Girl Detective

I saw The Golem years ago, but passed by it because of its imposing cover, even though it was by one of my favorite artists, Trina Schart Hyman. But the concluding essay in Michael Chabon’s Maps and Legends, “Golems I Have Known,” reminded me of it, so I sought it out.

This is definitely a book for older children, not only in length; it’s 94 pages, divided into chapters, each one an individual story. But it’s quite dark and sad, dealing with themes of the extreme prejudice of Jews that prefigured the Holocaust. In Rogasky’s version, Rabbi Judah Loew creates a man of clay, the Golem, whom he names Joseph. Joseph is a protector of the Jews of sixteenth-century Prague. Each tale shows Joseph’s strengths and limitations, and how the relationship between him and the rabbi develops.

The introduction to one of the chapters does a good job of describing the book:

The story here is one of blood and murder. Hatred is its root. In hatred there is evil, and in evil there is madness. That is the lesson, if there is one. And that is why the story will be told.

Hyman’s illustrations are detailed, beautiful, and appropriate to the complex subject matter. This is good stuff for older children, but too scary for young ones.

Prior to seeing the Guthrie’s current production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, I read the text of the play. It’s easy to see it’s one of Shakespeare’s earliest. The prose and poetry aren’t as polished, and it prefigured many of his later, better plays in some of the phrasing, and the cross-dressing of a female character in love. Its ending is neatly tied up, though surprising in some of the particulars, like a threat of rape and an overquick, overgenerous forgiveness.

Joe Dowling’s Guthrie production did an engaging job of staging they play. It’s set in 1955, and the conceit is that the play is a live performance to be shown on television. Since the play is a comedy, and a light one, the liberty with setting did not trouble me. I found, though, that the young actors playing the lead parts of Valentine, Proteus, Silvia and Julia, were less strong than those actors in supporting parts, including Kris Nelson as the producer, a woefully underutilized Isabell Monk O’Connor, and Lee Mark Nelson as the Duke. It was Jim Lichtscheidl as Lance, though, who stole the show. His sometime stage companion didn’t always hit his mark, but Lance’s scenes were hilarious, and felt authentically true to the play as well as slightly improvised. This was a good example of why plays are meant to see performed, and not only read as text. When I read the play, I didn’t care for the scenes with Lance. Having seen the Guthrie production, I now have a much increased appreciation for them.

Overall entertaining, but not a must see. I much preferred Henry V.

I read too many reviews of The Wrestler before I saw it. They didn’t give away the ending, but they did spoil the small joys of the film, which are many. So I’ll say very little.

Mickey Rourke’s performance is amazing. The film is a deep, involving character study, though it works less well as a holistic story. Marisa Tomei is also strong, but I thought director Darren Aronofsky should have been more sparing in the use of nudity, which felt gratuitous. Similarly, I have lingering discomfort over Aronofsky’s deliberate blurring of the line between Rourke and his character. Still, it’s a powerful, moving film. See it before some of what’s great about it is spoiled, either by reviews or by the deserved attention it’s receiving.

In his essay “Fan Fictions: On Sherlock Holmes,” from Maps and Legends, Michael Chabon discusses how the details of Doyle’s life contributed to his writing of the Holmes oeuvre. Chabon is adamant that the Holmes stories are entertaining and well done, yet shouldn’t be taken too seriously. I was reminded me the scene in The Thirteenth Tale when the doctor tells the overwrought heroine to stop reading gothic fiction, and gives her a prescription for Sherlock Holmes.

A Study in Scarlet & The Sign of the Four, two short novels, are the beginning of the Holmes canon. They are racist, sexist, anti-Mormon, and inconsistent, yet enduringly funny, engaging, and entertaining.

In A Study in Scarlet, Dr. Watson meets Holmes, and they quickly are involved in a nasty murder case involving Mormons.

There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.

As for The Sign of the Four, one of the characters described it very well:

‘It is a romance!’ cried Mrs Forrester. ‘An injured lady, half a million in treasure, a black cannibal and a wooden-legged ruffian. They take the place of the conventional dragon or wicked earl.’

‘And two knights errant to the rescue,’ added Miss Morstan, with a bright glance at me

.

In addition to the stories, the characters held my attention as well. Dr Watson, on Sherlock Holmes’ mood swings:

Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him; but now and again a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting-room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night. On these occasions I have noticed such a dreamy, vacant experssion in his eyes that I might have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some narcotic had not the temperance and cleanliness of his hwole life forbidden such a notion.

In The Sign of the Four, Holmes still vacillates between depression and mania, but his drug use is acknowledged, one of the inconsistencies in the series; Chabon says these show Doyle was likely writing quickly for money, with little attention to continuity.

Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time, his eyes rested thoughtfully on the sinewy forearm and wries, all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction.

Three times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance, but custom had not reconciled my mind to it….

‘Which is it today,’ I asked, ‘morphine or cocaine?’

He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-leather volume which he had opened.

‘It is cocaine,’ he said, ‘a seven-percent solution. Would you like to try it?’

Inconsistencies and dated views included, these two novels, which I bought in one volume, were a lovely change after I finished Shakespeare’s Richard II. I may try to work in more Holmes throughout the rest of the year.

I found the recent Wuthering Heights Masterpiece adaptation on PBS mostly disappointing. It felt romanticized rather than rough; Wuthering Heights looked much too clean.

EDITED TO ADD in 2014. Originally I said some flip and unkind things here about Charlotte Riley as Catherine and some production decisions. They were excerpted elsewhere and read by Riley and others, and I was correctly chastised for my glib, bitchy tone. I’m trying to be entertaining on this blog, but as Nigel notes in This is Spinal Tap, there’s a fine line between clever and stupid. Thus, I will say after re-watching this adaptation, Riley is spirited and lovely as Cathy, but her groomed eyebrows and white teeth made her look too modern to me. (end of this edit)

Heathcliff, on the other hand, was done very well by Tom Hardy. His crooked teeth, wild hair, large frame, jolie-laide countenance and well-done acting all helped convey the palpable menace, sexiness and craziness that is this complex character.

I’ll re-read the book soon, as I couldn’t tell quite how many liberties they took with the dialogue.

Edited to add after a 2014 rereading of that Oxford edition. The 2009 version takes a number of liberties with the text, including having Cathy and Heathcliff actually consummate their passion, and Heathcliff actively takes his own life at the end. It’s one of the few adaptations that does include both generations, though, and Hardy does Heathcliff well, so I do recommend it. Also, Riley and Hardy ended up together in real life, so Riley FTW, says I.

I planned to skip The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It looked sappy and sounded far too much like Forrest Gump. Yet when it got a sled-load of Oscar nominations, I thought I’d better pay attention, so I managed to see the last showing of it at the Heights Theater before it moved on. I’m glad I did.

Not that it wasn’t a mixed bag. I loathed the framing story, where a woman on her deathbed is communicating the past to her daughter. Cate Blanchett is covered in so many layers of makeup she might as well be an animatronic doll; the dialogue might have been more intelligible. And the choice of a recurring bird symbol and the setting during Hurricane Katrina felt forced and unpleasant.

Yet I thought it was a good film. It felt old-fashioned in its sweeping, decades-long central story, with its many characters, most of whom were sufficiently well characterized to distinguish them. Taraji P. Henderson, as the woman who finds a strange baby, and Tilda Swinton, as a woman who befriends Benjamin when he leaves home, are both excellent and luminous. Blanchett, though, has a glow and presence only surpassed in her turn as Galadriel in the LoTR trilogy. Her beauty and presence resonate as Daisy, a childhood friend of Benjamin’s.

It’s Pitt, though, whose star blazes the brightest, especially because he’s such a well-known movie star. His backward aging has more meaning, since his image has been so familiar to the public since 1991 and Thelma and Louise. Once he gets to about his real age, in the middle of the film, I was well and truly hooked. And when he got even younger, he so resembled himself from movies I recall like A River Runs Through It and Thelma and Louise that it spooked me, even as it had to spook the other characters in the film. I cried at the end of the central story; even the saccharine ending of the framing story didn’t undo my feeling that seeing Benjamin Button was time well spent.

The Guardian, on the rise of Scandinavian crime fiction:

Scandinavian crime fiction may still be something of a novelty act in the UK, but it’s a well-established genre in the rest of Europe, particularly Germany and France.

Link from The Morning News.

My book group recently read and thought well of Henning Mankell’s Return of the Dancing Master.

I remember the glowing reviews of Richard Roeper and Michael Phillips on Ebert and Roeper At the Movies when Snow Angels came out, so I was excited when the dvd finally came in at the library. My husband G. Grod said he didn’t want to watch it, as it would be too depressing. Alas, he was right. Snow Angels starts with a hint of tragedy to come, but that hint has nothing on the tragedy that does come, which is all the more wrenching for its unexpectedness.

The film has a lot going for it. Much of the imagery is beautiful, and lingers. There is a sweet, mostly believable romance between teens Michael Angarano and Olivia Thirlby. Both Angarano and Sam Rockwell give tremendous and moving performances.

Less successful is Kate Beckinsale, less because of her acting ability than because she no longer looks like a real-enough person to be believable in a small-town tale like this. Her long, groomed hair, the sculpted slope of her nose, her full lips, her lack of forehead movement, and her inflated chest all reminded me of a Barbie doll, not a believable, sympathetic character. Especially in scenes with Rockwell, Beckinsale’s look rang false, both because of its artificiality, and because her superficial prettiness was not a match for Rockwell’s everyday schlub. A.O. Scott had a similar reaction, from his review:

As for Ms. Beckinsale, her skill and discipline cannot overcome the sense that she is an exotic species transplanted into this grim ecosystem. Hard as she works to convince us otherwise, it’s a stretch to believe that a woman with the kind of poised confidence in her own beauty she manifests would wind up with an underachieving mouth breather like Glenn.

This boy/girl imbalance was also the only false note for me in the teen romance. Angarano was charmingly, geekily real. Thirlby, though, is so attractive, cool and self assured that she’s more likely to be that kid’s fantasy than his actual girlfriend.

The grand scale of the tragedy, along with the disruptive feel of these male/female pairs, left me wishing I’d skipped this one.

Earlier in the month, I got carried away by a special the Guthrie theater was offering, and bought tickets not only to the two plays I was interested in–Henry V and Two Gentlemen of Verona–but also to Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance. This last was a mistake.

A tale of tension and anxiety in WASPy suburbs of the mid-sixties, the play’s slow pace was worsened by two intermissions. The set was beautiful, though, and I especially liked the splatter painting at its center, a hint of the chaos that underlies the delicate balance of the title. The individual performances were uniformly good (though I found Candy Buckley as Claire looked distractingly like my sister Sydney), but were overwhelmed by the overlong play. It so lost its tension by the end that I wondered less about the characters than about why I’d spent time and money to watch them.

Other reviews: TCDaily, Examiner, Star Tribune

said Mary Lucia, after 5yo Drake told her his favorite band was Rush, at today’s Rock the Cradle event. We got the kids out of the house and to a variety of activities at a free event on a super-cold day. I love it when a plan comes together.

We went three years ago, pre-Guppy with then-2.5yo Drake. It was super crowded, and not so much fun; he didn’t want to do much. This year, though, both boys had a great time. They enjoyed the disco and the instrument room. Guppy liked family yoga with me, and Drake liked being interviewed “on air” by Mary. There were more events and bigger spaces than in previous years, so it was manageable, though still crowded. It was a good reminder that just because something doesn’t work once with the kid(s) doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try again.

I recently attended a Guthrie Theater production of Henry V. While I’ve read and seen that play several times, I’ve not read either part i or ii of Henry IV. I began them, but backed up further re-read King Richard II, since they all feel of a piece.

It is both a history and a tragedy, so I don’t think it will spoil much to write that things end badly for Richard. Poor Richard. He seems to be doing a decent job as king, recently declared by his now-dead grandfather, Edward III. As usual, Shakespeare plays fast and loose with historical detail, relying on several sources for his play. Superficially, the play is about the struggle between Richard II and Henry Bolingbroke. Ultimately, though, I found this a complex and involving character study of a young, inexperienced king, that foreshadows elements of Henry V and many other of his plays.

For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the deaths of kings:
How some have been depos’d, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed,
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping kill’d,
All murthered–for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court, and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear’d, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable; and, humour’d thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king! (III, ii, 155-170)

I read the Arden edition, 2nd series, edited by Peter Ure. I didn’t care for this version. The footnotes were concerned mostly with arguing for and against the source material, rather than in explicating the text. There is now an Arden 3rd series version available, so I’d be interested to see how it differs.

I really liked the cover depiction of Richard, and felt it nicely represented elements of his character. He has a high forehead, denoting scholarly wisdom, which is shown in his preference for words and speeches. He has a full upper lip, denoting sensuality. His collar is much too large, hinting that Richard isn’t up to the grand task of being king. And I fancy the look on his young, tired looking face is at least wary, if not actually scared.

I look forward to finally reading about Henry IV, and seeing how well (according to Shakespeare, at least) he fills the role of king.

In a standalone picture book for young readers, Newbery Award winner Kate DiCamillo teams with artist Harry Bliss (Diary of a Spider, Worm and Fly, respectively) for Louise, the Adventures of a Chicken. Three times Louise leaves her farm looking for adventure. Three times she finds it only to end up in grave danger of being eaten. I won’t spoil the ending(s), though I will say they’re satisfying.

Bliss’s watercolor illustrations beautifully capture Louise, and the complicated, sometimes dangerous, situations she encounters. But always there is the security of home and the farm, if she can only get back.

The youngest readers might be scared by a few elements, such as a shipwreck or a chicken-napping. But Louise is a stalwart bird I think kids and their parents will both enjoy.

My husband G. Grod is an Eagles fan. He was in a bad mood for most of the early football season, and a risingly good one towards the end. Each year, Drake and Guppy (now 5 and almost-3yo, respectively) are able to watch a little more of the game. Drake, ever oppositional, learned this year that it annoyed G. to cheer for the Eagles’ opponent. A low point for G. was when Drake cried after a spectacular Brian Westbrook touchdown.

Strange consequences of football watching have developed though, some more concerning than others. Two seasons ago, Drake was terrified of a rock-em, sock-em robot commercial, which I think was for some brand of truck. He would shriek, throw himself to the ground in a tantrum, and take a long time to calm. This season, it’s amusing how Drake re-enacts things that happen to him in slow motion. I’m not sure if it’s amusing when he insists that Bud Light is a good beer, or wants me to look up Ford F150 trucks and iPods at amazon to put on his wish list.

I just hope he doesn’t start talking about erectile dysfunction.

If you’re reading this on a feed, please click through. My technical support guy, ahem, husband, finally was able to do the a$$load of tasks needed for an upgrade to Wordpress 2.7, and a new template.

It’s very different from the last, very busy one. I like the non-serif headers and serif for the text–yay for round periods! My only concern so far is that the white background doesn’t provide enough contrast, in general and to see the links.

What do you think? Is it in, or is it out? (Imagine that phrase in Heidi Klum’s voice.)

From Salon’s review of Food Matters by Mark Bittman:

The essence of the Bittman approach is simplicity, ease and quality, but that means he has to walk a fine and constantly shifting line. Americans’ attitudes toward what we eat are laden with class and cultural baggage.

Now Bittman has waded even further into the fray by publishing “Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating With More Than 75 Recipes,” an unusual blend of manifesto, self-help manual and cookbook designed to convince people that they can drastically improve their diets with relatively little discomfort. Not only that, but in doing so, Bittman avows, they can also save the planet and relieve some of the pressure on their pocketbooks. As promises go, that’s a whopper, a super-trifecta encompassing the major obsessions of the current moment: weight loss, environmentalism and penny-pinching.

Laura Miller succinctly notes that Bittman’s book is “applied Pollan”, referring to Michael, who wrote The Omnivore’s Dilemma (reductive summary: eat more local, sustainably created foods) and In Defense of Food (reductive summary: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants”)

I’ve been a fan of Bittman’s since he wrote for Cook’s Illustrated. He’s the creator of the New York Times cooking column “The Minimalist,” advocating real food cooked simply and easily. He has Bitten, a blog at the New York Times, and his How to Cook Everything, which I consult so often pages are falling out, just celebrated its 10th anniversary.

My family and I aren’t ready to try the “vegan till 6pm plan”, but I was game to give the Food Matters approach a try. This was Monday’s meal plan:

Breakfast: yogurt and cereal
Morning snack: tofu and berry smoothie and frozen waffles
Lunch: Spinach and sweet potato salad with warm bacon dressing
Afternoon snack: buttered popcorn made on the stovetop, and hot cocoa
Dinner: Beet soup with Three Legumes (From Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone)
Dessert: B.T. McElrath chocolates

The downside was the time involved in planning and making things, and having a lot of dishes to clean. The upside was that the food tasted great, the kids even tried the beet soup, and I felt good about the quality and variety, and I didn’t feel deprived or resentful. Now I see if I can keep this up, and if practice makes it easier. (Salon link from Arts & Letters Daily)

Cribbed from an article I’m working on somewhere else. Three cold/flu remedies that have more than anecdotal evidence to recommend them:

Sambucol: This brand of black elderberry syrup also comes in tablets. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized study, Sambucol reduced the duration of flu symptoms to three to four days. Also, it’s pleasant tasting, so my five-year-old and two-year-old sons are happy to take it.

Oscillococcinum: In several studies, it’s been shown to reduce the severity of symptoms and length of flu illness.

Andrographis paniculata: In a double blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group clinical study, subjects who took this herb showed a significant reduction in upper respiratory tract infection and sinusitis symptoms.

Please remember: I’m a girl detective, not a doctor, so consult yours before taking anything.

Longtime reader and email correspondent Holly, of the blog On My Bookshelf, kindly gave this blog a butterfly award. I’m supposed to post the butterfly visual and list other sites, but I’m just terrible at this kind of thing. Thank you, Holly, and please accept my apologies for being lame. Everyone else, go check out Holly’s blog.

Carrie, of the blog Books and Movies, tagged me in a meme about the excuses we use when we’re behind on reading, particularly the books on our shelves. I’m also terrible at memes. I replied in her comments to the post, but I forgot to mention that I often give movies precedence over books and later regret it. Go check out Carrie’s blog, too.

Finally, as always, I apologize because I get and read all your comments but don’t always have time to comment or email back. I do read and enjoy every one, and will try to do better this year about keeping up, because I really value the email pen pals I’ve gained here.

or, why movies are more likely to be great in the theater than at home. (Link from The Morning News.)

Studies have indicated that Elevation is triggered by the stimulus of our vagus nerve, described by Wikipedia as the only nerve that starts in the brainstem and extends down below the head, to the neck, chest and abdomen, where it contributes to the innervation of the viscera. It must be involved in what we call “visceral feelings,” defined as “relating to deep inward feelings rather than to the intellect.”

The vagus nerve would certainly account for what I feel, which is as much physical than mental. For years, when asked “how do you know a movie is great?” I’ve had the same reply: I feel a tingling in my spine. People look at me blankly. I explain that I feel an actual physical sensation that does not depend on the abstract quality of the movie, but on–well, my visceral feelings.

It still sometimes shocks and disturbs me how many tiny details my husband G. Grod recalls from the original three Star Wars movies. I saw Episode 4 in the theater when it opened, but didn’t see the other two till they were re-released in theaters in the nineties. Prior to that, my summary of the trilogy might have gone something like Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it), and I don’t think that’s anything to be ashamed of. But even I laughed at this. A lot. I can only imagine how funny it is to the rabid fanboys. (Link from Boing Boing.)

One of the things I love about How I Met Your Mother are the jokes, and especially the jokes that pay off for long-time viewers. I haven’t been watching from the get go, but I have been watching long enough to see jokes start and get paid off much later.

One thing I didn’t know, though, was that a scene from earlier this season had a secret, political agenda, as revealed by HIMYM star Josh Radnor (who, like me, is from central Ohio) in this very long interview. (links from ALoTT5MA) You can read all the interview, just scroll to the end, or read this:

The speech was to be YouTubed in case the presidential election went the other way. It suited the storyline, but I’m impressed with the cleverness of how it could have been repurposed, and really happy it didn’t have to be.