Obama, the opera!

Hilarious - I try to steer clear of politics here but I think this is good fun no matter where your's are, especially if you're an opera fan. From Mr. Eugenides blog - Obama! the opera.

Noir gumshoe in 1970s Los Angeles and other odds and ends (Film - The Long Goodbye)

We are edging toward the final weeks of the semester, and may I just say one word - cuh-ray-zee - so we will all be lucky if this is coherent.

Made a stop at normblog after learning about him from exlibris who was profiled there recently. He has an impressive selection of blogger profiles which I much enjoyed. I love to eavesdrop on other people's lives a phrase which always makes me think of the opening sequence of the film of Ordinary People , the first film directed by Robert Redford. Have you seen it? The camera comes down a street, passing by houses in an average American suburban neighborhood, peering suddenly into the window of one and then moving magically through that window into the house? Wonderful sequence.

Speaking of movies, we had Robert Altman's 1973 adaptation of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye with Elliott Gould out from the library this week and watched it a few nights ago. Altman is a structured but improvisatory genius, a style after my own directorial heart, so I have always loved his approach to film making. This film makes barely a nod to 1930s noir, despite the fact that it might be fair to say that the Bogart/Howard Hawk's film of The Big Sleep, another Raymond Chandler novel with detective Phillip Marlowe, fairly defined it. This gumshoe is stuck in 1970s Los Angeles, definitely a man out-of-place, as Chandler's Marlowe is. That is the thing I like about this movie. It is faithful to the themes of the book and the experience of the characters but not slavish or imitative of the iconic film that preceded it. Though there is no noir to be seen, this man's world is black as can be. He drives his friend Terry Lennox to the Mexican border and is then hounded by the police for aiding Lennox in escaping prosecution for the murder of his wife, and is hounded by a crime syndicate loony who is sure Marlowe has the substantial sum of money owed him by Lennox. In the meantime he is hired by the wife of a famous writer to find her disappeared, desperate, alcoholic husband played with brio by Sterling Hayden a fine contrast to Elliott Gould's Marlowe, who he understatedly plays as a decent guy, wise-cracker, with no delusions about himself. Altman gets this incredible grimy sense of verismo in this film. The camera work and the personal interplay, feels totally accidental and utterly real. It most evokes for me Joan Didion's bleak novels, also set in 1970s California. Altman also has a lot of fun with the theme music - a song by John Williams and Johnny Mercer that is played in ten different guises - by a local Mexican orchestra, twinkled on the piano by a bar tender, played on the car radio as a popular song of the day... a fun conceit. If you're not familiar with this film, it's worth a look.

And last, but certainly not least, I have begun a re-read of A. S. Byatt's Possession, yes Sheila, I know it is one of your favorites. I am barely fifty pages in and am taken with her observant, whimsical eye for character and the elegance of her prose. Perhaps after The Meaning of Night I wanted to continue in the fictionalized scholarly vein. Also, as the pressures of papers and finals bear down, I want a quality of writing good enough and a world compelling enough to absorb me completely.

Elsewhere is where I'd rather be...

If you are as crazy about notebooks as I am, you will love the Black Cover. So dedicated are they to finding the perfect notebook, they review their candidates within an inch of their lives. A stationary store is toy store for grown-ups as far as I am concerned.

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The Booksurfer made me aware of a new book worth coveting by biographer Richard Holmes - The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. His post links to the Times review. Holmes's book follows the journeys of several discoverers of the day including William Herschel in his creation of the reflector telescope and Humphrey Davy on his numerous advances in chemistry. It sounds as though Holmes builds a case for what he sees as the very model of a scientific discoverer. As Jenny Uglow puts it in her excellent review in this weekend's Guardian:

The key virtue is close attention, immersion in the other: the questing, reasoning, "scientific" mode of Keats's negative capability. The track on which these questing spirits race, however, is far from fixed. Holmes's scientists roam far, literally and poetically, as the playful chapter headings suggest: "Joseph Banks in Paradise", "Herschel on the Moon", "Davy on the Gas".

As is the current mode, Holmes's book links science and imagination, so it is a must-have for me. While it is not out yet in the U.S., I link to the Book Depository if you click the title. They ship anywhere in the world for free! So, go for it.

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Finally, there is another book I am excited to read - a new biography of Oscar Wilde by Thomas Wright called Oscar's Books. It is being hyped as a revolutionary type of biography. It hardly seems that, but Wright chooses to re-tell Wilde's oft-told life through the books he read and has accomplished this by spending two decades tracking every last one of them down. I owe a big apology to the blogger who wrote about this book as I cannot for the life of me remember who it was. CORRECTION! It was Sheila, sorry Sheila. Here are the reviews from the Guardian, Independent, and The Scotsman. The Book Depository carries that one too.

Dr. Who's David Tennant attempts the indecisive Danish prince and other gob-smackers

Cam tries to avert blogertia today. Dovegrey introduced me to the meaty Mookse. And, OMG, cute-as-a-button BBC television star David Dr. Who Tennant attempts Hamlet and this review (thanks again Dovegrey) is hilarious. Then again, if you're a fan of Dr. Who, Tennant, the RSC, or Hamlet, maybe you won't find it so funny. But anyone else...

And I just came across an advertisement for a new novel - In the Land of No Right Angles by Daphne Beal who, I believe, was this very cool, very smart young woman, a Brown student at the time, who assistant directed a show of mine at my theater company in Milwaukee! I'm going to have to read it on that basis alone even though the ad threatens me with its being "A subtly resonant masterpiece."

BBC television did a three-part adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst's 2004 Booker-winning novel The Line of Beauty about 1980's politics, hypocrisy, and the lure of the superficial. I reviewed the novel here and, while the adaptation lacks some of the psychological complexity and the grace that is afforded it by the quality of the writing, it's not bad at all. Thank you New York Public Library (my Netflix).

Meanwhile, The Neuroscience of Cognitive Development - The Role of Experience and the Developing Brain continues to impress me for its conciseness and George Eliot has this to say on the subject of human psychology in Middlemarch:

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts - not to hurt others.

And this:

The human mind has at no period accepted a moral chaos; and so preposterous a result was not strictly conceivable. But we are frightened at much that is not strictly conceivable.

Her certainty is, at times, shattering.

One last question: can one eat too many blueberries? I hope not. Off to class.

Elsewhere is where I'd rather be...

I've just begun reading Thirteen by Sebastian Beaumont. In it, a guy's business goes bust and he mopes around for a while and then a friend makes him an offer:

'Don't you trust me?' he asked.


'Yes, but...'

'I know you. I respect you. I want the best for you. As you can't think of what to do, give me one reason why I shouldn't decide for you.'

I shrugged.

'Okay,' he said. Think about it. If you agree, I'll tell you to do something, and you must do it - unless you can think of a good reason not to. And "because I don't want to" isn't a good enough reason. You've go to be able to say, in all honest, that what I suggest would be damaging to you, psychologically. Only then will I let you off, and try to think of something else.'

I stared at him, breathless, because I knew he was serious, and breathless, too, because I was so tempted to take him up on his suggestion.

'Give me a year. A year,' he said. 'I'll give you my email address in California and you can send me regular bulletins. And any time you feel that you need to stop, then you must stop. But only if you need to. You'd have to define what you mean by "need," not me.'

I got up and went to have a piss, then went through to the kitchen to make us both coffee. In that short time, in just four or five minutes, I made my decision. Looking back on it, the way I jumped at his suggest was not because I thought he would solve my life for me: make me happy. If was just that things right then were so shit, that even if they remained shit after I'd started doing whatever it was that I'd agreed to do, at least they'd be no worse. And what bliss it would be to stop wondering, however briefly, what to do with myself.

My amateur psychologist side said, 'You're just refusing to take responsibility for your life.'

Well, alright, but this was at least finite.

One year.

One year.

'Okay,' I said when I came back into the room. 'I'll do it. I'll give you one year. When are you going to tell me what to do?'

'Now, if you like.'

'Okay.'

He shifted slightly, as though uncomfortable, and took a sip of coffee before looking at me, watching for my reaction.

'Become a taxi driver,' he said. 'Working on a night shift.'

And so he makes this modern-day Faustian bargain and the number thirteen begins cropping up in all sorts of strange ways. Ominous chord. That's all I'm going to say. That and it's really fun.



Elsewhere on the web... Curious Expeditions had a post about pneumatic mail systems called Pneu Yourk, Pneu York - very cool stuff.

© Denis Darzacq

Photographer Denis Darzacq has done a series entitled Hyper set in France's supermarkets. These images mock the notion that buying any product will revolutionize your life. It's on view at Lens Culture - great site. It will revolutionize your life. Batteries not included. Check with your doctor if you have hypertension.


That'll do. Wherever you are stay cool and read with aplomb.

Web finds

I discovered artist Jacob Whibley while trolling around this morning. I particularly like his collages (left).

Hat tip: scout holiday


This really cracked me up - courtesy of raincoaster.

Of Books and Bicycles muses on her summer reading plans to get her through the end of the semester. I'm planning on The Pickwick Papers for my annual Dickens novel, Middlemarch, and Revolution on my Mind for the Russian Reading Challenge, which has sadly ended up on the back burner lately.

Scott Pack rants on the Times Top 50 Crime Writers (list freaks - go forth and be outraged). Have you noticed that whenever someone draws up a literary list it provokes nothing but rants and raves? I include myself in this. I've yet to read someone post a list and say something like, 'The Guardian posted this great list of the top 50 books to read before you drop and it's brilliant - I wouldn't change a thing.' Scott makes his case for adding John Connolly, which made me think that I've read nothing of his besides The Book of Lost Things. It may be time to remedy that - any suggestions?



Curious Expeditions who I can always count on for, well... curiousities, taught me about Louis Thomas Jérôme Auzoux, 19th century French anatomist and his paper mache and resin anatomical models, one of which is tucked into the back of an antique shop called Obscura. You know where I'm going this week. That's one of his brains above.

How blind children learn the verb "see" - at the Cognition and Language Lab.

That ought to keep you busy. Happy Sunday.

Elsewhere on the web...

Neurochem midterm today. Oy. Wish me luck. At one point during our lovely two-day get-away I looked up at The Ragazzo from my pile of articles and study notes on the gargantuan sleigh bed and said, this is it for two months, meaning this is the last break. I think I was right. I was lucky to read twenty pages of Child 44 last night before falling asleep, so nothing new there.

I was delighted to learn that Jumpha Lahiri has a new book of stories coming out. Here's an interview with her at Book Forum. Hat tip: BookFox.

And here's the latest on the arcuate fasciculus. What? Not heard of it? And you call yourself a language buff? Hat tip: 3quarksdaily.

May your day be rich in neurotransmissions.

Reflective or merely distracted? (elsewhere on the web)

I adore browsing this site occasionally, lovely pictures. I particularly love two reflections - one in a cup of coffee (reflection in java) and the second of a neon sign in a puddle on the street (paysages d'hiver 2). Perhaps I'm in a reflective mood. Or perhaps I'm dreading the results of my midterm tomorrow and can't concentrate on what I'm supposed to be doing!

elswhere on the web...

A gorgeous picture by Alfred Eisenstaedt at wood s lot this morning.

A fun new site I've discovered: Biologists Helping Bookstores

Another fun site I've discovered: Brass goggles

and check out Curious Expeditions for the steampunk galaxy