think they want something (like having his wife return) but then can't accept the results and spoil things for themselves or more importantly in this case can't bring themselves to fix the original problem, i.e. find enough forgiveness to actually live with his wife after she returned.  But that doesn't mean I care to read about it at such length (and frankly do consider the book over-rated).  A short story would have been sufficient...  That said, Chapter 12 is a masterpiece (even a bit more impactful than the bar scenes in Nightwood), and I'll certainly reread this at some later point.  But I think it's fairly unlikely I'll reread the entire novel or watch the film again, though I don't regret having finally gotten around to both of them.

Interim Reading List

As I have gotten so sidetracked, I'll just update a much shorter list here (however, not listing all the poetry I am reading) and, one day, when I have gotten through most of books I am purging from the house, I'll return to this list...

Atwood The Edible Woman
Hemingway To Have and Have Not
Welch In Youth is Pleasure & I Left My Grandfather's House
Kesey One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Cervantes Don Quixote (many interesting parts but it would have been so much better at 300-400 pages)
Lowry Under the Volcano
Rooke The House on Major Street
Colon A Puerto Rican in New York
Kennedy Lulu Incognito
Trevor Mrs. Eckdorf in O'Neill's Hotel (Mrs. Eckdorf was just appalling & I couldn't press on)
Kennedy Ride a Cockhorse
Atwood Payback
P. Hamilton The Slaves of Solitude
Lethem The Fortress of Solitude
J. Williams Stoner
Cary Herself Surprised/To Be a Pilgrim/The Horse's Mouth
Lodge Therapy
O'Connor Wise Blood
Tibor Fischer The Collector Collector (everything about this was annoying and I bailed) 
The Tale of Genji (it was unwise to tackle such a long book right after Quixote and I stopped)
Ford Canada
Shields The Box Garden
Ballard Concrete Island (just hated this and dropped it after a few pages)
Hornby High Fidelity
Oyeyemi Gingerbread (just not my cup of tea)
Grossman Soon I Will Be Invincible
Welty The Robber Bridegroom
Maugham The Razor's Edge
White Skinned Alive
Waidner Sterling Karat Gold
Coupland Shampoo Planet (just landed in my Little Free Library)
Beckett Three Novels (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable)
Roy The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
JG Farrell Troubles/The Siege of Krishnapur/The Singapore Grip
Bissoondath A Casual Brutality
Selvon The Lonely Londoners
Gaiman American Gods
Hrabel Murder Ballads (inc. The Legend of Cain)
Shields Larry's Party
Desani All About H. Hatterr
Chesterton The Man Who Was Thursday
Arlt The Seven Madmen & The Flamethrowers
Steinbeck Of Mice and Men
Giono The Open Road
Wharton The Age of Innocence

I actually moved Under the Volcano up many slots (from my main reading list), as I wanted to be sure I read the book before watching the movie (directed by John Huston).  Basically the same logic behind Wise Blood (also directed by Huston!) and The Razor's Edge (w/ Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney).

Bogart Mini-Marathon

That may be a bit of an overstatement, but over the past month, we've watched The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep and Casablanca. In terms of my personal favourite movies that Bogie is in, this covers all of them except The African Queen, which we'll probably get to in a few months.  I'm not sure if Bogart is my very favourite actor, but he's got to be in the top 10.

I was watching the Bacall on Bogart documentary that came along with Casablanca.  I had no idea that they were getting ready to make a 5th film together when he got quite ill and never recovered.  Obviously, a shame all the way around, and I would have been quite curious to find out if they would have struck cinematic gold yet again.

As it happens I own Key Largo, but haven't ever watched it.  I'll have to correct that fairly soon.  I am still waiting on To Have and Have Not to turn up at the library.

Here's a relatively short list of the other Bogart films I'll try to watch this year:

• The Petrified Forrest
• Dark Passage
• The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
• In a Lonely Place
• Beat the Devil (I may have this on VHS still!)
• The Harder They Fall (I'll try to wrap up with this, his final film)

I'm not as sure about We're No Angels, All Through the Night, They Drive By Night, The Big Shot or Dead Reckoning, but perhaps I can fit them.  It seems that the library has all of them.

Movie Updates

Making reasonable progress on the movies.  Since the last update, we saw The Big Sleep and The Third Man.  (I came fairly late to Third Man, not watching it during my first pass through the noir canon in the early 90s. I can't recall offhand if I watched it before my first and only trip to Vienna, though I know that, either way, I wasn't inspired to take a tour of the Vienna sewers.  It's not that great of a movie (to convince me to walk through a sewer)...  I was much more inclined to visit the great museums in Vienna, and I went on a Kafka tour when in Prague just a few days later.)

We're likely to watch Etaix's last feature film, Le grand amour, tonight.*  I'm hoping next weekend we can sneak in Shoot the Piano Player on Friday, as it is fairly short at 81 minutes, and then probably Casablanca and Tati's Mon Oncle during the weekend proper.

Of course, I keep piling up great movies that we should get to by the summer -- Citizen Kain, Touch of Evil, Our Man in Havana, Key Largo, To Have and Have Not (even though the book it is based on is dreadful), The African Queen, and The Lady from Shanghai.  And this is before even getting started on Japanese films, or 80s classics or going back to the Marx Brothers or even further back to Chaplin/Keaton/Lloyd. Somewhere along the way, as I wrap up reading Don Quixote, I'll want to watch Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.  And apparently this is a controversial stance, but I have no intention of "cancelling" Woody Allen.  I'll plan on watching Sleeper, Manhattan and Annie Hall at a minimum with my son.  Probably Zelig and Bananas as well.

* As always a last minute snag.  However, instead of watching the next Fawlty Towers, I decided to watch the Northern Exposure pilot instead to see how it held up (and in a sense it is a good link to the "fish out of water" theme from The Third Man).  I forgot quite how abrasive Dr. Fleischman is in the pilot (even calling Maggie a prostitute!), but overall it is a very different paced and basically gentler comedy than Fawlty  Towers to be sure.  (I did not realize that the writers/producers were directly insprired by Fellini's Amarcord, but I can see that -- and at the pace we are going we may not get to Amarcord much before Northern Exposure, as we see 3 to 4 times as many TV episodes as movies...)  While it is still fairly low in the queue (and will be slotted in after the majority of the Britcoms**), I'd say it does hold up well.  Indeed, one of the main reasons I watched it was to decide how much it matters to me that some (and sometimes a lot) of the original music was replaced due to rights issues.  Apparently there is a Region 2 version of the full run of the series with all (or 99%) of the original music in place.  I will most likely breakdown and buy this.  Unfortunately, no such alternative exists (aside from pirated DVDs) of The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, which was never released on DVD in any region or even VHS back n the day.

** I mean at this pace, it is entirely possible I won't get back to it until the producers actually get their rumoured reboot off the ground, though it's already been delayed a couple of years, so I'm not holding my breath.  

Cruel TV

It's interesting (to me at least) is that my tastes in tv have definitely shifted.  I mean I really never watched all that much TV, at least after leaving the dorm in my second year of university.  And indeed there are many classic shows that I haven't watched at all, including Twin Peaks, The Sopranos, The Wire, Lost (at least the early seasons), Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, etc.  Odds are if it aired after the 80s I probably haven't watched it and certainly didn't follow it with the exception of Blackadder (technically an 80s show except for the Back and Forth Special), Northern Exposure, Red Dwarf, Futurama, Firefly (hmm, sensing a theme here), The Simpsons (though I finally threw in the towel and stopped watching in 2014 or so), Father Ted, Black Books, Arrested Development, The IT Crowd, Malcolm in the Middle, My Name is Earl, Extras, The PJs (with Eddie Murphy as a claymation superintendent) or the animated version of Corner Gas.  To be honest, I don't think I've missed that much, though one day I'll probably watch Breaking Bad and maybe Better Call Saul.*

Maybe it is an extremely naive view of television comedies, but it seems to me they can be organized along a spectrum of how cruel are the characters to each other (all in the name of "fun" of course).  Is one character always the butt of jokes or is this distributed around more equally (as was arguably the case with Friends)?  Or in fact is it a more gentle comedy where humour arises from misunderstandings that can be put right by the end of the episode (say in The Cosby Show or The Vicar of Dibley)? Conversely is there one focal point for the negative energy of the show (the "heel" in wrestling parlance) or are all the characters basically jerks, cynical or not?  So for instance in Taxi, Louie (the character played by Danny DeVito) was the heel, whereas almost everyone is terrible in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (also with DeVito) or The Trailer Park Boys.

Really good comedies can run right up to the line of it just being too much (Arrested Development and Black Books), but it is a fine line  I'm finding that John Cleese as Basil Fawlty is just too brittle and high-strung for me and his wife is just uniformly awful to him.  I'm sure I liked this much more when younger, but it is making me cringe now and not in a good way (and indeed I couldn't bear one of Cleese's favourite sketches from At Last the 1948 Show where he amps up the frustrated hostility far too early for my tastes).

No question I think there is just a higher undercurrent of hostility in British comedy than US comedy, which generally does pull its punches more.  And maybe because I haven't been as exposed to it for a while, I find it too much right now.  Or because I am so unhappy about the state of the world, I can't really enjoy the claustrophobic nature of Fawlty Towers and how everyone except for Polly is so grating (and indeed clearly has so much contempt for everyone else, which truly is shocking to American sensitivities).  I'll get a few more episodes in, but if it is still just winding me up and it isn't enjoyable, then I'll bail.  (I'm pretty sure that my son won't appreciate The Young Ones for all kinds of reasons, and at any rate I'm leaving that for last, even after Max Headroom!)  Perhaps it is something about the manic energy combined with the cruelty that is setting me off.  Blackadder himself is fairly cruel as a person and the show embodies a fairly misanthropic outlook, but I enjoyed it as much as ever, though it is fair to say that the overall pace is more measured than Fawlty Towers or The Young Ones for that matter, and also it is only Blackadder as the cruel one with generally two foils -- Baldrick and Percy or the Prince or George -- though of course Queen Elizabeth had her special brand of whimsical cruelty and Captain Darling was a bit of a bastard.

Anyway, those are my disjointed musings on the topic.  No question I've gone a lot softer and don't really enjoy gratuitous cruelty anymore, which is also why I stopped watching Ricky Gervais projects...

 

* To be completely honest, though I would never have tuned in on my own, I have watched a few random episodes of X-Files, 30 Rock, Community, Parks and Rec, Monk, Will and Grace, SNL and Scrubs, and back when I was still doing business travel I would sometimes watch whatever Adult Swim was showing at the time, if the hotel had Cartoon Network.  And I've caught flashes of Friends, Chuck, The Office and The Blacklist, though I don't think I even sat down and watched a full episode.  There used to be all kinds of tv shows running at the gym, but I don't think it counts if I don't have the sound playing, do you?