March 20, 2007
Reality is Ralph
From Lisey’s Story by Stephen King:
~He didn’t even plan his books, as complex as some of them were. Plotting them, he said, would take out all the fun. He claimed that for him, writing a book was like finding a brilliantly coloured string in the grass and following it to see where it might lead. Sometimes the string broke and left you with nothing. But sometimes– if you were lucky, if you were brave, if you perservered– it brought you to a treasure. And the treasure was never the money you got for the book; the treasure was the book.~
March 19, 2007
Living Properly
The more I think about About Alice by Calvin Trillin, I realize this tiny memoir is actually a guide to living properly. Seriously, lately I’ve found myself thinking, “What would Alice do?” in a variety of situations. I have a hunch I may be better for it.
March 18, 2007
New books brought home
Last day is tomorrow for the half price sale at Balfour Books (601 College St.). We went yesterday, and I was devastated to find that the Penelope Liveleys and Virginia Woolfs I’d been hoping to buy were all gone. Clearly the shelves have been well picked over this week, but treasures remain. I was pleased to pick up so many books I’d borrowed from the library recently and subsequently fallen in love with. Even Stuart got in on the fun. He got two James Bond novels and The Water Method Man by John Irving. I got The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing, which I’ve never read and I bought mainly because I wanted an old school orange Penguin cover. And the rest, I got Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe, and Huckleberry Finn. Sugoi! The shelves are happy to have them.
March 17, 2007
On the other hand…
Considering my just-below post, I will consider accusations of hysteria and melodrama. And history will inevitably tell a story so different from what we consider the state of literature to be today.
It reminds me of when today I read “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown” by Virginia Woolf, or any of her attacks on Wells/Bennett/Galsworthy. I almost feel sorry for them, with her scathing critiques. Because what is this triumverate really, compared to the Great Virginia Woolf? An unfair pitting, so it seems to modern eyes.
But then back then she was all David, and they were decidedly Goliath.
So the moral of that story is that you never really know.
March 13, 2007
On time
Alan Lightman won my heart with this article recommending books on “the mysterious nature of time”. He’s mixing up the fic and nonfic, suggesting Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Einstein’s The Meaning of Relativity, and The Seven Day Circle by Eviatar Zerubavel. Apart from the good picks, I learned a whole lot about time from Lightman’s article itself.
March 7, 2007
Half a Grapefruit
~Horse Nicholson had made a lot of money as a contractor and had left that to go into politics. He had made a speech saying that what they needed was a lot more God in the classroom and a lot less French.~
March 6, 2007
Poor Scoot
Brilliant! Nora Ephron profiled in The Guardian. Kundera on the art of the novel. Deanna McFadden writes around town— with an interview with Ben McNally. Beryl Bainbridge on writing. Martin Levin on book lists, and more here.
I will speculate about why we love them– lists in general, I mean. They give the illusion of containment and control, and for a brief instant, all is manageable. The universe is catalogueable, navigable. To-do lists particularly illustrate the power we grant words; if it is written, it will get done. Book lists provide our sprawling to-be-read piles with an armature, and this is assuring. We don’t need to do anything with lists though, really. Their very existence is their object, and beyond that they are scrap. Therefore, no one needs to worry Sirs. List away and live free.
Middlemarch continues. I had to trade in my copy for another, however, as the small print was making me go blind.
And you do have to worry about a grown man called Scooter. Unless, of course, he is a muppet.
Short short story contest here in The Guardian. Fun.
March 3, 2007
Dashed hopes
In the midst of Mini Pops nostalgia, I remembered how I’d once longed to join their fan club. I don’t think I ever followed through, but thinking about this led me to remember one of the great disappointments of childhood– ads and offers in the backs of books.
As a small child, these appeared as invitations toward engagement with the outside world, and they seemed irresistable. Do you remember the scheme in Archie comics where you signed up to sell something (it was never clear what) and you could win points toward a new bike, a skateboard, or a tent? These marvelous full-colour images of everything you ever wanted. You could be an entrepreneur at the age of seven! Though I was never taken in. My parents wouldn’t let me do it.
Stuart told me today about how he wrote away to join the Beano club when he was five, and was promised “two badges and a newsletter or something”. His mum and dad helped him get the postal orders necessary, but he never heard back from Beano.
I had better luck with the Eric Wilson Mystery Club, though by the time I got my newsletter, years had passed and I wasn’t that interested anymore.
Part of the problem was that books tended to age, and it was always disappointing to see that the offer for ten books for a nickle had expired in 1963. Very very sad.
But nothing was as sad as when I wrote away to join “The Puffin Club”. I’ve got a copy of the ad on hand: “You will get a copy of the Club magazine four times a year, a membership book, and a badge.” The opportunity of a lifetime, I thought. And I heard back quite promptly, raising my hopes to the moon. But there would be no membership for me, in the end. They told me Canadian children weren’t eligible and I was absolutely gutted.
And so there would be no outside world for me for a number of years yet.
March 3, 2007
Full Disclosure?
I don’t really see how one can attack a collection of letters, except on two terms: the first, maybe you don’t like reading letters; the second, the letters are boring. As my entries of late have made clear, Decca: The Collected Letters of Jessica Mitford was hardly boring. This book was absolutely enthralling, and Mitford’s letters found their way into my dreams. Epistolary dreams! You can’t fathom it. This was such an absorbing book, a twentieth century overview, and a record of one absolutely fascinating life. Jessica Mitford was a complex, exasperating, difficult woman, but she was brilliant, funny and sharp, and I have never before gained such an intimate understanding of character from a book as I did with this one.
And so, when one takes a collection of letters that are decidedly not boring, the plan of attack must be through character. Fine, I suppose. Though that seems to me a strange approach for a book review, and probably inappropriate. And no doubt, Jessica Mitford herself would not disagree with Daphne Merkin’s review in Slate that she was neglectful mother, that “vitriolic archness was her first and last defense”, or that empathy was not always her forte. Etc. etc. (though I think this reviewer simplifies her character considerably– eg. why she “airbrushes” her deceased son from her memoir, because she could not bear to relive his death through writing about it).
What is inexcusable, however is for a reviewer to write such a review, with its snide attacks, and not mention that she herself is rubbished in the book, perhaps underlining her perspective? Decca, page 706: Sez Decca: “[Did you read the] New Yorker women’s issue? Some good, some awful. One of the worst was by someone called Daphne Merkin, v. long and all about how she craves to be whipped (she’s a masochist) with nary a joke in it. Marina looked up “Merkin” in the OED– says it means “a pub*c wig”.
So perhaps Ms. Merkin had a bone to pick, but shouldn’t she have been a bit more honest about picking it?
March 2, 2007
The Myth of Justice
A recent overdose of Decca had a detrimental effect on last night’s sleep. I’ve never dreamt in letters before. To do so is rather maddening. I’m starting Middlemarch today; Bronwyn’s reading it too.
The Guardian World Literature Tour in New Zealand: fascinating to read the discussion in comparison to Canada’s which turned in to an all-out internecine CanLit hatefest. Here for literacy initiatives. The usual suspects for Britain’s favourite books. Here for Granta‘s best American novelists.
Our beloved Curtis’s birthday plans were waylaid last night due to a ferocious winter storm. An emergency birthday party was thrown together with some success. Cake was devoured. Excellent. Bonne fête.
