February 6, 2008
Inedible, Indelible Love
She was eating mouldy cheese at the table, and he was reading a book on the couch. Outside it was raining, and their telephone didn’t work when it was raining. They’d tried calling the telephone company about this a hundred times, but no one believed them, and of course by the time someone was sent over for repairs, the rain had stopped.
“Your phone’s just fine,” the repairman always would say, and when they explained the rain, he’d say “Impossible.” And present them with a bill for $76.00, and so they stopped worrying about it. The broken telephone became a fact of rainfall as much as getting wet was, and this was what life was. And life was fine.
February 6, 2008
Credible space flight
I’m on the tail end of a short story run– I finished Simple Recipes by Madeleine Thien (whose Certainty was one of my favourite books of last year). Now reading Bang Crunch by Neil Smith, now out in paperback. And then back to novels come Saturday morning, as I’ll have airport waiting and flights to pass (dance dance dance). But lately I have found the short story quite delicious– perfect. Which is probably very fitting, as lately I’ve been writing quite a few of my own.
Fabulous things read lately include from Hilary Mantel’s review in the LRB, “Until the idea of space flight became credible, there were no aliens; instead there were green men who hid in the woods.” The Judy Blume profile that Kate was talking about. Boys don’t get it, do they? Bookninja thought the profile went on “a tad lengthily”. And I do wonder if it is girlishness that kept the Guardian Books blog’s celebration of Anne Shirley as one of the few pieces ever there whose comments didn’t descend rapidly into a churlish a*shole contest. Which is not to say that boys are as*holes, but the ones commenting over there usually seem to be. Or commenting most places, actually (but of course, dear readers, not here.)
Also, though I don’t agree with all she says here, I have fallen completely in love with Tabatha Southey. My love for columnist Doug Saunders is much older, but his piece this Saturday comparing today’s terrorists with those of the early ’70s was fascinating.
And also this stellar piece on the Munich air crash 50 years ago in which 8 Manchester United football players were killed, along with the crew members, team supporters, reporters and coaches: “On February 6, 1958, however, the news has only just begun to find the means of spreading itself at speed through the global village. An international network exists, although it is a primitive and unreliable mechanism compared with the digital world of the future.”
February 6, 2008
Spiced Up
It was almost as exciting as when Backstreet was back, except it was the Spice Girls, who we used to go to high school parties dressed as in 1997, refusing to break from our Spice personas. There is also a lingering memory of dancing on cafeteria tables, but we turn away from that. I was Ginger, and last night Baby and I attended the Spice Girls’ second sold out show in Toronto. Scary would have come, but she thought she’d be on a business trip to the Cayman Islands, but it turned out she was only home with a throat plague. We missed her, and we also missed Posh (who I haven’t actually seen for ten years) and Sporty (who is currently working at the South Pole).
And it was fun– we were on our feet dancing and singing for the show’s entirety, I’m hoarse today. “Wannabe” was the encore, and that one would have to get with our friends in order to be our lovers is as true as it ever was– just ask our lovers. Arms waving at “Viva Forever” and “Goodbye”– “look for the rainbow in every storm.” “Mama” brought tears to my eyes– how much additional meaning the years have brought it. The Spice Girls in real life, and they can really sing. Interestingly, though, they are about as good as I am at dancing. All a wee bit perfunctory, but what did one expect?
The downside was the absence of our Spice comrades (friendship never ending, and all), and that everybody there was fifteen. Then I got upset because all the fifteen year olds were way prettier than me, and had perfectly straight hair, and Baby and I were both cranky, and tired after all day at the office, and I was wearing winter boots, and we had headaches, and kept yawning, and even though she holds the group together, why doesn’t Mel C. get the credit she deserves? I also couldn’t stop thinking about Eddie Murphy, and that I am way too lame to go out on weeknights.
February 4, 2008
My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead by Eugenides
I’ve written before about short stories and their lack of portability. It’s a bit paradoxical then to have found the solution in the form of a big fat anthology. Perhaps it works because the anthology makes no illusion of portability? Anthologies aren’t great books for lugging around, for reading as you go, but the short story works in this context, functions as itself, best to dip into from time to time. Reading the whole book made me hungry for more, and for more short story anthologies (which is why The Penguin Book of Summer Stories is scheduled as an upcoming heart’s desire).
Perhaps the reason I’ve been so struck by My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro is that somehow every story managed “greatness”. Which sounds entirely subjective, I realize, but seemed quite straightforward with each story I finished. Love also the platform from which many “great” stories are launched from anyway, if not necessarily the most romantic ones.
Editor Jeffrey Eugenides writes in the introduction, “Please keep in mind: my subject here isn’t love. My subject is the love story… The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims– these are lucky eventualities but they aren’t love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment… Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.” Which, I suppose, makes for better reading than roses are red, violets are blue…
Eugenides has chosen such a vast array of stories– some translated from Russian, German, Chinese, from such unlikely co-conspirators as Chekhov and Miranda July. From the short story writers I like the very best– Grace Paley and Alice Munro– to those stories so classic, we scarcely give them a second glance– “A Rose For Emily” or “The Dead”. Nabokov’s “Spring in Fialta”. To fall in love with Lorrie Moore for the first time (and yes, I’m lucky indeed). I liked almost every story here, and the few I didn’t, I will still acknowledge are good. This anthology was akin to a party, but crowded with stories instead of people, and I felt privileged to have had them so specially collected, to be able to mix among them.
February 3, 2008
Mad steed
To determine the strangest item in The Joy of Cooking would just take too long, I think (though Page 515 would be high on the list, what with the line “If possible, trap ‘possum and feed it on milk and cereals for 10 days before killing”, and other recipes for porcupine or raccoon). But the “Birthday Bread Horse” is especially weird, if in an understated way:
“As our children have always demanded a piece of their birthday cake for breakfast, we concocted a bread horse to be supplemented later in the day by the candlighted cake of richer content… You will need a well-rounded loaf of bread…. Use the loaf for the body. Mount it on four of the candy sticks. Break off about a third or less of the fifth candy stick. Use it for the neck. Stick it into one end of the loaf at an angle. Put the oval rolls on the other end for the head. Use the braided rolls for the mane and tail, the raisins for eyes, the almonds for ears, and the piece of cherry for the lips. Bed the horse on leaves or grass. Add a ribbon bridle to keep this mad steed under some sort of control.”
February 2, 2008
Specific Requirements
Well done, Type Books! We went down there this afternoon (and Trinity Bellwoods Park was winter wonderland, though my right boot sprung a leak in the slush [bollocks]), with very specific requirements, and they satisfied every one of them. Plus they’ve started stocking Miffy. (The girl who worked there said she was the buyer and they’ve always been stocking Miffy, which is absolutely untrue, but I didn’t question her authority). Anyway, enough with the brackets.
Specific requirements: we got When You Were Small for the baby we’re going to visit in California– whose name is Henry, like the boy in the book. We bought Townhouse for his mom. And then, of course, just because I was there, as soon as I saw the hard-to-find Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk, I had to have it. Brilliant!
February 1, 2008
Snow Day
Gobsmack! The university has closed and I’ve been sent home early. Today is officially a miracle.
January 31, 2008
Bits and Pieces
My bits and pieces reading continues, and though all of it’s so good, I’m craving the solidity of a novel. So now reading Like Mother by Jenny Diski (whose blog I keep checking for updates), as well as My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead (which has just done me the great pleasure of introduction to Lorrie Moore).
I’ve been suffering from February in this mean mean wind, and it’s not even February yet. Consolation to be taken from a list of thoughtful artful stuff on the internet, 29 things to be happy about (via Leah), 100 books every child should read, and the teakettle whistle at the end of the Goldfrapp video.
January 30, 2008
Words I encountered
Words I encountered today whilst reading Nabokov: violaceous; canthus; effluvia; elytra; gouache; basilisk.
