Girl Detective

#13 in my 2007 book challenge was Marjane Satrapi’s memoir and graphic novel, Persepolis. A friend who heard Satrapi speak said the author disputes that label, and that she is a cartoonist.

Satrapi’s first volume of her memoir details her childhood in 1980s Iran. Since she and I are roughly the same age, I found it fascinating to learn the perspective of someone who lived in Iran when I was just beginning to watch the news and hear the media and adult perspectives in the United States. My perception at that time was that the Shah was a good man, unfairly ousted by the religious fanatic Khomeini; the US welcomed the Shah because that was the just thing to do. Both time, education, and Satrapi’s memoir have helped me gain a much more nuanced picture of what happened.

Satrapi manages, through her stark black/white contrasts, to convey a child’s perspective, though adult insight murmurs between the lines, both of her cartoon panels and her narration. My favorite pages may be 70 and 71, on which we learn the fate of Marji’s uncle. The art, panelling, and text combine for a bittersweet synthesis.

This is a touching, beautiful book, and one that gave up further rewards and insights on this beyond what I had on my first reading.

Richard III was #23 in my 2007 movie challenge. I am abashed to admit that we removed the plastic off our dvd copy that I’m fairly sure we bought new, i.e., in 2000, and two abodes ago. I wanted to watch in it preparation for Looking for Richard, a film I’d recorded on our Tivo soon after we moved to our new abode. In a spate of impulsive programming, G. Grod and I plied our DVR with too many requests, and Looking for Richard was deleted. (Yet, A Better Way to Die was not. And Looking for Richard is at none of my three libraries, and is no longer available. Oh, Irony, up yours.) But I digress.

Richard III was directed by Richard Loncraine, and starred Sir Ian McKellan.

The reasoning behind the film was to bring classical actor McKellen together with a director who has avoided the Bard; the result is a fresh, unified vision which may add lines and make cuts, but does a fine job of turning Shakespeare’s grand design into a veritable world at war.

The costumes and settings are a mythic 1930s fascist England. I had a brief moment of trepidation as the film began, and I wondered if I’d understand the language, and the story. The film, though, soon whisked me through the first demanding scene and through to the end at breakneck, exhilarating speed. The language of Shakespeare required a bit of acclimation, and the modern setting required a bit of temporal translating, but things quickly fell into place.

Dark, intense, and satisfying. Very much like a good, scary, roller-coaster ride.

I have never considered myself a good multitasker. Yet when I went on retreat this weekend and tried to cultivate mindfulness, I often often had to stop doing more than one thing at a time. I usually read when I eat. I usually listen to music while I drive, or walk. For thirty six hours, I tried to do one thing at a time. It’s much harder than it sounds.

When I searched for the quote to illustrate this, which goes, “When you’re eating, eat. When you’re walking, walk.” I could only find it in articles on mindfulness, never attributed to one person.

This morning I saw an alarming thing: the door to our laundry chute on the ground floor had popped open. The chute starts in the basement. I have more than one story’s worth of laundry!

That’s how long my peace of mind lasted after I returned from my 36-hour retreat. I sent G. Grod out to a movie with a friend, and had to call him at 5 p.m. to urge him home. Guppy and Drake’s needs were so enormous that I eventually wilted. My struggle with depression and anxiety continues, obviously. The good news is that I can be happy, rested, and balanced when I’m apart from my family, though I’ve still got a ways to go before I can do, and be, those things at home.

#22 in my 2007 movie challenge was Borat - Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan It was sometimes hilarious, and frequently cringe inducing–I often watched through a lattice of my fingers in front of my eyes. Sacha Baron Cohen has a strange, extreme sense of humor. The DVD is cleverly and thoroughly set up to look like it’s an illegal bootleg, and all extras are titled in Borat-ese. This movie was funny, but also worthwhile because it became a comedic touchstone so quickly; it’s useful to know what everyone else is referring to.

Isn’t that a fab title? Too long, but funny enough to deserve its length. #12 in my 2007 book challenge was You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing by John Scalzi.

My husband G. Grod started reading Scalzi’s blog, The Whatever, a while back, and frequently shares entries with me. Scalzi is funny (Chapter 4: Science Fiction, or, Don’t Skip This Chapter, You Damned Writing Snobs), smart, and not shy about sharing how he manages to make a decent living as a writer. (Hint: it’s not book tours and Oprah, though he is coming to a city near you very soon to promote his new novel, The Last Colony.) Scalzi is a pragmatist, not a romantic. He writes for hire, and for fun. He picked the topic of his novel, Old Man’s War, by going to the bookstore and studying which sci-fi books sold well. He lives in what I grew up calling BFE Ohio, where the cost of living is low, the politics swing right, and culture isn’t entirely absent, though I would argue that fine dining pretty much is. (Scalzi also claims that central-ish Ohio is a great place to raise a kid. He’s entitled to that opinion. I was a kid raised in Ohio. I left at 19 with a drinking problem and a decided lack of worldliness. Both of those got better once I was out of Ohio.)

YNFA is a collection of his blog entries. Check out the archives at The Whatever. If you like what you read, you’ll like YNFA. Why buy it if the individual entries are available for free? One, you’ll contribute to the decent living that one writer makes. If you’re a writer aspiring to make money and be published, that’s gotta help to slough some karma. Two, the edition, by Subterranean Press, is very nice. It’s cloth bound with good typefaces. My quibbles? Page 271 has a typeface goof, and there are a sprinkling of errors throughout the text that a more careful editing should have caught.

Heartening, humbling, and fun to read.

P.S. YNFA sold out of its initial print run! If you’re interested, feedback to Subterranean Press might encourage a second printing.

I woke Friday morning with a severe spike in my already considerable irritability. It was not long before I was angry and cursing aloud in front of the kids, which I’ve learned is a sign of rising anxiety for me. I sent off a quick email to a retreat center to see if they had any space. We have a babysitter helping us with childcare for now, so I left soon after she arrived, and went first to a yoga class, then to my regularly scheduled therapy appointment. I returned home better, though not feeling calm, and had almost forgotten about my inquiry to the retreat center. When I checked email at home, they’d replied and had a last minute cancellation at the hermitage, their private cabin for a solitary retreat. Figuring that the universe seemed to be answering my request, I said yes, then sent off a few emails and made some calls to alert friends that G. Grod would be on his own for the next 36 hours and could use some help with the boys.

My friend Becca recommended the ARC retreat center to me, and I will thank her forever for it. I’ve now gone twice, and it is a haven. The hermitage cabin has just what it needs and no more. Since I tend to anxious overdoing, I took way too much with me, but sorted things out when I got there.

Once I could think clearly, I realized what I did and didn’t need.

Did need: book, journal, fiction notebook.

Didn’t need: laptop, City Pages, two Entertainment Weekly’s, five books to review for the blog.

I also probably didn’t need any toiletries other than sunscreen, toothpaste and toothbrush. (And I would’ve liked to have fluoride-free toothpaste, since the cabin doesn’t have running water.)

The staff at ARC is wonderfully supportive, and the food they make is vegetarian, hearty, sustaining AND delicious. There was fresh bread at almost every meal, some wonderful gingered beets from a recipe in Sundays at Moosewood. I had a restorative 36 hours. During that time, I tried and succeeded at doing only one thing at a time; I didn’t multitask. I didn’t read while I ate (or in the outhouse). I also tried, and mostly succeeded, at not making a to-do list. I did one thing at a time, and allowed myself just one, “and then”. This worked surprisingly well, probably because I was in a tiny cabin in the woods by myself and chose to limit my options to: eating, sleeping, reading, journalling, novelling, and walking.

I have a huge crush on the book I took with me, that I finished this morning in between my first breakfast (yogurt with strawberry rhubarb sauce and granola, bread and butter, coffee with almond biscotti) and second breakfast (egg scramble with cheddar cheese and hummos). It’s Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

READ THIS BOOK. It’s funny, sad, honest and intelligent and it’s got some GREAT stuff on religion and spirituality. Gilbert is instantly accessible and empathetic. My only quibble (oh, I always have one, don’t I?) is Gilbert’s overuse of male pronouns for God. A little equal opportunity time for goddesses would have been lovely.

I came back this morning rested and with some little reserve that helped me to handle the boys screaming and poking and crying that has sporadically filled the day. I really needed to get away, and I’m so thankful and fortunate that I could do so. Thanks, G. Grod. Thanks, friends who helped G. Grod. Thanks again, Becca. Thanks, ARC staff. Thanks, whoever cancelled your hermitage reservation. Thanks, Liz Gilbert for writing an awesome spiritual memoir. Everybody rocks.

A few people’s voices inspire in me a strong, visceral negative reaction; I can’t get beyond the sound to what they are saying. My antipathy to their voices is immediate, and causes me to leap across rooms or lunge into front seats to change the CD or the radio station. I am thankful that these aren’t frequent.

1. The Sugarcubes/Bjork. A boss of mine used to play this when we had to go on business road trips. She also liked the Sundays, and both bands plus Bjork got jumbled together into one unhappy sound memory.

2. Joey Lauren Adams in Chasing Amy. I liked the movie. I hated that Adams, who was dating director Kevin Smith at the time, was given ridiculously long, talk-y speeches. Her voice should be used sparingly, not in Smith-ish talkfests. May she never do a Tarantino movie.

3. Garrison Keillor. I call him the bad man. His creepy baritone scares me.

4. Mazzy Star, Fade into Me. Unfortunately, this is one of those 90’s hits that gets replayed all the time. The drawn out music plus the whiny vocals are like fingernails down a chalkboard.

I think 1yo Guppy may be a hobbit. He is short, yet round. He demands second breakfast. Unlike the other three of us, he is sweet and good-natured; he laughs and smiles often. He also has a straightforward demeanor. It’s usually simple to figure out his wants and needs, or what’s bothering him if he’s crying or screaming.

While he doesn’t have furry feet, he did arrive covered in lanugo, since he was born two weeks before his due date. Maybe hobbits are better at disguising themselves and insinuating themselves into human families these days. In any case, Guppy is pretty fun to have around.

One of the skills I’ve acquired as a parent is the quick scan my environment for the most distracting and least harmful object to give my child(ren). Last week, my kind sister Sydney arranged for someone to clean our house. In a frenzy of pre-cleaning prep, I somehow found myself re-organizing G. Grod’s closet.

Why, yes, I do have anxiety issues. Thanks for noticing.

Both 3yo Drake and 1yo Guppy were trying to insinuate themselves into the not-that-large closet with me, making things crowded, metaphorically weird, and fraught with danger. Each by himself has considerable mess-making power. When Drake and Guppy join forces, though, the destructive power doesn’t just increase or double, I think it squares. In other words, it’s not incremental or arithmetic, it’s GEOMETRIC. The whole is WAY bigger than the sum of the parts.

With the Entropy Brothers approaching, my recon produced a talking Simpson’s watch, which I think was a Burger King giveaway, still in the original box. I gave the box to Guppy, and the talking watch to Drake. The noise button is Homer’s voice saying, “Mmm, burger,” but with two problems. One, the watch was a freebie, so it wasn’t that high quality and good an imitation to begin with. Two, it was old. The battery was dying, so the already poor sound was slowed down and gravelly.

My distractions worked, though. Drake backed out of the closet with the watch, pressing the noise button over and over. Guppy backed out and dismantled then chewed on the cardboard box. I finished re-arranging the closet. It just took that few minutes, though, for Drake to perfect his imitation of the watch’s “Mmm, burger.” I was astonished, impressed and disturbed that Drake’s imitation was spot on–Homer’s voice, filtered through a cheap watch, with a dying battery. It was uncanny.

[Isn't this post rather like a Simpsons episode itself; it starts out with me talking about one thing, then ends somewhere very different?]

Three more things, which I feel are distinct enough to merit their own postscript, rather than me cramming them retroactively into yesterday’s post on Stephen King and Fieldwork.

One: M., who blogs at Mental Multivitamin, is also a fan of Entertainment Weekly. She is erudite, but not elitist. She, too, liked the essay by King.

Two: I forgot one of the reasons I was so attracted to Gilead when I first saw it in hardcover. Not only was it physically beautiful to look at, but it also felt good in the hand. It was a good size and weight; its slight heft bespoke substance, not the overwhelming weight of pretension. And the cover was textured, so the weathered pastels felt as good as they looked.

Three: one more thing urged me to buy and read Gilead, but I felt it was too long to add to yesterday’s already long post. My writing instructor told this story, which I hope is true, of an editor at Farrar, Straus, Giroux who appeared at the door of another editor, holding an unremarkable box in his hand.

“Guess what I’m holding?” editor #1 asked, holding the box aloft.

He paused dramatically; he knew editor #2 had no idea.

He continued, his voice reverent and excited. “The manuscript for Marilynne Robinson’s second novel.”

How could I not want to read the book that inspired such a reaction?

I am an unapologetic reader of Entertainment Weekly. For all the swearing off of magazines I’ve done, there are a few that rise above the crowd to earn my attention. EW is one of those. I find it smart, funny, and a good, quick review of many things important to me: books, movies, tv and music. Sneer if you must, but in this case I’m no snob. I like EW because it embraces popular culture, though whether it’s high, medium or low is anyone’s call.

Stephen King is a columnist for EW. I haven’t read a King novel in many years, but I enjoy his “The Pop of King” and his sense of humor. In April 6, 2007’s “How to Bury a Book,” he accuses publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux of dropping the ball with its treatment of the new novel Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski. King takes issue with the cover and the title. He feels they tell nothing about, and therefore don’t sell, the book. King picked Fieldwork up on impulse, in spite of the cover and title, and was pleasantly surprised. He says that FSG has burdened the book with a smeary image and vague title because they’re afraid to market a literary novel overtly:

Hey, guys, why not put the heroine on the jacket….why not actually sell this baby a little?

I found it interesting that King also took issue with the cover and title of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, also from FSG, because I clearly remember the first time I saw that book in a store. I had to sternly restrain myself from buying Gilead in hardcover. Oh, how I wanted that book. The cover was a lovely wash of bleached-out color. It looked like the door of an old church. That plus the title told me it would be a book about religion and spirituality. I didn’t buy the book, because I managed to adhere to whatever “if I’m not about to read it next I can’t buy it, and I certainly can’t buy it in hardcover because by the time I read it, not only will it be out in paperback, it will probably have gone through a trade paperback printing into a mass market printing and I’ll have spent $25+ on a book that’s harder to read because of its lack of portability, and I’ll long for the lighter weight, and smaller pocketbook dent, of a paperback” vow I had taken at the time. I continued to visit that hardcover on subsequent bookstore trips, even after I borrowed Gilead from the library. I bought it as soon as it came out in trade paperback.

I went to amazon.com to check out Fieldwork after I read King’s column. Based on the description of the book, the cover and King’s endorsement, I would get this book, in spite of the mixed editorial reviews at amazon. (I don’t take the editorial reviews as gospel, and I pretty much ignore the personal reviews–too little signal to noise. But the ed. reviews usually point me in the right direction: check it out/meh/avoid.) I might not buy Fieldwork in hardcover (see para. above). But I would certainly reserve it from the library, which notifies them that the book is in demand, and encourages them to purchase more copies. The smudgey cover and title, along with the book description, point to a messy tale about anthropologists. The image and title both appeal to me, and make sense.

I find King’s complaints interesting. He may have a point that publishers are afraid to market literary fiction. Yet his argument sounds to me like he’s taking his opinion–that the cover and title should be more obvious in order to better sell the book–and universalizing it. Given that King is mostly a writer in the horror genre, and genre books tend to have more representative and less impressionistic covers and titles, I think he has a bias for what he likes that may not be as true for “ordinary readers,” as he believes.

Let me be clear. He is Stephen Freakin’ King, the bestselling author, many of whose books I’ve read and bought over the years. I am merely the author of this little weblog, and mostly unpublished. His opinion counts for more than mine. But since I consider myself one of the “ordinary readers” whom he validates, I wanted to voice my difference of opinion.

In the end, it feels unfair to quibble with King. He’s using the considerable power of his good opinion to support Fieldwork. In fact, his closing words are so good they should be repeated:

Under the drab title and drab cover, there’s a story that cooks like a mother. It’s called Fieldwork.

#21 in my 2007 movie challenge was Over the Hedge, which we rented from the library and allowed Drake to watch. When I asked him what the movie was about, he answered, “A crash.” So I’m not sure Drake is quite ready for prolonged narratives, even of the animated kind. I liked the movie, too, and thought it was about more than a crash but about natural versus junk food, and the suburban desire to mimic nature while really avoiding it. There’s some very good voice work here by Steve Carell, as Hammy the hyperactive squirrel. Shatner as a daddy opossum does brilliant work playing dead. This is a decent movie for both adults and kids.

But be warned; it gave me a serious craving for Pringles. Oh, excuse me, “Spuddies”.

#20 in my 2007 movie challenge was Brad Anderson’s The Machinist, starring a skeletal Christian Bale. Since I’ve seen both Memento and Fight Club, the reveals at the end weren’t particularly surprising. I was disappointed to see Jennifer Jason Leigh in the thankless role of a hooker with a heart of gold who will leave her job for Bale. What’s compelling, though, is the look of the film. It’s heavily stylized with dark, Hitchcockian flair. Most arresting, though, is Bale’s gaunt physique, and the haunted look this brings to his character. I enjoyed two of Anderson’s previous films, Next Stop Wonderland and Happy Accidents. Both those were quirky romantic dramedies, decidedly different from the dark horror of this film.

#19 in my 2007 movie challenge was The Devil Wears Prada. I couldn’t read the book when it came out. I put it down at the 50-page mark because it was so poorly written, and because the main character was so unlikeable. I wanted to see the movie because I’d heard good things about the performances. Streep, Tucci, and Blunt all bring nuance and dimension to characters that could easily have been caricatures. I’m not sure that the creepily doe-eyed Hathaway did much to redeem the main character for me, though. She was still a fashion-ignorant intellectual snob who underwent a Cinderella makeover and saw the humanity in her co-workers; no surprises here.

Streep’s platinum forelock looked so distinct that I suspect it was a wig. And the gag reel was well worth watching for the many shots of the main characters falling down in their high heels.

#18 in my 2007 movie challenge was Tapeheads. My recent viewing of Repo Man reminded me that I’d never seen this 80’s oddity, even though it starred two favorites of mine, John Cusack and Tim Robbins. I enjoyed this tale of a team of video nerds more than I did Repo Man. Both movies share a similar whacked-out humor, perhaps because both were produced by Michael Nesmith, the smart Monkee and heir to the Liquid Paper fortune. I was amused to see that Robbins’s character could very well be an early prototype of Dwight Schrute from The Office, and some of the movie’s music was done by Fishbone, explaining the provenance of the T-shirt that Robbins sports in Bull Durham.

#17 in my 2007 movie challenge was Michael Mann’s Miami Vice. I loved Mann’s 2004 Collateral, but I found Vice deeply, disappointingly silly. And I am officially over the plot device of putting a woman in danger in order to manipulate a man. It’s a crap cliche, and I’ve had enough of it.

#16 in my 2007 movie challenge was 21 Grams, the 2003 effort by Alexander Gonzalez Inarritu, nominated for Oscars this year for Babel. 21 Grams, like Amores Perros, is a criss-crossing lives story that does not unfold in linear time. Eventually, the story settles into a coherent narrative but it’s the performances by Sean Penn, Naomi Watts and Benicio del Toro that grabbed my attention. Depressing yet redemptive.

#11 in my 2007 book challenge was Breaking Up, a graphic novel written Aimee Friedman with art by Christine Norrie. I’ve admired Norrie’s work on the Hopeless Savages series, as well as her previous book Cheat. I’d not read Friedman before. This is the story of four friends at an arts high school nicknamed “Fashion High”. The friends bicker over boys, then “break up” and get back together. The narrator, Chloe, is a painter. She falls for a geek boy; her friends don’t approve. In the end, everyone is wiser and more tolerant, and Chloe and the (very cutely drawn) geek boy are together. This felt a little like a mishmash of 90210 episodes. And while that inspires affection in me, it also disappoints, because there was little that was new here. The dilemmas the girls faced felt real–desire for popularity, overly strict parents, pressuring boyfriend, inappropriate crush–but more young teen than young adult. I did very much like the sneaky, specific, and cruel revenge exacted on the pretty blond by the popularity queen, whose boyfriend the blond was trying to steal.

I suspect that Friedman’s lack of experience writing for the comics format is what made the prose feel a bit stiff to me. But what made this book stand out was Norrie’s art, and her interpretation of the fairly straightforward teen story. Her art gave the characters depth, made them sympathetic, and added both humor and pathos to Friedman’s story. Norrie did a very good job showing what Friedman was telling. The art infuses the story with a sweetness and empathy for its confused teen protagonists that ultimately elevates this above standard YA fare.