March 9, 2007
Cutting page intake
The last two books I’ve read have been 700 and 900 pages respectively, and though I do like devouring books, these have been awfully big meals. I look forward to some less sprawling novels in the near future; next up is Afterwards by Rachel Seiffert. And we just got Lisey’s Story by Stephen King from the library. Stuart is currently in the midst of it, but he says that I’m going to love it when my time comes.
But I am so glad I read Middlemarch. My monthly classics plan is doing wonders to close up some holes in my reading, and each book I’ve read so far, I would pity having missed forever. The book was extraordinary, and it’s been said before, but all I wish to say is that I agree. The scene that to me demonstrated Eliot’s force as a writer and character creator was when Dorothea calls on Lydgate, and meets Rosamond for the first time. This was a fair way into the book, and by this point I knew both these women intimately. And I could not fathom that they could be ignorant of one another, because they were each so vivid to me. Besides, how could anyone not know Miss Brooke? Each of Eliot’s characters were so persuasively people.
And then the Richard Dawkins vs. Peter Kay affair. Who could beat up whom? We’re Peter Kay fans at our house, and Stuart went off Dawkins with The Ancestors Tale, and so we’re betting on the boy from Bolton.
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 5, 2007
Pages to turn before I sleep
Book-wise (and really, is there any other wise?) March is an exciting month for me, as I’ve got a stack of to-be-reads this high. But at the moment I’m in the midst of Middlemarch— my March Classic. And it’s absolutely huge, so I will be embroiled for a long while. It’s very bookish and pretty wonderful though, which is fortunate for such a big commitment. I will enjoy the ride.
March 5, 2007
Weapons to be deployed
~It is easy to make light of this kind of “writing,” and I mention it specifically because I do not make light of it at all: it was at Vogue that I learned a kind of ease with words (as well as with people who hung Stellas in their kitchens and went to Mexico for buys in oilcloth), a way of regarding words not as mirrors of my own inadequacy but as tools, toys, weapons to be deployed strategically on a page. In a caption of, say,eight lines, each line to run no more or less than twenty-seven characters, not only every word but every letter counted. At Vogue one learned fast, or one did not stay, how to play games with words, how to put a couple of unwielding dependent clauses through the typewriter and roll them out transformed into one simple sentence composed of precisely thirty-nine characters. We were connoisseurs of synonyms. We were collectors of verbs. (I recall “to ravish” as a highly favoured verb for a number of issues, and I also recall it, for a number of issues more, as the source of a highly favored noun: “ravishments,” as in tables cluttered with porcelain tulips, Faberge eggs, other ravishments.) We learned as reflex the grammatical tricks we had learned only as marginal corrections in school (“there are two oranges and an apple” read better than “there were an apple and two oranges,” passive verbs slowed down sentences, “it” needed a reference within the scan of the eye), learned to rely on the OED, learned to write and rewrite and rewrite again. “Run it through again, sweetie, it’s not quite there.” “Give me a shock verb two lines in.” “Prune it out, clean it up, make the point.” Less was more, smooth was better, and absolute precision essential to the monthly grand illusion. Going to work for Vogue was, in the late nineteen-fifties, not unlike training with the Rockettes~ Joan Didion, Telling Stories
March 4, 2007
Drawer, get ready for this.
Finished. Conversations About Gravity. 80500 words, many of which, I admit, I’m rather fond of. Beginning, middle and end.
March 4, 2007
New Title
Conversations About Gravity. I think it’s perfect. And the whole thing will be finished tomorrow.
March 3, 2007
Mini*Pops
Fun site of the week is Mini Pops Magic, which taught me plenty about one of my first favourite bands. Looking through their discography, I realized that my family owned at least four of their albums– I’d forgotten. I was also surprised to learn they were British (though I probably should have known). They were known for their Channel 4 television show in 1982 which was controversial due to that old “eight year olds dressed like harlots” problem. The show was cancelled, but a number of albums were released, and were particularly popular in Canada, where the Mini Pops embarked upon a three week tour. Who knew?
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?
