Dillinger
Knife, a fork, a bottle and a cork. That's the way we spell New York, Jim.
Zadie Smith’s new book is comprised of seventeen essays, clumped into five brackets: “Reading”, “Being”, “Seeing”, “Feeling” and the last, “Remembering”, which contains a single excruciating essay (by far the longest in the collection): a remembrance of David Foster Wallace. In her six essays from ”Reading”, Zadie opens with a rather complicated one that has as much to do with her mother as with her ostensible subject, Zora Neale Hurston: being black and the meaning of “soulful”.
She really hits her stride with her essay on E.M. Forster (“tricky bugger”), a subject that Zadie is obviously very fond of.
In the taxonomy of English writing, E.M. Forster is not an exotic creature. We file him under notable English Novelist, common or garden variety…he never believed the novel was dead or the hills alive, continued to read contemporary fiction after age of fifty, harbored no special hatred for the generation below or above him, did not come to feel that England had gone to hell in a handbasket, that its language was doomed…
“Banal and brilliant” at the same time, Zadie shows her Forster feelings with gentle humor. And on literary criticism in general, Zadie shares these insightful thoughts:
Here’s the funny thing about literary criticism: it hates its own times, only realizing their worth twenty years later. And then, twenty years after that, it wildly sentimentalizes them, out of nostalgia for a collective youth
It’s fun to listen as Zadie brings thoroughly modern sensibilities to her commentary on, say, the likes of George Eliot (“the result is that famous Eliot effect, the narrative equivalent of surround sound”). Poking at Henry James for his denseness on the subject of Middlemarch, Zadie notes that Virginia Woolf had it right: “One of the few English novels written for grown-up people.”
Jane Eyre is one thing. Middlemarch another entirely. Zadie makes a passionately strong case for the humanism of Eliot’s writing:
We are moved that is should pain Eliot so to draw a border around her attention, that she is so alive to the mass of existence lying unnarrated on the other side of silence. She seems to care for people, indiscriminately and in their entirety, as it was once said God did.
“Rereading Barthes and Nabokov”, is an example of Zadie “changing her mind”. As a young reader, she read one way. As a writer, she’s taken a somewhat different path. From the arguments of Barthes and Nabokov, she’s created an elegant synthesis.
Nabokov is not God, and I am not his creation. He is an author and I am his reader, and we are stumbling toward meaning simultaneously, together. Zebra cocktail!
You’ll need to read the essay to understand that reference.
Alas, there were certain pieces that were well beyond my reach. Among them the essay on Kafka. But in “Two Directions For The Novel”, which first deals with Netherland and then with Tom McCarthy’s Remainder, Zadie tears into the publishing game.
When it comes to literary careers, it’s true: the pitch is queered. The literary economy sets up its stall on the road that leads to “Netherland”, along which one might wave to Jane Austen, George Eliot. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Richard Yates, Saul Bellow. Rarely has it been less aware (or less interested) in seeing what’s new on the route to “Remainder”, that skewed side road where we greet Georges Perec, Clarice Lispector, Maurice Blanchot, William Burroughs, J. G. Ballard. Friction, fear and outright hatred spring up often between these two traditions – yet they have revealing points of connection. At their crossroads we find extraordinary writers claimed by both sides: Melville, Conrad, Kafka, Beckett, Joyce, Nabokov….In its brutal excision of psychology it is easy to feel that “Remainder” comes to literature as an assassin, to kill the novel stone dead. I think it means rather to shake the novel out of its present complacency. It clears away a little of the deadwood, offering a glimpse of an alternate road down which the novel might, with difficulty, travel forward. We could call this constructive deconstruction, a quality that, for me, marks “Remainder” as one of the great English novels of the past ten years.
She likes it. She really, really likes it! And in the same essay, she goes on to call J. G. Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition, “possibly the greatest British avant-garde novel. I’ve put Ballard’s book on my tbr list (I’ve already read Netherland, and Remainder).
In “Being”, two of the three essays are culled from lectures Zadie gave: One has her addressing her writing craft (“That Crafty Feeling), and “Speaking in Tongues” is a thoughtful essay on multiracialism and ‘voice’ – not the writers voice, but the voice of identity, of culture, and of heritage. She draws several parallels to Barack Obama in this one, that make extreme sense. The third essay is a reportage piece about Liberia, that frankly, just seems out of place here.
In “Seeing”, Zadie culls some of her film reviews – not much to cull from due to the nature of the films she had to review. There’s this though: In “Hepburn and Garbo” Zadie writes just the most wonderful eulogy to Katherine Hepburn. She was her role-model and icon. This is superior writing, and shows an immediacy that is real – she wrote it just a few days after Hepburn died. I’m not ashamed to admit that I laughed and cried when I read this. You can read it here.
After that, there was not much of interest for me, so I’d say it’s a spotty collection. Back to waiting for her next novel…
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Seven years after the Watts riots, there was the Watts Summer festival. Captured in the musical documentary, Wattstax. I was channel surfing and came across this, already half over. I’d seen it many years ago, but it caught my attention. Just as I stop by, there’s Rufus Thomas in an outrageous pink outfit with white mid-calf length boots. Do the Funky Chicken now.
Rufus was infectious and although I came in late, I do believe that this was the highlight. And there’s Jesse Jackson with a crazy-early 70’s Afro introducing Issac Hayes. I am somebody. And Mr Hot Buttered Soul was certainly somebody too, back in the day. Richard Pryor was interspersed with the music. That man was one funny……well, you know.
It looked like a beautiful summer day as everyone cut loose. Dig those moves. Sorry I was late to the party. Right on.
Chan-wook Park (Oldboy) turns his macabre sensibilities to vampires, in this quick to DVD film. The start was confusing and nearly incoherent to me, but once it got going, it was a whirlwind. Its mixture of horror and humor felt just about right. Increasingly bizarre, it nearly, but did not, topple over from its own trajectory.
Vampirism is all the rage these days, and everyone wants an edge, a different take on the age-old genre. This one adds something new: A deeply religious priest who contracts the V through a blood transfusion (the AIDS theme), and attempts to ‘do no harm’. Tough when you need blood. Why is it though that men seem to be level-headed vampires with souls, and women invariably get all out of control with blood lust?
Although this perked me up in the last two thirds, still…’twas no Let The Right One In.
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In 
August of 1873, Selina Dawes conducts the fateful séance that leaves her patron dead of a heart attack and other participants injured. Shift to a year later (September 1874) and Margaret Prior. Margaret is one of those Victorian ladies that is “high strung”, prone to becoming over excited. Margaret, is also recovering from a suicide attempt, and begins visiting the women inmates of Millbank prison as a “Lady Visitor”. By this time, Millbank houses the infamous medium Selina Dawes. The novel moves back and forth between the brief accounts of Dawes, and the longer passages where Margaret is the narrator,.
Waters is on familiar ground here, with her ghosts and séances. In The Little Stranger, one of this years Booker finalists, there were also seriously strange goings on in an increasingly dilapidated manor house. There though, it was the ‘man’ of the manor with the fragile psyche and drug dependency. In Affinity, Waters second novel from 2000, Margaret Prior is hooked on the gateway drug “chloral”, which she takes as a sleep aid. Laudanum is not far behind. Morphine is right around the corner.
Waters gives an early nod to The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins. In that ‘first’ detective novel, the protagonist (Rachel) has a large, extremely valuable diamond that is stolen one night while she sleeps. Laudanum junkie Franklin Blake is suspected of taking the diamond and hiding it somewhere. He forgets where. The prospect of this as a believable plot device was much discussed in Dan Simmons’ Drood. Waters has Margaret’s special locket (of great sentimental value) go missing in a similar fashion. The missing locket is the first of many strange occurrences involving Margaret.
The locket itself contained a lock of a friend’s (Helen) hair. Helen is now married to Margaret’s brother. As the novel progresses, it becomes clear that Margaret has the ‘forbidden’ love bug. Helen though, has decided to play it straight. It’s still the 1870’s, dontcha know.
With her many visits to the prison, and on the rebound, Margaret becomes increasingly enamored of Selina Dawes. Dawes exerts a power over her that has Margaret increasingly weak-kneed in her presence. Selina assesses Margaret’s visits thus:
‘You have come to Millbank, to look on women more wretched than yourself, in the hope that it make you well again.’
Margaret sees the truth in this, but is undeterred. Her wretchedness takes the form of a virulent self-loathing. A self-loathing perhaps borne of the fact that she is ‘different’. Reading accounts of the Dawes trial, Margaret comes across a passage regarding the testimony of Madeline Silvester.
There are three attempts to question her, and she breaks down weeping at every one. Mrs. Silvester I don’t much care for – she reminds me of my mother. Her daughter, however, I hate: she reminds me of myself.
The affinity of the title, refers to that frowned upon attraction for members of the same sex. Whether there is a real affinity between the two women, or whether there’s a con in progress is the stuff of the novel. There’s an excellent plot twist near the end that forgives a lot of earlier complaints I may have had about the book. This makes it ultimately a satisfying read.
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I had seen this movie at TIFF ‘08 (review here) and was blown away at the inventiveness, the warmth, and the humanity of it. As far as I know never released here (US), you can catch it on Showtime On-Demand or streaming on Netflix (see tweet to the right). I really want people to see this. And if you love dogs? Oh, gawd. Do not miss it.
Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself is one of those sweet, rather sentimental movies that makes you want to save a place in your heart for the human race despite where we may see the world headed. “You’ll laugh, you’ll cry”… But maybe we ain’t so bad after all. We can sure suspend dis-belief for the moment and enjoy the film at least And isn’t that what the movies are ultimately all about?
Two brothers in their early middle age have inherited a book shop from their father, who has recently died. Harbour (the more practical and centered one) and Wilbur. Of the title. Not only does Wilbur want to kill himself but he tries repeatedly – and unsuccessfully. His brother hangs in there with him throughout. Wilbur has parental issues.
Into their life comes a woman with a young daughter, both of whom change the brothers lives. As with movies of this genre, there are tears, there is laughter, and there is hope at the end of the trail. We just gotta keep on keepin’ on.
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Yesterday I was sitting in one of my GP’s rooms, waiting for his nurse to give me the H1N1. Shot that is. His is a family practice, so there are lots of kids and consequently lots of kids toys, Elmo’s, books and stuff. I picked up a book called Action Jackson, a seriously cool kid’s bio of Jackson Pollack I finished it in one sitting! (heh-heh)
they swear freedom or death the shock and horror of blood, it’s surprising redness he’d have to clean with bucket and sponge each red wet gust from the station wall the poetry of flies glittered like ordnance and fizzzed around the buckets the home front bored, bored, bored prisoner interrogation stand up when your number is called surrender I am not Mau Mau, not rebel Please torture and release let out to wander briefly as mayflies and die as a warning the heat the constant heat the sun detonating its hydrogen shoved into a pit of death Oopsy-daisy it’s like another world no another dimension a parallel universe back in the real world the real world the real world It is still there they’re all still there except for the newly dead back in the world freedom solitude rain
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What I love most about Auster is how he immediately engages the reader. He jumps right into the story, and inevitably this entails an air of mystery. Hooked liek a small-mouth bass. In Invisible, his new novel, Auster opens with:
I shook his hand for the first time in the spring of 1967.
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News tonight that Sandra Day O’Connor’s husband of 57 years, has died. He had suffered from the A for nearly twenty years. That is a long descent into darkness, to be sure. Her husband’s suffering from this terrible disease is one of the reasons that Justice O’Connor retired from the Court.
What caught my attention though, was what happened to John O’Connor in his assisted living home. He fell in love with a fellow sufferer. This is very similar to what happened in the film Away From Her, when Julie Christie’s Fiona found solace and companionship with a fellow resident. Is this a common phenomena? I guess it must be, and it seems a reasonable progression. It’s a sad, sad business. Their son has said that his father became happier in the end, and it sounds like Ms. O’Connor handled these turns of fortune with grace.
