Category Archives: books

a propos of nothing, books

Observing the preliminaries

Mary and I think people who are really up on their knowledge of THE GAME should refer to it like the Bible, or die Glassperlenspiel – deigning to actually use the pickup tactics, but have conversations like this:

F: Corinthians 12.

Q: Oh yeah? Leviticus 14.

F: Numbers 6!

Q: (in a devastating tone of voice) Deuteronomy 44, second from the left, third line: appendix G.

F: (Dropping pants) I feel attracted to you because you seem inaccessible.

Q: Works every time…

I need to read THE GAME in prep for 52. And Story of O again. And probably actually read Dangerous Liaisons instead of just the play. I had a weird idea about 52 today that maybe it should be some kind of LeGuinian society where the coming-of-age is a requirement…

I should find out what Prof. Apostolides is up to – both his LONG DAY’S JOURNEY and his LIAISONS were among the theatrical highlights of my Stanford career. Gabe telling me that Prof. Fliegelman had died really made me want to reach out to the folks I did know there.

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books, film, Uncategorized

In the realm of amazing:

1) BECOMING JANE. So good. I will never say anything bad about Anne Hathaway again. I may say bad things about her previous career choices, her previous directors, her previous makeup artists, but either the woman has the soul of an actress in her or they replaced her with a body-snatcher who does. She kicks ass. It’s an amazing movie. I knew it wasn’t going to be happy for her, knowing her biography already, but the damn thing convinced me into hoping past hope, ot once, but twice. Going to have to see it again, and cry some more.

I walked out of it and told Meredith that we women, that is, we twenty-five-year-old folks, have a responsibility to enjoy ourselves in proportion to the degree in which women of the past were unable to. In other words, have another drink for the Victorians, girls.

2) THE NAKED AND THE DEAD. Mother of God. Finished it, and…
yeah. I have nothing to say except that it manages to be a completely inspiring fusion of formal innovation and devastating content. If I was still in school I’d tear it to shreds just to watch how pretty it was on the dissecting table. The man is bristling with talent. And it is so young, and so self-assured, and so good despite its occasional awkwardnesses. Here’s another quote:

“Afterward, he feels as if his education is completed. He has known for a long time that there is no man you can trust, but women have not concerned him. Now he is positive that women too are as unreliable as the altering sands of mutual advantage.”

That’s right, sucker! In all seriousness, I think this is the new book that I’m going to be pawning off on everyone. Did I already use the “Mailer? I hardly even…” joke? It bears repeating.

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a propos of nothing, books

Caltrain Is For Crazies

I’m reading THE NAKED AND THE DEAD on the train from Millbrae to Mountain View.

Caltrain Dude: Do you have to read that?

Me: Huh?

Caltrain Dude:Is that for class?

Me: Oh. No. I read an interview with Norman Mailer in the Paris Review, and I –

Caltrain Dude: You don’t see too many females reading books like that unless it’s for class.

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books, film, interviews

Santa Cruz Ave

Yesterday I interviewed Michael Dixon, Juliette Carrillo, Peter Van Norden & Claire Peeps, with a piano tuner working on Shiyan’s piano in the living room all the while, and got answers back from Anne Bogart. I also talked to Jenelle a bit about a possible pitch of these interviews to BSW.

Today: James Bundy & Joann Breuer.

Yesterday Mere drove me down to Santa Cruz Ave and I bought photo boxes to organize my many, many photographs. It feels good to get them out of those dusty albums – and also to be able to say, I know exactly where the pictures are for Vast Wreck, for Lysistrata, for MOH&H, etc. I’m finally on the point of putting together a portfolio. Imagine that.

Then I went to Kepler’s and Borrone’s. I read Kazuo Ishiguro’s NEVER LET ME GO. It’s fantastic. Sad and moving. I started reading it right over again the moment I’d finished.

Then Mere and I watched the old SABRINA and about half of the new SABRINA before getting bored with the remake.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that you could only really call this a “vacation” if you were “insane” or a “workaholic” like “me.”

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books, F&F, interviews

Millbrae

You’d think I’d remember not to get gas at the Millbrae exit from the 280. You go down miles of a windy road before you come out by the station. I once did the same thing, at school, when I was nearly out of gas, and I was just cruising down the hill without any prayer of finding a station. There are so many roads like that around here – windy and endless. I got stuck on the 84 going the wrong way last night, too.

Anyway, I did manage to get to SF, find parking (miraculous!) return the car to Kersti, and take the train back to Mountain View in time to have sushi with Cisco, Shiyan, and Meredith. I love that BART connects to the Millbrae Caltrain now. If that had been an option when I was in school…

No more car! Hooray! Kersti drives back to Ashland at some point today.

We adjourned to Cisco and Lax’s apt for bread pudding and some weird variation on British cookies called “tim-tams.” That evening, we read from THE GIFT OF NOTHING (a Matt and Earl comic book) and Derrida’s ON GRAMMATOLOGY. I’d never picked the thing up before. It repays the reader with great amusement. I’m going to have to get through it.

“Speaking of the hymen,” Stayner and I took the Taspers to see Gayatri Spivak (Derrida’s translator and cultural critic) at Cornell once, and we had trouble understanding the meaning of anything in her lecture. I found her introduction to be much more comprehensible because I could read over it again and again.

I have four interviews today:

Peter Van Norden (actor)
James Bundy (YSD)
Juliette Carrillo (director)
Claire Peeps (Durfee)

Getting busy.

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books, film

Beware Of Fainting Fits (And American Girl Dolls)

I finally saw Canadian director Patricia Rozema’s MANSFIELD PARK last week. I enjoyed it – she’s a really good director – but Fanny was too pretty for my taste, looking directly at the camera doesn’t work for me – and as much as I’m usually a fan of interpolating other lost or lesser-known material from an author’s work into adaptations for performance, in this case, I thought it made Fanny far too confident too early to have her quoting Austen’s “History Of England.” It did elaborate her relationship with Susie, though.

Fanny, at least the Fanny of the novel, never struck me as being independent-minded enough to do anything like write satiric history. But this was one fly in an otherwise great ointment. I admire Rozema for adapting Austen so well – and I’m sure if I live long enough, I’ll eventually create a less than faithful adaptation of an adored novel which will drive people wild but satisfy me.

Austen.com has a fantastic list of all the times in the book that Fanny is actually crying – fourteen times.

Has Patricia really not made a full-length film since 2000? She’s way too good for that! And is her next project, as IMDB claims, honest-to-god-really “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl Mystery??” Although with Abigail Breslin of Little Miss Sunshine playing Kit, I just might have to go see it.

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books, theater, writing

The Step-Daughter Lives

I got a copy of Eric Bentley’s translation of Six Characters In Search Of An Author from Bloomsbury. I’m going to be working on an adaptation of it. There have to be more contemporary translations – I’ll have to go to the Stanford library while I’m there and get the rest of them. Amazon has a Mark Musa version published in 1996. But this is a good translation. It’s the one I first read the play in and it has a lot of dramatic power.

The original Italian is available here via Project Gutenberg.

I’m going to have to make myself my own Ashland text bible – original language, classic translation (Bentley) and modern translations (Musa, etc.) side by side.

T minus 3 days till leaving Ashland, Oregon.

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books, quotes, style

Mailer? I Hardly Even…

It’s been a Maileresque couple of days. I bought the PARIS REVIEW with Andrew O’Hagan’s interview of him in it. I was so happy that there was a discussion of style in it:

MAILER
[…]
One of my basic notions for a long, long time is that there is this mysterious mountain out there called reality. We novelists are always trying to climb it. We are mountaineers, and the question is, Which face do you attack? Different faces call for different approaches, and some demand a knotty and convoluted interior style. Others demand great simplicity. The point is that style is an attack on the nature of reality. [my italics]

That’s a great summation of my theory about styles of directing, too. We are mountaineers. Which face do you attack? All styles are legitimate – the only danger is to eschew or denounce style, or to fail to understand that style is a choice with value, or to only be capable of writing (performing, directing) in one style…
I guess that’s a lot of dangers.
Style is a minefield full of cherry trees.

Mailer wasn’t always so aesthetic in the interview – he managed to get in some weird race references and bash Vaclav Havel, not to mention refer to his wives as cities he had gotten tired of living in (femininity as geography, anyone?) but I liked so much of his notions about writing, and I liked his bluntness.

The interview also had my favorite interviewer line in it ever:

INTERVIEWER
That won’t do, Norman. No way.

I was having breakfast with Kate McConnell at Brother’s the next morning, and as we left our table, a family playing the Trivial Pursuit cards which are on all the tables read this question aloud:

Dad: Which Pulitzer-Prize-winning author’s first novel was THE NAKED AND THE DEAD?

A silence followed it, but I gasped, “Norman Mailer!” and went straight to Bloomsbury to order a copy of that novel.

(The Paris Review archives all their extensive interviews here, by the way.

Here’s another great quote:

MAILER
Our understanding of good and evil begins with our parents. Down the road one is altered by one’s relationships with one’s children.

INTERVIEWER
If one is so minded – or so inclined – is it a good idea for a novelist to have children?

MAILER
I don’t prescribe for novelists. I mean, if Henry James followed my prescription, where would he have been?

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books, directing

Brrrrrrontes

Read Villette yesterday, at the rec of Christopher at Bloomsbury. Pretty depressing, Charlotte.

Jemal MacNeil and I are putting in a co-directing pitch for EYE MOUTH GRAFFITI BODYSHOP – I’m inspired partly in this by Bill and Tracy’s work on MMC, but party just by trusting Jemal as a collaborator. I think our ideas together are already better than what I ever could have come up with on my own.

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