Girl Detective

#38 in my 2007 movie challenge was Notes on a Scandal. It’s a short, but powerful story about a friendship between Blanchett’s free-spirited art teacher Sheba Hart and Dench’s battle axe history teacher. The nastiness of the film is dense and compressed, like a bitter diamond. The film does a deft balancing act of making both characters believable, understandable, and yet not quite likeable. Dench’s character is ugly inside and out, but her solitary meditations on a life of loneliness are heart wrenching. Sheba is short for Bathsheba, a reference to the Biblical story, in which a beautiful woman is seduced (or possibly commanded) away from her older husband, Uriah the Hittite by a handsome young man, King David.

#37 in my 2007 movie challenge was Adrienne Shelley’s Waitress. I feel cynical when I wonder if the reviews of this film are so effusive because Shelley was murdered before the film was released. It is a very good film, though. I was strongly reminded of the tone of Hal Hartley’s early films such as The Unbelievable Truth, which starred Shelley and that I saw at the Ritz in Philadelphia. It’s by turns bitter and sweet, like the chocolate called for in many of the movie’s pies. Keri Russell and her heart-shaped face are captivating as Jenna, a pie-inventing woman married to a controlling and abusive husband. Jeremy Sisto gives a chilling performance, all the more creepy because of his obvious love for Jenna.

Having the time to check Arts & Letters Daily, click through to the stories that interest me, read them from beginning to end, then quote the parts I like here.

Having the time, or taking the time, to read and think is something I value, and try to cultivate. Parenthood is not an excuse to give up learning. Instead, it can be a reminder to keep trying.

#36 in my 2007 movie challenge was Diggers, starring Paul Rudd. Is there anything he can’t do–television, movies, poker, music, dancing, comedy, and drama?

In Diggers he’s a 70’s clam digger who can’t quite work up the nerve to leave his small job and small town.

Diggers may seem like a tired premise: four working class buddies try with varying success to manage family, work and times that are a-changin’. Yet the acting, the humor of Ken Marino’s script (he played Vinnie Van Lowe on Veronica Mars), and director Katherine Dieckmann’s obvious affection both for the characters and story all elevate this little indie.

Rudd, Marino, and Maura Tierney gave strong performances that resulted in complex, sympathetic characters. Lauren Ambrose and Ron Eldard looked good, but their acting showed–they didn’t inhabit their characters as completely as the rest of the cast. I watched the deleted scenes both with and without commentary. Unlike other DVDs, where the deleted scenes make clear the reason they were cut, these flesh out the characters, and show the process of editing. Some were removed when the storyline changed, and characters were dropped, and sequences of events changed. Yes, a few were superfluous, but overall watching them improved my appreciation for the sweet film a great deal.

For his ten-page piece “The Art of Sushi,” from the June 2007 issue of Vanity Fair, Nick Tosches traveled the world to observe the economy and art of sushi from the market to the meal. The long article both informs and tantalizes. He describes a meal at Sugiyama, in New York, a restaurant that doesn’t have sushi (characterized by sweetened rice) though it does serve raw fish:

First, a course of monkfish liver, vinegared baby eel, which seems to have been filleted, and a jelly cake of crab and vegetables. (Later, I find out that the “baby eel,” noresore, which I assumed to have been filleted, is actually pre—baby eel–the flat, transparent larvae, whose season is brief and now, of the Japanese conger.) Then slices of raw bluefin tuna, raw bluefin toro, raw hamachi, raw hamachi toro, raw tilefish, steamed octopus, ama-ebi (sweet shrimp; the sweetness is in the meat of the brain), a raw Kumamoto oyster, and a fragrant spray of small, purple shiso flowers. Then a clear soup of seaweed, whitefish cake, bamboo, and asari (a sort of springtime Japanese littleneck). Then grilled black cod from Toyama and crisp-roasted mild green peppers. Then half a lobster (served with a spoon to blend the soft, dark meat of the head into the white tail meat) and shiitake and oyster mushrooms. Then a miso soup with straw mushrooms and seaweed. Then minced grilled eel, tilefish, and bonito steamed in a mixture of botan rice and sticky rice, wrapped in a large, salted houba leaf, served with pickled Japanese radish. Then hoji tea, which Sugiyama-san describes as “sticky” tea. He means it was made from tea twigs, and “sticky” is to be taken as an adjectival form of “stick,” which in fact turns out to be the first definition of the word in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then a grapefruit-and-cream thing, invented by Sugiyama-san many years ago, made from hand-squeezed grapefruit juice, powdered sugar, lemon, Chardonnay, and scotch–all of which, magicked into a chilled semi-solid sphere, somehow ends up seeming to be an idealized peeled grapefruit, with no fibrous membranes, no pulp, no pits–served in very cold cream with a sprig of mint.

At Masa, which Tosches notes is probably the most expensive, and best for sushi, in the world, he had a meal that cost upwards of $1100:

baby firefly squid (hotaru ika) in a sauce of Japanese mustard (karashi) with rape-blossom buds (nanohana). Then chopped raw toro topped with caviar. Then seared bonito (katsuo tataki) with crispy seaweed (ogo), woodland ginger and bamboo (myoga take), wasabi greens, and those little purple shiso flowers. Then steamed asari clams from Chiba in their broth. Then icefish (shirauo)–tiny, almost translucent fish with buggy little black eyeballs which can be had for only a few weeks in early spring–served in sizzling white-sesame oil with Kalamata-olive paste and sprigs of newly budded prickly-ash leaves (kinome). Then a hot pot of cherry trout (sakura masu), whose season also lasts only a few weeks in spring. And then, after the kaiseki overture, the sushi feast begins.

Each piece of sushi is prepared individually and served immediately, as Takayama-san slices the fish, reaches into a cloth-covered barrel of rice, applies fresh-made wasabi paste to the side of the sliced fish that will be pressed to the rice, and, piece after piece, forms perfect sushi with dexterous rapidity in the palm of one hand with the nimble fingers of the other, placing it before you on a stoneware dish. He tells you to eat it with your hand….It’s really just a matter of preference, but you don’t want to piss this guy off while he’s feeding you. You’re given a small bowl of shoyu, into which only certain sushi should be dipped, and another small bowl of pale pickled ginger to be nibbled between courses.

The toro sushi is first. Then, in succession: striped jack; fluke; sea bream; snapper; squid; ama-ebi (the little shrimp with the sweet brain); cockle; red clam; giant clam; baby scallop; Nantucket scallop (freshly caught by a diver who sells only to Takayama-san and a few others); grilled toro sinew; herring; horse mackerel; uni; octopus; cooked shrimp; sea eel; freshwater eel; shiitake sushi; black-truffle sushi; a seaweed-wrapped roll of chopped toro and green, negi onion; young ume, a sort of Japanese plum, enclosed in a shiso leaf.

“And that’s all,” says Takayama-san with a smile.

After this dense article, I am curious where my favorite Twin Cities sushi restaurant, Origami, gets its fish. I’ve never yet been to Kikugawa; their menu has a kaiseki teishoku that sounds compelling. Most of all, though, I’m hungry, and reminded again that eating sushi at the bar, piece by piece, omakase-style (chef’s choice), is the best way to experience it.

In “The Biology of Imagination” at Entelechy (link via Arts and Letters Daily), Simon Baron-Cohen argues that our capacity for imagination is based in biology:

So, what has all this got to do with the original question of whether the capacity for human imagination is, at its core, biological? For Leslie, the capacity for meta-representation involves a special module in the brain, which humans have and that possibly no other species possesses. In the vast majority of the population, this module functions well. It can be seen in the normal infant at 14 months old who can introduce pretence into their play; seen in the normal 4 year old child who can employ mind-reading in their relationships and thus appreciate different points of view; or seen in the adult novelist who can imagine all sorts of scenarios that exist nowhere except in her own imagination, and in the imagination of her reader.

But sometimes this module can fail to develop in the normal way. A child might be delayed in developing this special piece of hardware: meta-representation. The consequence would be that they find it hard to mind-read others. This appears to be the case in children with Asperger Syndrome. They have degrees of difficulty with mind-reading.v Or they may never develop meta-representation, such that they are effectively ‘mind-blind’. This appears to be the case in children with severe or extreme (classic) autism. Given that classic autism and Asperger Syndrome are both sub-groups on what is today recognized as the ‘autistic spectrum’, and that this spectrum appears to be caused by genetic factors affecting brain development, the inference from this is that the capacity for meta-representation itself may depend on genes that can build the relevant brain structures, that allow us to imagine other people’s worlds.

Biology, though, is not the entire story. The content of imagination, Baron-Cohen concludes, is primarily cultural. As always, it seems the answer is not either nature or nurture, but both/and.

From the Chicago Tribune’s “Great books not meant to be used as weapons”

Up north in Canada, novelist Yann Martel (”The Life of Pi”) has started a book club of one member — Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Every couple of weeks since mid-April, he has been sending a new book to Harper in an effort to get the national leader to increase funding for the arts.

I want elected officials to work for literacy, but what Martel is doing feels obnoxious. I love books, but if Martel (or anyone) sent me a book every couple of weeks, I would show up at his house and chuck the books at his head.

I all but stopped giving and loaning books after I read this insightful deconstruction at Outer Life. Gift books create an obligation, both to read and to enjoy the book. I am terrible about reading books in a timely fashion. Gift books often sit on my shelf for years, gathering dust and sending out prickly rays of guilt. I try to finish a book before I recommend it. I learned that lesson from Smilla’s Sense of Snow. I also try only to recommend books I love. As the author of Outer Life noted in another post, recommendations are difficult, too. Too often I’ve sensed the careful phrasing of friends after I’ve loaned or given them something good but not great. And even if I loved the book, like John Burdett’s Bangkok 8, it won’t be every person’s cup of tea.

Instead, now, I try to gently recommend books. I review everything I read here, so readers can seek out or avoid books as they are inclined. The books I am pleased to receive are ones I’ve placed on my wish lists at Amazon. They’ll still sit on my shelf, but at least they are wanted.

This article from The Edge (link via Arts and Letters Daily) elucidates how and why many adults choose speculative beliefs over scientific findings:

…resistance to science will arise in children when scientific claims clash with early emerging, intuitive expectations. This resistance will persist through adulthood if the scientific claims are contested within a society, and will be especially strong if there is a non-scientific alternative that is rooted in common sense and championed by people who are taken as reliable and trustworthy.

New York Magazine’s “The Best Books You’ve Never Read“. Link via Mental Multivitamin.

Wait, I have read some of them! Ron Hansen’s Mariette in Ecstasy, Ali Smith’s The Accidental, and Kelly Link’s Stranger Things Happen. All were well worth my time. But Normal Rush’s Mating, which one critic mentioned as his best? Feh. Hated it. Sexist, pedantic, and needlessly esoteric.

My suggestion for the list? Maureen McHugh’s Mothers and Other Monsters. Shockingly good.

#19 in my 2007 book challenge was The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon. I went to see Chabon discuss this book, a recent selection of Talking Volumes. Chabon in person is good looking, funny, and well spoken. I also saw him on the promotional tour for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. He joked about the danger of obsessing over his rank at Amazon. Since winning the Pulitzer, I’m guessing he doesn’t worry so much. Before that reading, I made an embarrassing gaffe. This time I was much better behaved. I stayed in my seat and kept my mouth shut, and listened while Chabon talked and read from his very entertaining book.

My opinion may be biased. I’ve had a literary crush on Michael Chabon since I read The Mysteries of Pittsburgh in college. It was a book that made me want to become a better reader (see #4). I’ve come to have a great deal of empathy for his wife, author Ayelet Waldman, diagnosed as bipolar after the birth of their fourth child. I admire her further for writing AND being married to Chabon. I would be intimidated to write alongside the multiple-award-winning author who’s been showered with critical acclaim since he was in college. She does, though, and her latest book was well reviewed.

Chabon’s TYPU is an alternate-reality noir, in which Jews were granted temporary exile in Alaska after WWII. Detective (”shammes”) Meyer Landsman investigates the murder of a man who lived in his building. He is discouraged from this by his new boss, who is also his ex-wife. In true noir fashion, he continues to pursue his investigation, pissing people off, getting shot at, and obsessing over dames (his ex and his dead sister). It’s a decent mystery, elevated far above the ordinary by its humor, and Chabon’s fluid prose and the eccentricity of the yiddish/noir/alternate history mix. In the end, though, Chabon has too much affection for his characters for anything very bad to happen. In fact, the description of Landsman’s ex is strikingly similar to that of Chabon’s wife. The novel can also be read, I think, as an extended mash note to her.

TYPU succeeds because it unexpectedly tweaks the noir formula. Like John Burdett did with Bangkok 8 (Buddhist noir) and Jonathan Lethem did with Motherless Brooklyn (noir with Tourette’s syndrome), Chabon has taken a seeming incongruity and made it work. TYPU is clever and fun, though perhaps less bitter than it would like to be.

which have become so difficult with two small children around that they FEEL like luxuries.

1. Eating when I’m hungry. Drinking enough water.
2. Going to the bathroom whenever I want. With the door open. Alone.
3. Phoning family. Giving attention only to the phone call.
4. Going to sleep when I’m merely tired. Getting up when I no longer am.
5. Drinking coffee WHILE IT’S STILL HOT! Freely eating a biscotti, or strudel, or toaster pastry.

1. Reading 75 to 100 pages a day.
2. Doing the daily NYT crossword puzzle. Only having to cheat on Saturday.
3. Watching wildlife. Recently sighted: a covey of baby quail, a mama hummingbird feeding her baby, and a pair of wild parrots.
4. Peace and quiet.
5. Dozing, then lolling, in bed before getting up.

My friend Becca and I went to see #35 in my 2007 movie challenge, Knocked Up, in the theater, without kids (though apparently some parents were OK with bringing small children into this R-rated film), and with buttered popcorn and candy.

I loved this movie. It is an ever-so-rare comedy of substance. It’s funny, it’s sad, and in the end it’s sweet. I left this movie feeling happy, as did NYT film critic A.O. Scott.

If you were a fan of director Judd Apatow’s critically acclaimed but criminally canceled television shows Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, you will probably appreciate this movie and its strange blend of hope, and acknowledgement of the suckiness of much of everyday life.

I know many people who didn’t like the similar weird mix in Apatow’s last film, The 40-Year-Old Virgin. I hope the packed theater at Knocked Up means that more people are open to Apatow’s geeky, complex, and ultimately life-affirming, sense of humor.

My husband G. Grod sent me a link from Boing Boing to Merlin Mann at 43 Folders on “The strange allure (and false hope) of email bankruptcy“. This was the first I’d heard of the term, though Mann posted previously about it, and it may date from as long ago as 1999, according to this WaPo article. The popular lit agent/blogger, Miss Snark, periodically referred to “hosing out her inbox” in a similar bid to start fresh. Mann has another suggestion for managing email that he calls the “email DMZ“.

The WaPo piece notes that many tech-savvy and email-inundated people are backing off from (or even out of) email in favor of the telephone. Since having baby Guppy 16 months ago, I’ve attempted the opposite, as I found phone calls more difficult than email.

As I noted recently, though, I’m buried in my inboxes, both at home and for the blog. They’ve swelled to a grand, cringe-inducing, and possibly paralyzing, total of 580. Mann captures my feelings on this, exactly:

Email is such a funny thing. People hand you these single little messages that are no heavier than a river pebble. But it doesn’t take long until you have acquired a pile of pebbles that’s taller than you and heavier than you could ever hope to move, even if you wanted to do it over a few dozen trips. But for the person who took the time to hand you their pebble, it seems outrageous that you can’t handle that one tiny thing. “What ‘pile’? It’s just a fucking pebble!”

To all the kind friends and family who have emailed me, I will again quote Mann, in reply to you.

I’m not prepared to declare bankruptcy just yet, but if you were kind enough to email me a pebble some time over the last few [YEARS], there’s a very good chance that I still haven’t found the time to do something appropriately nice with it. Which makes me feel awful. I sincerely apologize if your lovely pebble is still in my very large pile.

I’m currently on a sort of break, so I have the usual hope/delusion that I’ll be able to “catch up on everything” that this piece from the Onion skewered so wonderfully. Please be patient if (when?) I don’t get through all 580 pebbles in the next few weeks.

#18 in my 2007 book challenge for the year was Discipline without Tears, a book recommended to me by the doula who helped me through labor with Guppy. It’s not aimed at parents, but rather at teachers, though it has some good insights for both. The authors note that children are good observers, but bad interpreters. They contend that young children have four major desires when they act out: attention, power, revenge, and withdrawal. How an adult feels is a good hint as to the child’s object. An adult often feels annoyed at a child wanting attention, threatened by one seeking power, hurt by one seeking revenge, and helpless by one who has withdrawn. Adults are encouraged to communicate with the child to clarify the situation, and act in response to the different situations: give attention when the child isn’t seeking it, not when she is; give power to the child; don’t show hurt, and find ways for other children to draw out withdrawn peers. This is an old book, and somewhat dated, but it’s worthwhile in that it encourages adults to take the time to analyze what’s going on, learn new patterns, and teach new patterns. Skip the workbook at the end. I recommend re-reading the most relevant chapters instead.

Hello, gentle readers. I was unplugged last week getting some serious R, R, R, and R: rest, relaxation, rejuvenation, and reading. What a difference it’s made. I think we all need extended down time periodically, but life as we know it doesn’t tend to support or encourage it. There’s always family to visit, and why don’t we take a short trip here, and this and that, and then the vacation time is gone. I would’ve benefited from a week away after I weaned Drake and we moved, yet instead I’ve been doing full-time childcare for about three years, now. This break was better late than never, and I’m enjoying every moment, and appreciating it as if it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity (though I’m hoping it’s not). Last week I didn’t feel like writing anywhere but in my journal or on a postcard; I didn’t turn on my computer at all. This week I’m hoping to ease back in, first on the blog and then onto the creative stuff. I’m excited to get back to blogging.

If you have sent me an email recently and I haven’t replied, it’s not you, it’s me. I’m swamped. Buried. I’ve got more than 350 emails in my inbox, and less time each day to manage them.

I read and appreciate each one, and thank you, thank you for all the kind words and thoughts. I do hope to reply, and soon, but digging out of 350+ is going to take some time. (Funny, the backlog dates from around the time Guppy was born, over 15 months ago.)

A few things, in list form about Chabon’s appearance, as I’m tired and feel a cold coming on.

One of Chabon’s favorite books is Pride and Prejudice. When the interviewer expressed surprise at this, his voice gently chided her as he asked whether she was surprised that he had picked it, or that it was considered great at all. He admired Austen’s ability to dial up and down her ironic and perfectly pitched voice in the service of her characters. He also said that Elizabeth Bennet is one of the very few main characters that he never tires of spending time with.

While he was writing three of his recent novels–Summerland, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union–people sent him books by other authors that had similar, out-there themes. He waited till after he’d finished his book to read them. (American Gods by Neil Gaiman, a book about comic strips, and The Plot Against America by Philip Roth, respectively.)

Chabon no longer writes through the night, as he did when he was younger. He prefers waking early to spend the beginning of the day with his kids before they go to school, as opposed to 4 to 6 pm, which he noted is the hardest time of the day with kids. (Amen to that.) He also no longer writes short fiction, since the time he used to devote to it is now given to his four children, who range in age from four to thirteen. He likes to read fairy tales to them, since it’s something that can engage all ages.

#17 in my 2007 book challenge was Gilead, my second reading of Robinson’s luminous work. How can I possibly contain my admiration for this book in a brief review? I discussed it with two groups of people. Few liked it; many found it dull. Several wondered why it was good enough to win the Pulitzer. I admit that I admire it more than I enjoyed it. But the experience of it and the aftermath as I ruminate on it, are deeply pleasurable and satisfying.

It’s a letter by an elderly minister written to his young son, to be read long after his death. There is story, plot, mystery, and romance; all are part of the narrator’s ruminations on his life. This is not a fast-paced thriller. It is, though, a deep examination of human relationships, especially between parents and children. It is also a thoughtful theological examination of a microcosm of suffering and redemption, etched onto a small town.

On this reading, I found a parallel between the generations of the narrator’s family, and the ages of Christianity. His grandfather was a soldier and warrior, who had visions of God and lived by simplistic rules of right and wrong, like the God of the Old Testament. He also has only one eye, like Odin, the Norse god of thunder and war. The narrator’s father read widely, and valued peace above all. He had a contentious relationship with his father, much as Jesus did. The narrator, John Ames, is a thinker. He has books on theology and his own thoughts on those. He is an analog for the age of the Holy Spirit, in which there isn’t an immanent God. The question I still ponder is, what age of Christianity does the narrator’s son represent?

The last three movies I watched–Babel, For Your Consideration, and Infamous–were disappointments. All three had moments, but not enough to feel good about the time I spent on them, or to recommend them.

By skimming reviews from trusted sources like Time Out and Ebert and Roeper, I can get a pretty good idea of what I’ll like and what I can skip. I need to be more careful in the future. I have little time to myself, and I don’t want to spend it on mediocrity. I’m glad that I saw a few excellent movies recently, like The Lives of Others, Shadow of a Doubt, and Infernal Affairs, that remind me to keep trying.