Late March arts updates

I actually have a weekend more or less free, though I am hoping to take the kids to a museum or two tomorrow (even if we don't actually see the Basquiat at AGO -- it is worth noting that the crowds have died down and this is a good time to go).  This morning was still way colder than I was expecting, and I knew that hauling them over the city wasn't the best idea.  Even taking my son over to the library was a bit of a struggle.

I had been giving serious consideration to seeing Wyrd Sisters over at Red Sandcastle tonight (the timing is impeccable as a way of celebrating Terry Pratchett's life and career).  However, this review suggests that the Socratic Theatre Collective is not ready for prime time and may never be.  The reviewer basically felt that they were treating this as a glorified hobby and suggested they would be better off putting on plays for their friends and family.  This review goes over the same issues that I try to tackle in this post, which is that while no one really likes to kick a struggling company, at the same time, they are asking the public to pay for a full price ticket.  Ok, $20 is a fairly cheap ticket, but it's still a bit more than should be requested to watch what is basically a live version of fan fiction (again, according to this reviewer).  I am sure that there are plenty of people who are looking for this sort of thing, just as there were lots of folks in Chicago who came out for the all-Klingon version of Dicken's A Christmas Carol.  But it is not the same thing as a play that will appeal to the general public (and perhaps such a Platonically ideal play does not exist).  At any rate, I've been really meaning to write my own work for a while, and I will take this as a sign to stay home and help the kids finish their homework early and do some writing.

In terms of what I did see recently, I agree very much with the Now review that says there are great performances in the very middling play by Christopher Durang (Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike).  This really could be a good play, but Durang just makes too many missteps, and really in a lot of ways it becomes fan service to the Boomer generation.  Vanya's lament about 1950s culture being better or at least more of a shared collective experience goes on far too long.  Durang intentionally considers this Vanya's aria, but it is way too self-indulgent.  The recurring line about licking postage stamps is funny, but half of the description of TV sitcoms should have been cut out.  What I was discussing with someone else though is that there is a serious problem with time.  Durang positions Sonia as 52 and Vanya is probably mid 50s.  If he was mid to late 60s, then he probably wouldn't even care about the "wasted life" thing -- he would accept his life is over before it even started (like a Prince Charles figure).  But there is just a bit of life left in him yet, and he even thinks about getting a job to help out with the household expenses.  At any rate, he would not be nearly as hung up on 50s TV if he was in his mid 50s.  He would be a fan of 60s culture -- I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched and perhaps My Three Sons (which was its own throwback show).  Also, Durang has Masha discussing how she was supposed to be the American Judi Dench, but at a time in her career  when Judi Dench would have been a complete unknown in the U.S.  So just a lot of sloppy writing and no attention to internal chronology.  This is one of those things that while it may be a bit boring or annoying for the playwright to work out, there are always a few people (like me) who will be bugged immeasurably by getting it wrong.  So it is better to put in the effort up front, and Durang simply didn't do it.  I discuss my own challenges with keeping time periods consistent here.

Beyond this, I found Vanya's lusting after the entirely shallow Spike to be very disturbing.  It's bad enough that his sister has fallen for this boring, one-note character, but Vanya as well?  At least Nina (the next-door neighbor) is able to see through Spike and dismiss him instantly.  I really thought Durang's take on Millennials was so extreme that it actually backfired for me (and I am hardly a defender of Millennials), but this was like kicking a puppy over and over.  The experimental play that Vanya wrote was so terrible that I could completely sympathize with Spike for checking his texts during the reading.  I did like Nina though, and she had a few interesting observations.  I kind of liked Durang's nod to a younger character who was at least aware of the great art of the past.  Certainly, the most successful aspect of the play was Sonia who turned herself into an entirely different person while impersonating Maggie Smith's turn in California Suite.  I still found the writing entirely manipulative when Durang has her nearly throw away a chance at late-bloom romance (the audience actually goes "Awww") and then rallies herself to take a chance (and the audience practically cheered).  I was not moved to the same extent, to put it mildly, though it was an interesting scene.  So some great performances in general in an script that isn't really worthy of these actors.  (It is still quite amazing that it won the Tony in 2013, but I guess that's what happens when you pitch a softball right at the Boomers in the audience.)

I did enjoy the John Patrick Shanley series of two-hander one acts (or mostly two-handers, the first one has a couple in a restaurant and a sexy, laconic French waitress) -- A Woman is a Secret.  It's sort of amusing that the Toronto Star has no choice but to review this independent production because it is a world premiere.  While I think they have gotten better with time, it still seems (to me) quite difficult for independent theatre companies to get any coverage in the Star.  My take is that one of the six went on a bit long and the one that was basically a riff on film noir conventions fell flat (though the Now reviewer liked it -- again, taste is so variable*).  But that is a very good success rate.  It was nice seeing a pro put the actors through their paces in the script.  I would recommend going and there are basically two weeks left to see this.  I will write a separate post about the master class that Shanley gave last Sunday.  It was really interesting discussion with a true professional, and a few points he made were actually quite helpful, so I will try to recall them and get them down before I completely forget.

Finally, last Tuesday I saw Cake and Dirt at Tarragon.  I definitely have mixed feelings about the play.  I guess I liked it a bit more than Ouzounian, who basically panned it, but a bit less than the Now reviewer who was reasonably positive.  It's basically about the super elite of Toronto and how boring the idle rich are and how their issues and preoccupations are so removed from the rest of us (the hoi polloi).  But it really pounds this into the ground to the point it gets boring.  And, my god, the drunken party scene goes on far too long.  I kept hoping someone on the floor would call the police just to break it up (though indeed one plot point is that the ex-wife is shocked to find out that she doesn't have the entire floor to herself).  It's very dicey to write a play where there really isn't a truly sympathetic character (I don't even think the maid counts as she is so "uppity").  Why do we want to watch these group of rich buffoons act badly?  And MacIvor takes it so far that it becomes difficult to believe that the husband really could succeed in his career as a big shot lawyer.  I guess part of the bile that drives this play (which MacIvor admits to) is just a disgust at how badly Toronto elites act when no one else is around and watching them.  But it is pretty tough to make a play out of this that people will care about, and I think that is where Ouzounian is coming from.  So that's far from a sterling recommendation, either from me or the other reviewers, but there is a certain grubby fascination in watching the well-to-do let their hair down.  If that sounds of interest, then this play is for you.  Three more weeks.

As for me, I am looking forward to Tarragon's next show - Infinity.  I'll catch this in a few weeks, and it looks a lot more up my alley.  That's probably enough for now.  Ciao.


* Update -- as I was cleaning up this post, I came across a review of A Woman is a Secret that I found so different from my own take that I was quite taken aback.  The entire play was reviewed from a feminist perspective and judged to be an unworthy, misogynistic piece.  Wow.  Obviously the reviewer has the right to her opinion, but I find it unpleasant and strident and frankly a bit boring to review from such a political stance.  This in general has always been my problem with the reviews in the Chicago Reader and Now (though the film reviews tend to be more political than the theatre reviews).  They serve a really important function in letting me know about independent theatre, but I have to be willing to look past reviews that are slanted in ways that I disagree with.  As far as this reviewer, after looking through a few other pieces, it is clear we are not on the same wavelength at all (except we both thought the film noir scene kind of sucked).  She reminds me of the completely humourless feminists that I have learned to avoid (as opposed to the feminists who do have a sense of humour and/or don't see the world in such absolute terms), and there is absolutely no point in reading her blog.  I'm aware people can have completely different takes on life and on specific plays.  I don't need to knock myself out reading reviews that will just rile me up.  Life's too short.

Overwhelming toxicity

I am trying not to get dragged down into toxic mess that is the internet today, but I am weak.

I'm very close to completely cutting ties to a jazz bulletin board that has devolved into only a very few regular posters who all have to "win" on each and every post.  The actual threads of interest have gotten very, very few (and the ones I contribute to the most are not about jazz at all).  But this is also part of the overall death spiral of jazz music as a meaningful part of the cultural conversation.  I don't think I've ever internalized the irrelevance of jazz to the point I do now.  It's over.

But that's pretty much how I feel about all non-corporate art.  I was watching part of an interview with The Lowest of the Low (a band I knew about in Toronto in the early 90s, though I never saw them live).  They broke up after two albums, but decided many years later to reform and do a set of reunion shows but then if they were going to continue beyond that, it would have to be on the basis of new material.  (This is actually not that different from Camper Van Beethoven.)  And they did this for a few years, but eventually one of the members got tired of this and pulled out.  Still, they were older and were more mature about it.  But the point was there was a door in the early 90s for alternative music that has been completely closed.  Record sales are maybe only 10% or at best 20% what they were back then, so the number of labels that can make a go of it with any decent return is way down.  But more upsetting is how radio has gotten so corporate that DJs cannot play what they want -- it is all from a list dictated by the corporate types.  Basically, bands now have fewer mainstream opportunities -- they have to make their breakthrough on Youtube or something like that.  To some extent it is just different -- there are some avenues for creative people -- but it does feel like the way to get noticed today is so atomized and a bit alienating, particularly when Gen X types remember how our way of coming to music did have more of a community feel to it.  Anyway, I certainly don't like the way the media landscape has shifted, and I'm glad I grew up when I did, even though it turns out that was the last dying gasps of a certain kind of cultural production.

Ok, that was a bit of a sidebar (only linked to the topic of the internet due to the role that the internet had in killing off the music industry that I grew up with).  What really kills me now is just how irresponsible the media has become, completely selling out their soul for clicks (and just chasing after all kinds of fads in a desperate attempt to stay afloat).  Stuff that we just couldn't imagine, like beheading videos and the like, is up for display on CNN and even The Guardian (even if the very last seconds have been edited out).  It's so unbelievably coarse.  And the comment sections are a disgusting free for all, again dominated by a handful of very loud trolls who disparage anyone who disagrees with them.

But even if you ignore these voices (the trolls) as best as you can, then it turns out that other, semi-normal people just cannot let go of certain topics and become quite troll-like, reposting the same general comments over and over.  It's like the Nancy Grace show translated to the internet endlessly.  The latest is the Amanda Knox case which has riled up passions to a point I find astonishing.  I don't know the truth of the case nor do I have anything to add beyond saying that the Italian courts seem unbelievably cumbersome and in need of an extreme overhaul.  But I don't need to go on comment boards and argue endlessly about it.  What is it that these people are lacking that they need to try to sway others on a case that makes no difference to their personal life?  Some people will not accept that others don't share their views.  Personally, I have given up on the human race.  It is clear that on the whole they have decided to fall back on superstitions and magical thinking (and things are much worse along these lines than they were 15 years ago), so I am just trying to avoid discussing anything of any importance with co-workers, and I am posting less and less on internet comment boards.  That doesn't mean I am not disgusted, but I just don't expect anything better from humans.  It's somewhat liberating to just ignore the foolishness as best as I can.  I actually had another good example of the shortcomings of the media but decided it just isn't worth raising it.  I'll just go "tend my own garden" for a while and focus on the things that add to my happiness, such as it is.

Needles and Haystacks

It took much longer than I had hoped, but I was able to rescue almost everything off of the hard drive of the computer that just died.  This includes a bunch of music files and perhaps most importantly the email archive of all my Vancouver emails.  I haven't restored all the programs yet, but once I get TotalRecorder and the .Wav editor (did I use CDWav?) back up and running, I will be pretty much back in business.  I don't intend to ever get as obsessed with internet recording as I was, but there are always a few shows here and there that I wouldn't mind taping.

Anyway, what is bugging me at the moment is that I cannot find a few mp3s that I downloaded from eMusic ages ago.  They aren't on the rescued hard drive or any of the hard drives I use on a routine basis.  There is a small chance it is on one of the other rescued hard drives (over the years quite a few computers have died on me!) and a moderate chance that I burned it to a CD or DVD.  But the sheer number of data disc lying around makes me very hesitant to really take on this task.  In the good old days, you could just download the tracks from eMusic a second or third time, but those days are gone.  In fact, I don't think that option exists for iTunes either, though most people put their music up in the cloud (surrendering what little control they thought they had over it) to prevent these kind of data losses.  I guess there is no easy solution other than to try to back up key documents on a couple of hard drives.  It is true that I don't lose my writing files, but pictures, music and movie files are just a bit too large and overwhelming to ensure that everything is backed up in multiple locations.

That particular set of mp3s is going to have to wait until my other search is over, which is to try to track down a check stub that doubled as a T4 or T5 form.  I need to know exactly how they categorized some income for my taxes.  Here the problem is that the check was cashed in Vancouver and we moved fairly shortly after that.  I have a few places to look first for the papers that were most important, but I am running out of time.  Well, if it wasn't this, it would be something else.  I clearly need to get my life and particularly my papers in better order.

Notes on Nightwood

I find that with some regularity, novels that I read when I was much younger don't seem to hold up as well now that I have reached middle age.  I don't really think it is that I have a shorter attention span, but it is true that my preoccupations have changed. Probably at the root of it is that I have less time for or interest in characters behaving badly and then justifying their actions.  But if we take an objective eye to it, most interesting characters in literature are monstrous egoists; it is very, very difficult to make basically decent people into interesting characters.  I'm sure I'll have more to write on this down the road, as it is one of the dilemmas I face in my work -- how to add conflict and some dramatic intensity to stories where the stakes are generally lower.

In any event, perhaps because it is fairly short and perhaps a bit over-written, Djuna Barnes's Nightwood still holds up.  Quite a bit of it seems to be comprised of confessional speeches made by and to the Doctor in the night, which almost always turns out to be the long dark night of the soul. 

The Doctor Matthew O'Connor is by far the most interesting character, though the others have their moments as well.  I suppose one could talk about ambiguous poetry, particularly some of Shakespeare's sonnets, but O'Connor is one of the first characters I can think of who openly complains that he was born the wrong gender, and indeed, dresses as a woman periodically and has gay sex.  While the latter is not on-stage as it were, it is still quite obvious what is going on, i.e. his desires aren't all obscured in poetic whimsy.

What is somewhat curious is that the lesbian love trio of Robin, Nora and Jenny feels more evasive or at least less explicit about what is going on between these women.  Jenny tries to interfere between Robin and Nora, but that is because she feasts on the happiness of others and only seems complete when she has caused drama and broken up a relationship.  However, Nora's hold on Robin seems so slight to begin with, and yet Robin hardly seems a prize worth pursuing.  She strikes me as pretty but empty (and it is particularly hard to sympathize or empathize with a mother who would abandon her son without any internal struggle at all*), but I suppose most (tragic) love stories involve an unworthy partner, who is more an object of desire than an actual person.  I suppose things do make a bit more sense when it is revealed that Djuna wrote herself into the story as Nora.  She didn't feel like completely facing up to what a fool she made of herself over Robin.  I suppose a big part of the tragedy of lesbian life, prior to the 1970s perhaps, is that the sheer number of potential partners was so low (and the stakes of getting it wrong so high) that any lesbian woman or even bisexual woman was a prize of sorts.  While I don't think she gets it quite right either, the lesbian couple in Molly Keane's Devoted Ladies at least feels more like a couple (even if an unhealthy one) than Nora and Robin or Robin and Jenny.

I can sort of see where Nightwood would have inspired Carter's Nights at the Circus, particularly the first section of Nights where the aerialist Sophie Fevvers and her maid Lizzie tell the journalist Jack Walser her life story over what turns into an extremely long night.  Most of the characters in Nightwood (as well as Nights at the Circus) are outcasts of one sort or another.  Things are certainly not as they seem in both books.  There was probably some other direct reference that I have already forgotten, but I'll fill back in if it comes to me.  Both are certainly worth reading, though Nightwood (despite a relatively thin plot) is the one I am more likely to come back to a third or fourth time.

As it turns out, this is post #400!  I have been poking around on the blog and am finding quite a few posts of interest that are quite buried at this point, though at least for the reviews, there is a page that pulls all the links together.  While it probably isn't worth it, I am toying with the idea that when I get to post #500 (towards the end of 2015?), I will publish the best of them as an e-book (working title -- My Life in Lists).  I'll have to remove the majority of the images and thus may simply skip over the majority of the art posts, but I could still compile the writings on books and theatre.  If this seems like a good or particularly bad idea, feel free to let me know in the comments.  I do have a few other pressing posts to get to, but I really need to do some creative writing, so I may have to hold off on them for a bit longer.

* This actually puts her (Robin) in the same uncomfortable company as Karen from Elizabeth Bowen's The House in Paris where she has abandoned her son (Leopold) and seems largely indifferent to him.  While it surely was not the wisest course of action for Leopold to try to force a meeting with her, it will surely strike most readers as quite unnatural that she does not want to face her son.  For better or worse, this will not be an issue between Robin and her sickly son, though it can probably be said that Robin has no maternal feelings at all, while Karen's feelings are more complicated.  It's possible that today we would characterize Robin (and even Karen) as having some kind of trauma or even a psychotic break triggered by overwhelming postpartum depression.  I actually knew someone from grad. school who followed this latter script and had to have her baby taken away (not sure if this was permanent or temporary).  I think in her case it was not having sufficiently escaped her Mormon roots by the time the baby came along that was at the heart of her troubles.

Mid March updates

Hard to believe we are only a few days away from spring.  It's been pretty chilly out there after a warm weekend.  Friday actually should be mild but the following week the temperature drops at least for a while.  I'm not 100% sure I really ought to ride my bike, but I'm considering it.  I'm sure if this were Vancouver I would be riding, but that was a very different scenario.  At the moment, Richmond is totally useless as a bike lane, and I don't know if I am up to figuring out an alternative.

I didn't think I would quite have the time tonight to go to the library and to go swimming, but I just managed to sneak in a few laps.  That is the first swimming I have done since I have been sick.

I got through Lethem's Lucky Alan in about a day and a half (it is very short - 160 pages). I have to admit, I didn't think very highly of it. Two stories had sort of interesting plots but were not really well developed ("Lucky Alan" and "Pending Vegan"), and "The Porn Critic" had some grubby fascination, and that was about it. Definitely glad I borrowed this from the library.

I did enjoy Albert Cossery's final novel (or really novella as this clocks in under 100 pages): The Colors of Infamy.  I wasn't entirely sure about the ending, which is sort of an elaborate set up for a punch line, but there isn't much indication of what will actually happen next.  Either the corrupt developer will accept he has been bested and slink off or violence will erupt.  However, I have heard that Cossery is far more about ambiance and mood and less about plot.  I'll have to remember that in the future.  (Also, quite a bit happens in the cafes of Cairo, which is a pretty direct linkage to Mahfouz.) I admit I was intrigued by Karamallah -- Cossery's world-weary intellectual who has been forbidden by the government to publish and who lives in his family tomb in the cemetery.

He reminds me in some ways of the very crass, debauched and yet morally outraged Spider Jerusalem from the Transmetropolitan comic books.

It's a bit hard to make out, but the tattoo on his forehead is a spider.  Spider in turn is an even more amped up and whacked out version of Hunter S. Thompson, who often took refuge in acting gonzo when confronted with the never-ending venality of U.S. politics.  Of all of these figures, Karamallah is probably the most successful in just being detached and finding at least some humour in the corruption around him.

I only have one last short novel (Joseph Roth's Weights and Measures) before I launch into Dos Passos.  I should be done with Weights and Measures tomorrow, particularly as I can read a bit during the intermission of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike tomorrow evening.  So I should begin Dos Passos on the Friday commute unless I actually do bike in.  I wouldn't say I am exactly nervous about tackling it, but I did try to read the USA Trilogy before and set it aside, feeling I wasn't quite ready.  Interestingly, Dos Passos wrote a great deal more than this and Manhattan Transfer and Three Soldiers.  It seems, however, that he departed greatly from his socialist roots and became pretty fanatically anti-Communist and even briefly a McCarthy supporter!  In the 1960s, he campaigned for Goldwater and Nixon, so it was almost a complete reversal from his early days when he attacked Big Business.  While this lost him no end of friends (particularly Ernest Hemingway) and the support of most English professors (who continue to assign only his early works), many detached observers seem to agree that the quality of his books really suffered (in contrast to, say, Koestler's Darkness at Noon, which is also fiercely anti-Communist).  I had no idea that Dos Passos had actually written a second trilogy dwelling on national issues: the District of Columbia trilogy includes Adventures of a Young Man (1939), Number One (1943) and The Grand Design (1949).  The second two don't interest me, but Adventures of a Young Man is essentially a companion piece to Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, as both cover the Spanish Civil War.  It appears Robarts does have this, and I may go ahead and read it in a year or two when I finally get back around to Hemingway.

What was a surprise (at the Toronto Public Library) is that Patrick Modiano's Suspended Sentences would be ready so soon. I'll have to read this right after Dos Passos (most likely interspersing the novellas with Pullman's trilogy). Modiano won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year, and there is now all this interest in him. It appears that most of his best work is all tied up in memory and history and an obsession with Occupied France. What is particularly intriguing is that this seems to be the same ground that Emmanuel Bove trod, so there is surely a dissertation in that -- for somebody else to write...

It may be silly but someone recommended reading Rue des Boutiques Obscures in the original French, as it was fairly straight-forward, and there was a very cheap copy on Amazon, so I ordered it.  I have not had time to practice French in a long time, but I think I'll have to start.  My son is getting lessons in school, and I'll need to be able to help out a bit.  BTW, this particular Modiano novel was translated as Missing Person and is in the library as well, but I really ought to try to struggle through on my own first.

That's pretty much it.  I'm going to hold off a bit longer on some other reviews and some notes on Nightwood.  I have good ideas for some creative writing projects, but not quite enough energy to follow through...  Maybe tomorrow.  

8th Canadian Challenge - 15th review - The End of the Alphabet

I cannot recall exactly when I came across C.S. Richardson's The End of the Alphabet.  It was probably suggested by Amazon at one point or another.

I think the best comparison is that the author was trying to achieve the whimsy of the Griffin and Sabine books (alphabetical lists all over the place) but combining with a story that tugs at the heart-strings.  For we learn within the first 5 pages that the main character Ambrose Zephyr has a fatal disease that gives him only a month to live.  So he drags his wife, Zipper, off to the places that mean the most to him, her or the two of them together.  Obviously, this has to be done in alphabetical order.

In another somewhat quirky, somewhat manipulative gambit, Richardson ties this obsession to letters and even type sets to the fact that Ambrose's father worked for a newspaper (though as a copywriter not as a typesetter).  After his father died, Ambrose stopped reading the papers altogether.

There is something to be said for this, and I have slowly started cutting newsfeeds from my life.  However, my work does depend to some extent on monitoring infrastructure spending, which is inevitably tied up with state and national politics.  What I really do need to do is stop looking at comment sections.  The comments in the Guardian used to be higher quality, but they have been invaded by all kinds of trolls (oddly enough a lot of pro-Putin trolls).  I'd say the only comments even remotely worth reading now are those on the NYTimes website.  But certainly scrolling through an average article just reminds me how divided I am from most of humanity and makes me feel like a smug but powerless Mencken.  Not a great feeling and one that should not be indulged.

SPOILERS

I found the book moving at times, but still resented how manipulative it all felt.  And the book sort of cheats at the end.  For instance, a huge sandstorm prevents the couple from reaching Haifa and then they end up going on to Istanbul without doubling back, and the whole project is abandoned shortly after that.  I am sure that Zipper was pleased that Ambrose relented and reshuffled Paris to come up much earlier in their itinerary (putting it under E for Eiffel), so that they did have one more trip to Paris as a couple.  To a certain extent, one can appreciate that Richardson is showing how whimsy falters in the face of real-world problems or that monomaniacal travel plans are probably better not undertaken by the sick.

That last point certainly resonates with me, considering I had to cancel long-standing plans to travel to New York.  No amount of will power would have made it worth trying to walk through museums for hours on end.  While Ambrose and Zipper do tour a few museums early in the tour (though Ambrose wanted to see the Rijksmuseum by himself and spent quite a bit of time in front of Rembrandt's The Night Watch), their idea of vacationing involves a lot more time in cafes and relaxing than takes place on my vacations.

Rembrandt, The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch, aka The Night Watch, 1642

(The Night Watch is an incredible painting, and you pretty much do need to see it in person to really absorb it.  I do hope that I'll be able to arrange a trip to Europe to see this and some other old favorites before I am too old to enjoy it.)

So I am not entirely convinced that Richardson has given us enough on this couple for us to really care about them, that is to say, he has taken short cuts and made his book sentimental.  On the other hand, I was able to read it in an afternoon when I wasn't feeling all that great, and there is something to be said for that as well.

A couple of other tie-ins with travel and health as long as I am on the subject.  I just read the book of poems Letters to Borges by the writer/poet Stephen Kuusisto.  Many of the better poems are imaginary letters to Borges written from various locations in Europe or North America.  Apparently, Kuusisto did travel to all or most of these locations.  It's really impossible for me to tell what I would have done had I lost my vision early in life, but at this point, having seen and taken in so much, I doubt that I would travel extensively if I went blind.  Certainly, I would not do it for pleasure, since as I recently related, my idea of a vacation trip is spending nearly all of it in art museums, and there would be no reward in doing that as a blind person.  I imagine I would mostly hunker down and focus far more on music and learning to read Braille and so forth.  Again, everyone's reaction to such a loss is very personal.

So I guess this concludes a somewhat shaggy review of Richardson's The End of the Alphabet.  It has some pleasures but mostly leaves you hungering for more -- more plot, more characterization, more cities on the itinerary but mostly it made me long to get back to the real, not imagined, Europe for myself.

Northern Lights in Toronto?

While I suspect there is just too much light pollution, I will check outside periodically to see if the Northern Lights can be seen tonight and tomorrow: story.

I've only seen them twice in my life -- and in neither case was it truly spectacular, though it was nice to see them.

I think this site is probably a better one than the one others had relied upon, and I don't believe the Northern Lights came down nearly as far south as had originally been anticipated.  Of course, the last time I checked was 11 pm last night.  I'll give it another shot tonight and see if we luck out.

P.S. No luck.  I think they were wildly optimistic in how far south they would appear.