It's no secret that when you have a huge task ahead of you, it can feel like a terrible chore or burden, even if -- in the moment -- whatever it is it that you are doing brings pleasure or wisdom or at least a feeling of accomplishment. That's kind of how I feel about my reading list at the moment. I've actually knocked off quite a few mid-length books and some shorter ones. This was a stretch where quite a few were coming off the To-be-read-and-discarded list and so far, they have basically lived up to or down to expectations. What was a surprise is three or four "classics" that I assumed would be keepers but really didn't care for and/or certainly don't imagine I'll read a second time, so there is no reason to keep them, particularly in advance of another move. Probably the single most surprising* is Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, but I also assumed that I would be fairly attuned to Dinesen's Winter's Tales and Bowen's A House in Paris. But I really wasn't, so I now have slightly more room on the shelves for other things.
I think even getting through this list as far as I have (and the previous ones as well, particularly the Russian lit one) is a pretty significant accomplishment, but there doesn't feel like a natural end to it. It will just grow onwards, since there are far more good-to-great novels than one could read in a lifetime. This point was really driven home just this evening as I was looking at 20 or so rows of a dozen or more shelves of literature over at Robarts -- tens of thousands of books, many of which are well out of fashion.
I myself must own close to 1000 books, and I have gotten it down to maybe 600 that I clearly plan on reading or rereading. I should just about get through that in 20 years at my current rate, which might drop off a bit if I start watching classic movies with my children as they enter their teen years. It can be a bit too much when thought about in those terms, i.e. trying to cover all aspects of "literature."
It is more useful to think about it as finally getting around to reading those books that have a proven track record, as well as a few quirky, unknown books that I have carted around for years. I am particularly looking forward to Maugham's Of Human Bondage as an example of the former and Ivan Vladislavic's The Restless Supermarket of the latter. I'll certainly blog about the supermarket book if it lives up to my expectations. I've generally been pretty good at tackling massive series and ambitious books, though it does seem to work out to only one such set per year: Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time back in 2006, Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy two years ago, Proust last year, Dos Passos's USA Trilogy in about a week and Musil's The Man Without Qualities probably in a couple of years. I'm actually pacing things out differently than I used to, but should over time manage to get through the complete works of quite a number of key literary figures -- DeLillo, Faulkner, Mahfouz, Narayan, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro and so on. Steinbeck is lower but still in the mix, along with Carlos Fuentes, Vargas Llosa and Garcia Marquez. But it does get wearying at times to the point where it feels like a second job.
At any rate, this post will be on the long side, as I wrap up some thoughts on what I have read so far in 2015. I expect there will be some SPOILERS, so tread carefully if that bothers you.
I was pretty happy with von Rezzori's An Ermine in Czernopol once I finally got to it. The long delay didn't spoil anything.
In contrast, I think I would have liked Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus more had I actually read it back when I bought it, almost certainly 15+ years ago. I really did like the first two sections, but was not at all sold on the last third of the book. By no means a failure, just not as good as I had hoped.
Machado De Assis The Alienist was fun and short (or mostly fun -- one story was about a slave who was caught and returned to her master -- that was mostly pathos). The notes were helpful in establishing his place in Brazilian society. This unofficially kicked off my undertaking to read a number of short story collections (also Kafka, Chabon, Dinesen and now Lethem). Probably the best stories were "To Be Twenty Years Old!" and "A Chapter on Hats."
I've already discussed how disappointed I was with As I Lay Dying, so I'll just let that lie.
Perhaps I am even more surprised that I wasn't that taken with Bowen's The House in Paris. The structure is fairly similar to Three Days of Rain (the play). Present, then long flash-back to explain the present situation, then back to the Present to wrap things up.
SPOILERS
I ended up not liking this very much. I did like the first "The Present" section but that was about it. It's hard to pinpoint exactly the problem, but really much ado about a fairly pedestrian affair and a number of high-strung characters that didn't seem particularly believable. Also, this was one of several Modernist novels to have some distracting comments on the status of Jews in Europe. I do understand that this was viewed very differently in the early 20th Century, but the whole racial legacy of the Jews making all their intermarriages with gentiles impossible is tough to read now. (This is also a bit of an issue with Nightwood, even though Djuna Barnes is fairly sympathetic to the outcasts of Europe.) One could certainly argue that for all kinds of reasons, the trope of Jew as Other is becoming more prevalent in modern-day Europe, though I think you would be hard pressed to say it had the same relevance in major North American cities, which is of course where I am coming from.
Anyway, basically the "undeserving" and high-strung Jewish man ends up seducing a young woman, who is best friends with his finance. After their encounter, he commits suicide and of course she becomes pregnant. She has the child (the boy Leopold from The Present section) but bundles him off with another family. What's a bit more surprising is that when she backs out from seeing the boy in Paris, her husband decides to take the boy after all and there is still the chance of a somewhat delayed and surely fraught but perhaps successful reconciliation. But it is fairly clear that she is not a particularly stable or even deserving individual (compared to her friend). In this she reminds me of the Robin character in Nightwood. So I found the first section and aspects of the third section to be of interest, but wasn't at all interested in the middle section covering the Past. So this is not a book I expect to return to.
I had different reasons for being somewhat unimpressed with Elizabeth Taylor's A Game of Hide and Seek. While I hadn't really heard much about this book, or the novelist as a matter of fact, the introduction positions her as an author who combines the fine attention to detail of Jane Austen with the wild emotional ride of Bronte's Wuthering Heights. And if I squint a bit, I can see this. There certainly is the attention to micro-detail and some fine set pieces when Harriet goes off and works in a shop and interacts with the other salesladies. Also, the early chapters where Harriet and Vesey find that they have fallen in love through long association of spending summers together as children. Where it falls down is that Harriet is a fairly dim girl who doesn't outgrow her childhood obsessions, while Vesey is a spoiled boy who becomes a failure as a man, a second-rate actor (if that) in a very middling road company. I didn't find either of their stories very interesting nor worthy of my time.
SPOILERS
Harriet finally ends up marrying a much older man (this was quite a theme for a number of novelists of this period) and has a daughter. The daughter is bright, though mostly applies herself to learn Latin and Greek because of her obsession with her teacher. When Vesey's company rolls into town, she finds herself obsessed with him, and there is a moment or two that threatens to become very icky until she (the daughter) decides she must actually be Vesey's daughter and then tries surreptitiously to support her mother in continuing this age-old affair. I will say the daughter is probably the most interesting character in the book, followed by her teacher. A book centred on the two of them would have been far more satisfying to me. Despite being a complete louse, Vesey attempts to break off the affair and pretends that he is moving to Africa or Brazil to look after his father's business interests. The novel ends as Harriet is seeing Vesey off, and it is expected that her life will go back to normal, though this is somewhat unresolved. As I said, there are certainly some nice touches throughout the novel, but I found Harriet totally insipid and Vesey a thoroughly unworthy and (more damningly) uninteresting Heathcliff-figure.
However, this was still light-years ahead of Elizabeth Berg's Open House. This author is often advertised as a cross between Alice Hoffman and Anne Tyler. I can't speak for Hoffman, but I have read quite a few Anne Tyler novels, and Berg does not come remotely close. There's something about how she writes "uplifting" fiction for very privileged (white) characters that is so unappealing. When her marriage falls apart, the spurned wife's first reaction is to go into Tiffany's and charge, charge, charge to try to get back at her husband. I'm sure there are some people like that, but I can't relate. Then she tries to give this bracelet to a homeless woman to go pawn. I do understand Berg is poking fun at the total cluelessness of this woman, but I found it appalling and had no interest in going along for the ride. Finally, I just skipped ahead to see if it got any better at all, and what happens but Martha Stewart calls this woman to give her some advice. This just totally summed up all that was wrong with this book. I see from the various reviews of other books on Amazon that this general approach is seen in quite a few of her books, so I have stricken Berg off my list of novelists who I will even consider for the To-be-read-and-discarded pile. It's nice to be decisive and exclusive at times.
After this is was back to a number of short story collections. I have to admit that Patrick Somerville's The Universe in Miniature in Miniature didn't do all that much for me. Most of the stories are quirky and vaguely reminiscent of Jonathan Lethem, so I figured I really ought to go back to the source, and indeed I have just started Lethem's new collection Lucky Alan.
Michael Chabon's A Model World was more successful, though I didn't like the title story very much. It somehow slipped my attention that the second batch of short stories are all about the same set of characters. A young Jewish boy, his younger brother, and their parents who get divorced for unclear reasons by the 2nd or 3rd story in the group. They are fairly melancholy and are not that memorable on their own, but pick up some power in the way they are linked. It's not dissimilar to Munro's Lives of Girls and Women, which is basically a novel in stories.
As for Isak Dinesen's Winter's Tales, I thought they were ok, but more were fairy tales or directly inspired by fairy tales than I imagined. I can't see reading any of them a second time, except for the first story "The Young Man with the Carnation," which is quite a bit like an O Henry story, but with a mixed ending, happy for one couple and sad for another. I found the opening a bit slow but it picked up fairly quickly. I also liked how the stories within the story functioned and, in a sense, provided a bit of moral instruction to the author (the "hero" of the story). A comparable process takes place in Platonov's "The Return," which is a story well worth seeking out.
I found the first chapter of Julian Barnes's A History of the World in 10½ Chapters to be a very tedious retelling of the Noah and the Ark story. I realize there is no way to
tell the story literally in a way that doesn't sound absurd, but somehow
the tone was so off and Barnes kept layering on one thing after another
-- that's why there are no basilisks and no unicorns and so forth.
Maybe what really killed it for me was the combination of the Ark legend
with Kipling's Just So Stories (how Noah's beatings gave the zebras
their stripes; how hiding from Noah caused chameleons to change their
color; etc.). See Timothy Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage for
tackling the same legend/myth (including an on-board unicorn!) but
somehow done in a far superior manner.
I did slog through Barnes's History, but never really enjoyed it and found the closing "The Dream" to be quite tedious. This book generally reinforced my opinion
that Julian Barnes is a writer who thinks he is far cleverer than he
actually is. While it's been a long, long while since I read it, I am
actually revising my opinion of Flaubert's Parrot somewhat downwards in
retrospect. I'm probably also going to strike him (Barnes) off my list and
not read anything further by him.
And with that I finally come to Djuna Barnes's Nightwood. I did find this a lot more rewarding than most of the other books mentioned in this (too long) post. To do it any justice, it really needs a separate post, so I'll see what I can whip up in the next week or so before it fades too much from memory.
* That is the single most surprising this time around. From the previous list, I found that Proust's Remembrance of Things Past was just not to my taste at all, and I divested myself of those thick yet elegant silver-spined books for once and for all.
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Short(ish) March post
In contrast to my typical long posts.
I am slowly recovering but still don't have much of an appetite. I'll probably try veggie hot dogs for dinner and maybe risk just a bit of chocolate afterwards. I think I'll try some less processed dairy tomorrow, like a bit of milk on my cereal.* I went through my blog and emails, and indeed, most of my sicknesses of the last 3-4 years have been coming down with a cold and/or lingering cough. This business with the stomach being so unsettled has not happened for many years.
I did get out to take in some sun, which has been a welcome change. It doesn't precisely feel like spring, but it's above freezing and the sun is out more often than not. I'll take it. Almost all the snow is off the sidewalks and there isn't that much left on the grass. While I need to take it easy, in a week or so, I'll probably start trying to ride my bike in to work. I actually have missed that, particularly on bad transit days (or on days where I am forced to pay extra for very short trips that by all rights would be covered under a reasonable timed transfer system -- TTC may actually have the worst and most punitive transfer scheme in North America, primarily because it is so under-funded).
I decided I probably ought to see just how it would feel to go in to work, as well as clean up my inbox (since I had left my laptop in the office). So I did that. I felt sore and would rather have stayed home, but that isn't all that surprising.
Anyway, once I was there, I thought I would check out Blood Wedding at Buddies in Bad Times. I had not realized that there was a parade on Yonge Street for St. Patrick's Day (I've been kind of out of it). This slowed me down, and certainly messed with the streetcars, but I made it with a few minutes to spare. I'm not really sure what to say about the performance. I thought they did a good job, but it wasn't what I wanted to see. The script is too symbolic with even the moon getting into the act, telling the branches below to get out of the way so that her moonbeams can be soaked in blood. Everyone knows where the story is going, so does it have to be dragged out so long (a bit over 95 minutes)? All I can say is that in my current mood, I probably would have walked out midway through Iceman Cometh. I know this goes in waves, but right now I am just not very open to symbolic or poetic theatrical pieces. I want taut realism or at least neo-realism, though I am open to comedy, i.e. it doesn't have to be drama or melodrama, but it can't meander too much (and I am going to try to apply this lesson to my own work). So as I said, I thought they achieved what they set out to achieve quite well, but it wasn't really what I was looking for. Of course, I have read the Garcia Lorca plays before, but it has been a long time, and they can be played in a number of styles. This performance does fall on the mannered side. I think of all the roles, the spurned wife was the most effective or real to me.
I had hoped to catch the streetcar home and get a little further into Djuna Barnes's Nightwood (I guess moving from High Symbolism to High Modernism) but they were only running the other way. It was going to be at least another 5-10 minutes before an eastbound one showed up, and then it would be pretty packed. I gave up and took the subway and bus home. And that is it for a relatively short update post. Perhaps after a nap I will get around to a few longer posts that are midway complete.
* I actually planned for some plain sushi for lunch but through a strange set of circumstances ended up risking a slice of cheese pizza, which so far is staying down, so I guess the worst is over. I expect I've lost 5 pounds, though not in a way I would recommend. However, I will try to take this opportunity to reset my eating habits at work at least a little and cut out more of the junk food where possible. Assuming I really can start biking by Friday, I can get a jumpstart on getting back in reasonable shape, which would do wonders for my mental health.
I am slowly recovering but still don't have much of an appetite. I'll probably try veggie hot dogs for dinner and maybe risk just a bit of chocolate afterwards. I think I'll try some less processed dairy tomorrow, like a bit of milk on my cereal.* I went through my blog and emails, and indeed, most of my sicknesses of the last 3-4 years have been coming down with a cold and/or lingering cough. This business with the stomach being so unsettled has not happened for many years.
I did get out to take in some sun, which has been a welcome change. It doesn't precisely feel like spring, but it's above freezing and the sun is out more often than not. I'll take it. Almost all the snow is off the sidewalks and there isn't that much left on the grass. While I need to take it easy, in a week or so, I'll probably start trying to ride my bike in to work. I actually have missed that, particularly on bad transit days (or on days where I am forced to pay extra for very short trips that by all rights would be covered under a reasonable timed transfer system -- TTC may actually have the worst and most punitive transfer scheme in North America, primarily because it is so under-funded).
I decided I probably ought to see just how it would feel to go in to work, as well as clean up my inbox (since I had left my laptop in the office). So I did that. I felt sore and would rather have stayed home, but that isn't all that surprising.
Anyway, once I was there, I thought I would check out Blood Wedding at Buddies in Bad Times. I had not realized that there was a parade on Yonge Street for St. Patrick's Day (I've been kind of out of it). This slowed me down, and certainly messed with the streetcars, but I made it with a few minutes to spare. I'm not really sure what to say about the performance. I thought they did a good job, but it wasn't what I wanted to see. The script is too symbolic with even the moon getting into the act, telling the branches below to get out of the way so that her moonbeams can be soaked in blood. Everyone knows where the story is going, so does it have to be dragged out so long (a bit over 95 minutes)? All I can say is that in my current mood, I probably would have walked out midway through Iceman Cometh. I know this goes in waves, but right now I am just not very open to symbolic or poetic theatrical pieces. I want taut realism or at least neo-realism, though I am open to comedy, i.e. it doesn't have to be drama or melodrama, but it can't meander too much (and I am going to try to apply this lesson to my own work). So as I said, I thought they achieved what they set out to achieve quite well, but it wasn't really what I was looking for. Of course, I have read the Garcia Lorca plays before, but it has been a long time, and they can be played in a number of styles. This performance does fall on the mannered side. I think of all the roles, the spurned wife was the most effective or real to me.
I had hoped to catch the streetcar home and get a little further into Djuna Barnes's Nightwood (I guess moving from High Symbolism to High Modernism) but they were only running the other way. It was going to be at least another 5-10 minutes before an eastbound one showed up, and then it would be pretty packed. I gave up and took the subway and bus home. And that is it for a relatively short update post. Perhaps after a nap I will get around to a few longer posts that are midway complete.
* I actually planned for some plain sushi for lunch but through a strange set of circumstances ended up risking a slice of cheese pizza, which so far is staying down, so I guess the worst is over. I expect I've lost 5 pounds, though not in a way I would recommend. However, I will try to take this opportunity to reset my eating habits at work at least a little and cut out more of the junk food where possible. Assuming I really can start biking by Friday, I can get a jumpstart on getting back in reasonable shape, which would do wonders for my mental health.
Saturday, March 14, 2015
Sick sick sick
Well, the trip to Saskatoon proved incredibly costly in many ways. I had to work like mad to get all the slides in place, helped greatly by a junior who was able to stay home. I took the lead during the presentation, probably talking for close to 4 hours. It is exhausting, particularly when one is out of practice. But overall, it was a successful meeting, and it looks like the project is coming to a relatively good outcome.
I was not thrilled at the lunch that was catered in, only getting half of an egg salad sandwich. So I was famished by the time the meeting ended and just wanted to get to the airport and get some food. Well, no luck. The Saskatoon airport is perhaps the worst I have ever seen in terms of food options. Even the Island Airport has a somewhat better selection of sandwiches and vending machines. Anyway, there was a Tim Hortons that didn't have any sandwiches with no meat and a small cafe next door that was even worse. The cafe had omelets on the menu but said that they were not serving the breakfast menu (as if it really would have been so hard to make an omelet on their grill). After security, things were even bleaker. An uninspiring Starbucks and another Tim Hortons. This one had yogurt parfaits, so I bought one. I noticed it was pretty watery, but didn't think that much of it. Well, the next day, I started feeling a bit woozy. I (fortunately) turned down a burrito at lunch and went home. Within about an hour, everything in my stomach, including the fateful parfait, had come up. I suppose it is possible it is just bad luck and that I happened to catch the flu at the tail end of the season, but I basically never get the flu anymore. I'm pretty sure it was food poisoning.
What made this so frustrating and terrible is that I was supposed to fly off to New York the next day (Friday). If I had had one more day to recover, I might have made the flight, but I knew around noon that there was no way I could make it. I canceled what I could, but there are very little credits and refunds left when you have to cancel on such short notice. And before people pop up and say what about travel cancellation insurance, if you actually look at the policies, most of them do not allow you to just claim you were sick and have the money refunded. It generally applies to a huge weather system interfering with traffic control or a death in the family or something a lot more significant than just being under the weather.
I haven't been this sick in quite a long time, and I can only recall one other instance of having to cancel a flight due to sickness (I think I was planning on visiting my father). While I don't believe in karma with a big K, it is true that I was feeling guilty about leaving my family while going off on this jaunt. Of course, I would have been even more upset had a vacation for all 4 of us been scrapped!
It is also true that my idea of a holiday is not remotely restful. I basically view it as an opportunity to do a forced march through the museums, eat as quickly as possible and take in some other culture. It will be very hard to square this with the kids' idea of a good time now that they are starting to be old enough to travel and have some say in the matter. If we all go to Montreal, that will be an interesting experiment.
I knew that I was not up for 5 or 6 hours of wandering through MOMA and the Met, but even the main reason I was going -- to see The Iceman Cometh at BAM was appealing less and less to me. I was expecting 3 or 3.5 hours of greatness, but they announced that this was 4.75 hours (with 3 intermissions) and that just seems wildly indulgent. I cannot see the point in letting the play stretch out to that length or not negotiating any cuts at all. So while I am sure my mind did not secretly conspire with my body to get sick to spare myself that much time in the theatre, missing Iceman is probably the lowest on my list of regrets. At this point, I don't know that I will ever go see the full play. But for certain I will check the running time before I ever commit in the future. I can't even tell where the line falls for me. Maybe if they had kept it to 4 hours, I wouldn't have been quite so put out, but really the story that O'Neill is telling is so simple that 2 hours should be plenty. Long Day's Journey into Night reveals itself in a far more interesting way that justifies 4 acts, but even so I've seen it in productions that couldn't have lasted more than a bit over 3 hours. That's about right.
Anyway, I am slowly working my way up to more complex foods. I took a short walk around the neighborhood today. There is a small chance I will be willing to travel further tomorrow, maybe even to see Blood Wedding at Buddies, but I don't feel like committing until I know how I feel in the morning. I was going to work on another post, but really I think it makes more sense to go lay down and get a bit more rest. More than anything though, this experience is showing me that it is time to change my life, though perhaps not as profoundly as Rilke would have it. Probably best just to leave it at that for the moment.
I was not thrilled at the lunch that was catered in, only getting half of an egg salad sandwich. So I was famished by the time the meeting ended and just wanted to get to the airport and get some food. Well, no luck. The Saskatoon airport is perhaps the worst I have ever seen in terms of food options. Even the Island Airport has a somewhat better selection of sandwiches and vending machines. Anyway, there was a Tim Hortons that didn't have any sandwiches with no meat and a small cafe next door that was even worse. The cafe had omelets on the menu but said that they were not serving the breakfast menu (as if it really would have been so hard to make an omelet on their grill). After security, things were even bleaker. An uninspiring Starbucks and another Tim Hortons. This one had yogurt parfaits, so I bought one. I noticed it was pretty watery, but didn't think that much of it. Well, the next day, I started feeling a bit woozy. I (fortunately) turned down a burrito at lunch and went home. Within about an hour, everything in my stomach, including the fateful parfait, had come up. I suppose it is possible it is just bad luck and that I happened to catch the flu at the tail end of the season, but I basically never get the flu anymore. I'm pretty sure it was food poisoning.
What made this so frustrating and terrible is that I was supposed to fly off to New York the next day (Friday). If I had had one more day to recover, I might have made the flight, but I knew around noon that there was no way I could make it. I canceled what I could, but there are very little credits and refunds left when you have to cancel on such short notice. And before people pop up and say what about travel cancellation insurance, if you actually look at the policies, most of them do not allow you to just claim you were sick and have the money refunded. It generally applies to a huge weather system interfering with traffic control or a death in the family or something a lot more significant than just being under the weather.
I haven't been this sick in quite a long time, and I can only recall one other instance of having to cancel a flight due to sickness (I think I was planning on visiting my father). While I don't believe in karma with a big K, it is true that I was feeling guilty about leaving my family while going off on this jaunt. Of course, I would have been even more upset had a vacation for all 4 of us been scrapped!
It is also true that my idea of a holiday is not remotely restful. I basically view it as an opportunity to do a forced march through the museums, eat as quickly as possible and take in some other culture. It will be very hard to square this with the kids' idea of a good time now that they are starting to be old enough to travel and have some say in the matter. If we all go to Montreal, that will be an interesting experiment.
I knew that I was not up for 5 or 6 hours of wandering through MOMA and the Met, but even the main reason I was going -- to see The Iceman Cometh at BAM was appealing less and less to me. I was expecting 3 or 3.5 hours of greatness, but they announced that this was 4.75 hours (with 3 intermissions) and that just seems wildly indulgent. I cannot see the point in letting the play stretch out to that length or not negotiating any cuts at all. So while I am sure my mind did not secretly conspire with my body to get sick to spare myself that much time in the theatre, missing Iceman is probably the lowest on my list of regrets. At this point, I don't know that I will ever go see the full play. But for certain I will check the running time before I ever commit in the future. I can't even tell where the line falls for me. Maybe if they had kept it to 4 hours, I wouldn't have been quite so put out, but really the story that O'Neill is telling is so simple that 2 hours should be plenty. Long Day's Journey into Night reveals itself in a far more interesting way that justifies 4 acts, but even so I've seen it in productions that couldn't have lasted more than a bit over 3 hours. That's about right.
Anyway, I am slowly working my way up to more complex foods. I took a short walk around the neighborhood today. There is a small chance I will be willing to travel further tomorrow, maybe even to see Blood Wedding at Buddies, but I don't feel like committing until I know how I feel in the morning. I was going to work on another post, but really I think it makes more sense to go lay down and get a bit more rest. More than anything though, this experience is showing me that it is time to change my life, though perhaps not as profoundly as Rilke would have it. Probably best just to leave it at that for the moment.
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Early March arts update
I'm just back from seeing an adaptation of Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River
Anthology over at Soulpepper. I'd guess they covered 20-30 of the epitaphs, so only a
small slice (of the full 244), but it gives you a pretty good sense of the work. They
actually turned quite a few of the poems into songs, some melancholy,
some upbeat. It was well done, though I do prefer a bit more of a
coherent through-line in a play. A few of the people around me were getting a bit restless towards the end. It was a somewhat radical departure from the norm in that we were ushered into the hall in near darkness (to keep the mood very somber) and the programs were only handed out at the end!
It just dawned on me that I'm going to see Soulpepper doing Maugham's Of Human Bondage in May, and I would definitely prefer to read that first, so as not to spoil the novel later on. However, it's longer than I recalled (700 pages!), and it's hard to see just how to fit it in. But I have a couple of months, so there is no need to panic. I think I'll take Dinesen's Winter Tales with me on the flight to Saskatoon, but if I have made sufficient progress with that, then I might take Bondage to New York, and certainly to Montreal (and particularly if I do end up on the train by myself) and then the last-ditch effort will be Omaha in late April when I probably won't have anything else to do. So I should manage to get through this and not distort my reading list too much. Still, it seems incredible that they can turn a 700 page novel into a 2.5 hour play.
I should report that Angela Lansbury was in fine form in Blithe Spirit. It turns out Simon Jones (of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame) is also in the cast, though his role was a minor one. I'd say of the cast members not named Lansbury, the woman playing Elvira (the first wife) was the strongest. The play is a fun romp, never too serious. This is apparently going to be Lansbury's last tour (she is 89 after all!), so if you want to see her, it will have to be mid-March at the National Theatre in DC. I think for once, the New York area will miss out, but that's what the Amtrak Acela is for, I guess.
I've written a bit here and there about the Toronto Symphony (TSO). I'd say it is only slightly better than the Vancouver Symphony, which is frankly a bit shocking, considering Toronto's size. However, what I've decided is that the overall going-to-the-symphony experience was simply better in Vancouver, since I like the Orpheum Theatre so much better than Roy Thomson Hall, which I don't like much at all. Where Toronto has Vancouver clearly beat, however, is in all the small concerts put on in random halls and churches. In fact, I should manage to see Tafelmusik in Trinity Church on Bloor and the Mendelssohn Choir in another church in early April. I didn't realize until recently that Toronto has so many classical concerts that it can support its own magazine: The WholeNote (online and in print).
All that said, I did find a few TSO concerts worth going to next season and put together a subscription. I'll be going to:
Beethoven Symphony 5
Gershwin Piano Concerto in F/Prokofiev Symphony No. 5 (and even a short Shostakovich piece thrown in)
Shostakovich Symphony No. 10 (actually the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal decamping to Toronto for an evening)
Angela Hewitt Plays Bach (combined with Shostakovich Symphony No 8 for some reason, not that I am complaining)
Mozart Violin Concerto 5 and Shostakovich Symphony No. 13 "Babi Yar"
and finally Second City's Guide to the Symphony, which was such a hit last year.
It's a decent series of concerts, but it's really surprising to me how rarely TSO actually plays. There are huge gaps in the calendar whereas in Chicago or New York these calendars are completely full (except for the summer).
Anyway, I suppose if the symphony was more compelling, I'd have less time for theatre, which really is my first love amongst the arts.
In March or very early April I plan to see:
Garcia Lorca's Blood Wedding over at Buddies in Bad Times (somehow they slipped in a M. Tremblay play without me seeing it until too late, which is frustrating).
Vanya & Sonia & Masha & Spike over at Mirvish as part of the Off-Mirvish series. (Sadly next season at Mirvish looks very boring with almost nothing I want to see and no high profile transfers of Shaw or Stratford productions)
A world premiere from John Patrick Shanley: A Woman is a Secret (I've actually booked my ticket for the 22nd which is supposed to feature a discussion and masterclass with J.P. Shanley after the performance -- should be interesting)
Finally, I need to make sure to book my tickets for the last plays over at Tarragon, with Cake and Dirt coming up pretty fast.
So that really should be plenty to keep my occupied over the next few weeks and months.
It just dawned on me that I'm going to see Soulpepper doing Maugham's Of Human Bondage in May, and I would definitely prefer to read that first, so as not to spoil the novel later on. However, it's longer than I recalled (700 pages!), and it's hard to see just how to fit it in. But I have a couple of months, so there is no need to panic. I think I'll take Dinesen's Winter Tales with me on the flight to Saskatoon, but if I have made sufficient progress with that, then I might take Bondage to New York, and certainly to Montreal (and particularly if I do end up on the train by myself) and then the last-ditch effort will be Omaha in late April when I probably won't have anything else to do. So I should manage to get through this and not distort my reading list too much. Still, it seems incredible that they can turn a 700 page novel into a 2.5 hour play.
I should report that Angela Lansbury was in fine form in Blithe Spirit. It turns out Simon Jones (of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame) is also in the cast, though his role was a minor one. I'd say of the cast members not named Lansbury, the woman playing Elvira (the first wife) was the strongest. The play is a fun romp, never too serious. This is apparently going to be Lansbury's last tour (she is 89 after all!), so if you want to see her, it will have to be mid-March at the National Theatre in DC. I think for once, the New York area will miss out, but that's what the Amtrak Acela is for, I guess.
I've written a bit here and there about the Toronto Symphony (TSO). I'd say it is only slightly better than the Vancouver Symphony, which is frankly a bit shocking, considering Toronto's size. However, what I've decided is that the overall going-to-the-symphony experience was simply better in Vancouver, since I like the Orpheum Theatre so much better than Roy Thomson Hall, which I don't like much at all. Where Toronto has Vancouver clearly beat, however, is in all the small concerts put on in random halls and churches. In fact, I should manage to see Tafelmusik in Trinity Church on Bloor and the Mendelssohn Choir in another church in early April. I didn't realize until recently that Toronto has so many classical concerts that it can support its own magazine: The WholeNote (online and in print).
All that said, I did find a few TSO concerts worth going to next season and put together a subscription. I'll be going to:
Beethoven Symphony 5
Gershwin Piano Concerto in F/Prokofiev Symphony No. 5 (and even a short Shostakovich piece thrown in)
Shostakovich Symphony No. 10 (actually the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal decamping to Toronto for an evening)
Angela Hewitt Plays Bach (combined with Shostakovich Symphony No 8 for some reason, not that I am complaining)
Mozart Violin Concerto 5 and Shostakovich Symphony No. 13 "Babi Yar"
and finally Second City's Guide to the Symphony, which was such a hit last year.
It's a decent series of concerts, but it's really surprising to me how rarely TSO actually plays. There are huge gaps in the calendar whereas in Chicago or New York these calendars are completely full (except for the summer).
Anyway, I suppose if the symphony was more compelling, I'd have less time for theatre, which really is my first love amongst the arts.
In March or very early April I plan to see:
Garcia Lorca's Blood Wedding over at Buddies in Bad Times (somehow they slipped in a M. Tremblay play without me seeing it until too late, which is frustrating).
Vanya & Sonia & Masha & Spike over at Mirvish as part of the Off-Mirvish series. (Sadly next season at Mirvish looks very boring with almost nothing I want to see and no high profile transfers of Shaw or Stratford productions)
A world premiere from John Patrick Shanley: A Woman is a Secret (I've actually booked my ticket for the 22nd which is supposed to feature a discussion and masterclass with J.P. Shanley after the performance -- should be interesting)
Finally, I need to make sure to book my tickets for the last plays over at Tarragon, with Cake and Dirt coming up pretty fast.
So that really should be plenty to keep my occupied over the next few weeks and months.
Sunday, March 8, 2015
Late Levine
So I have gotten caught up as much as is possible with Philip Levine's late work.
The basic chronology of his collections can be found in this earlier post, but the short version is that New Selected Poems covers everything from On the Edge (1963) through A Walk with Tom Jefferson (1988). He later supplemented this with Unselected Poems, though he drew the line at Sweet Will (from 1985). The vast majority of Sweet Will was incorporated into those two collections, whereas Tom Jefferson was not considered,* primarily because it was still in print. Indeed, all the remaining books with Knopf, from What Work Is (1991) onwards, have never been re-anthologized, at least not in North America.**
While I suspect it won't happen, I think it would be a good thing if an editor at Knopf put together a supplemental collection that rounded up a few of Levine's missing poems (like "The Last Shift") and anything that appeared in print after 2009, but primarily going through What Work Is (1991) through News of the World (2009) and gathering up the best of them.
I'll just add in my two cents† as to my preferences:
What Work Is (1991)
"Coming Home From the Post Office"
"Facts"
"Coming of Age in Michigan"
"On the River"
The Simple Truth (1994)
"Ode for Mrs. William Settle"
"The Trade"
"In the Dark"
"Dreaming in Swedish"
"Getting There"
"The Escape"
"The Simple Truth"
"The Spanish Lesson"
"My Mother with Purse the Summer They Murdered the Spanish Poet"
"My Father with Cigarette Twelve Years Before the Nazis Could Break His Heart" (some thoughts on this poem here)
The Mercy (1999)
"Flowering Midnight"
"Reinventing America"
"The Cafe"
"Night Words"
"Philosophy Lesson"
"The Evening Turned Its Back Upon Her Voice"
"These Words"
"The Return"
"The Mercy"
Breath (2004)
"The Great Truth"
"The West Wind"
"The Two"
"The Lesson"
"The Esquire"
"My Given Name"
"The Genius"
News of the World (2009) (a partial review of this collection here)
"Dearborn Suite"
"Arrival and Departure"
"Library Days"
"Closed"
"News of the World"
"The Music of Time"
I haven't had much of a chance to track down any poems published after 2009, as I was quite short on time on my last visit to Robarts, but I'll make sure to spend some time on this on my next visit and will post an update on that, probably in a new post, however.
* New Selected Poems is missing (in my view) just a few from A Walk with Tom Jefferson. I can understand why it wouldn't be worth the flak to add "Dog Poem," which is actually an anti-dog poem. But I think "Winter Words" should have been added, and probably "I Sing the Body Electric" and "Picture Postcard from the Other World."
** Stranger to Nothing (Bloodaxe, 2006) is for the UK market and while it does cover all the Levine's books through Breath, and indeed is somewhat heavier on the later collections, it is a bit slimmer than is ideal. It is not surprising that only about half of the poems I picked ended up in Stranger to Nothing, and it does include some that don't do as much for me.
† I want to be entirely clear I have no stake in this, and I am happy to delete this post if it truly impedes an editor from Knopf from actually undertaking such an endeavor.
The basic chronology of his collections can be found in this earlier post, but the short version is that New Selected Poems covers everything from On the Edge (1963) through A Walk with Tom Jefferson (1988). He later supplemented this with Unselected Poems, though he drew the line at Sweet Will (from 1985). The vast majority of Sweet Will was incorporated into those two collections, whereas Tom Jefferson was not considered,* primarily because it was still in print. Indeed, all the remaining books with Knopf, from What Work Is (1991) onwards, have never been re-anthologized, at least not in North America.**
While I suspect it won't happen, I think it would be a good thing if an editor at Knopf put together a supplemental collection that rounded up a few of Levine's missing poems (like "The Last Shift") and anything that appeared in print after 2009, but primarily going through What Work Is (1991) through News of the World (2009) and gathering up the best of them.
I'll just add in my two cents† as to my preferences:
What Work Is (1991)
"Coming Home From the Post Office"
"Facts"
"Coming of Age in Michigan"
"On the River"
The Simple Truth (1994)
"Ode for Mrs. William Settle"
"The Trade"
"In the Dark"
"Dreaming in Swedish"
"Getting There"
"The Escape"
"The Simple Truth"
"The Spanish Lesson"
"My Mother with Purse the Summer They Murdered the Spanish Poet"
"My Father with Cigarette Twelve Years Before the Nazis Could Break His Heart" (some thoughts on this poem here)
The Mercy (1999)
"Flowering Midnight"
"Reinventing America"
"The Cafe"
"Night Words"
"Philosophy Lesson"
"The Evening Turned Its Back Upon Her Voice"
"These Words"
"The Return"
"The Mercy"
Breath (2004)
"The Great Truth"
"The West Wind"
"The Two"
"The Lesson"
"The Esquire"
"My Given Name"
"The Genius"
News of the World (2009) (a partial review of this collection here)
"Dearborn Suite"
"Arrival and Departure"
"Library Days"
"Closed"
"News of the World"
"The Music of Time"
I haven't had much of a chance to track down any poems published after 2009, as I was quite short on time on my last visit to Robarts, but I'll make sure to spend some time on this on my next visit and will post an update on that, probably in a new post, however.
* New Selected Poems is missing (in my view) just a few from A Walk with Tom Jefferson. I can understand why it wouldn't be worth the flak to add "Dog Poem," which is actually an anti-dog poem. But I think "Winter Words" should have been added, and probably "I Sing the Body Electric" and "Picture Postcard from the Other World."
** Stranger to Nothing (Bloodaxe, 2006) is for the UK market and while it does cover all the Levine's books through Breath, and indeed is somewhat heavier on the later collections, it is a bit slimmer than is ideal. It is not surprising that only about half of the poems I picked ended up in Stranger to Nothing, and it does include some that don't do as much for me.
† I want to be entirely clear I have no stake in this, and I am happy to delete this post if it truly impedes an editor from Knopf from actually undertaking such an endeavor.
Saturday, March 7, 2015
8th Canadian Challenge - 14th Review - Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You
So as I move into "overtime," I thought I should review a book by another Can lit. icon -- Alice Munro. I've now reached the point where I am reading collections of her short stories that are completely new to me. I've been reading quite a few collections of short stories (by other authors) lately and I do read them a bit differently. I am more likely to read one or one and a half stories on the way to work and the same home, but then I might only read another story in the evening. It's sort of nice to space them out with other things and not try to force my way through a lot of short stories in one go, or at least by the same author. There can be exceptions to this approach, of course. After I finish the short story collections I am currently reading (Chabon's A Model World and Somerville's The Universe in Miniature in Miniature), I should probably wrap up the collection of Kafka stories (in a new translation). I think relatively soon I will start working my way through Isak Dinesen (starting with Winter Tales, assuming it is still chilly outside), and then very late in the year or next year I will alternate through the collected stories of Elizabeth Bowen and Elizabeth Taylor.
But back to the collection at hand. Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You is Munro's third collection. I won't go too deeply into any particular story, but I warn sensitive readers that there may be SPOILERS in my discussion. However, the collection came out in 1974, so they've been out for a while. (You snooze, you lose, as they say.) I suspect more than a few of these stories were written in the late 1960s as they often feature a middle aged or elderly character dealing with some aspect of the counterculture of the 60s (perhaps it got started a bit later and ended later in Canada). Somewhat curiously, Munro would have been in her late 30s or early 40s when she wrote them, but in several of these stories, she writes from the perspective of a retiree who has seen it all. It will be interesting to see if she keeps that up in later collections or perhaps now that she has reached retirement age she primarily writes about younger characters. I suspect more than a few stories she will be reaching back into her past, just as in several of these stories she imagines life down the road as a senior.
Of the 13 stories, overall I'd say I liked 3 a fair bit and really disliked one. The others sort of floated by in a neutral way. I could see why Munro had written them, but they didn't do very much for me one way or the other. A large number of them feature broken marriages and marital betrayals of one sort or another. I don't know exactly what happened in her first marriage, but she was divorced from her first husband in 1972, so the feelings were particularly raw around the time these stories were written. As most people know, Munro's Books in Victoria remained with her ex-husband (only very recently was it sold off to the employees and became a collective enterprise of sorts). Alice Munro returned to Ontario, remarrying in 1976 (apparently quite happily, though by this point she had an entirely different life -- going off on book tours and teaching creative writing at various universities).
As I said some SPOILERS are pretty much inevitable. The title story is about two sisters who live in a small town presumably on the outskirts of Toronto, as the most notable local mansion was built by a Toronto distiller (and perhaps bootlegger?). One of the sisters is considerably prettier than the other, which means that she gets the most interesting boys. But she is also less emotionally stable than her sister. The pretty sister tries to commit suicide when she is left by the most dashing beau, who moves off to California with his family. The other sister helps her through this crisis. The pretty sister marries a young high school teacher (only shortly after she is out of high school herself). I don't believe the other sister ever does marry. Certainly neither of them leaves town, though the former flame returns, somewhat worse for wear. This sets off a chain of events that, while somewhat restrained, have a tragic element. The other sister is left to decide if she should tell the husband (her brother-in-law) about his wife's past, but basically never gets around to it.
So the story is full of thwarted but genteel passions, as are many of these other stories, though given that infidelity is a recurring theme, passions are less tamped down than in many other Munro stories. Certainly quite a few of these stories feature women in restrained conflict with each other or at least at odds with each other. In "Memorial," it is again two sisters, though it is "the other woman" and the wife in "Tell Me Yes Or No," which I didn't find particularly successful.
More frequently it is conflict between generations, in part due to different expectations and simple failure to communicate. I don't think Munro means to blow this up into a general statement about women at war with each other, but just to point out how relationships between women can be just as fraught as those between men and women, which is a more typical topic of literature. Anyway, while "The Ottawa Valley" has a mother-daughter-aunt triad of mini-conflicts, two of the stories feature grandmothers and granddaughters, as Munro seems (even at this point in her life) to be looking to represent senior citizens in her fiction. These stories are "Winter Wind" and "Marrakesh." There is actually very little conflict in "Marrakesh," though at the end, the grandmother does seem to be both puzzled and somewhat refreshed by her granddaughter's liberation. This was one of the more successful stories.
I wasn't entirely sure what to make of "Executioners," where Munro is writing about a particularly rural town, full of ne'er-do-wells, that are almost out of Faulkner. (Actually Faulkner was much on my mind as I had just wrapped up As I Lay Dying, and this story has more than a little Southern Gothic flavour to it. But if I recall, there was actually a whole section of Lives and Girls and Women that feature a countrified boyfriend and his rambunctious family. At any rate, for the moment I much prefer keeping my daily dosage of rednecks down to a minimum, so "Executioners" was a lot more palatable than As I Lay Dying.) One thing that was curious was a callback (or really a call-forward) to the idea laid out in Kevin Brockmeier's The Brief History of the Dead where at some point there won't be any people left to remember anything about this town and its scandals. I guess that can be comforting or disturbing, according to one's views.
The only story I strongly disliked was "Forgiveness in Families," where there is a small family -- a mother, her sensible daughter and a spoiled son, who is always having to be bailed out of trouble and can't or won't hold a steady job. As one might imagine, the daughter deeply resents her brother, since she must be the ant to his grasshopper. What I disliked about the story is that it implies that her brother managed to pull his mother back from the brink of death with his ridiculous chanting and incense, and that the daughter decides she really ought to be nicer and more understanding of her brother in the future. I didn't care for any aspect of this story.
While I didn't really care either way about "Material," where in this case the somewhat selfish ex- was only an ex-boyfriend and not an ex-husband (so the stakes are somewhat lower and the former lovers can at least communicate more-or-less civilly), there is a strong paragraph at the start. While it offers an extremely unflattering portrayal of academics/intellectuals, I think I'll repeat it anyway:
The narrator has broken away from one such man, Hugo, and married a more understanding and reasonable man, Gabe. She has a career of her own, as a part-time teacher at a girls' school. As the story ends, she sits at a table, trying to shake off the influence of just having seen Hugo (and read a story he wrote based on their former life) and grading papers. I have to say, it reminded me a fair bit of Patricia Arquette, trying to keep it together on numerous occasions in Boyhood.
I can't cover all the stories, so I will wrap up with a short discussion of my favourite story in the collection: "How I Met My Husband." I should say that, just as in the TV show How I Met Your Mother, there is just a bit of bait-and-switch going on, but that's ok. What is interesting is that the young girl who narrates the story did so poorly at school that they practically had to come up with a longer list to put her at the bottom (37, presumably out of 100). Curiously, I was just reading Elizabeth Taylor's A Game of Hide and Seek and the female lead was a terrible student as well. It was just more expected back then (pre-1960s) that most girls would not succeed and that they would either marry or find some other low-paying job. The main issue would be whether they fell into the domestic servant category. It was obviously a bigger blow if the family started out middle class; then one definitely would not want one's daughters going into service. It isn't nearly as much of an issue here where the girl's parents are basically farmers. She goes to work in the house of a doctor and his wife, who are relatively new to the area. There are some very amusing scenes in the story, and it turns out that the girl, while not book-smart at all, does have some common sense and is even a bit sly. (Whereas the female lead in A Game of Hide and Seek makes some very foolish mistakes, getting emotionally tangled in a completely undeserving and frankly boring/boorish Heathcliff type.) There is a scene of considerable power where a woman betrayed turns on this young girl that manages to be kind of horrible, yet just a bit funny at the same time. I think I will skip the details to leave it as a surprise if you haven't read the story before.
On the whole this is a reasonably good collection, though I think Lives of Girls and Women was more focused and a bit stronger. I do think Munro's rawness over the break-up of her own marriage does get in the way a bit, as I wasn't as moved by nearly every story having marital problems at their root. But I am supposing or at least hoping that she got this break-up collection out, and that the ones that followed are more varied.
But back to the collection at hand. Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You is Munro's third collection. I won't go too deeply into any particular story, but I warn sensitive readers that there may be SPOILERS in my discussion. However, the collection came out in 1974, so they've been out for a while. (You snooze, you lose, as they say.) I suspect more than a few of these stories were written in the late 1960s as they often feature a middle aged or elderly character dealing with some aspect of the counterculture of the 60s (perhaps it got started a bit later and ended later in Canada). Somewhat curiously, Munro would have been in her late 30s or early 40s when she wrote them, but in several of these stories, she writes from the perspective of a retiree who has seen it all. It will be interesting to see if she keeps that up in later collections or perhaps now that she has reached retirement age she primarily writes about younger characters. I suspect more than a few stories she will be reaching back into her past, just as in several of these stories she imagines life down the road as a senior.
Of the 13 stories, overall I'd say I liked 3 a fair bit and really disliked one. The others sort of floated by in a neutral way. I could see why Munro had written them, but they didn't do very much for me one way or the other. A large number of them feature broken marriages and marital betrayals of one sort or another. I don't know exactly what happened in her first marriage, but she was divorced from her first husband in 1972, so the feelings were particularly raw around the time these stories were written. As most people know, Munro's Books in Victoria remained with her ex-husband (only very recently was it sold off to the employees and became a collective enterprise of sorts). Alice Munro returned to Ontario, remarrying in 1976 (apparently quite happily, though by this point she had an entirely different life -- going off on book tours and teaching creative writing at various universities).
As I said some SPOILERS are pretty much inevitable. The title story is about two sisters who live in a small town presumably on the outskirts of Toronto, as the most notable local mansion was built by a Toronto distiller (and perhaps bootlegger?). One of the sisters is considerably prettier than the other, which means that she gets the most interesting boys. But she is also less emotionally stable than her sister. The pretty sister tries to commit suicide when she is left by the most dashing beau, who moves off to California with his family. The other sister helps her through this crisis. The pretty sister marries a young high school teacher (only shortly after she is out of high school herself). I don't believe the other sister ever does marry. Certainly neither of them leaves town, though the former flame returns, somewhat worse for wear. This sets off a chain of events that, while somewhat restrained, have a tragic element. The other sister is left to decide if she should tell the husband (her brother-in-law) about his wife's past, but basically never gets around to it.
So the story is full of thwarted but genteel passions, as are many of these other stories, though given that infidelity is a recurring theme, passions are less tamped down than in many other Munro stories. Certainly quite a few of these stories feature women in restrained conflict with each other or at least at odds with each other. In "Memorial," it is again two sisters, though it is "the other woman" and the wife in "Tell Me Yes Or No," which I didn't find particularly successful.
More frequently it is conflict between generations, in part due to different expectations and simple failure to communicate. I don't think Munro means to blow this up into a general statement about women at war with each other, but just to point out how relationships between women can be just as fraught as those between men and women, which is a more typical topic of literature. Anyway, while "The Ottawa Valley" has a mother-daughter-aunt triad of mini-conflicts, two of the stories feature grandmothers and granddaughters, as Munro seems (even at this point in her life) to be looking to represent senior citizens in her fiction. These stories are "Winter Wind" and "Marrakesh." There is actually very little conflict in "Marrakesh," though at the end, the grandmother does seem to be both puzzled and somewhat refreshed by her granddaughter's liberation. This was one of the more successful stories.
I wasn't entirely sure what to make of "Executioners," where Munro is writing about a particularly rural town, full of ne'er-do-wells, that are almost out of Faulkner. (Actually Faulkner was much on my mind as I had just wrapped up As I Lay Dying, and this story has more than a little Southern Gothic flavour to it. But if I recall, there was actually a whole section of Lives and Girls and Women that feature a countrified boyfriend and his rambunctious family. At any rate, for the moment I much prefer keeping my daily dosage of rednecks down to a minimum, so "Executioners" was a lot more palatable than As I Lay Dying.) One thing that was curious was a callback (or really a call-forward) to the idea laid out in Kevin Brockmeier's The Brief History of the Dead where at some point there won't be any people left to remember anything about this town and its scandals. I guess that can be comforting or disturbing, according to one's views.
The only story I strongly disliked was "Forgiveness in Families," where there is a small family -- a mother, her sensible daughter and a spoiled son, who is always having to be bailed out of trouble and can't or won't hold a steady job. As one might imagine, the daughter deeply resents her brother, since she must be the ant to his grasshopper. What I disliked about the story is that it implies that her brother managed to pull his mother back from the brink of death with his ridiculous chanting and incense, and that the daughter decides she really ought to be nicer and more understanding of her brother in the future. I didn't care for any aspect of this story.
While I didn't really care either way about "Material," where in this case the somewhat selfish ex- was only an ex-boyfriend and not an ex-husband (so the stakes are somewhat lower and the former lovers can at least communicate more-or-less civilly), there is a strong paragraph at the start. While it offers an extremely unflattering portrayal of academics/intellectuals, I think I'll repeat it anyway:
The wives of the men on the platform are not in that audience. They are buying groceries or cleaning up messes or having a drink. Their lives are concerned with food and mess and houses and cars and money. They have to remember to get the snow tires on and go to the bank and take back the beer bottles, because their husbands are such brilliant, such talented incapable men, who must be looked after for the sake of the words that will come from them.
The narrator has broken away from one such man, Hugo, and married a more understanding and reasonable man, Gabe. She has a career of her own, as a part-time teacher at a girls' school. As the story ends, she sits at a table, trying to shake off the influence of just having seen Hugo (and read a story he wrote based on their former life) and grading papers. I have to say, it reminded me a fair bit of Patricia Arquette, trying to keep it together on numerous occasions in Boyhood.
I can't cover all the stories, so I will wrap up with a short discussion of my favourite story in the collection: "How I Met My Husband." I should say that, just as in the TV show How I Met Your Mother, there is just a bit of bait-and-switch going on, but that's ok. What is interesting is that the young girl who narrates the story did so poorly at school that they practically had to come up with a longer list to put her at the bottom (37, presumably out of 100). Curiously, I was just reading Elizabeth Taylor's A Game of Hide and Seek and the female lead was a terrible student as well. It was just more expected back then (pre-1960s) that most girls would not succeed and that they would either marry or find some other low-paying job. The main issue would be whether they fell into the domestic servant category. It was obviously a bigger blow if the family started out middle class; then one definitely would not want one's daughters going into service. It isn't nearly as much of an issue here where the girl's parents are basically farmers. She goes to work in the house of a doctor and his wife, who are relatively new to the area. There are some very amusing scenes in the story, and it turns out that the girl, while not book-smart at all, does have some common sense and is even a bit sly. (Whereas the female lead in A Game of Hide and Seek makes some very foolish mistakes, getting emotionally tangled in a completely undeserving and frankly boring/boorish Heathcliff type.) There is a scene of considerable power where a woman betrayed turns on this young girl that manages to be kind of horrible, yet just a bit funny at the same time. I think I will skip the details to leave it as a surprise if you haven't read the story before.
On the whole this is a reasonably good collection, though I think Lives of Girls and Women was more focused and a bit stronger. I do think Munro's rawness over the break-up of her own marriage does get in the way a bit, as I wasn't as moved by nearly every story having marital problems at their root. But I am supposing or at least hoping that she got this break-up collection out, and that the ones that followed are more varied.
Sunday, March 1, 2015
Death of a Computer
I knew the computer downstairs was heading for a crack-up, so fortunately I did burn a DVD with all the recent work I have been doing, but I still expected to have a week or so. But no. Last night it really and truly died. It looks like the battery on the motherboard has died (roughly a year earlier than one would normally expect, though I will admit that I ran that thing pretty hard with all the internet radio recording I did until last summer).
I suppose it would be possible to have the battery replaced, but the bios has to be reset and quite a number of other annoying tasks. I think if I took it to a shop, it would probably cost $200 and only extend the life another 6-9 months, so I think instead I'll run over to Staples and see what they have in stock.
It's just something I didn't really expect to have to do today and kind of throws a big kink into my plans. (I just have not had much luck with electronics lately, with losing two external hard drives and now this.) Well, I'll check in bit later, assuming I can get back on-line. If I do buy a new computer, I can probably get it started in just half an hour, but it will take a lot longer than that to get it set up the way I am used to working (to say nothing of trying to salvage the data on the internal hard drive!).
Edit: Well, I'm basically back up. Internet is functioning and I seem to have gotten computer protection back on and most of the Acer bloatware turned off. The real problem is the half-dozen or so little programs that I have gotten used to, and only some of them are compatible with newer computers (particularly those running this lousy Windows 8.1).
In general, it's been an up and down day with this really putting a huge damper on the day. I did really enjoy the Amici concert (and I'll probably discuss that and the TSO Mind of Winter program soon), but I hated Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Millennium Mambo over at TIFF. What a complete waste of time. And I found out that because my piece got in pretty late to RedOne, that they won't be putting it on this Monday. {Dark thoughts.} I guess I'll come home instead and swim a few more laps in the evening and spend the rest of the time getting the computer back up and running.
I suppose it would be possible to have the battery replaced, but the bios has to be reset and quite a number of other annoying tasks. I think if I took it to a shop, it would probably cost $200 and only extend the life another 6-9 months, so I think instead I'll run over to Staples and see what they have in stock.
It's just something I didn't really expect to have to do today and kind of throws a big kink into my plans. (I just have not had much luck with electronics lately, with losing two external hard drives and now this.) Well, I'll check in bit later, assuming I can get back on-line. If I do buy a new computer, I can probably get it started in just half an hour, but it will take a lot longer than that to get it set up the way I am used to working (to say nothing of trying to salvage the data on the internal hard drive!).
Edit: Well, I'm basically back up. Internet is functioning and I seem to have gotten computer protection back on and most of the Acer bloatware turned off. The real problem is the half-dozen or so little programs that I have gotten used to, and only some of them are compatible with newer computers (particularly those running this lousy Windows 8.1).
In general, it's been an up and down day with this really putting a huge damper on the day. I did really enjoy the Amici concert (and I'll probably discuss that and the TSO Mind of Winter program soon), but I hated Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Millennium Mambo over at TIFF. What a complete waste of time. And I found out that because my piece got in pretty late to RedOne, that they won't be putting it on this Monday. {Dark thoughts.} I guess I'll come home instead and swim a few more laps in the evening and spend the rest of the time getting the computer back up and running.
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