Quick Updates On The Fly Redux

We’ve been back from up north for a week and it flew by so fast that I haven’t had time to blog but here’s a list of things to come this week:

1. Book reviews of “Life on the Refrigerator Door,” “No Country for Old Men,” (the book, not the movie), “Bel Canto,” “Little Men,” and Per Peterson’s “Out Stealing Horses,” which I am about twenty pages away from finishing.

2. Thoughts on a few movies like “3:10 to Yuma” and a couple leftover summer flicks like Bourne and Potter.

3. I’m gearing up for all kinds of classes: dance classes, novel writing classes, yoga classes…

4. I want to dish about the new freelance assignment.

5. I finished my latest Classic Start and handed in my manuscript over the long weekend. Now I’m back to writing my own story and need to start in with serious revisions.

Whew. There’s so much going on that I don’t even know where to start.

Mad Men

Just a quickie post to say that I am utterly engrossed by Mad Men. I love the attention to detail, the wonderful period costumes and situations, the brilliant dialogue, and the bloody fascinating ‘ad men’. It’s not reaching Flight of the Conchords-levels in terms of the actual obsession, but it’s a good, solid drama to take up the place of the bloody awful Grey’s Anatomy that I have now permanently broken up with and will not reunite with this fall under any circumstances.

I am going to desperately try to limit the amount of television I watch this TV season. I found watching more movies (even older ones, shocking, I know for those of you who know me, non-virtually) and picking up more books this summer because we’ve been away from the television has actually been a really positive thing in my life.

It’s a battle I have constantly, the TV-no TV argument, and I can see both sides, but then I sit down and get sucked into a world like the one they’ve created in Mad Men and think, wow, this is a hundred times better than a) that terrible Halle Berry film that the RRHB downloaded for me that I watched on Sunday in a computer coma and b) more engaging than half the films we watched this weekend, yes Fracture, I’m looking at you—while trying to ignore the obvious heat resonating from Ryan Gosling.

And Ethan, yum. And Ethan, ohhh.

#55 – Divisadero

Like so many of these reviews, sometimes it’s necessary to start with a confession. There are no limits to my admiration for Michael Ondaatje’s work. He’s one of my favourite living writers. In the Skin of the Lion remains one of my all-time favourite books, right up there in the top ten at least. One night, when I was still slaving away at the worst job ever, even before I ended up at the evil empire with the boss from hell, I managed to get a free ticket to hear him read at Harbourfront. That night inspired me in ways that few other readings ever have. I came home, haunted by the sound of his voice, and wrote a prose poem called “Bittersweet”. When I showed it to a creative writing teacher who actually knew Ondaatje, she sent him a copy, and I’ve still got the note he sent back—in fact, the thin scrawl telling her it was a ‘lovely piece’ sits on my desk to this day.

It’s hard then to critique Divisadero from any where other than the pedestal of this affection I feel for a man I have clearly never met. The pure skill he has in crafting every single sentence, of creating characters that are broken and blue even before they are born, and of drawing a reader in as purely as one craves the sun, are uncompromising in this novel, even if the book itself might not necessarily be as successful as either The English Patient or In the Skin of a Lion. But how am I judging the success of the book? Much like Kerry, I felt a little bit lost as the tenuous threads of the novel hold two very different, yet equally complex stories together.

The first half of the story deals with how a tragic act of violence breaks up a patched together family in northern California. The two girls, Anna and Claire, sisters in every way except blood, are split apart forever, and Coop, a farm-hand who grew up on the farm since he was four, is chased away from the only home he has ever known. As they splinter, the novel removes itself from their primary narrative, and unfolds into the story of a Lucien Segura, a French writer at the turn of the century, who Anna studies as she lives in his house and sleeps with his neighbour (who he had known when he was just a boy, obviously), and whose tragedies (the loss of a great love, the splintering of family) echo those of her own.

Yet, by the end, I craved more about Coop, Anna, and Claire, somehow knowing that might be the point, that there was no more of this story for me to know. That the author, in firm control at all times, needed to explore tragedy in a different light halfway around the world from where he began, realizing that these are common themes that hold humanity together: loss, love, language. And wondering how it all fits together in ways that might not make entire sense to me right now, might just be the very point that I’m missing.

Regardless, it’s a bloody beautiful book with prose that soars and touches you in ways that only he knows how to do, where prose melts with poetry, where longing remains far after the love has passed, and where two entirely different stories, narratives, and characters can fit together in one book as if they had meant to be that way all along.

I’ve added Michael Ondaatje to my Around the World in 52 Books challenge as the Sri Lanka entry, regardless of the fact that this book is set mainly in California and in France, and he’s lived in Canada for over 40 years, that’s where he was born, and those are the self-imposed rules of my challenge. Maybe that’s wrong of me to organize the challenge in that way but I’ve started it along those lines and am committed to finishing!

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: I love the photo on the cover of this book so much that taking another picture of a book on my bed wouldn’t be remotely as interesting as imagining the woman lying there on a bench in an old French kitchen, bread, cheese, tea, pen nearby, creating a world that I am as desperate to know as any I have imagined in my reading life.

Californication

So I Faux-voed the first two episodes of Showtime’s new “comedy” Californication (wherein the only indication of the supposed genre must be in the fact that it’s got the half-hour running time). Partially washed up yet still brilliant, Hank Moody suffers from writer’s block and calls himself a one-hit wonder. His celebrated work of literary fiction is turned into some Hollywood dreck starring Tom and Katie (aren’t we all tired of that joke?), and this seems to have stopped him in his tracks from putting pen to paper entirely. So, he has sex. Lots of it. With anything that walks and waxes.

And if it wasn’t for David Duchovny, the show would be a complete disaster. Yet, he manages to pull it all together, wounding his way through scene after scene totally messing up his life, trying to get his partner back (Natasha McElhone), and being a semi-decent dad to his precocious twelve-year-old daughter. But so much of this show is just plain tired, and I get frustrated when I see full-on scenes cribbed from much better work (anyone who has seen episode two and watched Lovely and Amazing knows of what I speak), and tired cliches (man sleeping with underage girl and then realizing his mistake, yawn) trotted out with more swearing and better shot nudity to be “dangerous.”

On the whole, I’m giving it two more episodes to find some kind of heart, because as great as Duchovny remains solid and utterly watchable with the tired material surrounding him (his dry wit and even toastier delivery are truly engaging), there still needs to be an emotional core to the series that’s sort of missing right now. Who knows? Maybe I’m the one who is jaded and frustrated and taking it all out on an innocent television show. All I know is that it’s no Flight of the Conchords. Now there’s comedy. Ummm, Steve.

#54 – October

When Richard B. Wright’s Clara Callan won both the Governor General’s Award and the Giller in 2001, I devoured it like the rest of Canada, in one fell swoop sitting on the world’s most uncomfortable couch in our old apartment with its fabulous windows and loud College Street traffic. The novel both inspired and saddened me, with its echoes of A Bird in the House, and its epistolary format, which just seemed to work, Clara Callan haunted me for years.

Fast-forward many seasons and I’ve just had my hip surgery. Zesty‘s utterly wonderful mum gave me a copy of Adultery. And maybe I shouldn’t have read it then because sometimes when you expect an author to write the same book twice, it’s more your fault than theirs when you’re disappointed. Right?

Regardless, I’m thrilled, thrilled to say that October, Wright’s latest novel coming out in a few weeks, has me enthralled all over again. It’s a short, tightly written book about James Hillyer, a retired professor (of literature, natch), who learns that his daughter, the headmistress of a prestigious girls’ school in England, has aggressive breast cancer—the very same disease that killed her mother around the same age. When Hillyer flies to England to see her, he runs into Gabriel Fontaine, an old friend from childhood.

Hillyer drifts with swift strokes down memory lane as he describes his friendship with Gabriel during the summer he spent with his uncle at a resort town in Quebec: the rivalry he felt towards the boy despite the latter being wheelchair bound because of polio; the love he felt for Odette, a French-Canadian maid and Gabriel’s girlfriend; and the coming of age he endures in that moment when he realizes that wealth and privilege will always allow for a certain latitudes that James can never experience. All these themes and events swell together and capture that feeling of childhood, you know when you’re free for those two weeks the Americans show up at the cottage and it’s not just you, your brother, and your cousins, but a whole gang of kids with adolescent emotions and feelings, adventurous spirits and a crushing reality that it all will come to an end just a mere fourteen days later. That’s the essence of this book: that feeling when the vacation comes to an end and things have happened to change your life forever, only James doesn’t know it at the time, he doesn’t realize it completely until he looks back, which is the simple brilliance of this book.

Wright’s narrative style reminded me so much of Hugh MacLennan’s The Watch That Ends the Night, which can never be a bad thing, and he has such a skill for crafting the scenes between Gabriel and James. Their voices drifting easily between the high pitched tones of young adulthood to the more defined, fully grown mature tenor of elderly men, Gabriel and James, whether they like it or accept it or not, have deeply impacted each other’s lives.

I know the fall remains the single busiest time when it comes to the more commercial forms of art (novels, films, television). But sometimes, a book comes along that reminds you why we all work so hard, for me, this fall, it might just be October. But ask me again after I’ve maybe read a few more of the new releases…

Into The Wild

You know, knowing the end of this film brought tears to my eyes just watching the trailer. There’s something that sort of catches in your throat when you see it in a three-dimensional way that even Krakauer’s book, as fascinating as it is, just didn’t manage.

But it makes for an interesting debate: by turning nonfiction into fiction, in a way like this movie, does it diminish the story or heighten it?

I guess I’ll have to go and see it to answer the question.

Adventures In Illness Part 81358

So yesterday I went to see the family doctor because I’ve got this strange rash on both sides of my nose that looks like eczema, and it simply won’t go away. That coupled with the lip blisters that lead to cold sores cropping up for the second time in two weeks ensures that I’m looking awesome these days.

Anyway. I think the rash-type thing is a result of the meds, it’s the only thing that it can be as I haven’t changed anything with respect to my skin care regime, and even tried stopping washing my face for a day to see if that would help (it didn’t). Even so, the family doctor wasn’t willing to make a diagnosis and even suggested that I go see the Super Fancy Disease Doctor about it. Considering he’s, like, the smartest doctor in the world and it’s just a rash, I felt that maybe that wasn’t quite the right thing to do.

Without having ANY idea what it might be or what might be causing it, they’re sending me to a dermatologist, which is fine. Except they don’t want to TREAT it in case it goes away or something before I see said dermatologist without them figuring out exactly what it is. Yay for me. It means that however long it takes for them to refer me that I’ll have to continue to look like I have the chicken pox.

I tell you, Wegener’s is awesome.

Not.

Sunday, Sunday

The weather today is absolutely brilliant, sunny, warm but not overwhelming with a hint of fall in the air. Zesty and I had brunch and then made the decision to head over to the Farmer’s Market at Liberty Village. So, before sitting down and getting back to work on my book that’s due in a couple of weeks, and spending the day at the computer again, punctuated by a couple of breaks spent fighting with the vacuum and doing some laundry, I had to share this:

So, at the Farmer’s Market, I decided I wanted to buy some fruit, and found the perfect stall for me: peaches, pears, plums, you name it, this farmer had it, some of which had just been picked that morning. I’m not lying when I say I got very excited by the rock hard pears he had on offer.

Now, I love rock hard fruit. I know it’s not normal, but I like to eat peaches and pears when they’re as hard as apples. I’m not kidding when I say I enjoy the crunch. The farmer had already packaged up the pears for me, and even threw in some sugar pears, which he said needed to be eaten when they are green, so right away. Cool. I’m planning on making fruit salad anyway.

So now that we’re trying to eat things in season, I was tickled pink to see that he also had locally grown nectarines, which are, to this day, my favourite fruit. He adds those to my bags as well.

While he’s putting everything in for me he says, “Some of them [the nectarines] are ready to eat but some might need to sit for a day or two out of the fridge.”

“Well, I like to eat them hard,” I say, “so these are actually perfect.”

Dead silence ensues.

Then he looks at me like I’m absolutely nuts and hands me a semi-squishy nectarine, and says, “Eat it when they feel like this, not like an Indian rubber ball, okay?”

(But the okay is more like he’s telling me to do it this way, and that not only is eating hard nectarines wrong, it’s just plain stupid.)

And then he proceeds to give me some intimate advice about the freshness of the fruit. “Okay!” I say with a winning smile even though I’m thinking ‘oh my god I can’t wait to get home and crunch away at these half-ripe nectarines.’

I mean, I see his point, and they do smell wonderful when they are riper, but I can’t get away from the crunch. I am addicted to the crunch. So I’m sure I’ll be doing a disservice to the farmer when I bite into the nectarines and keep them in the fridge so they stay harder longer, but a girl likes what a girl likes, you know?

Annnnywaaay. The best part is that an entire bag of fruit, we’re talking more than a dozen single pieces, came to a whopping $8.00. That’s right. Less than the cost of a movie, almost less than a movie rental. And I got a lesson in fruit management too, for free.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: Said fruit in a bowl. Keep in mind I had given a bunch to Zesty too, isn’t that crazy?

Good grief I love the farmer’s market.