Once again I cut things a bit too close. I was supposed to meet my son at Yonge-Dundas Square right before Some Like It Hot. Fortunately, in the morning I had checked and realized that this was playing in the theatre right there at Yonge-Dundas (across from the Jazz Bistro in fact) and not on King St. The theatres on King would have been a lot more convenient for a few reasons, but it was not to be.
Anyway, I found out that I had to rerun a long model run. I decided I really needed to push through and get it restarted, as it basically runs overnight. So I didn't leave until 6:30, and I was to meet my son at 7! And I hadn't eaten! I decided with all the potential delays and waiting on the subway, it would be just as fast to walk, even on the slushy sidewalks. I made it to Eaton Centre by 6:45, making pretty good time. Sadly, there wasn't much I wanted to eat at the new southern food court and some of the restaurants had closed, which I thought was weird. I ended up grabbing some passable sushi and quickly walked over to the Square (or rather under, as there is a TTC underpass I utilized). I was only a couple of minutes late. I ate the sushi, and we went in. He enjoyed it. I thought it was well done, though the set is (not surprisingly) on a smaller scale and less impressive than the Broadway run. I definitely think a number or even two could be trimmed from the first act, but the second moves at a good pace. My favourite number is "Let's Be Bad," which opens the second act.
I've managed to get through a few more poetry collections. I'm finding that I don't care as much for Wellwater as Karen Solie's earlier collections like Pigeon or Short Haul Engine, and I really didn't like The Caiplie Caves. It's just as well that I read the earlier collections first, or I definitely wouldn't have continued. I suppose this happens. I found that my favourite Ronna Bloom collection was Public Works, and her other collections are ok but just don't speak to me the same way. I'm not enjoying the early poems of Jack Spicer and all and generally find him very over-rated, but I'll push through. I'm generally enjoying Phil Quinn's The Sub Way, which is all about the Yonge St. subway, which really did reshape Toronto. I thought he was actually a subway driver (much like Chris Pannell was a bus driver and wrote several really good poems about driving the bus), but that doesn't seem to be the case after all. I am finding it hard to pull out a subway poem that would work for the transportation anthology, but I'll keep trying, and maybe look over some of the poems here that didn't make the cut, whereas I can definitely find a bus poem or two that would slot in from Pannell's work (and in general, Pannell's work clicks more often for me...).
I'm halfway through Ben Jelloun's The Last Friend but actually am fairly disappointed in it, though I can't explain why without SPOILERS.
SPOILERS
Basically, half of the book is told from the perspective of one friend (Ali) and the second half from the other's (Mamed). Towards the end of Mamed's life, he writes this terrible letter, saying that Ali was not a good friend and had cheated him (pretty much throughout their whole friendship). Ali is incredibly hurt but thinks that probably Mamed is just lashing out due to his fear of death. Then you read the second half, expecting to find out why Mamed has such a different view on their relationship. I skipped ahead, and in fact Mamed clearly admits he is in the wrong, and then sends a letter set to reach Ali after his death, saying that in fact Ali was in the right all along. Lame. Such a missed opportunity. It would have been a far more interesting novel if Ben Jelloun had explored the key differences in perspective of the two and how there can be such a gulf in the way two people view the world. I'm fairly sure that Durrell's Alexandria Quartet explores this at some length, hinting that there can never be a single source of truth and that all narrators are unreliable. I really ought to reread this, though I don't know when I would find the time.
I'm making decent progress through Faulkner's The Wild Palms, and I should finish it sometime over the weekend and then watch Varda's La Pointe Courte when it turns up from the library. I think my current plan is to read Bruno Shulz's Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (inspired by finally watching Has's movie, which is extremely loosely based on these stories), Winterson's One Aladdin Two Lamps (inspired by Shahrazad and the Arabian Tales), Shulz's The Street of Crocodiles, O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find, then Murakami's The City and Its Uncertain Walls and finally McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. The Ottawa trip will fall somewhere in the middle of this, so I'll be reading Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor, and I'll probably just push through and finish whatever I haven't read on the train once we get back. I'll tackle Shteyngart's Vera, or Faith after McCullers, and then I'll definitely be into the second tranche of books for 2026, which includes novels by Robert Maxwell, Narayan, Mahfouz, Amis and Thien and probably Offill's Weather. And maybe rereading Murdoch's Under the Net, though that may end up in the third tranche.
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