NaNoWriMo starts in something like an hour and twenty minutes, and I’m going to give it a shot this year, so if you’ve already signed up with the site, add me as a buddy to keep me going. :)
Jeffrey Overstreet has a great interview with Sara Zarr, a nominee for the 2007 National Book Award for her book Story of a Girl, at his newish site, The Eagle and Child.
She says a lot of great things about writing during the interview, but this particularly caught my eye:
Overstreet:
Do you think that faith makes you a different writer? Do you see connections between your spiritual convictions and your writing?
Zarr:
This kind of goes back to your question about the flaws and redeeming qualities in my characters. My understanding and experience of faith involves a compassionate and gracious God, who is also just. If I’m the creator and god of my own little universe of characters, I want to be compassionate, gracious, and just, too. Which means seeing realistically the flaws in each character, while also seeing their potential for good. The justice comes in when it comes to consequences of things characters do and say. I don’t pretend to understand how it all works on a theological level in real life, but it seems that sometimes God lets us experience consequences to their full effect, sometimes he softens the blow, and sometimes he shields us completely. So all those things are options for me in a story . . . as the all-powerful creator of my little world, I get to orchestrate things so that my characters, who I love, get to experience grace. I love that about writing, and I don’t think I’d be that kind of writer if that’s not how I saw and experienced my own faith.
Yes, yes, yes.
I got the following press release from Paste today:
NAME YOUR PRICE!!
PASTE Magazine Subscriptions On Sale For, Well,
Whatever You Want…“the best among American music titles”
– The Wall Street JournalDecatur, GA (October 29, 2007) – Beginning today, and continuing for the next two weeks, PASTE magazine will be offering one-year subscriptions—and readers can name their price! New subscribers can sign up, and loyal subscribers can renew online at www.pastemagazine.com for a minimum payment of $1, though all are encouraged to pay what they think the subscription is worth. Anyone paying more than the $19.95 PASTE typically offers for a one-year (11-issue) subscription will be thanked in print, in a future issue of PASTE.
The campaign came about from a casual conversation at the PASTE offices discussing the recent Radiohead campaign and the Jim Collins book, Good to Great. “We were curious to know what our customers thought we were worth. And what better way to find out, than to let them tell us,” explained PASTE President/Publisher Tim Regan-Porter. “While it’s certainly a bit unconventional, we also see it as a chance to get our product in the hands of people who could become lifelong fans. It’s been our experience that once people become familiar with PASTE, they turn into loyal readers,” added Regan-Porter.
Interested readers can order multiple subscriptions to PASTE, as long as there is a valid mailing address, so even gift subscriptions are encouraged. Each issue of PASTE comes with a CD sampler, so one subscription will give you 11 CDs of great music, in addition to the award-winning writing and entertainment coverage.
Voted “Magazine of the Year” by the PLUG Independent Music Awards for 2006 and 2007, and having won the Grand GAMMA Award (along with 4 Gold awards and 1 Silver award) at the 2007 GAMMA Awards, Paste is rapidly emerging as the go-to source for music and film aficionados.
Paste magazine is one of the fastest growing independently published entertainment magazines in the country, recently named “Magazine of the Year” at the 2007 PLUG Independent Music Awards. Providing thoughtful analysis on the best in film, books and other aspects of popular (and alternative) culture, Paste is the premier magazine for people who still enjoy discovering new music, prize substance and songcraft over fads and manufactured attitude, and appreciate quality music in whatever genre it might inhabit. Now in its sixth year, Paste has grown quickly with international distribution in over 12 countries. Paste is available on newsstands all over the U.S. and Canada. www.pastemagazine.com
My review of Anthony Hopkins’ new film, Slipstream, is up at Paste Magazine.
We had a perfect weekend.
On Friday night, Catherine and I went to see Rosie Thomas and Over the Rhine at the Highline Ballroom. I’d never been to this venue - it’s WAY out in the meatpacking district. Rosie was adorable, as always, and Over the Rhine was amazing. They played all of the songs from The Trumpet Child, plus North Pole Man, Born, Ohio, and Orphan Girl.
I had an amusing moment; we handed our tickets to the doorman/bouncer. He asked if we wanted a table, and we declined. Then he said, “We ask that there be no moshing at this concert.”
Now, if you’re familiar with either of these artists, you know that moshing is probably not something you could actually do at this concert. So I smiled.
“I’m very serious, ma’am,” he said, as he ushered us in the door. I felt vaguely reprimanded, but it was so ludicrous that I just starting laughing when I was safely away from the bouncer. I didn’t want to get kicked out.
The drummer on this tour was on the Snow Angels tour last Christmas; we liked him so much that Tom went backstage and got his contact info in case we ever ran across a sudden need for an awesome drummer. I was so excited when he came onstage that I texted Tom. And he did not disappoint. After his drum solo, the twentysomething guys next to me were clapping and shouting “Mickey! Mickey!”
I met up with Tom for dinner at Lobo in Park Slope (nachos loaded with pork, yum). He walked in grinning like a Cheshire cat. After we ate, he handed me the sweetest birthday card (yes, my birthday isn’t until this coming Sunday . . . but stay with me here), grinning again. We went home and when I walked in, I saw one of these.
Yeah. Major freak-out. Once upon a time, piano was my life, but I haven’t really played much since I started college six years ago and not at all since I moved to New York. It’s amazing. I’ve never played a keyboard that so closely resembled an actual piano. I can’t stop grinning.
On Saturday we got up late, watched a few episodes of Battlestar Galactica (we’ve almost finished Season 1), and headed off to Angela’s for her birthday celebration including much food, good company, and a very late night. Felt a lot like old times. I stuffed a lot of prunes with cheese and wrapped them in bacon, and I managed to clean out the roast pot, so she was very happy.
We were misinformed by several people on Saturday night and therefore set the clocks back when we got home around 3am; unfortunately, when we finally got up Sunday morning, we discovered that we were wrong because of the legislation that moved the end of Daylight Savings Time forward one week. Whoops. So we were rather late for church.
After church we had a raucous lunch at Miracle with plenty of lovely people (including these two. Tom and I dashed off to the Angelika to see Before the Devil Knows Your Dead (the jury’s still out, but I can’t say I recommend it), then dashed out of there to see a staged reading of a play, of which two of the actors were from Tom’s class at Esper. Very New York day.
And the World Series was just the icing on the cake.
I am really glad it is Friday.
Yesterday, we got cable internet. It wasn’t very expensive when compared with our old DSL service, and what’s more, this one actually works. And it’s much faster. I’m still wrestling to get the printer and external drives set up with our multiple-Mac laptop setup, because I am not so good with networking, but Apple makes it much easier. Hurrah!
And as a result, I was able to keep tabs on the World Series while we watched the Season 4 premiere of The Office on the NBC website. Yes, we’re behind, but we were very happy. Happier still that the Sox hung on.
Someone blogged about having a grilled pepperjack cheese sandwich and now I am CRAVING grilled cheese; I looked it up, though, and the grilled cheese restaurant is someone on the lower east side, and I’m not warm enough to wander around town today. I will make do.
Tonight, I am seeing Over the Rhine and Rosie Thomas, which should be an excellent concert. Tom couldn’t go, so I replaced him with Catherine, who was happy to oblige. This is the Trumpet Child tour, and I think Rosie’s just along for the ride.
Tomorrow involves some celebratory cooking, drinking, and eating around Angela’s birthday. She has a menu planned with food that sounds very good, and I shall make a roast (beast?) and other lovely edibles. Mmmm.
I finished Housekeeping yesterday and started Atonement today, and I’m already obsessed. Love reading good books. Tom hauled our copy of Anna Karenina off the shelf last night (something like 900 pages) and brought it to work with him. And I have What is the What on deck.
I’m a bit boring today. But I’m hungry.
In Germany, book prices have been fixed (i.e., no discounting) for years. But that’s all changing. Read the article.
A few excerpts to whet your appetite:
“It was in the middle of nowhere, only 20,000 steel workers,” he said, “but we could order any book in Germany and have it within a day. The whole post-fascist idea was that we needed books, along with universities and schools, to fix society.”
If you want proof that a cultural divide separates Europe and America, the book business is a place to start.
“I feel relatively calm for the simple reason that here almost everyone agrees,” Mr. Rodig said. “We want to make sure that a large number of books can be produced and distributed in Germany.”
Why? I asked.
For a second he seemed baffled that I would even ask the question.
“Because we need them,” he answered.
How to talk about books you haven’t actually read.
My biggest gripe is that Bayard’s conception of reading is entirely social— a way to rack up points at cocktail parties. At the risk of sounding like the fusty old crank everyone does impressions of in the faculty lounge, I still believe in the private ecstasy of reading. It’s one thing to jockey for social position by saying that Dostoyevsky introduced psychology into the novel, or that Chaucer had a fuller grasp of humanity than Shakespeare. It’s another thing to experience, with your full attention, Raskolnikov wandering feverishly around St. Petersburg, or the young scholar farting in the face of his romantic rival in “The Miller’s Tale.” Real reading is not just hoarding fodder for cocktail chatter, it’s crawling, phrase by phrase, through a text and finding yourself surprised or disappointed or ruined or bored with every other line. This direct connection—the voice that enters your brain and mingles with your own internal voice—is the only way books really matter, and experiencing it requires a kind of deep surprise at the words in front of you. If anything, we’re already too good at talking about books we haven’t read. The challenge now is to preserve our ignorance.
I eschewed personality type tests for years because, frankly, I found them boring. But I took one (out of boredom!) a couple weeks ago and it pegged me as an ENFP (the Visionary), which, as it turned out, is exactly right. Not only does it describe me to a T - I am very clearly 100% this type - but it makes me feel better about my discipline-hopping (as apparently this is pretty normal for ENFPs). Is it any wonder I’ve only applied to interdisciplinary Master’s programs?
But these bits surprised me and made me laugh:
• This type is found in only about 5 percent of the general population, but they have great influence because of their extraordinary impact on others. (Is this good, or does it mean I’m a freak?)
• Because they tend to be hypersensitive and hyper-alert, they may suffer from muscle tension. (NO JOKE. I’m wound tighter than a top most of the time.)
• People to people work is essential for ENFPs, who need the feedback of interaction with others. (Chuckling - I was telling Tom yesterday that my greatest struggle in writing is that I don’t get a grade for my work, so I don’t know if the editor liked it or not.)
• Common occupations picked by ENFPs include artist, clergy, consultant, counselor, entertainer, journalist, public relations worker, social scientist, social worker, teacher, and other occupations that allow ENFPs to use their creativity and insight.
And this was the real kicker . . .
• Flexibility and autonomy are important to ENFPs, who may bolt from organizations in which this is not attainable.
Any other ENFPs out there?
This last week or so has left me overflowing in thankfulness:
• For my sweet, funny, hard-working husband; God’s providence in bringing us together has struck us anew as we’ve been remembering things together. If you haven’t done it, you can’t imagine how wonderful it really is to be married to your best friend.
• For a full slate of new opportunities that came my way in the space of a week. It’s meant some hard work (and it always leaves me doubting my abilities), but it’s been completely exhilarating.
• For my job; I realized this morning that if I’ve got to have a “real job”, this is the perfect one for me. A year ago I wouldn’t have dreamed that I’d land here, and I’m so glad.
• For the dreams that I’ve started to dream. They’ve grown slowly and filled me with delight.
• For this city, where I’ve finally felt as if I were among my kind, and where I first started to learn to find my path.
• For the people I’ve been privileged to meet, whose influence I’ve only begun to understand and whose mentorship’s significance is only beginning to sink in.
• For Jeremiah 1:4-12:
Now the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.” But the LORD said to me,
“Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’; for to all to whom I send you, you shall go,and whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, declares the LORD.”Then the LORD put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the LORD said to me,
“Behold, I have put my words in your mouth. See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”
And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Jeremiah, what do you see?” And I said, “I see an almond branch.” Then the LORD said to me, “You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it.”
Occasionally I wish we had TV; yesterday it was because I was watching ALCS Game 7 on MLB’s Gameday website and pounding the couch because the connection kept dying and the page wasn’t refreshing fast enough. If you haven’t been reading my blog long, you might not have suspected that I come from a long line of Red Sox fans, of the rabid Southie variety. So last night was exciting.
Also? This is nuts.
I claim, three-quarters kidding, that I married Tom for his collection of books and music. He really does have a stunning inventory, and occasionally he culls a couple CDs from his two giant portfolios full and puts them into a small book so he can take them with him when he’s on a trip, or whatever. I stole the little book today to rip to my work computer, and was completely delighted to find out that the unmarked CD in the back was actually Iron & Wine’s Our Endless Numbered Days. I have a viscerally ecstatic reaction to the CD - it reminds me of the very early days of our relationship, when we did a lot of cafe-hopping late at night in Manhattan and then would come back and sit on my bedroom floor and with glasses of wine and enthuse about all the things we love until I got so sleep-deprived that I actually contracted mono. Still, I don’t regret a moment of it.
Tom has to work tomorrow, and I had some loose plans to go up to the Cloisters and take some pictures. Alas, a last-minute film review is anchoring me firmly in a theater and then a coffeeshop (here’s a question: why do movies not start showing until 1:30pm or so on weekends here? Sure someone must want to go in the morning). I haven’t gone to a non-press-screening movie alone since last summer, when I was stressed out of my mind with Dad’s relapse and my wedding planning and finally broke down and went to see The Devil Wears Prada. In any case, there are much worse ways to spend a Saturday. And this opportunity is VERY exciting and I can’t wait to share it with you.
On Sunday, dear little Dahlia (daughter of these wonderful people) is getting baptized, and after the service we are going to the party. I think this might actually be the first non-Catholic baby baptism I’ve ever been to. We didn’t baptize babies in the church I was raised in, and I’ve missed every baptism Sunday since I moved to New York and joined the Village Church and finally admitted that I was all Reformed and stuff.
Here’s a random plug: Tara Leigh Cobble texted me yesterday to make sure I knew that Tom and I are in her upcoming book. Tom was in her last one, Here’s to Hindsight: Letters to My Former Self (which I greatly enjoyed), so I’m rather excited that I’ve made an appearance. Aren’t you itching to read it now?
So I was reading this article about new theories concerning the death of Edgar Allan Poe. Interesting, but this made me laugh out loud.
There are numerous competing theories about the Mr. Poe’s death—the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, even has an exhibit dedicated to all of them. Some Poe experts believe it was the result of drink. Others think he had rabies. A few argue he was poisoned by corrupt political operatives. But Mr. Pearl—a 32-year-old graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, whose 2003 debut, the international best seller The Dante Club, prompted Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown to declare him, “the new star of literary fiction”—told The Observer recently that he has unearthed new information that suggests a less sensational answer: Mr. Poe, it seems, may have died of a brain tumor.
Um, ouch?
Hello, internets.
It’s suddenly become very busy around here; Tom’s shoot started today (he was up by 4:30am and may be home by 9pm) and runs almost until Christmas, and my list of projects and deadlines is growing.
I’d been avoiding pitching articles for a while this summer, and considered leaving off until the New Year, but that’s basically been thrown out the window (be careful when you ask the Almighty for guidance) and I’m happily and slightly frightened-ly staring at my list of deadlines. Since I hope and plan to be in grad school in January, and to continue in grad school for roughly a decade, I guess my nice restful post-college era is coming to an end. It’s been fun, but we all know that I prefer to live dangerously.
I went to Barnes & Noble on my lunch break and splurged on the recent issues of two magazines I’m ashamed to have not read previously - Poets & Writers and Blueprint (which I resisted because of the Martha Stewart connection but opened and loved immediately). They’ve gone on my wishlist and I’m awfully glad to have them in my tote bag.
I’m seeing some friends from college on Thursday night - people with whom I spent a lot of time during various high-stress times (student orientation, senior capstone . . .). I’m excited about that. I never really meant to ditch RPI entirely; it’s just that nobody I knew from the class of ‘05 moved to NYC with me. Since then, that’s changed, and I’m glad.
A lot of my internet poking-around activity in the last year has involved trying to hunt up a good website for logging my books. Chainreading wasn’t interactive enough, LibraryThing didn’t have the features I wanted, and I had trouble finding anything that worked exactly as I wanted. But I finally took a look at Goodreads recently, and I’m hooked. It’s excellent. Here’s my page - add me, if you have an account!
Of late, I’ve gone back and re-read my husband’s old blog entries, which start in May of 2004. We’ve known each other for two years and been married for a little more than one, and so it’s a bit mind-blowing to think that his “previous life” (and mine, too) were not so long ago. It just doesn’t seem possible.
Life’s so funny.
When you hear the Hare Krishnas ringing bells, hitting tambourines, and singing through their portable PA system as they march around the block on Friday, you know it’s time to go home.
Lovers of classic books, good news: the New York Times Book Review has launched a new blog called “Reading Room: Conversations about Great Books”. The panel of “discussers” is impressive and promises some enjoyable and intelligent prompting to go back to these books afresh.
Here’s a teaser from the first post, in which they start with the new Pevear & Volokhonsky translation of War and Peace.
Readers didn’t know what to make of it. It read in some places like a history text or battlefield manua, in others like The Odyssey or The Aeneid. Tolstoy explains: “‘War and Peace’ is not a novel, still less an epic poem, still less a historical chronicle.” He then differentiates between the work of the historian and that of the artist and says historical accounts require heroes while for the artist “there cannot and should not be heroes, but there should be people.”
My first questions to the group: (1) Isn’t “War and Peace” in fact all these things–a novel, a poem, and a historical chronicle? Has Tolstoy really separated so neatly the functions of the artist from that of the historian? Does his invented world really seem devoid of heroes?
(2) One of the overarching themes in the novel–it amounts to a theory of history–is that human design is continually frustrated by events, which are too huge, complex and random for us to make sense of, let alone control. But don’t the events in the novel–Pierre’s sudden inheritance and his horrific marriage, Napoleon’s precision-tuned military victories, and many more–unfold with a kind of inevitability, which in turn implies there is some deeply rational order to the universe?
It smells like fall today, with sort of a wet-cold mixed with smoke (who has fireplaces in this city?).
This weekend’s activities include dinner with friends, Control, and Hotel Cassiopeia.
And this reaction of Doris Lessing when informed that she’d won the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature has been making me laugh:
This right brain/left brain test is fascinating me. Apparently most people would see the dancer turning counter-clockwise; I see her turning clockwise, and I can’t even make it reverse. Perhaps I’m more strongly right-brained than I thought. (HT: kottke)
Update: Oh wait, I made her reverse. By thinking about math problems. And now I can suddenly make her switch off by concentrating on thoughts of colors vs. number or punctuation. FREAKY.
Taken from SuperFastReader.
These are the top 106 books tagged “unread” in Librarything. Why 106? Nobody knows…
The rules:
Bold what you have read, italicize books you’ve started but couldn’t finish, and strike through books you hated. Add an asterisk* to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your TBR list.
Jonathan Strange & M. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One hundred years of solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice*
Jane Eyre*
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma*
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
Atlas shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury tales
The Historian
A portrait of the artist as a young man
Love in the time of cholera
Brave new world
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A clockwork orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and sensibility*
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A people’s history of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A confederacy of dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The unbearable lightness of being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey*
The Catcher in the Rye (I’m sure I just need to read this again, but it really annoyed me when I read it in high school.)
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers
Tom got a call yesterday to work on a big film until mid-December. It has some good named talent attached to it, and is shooting all over town, so we’re both pretty pleased. Work is good.
That also means I probably have a drastically more open schedule until then, so I’m seriously considering a shot at NaNoWriMo. For real this time. Anyone out there doing it (besides Josh)?
Our weekend really was quite good. Besides the scheduled events, we also took in Michael Clayton and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, both of which hit my top-movies-of-the-year list. I blogged briefly about them at Radiant today.
We listened to Lorrie Moore and Jeffrey Eugenides on Friday night; having read almost all of both their catalogs, we found it to be an insightful and wonderful experience. I feel like I’d love to just sit down over dinner with both of them and pick their brains. Lorrie Moore is very funny, unassuming but witty, a lot like her characters; Jeffrey Eugenides looks exactly like you’d expect him to look and seems excessively normal, for the kinds of stories he dreams up.
Though the costume design panel was good, the highlight of Saturday was definitely the Kronos Quartet, with a program called More Than Four. They started with a sampled piece that included bits of recordings of the work they’ve performed at BAM over the last twenty years. Then they moved onto a piece that included a giant puppet with a marionette stage in its chest; the music was composed by the puppeteer, and it was beautiful. The second half of the program included a piece that was incredibly intense - the Quartet, along with an accordion player/singer/live looper and a guy playing an electronic pad and surrounded by his MacBooks, sampling and doing crazy things. It all came together well, at times imitating the ocean, or a war zone, or just waves of sound. It makes me so happy to see a string quartet that’s been playing innovative music together for over 30 years and staying relevant while still maintaining the structure and beauty of their original form.
On Sunday, we ducked out of church a bit early to go to the Parkour demonstration. Jason Kottke was apparently there, too, so you can read his very accurate roundup.
We left and went to the East Village to a restaurants whose name I cannot recall (help, Angela?) and drank coffee and ate eggs and a pear cake, then met up with Angela and Steve for Jesse James, followed by a random pasta dinner at Pane e Cioccolato.
On Thursday, I’m seeing a screening of Slipstream, written and directed by Anthony Hopkins. I have high hopes.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we hope you’re having a good morning. We are an a capella group solely devoted to keeping doo-wop alive. We hope you enjoy the music and make you one promise: we will never sing any song by Britney Spears or Beyonce.”
We saw The Darjeeling Limited last night after my class, and serendipitously ran into our friend Ira, who just moved to NYC from LA on Tuesday. Who would have thunk it? We’ll have him thinking that New York is a rather small town in no time.
The movie itself: it’s no Royal Tennenbaums, but it is sweet and fun. Personally, I was not too invested in the characters’ lives, but I enjoyed traveling with them. And I really loved the quirkiness of the whole cast. Adrien Brody always just cracks me up. It’s very lovely to look at, too, with great colors. If you’re a Wes Anderson fan, then it’s worth seeing now.
There was probably the greatest collection of trailers beforehand, too, including:
• Be Kind, Rewind - Michel Gondry’s latest (he directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep), and it stars Jack Black and looks hilarious.
• Juno - the cast includes Rainn Wilson (Dwight Schrute), Jason Bateman and Michael Cera (Arrested Development), and is directed by Jason Reitman, the guy who made Thank You for Smoking (easily one of the most brilliant dark comedies I’ve ever seen). Plus it looks like a very thoughtful, funny story about teenage pregnancy and adoption, but nothing at all like Knocked Up.
• The Savages - Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney. ‘Nuff said.
Also had a preview for Walk Hard, which I instinctively back away from - I’m a big fan of satire, but mostly just when it’s on TV - but I did end up in helpless giggles about halfway through, so who knows.
In other news, my copy-editing class looks like it will be a really excellent experience. I feel like it’s going to fill in all the strange gaps and divots in my editing knowledge, plus help me figure out how I can pull off doing this freelance. The class is mostly comprised of people who already work in publishing, an added bonus.
Speaking of school, this article in the Times about exploring ways to shorten the path to a Ph.D. is quite interesting.
Tom got called to work on the Glenn Close TV show today (Damages, I think). He called me and said they are out in far eastern Brooklyn, in a swampy place that’s definitely where you’d dump a body. I asked him if that’s what they were doing; “no,” he said, “but we did get to shoot Ted Danson.”
We have a very busy weekend coming up, which I’ve mentioned previously but will mention again because I like being able to go back and see what I’ve done. In short: tomorrow night we go hear Lorrie Moore and Jeffrey Eugenides read at the New Yorker Festival. On Saturday we go to the costume panel at the Festival, which features Colleen Atwood (Memoirs of a Geisha), Patrizia von Brandenstein (Amadeus), Patricia Field (Sex and the City, The Devil Wears Prada), and William Ivey Long (numerous Broadway productions including Grey Gardens, Hairspray and Chicago); then we’ll dash off to BAM for the Kronos Quartet More Than Four program. And on Sunday we hope to make it to the FREE “Parkour: New York” program at the Festival, and maybe have lunch with Angela.
Coffee? I think so.
Along with plenty of French books, Laura gave me Coralie Clement’s CD Salle Des Pas Perdus (something like “Room of Lost Steps”), which I am greatly enjoying. Turns out French jazz is precisely what I need to move happily through my workday. Who knew?
Tom came home last night with lots of stories about the paparazzi in Central Park which he got to ward off with other production people as Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz shot some scene involving rolling in the grass. I hope I’m allowed to talk about that here. Anyhow, doesn’t that just sound like a peachy way to spend your day? Fighting paparazzi? Good times.
Tonight’s my first copy-editing class at NYU (continuing ed). I really don’t know what’s going to be covered, which is delightful. Ten weeks sounds like an enormous amount of time to spend on copy editing, which pretty much proves that I am a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants editor, and it’s probably amazing that I even do it for a living now. But! This will make me better at it, and possibly bring in more work, which is always good.
Also, tonight, we’re planning to go see Darjeeling Limited. Will let you know how that goes.
Today I feel like a real domestic goddess or something like that; I managed to go buy a week’s worth of groceries (including veggies and meat), make a salad for my lunch, run a mile and a half, shower, and eat breakfast all before I left for work. It helps that the coop is half a block away. :)
We saw the French new wave classic The 400 Blows last night at Film Forum. I enjoyed it, and Tom was just glad to have seen the whole thing, since he’d seen pieces in film school but never the whole thing altogether. Crazy that it was so revolutionary in its time.
Tom got a call last night to work on the Ashton Kutcher/Queen Latifah/Rip Torn film that’s been shooting all over town since August, so that’s where he is today. We were trying to figure out how big the production is. Actually, last week, I was coming back from lunch and ran into a huge production right outside my building, on Astor Place. They had a crane over the 6 train stop outside my Starbucks. That subway stop shows up in a lot of films and TV shows (including the Office Season 3 finale, which had to be mostly shot right outside my building) because the sidewalk is pretty wide around it and they don’t have to shut down any streets to shoot.
I am ideally picking up many and varied French materials from my French-major friend Laura tonight when I’m at their apartment for small group. I also picked up a couple sets of flashcards that came pre-punched and ring-bound when we were at Messiah last weekend to use for French vocabulary. I don’t have any more time to take French classes, but I figure if I start early, I may have a chance at fluency by the time I’m a second-year Ph.D. candidate. (Heh heh heh.)
Comment’s most recent article is an excellent, encouraging symposium entitled Finding our way to great work: Called to work—and live—in the city. This is editor Gideon Strauss‘ introduction:
Some time ago, a friend in a world city told me that some of the people in their church who have the hardest time, vocationally speaking, are 28-year-olds working in big corporations. They are no longer novices. They are set on a career, but they don’t really have any significant institutional power yet. They are caught in middle positions where they work very hard, but they must conform very closely to institutional expectations if they want to keep their jobs and build their careers. They have limited opportunities to offer leadership or take initiative . . . and their dreams of changing the world—of making a difference—are turning a little stale.That conversation inspired us to pull together a symposium of encouragement and advice for 28-year-olds who believe that they are called to live in the city—and who are doing so, but who are discouraged and confused by the challenges they and their cohort are experiencing—in corporate life, city administration or politics, education, film and other media, the arts, or whatever their areas of work.
Today, Comment concludes its series Finding our way to great work with a broad array of advice for our young adult readers, trying to live and work in the city.
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Well! This was a trip. It’s not as racy as you probably assume it is (having been published in the 50’s), and it’s really a morality tale in which everyone gets their due come-uppance. But Nabokov, whose first language wasn’t even English, manages to excel in double entendres, puns, quips, and sly digs at people through names. It reminded me a lot of Poe stories where you become increasingly aware of the narrator’s madness as he more emphatically denies his insanity. Really excellent. [4/5]
The Virgin of Bennington - Kathleen Norris
My main complaint with this book is the title, as it really has almost nothing to do with the bulk of the story and would probably give a wrong impression to people who didn’t know Kathleen Norris’ work. This book is a pre-Cloister Walk story of the author’s college experience and subsequent move to New York, along with her slow growth toward faith; more broadly, it’s the story of poetry in America in the 1960’s and the birth of arts administration, and a real who’s who of artists, poets, and writers. Highly recommended to anyone who works with artists or loves books. [4/5]
Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany - Bill Buford
I loved this book; the author was an editor at the New Yorker when he was assigned to write a profile of Mario Batali, who owns the popular and well-known restaurant Babbo (located a few blocks from where I sit right now) and has a lively show on the Food Network. He got so obsessed in the course of writing the piece that he quit his job to go apprentice in Babbo’s kitchen, eventually moving up to a competent line cook, and then went to Italy to work there. He’s a great prose stylist and I was totally engrossed the entire time. If you like food, or books, then check it out. [5/5]
The Crossing - Cormac McCarthy
Truly a masterpiece. Did I enjoy every second? Not exactly. It’s very long, filled with lots of riding around Mexico and sleeping on the plains. But there are moments of horror interspersed throughout. Most people won’t be able to read this book; those who do will be glad they did. [5/5]
This month marked the completion of book #50, but I’m not really slowing down. I finished Jonathan Franzen’s The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History on the way to work this morning, and I’m nearly done with The Maytrees, Annie Dillard’s latest. We’ve acquired a bunch more that I want to read, too: Auralia’s Colors (Jeffrey Overstreet), What Is The What (Dave Eggers), Anagrams (Lorrie Moore), Nobody’s Perfect (Anthony Lane), plus I really want to finish The Life and Death of Great American Cities and start The Great Good Place. Looks like I’ll be busy.
We spent the weekend visiting my brother during his college’s family weekend, which included hanging out, a Walmart run, a soccer game, church, and a particularly hideous traffic jam which set us back an hour and a half and solidified our hatred of driving anywhere in Pennsylvania. Plenty of fun to see Sean, though. He’s doing well.
Stay tuned for September books!