The Latest
Just when I’d struggled over getting tickets to Radio City… Interpol ARE coming to Boston. I’m not complaining, though. Now I get to see them twice.
Over the snowy weekend, I watched a movie or two and some tennis (Australian Open) and did some knitting. I’m still working on that blanket (I’m slow, I guess, and blankets take a while), but I am finally just about done with a sweater that’s been sitting nearly finished for ages. All I need to do is weave in the ends, and then maybe I’ll post a picture, even! Then I get to start something new, too (rubs hands together wickedly…).
One of the movies we watched (finally) was The Front with Woody Allen and Zero Mostel. I think it’s fantastic. I sort of knew I’d love it right from the opening sequence, and I was right. The whole blacklisting theme, and the irony of the House Un-American Activities Committee, seems very relevant today. If you haven’t seen the film, I recommend it.
We also watched (finally) Flesh and the Devil. In it, the birth of Garbo’s relationship with John Gilbert is captured onscreen. Besides all the beautiful people and costumes, etc., it’s a really enjoyable (if a bit silly) movie.
Can’t wait to see pictures of the sweater! I’m too intimidated by blankets to try one, so I applaud your persistence. Post pix of that as well, even as a WIP.
And yeah, The Front is way cool.
And, uh, to answer a comment you left for me about 50 skadillion weeks ago, I started Russo’s Empire Falls last year-ish, but the tone and characters reminded me so much of Richard Ford, I forsook it for another book. Should I have persevered, or is there a better entree to his oeuvre?
I have posted pictures of the blanket, right here. You’ve seen them! But I will post again when it’s done. And I’ll definitely post pictures of the sweater… It’s taken forever.
I really liked Empire Falls. Once I got into it, I couldn’t put it down. The characters just seem so real and natural to me, and he manages to make you understand all of them a bit, even if you still hate them. They’re all multi-facted; they all have flaws and vulnerabilities (well, with maybe one exception that I won’t give away). I like how he did the plot as well. It’s a well-crafted book, in my opinion. But, it may be that it’s just not your taste. You might start with Straight Man, which is quite funny, and then come back to Empire Falls and try it again. Ezra has read a few of his other books, and I’m sure he would be happy to tell you what he thinks of Russo. I’m always interested in book recommendations, if you’d like to make some…
So, you’ll have to forgive me for not knowing more about Richard Ford; all I have are my impressions that I formed when I was younger, after reading a few short stories. I gave up becauase he seemed like a dick who only cared about being a Writer with a capital W. But I was a tougher critic then, and I have forgotten what he’s actually like.
Straight Man is a good start. Now, I don’t know about you, if a book is set in a college English department and is about a middle-aged professor who once showed promise as a young writer– well, this sets off all my alarms to run screaming from a book. It has every opportunity to self-pity or self-parody or self-consciousness or some other kind of winking masturbatory solipsism. But Straight Man misses those many opportunities to go wrong, and it’s very very funny. It’s like there had never been any other satire of a college English department, or a writer writing about writing, and he drew it all from scratch from real life.
The other ones I’ve read all are much more rooted in blue collar small towns whose days of industry have passed it by. This is also not the type of thing I usually go for, but it somehow never ends up being about that. Nobody’s Fool is maybe also a better intro: it’s set in a more Empire Falls-ish town, but it can be much funnier, and it has less of that “Hi, I’m a great big fat book” quality that Empire Falls has.
Terri, I think starting with another of his novels might just be the way to go. I’ve also heard good things about Russo from Doug, so I’m not willing to give up on him just yet.
I’ve spent a couple of days trying to think of under-the-radar-ish books to recommend, and I’m having a hard time thinking of anything specific. I’m over the moon for the literary magazine Tin House, and would be happy to loan you an issue if you want to see if you like it. Through it, I discovered some pretty great authors I’d never heard of (Stacey Richter and Vestal McIntyre spring to mind — copies of their short story collections should be hitting my front porch any day now). At the tip-tip-toppity-top of my favorites are Lorrie Moore and David Gates (though his nihilistic bent may be an acquired — or slightly skewed — taste), plus the fairly standard posse of po-mo posterboys: David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers, George Saunders, Thom Jones, Jonathan Franzen [who totally nails Somerville in Strong Motion], Matthew Klam, Michael Chabon). A couple of sorta-recent very nice surprises were Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, part of which is set in Cambridge, and Amy Fusselman’s The Pharmacist’s Mate. Again, any of which I’m happy to loan.
And Ezra — I laughed at your reservations about Straight Man, because Doug expressed identical misgivings before he read it.
Sorry, almost forgot re. Richard Ford: I’m pretty sure it was the whole capital W/Hey, dig me, everybody! style that queased me out. I think I bought Independence Day and The Sportswriter when the former came out in paperback, and I started the latter at least twice — possibly three times — thinking, Well, I’ll start with The Sportswriter because I ought to read these in chronological order. Which looking back was pretty stupid, especially given that I’m perhaps the least-sporty person on the planet (though I confess I do know what chin music is). But really, his mannered style, the plodding pace, and his affected, numbing habit of repeating characters’ first names in descriptions and dialogue scotched any hope of my finishing the dang thing (or starting the sequel). Hm, now that I think about it, Russo didn’t do any of that. Not sure what my problem was. OK, I’ll shut up now.
Thanks for the many fine recommendations. I have about 9 million books to read (only exaggerating by, oh, 8 mill 600 thou), but I will add some of these folks to the list. I have read some Jhumpa Lahiri and liked it… I haven’t finished the stories, but I will! I read the Corrections and I enjoyed parts of it, but I found it kind of depressing. I guess there are two major reactions to that book–it’s either hilarious or depressing. Maybe it hit its marks a little too well in some not very nice places for me.
On my pile currently: Finishing the Garbo bio, which has been thoroughly enjoyable. I also have Paris’ Louise Brooks bio to tackle soon. In addition, there’s a new Murakami book that I’m itching to read, and then there are the many tomes here at the hut that have been waiting for me anywhere from a month or so to… well, years. The fact that there are so many books in the world that I’ll never read them all is, must remember, a GOOD thing.