I'd say I'm still not 100%, but I just have so much trouble taking it easy when there is so much to be done. First, I ran off and got the groceries.
Then I decided I didn't really want to see Arthur Miller's Broken Glass today, but I could run up and get the ticket for later in the week and then take care of other errands. This set off quite a chain reaction. There wasn't much point in getting started before 12:30, since the box office wasn't open until 1. So I started pulling together some books to sell. I recently picked up a signed copy of Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence, so I could sell off the hardback version I already owned. I had planned to sell Bissoondath's On the Eve of Uncertain Tomorrows, but when I opened it up, I saw there was a long inscription and signature, so I decided to keep that (even though it wasn't dedicated to me). Finally, I had a book bag full of books and a few CDs I could part with.
It was a long wait for the bus (in the cold), so I wasn't in the best of moods. Then I got to Bloor and Yonge only to find out that part of the subway was down and they were running replacement buses. While it was only a relatively short stretch, it was very slow and very crowded and just unpleasant all the way around. I think in the end, this added 40+ minutes to the trip up and back, which put me in a foul mood. About the only good thing to come of it, is that I made substantial progress in Austen's Sense and Sensibility, and I'll probably finish that off tomorrow.
My mood worsened when I found out that the only discounted tickets were for seats with obstructed views. Even the balcony seats were full price. I thought that was uncalled for (and this put the show just a bit out of reach of what I thought was reasonable, which was the same reason I finally bailed on Wilson's Burn This). I actually stomped out and went about halfway down the road when I decided that I was being a bit ridiculous, given that I had already invested close to an hour to get to the theatre box office, so I went back and bought a ticket for next Tues. However, this is very likely the last time I come up to North York to see a play unless it is something I absolutely must see.
In some way, going back south seemed even worse than coming north, but I finally got back into the core. I managed to sell off several of the books, and than ran over to Robarts. I had just enough time to renew my alumni card, but then needed another 10 minutes or so to check something out at the Media Commons. I was so close. The same thing happened with Laidlaw Library, which also closed at 5. No question had the TTC not shut down a bit chunk of the subway, I would have been able to complete all these tasks. Indeed, it is possible I could have gotten it all done had I reversed the order. Still, I was thoroughly pissed off.
I ran down to work, partly to drop off the ticket (so I didn't lose it) and also to pick up a few more books I was trying to sell. I took them to a different BMV and managed to sell two more (though I picked up one book, Passing Ceremony by Helen Weinzweig, but passed on Basic Black with Pearls as I just pre-ordered the NYRB edition). In the end I sold $25 worth of merchandise. I had hoped to make it $30, but times are tough. I actually have a fairly tall stack of CDs that I need to try to take to a store (it looks like the one I used to take them to has closed). I guess that is something I can work on later in the week. So it was a partially successful day, but it would have been much more productive if the TTC hadn't been so slow. I'll try to ensure I don't have to rely on them tomorrow!
Sunday, November 12, 2017
Saturday, November 11, 2017
Cubing It
In the midst of all my (minor) illness, I forgot that I promised to post that my daughter actually solved the 2 x 2 version of the Rubik's Cube.
She was quite proud of this. I have to say, I really never got into the whole cubing thing. I could generally get one side and a bunch of stripes in order but then something would always go wrong as I tried to get the last pieces in place. I probably should have just read a book on the best strategies, but I never cared quite enough to really work at it.
Anyway, I was recently at a high school open house and one boy was asking if the school had a cubing club. Sort of hard to believe this is becoming a mini-fad all over again. Though I also ran across an adult who admitted to playing D & D, which I thought was dead and buried. I guess you never know what people get up to in their spare time.
She was quite proud of this. I have to say, I really never got into the whole cubing thing. I could generally get one side and a bunch of stripes in order but then something would always go wrong as I tried to get the last pieces in place. I probably should have just read a book on the best strategies, but I never cared quite enough to really work at it.
Anyway, I was recently at a high school open house and one boy was asking if the school had a cubing club. Sort of hard to believe this is becoming a mini-fad all over again. Though I also ran across an adult who admitted to playing D & D, which I thought was dead and buried. I guess you never know what people get up to in their spare time.
Wednesday, November 8, 2017
Blade Runner 2049
As I mentioned, I finally got around to seeing this movie on Sat. The room was relatively packed,
so I am a bit surprised to hear the media narrative of this film is that
no one is going to see it and that it will lose a ton of money
(actually it has sort of broken even already if you don't count
marketing, and I saw very little marketing, so I don't know what they
spent). In a way, this almost seemed like a throwback to 80s era films
with a fair bit of nudity, some in the service of the plot and some a
bit more gratuitous. It felt like a long film (and many people slipped
out in what was essentially the third reel just to hit the rest room). I
just read that the original cut was 4 hours long! So perhaps there
will be a director's cut as well.
Minor SPOILERS
I agree that it is ridiculous to say it is misogynistic just because the main villain is a female (even one who is gratuitously evil to another woman). You can say that there are some tired tropes here. The way that female replicants (androids) are disposed of without a second thought when they don't measure up (whereas the male replicants at least have a fighting chance literally). There is a bit of a Handmaid's Tale vibe going on where women are sort of reduced to their reproductive ability. (And yet children were not actually valued at all, given the frankly unbelievable number of orphans.)
I will also agree that there are some ideas that work better than others, but the reveal about the Gosling character (K dash something) was actually pretty good. (This article agrees with me, though warning that it has major spoilers.) Still, the internal SF "world building" rules don't seem to make any kind of sense. Also I thought there were a few specific plot holes, particularly how LAPD of the future has apparently no meaningful internal security or even metal detectors in its building. I thought K, the Ryan Gosling character, 1) might have realized he was easily trackable (this is a neo-noir after all) and 2) would likely have had to give up his cool flying car (maybe this is better explained in the 4 hour cut). Also, why replicants need their own apartments (rather than living in a cubical at work for instance) and are paid actual money for their services is unclear (again see the odd "world building" rules).
But I did enjoy it. The visuals worked well, both the rainy LA setting and then the exploration of what was presumably Las Vegas. I was a bit less sold on the soundtrack, which was a bit too much of a rehash of the original. I'm quite glad I saw it on the big screen before it vanished. This may be one of those films that has an audience that grows over time, just like the original film.
Major SPOILERS
I might as well put the rest of my thoughts down before I forget them. Many of them are about the world building issues. I don't quite understand why Las Vegas would be this radioactive hellhole and Los Angeles is unpleasant but still livable. Are they imagining that the seemingly endless rain (brought about by climate change) somehow washed more of the radiation out of West Coast cities? But a bigger issue is how there could presumably have been a nuclear war and then society had already recovered from it. Unless the bombing of Las Vegas was a bit of a one-off, perhaps a missile launched by North Korea. Bonus points if this was what led to the "Black Out" that wiped out most digital records from the period between the original Blade Runner and the events in this movie.
Society seems to largely have collapsed with the middle class emptied out, with most people fleeing to the outer colonies (presumably the work of the original replicants has finally led to them being habitable). However, unlike the original movie where there were many abandoned buildings, here LA has become as overcrowded as Delhi with poor people living on the landings of K's building. And then the huge number of orphans working on scrap piles in what used to be San Diego! Still I guess we do get a few flashes of average people still living in LA having coffee (so maybe not everyone left after all), though a huge number of people are actually replicants.
I think it is a bit unlikely that the Wallace Corporation could have really convinced the government(s) to allow it to start rebuilding replicants, even with more internal brain-washing and control. But more to the point, it's odd that Wallace really thinks in the long run it would be cheaper to come up with replicants that could reproduce rather than just being grown in vats, if for no other reason that they have such a long time to grow to maturity whereas the grown replicants are adult sized and ready for work right away. It's also unclear whether naturally-born replicants would have the proper slave programming (and indeed the film suggests that they would not), so once the government found out about this, they would definitely shut down the program with prejudice. But the weakest link really is that he wants millions of replicants to go off and explore the stars, but aside from the fact that finding inhabitable planets light years away is pretty useless, if it just a matter of bodies to stuff into spaceships (as the slave programming will be broken anyway), why not just develop "generation ships" and put all these orphans in them? No one will miss them. I guess there is the matter of radiation poisoning. Somehow replicants are biologically-based and yet are immune to radiation, which is a bit of a cop-out. Like so many SF movies, the androids have near super powers most of the time, but then have human vulnerabilities when necessary to advance the plot. It didn't really seem consistent.
I still don't quite understand why the LAPD didn't just have holding tanks where they stored the replicants between jobs, as it would have resulted in less friction with the general human population (that really hates "skinjobs") and probably would have made it easier for the replicants to maintain their baseline. Also, why they don't just provide the minimum nutrition and necessities of life -- rather than paying the replicants a salary -- is not clear. Not only does K get paid, but he often gets bonuses for retiring particularly difficult cases. I'm a little disappointed in how K didn't realize just how easy the Wallace Corporation could track him (presumably some kind of internal chip, that they didn't bother to disclose to the LAPD), based on the time when the Wallace Corporation rained down missiles to save him from a battle with a bunch of scavengers. We also don't see him restarting his flying car after it was taken down in San Diego, so I am not sure how he gets back to LA. For that matter, his car is completely destroyed in Las Vegas, and he has a high powered one shortly after this that he uses to shoot down Luv's car. In this case, I presume he borrowed it from the rebel replicants. In a way, I kind of thought it would have been more logical that when he turned in his gun (and badge?) to the LAPD (because his baseline readings were way out of wack), then he should have turned in his car as well. It certainly seemed pretty high powered with some extra features not available to civilians. But maybe it was his personal property. I admit it would have been hard to advance the plot if K had to get to Las Vegas on camel or something, but that could have been interesting. (Really, I just thought it would have been super cool to have "Nobody Walks in LA" on the soundtrack...)
One nice touch when we finally meet Deckard and things calm down a bit is that there is a dog, presumably a replicant dog (because again, radiation levels off the charts). This in many ways is the closest that either of the scripts really gets to the original PKD novel where there are different sorts of artificial pets.
These issues don't detract too much, but it isn't a perfect movie, particularly if you don't like plot holes or are concerned with how everything hangs together in this future society (as I noted, this world seems improbable at best). It does have a number of nice neo-noir touches and in some ways is a more legitimate mystery compared to the original Blade Runner, which is more a police procedural with considerable violence doled out along the way.
Minor SPOILERS
I agree that it is ridiculous to say it is misogynistic just because the main villain is a female (even one who is gratuitously evil to another woman). You can say that there are some tired tropes here. The way that female replicants (androids) are disposed of without a second thought when they don't measure up (whereas the male replicants at least have a fighting chance literally). There is a bit of a Handmaid's Tale vibe going on where women are sort of reduced to their reproductive ability. (And yet children were not actually valued at all, given the frankly unbelievable number of orphans.)
I will also agree that there are some ideas that work better than others, but the reveal about the Gosling character (K dash something) was actually pretty good. (This article agrees with me, though warning that it has major spoilers.) Still, the internal SF "world building" rules don't seem to make any kind of sense. Also I thought there were a few specific plot holes, particularly how LAPD of the future has apparently no meaningful internal security or even metal detectors in its building. I thought K, the Ryan Gosling character, 1) might have realized he was easily trackable (this is a neo-noir after all) and 2) would likely have had to give up his cool flying car (maybe this is better explained in the 4 hour cut). Also, why replicants need their own apartments (rather than living in a cubical at work for instance) and are paid actual money for their services is unclear (again see the odd "world building" rules).
But I did enjoy it. The visuals worked well, both the rainy LA setting and then the exploration of what was presumably Las Vegas. I was a bit less sold on the soundtrack, which was a bit too much of a rehash of the original. I'm quite glad I saw it on the big screen before it vanished. This may be one of those films that has an audience that grows over time, just like the original film.
Major SPOILERS
I might as well put the rest of my thoughts down before I forget them. Many of them are about the world building issues. I don't quite understand why Las Vegas would be this radioactive hellhole and Los Angeles is unpleasant but still livable. Are they imagining that the seemingly endless rain (brought about by climate change) somehow washed more of the radiation out of West Coast cities? But a bigger issue is how there could presumably have been a nuclear war and then society had already recovered from it. Unless the bombing of Las Vegas was a bit of a one-off, perhaps a missile launched by North Korea. Bonus points if this was what led to the "Black Out" that wiped out most digital records from the period between the original Blade Runner and the events in this movie.
Society seems to largely have collapsed with the middle class emptied out, with most people fleeing to the outer colonies (presumably the work of the original replicants has finally led to them being habitable). However, unlike the original movie where there were many abandoned buildings, here LA has become as overcrowded as Delhi with poor people living on the landings of K's building. And then the huge number of orphans working on scrap piles in what used to be San Diego! Still I guess we do get a few flashes of average people still living in LA having coffee (so maybe not everyone left after all), though a huge number of people are actually replicants.
I think it is a bit unlikely that the Wallace Corporation could have really convinced the government(s) to allow it to start rebuilding replicants, even with more internal brain-washing and control. But more to the point, it's odd that Wallace really thinks in the long run it would be cheaper to come up with replicants that could reproduce rather than just being grown in vats, if for no other reason that they have such a long time to grow to maturity whereas the grown replicants are adult sized and ready for work right away. It's also unclear whether naturally-born replicants would have the proper slave programming (and indeed the film suggests that they would not), so once the government found out about this, they would definitely shut down the program with prejudice. But the weakest link really is that he wants millions of replicants to go off and explore the stars, but aside from the fact that finding inhabitable planets light years away is pretty useless, if it just a matter of bodies to stuff into spaceships (as the slave programming will be broken anyway), why not just develop "generation ships" and put all these orphans in them? No one will miss them. I guess there is the matter of radiation poisoning. Somehow replicants are biologically-based and yet are immune to radiation, which is a bit of a cop-out. Like so many SF movies, the androids have near super powers most of the time, but then have human vulnerabilities when necessary to advance the plot. It didn't really seem consistent.
I still don't quite understand why the LAPD didn't just have holding tanks where they stored the replicants between jobs, as it would have resulted in less friction with the general human population (that really hates "skinjobs") and probably would have made it easier for the replicants to maintain their baseline. Also, why they don't just provide the minimum nutrition and necessities of life -- rather than paying the replicants a salary -- is not clear. Not only does K get paid, but he often gets bonuses for retiring particularly difficult cases. I'm a little disappointed in how K didn't realize just how easy the Wallace Corporation could track him (presumably some kind of internal chip, that they didn't bother to disclose to the LAPD), based on the time when the Wallace Corporation rained down missiles to save him from a battle with a bunch of scavengers. We also don't see him restarting his flying car after it was taken down in San Diego, so I am not sure how he gets back to LA. For that matter, his car is completely destroyed in Las Vegas, and he has a high powered one shortly after this that he uses to shoot down Luv's car. In this case, I presume he borrowed it from the rebel replicants. In a way, I kind of thought it would have been more logical that when he turned in his gun (and badge?) to the LAPD (because his baseline readings were way out of wack), then he should have turned in his car as well. It certainly seemed pretty high powered with some extra features not available to civilians. But maybe it was his personal property. I admit it would have been hard to advance the plot if K had to get to Las Vegas on camel or something, but that could have been interesting. (Really, I just thought it would have been super cool to have "Nobody Walks in LA" on the soundtrack...)
One nice touch when we finally meet Deckard and things calm down a bit is that there is a dog, presumably a replicant dog (because again, radiation levels off the charts). This in many ways is the closest that either of the scripts really gets to the original PKD novel where there are different sorts of artificial pets.
These issues don't detract too much, but it isn't a perfect movie, particularly if you don't like plot holes or are concerned with how everything hangs together in this future society (as I noted, this world seems improbable at best). It does have a number of nice neo-noir touches and in some ways is a more legitimate mystery compared to the original Blade Runner, which is more a police procedural with considerable violence doled out along the way.
Sunday, November 5, 2017
Unfortunate lapse
Maybe you've had this happen -- where you have a pretty good day and then one thing happens at the end of it that casts a pall over the entire day (or even the entire week).
I was enjoying myself at the Toronto Cold Reads 3Fest, though a bit bummed to hear that my piece(s) were going to be pushed back at least one more week to the 19th (and perhaps beyond). I wrote another 3-4 pages of the last scene of Straying South, and it seems to be coming together, so that's good -- a productive use of my time while waiting for the show to start (I wasn't doing any stage directions this week). I do enjoy TCR quite a bit, and they do deserve their award for Best Reading Series (see here) -- though it doesn't look like Sing-for-Your-Supper even entered the competition. Nonetheless, from a writer's perspective (or this writer's perspective), stuff gets sent into TCR and then it takes ages for them to get back to you. With SFYS I generally hear back within a week. Also, I am much more in tune with the vibe of SFYS and write material that they like. So almost all my pieces go to them first. Indeed, I came up with another pretty solid idea that I will write up shortly and send in for the December reading.
Anyway, I was chatting with folks afterwards and Toronto Fringe was on my mind. I knew that the deadline was coming up fast, but thought it was early next week, so when I got home I checked the website. It turns out that the last day to apply for the lottery was Friday. So I have lost another full year. I'm so upset that it was my own fuck-up and just not paying attention. Plus, there are apparently a bunch of theatre festivals I don't even know about that the writers are applying to. I don't seem to hear about any of these. So right now I feel completely out of the loop and just really upset. I definitely feel almost all the positive energy from the weekend is gone. I probably should just park the creative writing for a while (at least a week) and work on something else.
Edit: Well, I did see that the deadline for Theatre InspiraTO's 13th Playwriting Contest isn't over just yet. They are looking for 10 minute plays. I might submit "Double Sabbatical" as it doesn't require too much tweaking to fit this year's theme. That would make me feel a bit better to get something in this season, as well as trying harder to get a piece into the Future Fest next year (if it even goes forward). I really ought to put all these deadlines into some calendar, but it is becoming too much like another full time job.
Edit2: Actually, I went and poked around and now I find that even though I specifically emailed someone to try to find out more about a different festival, they never got back to me, and that one closed Nov. 1. I don't know -- it just feels right now that the Toronto theatre scene is pretty closed and you have to know the right people to even find out about these things. I'm definitely feeling like an outsider who just isn't going to break in here. I probably did have a better chance in Chicago had I stuck it out longer there, not least of all because there are simply more companies looking to stage new work.
Edit3: I am quite thrilled to find out in a roundabout way that my piece has been accepted for Toronto Cold Reads next week (Nov 12), but my point still stands that I don't really hear back from them. The process feels opaque. But I am extremely grateful that they will put on my piece, and I hope I get a sense of what works and what doesn't. And maybe people will give me feedback afterwards as well.
I was enjoying myself at the Toronto Cold Reads 3Fest, though a bit bummed to hear that my piece(s) were going to be pushed back at least one more week to the 19th (and perhaps beyond). I wrote another 3-4 pages of the last scene of Straying South, and it seems to be coming together, so that's good -- a productive use of my time while waiting for the show to start (I wasn't doing any stage directions this week). I do enjoy TCR quite a bit, and they do deserve their award for Best Reading Series (see here) -- though it doesn't look like Sing-for-Your-Supper even entered the competition. Nonetheless, from a writer's perspective (or this writer's perspective), stuff gets sent into TCR and then it takes ages for them to get back to you. With SFYS I generally hear back within a week. Also, I am much more in tune with the vibe of SFYS and write material that they like. So almost all my pieces go to them first. Indeed, I came up with another pretty solid idea that I will write up shortly and send in for the December reading.
Anyway, I was chatting with folks afterwards and Toronto Fringe was on my mind. I knew that the deadline was coming up fast, but thought it was early next week, so when I got home I checked the website. It turns out that the last day to apply for the lottery was Friday. So I have lost another full year. I'm so upset that it was my own fuck-up and just not paying attention. Plus, there are apparently a bunch of theatre festivals I don't even know about that the writers are applying to. I don't seem to hear about any of these. So right now I feel completely out of the loop and just really upset. I definitely feel almost all the positive energy from the weekend is gone. I probably should just park the creative writing for a while (at least a week) and work on something else.
Edit: Well, I did see that the deadline for Theatre InspiraTO's 13th Playwriting Contest isn't over just yet. They are looking for 10 minute plays. I might submit "Double Sabbatical" as it doesn't require too much tweaking to fit this year's theme. That would make me feel a bit better to get something in this season, as well as trying harder to get a piece into the Future Fest next year (if it even goes forward). I really ought to put all these deadlines into some calendar, but it is becoming too much like another full time job.
Edit2: Actually, I went and poked around and now I find that even though I specifically emailed someone to try to find out more about a different festival, they never got back to me, and that one closed Nov. 1. I don't know -- it just feels right now that the Toronto theatre scene is pretty closed and you have to know the right people to even find out about these things. I'm definitely feeling like an outsider who just isn't going to break in here. I probably did have a better chance in Chicago had I stuck it out longer there, not least of all because there are simply more companies looking to stage new work.
Edit3: I am quite thrilled to find out in a roundabout way that my piece has been accepted for Toronto Cold Reads next week (Nov 12), but my point still stands that I don't really hear back from them. The process feels opaque. But I am extremely grateful that they will put on my piece, and I hope I get a sense of what works and what doesn't. And maybe people will give me feedback afterwards as well.
Short story round-up
I have been trying to sneak in some short stories, along with all the novels on my reading list. I thought I would weigh in on some of these collections.
I already mentioned that I thought Atwood's Moral Disorder (essentially a novel in stories) was good.
I have sort of mixed feelings about John Fante's stories. So many of them are about his childhood growing up in a working-class Italian neighbourhood that they start to feel a bit repetitive. Also, it's quite difficult for me to really cheer on hell-raisers, particularly those that commit some relatively serious crimes, then come to the nun or priest and tell a sob story and get it all hushed up, ending with them getting communion. It really feels like a particularly illegitimate use of religion. At some level it is a class issue, and I really don't care for any of the family members the way they are portrayed, as always feuding and getting drunk and generally being unpleasant. ("A Bad Woman" from The Big Hunger may be the worst.) That said, the writing generally elevates the material, and I'll wrap up The Big Hunger fairly soon, as well as West of Rome. I'm not sure when I will get to the Bandini Quartet.
In many cases, F. Scott Fitzgerald's writing also elevates his material, even when the story line is a bit silly or even corny. All that said, I'm coming around to the opinion that he didn't always have the Midas touch. I'm currently about halfway through F. Scott Fitzgerald's I'd Die for You and Other Lost Stories. Some of these are stories that were a bit too dark for periodicals of the time (or at least under his byline, given what the public expected from him). But in most cases, he had a policy of refusing to accept any editorial advice, and then just filed the stories away if they couldn't be sold "as is." I'm very sorry to report back that, in most cases, Fitzgerald was wrong and far too proud at this stage of his career, as these definitely could have used editing. Quite a few are really corny (especially his movie treatments turned into stories), and one ("The Pearl and the Fur") has so many factual errors (claiming that the subway up in the 200s in Manhattan only had service every hour) and such ridiculous plot contrivances about an underage cab driver that I actually found it unreadable and stopped midway through. Even his literary agent begged him to fix the errors, but Fitzgerald refused. The first story in the collection (The IOU) was decent and was recently (and belatedly) published by The New Yorker. The second was improbable but at least readable. I personally didn't care for the title story (due to the over-the-top sexual magnetism of one of the characters), but it was reasonably well written and some people will like it. And that's about it. The rest are basically a mess (I've sort of been peeking ahead to the remaining stories). So this is one for Fitzgerald fanatics only, and even then I would only borrow it from the library.
I have slightly higher hopes for The Price was High (50 uncollected Fitzgerald stories, which were at least all published in magazines at the time). However, perhaps I should temper my expectations. A contemporary review claimed that they were pretty thin gruel, and only a handful migrated from this book to Bruccoli's final volume of Fitzgerald's selected stories. The Price was High is probably also one for fans only.
I've been somewhat pleasantly surprised by Anthony Trollope's Lotta Schmidt and Other Stories. These are generally pretty solid stories. One or two have a bit of a twist (predating O. Henry), though in a way I was impressed by a story ("The Adventures of Fred Pickering") about a young writer, on the verge of starvation, who doesn't miraculously acquire a patron at the 11th hour, which I had been expecting from the set up. The denouement was a bit more interesting than that. "The Two Generals" is a very early example of the brother against brother theme so prevalent when writing about the U.S. Civil War. What is particularly notable is that it was written midway through the war, but even then most knowledgeable observers knew the North would win eventually, since it had such a much better industrial basis and had a larger population as well. It's also obvious, despite those today who would deny it, that maintaining their system of slavery was really the root cause of the South's rebellion. No one pretended any differently during the war. Overall, the stories all are just a bit longer than I would like, but that's Victorian fiction for you...
In the very near term, I expect to be reading Mordecai Richler's The Street and a couple of volumes of Narayan's short stories, and I'll try to remember to report back at that point.
I already mentioned that I thought Atwood's Moral Disorder (essentially a novel in stories) was good.
I have sort of mixed feelings about John Fante's stories. So many of them are about his childhood growing up in a working-class Italian neighbourhood that they start to feel a bit repetitive. Also, it's quite difficult for me to really cheer on hell-raisers, particularly those that commit some relatively serious crimes, then come to the nun or priest and tell a sob story and get it all hushed up, ending with them getting communion. It really feels like a particularly illegitimate use of religion. At some level it is a class issue, and I really don't care for any of the family members the way they are portrayed, as always feuding and getting drunk and generally being unpleasant. ("A Bad Woman" from The Big Hunger may be the worst.) That said, the writing generally elevates the material, and I'll wrap up The Big Hunger fairly soon, as well as West of Rome. I'm not sure when I will get to the Bandini Quartet.
In many cases, F. Scott Fitzgerald's writing also elevates his material, even when the story line is a bit silly or even corny. All that said, I'm coming around to the opinion that he didn't always have the Midas touch. I'm currently about halfway through F. Scott Fitzgerald's I'd Die for You and Other Lost Stories. Some of these are stories that were a bit too dark for periodicals of the time (or at least under his byline, given what the public expected from him). But in most cases, he had a policy of refusing to accept any editorial advice, and then just filed the stories away if they couldn't be sold "as is." I'm very sorry to report back that, in most cases, Fitzgerald was wrong and far too proud at this stage of his career, as these definitely could have used editing. Quite a few are really corny (especially his movie treatments turned into stories), and one ("The Pearl and the Fur") has so many factual errors (claiming that the subway up in the 200s in Manhattan only had service every hour) and such ridiculous plot contrivances about an underage cab driver that I actually found it unreadable and stopped midway through. Even his literary agent begged him to fix the errors, but Fitzgerald refused. The first story in the collection (The IOU) was decent and was recently (and belatedly) published by The New Yorker. The second was improbable but at least readable. I personally didn't care for the title story (due to the over-the-top sexual magnetism of one of the characters), but it was reasonably well written and some people will like it. And that's about it. The rest are basically a mess (I've sort of been peeking ahead to the remaining stories). So this is one for Fitzgerald fanatics only, and even then I would only borrow it from the library.
I have slightly higher hopes for The Price was High (50 uncollected Fitzgerald stories, which were at least all published in magazines at the time). However, perhaps I should temper my expectations. A contemporary review claimed that they were pretty thin gruel, and only a handful migrated from this book to Bruccoli's final volume of Fitzgerald's selected stories. The Price was High is probably also one for fans only.
I've been somewhat pleasantly surprised by Anthony Trollope's Lotta Schmidt and Other Stories. These are generally pretty solid stories. One or two have a bit of a twist (predating O. Henry), though in a way I was impressed by a story ("The Adventures of Fred Pickering") about a young writer, on the verge of starvation, who doesn't miraculously acquire a patron at the 11th hour, which I had been expecting from the set up. The denouement was a bit more interesting than that. "The Two Generals" is a very early example of the brother against brother theme so prevalent when writing about the U.S. Civil War. What is particularly notable is that it was written midway through the war, but even then most knowledgeable observers knew the North would win eventually, since it had such a much better industrial basis and had a larger population as well. It's also obvious, despite those today who would deny it, that maintaining their system of slavery was really the root cause of the South's rebellion. No one pretended any differently during the war. Overall, the stories all are just a bit longer than I would like, but that's Victorian fiction for you...
In the very near term, I expect to be reading Mordecai Richler's The Street and a couple of volumes of Narayan's short stories, and I'll try to remember to report back at that point.
Monsters at Home - Del Toro at AGO
Sort of a continuation of the last post, Toronto was relatively fortunate in that our turn to see the Guillermo del Toro exhibit coincided with Halloween. I have plenty of misgivings about this exhibit (feeling that it really has no business being in the AGO and should have been at the ROM -- like the Cronenberg exhibit all the way back in 1993!), but if it is on display, then Halloween is the right time.
There were a few interesting tidbits that I wasn't aware of. He has named his house/estate Bleak House, after the Dickens's novel (and he had some interesting observations on Bleak House and Great Expectations being essentially Gothic novels). He has a small shrine to Dickens in his house.
He seems to have a really creepy obsession with putting waxwork figures of authors in his house. In addition to Lovecraft, he has Edgar Allan Poe, though I will say that the whole idea of a rain room is pretty cool. He says it is one of the rooms in which he is most productive.
Still, mostly the exhibit is a weird grab bag of props from his movies, plus a wall of comics he has collected and a bunch of books he has been inspired by. One of the few things that actually looked "artistic" was actually a poster for his upcoming movie, The Shape of Water.
Still, I am sure this will be considered a big success as it is bringing relatively large crowds of folks, who also buy the trinkets on sale at the gift shop. I'm well aware that the high/low art is fairly arbitrary, but these are really movie artifacts and are just not what I consider art, since they weren't made to stand on their own. Anyway, I was glad that the crowds had died down a bit, so it wasn't painful going through the exhibit, but there were a few parents who had disregarded the warning signs and brought small children who were not ready for this exhibit. I would generally avoid bringing impressionable children along. More info here if interested.
I briefly checked out the Florine Stettheimer exhibit, but I have to say I thought it was pretty weak. She has almost no ability to give depth to her paintings, and everything sort of floats all on the surface. Some of her larger (and marginally more interesting) paintings are often on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but these didn't make the trip. I do see some connections with the work of Hollis Sigler, who may well have been inspired by Stettheimer, but I personally much prefer Sigler's work.
I still had time to check out the antiquarian book sale on the 3rd floor, but there wasn't anything even remotely in my price range. I really don't have any interest in collecting used books; I only like used books when they are cheap and thus I have no qualms about reading them.
Then I biked over to the movie theatre to see Blade Runner 2049. The visuals are pretty awesome. The story was pretty good, with some significant plot holes, but I'll write about this in a separate post. Biking home, I faced a major headwind (it's not just that it is the cold that makes it harder to cycle, but somehow the wind usually does seem stronger as we head into winter). Still, it was good to be biking (it's really the first major biking I've done in two weeks, and I also avoided the gym while I was so sick these past two weeks). That was pretty much all I accomplished yesterday. Now I will have to get the groceries and cook and probably do laundry just to feel I have caught up.
There were a few interesting tidbits that I wasn't aware of. He has named his house/estate Bleak House, after the Dickens's novel (and he had some interesting observations on Bleak House and Great Expectations being essentially Gothic novels). He has a small shrine to Dickens in his house.
He seems to have a really creepy obsession with putting waxwork figures of authors in his house. In addition to Lovecraft, he has Edgar Allan Poe, though I will say that the whole idea of a rain room is pretty cool. He says it is one of the rooms in which he is most productive.
Still, mostly the exhibit is a weird grab bag of props from his movies, plus a wall of comics he has collected and a bunch of books he has been inspired by. One of the few things that actually looked "artistic" was actually a poster for his upcoming movie, The Shape of Water.
Still, I am sure this will be considered a big success as it is bringing relatively large crowds of folks, who also buy the trinkets on sale at the gift shop. I'm well aware that the high/low art is fairly arbitrary, but these are really movie artifacts and are just not what I consider art, since they weren't made to stand on their own. Anyway, I was glad that the crowds had died down a bit, so it wasn't painful going through the exhibit, but there were a few parents who had disregarded the warning signs and brought small children who were not ready for this exhibit. I would generally avoid bringing impressionable children along. More info here if interested.
I briefly checked out the Florine Stettheimer exhibit, but I have to say I thought it was pretty weak. She has almost no ability to give depth to her paintings, and everything sort of floats all on the surface. Some of her larger (and marginally more interesting) paintings are often on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but these didn't make the trip. I do see some connections with the work of Hollis Sigler, who may well have been inspired by Stettheimer, but I personally much prefer Sigler's work.
I still had time to check out the antiquarian book sale on the 3rd floor, but there wasn't anything even remotely in my price range. I really don't have any interest in collecting used books; I only like used books when they are cheap and thus I have no qualms about reading them.
Then I biked over to the movie theatre to see Blade Runner 2049. The visuals are pretty awesome. The story was pretty good, with some significant plot holes, but I'll write about this in a separate post. Biking home, I faced a major headwind (it's not just that it is the cold that makes it harder to cycle, but somehow the wind usually does seem stronger as we head into winter). Still, it was good to be biking (it's really the first major biking I've done in two weeks, and I also avoided the gym while I was so sick these past two weeks). That was pretty much all I accomplished yesterday. Now I will have to get the groceries and cook and probably do laundry just to feel I have caught up.
Thursday, November 2, 2017
Another Halloween in the books
I suppose we really lucked out this year. It was crisp, even a bit on the chilly side, but it didn't rain on Halloween itself. It rained the following two days (and frankly the weekend looks like it will get rained out as well). Last year it was clear as well, and perhaps the year before that. I vaguely recall that it rained on Halloween in 2014. It's just not much fun when you have to go trick-or-treating with an umbrella over your costume (to say nothing of the parents who generally end up with the umbrellas).
I managed to get home just before 6. I saw one grandfather with a couple of kids in tow, but the trick-or-treating hadn't really started. I was taking my daughter and one of her school friends around. My wife and son (but mostly my son) were going to stay home and hand out candy. Our neighbourhood has a fairly compressed schedule -- trick-or-treating is almost exactly from 6 to 7:45, and then the lights start going out and the party is over. Actually quite a few of the families then head over to Langley for the big show (15 years' running now!). Other streets keep doling out the candy longer, but I think it is nice that we don't have to stick too close to the door all evening long.
I mentioned that we don't do a whole lot in terms of decoration. Due to that, and also the fence, we probably only get 2/3rd of the trick-or-treaters that my neighbours get, but it is still a fair number, which is nice but not overwhelming. We typically end up with some candy left over.
Here are a few shots from the evening.
I managed to get home just before 6. I saw one grandfather with a couple of kids in tow, but the trick-or-treating hadn't really started. I was taking my daughter and one of her school friends around. My wife and son (but mostly my son) were going to stay home and hand out candy. Our neighbourhood has a fairly compressed schedule -- trick-or-treating is almost exactly from 6 to 7:45, and then the lights start going out and the party is over. Actually quite a few of the families then head over to Langley for the big show (15 years' running now!). Other streets keep doling out the candy longer, but I think it is nice that we don't have to stick too close to the door all evening long.
I mentioned that we don't do a whole lot in terms of decoration. Due to that, and also the fence, we probably only get 2/3rd of the trick-or-treaters that my neighbours get, but it is still a fair number, which is nice but not overwhelming. We typically end up with some candy left over.
Here are a few shots from the evening.
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