o’gloomy: repent

Here are some antidotes to the glooms:

 First this is a delightful piece on Hepburn by Heather Rose Ryan and includes Miss K’s brownie recipe. What a treat! I could actually be converted to cooking on the basis of it. Sequential inabilities mean recipes always fail me, but surely Miss Katherine’s wouldn’t

 Eleanor Wachtel now has many of her audio interviews archived, ‘specially pertinent for folks across the water, Check out Elaine Scarry for a reminder to look upwards.

 Or Colm Toibin because he’s an interesting man to listen to and there’s a moving anecdote about his mother and his bridge playing brother that has the familiar ring of every teapot and kitchen table. Honest, not pitying.

or Hermione Lee on Edith Wharton because she’s funny and smart and knows her stuff.

There’s also been a recent focus on Turkish writers

 Finalement there’s Elgar. (this programme is only avail til next Thurs)

In the week marking Elgar’s 150th anniversary, four commentators reflect on aspects of Elgar in the context of his time and after, exploring the contradictions and enigmas in his complex and paradoxical personality.

Climbing on a bad hip and chocolate

Here’s a link to a travel article published in Sat’s Globe and Mail I wrote about climbing Croagh Patrick with the Puffin and granny/sister gang. For at least 15 minutes after the descending I considered acquiring an appetite for clambering and wandering about the place, but it appears to have diminished in favour of learning the Japanese abacus.

Another pairing

By virtue of another combination of circumstances I found myself at a  show yesterday where a book on Henry James was my only reading material. I read it while a woman with a guitar sang loudly I am a pizza in three languages.

Workers

Yup someone else has noticed:

In search of novels about working life

Work’s relative absence from the novel is all the odder when you consider its absolute ubiquity. Not only is it a universal leveller, it is also one of the great venues for social interaction. Even the members of a chain-gang can be guaranteed to speak to each other now and again. Work ought to occupy the literary imagination as much as sex, money, or power, and yet for the most part the Anglo-American novel has spent at least half of the first two or three centuries of its development resolutely denying its existence.

Could this absence on the page be attributed to the matter of unemployment (or perhaps incarceration?) being the ideal state for a writer. Long, uninterrupted spells and all that.

 It’s also tricky to find more general non-fiction descriptions and documentation about working life. Blogs where people moan about their jobs don’t offer detailed descriptions of the processes of fixing a telephone pole or deciding on blah blah levels in x-rays or deciding on how the council should signpost a roundabout …likely because people probably assume no one’s interested. Likely no one is interested except some quirky novelist zooming in for curious details to borrow.

in yer ear

Sat down next to gal on bus yesterday discussing her “finance” exam marks on a mobile phone. Pitiful assault on the ears as I am trying to get to grips with Mr Roth’s rumination on his losing his modern library collection and disappointing his mother or plucking the feathers out of a pigeon or peeling grapes or… that’s the point the endless humphing in my left ear about a 71 that should have been an 84 like, (that word is the equiv. of a blink in this dialect, it’s so overused) meant there was no possible way to ascertain anything from the pages of my book.

Conversations about finance marks are useless. I could appreciate you won’t come to my wedding, I have a strange worrying bump on my elbow, I don’t know which way I should vote, I only have three Christmas’s left, type conversations, but this was unfathomable, unnecessary and likely to continue for 25 bus stops.

I moved. Enraged. To the dangerous seats in the centre of the bus, which turn about, and I have been ejected from a couple of times.

On moving I note a woman who I thought might be a woman I recognize from theflower-shop, but because recognizing people aint my strongest skill I cannot be sure. Today I ran into her. Were you on that bus? She confirms she was sat there trying to repeat a Latin word for some obscure muscle or tendon in her head in an effort to drown it out.

Every time I see a mobile phone I think of Harold Pinter and his piece. Neither Literature nor Latin could tumble finance yesterday. I think the only thing for the job is sean-nos singing. One of these days I will pluck up the courage to breathe in and let a desperate ballad of unmitigated ugly wailing out from between my lips about a woman seeking a decent shampoo and set or a large bowl of pea soup. The notes will be long. One word sung in an elongated manner to mimic the husky exhales of a hungry donkey. The song belted out, will travel up that bus and every head shall turn. I will bear the excruciation of it, risk getting myself sectioned for the glory of a hurriedly uttered “yeah gotta go man”.

Unusual pairing

A generous invitation from a friend and I find myself present at a tribute to Frank Sinatra’s music. I cannot resist an opportunity to hear an orchestra live, despite technically not knowing nor liking much of Frank Sinatra’s music.

 A few songs in and the experience of the pink lights and arm swinging by the singer, who apparently sounds just like Frank and from my p.o.v not knowing how Frank sounds could have been Frank, was vastly improved by reading a Philip Roth book: The Facts.

On the page, slightly tricky in the low light of this theatre, I read Roth’s descriptions of an Alcatraz marriage that wrecked ten years of his life and had to be equally trying for the other party, while on stage the joviality blasts on. I can manage this music as long as I don’t actually look at it, which is unfortunate because the very animated conductor is pulling some bendy moves with his lower body and every now and again swings around picks up a trumpet and parps it out beautifully across the auditorium while swaying his belly.

There’s a robust trombone player on the right, whose trombone wails affectionately. The audience swing their curls. The man beside me appears to have poor control of his plump left knee, which keeps visiting my seat and clanking in to my bone. He has binoculars. What’s he looking at? Close up of fingers on the trumpet. How can he handle a closeup on the pink lights when I’m a-dizzy up here in the distance?

I’m more of a Shostakovitch gal and it’s sad that the place is hopping yetlast year at the CBC Radio Orchestra Shostakovitch 100 series the theatre was rattling like a half empty biscuit tin.

The man with the poor knee control is taking a break on the binocs, he wants to know what I am reading. He shrugs. Who is he? He mouthes. More blather from the Frank singer takes care of it. Up go the binocs.

 The content of the book and music seemed an unlikely pairing until I wondered afterward if Frank Sinatra’s music was likely the soundtrack to the demise of most marriages.

Having been raised on Boy George it may explain why marriage has never held any remote appeal.

M.D.K.A.

When I first read this obituary(Margaret Atwood’s ma) on Monday I thought it remarkable and considered the advantage of having writerly offspring to pen one’s obit, until a few hours later the image of the broom, the bear and the ice-dancing all made sense. It was the life that was remarkable, which must have meant the obituary wrote itself.

On the shelf with James

Colm Toibin reflects on how Henry James wrestled with the effect of marriage and being broke on the artist.

I’m partial to these essays. They provide the literary equivalent of the Puffin’s daily requests for me to disclose exactly what his stuffed horse is thinking about him. You can be beating an egg and may have the passing wonder of whether Mr James worried about putting eggs in the cupboard and eh voila Colm Toibin’s (or whomever) dished it up. No need to trawl four biographies … the man was frantic over eggs. These days however James might have needed to be a bit more frantic about the likelihood of finding someone who’d be willing to put up with him.

Such literary pairings are to be encouraged. I’d like to know more about the kitchen table of the author who wrote The Tenants of Moonbloom, (excellent book) whose name presently escapes me. Edwin, or Edward something. The kitchen table is of significance because he’d a bunch of children and apparently sat at it and wrote with them milling about. Therefore it must have been some incredible table to help sustain his concentration. Hopefully some writer will pair off with him and reflect…

More generally no writer ever need worry ’bout the impact of marriage on their work if they accept as previously, proudly asserted in this blog the best person for them to have a relationship with is the leg of a table.

Broke? Here’s Orwell

If you’re broke, and if you’re a writer it’ll be a permanent state that you’ll adjust to like a penicillin allergy … well here’s some company Mr Orwell. Compare notes, put yer feet up listen and find some comfort in this Radio 4 Classic Serial

 Down and out in Paris and London By George Orwell, adapted by PG Morgan

On the shelf

At the library on the DVD shelf people do not borrow Charlie Chaplin collections, nor Indiana Jones. I counted seven rejected Charlo collections on an otherwise bare looking shelf.

Folks have this ritual where they hurriedly flick through what’s there, nearly taking neighbouring arms off in the process, slam the shelf back. Repeat process. Look dismayed.

I’d love to know exactly what they are all hoping to find. Maybe the excellent documentary I grabbed last week about The New York Times crossword. Another curiousity is why the boxes often emit an odour that suggests they’ve hibernated under someone’s armpit for six months.