December 30, 2008

Lush Life by Richard Price

In The Writing Life, Annie Dillard notes, “The printed word cannot compete with the movies on their ground, and should not… [So w]hy would anyone read a book instead of watching people moving on a screen? Because a book can be literature. It is a subtle thing– a poor thing, but our own.”

So then how would Dillard contend with the recent fashionable claim that movies or television can be literature too? Is their “thing” just as subtle? What would she make of Richard Price, whose novels have been made into movies, who has written screenplays of his own, and is a noted writer of the television show The Wire?

But as Deborah Friedell remarks in her LRB review of Price’s latest novel Lush Life, “writing for the screen also seems to have given [Price] the enthusiasm of an outsider: his novels delight in being novels.” Which is Dillard’s “subtle thing”; that it is language and not spectacle used to tell the story here. However cinematic and paced Price’s writing might be, this effect is created through careful attention and deftness with words and not by a trick of a camera.

So why would anyone read a book, particularly one so decidedly steeped in a world we know from film, instead of watching people move on a screen? For the love of language first, of course, but also for the experience of ten or twelve hours entrenched in the story. And the experience of re-imagining the scene from words on a page, so that the act of reading becomes one of creation. Particularly the creation of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where I’ve never been before, but from Price’s narrative I can decipher the points on its map. The part of New York City as much a character in the story as anybody else, Price plumbing its depths sometimes quite literally, whether historically and topographically.

Though I was completely lost during the first fifty pages of the novel– in unfamiliar geography, references, a language in which I’m decidedly unschooled. I persevered because the novel’s premise continued to intrigue me so– three young somebodies (if even in their own minds) robbed by two characters they identify solely by their race. One victim too drunk to stand and falls apart, the second handing over in wallet in sheer terror, but the third, Ike Marcus, who “walks around starring in the movie of his own life,” steps to his assailant saying, “Not tonight, my man.” And then he’s shot dead.

But as the novel progressed, I found my way into it eased. Going back to reread the beginning (by which I am imploring you to follow it through), I made more sense of it all. As suspicion is cast upon Marcus’s companion that night, Eric Cash, the thirty-something restaurant manager who “had no particular talent or skill, or what was worse, he had a little talent, some skill…” In a world where everybody is trying to become something else, Cash is old enough to realize he might never succeed, and bitter enough to find Ike Marcus’s confidence more than irritating.

What follows is more than just a police procedural as detectives investigate Marcus’s murder. The narrative shifting point of view from Cash himself, the police involved, to Tristan, a young black teenager who lives in one of the neighbourhood’s surrounding housing projects and writes hip hop poetry in his notebook. The juxtaposition of Cash and Marcus’s lifestyle with Tristan’s in such close proximity is as jarring as its meant to be, though for its commonalities as much as the differences.

Lush Life could be a movie but it isn’t, and as a movie it would still be something very different. In the meantime then taking full advantage of its literary-ness– the effects of language, depth of character, such a scope. Demonstrating that their very own way, books are as capable as movies of extraordinary things.

December 24, 2008

Merry Christmas

Christmas Eve was always such a funny day, so wondrous and yet so ordinary. You’d have to keep reminding yourself, “It’s Christmas Eve!”, all the while incongruously eating your cheerios, brushing your teeth, going through the motions. This all to push yourself forward, because the magic is never apparent until after the sun goes down, so you have to conjure it in the meantime. And enjoy this lazy lovely day, should you be so fortunate to be spending it as a holiday. It is to be hoped that those who aren’t so blessed are granted an early dismissal.

Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays from Pickle Me This. If you don’t have any books on your tree, I’ll cross my fingers you find some good ones under it.

December 23, 2008

A sound economic prospect

Over at the Descant blog, I’ve written about why book buying for Christmas is a sound economic prospect.

December 23, 2008

Phoebe Gilman

Somehow it took me until yesterday to learn that Phoebe Gilman died in 2002. She was a really marvelous author and illustrator who had such an impact on me as a reader. I still remember her visit to my elementary school, and how exciting it was meet someone who’d created such a wondrous thing as a book. I can still recite most of Jillian Jiggs by heart. I also remember how Phoebe Gilman told us that she thought Jillian’s little sister was called Rebecca, although the character went unnamed in the story, and so I am excited to see Rebecca’s name was made official in subsequent Jillian tales. I am excited also to note that Gilman left such an extensive literary legacy that will bring her work to avid readers for generations to come.

December 23, 2008

A Passion for Reading

The text of my presentation for the December 9 Art Matters Forum “A Passion for Reading” has been posted online. I addressed the ways in which literary blogs promote a passion for reading, and how, as Virginia Woolf wrote, “The standards we raise and the judgments we pass steal into the air and become part of the atmosphere which writers breathe as they work.”

My co-panelists’ presentations can be found here and are well worth reading.

December 23, 2008

Crumbs

On “slummy mummy” writing: “[these] writers know these idiosyncrasies aren’t really faults but bargaining chips… The domestic preoccupation seems so much worse because the women are complaining about domesticity without moving beyond it.” Via Maud Newton, Laura Miller on rereading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe: “Narnia is a mongrel thing, and so is Christmas. As is often the case, this mongrelizing is the source of its strength.” Could Curtis Sittenfeld’s fictional reassessment of Laura Bush have been all too misleading? Macleans covers Rebecca Rosenblum’s marriage to Robert Downey Jr. The Edible Woman is Seen Reading (aside: last time I read this book, I thought it was dated and politically irrelevant, however brilliant. An essential literary artifact. And then it was sometime last year when I was restless, and everybody told me I should have a baby, and I started feeling a bit like a cake. And now I am having a baby, and of course I’m thrilled about it, but I’ve realized I was wrong about The Edible Woman).

December 23, 2008

Today's things to do list

• check the post
• go swimming
• pick up a book at the library
• pick up a parcel at the post office
• bake three apple pies
• write, read and knit
• be cooked my favourite dinner
• look into becoming a lady of leisure

December 23, 2008

Dessert Trends Bistro

In the past week, I’ve eaten at Dessert Trends Bistro three times, and I think I’m going back for lunch tomorrow. This making clear that I go out for meals far too often, and that I’m a creature of habit, but I really must emphasize how good the restaurant is.

The restaurant is also around the corner from my house, which is convenient in a snowstorm (as has often been the case of late). Light and airy on even the greyest day, the first sight that greets you when you walk in the door is a feast of desserts that will blow your mind. (Pictured here are Berry Box, and Raspberry Chocolate Tarts, which are two tried tested favourites). The array of desserts making clear why one might want to come four times a week, to leave no selection untasted. I’ve never chosen a dessert that wasn’t delicious.

But the main-course selections are truly exquisite. I had lamb-shank with couscous and rapini last weekend, grilled vegetable sandwich (with wild mushroom soup on the side) when I was in for lunch, and braised short ribs with pasta when I had dinner last. Each meal really was an eye-rolling delight. Dinners come with bread and three kind of dips– white bean, hummus and jalapeno– that are quickly devoured. Service isn’t always quick, but I’m never in a hurry. That food can be this good is a treat, and consistently so is a miracle.

December 23, 2008

Holidays

I’m now on my holidays, so expect to get plenty of reading done over the next two weeks. I just finished reading Penelope Lively’s memoir Oleander, Jacaranda about her childhood in Egypt. More than a memoir, actually, it is an investigation into the dawning of consciousness ala Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood. I enjoyed it immensely, and not only for its endpapers. Now just beginning Rainforest by Jenny Diski, and The Thinking Woman’s Guide to a Better Birth by Henci Goer. Now enjoying the lights on the zmas tree, one blizzard after another, and the ache of my muscles after this afternoon’s swim.

December 20, 2008

I prefer weak tea!

“Daisy turned to Winterbourne, beginning to smile again. He was still more perpelexed, for this inconsequent smile made nothing clear, though it seemed to prove, indeed, that she had a sweetness and softness that reverted instinctively to the pardon of offences. ‘It has never occurred to Mr. Winterbourne to offer me any tea,’ she said, with her little tormenting manner.
‘I have offered you advice,’ Winterbourne rejoined.
‘I prefer weak tea!’ cried Daisy, and she went off with the brilliant Giovanelli.” –Henry James, Daisy Miller