Mansfield Park...the chase scenes, the lavender, the dew!

I don't know what to say about the Masterpiece Classic version of Mansfield Park. I've mentioned when talking about the feature movie that the character of heroine, Fanny Price, is a mouse who never roars. Seeing so many elements missing from the dramatization reminded me that the suspense in the novel is whether this painfully shy, unassertive woman will ever get the man she adores and the happiness that she deserves.

The 1999 motion picture resolved the problem of Fanny's passivity by reinventing her as a writer and assertive wit. Gillian Anderson's introduction The Masterpiece PBS version begins by suggesting that witty, hardened Mary Crawford in Mansfield is very much like Jane Austen herself--excuse me? Then she adds a bit regretfully that the actual heroine of Mansfield is Fanny Price, who has been always urged to be grateful.

This version of the story depicts Fanny as a sort of holy fool--with touseled blonde hair and the urge to play childish games on the lawn. This version doesn't go far into the threat hanging over Fanny--who lives with her relatives on sufferance. Fanny's primary persecutor-in-residence is the self-righteous Mrs. Norris, who never misses a chance to belittle Fanny. In this PBS version, Mrs. Norris is basically gutted like a trout--she has just a few lines.

The Masterpiece production perhaps did not have the budget to stage the episode where Fanny is returned to her impoverished family in Portsmouth after years of living a ladylike life with her rich Mansfield Park relatives. I'd better stop here. The primary realization I had watching this show--and missing Mrs. Norris's malevolent threats--was that Mrs. Norris is the name of the watch cat at Hogwarts School in the Harry Potter books. That must be a reference to the character in Mansfield Park.

Okay, okay, one more comment...what IS it with the insertion of a chase scene into Persuasion and now into Mansfield Park, where it seems even more forced--quick propose to her before the dew dries on the lavender!

The mysteries of writing... know some, glad to learn more

Sometime, not tonight, I want to talk about ebooks and how differently people treat them from paper books--when they treat them at all. Okay, reporting back, I read Holly Lisle’s 21 Ways to Get Yourself Writing, which had some practical strategies that were well worth the $9.95 price of admission for an ebook. I was even happier to get the bonus ebook she threw in Mugging the Muse, Writing Fiction for Love and Money, which contained over 200 pages of extremely useful information about the highly dysfunctional publishing industry. There are things there I haven’t seen elsewhere. These are also available as POD (Publish on Demand) editions for those who are interested, but who need the paperback book in hand.

January 13 to 26, 1978 I read:

Shadow Box, George Plimpton
Note: The man sure can write, what a pleasure

All My Sins Remembered, Haldeman
Note: there is no way to keep the characters straight in this book

Blue Skies, No Candy, Gael Greene
My note on this contained four four-letter words — I’m not going to quote it beyond the mildest part. The gist of my conclusion was that in this book, the character did not grow and the work was not profound, my mildest pronouncement was: "cock-deep ain’t too deep.”

Homer’s Daughter, Robert Graves
Note: Wow. I thought Graves was an MCP a la D.H. Lawrence, but this book shows him to be much wiser than I could have imagined. Entertaining too.


Writers at Work, The Paris Review Interviews, 4th Series, George Plimpton, Ed.
I adored the way they showed a reproduction of an actual edited page by each author interviewed. I'm still a bit of a sucker for "how do they do it?"

Growing (Up) at 37, Jerry Rubin
Note: Honest, but sappy

Wife to Mrs. Milton, Robert Graves

I went on a Robert Graves and George Plimpton kick in January ‘78. On the facing page I listed 10 historical and one contemporary Robert Graves book (from Hercules, My Shipmate to Watch the North Wind Rise) and the contents of George Plimpton’s Writers at Work, The Paris Review Interviews e.g. 1st Series, Ed with intro by Malcolm Cowley, E.M. Foster, etc. to 4th Series, Ed. By George Plimpton, Intro by Wilfred Sheed, Isak Dineson, etc.

I’m not going to inflict copying this list on my hands or this blog.

January 13 to 26, 2008 I read:

21 Ways to Get Yourself Writing When Your Life Just Exploded, Holly Lisle
Mugging the Muse, Writing Fiction for Love and Money, Holly Lisle

Singer from the Sea, Sheri S. Tepper
Locus Interview

Researching Holly Lisle books on writing...more to come

Holly Lisle's fiction spoke to me so much that I was interested to see her books on writing and I am now checking them out.



Picking up my fluttering manuscript pages from the slow-motion train wreck of my last year...more to come -- oops! Clicking on the cover takes you to a more expensive option, the singular ebook I'm looking at can be reached through this link
21 Ways to Get Yourself Writing

Northanger Abbey....what happens in Bath..

A happier adaptation last Sunday in PBS's Northanger Abbey. One of the Austen observers at the Republic of Pemberley noted "What happens in Bath, stays in Bath." This version was spiced up with much ado about wild goings on at the resort of Bath. However, this adaptation also managed to make a point I had missed before about the story. On one level it is a satire on the Gothic romance novels of Ann Radcliffe, etc. Yet heroine, Catherine Morland, shows innocence and youthful exuberance that Jane Austen must have shared when she wrote the book at the of age 23. The sinister shadows of the Gothic tales disappear before the sunny optimism of youth. This adaptation certainly clarified how sexuality was masked and released for readers in novels like The Mysteries of Udolpho and Matthew Gregory Lewis's
The Monk, the Laurell K. Hamiltons of their day.

The old BBC dramatization of the book from the 1980s did give a little more screen time to the amusing character of old Mrs. Allen, with her unshakable conviction that the most important thing in the world is dresses--specifically her own--and the an interesting scene in the baths. But I was quite satisfied with the new version.

Not persuaded...

Just a few words about the Masterpiece Theater's adaptation Persuasion. Sigh. Okay, somehow the confines of the 90-minute length inspired screenwriter Davies to chop the material up in a very odd way. I hear some Austen fans having induced friends or spouses to watch this as a rare treat ended up spending a lot of time explaining what the heck was happening. This is not good, and I hope anyone who saw this Persuasion as an intro to Austen will check out the '95 film--which I've widgeted up in the sidebar. It was totally coherent, heartfelt and made sense!

For those who already know Persuasion, who want to watch this, I'll just say that there were some very odd stagings. Maybe the idea was to "chick-lit-ize" it. I was interested to find that the ardent Austenphiles on the Republic of Pemberley shared my disbelief at the insertion of a "Run to the airport" penultimate scene that has graced so many chick lit flicks. Only in this case, we had Anne Elliot and her invalid(!) friend Mrs. Smith pelting through the streets of Bath, with the camera following, hollering out important plot points. The fact that they were shot from behind did not help. Someone asked why Mrs. Smith needed a nurse to look after her if she was capable of competing in the Bath Marathon.

I don't trust myself to discuss what happened to the pivotal scene where Captain Wentworth is writing a letter and eavesdropping on Anne Elliott. Cutting that scene was like cutting the heart out of Persuasion. The place where Davies put Anne's moving speech about the constancy of women turned it into a throwaway.

And furthermore, the only thing I can say about Rupert Penry-Jones, the actor playing Captain Wentworth, is that he is quite handsome but looks entirely too sheltered to have just worked his way up to captain in the British Navy and made his fortune in booty from the Napoleonic wars. At the very least they might have given him a little scar or a sunburn. But that might just be my fondness for Ciaran Hinds in the '95 version talking. As they say, your mileage may vary.

I’m liking this year better already!

This past week I read Holly Lisle’s Tayln, which took me just where I needed to go—away, but with fascinating characters in a believable “other” world. It was good enough that I was up till 1:00 a.m. to read the end. I also discovered Holly Lisle's web page with some great stuff for readers and writers!

Then there's heaven on earth starting today for lovers of the works of Jane Austen. PBS is presenting dramatizations of all the Jane Austen novels, beginning tonight, January 13th, with the last, though certainly not the least heartfelt, Persuasion.

The URL above also offers is a great interview with the legendary Andrew Davies, whose 1996 dramatization of Pride and Prejudice is still the gold standard for Austen (and which PBS will air Feb 10, 17 and 24th).

I had to laugh at PBS's Online Dating Profiles for the men of Jane Austen’s books!

January 6 to 12, 1978 I read:

Working, I do It for the Money, Bill Owens, author of Suburbia.
Note from 1978: Actually a photo collection, (Suburbia was also an interesting book—I read it in a bookstore in SF)
Note 2008—what? It’s a photo book I looked at all the pictures, standing up in a bookstore. It’s not like I could have afforded to buy the book, good as it was.

The Far Side of Madness, Perry
Note from 1978: Didn’t finish

Close to Colette, Maurice Goudeket

The Grass is Always Greener over the Septic Tank, Erma Bombeck

Healing Benefits of Acupressure, Acupuncture without Needles, F. M. Houston
1978 note: Quite useful, Keats Publishing, Inc., must get several copies

January 6 to January 12, 2008 I read:

Tayln, Holly Lisle

All over the map and on to fantasy land

December 25, 1977 to January 5, 1978 I read:

Good Company, a memoir mostly rhetorical, Irving Drutman

1977 Note: p. 219 - “Goldwyn remained on the Coast during my first two months and I had no opportunity to make his acquaintance and gather my own little bouquet of his malapropisms.In fact I never got to meet him because when I was in town my boss Nathanson didn't introduce us...”

2008 note: I'm kind of with Nathanson on this one.... If this was supposed to make the author appear more impressive, it had the opposite result.

Writers in Love, story of George Eliot & George Henry Lewes, Collette & Maurice Goudeket, Katherine Mansfield & John Middleton Murray, Mary Kathleen Benet

My note: Didn't finish all but most, not bad

Dr. Zismor's Skin Care Book, Zismore, Foreman
My note: I read an earlier version or something

Rex, an Autobiography, Rex Harrison
My note:Quite a shallow and self-serving book

The Carlos Complex, a Study in Terror, Christopher Dobson Ronald Payne

Mitsou, Colette

Super Chic, Brady
My note: Could also be called “Superficial”

Short novels of Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
Includes: Cheri, The Last of Cheri, the Other One, Duo,The Cat, The Indulgent Husband, Plus a nice little intro written in 1951 by a reverent Glenway Wescott


December 25, 2007 to January 5, 2008 I read:

The Language of the Night, Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, Ursula K. LeGuin
A 1979 collection of essays on writing fantasy, revised in 1989. It took even longer for me to get to it, but it still applies and Le Guin is still going strong.

fearful symmetry

From my window I can see the San Francisco Zoo in the foggy distance across the park. Pondering the Christmas day escape, attacks on zoogoers, and execution of Tatiana, the Siberian tiger, I wonder if I am the only person in the city haunted by the William Blake lyric today.

The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire in thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art?
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand, and what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb, make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?


The web page where I looked up the poem has a tiger drawn by Blake himself, showing what looks like an untigerly, sheepish grin. The words evoke more to my mind and I'm more inclined to follow the example of the stars in the poem and shed tears for all concerned.

No new books, but a magazine with attitude

I had to make a new blog entry to take down the link to my cat essays. It seems my cats are quite content to have me support them and have no interest in seeking gainful employment. I may still write about them but not at that link which has thawed, and resolved into a dew...

I will share a very inspiring link for Fat Girl Magazine, which features some young voices with refreshing attitude. Information courtesy of Lara Frater at Fat Chicks Rule who is no slouch in the attitude department either.

If I don't post another entry before that--Happy New Year!

Lynne

Flickering fires of nostalgia

I am a Buddhist, not a Christian. There's no particular reason for me to do or not "do" a Christmas celebration. Buddhists are usually mellow about telling one another what to believe or do. One major appeal of Buddhism when I joined nearly 40 years ago was that it offered no commandments or recipes for life, except the strictest of all: Cause and effect. Buddhists celebrate the New Year in the Asian fashion--starting fresh, making good causes for the year to come and so on. However, if I wanted to sing carols and so on, it would not be as they used to say "against my religion."

However, the holiday season sometimes finds me stiffening my resistance to sentimentality, simply in self-defense against overwhelming nostalgia and a sort of Holiday Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Case in point, a line from T.S. Eliot's Journey of the Magi caught me unawares and transported me back to the little theater holiday presentation where I first heard the poem recited--and heard recited many times because I was doing props for the show and attended all rehearsals and performances. It sent a shiver down my spine now as it had when I was 16 instead of 59. The words have a different depth to me now than they did then.

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'

The link below is supposed to have an audio clip of Eliot reading the poem, but I couldn't make it work. It's been one of those weeks. Maybe it will work for you. If not the whole text of the poem is there.
Eliot poem

What keeps occurring to me as I slowly re-read In Cold Blood is the interplay of truth and fiction. The rafts and rafts of observed facts in the book give it more heft and volume than Capote's more slender, totally fictional works. Sometimes reading fiction, you can actually pick out the true episodes (often the ones that don't fit) and sometime a whole forest of shards of glass that the writer picked up from real life and scattered on the page. Honestly, you can very often tell those "real" notes, because they stand up off the page. There's quite a lot of that in In Cold Blood. Odd holiday reading, but it somehow seems like a New Yorker article to me--which is part of its genius. The wealth of factual detail meshes so well with Capote's dreamy flights of lyrical speculation.

December 11 to December 24, 1977 I read:

Blind Ambition, The White House Years, John Dean

Vibrations: Improving your Psychic Environment, Daniel Logan


December 11 to 24, 2007 I read:


Greywalker, (Greywalker, Book 1), Kat Richardson
Kat Richardson

and
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
very slowly

Nights in pink satin, days in pink collars

This past week was a sugar-coated fiction week, watching the Pixar/Disney film Ratatouille and reading Stephanie Rowe’s Date Me Baby, One More Time, which could be classified as paranormal chick lit.

The experience set me to thinking about the large quantities of gloss that gets slathered over stories in our era. Disneyfication of fairy tales is a case in point. As a cynical adult, my interest flagged a little in Ratatouille, and I think it was in part because the story was convoluted without being rooted in a reality I could access. You could see the cooking genius rat as an eternal outsider, aiming for an impossible dream. Yet, it was a strain to keep suspending that disbelief.

As my Web Diva, Sue Trowbridge put it in reviewing the film, “Rats, in a kitchen?” I’ve had pet rats, and they are charming little critters, but not shall we say housebroken or extraordinarily clean. A colony of rats living in and around your kitchen and flooding around the neighborhood, pouring into (or out of) a house in great masses evokes a visceral reaction that is hard to sentimentalize. We don't have this problem with Mickey Mouse because he looks and acts very little like the rat you do not want to find in your cupboard and much more like a human despite the ears.

Watching Ratatouille set me to contemplating how much harm has been done by “happily ever after” and yet how ingrained it is. If I were reading a story to a child would I prefer the “happily ever after” fairy tales than those of the Brothers Grimm, which end with "happily until their deaths." But that doesn’t mean the child would prefer the more sanitized version. I know those who fondly recall the bloodthirsty Grimm tales, envisioning the punishments inflicted on some characters as happening to siblings or mean kids on whom they wish vengeance. I think that’s similar to children’s love of dinosaurs—Tyrannosaurus Rex makes great imaginary backup.

“These fairy tales are not senseless stories written for the amusement of the idle; they embody the profound religion of our forefathers,” . . . -- W. S. W. Anson, Asgard and the Gods, p. 21

I’m not sure how much that the above quote relates to anything I read or watched this week, I just liked it when I found it while I was searching for
happily ever after,

The title of Date Me Baby, One More Time is a satire on Britney Spears’ 1999 mega hit song, "Hit Me Baby One More Time." Yikes. I don’t know how serious the sadomasochistic undertones are to the target audience (20-30 somethings). Date Me is filled with violent threats that are thrown out with the same casual tone that is used to contemplate buying pretzels. It's kind of a convention of the genre. The heroine and her love interest are each hoping to cut the other’s head off for complicated magical survival reasons. The characters take it seriously, that is their job after all. But it is not to be taken seriously by the reader who knows that this is a romance. The fragility of the threats dilutes the suspense somewhat, as does the fact that most of the characters are immortal or extremely hard to kill. But the kill-or-be-killed romance would be an extremely dark tale if the reader did imagine that actual murder would ever happen.

The heroine of Date Me, has a convoluted supernatural pedigree, a fire-breathing dragon for a roommate, and a dead mother who keeps returning from purgatory to complain that she is being courted by Satan, who is portrayed as a hopelessly ineffective lounge lizard who only lives to make the heroine’s mother Queen of Hell. The Satan character was at first irksome, but I eventually accepted him as a sort of Wile E. Coyote figure (with the part of the Roadrunner played by the heroine's dead mother--see? I said it was convoluted!)

The story and all of its conventions float on a veritable sea of horniness—I won’t say “hormones” because the characters' lusts seemed as formalized as a minuet, but I have to give it an "A" for inventiveness and I did keep turning the pages. Kind of like Laurell K. Hamilton on laughing gas.


December 3 to 10, 1977 I read:

The Pink Collar Workers, Inside the World of Women’s Work, Louise Kapp Howe

A Time Magazine review:

To assemble her disquieting portrait of the work life of the average woman, Howe interviewed scores of women, met with unions and management and even took a job as a sales clerk. The vast majority of women, she writes, are in "pink collar" occupations: beautician, office worker, sales clerk, waitress. Among the problems contributing to their generally low wages: too many applicants and not enough jobs, indifferent unions, and company policy predicated on "A and P" (attrition and pregnancy) to hold down the office payroll.

Louise Kapp Howe died in 1984, just a year after Stallard, Ehrenreich and Sklar took her work a step further and coined the term "pink collar ghetto."

In 1998 Salon Magazine reported that Public Relations was becoming a new pink collar ghetto
article

In the 21st century this situation has changed in some ways, and in other ways has not
2004 pink collar update

December 3 to 10, 2007 I read:

Date Me Baby, One More Time, Stephanie Howe
Stephanie Rowe web page/

Winter hearts, ironic rewards

I watched the film Infamous recently and found that it sent me back both to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, which I consider one of the best-written books I’ve ever read, but to some other books that surround it—including Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Last year I saw the film, Capote, which was powerful and dominated by Phillip Lee Hoffman’s tour de force performance. It took about a year for me to be ready to revisit the harsh subject matter of a cold-blooded killing in the American heartland. The intriguing spectacle of the glitteringly, openly gay, Capote charming his way into the hearts and minds of 1960’s small town people of 1959 Kansas has some humor.

Writer/director Douglas McGrath’s Infamous focuses on the damage inflicted by lost love while in Capote writer Dan Futterman and director Bennett Miller zero in more on the damage inflicted by betrayal, some of the improvisation took me out of that film's reality.

The Futterman/Bennett film was primarily based on Gerald Clark’s biography, while Infamous was more based on George Plimpton’s book of interviews Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career.

For me, Infamous was easier to view, less bleak, I guess. It was surprisingly evocative—not just of its time period, my 1960s were considerably different than either the glittering world of New York or the small town, but of the power of art and the price... Sandra Bullock's gentle words as Nelle Harper Lee about the "blue" at the heart of the the brightest flame was as affecting as some of the more dramatic moments.

November 22 to December 2, 1977. I read:

Literary Women, the Great Writers, Ellen Moers
Note: elusively written, didactic, disorganized. What is the odd feminist obsession with George Sand?

Media Sexploitation, Wilson Bryan Key
Note: a wealth of unsubstantiated statements, and some actual data.


Patternmaster, Octavia E. Butler

J. R. R. Tolkien, Architect of Middle Earth, Daniel Grotta-Kursk
Note: very nice, clean, literate

Loose Changes, Three Women of the 60s, Sarah Davidson
Note: It took about a week to finish this. I did not like it


November 22 to December 2, 2007 I read:

The Ghost, Robert Harris
A thriller, state-of-the-art escape reading!

Thanks to you who read! Plus anger—less of it—thankfully!

To those reading this blog now, thank you for your time, and I hope each of you has a great day. If it doesn’t happen to be Thanksgiving on the day when you read this, well, appreciation is a good thing for every day, and I appreciate your reading my words.

This past few weeks I’ve been studying up on anger and rage for purposes of literary research, however I myself have not actually been experiencing anger or rage—for which I am supremely grateful. I used to have a very short fuse and hot temper. But one of the unlooked-for results of decades of Buddhist practice is that my temper, while still white-hot, gets triggered less often and no longer sets off smoke alarms and forest fires.

During one time in my life I could literally rage for days, and it was not a pleasant experience—like a merry-go-round through hell. You keep buying tickets for another go-round without realizing you have any choice in the matter. Nowadays when I do get angry (and frequently that will happen when I am quite tired or sleep-deprived) a kind of built-in sprinkler system of non-attachment gets triggered and I have the choice to disengage from rage—which I always do—nowadays.

There’s a genuine adrenalin rush to be had from anger, be it righteous or un-…but the toxic cost is too high. The reason it was never a personal goal of mine to control my temper is that my own anger was invisible to me. It seems to be part of the condition of anger that a person manages to stay there by focusing on other people or situations as the cause of his or her ire. So I was first able to see in other people how they chose to keep rekindling anger rather than stopping the cycle. By the time I began to be able to see how damaging this was in myself, I was already beginning to figure out how to choose not to be angry…and again…and again. It gets easier with practice.


October 28 to November 22, 1977 I read:

Operators and Things: The Inner Life of a Schizophrenic, Barbara O’Brien
I think this was a re-read, this book was very haunting and I’ve read it many times

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Dorothy L. Sayers
My note is – “still soothing, amusing” so another re-read

Clouds of Witness, Dorothy L. Sayers

Whispers, An Illustrated Anthology of Fantasy and Horror, Stuart David Schiff

Gromchik & Other Tales from a Psychiatrist’s Casebook, A. H. Chapman, M.D.
Um, I didn’t like this one. My note was: “self-satisfied bastard”

Ringworld, Larry Niven

Jane Austen & Her World, Ivor Brown
Another re-read. My note is: “again—this time noticing that it’s 48 less-than-brilliantly illustrated pages, more of a skimpy essay than a book.

The Five of Me: the Autobiography of a Multiple Personality, Henry Hawksworth with Ted Schwartz
Okay, this note is from 2007, but I am guessing that Ted Schwartz is a collaborator and not one of Hawksworth’s other personalities. But wouldn't it be an intriguing idea if he were!


October 28 to November 22, 2007 I read:

A Violent Heart: Understanding Aggressive Individuals, George K. Moffatt

Rage, Michael Eigen

Anger’s Past, the Social Uses of Emotion in the Middle Ages, Barbara H. Rosenwein, Ed
Lots of fascinating stuff among the scholarly stickery weeds.

Widgets gone wild...not as much fun as Gidgets...

I just posted a moment ago and looked at the widget thing I'd managed to generate.... Graphics, okay, I expect them to go screwy. For some reason when I try to perpetrate graphics it's like I'm typing wearing oven mitts. But that little sucker shows the movie Truly, Madly, Deeply as selling for like $59! I mean it's a classic movie, but please don't think I'm suggesting anyone pay that much for it. Why...how...? Never mind, I'm fried, I'm talking to a widget, which is a little piece of computer code.... The good news is that as of this moment the widget is not talking back. Signing out! Lynne

"Just because it's fixed doesn't mean it can't be broken."

The quote above is from Simon Beaufoy, from the movie Blow Dry. I can't tell you how much better just the memory of Alan Rickman delivering that line makes me feel.

I didn’t read much since the last entry (major editing job—exhausting but necessary). I did watch a movie, which set me thinking about how much I admire certain screen writers. I selected Blow Dry in part because it starred Alan Rickman in a non-villain role. Then I discovered that Beaufoy also wrote The Full Monty.
The Full Monty

The screenwriters (in one case writer/director) of the four “Alan Rickman fascination” movies entries I listed are: Anthony Minghella who wrote and directed, Truly, Madly, Deeply has since written Cold Mountain (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)
Cold Mountain.
Richard Curtis, who wrote and directed Love Actually has a resume of greatest hits that would eat this space totally if I tried to list them. I’ll list Notting Hill Notting Hill (Collector's Edition).

The screenplay of Sense and Sensibility was written by Emma Thompson, who acts and writes (another screenplay she wrote was Nanny McPhee (Widescreen Edition) Nanny McPhee).

I’m so glad they all appreciate Alan Rickman! He sneers well and with great depth, but it’s good to see him displaying other facets of his talent.


October 21 to 28, 1977 I read:

Private Lives, Noel Coward

Hollywood is a Four-Letter Town, James Bacon

The Provoked Wife: The Life and Times of Susannah Cibber, Mary Nash
Note: Oddly very soothing

Sane Asylum: Inside the Delancey Street Foundation (Charles Hampden-Turner)

I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression, Erma Bombeck

The Savage God: a Study of Suicide, A. Alvarez
Note: No more interesting than before

October 21 to 28, 2007 I read stuff that I was editing for hire.

That's done for now, and I'm officially recuperating at Club Shred, which is where you go when you've concentrated on something so long that your brain is not focusing well till it recuperates.

Good news

I’m thrilled to report that my friend (and USA Today bestselling author) Jaki Girdner is preparing for the re-issue of all 12 of her Kate Jasper mysteries from E-Reads in trade paperback POD (Publish On Demand) and e-book formats. The books are scheduled to begin in January with the hard-to-find series opener Adjusted To Death, about murder in a chiropractor’s office. Her web page won’t be updated with this info for a few weeks because the web diva we both use, Sue Trowbridge, is moving to a new house even as we speak . . . well, even as I type this.

E-Book Fiction is also the subject of a new blog I’m going to collaborate with Jaki and her high-tech savvy Super-Spouse, Greg, in examining that phenomenon--maybe a few guest bloggers, the odd interview. Luddite perspectives on E-books. Watch this space.

Meanwhile, as you can see below, I’ve been reading up again on book marketing and blogging.


October 6 to October 20, 1997 I read:

The Alias Program, Fred Graham
Note: very well written, clearly told

The Co-ed killer, Margaret Cheney

I noted that I didn't like the axe-grinding and pop psychology but I've got to say this woman is versatile, she’s since written about Serial killers, Mabel Mercer, and Nicolo Tesla

The Life and Times of Chaucer, John Gardner
Note: Not bad once you get into it.
I see this is out of print now.

Lupe, Gene Thompson
Note: Undigested psychism [I don’t think that’s actually a word, but that’s what I said, I did define it, kinda…], i.e. bullshit and poorly written


October 6 to October 20, 2007 I read (well, chipped away at, these are reference books!)


1001 Ways to Market Your Book, John Kremer

This book got glowing reviews, and so much of it is aimed at print on demand and self-published nonfiction that I thought it might not be so relevant for fiction. But I was wrong. Only a small portion of the resources in this book are relevant to fiction, but they are presented so clearly and sensibly that you can easily use them.

Incidentally, as a shy author who is obsessed with the marketing end of writing (because it does NOT come easily to be and it so often makes the difference as far as continuing publication) I think this and every book on marketing should be followed with an eye to what you can do without feeling too overwhelmed. This book can easily be used that way and that's another reason why it's the best resource book on marketing I’ve seen. Go John Kremer!

Great website too.

Publishing a Blog with Blogger, Elizabeth Castro
I live in hope to improve my skills with this book!

Of bookstores, graphics...bright colors, heavy machinery

Once again I have tangled with the graphic elements and ... well, it's like trying to hold an inflated balloon under water for me. I love the bright colors, but if there had been heavy machinery involved someone might really have got hurt.

I had meant to use a nifty little widget software thing Amazon offered to put pictures and info on a web page. However before posting anything with the Amazon site logo, I wanted to acknowledge that some people I know and respect deeply feel that the online giant has something major to do with the breaking the hearts and destroying the businesses of independent book dealers we have all known and loved. I don't totally agree with that viewpoint. True, I have known booksellers whose dreams were crushed. However, small bookstores are fragile things, and Amazon is one of many hazards. I also know people who wouldn't buy books at all if they didn't buy them online, and they buy through Amazon and don't go to physical bookstores.

Anyway, enough foot-shuffling. I'd meant to put up at least a partial list of Independent Bookstore I know and love to sit next to the Amazon widget thingie, but it slipped away from me and got posted before I could do that. So I'm doing it now.
I'll try to put it in the sidebar thingie to stay on the template, but just so it doesn't get lost:

Green Apple Books is a bookstore I haunted from my college years—the used books were
the reason
Green Apple Books

A true San Francisco Institution—and a mystery booklover’s Bermuda Triangle
SF Mystery Books

Staceys, a store that helped me survive working in the SF Financial District!
Staceys

Another wealth of books in downtown SF
Alexander Book Company
Alexander Books

A little further south on the SF Peninsula in San Mateo is the amazing M Is for Mystery bookstore
M Is for Mystery

for the record:

October 5, 1977 I read:

The Main, Trevanian

October 5, 2007
I saw the great French-language film The Visitors on DVD.

DVDs did not exist in 1977 by the way!

Normal entry to follow in another day or so! Whew!

The Curse of the Giant, Blind, Albino Penguins?

Wandering in time and geography from West Los Angeles circa 1977 to Neanderthal prehistory with a side trip to Antarctica ... wondering how those giant blind albino penguins managed to get through customs ... a little R&R in Terry Pratchett's Disc World, and finally landing in 2007 San Francisco.

When I check on books read 30 years ago, often I do search out the authors to see what they are doing now.

I was never able to complete reading Stan Gooch’s Total Man in 1977 (see below) but the book drew me back to keep trying. A similar mystifying but sticky experience happened when I looked him up on the internet. It sounded as if he had fallen upon hard times. M. Alan Kazlev outlines some of Gooch's ideas at This link shows supporters distressed that he was (is? I hope not!) living in a caravan in penury in Wales. another link also shows concern.

Glancing over some summaries of Gooch's work I saw a reference to possible remote Neanderthal civilization in Antarctica before that continent was covered with ice. I couldn’t help being perversely reminded of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness and those pesky giant, blind, albino penguins in the abandoned cities of Antarctica. This page describes encountering At the Mountains of Madness at a used bookstore, anyone who has wandered in such places will recognize
the experience.
I know the book cover he’s referring too—creepy!

Lovecraft's GBA (Giant Blind Albino) Penguins served pretty much the same function as the crowds running away in the Godzilla movies: When the penguins were restless in the fathomless underground corridors, nameless horror was on its way. Yet I spent an idle moment considering that those huge flightless, sightless critters might impart a curse, totally apart from slipping on their “detritus’ as Lovecraft calls it, for those who dare to contemplate civilizations beyond time buried under the Antarctic ice. Perhaps not. As of 2005, Gooch’s thoughts on his original psychic encounter with a Neanderthal were released on a CD I hope all is well with Mr. Gooch and that giant, blind, albino penguins are not besieging a trailer park somewhere in Wales.


September 8 to October 5, 1977 I read:

What Really Happened to the Class of ’65?, Michael Medved and Wallechinsky

Total Man, Stan Gooch
Note – I also have this listed a few days later on 9/25, evidently I kept coming back trying to finish it, and finally got to about half way through and gave up.

more on Gooch

Charles Fort Never Mentioned Wombats, Gene DeWeese, Robert Coulson

Home Free, Dan Wakefield
Note: Couldn’t get into it at all, poorly done.

Crash, Rob and Sarah Elder
Hard-edged, journalistic prose, an unpleasant but very, very well written book

How the Good Guys Finally Won: Notes from an Impeachment Summer, Jimmy Breslin

Agatha Christie, First Lady of Crime, H.R. Keating, Ed.

The Condensed World of the Reader’s Digest, Samuel A. Schreiner, Jr.

Black Sun, the Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby, Geoffrey Wolff
rather too admiring bio but you get the idea.
Not the guy you want to see your niece or sister involved with, and if she did, she might be well advised to memorize the following phrase – “Sorry, Harry, but I make it a rule not to make suicide pacts on the first date, particularly with married men...”

His poetry is also a clue--anyone reading this poem would certainly be aware that the guy had some serious depression problems, and was also in dire need of a thesaurus...



Man in a Cage, Brian Stableford


September 8 to October 5 I read:

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, Terry Pratchett

American Gods, Neil Gaiman
journal

Wintersmith, Terry Pratchett

Neil Gaiman for fantasy noir and Terry Pratchett for fantasy bright and shiny—both fascinating!

Take two horror novels and call me in the morning

I guess I've been in a Stephen King state of mind (yikes!), reading It again. I'm a sporadic rather than a dedicated King reader. Sometimes he's too disturbing for me. But that is part of how he grabs the reader, and sometimes, as readers, we need to be grabbed and held. I think of my friend, Merry, who is a major fan of his. I am sure that measured doses of the solid hook and locked-in escape of King's books--and other horror and fantasy books, but first and foremost King's work--sustained her through 18 years of a job she detested. I'm glad she's in better circumstances now--though still reading Stephen King.


August 27 to September 7, 1997 I read:

Report to the Commissioner, James Mills

A Visit to Haldeman and Other States or Mind, Charles L. Mee, Jr.

Psychic Summer, Arnold M. Copper & Coralee Leon
College kids, a summer rental a Ouija board...sounds like a recipe for a slasher film. I'm not sure if I'd get as intense as the folks atthe shadowlands.net
but ya know, maybe I would. Some things I wouldn't have in my house and a Ouija board is one of them.
Evidently now there's psychic summer camp. I am so not going there.

Big Mac of McDonald's, The Unauthorized Story, Max Chain & Steve Boas

Bright Orange for the Shroud, John D. MacDonald

MacDonald was an author I loved enough to buy his newest in hardcover 30 years ago. Alas, I can no longer stand to read him due to the way his male characters treat his female characters. That once whizzed right over my head, now it's irritating to read.

Convention, Richard Reeves
Richard_Reeves

Important to Me: Personal Record, Pamela Hansford Johnson

The Privilege of His Company: Noel Coward Remembered, William Marchant
Noel Coward

The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist, Dan Rather & M. Hershowitz
Dan Rather

The Cracker Factory, Joyce Reba-Burditt
(I hope I spelled the author's name right, I'm worrying about this blog getting vaporized because of certain mysterious error messages--possibly caused by irate Ouija boards--no just kidding). Anyway I don't want to navigate away from this page and risk losing it!)


August 27 to September 7, 2007 I re-read:

It, Stephen King
I remembered that King was a visceral writer, but I’d forgotten the degree to which he seems to simply open his character’s heads and dump out every gross perception--another reason I don’t read him so much anymore. I say “seems” because King is far from the artless writer some seem to think he is. On the contrary, he’s made it clear that he aims to reach the reader on whatever level he can. The gross-out is one of his techniques and it gives the reader the impression of really being inside the character's head.

Death in the land of denial

My house-feral cat, Belladonna died on August 13th, and the process of being with her, particularly in her last few hours reminded me how words just cannot truly describe it. I feel like a jerk for all the times I've written using the word death, that now seem to have nothing to do with its implacable reality.

Whatever I’ve learned about the experience of death has been totally from sitting with my mother in 1980, my husband in 1991 and some of my cats who died at home when I could be with them. These experiences had enough common elements that the morning of August 13th I could tell that Belladonna wouldn't see another dawn as clearly as anything I've ever known.

Death used to happen at home and the process was pretty common knowledge, but now in our “advanced” culture it is often hidden behind hospital walls. I couldn't help but think of how the young Siddhartha Gautama (later the Buddha) was shielded by his loving parents from even the sight of illness, old age and death.

I was more sheltered than many, and never even attended a funeral till I was in my 20s. I certainly never sought that knowledge. So I’m always a little surprised at how clear it now seems once someone has entered on that last part of life’s journey. I believe in fighting for health up to the last moment. But I learned the hard way the price of denial when someone you love is actually dying.

Most people I’ve talked to who have had relatives die go through doubts about whether they did the right thing—having a relative die while driving to a hospital instead of calling an ambulance, calling the paramedics to resuscitate someone who then stayed on a respirator for a month before dying. Sometimes you just don’t know. Can’t know.

Sometimes you can.

Having seen it a few times with cats who just wasted away and then died at home, I’ve also taken a dying cat, my poor black Persian, Ophelia, to the emergency veterinary hospital to suffer through IVs and steroids to extend her life for a few more hours of suffering. I can only plead fear and ignorance. It was like trying to stuff a baby back in the womb when it’s ready to be born.

It was very, very hard to stay by Belladonna on the day she died. Feral that she was, over the last her last eight months, she had begun to let me pet and very gently brush her more although she fiercely resisted being picked up or restrained in any way. Her daughters came, nosed around briefly, and then retreated--shy Betty to hide and more outgoing Tigerlily to nap with the senior male, El Nino. The last few hours I just sat by Bella, though she was beyond seeing or knowing what was around her. As a Buddhist, I was fortunate to be able to chant because that made it easier to be with her and not be distracted. So I chanted, talked to her and petted her gently from time to time. I mixed up a little codeine in cat food gravy and put a few drops in her mouth now and then in hopes of dulling any pain from the convulsions, which did get milder. She seemed more peaceful, and finally was utterly still.

Since then my surviving cats are comforting each other and me, and we’re all learning to live without Bella’s tough but affectionate presence. I’m retreating into DVDs--I saw Trevor Nunn’s 1996, The Twelfth Night a couple of times. It was very good. I cried a lot, although I would probably cry at anything at this point. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows kind of demands it, but even so that dreaming world seems very familiar and safe.


August 12 to August 23, 1977 I read:

Gates of Eden, Morris Dickstein
Note: Couldn’t read all of it. [Sometimes I like literary criticism but clearly not this one. My note continued: “Literary criticism is hard for me to pay attention to”]

None Dare Call It Witchcraft, Gary North
Um, I can’t bring myself to quote my note on this. The most polite word I used was “propaganda.” Suffice it to say I found the author’s agenda intrusive and his attitude willfully ill-informed.

The Investigative Journalist, Folk Heroes of a New Era, James S. Dygert
I think it's been quite awhile since THAT new era faded.

Beyond Control, George Leonard
Note: Not bad. Not great but not bad.

The Living Buddha, Daisaku Ikeda (trans. Burton Watson)
Speaking of Shakyamuni Buddha, I think this was a bio of Gautama.


August 12 to August 23, 2007 I read:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling