Evening

Yes, I'm still here. (Madly waving.) I really, really need to get on board with posting more often. I've been right here, at home, doing major kid-duty, as always. Anyway...

Last night I went alone to the movies to catch Evening, before it disappears from theaters and comes out on DVD in 3 weeks. (Isn't that about the rate of the theater-to-DVD turnaround these days?) I didn't have high hopes for the movie, yet I really wanted to see it, because I'd read the novel years ago, and it holds a special place in my heart. I read it while on spring break in that tiny little cabin pictured above, just me & Myk and our sock monkey, Fred. (Fred used to accompany us on all our travels, but now that we have children, he not-so patiently waits for attention on Myk's bed table.) I cannot remember what path my brain was traveling on, back in the spring of 2000, that made me decide going to Convict Lake in the high eastern Sierra's for spring break from grad school would be a great idea. It was, um, pretty cold. And it snowed quite a lot. But it was romantic, and we had the the little ring of cabins and the lake almost all to ourselves. One night, we had dinner in the very good lodge, with a fire burning and snow flakes dropping silently out the windows. We took a daytrip up to Mammoth, and the June Lake loop, and my beloved tufas at Mono Lake. And in between, back at the cabin, with the snow and the lake and the massive mountains right outside the door, I was reading Susan Minot's Evening.
This is first section of Evening, on the first page, and after reading it, I was snagged, utterly:

Where were you all this time? she said. Where have you been?
I guess far away.
Yes you were. Too far away.
They sat in silence.
You know you frightened me a little, she said. At the beginning.
No.
You did.
He smiled at that.
You looked at if you didn't need anyone, she said.
But those are the ones who need it most, he said. Don't you know that?
I do now, she said. Too late.
Never too late to know something, he said.
Maybe not, she said. But too late to do any good.

Like I said, I didn't really have high hopes for the movie, and I wasn't wrong. The plot was changed quite a lot, from what I remember. The reason why Ann, the heroine, and Harris, her love, couldn't be together, was not at all the reason suggested in the movie. In the book, Ann's five grown children are not much more that shadow characters, floating in and out of their mother's bedroom as she lies dying and remembering the weekend in 1954 that she met and lost her one true love. In the movie, I was irritated and bored by the sibling rivalries and "life moments" shared by the 2 sisters. And what was up with that ending that totally ripped off The Way We Were? Well, I won't go into all the myriad differences between the novel & the film version. This is usually the case, isn't it? I would like to know, however, why all the commercials I saw proclaimed, "from the creator of The Hours..." True, Michael Cunningham did co-write & co-produce alongside Minot, but why does he get all the credit, when it's not his book or his vision?

Even though the critics have labeled the film a "tear-jerker," I didn't get misty for even a second. Compare that to when I read the devastating final, major scene between Ann and Harris. I remember that I was lying next to Myk on the small cabin bed as he napped, and the little wall heater kept blowing it's warm, dusty air through the room. I started reading and got immediately misty-eyed, and by the end of the scene, I had to bite on my knuckle to keep from sobbing out loud.

Later, I actually got to meet Susan Minot and even sit at the same table with her, at a women writer's conference in Long Beach. I remember shaking her hand and telling her how much I loved her novel. (Oh, how I hate sounding so inane and groupie-like, but just how else does one say these things?) I'm sitting here now, with my signed copy of the paperback on my desk, and it feels like a lifetime ago. I remember also that Ms. Minot had a great purse, and I was in awe of how...East Coast she looked and seemed.

One good thing about the movie: the gorgeous house used for the 1950s scenes, a real family home on the coast of Rhode Island (it's supposed to be Maine, in the book), with wonderful interiors and set decor. I swooned at the beautiful mural throughout the downstairs living room. (I read in House & Garden that it was painted by the home's original owner.) I've been on a real design-bender, combing through magazines and the 'net this week, and my hands are itching to get ahold of a brush and get to paintin'. I have big, big plans for my master bedroom. And after this week, I'm suddenly possessed by one rather startling and surprising word: wallpaper. (Yes, it's true, darling. As always, you just have to trust me on this.) It's going to be fabulous.

Heartbreak in the Aisles

The aisles of Target, that is. Back when things were just a little weird and typically crazy, before they got seriously weird and bad, I posted about my giddy love for the blue bunny Easter plates, and my fondness for trolling for interesting design at Target.

Last night I was back there again (honestly, I only go 2 or 3 times a month), in the children's book section, just randomly looking around. While I didn't feel very moody and touchy when I left the house after dinner, I found myself feeling awfully moody and weepy once I got there. I think it was because I stopped in the card aisle, looking for Father's Day cards for Myk from the kids and me. But of course, I couldn't help but see all the other Father's Day cards, the ones I'd normally be perusing for my own dad. Then there were also all the "Papa" cards, that I won't be buying for the kids to give to their great-grandpa this year, either. And then I felt rather silly, for getting upset at such a rather...obvious situation. I didn't imagine that Father's Day, or at least Father's Day cookie-cutter-sentiment greeting cards, would provoke me, but yet there I was, getting all misty under the fluorescents.

Anyway, later in the trip, after the dipes/wipes/vitamins, etc. had been checked off the list, I was in the children's book aisle, and I casually opened up a hardbound book for older kids, called, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. I didn't read the jacket to see what it was about; instead, my fingers just rifled through it and ended up on the dedication page, where there was this quote from a poem by Stanley Kunitz:

"The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking.
It is necessary to go through the dark and deeper dark
and not to turn."

Yes. Yes. So, this time -- no surprising modern design. Just a bit of truth and poetry, at a big-box retail store on a Tuesday night in the late spring. I don't think Lily, despite her advanced reading, is quite ready for the story of Edward Tulane, yet. Evidently it's about a cold and arrogant toy bunny who finds love after being very lost. All I know is that I'm grateful for the sentiment from Mr. Kunitz ( a late poet of great renown in the literature world), and I hope to be reading more of him -- and more poetry, in general, very soon. Wild emotion, tamed and distilled into perfect words and stanzas, is exactly what is called for, these days.

*Aisle of tall trees, taken in Oregon.

Like, Wow

So I finally got my hands on a copy of Little, Big, and finally finished reading it this weekend. What a long book. I felt like I've lived a few lifetimes since I started it, sometime back in early April. It was a world and a landscape unto itself and excuse me if I blush just a little bit when I say that its main plot is about a family who seem to be related to, or at least are very close to um, the wee folk. As in fairies (faeries?).

But the book and it's many subplots and tone are about so much more than just the fairy-folk, and the reader is given only passing, sly glimpses of them throughout most of the story. Since I have a nasty sinus infection and my head feels too stuffed with cotton to create a single, lucid sentence, let me just give you some of the critiques and credentials listed on my copy: Let's see...the book and it's author, John Crowley, won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel back in 1980. The Washington Post writes that it's "the greatest fantasy ever written by an American." And finally, the esteemed and very crotchety academic and critic, Harold Bloom, says, "It is literally the most enchanting twentieth-century book I know."

So there. Let me not spin my wheels any longer justifying my reading of this 538-page work that concerns a very old and powerful deck of tarot cards, a grandfather trout who lives in a deep, cold pond and surfaces when summoned by members of the Drinkwater family, or a very old and powerful wizard of a woman who turns into a stork in the book's final chapters. Or the fiesty Puerto Rican girl who lives in the City and has a Destiny, which turns out to be turning into a fairy princess and sailing upon a craft made of spiderwebs and acorns.

Forgetting the plot entirely, I was enchanted early on by the gorgeous prose and lovely, crafted sentences, and also the humor and intelligence that guided my way. I smiled and leaked a happy little tear onto my pillow when I saw that I was in the care of someone who could write:

"The gregarious weeds that frequent roadsides, dusty, thick and blowsy, friends to man and traffic, nodded from fence and ditch by the way. Less and less often he would hear the hum of a car; the hum would grow intermittently, as the car went up and down hills, and then suddenly it would be on him very loud and roar past surprised, potent, fast, leaving the weeds blown and chuckling furiously for a moment; then the roar would just as quickly subside to a far hum again, and then gone, and the only sounds the insect orchestra and his own feet striking."

Yes, exactly -- the weeds blown and chuckling furiously. For some reason, this mix of high intellect and lowbrow, sort of slapstick humor reminds me of Annie Dillard in her nature essays -- abstract, obtuse and terribly brainy, and then she throws in a knock-knock joke to prove a point. I'm such a sucker for that sort of thing, and I suppose that's why Dillard is high on my list of all-time favorites.

But I digress. Little, Big was a great read, a good companion for a lot of late and troubled nights of late. I only wish I'd read it first in darkest December, for it's mysterious big house of Edgewood that the story revolves around reminded me of winter nights and crackling fires. But I hear that many people, Harold Bloom included, reread this book often to uncover further meanings and discover new things, so I suppose a winter reading isn't out of the question.

First Book of the Batch: Pattern Recognition

Okay, first I should give the disclaimer that even with a B.A. and Master's in English and being a lifelong, die-hard bookworm, I really kind of suck at writing generally about books. I hate giving grammar-school type book report summaries of plot, and I just don't have the time or inclination to go deeply into all the academic whatsis of what makes a book work. Or not.

That said, I'm happy to say that I loved reading this first book in my Christmas-gift batch. I had a great time with it, and it reminded me that it's a pity when good books and good writers are slapped with a genre label, and then people like me tend to turn up their noses and move on down the shelf. Although it helped that the book was covered in glowing reviews from esteemed places like The Washington Post, and The New York Times, as opposed to, say, CyberGeek Monthly (I'm sure it exists, somewhere).

Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson, was not on my Amazon wishlist. Myk bought it for me because he'd listened to the audiobook a couple of years back and liked it and wondered what my take would be. I knew of William Gibson more because of his cool visionary-of-the-future image than because of his actual writing, and of course I'd heard of Neuromancer. (Another book Myk speaks well of, that I've yet to pick up. Although that will probably change, now.) Just thinking about Neuromancer gives me the heebie-jeebies, because although I have no idea what the plot is about -- except that it takes place in the future -- the title alone reminds me of all that creepy, alien-scary artwork by H.R. Geiger. And Geiger's artwork, as experienced by the few wall calendars Myk has displayed over the years, reminds me in turn of all those dark, scary, herky-jerky Tool videos. Taken together, all those associations and biases and generally creepy vibes kept me well away from any of Gibson's work.

Back to the book. So, Pattern Recognition is about this young woman named Cayce (after Edgar, which I guessed before it was explained), pronounced Case. She lives an austere, modern life in NYC where she works as a freelance cool-hunter for major corporations and advertisers, who want to tap into that mojo she has for knowing what young, net-savvy consumers will go for. Cayce has some quirks, the most noteworthy being her "allergy" for brand logos and labeling, from designer clothing labels to the Michelin man. Mickey Mouse makes her queasy, and the Michelin man gives her some serious panic attacks. She pays a locksmith to grind the Levi markings off the buttons of her black 501s, and favors black clothing that is intentionally without reference to any major trend or era. Cayce is also a follower of "the footage," a series of brief, non-linear film clips that have begun to mysteriously appear in random dark alleys of the web. She and fellow Footage junkies spend lots of time on an online forum dissecting the meaning and trying to guess the creator of the films. Oh, and Cayce's dad, a security expert with ties to the CIA, disappeared in New York on 9/1l.

And now I'm getting tired and overwhelmed with the book report-ish aspect of the above, and I thus send you here if you want a better summary. Suffice it to say, I thought the novel was pretty rip-roarin', and just plain fun., although the general mood of the story itself is rather somber, gray and melancholic, with all the references to graves, and ash and the looming presence of the Twin Towers, in their absence. But reading this also made me feel kinda hip, in that its main setting, in spite of all the world travel to London, Tokyo and Russia, is really the Internet itself, and I think it captures pretty well the feeling of having what sometimes feels like half your life and contacts floating apart from you out there in cyberspace (a word Gibson himself coined back in Neuromancer). Also, since none of the other online summaries seem to mention it, I should at least bring up the weird ESP and psychic stuff that occurs at a few key moments, too -- referencing cleverly back to Cayce's name and namesake, I suppose.

I kept thinking that this would make a great movie, if it was treated right and they actually kept to the story. Usually having that feeling while reading a novel is a bad sign overall, but I think in this case -- and, let's face it, Gibson is still primarily considered a genre writer, even if he did create the cyberpunk genre himself -- having that "this should be a movie!" feeling doesn't mean that the writing itself is dashed-off pap.

And now, having gone over to the Wikipedia site, I see tantalizing news that Gibson's new book, Spook Country, will be released this year, and also that director Peter Weir is working on a movie version of Pattern Recognition. Now if only they don't cast Reese Witherspoon or Angelina Jolie to play Cayce.....

Anyway, bottom line: Good book. Thanks, honey. (But I'm still not going to be reading any of your Douglas Adams books anytime soon.)