At Swim, Two Boys

After all these years (years?!), I'm back, with something not-quite-a-review.

My favorite read of 2013 was "At Swim, Two Boys" by Jamie O'Neill. It would be a shame to add any words to the ones in this beautiful book. In lieu of a review, I give you this tiny taste of the book's majestic intimacy:

“Grey morning dulled the bay. Banks of clouds, Howth just one more bank, rolled to sea, where other Howths grumbled to greet them. Swollen spumeless tide. Heads that bobbed like floating gulls and gulls that floating bobbed like heads. Two heads. At swim, two boys.” 
― Jamie O'Neill, At Swim, Two Boys

Tea, not writing

Across the internet--my first post on Gongfu Girl, a photo essay from our first tasting of Den's Tea's sublime Kuradashi Sencha.

The Awdrey-Gore Legacy, by Edward Gorey

What fun!  

 

The Awdrey-Gore Legacy is classic Gorey, and at first glance appears almost indistinguishable from the rest of Gorey’s oeuvre.  What makes this book stand out from the rest of Gorey’s work is that it is like a love letter to formulaic mysteries, replacing the usual sort of plot and sensible conclusion with a big, open sense of the hilarious oddness of the whole “mystery” genre itself.

The “mystery” as a popular genre was originally constructed around stories of intelligent people using logic, reason and observation to make sense out of criminal acts and restore justice to the world. The Awdrey-Gore Legacy seems like a classic mystery... there is certainly a murdered author, and what seem to be notes toward a murder mystery, that might be related to the author’s murder. But the progress of the book doesn’t follow reason, or common sense, or logic--instead it rewards our leisurely observation, moving from one unreasonable possibility to another, full of clues that add up to more of a mystery than we started with  Instead of reading an ordinary type of story, we find at the end that we’ve been dallying in an imaginary world of beautiful eccentricity and cryptic motives (the Gorey world) instead of an ordinary world of problems that can be solved.  A classic mystery, perhaps--but one half-seen, through a black & white kaleidoscope. 

Along the way, of course, we get plenty of jolly puns and wordplay, and the trademark Gorey wit. Adding to the charm of the writing, the physical book itself is beautiful--and the illustrations reward all of the attention you give them.  Enjoy!

A Single Man -- the audio-book

Mostly a stranger to the "audio-book" format, I very much enjoyed the way this recording paced me through the text:  listening, I simply did not have the option of rushing through this or that little part of the novel, and thereby missing the detailed nuances of Isherwood's language that help make the whole work so powerful. 

Encountering the text in this way, an experience halfway between reading a novel and watching a theatrical piece, was exquisite.

This audio-book of A Single Man is read by Simon Prebble, who has won numerous awards for his audio work and was a fairly accomplished stage actor. A Single Man is first and foremost about the continuous and complicated experience of living and, perhaps most of all, its fragility. The cadence of Prebble's voice captures the flavor and the beauty of Isherwood's depiction of lived experience, with a particular power and charm that makes the book worth seeking out in this format.  Prebble's interpretation of the text is perfect; his voice is crystal clear, and because of this clarity, captures the language of the book beautifully.  Further, he dramatizes the work with a subtlety that lets the strength and complexity of Isherwood's work come through.

When I finished listening to this recording the first time, I immediately had the feeling that I wanted to start listening to it again, all over.  Two nights later, I did listen to the entire book again--all in one go, instead of in bits and pieces as I did the first time-- and this time with company:  my spouse, two bottles of wine, a jar of almonds and two (seemingly) interested cats. I was glad to share such a singular performance like this one with my loved ones, and glad to take the time to do so (about 4 1/2 very nice hours).

For Valentine's Day: An Edward Gorey Review: The Black Doll: A Silent Screenplay

This book is something special, primarily for Gorey fans (this is admittedly true of everything he wrote). The book opens with a rare interview with Edward Gorey that is full of enchanting and informative tidbits; Gorey himself is charming and fun, as you would expect.

The screenplay of "The Black Doll" is mysterious, macabre, and full of references to films both familiar and obscure.  It has the satisfying inscrutability of a Robbe-Grillet novel—but with much more charm and friendliness. I suspect that this screenplay would not make a terribly watchable film--much of the action and information about the characters appears in explanatory texts within the screenplay, but not in dialogue or explicit action--but that is sublimely unimportant.  All in all, The Black Doll is a book to go back to, and puzzle over and delight in again and again over a glass of port (or three).

Speaking of the unfilmability of things:  this is as good a place as any to call you attention to the utterly amazing Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story,  a delicious and hilarious film of (and ode to) Sterne's 'unfilmable' Tristram Shandy.  I've never been able to finish the book, so I can't in good conscience write anything about the film's relationship to the book, or vice versa--but the film is endlessly surprising in its sophistication and delicious literary whatnottery.  Check it out!

City Boy, by Edmund White

Edmund White's City Boy is a memoir of the author's growth as a writer during the 1970s, primarily in New York. It is full of anecdotes and stories about real people--of varying degrees of fame--like Robert Wilson, James Merrill, William Burroughs, and Harold Brodkey, among many, many others. All of the characterizations are fascinating, capturing the particular impact that this or that person had on the author. These passages are the kind that inspired me to track down some of the people that were new to me and thus discover something wonderful and unexpected; and on the other hand, to be reminded of old favorites now also seen in the new light of White's sensibility.

The description of Jasper Johns in Chapter 15, whose "house had the sort of simplicity that only money could buy" (214) is especially powerful. His description of Johns starts on an intimate, personal level and then opens into a discussion (one of many) about the differences between artists of the time who were publicly out (like White) and those that were closeted (like Johns, Sontag, and many others). This chapter especially exemplifies White's charm, and the mixture of his thoughtfulness, his awe for the people who inspired him, and (not least) his vanity. Like he does in most of the book, in this chapter he balances the nostalgic voyeurism of his past with a thoughtful criticism of the attitudes of his younger self.

The book is solidly interesting and rewarding--up until the last chapter, which seems rushed and awkward. White doesn't seem to know how to talk about Susan Sontag, and ends up shifting suddenly, through a discussion of the impact of AIDS on the 1970s New York scene, into a weaker, maudlin prose unlike anything that precedes it. The impulse to grieve rings true, but his writing is clearly more effective in remembering earlier, happier times than it is eulogizing the loss of them.

"Ballard Locks", or, Here I Go Maudlin.

Here, please enjoy nostalgic and fiercely maudlin documentary record in pictures of my once-favorite tiny piece of anonymous art: a pair of padlocks with hearts on them. Perhaps the spontaneous expression of a couple's desire to express a permanence of love that, like the MasterLock, could allow each participant in that love to withstand the bullets of fate; perhaps the expression of the recently dumped of their desire for such permanence; perhaps just something very cute bolted onto a derelict building during another tedious, drug-fueled evening among once-and-future strangers to each other--who knows?

I was obsessed by these during the few months here recorded (March through September 2006)--not coincidentally a very emotional time in my life. This series of photographs is now, as then, a perfect excuse to wax pretentious and just enjoy myself.

"Ballard Locks" - a photo essay

The site of these "Ballard Locks" is now a newly developed complex called the "Ballard Blocks", with Trader Joe's and various other things that once again show the triumph of progress and modernity over love.