I'm reading Notes on a Scandal

So, the above are all covers of Zoë Heller's Notes on a Scandal. 

I remember seeing the movie a few years ago - you know the one: Cate Blanchett all blithe and gorgeous and SK-II dewy, and Judi Dench watchful and creepy*. The book was published in 2003 I think and the movie came out in 2006. So this is old news but I feel lucky to have found the book. It all came about when recently I saw a link to an article where Zoë Heller had slammed Salman Rushdie's new memoir Joseph Anton (currently residing on the floor beside me bed, no not him, the book.)

I looked up Heller and saw she'd written this, as well as a couple of other books. Found it at Readings and bazinga, just over half-way through.

The first thing I noticed about this novel is how slim it is, it's like a novella. I've had a good run with slender-volumes; in the last few years I enjoyed Michael Cunningham's By Nightfall (found a blistering review of that while I was googling around Heller; she didn't write it though) and also The Old Man and the Sea. Oh, and Cosmopolis. OH AND THE LIGHTHOUSE. How could I forget. Again, slim and perfect length though I don't know if any of the above technically fit novella length.

Anyway, second thing I noticed about Notes on a Scandal is how tightly it's written and how the words are arranged. Brilliant. The voice of Barbara, who narrates the story - everything comes through her as cipher, as taker of the said notes on the scandal in which her teaching colleague embroils herself. I don't think I've read a character with such a polished, wonderful, impressive vocabulary. Heller has definitely chosen the words that appear in Barbara's voice with such care. The choice she's enacted - the particular words selected - contributes to Barbara's character. Other words might have done but it gives the reader the message that Barbara is a very particular person, Barbara prides herself on her verbal skills (even if she doesn't speak them aloud, she feels proud that she knows these words and knows how to use them).

Words like: insouciant, parenthesis, orthodoxy, duress, soubriquet, calumny, lugubrious, bonhomie, imbroglio, glut, concupiscent, salacious, ribald, fecundity, ersatz and riposte.

Of the above words, it's only concupiscent that I didn't know. It means filled with sexual desire; lustful: "concupiscent dreams". Synonyms are: lustful - prurient - libidinous - salacious - voluptuous. I wonder why she didn't use libidinous or prurient.

I haven't read a book that has had such beautiful words all in the one place before. Sure, lots of literary writers use beautiful words all the time but there is something different about these words. They are on another level. I would bet that Heller had been keeping a list of words like this for years and then created a character who would use them. I reckon this because it's the sort of thing I would do - am doing - oh, those words. They are sublime.

So, the covers. I like the one with the apple best, hate the ones with the orgasmic blondes, but I got the one with the tattoo thingy on the front. Inside the back flap there is a mini feature of a tattoo artist, Valerie Vargas**, from Frith Street Tattoo, in London.

I will definitely be checking out Heller's other fiction, it's wonderful.


* can't think of a third adjective to use. I had lesbionic but took it out.

** cool name

God I love this

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee - ft Ricky Gervais

Freakiest gif evah

I've always been a late bloomer.
And so it is with gifs.
I've also never done the 'cat thing' on this blog.
But today's the day I do the cat thing in a gif.
Did you know you are meant to pronounce them 'jif' (like the non-scratch, household cream cleaner?)

What if money was no object?

What is it you would do?

One of the best short stories you'll ever read (note the deliberate absence of question mark)

26 Monkeys, Also The Abyss

at Kij Johnson

I'm completely fucking serious. It's so good, and I don't even read sci-fi. It's so good, it makes me think to forget even trying to write short stories. It's so good it will make you really happy just to read it, if not tear up a couple of times, if you're at all like me.

It's so good that it's made me post twice in one day. This does not happen often.

Lilley is coming...

New-look ABC revives Specks, Lilley

This is the headline The Age has online for this news item. I'm happy to read today that Chris Lilley has a new project and that a 'new-look' ABC will be hosting it. Sometime. Soon, I hope. But the headline in The Age might have Lilley lodging a complaint because it seems to suggest that Angry Boys was not a success and that Lilley needs resuscitation.

I don't think Lilley needs reviving. To me, Angry Boys was genius partly because lots of people didn't seem to get and it were made uncomfortable by what they perceived as the content rather than being aware that their discomfort was because they couldn't get the satire and the rationale behind doing it the way he did. People wanted more of Summer Heights High but really, while I loved that and thought that brilliant as well, he had to do something else, something different, something more.

I'm a definite Chris Lilley fangirl, for sure.

If people don't get something, that's their own, um, I want to say stupidity, but I will say lack, rather than the problem of the creator.

*

The second complaint of the day is the letter send by one Julia Gillard to the Fairfax chief. I love it, the way she lays out very clearly what happened. Again. This is not for the benefit of dullard journos, oh no. Nor is it for the education of opposition politicians. They all know what's what, that's for sure, but they aren't letting truth get in the way of what Gillard's describes is a witch-hunt. No, the letter is for the people, the voters, so they can see that Gillard  has nothing to hide and did nothing wrong.

It's just a matter of her hanging in there, I think, for another couple of days.

And how about the Libs getting Julie Bishop to do all their dirty work this week, because you know 'if we get a woman to do it, then no one can call us misogynists.'

Do they really think we are that stupid?*

Took me a while to choose a picture. There are too many good ones.

   

* Yes.

For grammar freaks

I like this from Granta Magazine

Sad.

Video goodbye from Bryce Courtenay.

While I wasn't one of his 'readers', I did read The Power of One years ago and I have to say, some of the scenes, particularly descriptions of place, still pop up in my head from time to time. That's pretty powerful, to be randomly taken back to a couple of passages that you read a long time ago.

This goodbye made me weepy, especially when his voice goes at the end.

Best thing found today

Brain Pickings

Happy Monday. A little early you say? Never too early for Hem and cocktails...

 

I have to say, I don't think the words 'cocktails' and 'Hemingway' go together. Surely it would have been drinks? To read about him and his favourite cocktails, see Philip Greene's article in the Huff Post.

Love this pic too, I think he's on his boat The Pilar. I like to think it's The Pilar anyway, look how happy and relaxed he is.

Busy times

This week has been busy. Finished off programs at three schools, and then on Friday evening, met Clokes in at the Martini Bar in the city.

I had two. First one was Grey Goose, second Imperia (as recommended by Mr E in a previous post.) I asked for them very dry, and they were okay but could have been colder. They weren't that cold at all, but they were stirred and not shaken and the olives were enormous green ones - delish.

Then we rolled up the hill to Flowerdrum. We had never been before and it was as good as I expected. Despite Gilbert Lau selling it (I think he still acts as adviser?) it seems the place has retained its charm and quality, though I can't compare. What I liked about it: the waiting staff were excellent and the sommelier deliciously casual and cheeky; the in-between courses hot towels on little silver trays; the generous servings of each course (we had a 6-course banquet, and there were four of us: this was an end-of-of year celebration dinner for our new business so it was me and my partner and our supportive, lovely husbands); the glassware; the cutlery; the way the tables were so spaciously positioned, you felt miles away from the other tables which makes for a very luxurious, special feeling.

We had three bottles of wine including a nice Henschke, not a Hill of Grace before anyone gets excited. And the bill came to under a thousand (just). Far out. But that's what we would have spent on a Christmas Party, say, for a staff if we had a staff. Mmmm, might be a reason to keep the biz small so we can have our annual thing at Flowerdrum rather in some tacky marquee in our backyard with sausages on the BBQ and Yellowglen on ice in the wheelbarrow.

THEN yesterday I had a writing thing. The best thing about this was: meeting (and hopefully making some sort of impression) on a writer that I admire. I negged him about his e-reader (see The Game, Neil Strauss) and poo-poohed one title he suggested for his next novel. This was at drinks, afterwards (see, even that impressed me, that he would spend that time. Most writer-teachers run away afterwards). I think I scared him a little when I brought out my copy of his book and asked him to sign it (typical fangirl but why not?), and THEN again when I said that I'd blogged about him and he'd emailed me saying 'thanks for reading, glad you liked it but what do you mean a bit of a spunk?' heh heh BUT I am hopeful that overall I didn't freak him out too much. Also he agreed to assess my ms if I want him to (paid) and I think I really would like him to, so that he sees my stuff primarily and then also to get his feedback. That would be ace.

So, this weekend thus far: Mission accomplished. Now to revisions for the agent, have to get them to her in January and someone needs to have a look at it (fresh eyes) (Alex?) once I've done revisions and before I send the full thing to her again.

For Mr E

Now you've got me going. I have been re-arranging my work space and getting all paid-work stuff out in to another bookcase so I can consolidate and tidy my non-paid writing space. While toiling, I kept in mind to watch out for a certain book on a certain topic.

A few years ago, I bought MARTINI, a memoir by Frank Moorhouse. I have never read, never much looked at it but I liked having it, knowing I possessed a book that was entirely a love-letter to martinis.

This is the table of contents:

Martini city
The story
The pageant of learning
Email to Ophelia in New York
The venerated craft
A captivating observation
The question of coldness
This thing called gin
The vodka option
The lost vermouth
A disturbing observation
The breast: the bra: the glass
The olive and the lemon tree
The diamond: the pearl: the acorn
'The olive on the toothpick gives the drink an axis'

Don't you just love it? The mention of 'this thing called gin'. Is he going to be pro or con? And the coldness; Mr E you are specific about coldness. And finally, the olive versus the lemon (I guess) is what that section refers to.

Let's see.

Oh wait, there's more. Turned the page, more in the TOC:

They had a date with fate in Casablanca
Liberating the Ritz
The first martini film
The role of the martini in movie-making
A martini matinee
'The orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music...'
Canapés
Scuba and Martini's Law
Mademoiselle and the doctor and the martini
The cocktail dress
The whole question of the drinks' cart
A new drinks' trolley
The souls of animals
The thirteen awarenesses
The mysteries
Where are they now?
Memoir of a story: Story of a memoir

End Pieces
A letter to my drinking companions around the world
The classic martini
Acceptable variations and close relatives of the martini
Martini music
What is this demon? Alcohol and the art of drinking

So much good stuff here. Where to begin?

Deliberation is one of the ingredients of the martini... To care about the martini shows that you know what it is that goes to make that which could be called, in life, fine.

In life, there are drinkers and there are martini drinkers.

The gauge of a sophisticated household is the number of glasses it possesses which are appropriate to the beverage.

(Moorhouse's friend V.I. Voltz, Mahattan identity)

Among many interesting snippets there is this one: Malcolm Fraser was (is?) a martini drinker. Apparently he takes a swig from the bottle of gin, replaces it with vermouth, shakes the bottle and puts it into the freezer for ready-made martinis.

More snippets to follow.

Hemingway's love of drinking

This is an article found at Food Republic
By Chantal Martineau

You may have heard: Ernest Hemingway enjoyed a tipple or two. In fact, the iconic writer liked his drink so much that another writer, Philip Greene, was inspired to pen To Have and Have Another, a book about Hemingway’s drinking habits and the libations that wove their way into his works. When Greene is not reading or discussing Hemingway, he is stationed at the Pentagon, where he works as a trademark lawyer for the Marines. A longtime Hemingway buff, he became interested in cocktails while researching his ancestors in New Orleans, including one Antoine Amedee Peychaud, the pharmacist who invented Peychaud’s bitters. Eventually, Greene co-founded The Museum of the American Cocktail. His book answers, among other things, the burning question: was Papa really the boozehound he was so rumored to be?

1. Hemingway was notoriously fond of drinking, but he refrained from indulging while writing
   When asked in an interview if rumors of him taking a pitcher of martinis to work every morning were true, he answered, “Jeezus Christ! Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You’re thinking of Faulkner. He does sometimes – and I can tell right in the middle of a page when he’s had his first one. Besides, who in hell would mix more than one martini at a time?”
2. The mojito was not Hemingway’s favorite drink
   Hemingway lived in Havana and may have drunk mojitos, but their connection to the writer can probably be traced to the marketing efforts of La Bodeguita del Medio. A handwritten inscription allegedly penned by Hemingway on the wall of the now famous bar professing his love for the cocktail is likely a forgery, says Greene, who consulted a handwriting expert. As a diabetic, Papa took most of his drinks (including absinthe and double daiquiris) without sugar. So, the sweet mojito surely would not have been his cup of tea.
3. Hemingway had several go-to cocktails, but his favorite was a dry martini
   The author “thought globally... drank locally,” explains Greene. His characters often drank what he himself quaffed in whatever city he happened to be in while writing. But martinis were a constant, and each seemed drier than the last. In Across the River and Into the Trees, Colonel Richard Cantwell orders a Montgomery Martini: 15 parts gin to one vermouth. In A Farewell to Arms, Frederic Henry muses of sipping martinis: “I had never tasted anything so cool and clean. They made me feel civilized.”
4. Hemingway may have liked his martinis as dry as a bone, but he loved vermouth
   While recuperating from his wounds during World War I, he would ask friends to smuggle bottles of it into his hospital room, writes Greene. Sound familiar? The A Farewell to Arms protagonist did the same: “I sent for the porter and when he came I told him in Italian to get me a bottle of Cinzano at the wine shop, a fiasco of chianti and the evening papers.” One of his favorite drinks aboard his boat Pilar was a Vermouth Panache, a blend of sweet and dry vermouth with Angostura Bitters.
5. Hemingway liked his drinks icy cold
   In a letter he wrote to his publisher, he described using tennis ball cans to make dense tubes of ice for mixing martinis, and was known to freeze not only his cocktail glasses but Spanish cocktail onions to keep them cold. He bragged that the method made “the coldest martini in the world,” and described it as “so cold you can’t hold it in your hand. It sticks to the fingers.”
6. Hemingway did not invent the Bloody Mary
   There are many stories about the origins of the Bloody Mary. One such legend has it that the drink was first served to Hemingway in Paris. As the story goes, his doctors had forbidden him from having alcohol and his wife, Mary, was holding him to it. A bartender at the Ritz mixed him the vodka-and-tomato juice drink, full of booze that could not be detected thanks to the other strong ingredients. Having got the better of his “bloody wife,” the cocktail was christened after her. A number of sources have debunked this myth.
7. Hemingway traveled extensively, but was most at home on a barstool
   From his experiences in World War I and Lost Generation Paris to safaris in Africa and fishing the Gulf Stream, from covering the Spanish Civil War and World War II to chasing German U-boats off the Cuban coast, Hemingway’s life was one full of adventure, Greene reminds us. “Don’t bother with churches, government buildings or city squares,” Papa once said. “If you want to know about a culture, spend a night in its bars.” 

*

I think what I love about this is his sense of ritual. The making of ice from tennis ball cans; the freezing of cocktail onions and glasses. I'm sure he would have cared about the shape and size of the martini glass, the length of the stem. Comme moi.

There is such pleasure in rituals and for those of us who aren't religious (yet who may hypocritically enjoy a bit of churchy stuff like stained glass windows, Christ-on-cross paintings and beautiful hymns) we can also find them in drinking, eating, bathing, sleeping, organising our cans in the pantry and making sure all our coat-hangers face one way in the cupboard. If you can call it a ritual, maybe it's more socially acceptable. No I don't drink my vodka out of the bottle, I like a nice glass, look at me I'm civilised.

775th post and let's go a little Kermit

Here's that gif

This is still me today, but on the inside

Hey pssst

I have news.

I have a literary agent who likes my novel and thinks she can sell it to a publisher.

I don't think I have EVER been this excited but I am really, really calm. Inside I am doing that arm-waving-dance that Kermit the frog does.

Champagne tonightski.

Re-reading it

And what a difference 35 years makes. I was a schoolgirl in love with this book but now, NOW...

And the movie is the best I've seen. LOVE TO LOVE.

Thinking of NYC today

Plus a couple more

I forgot to include Lily Brett's new book Lola Bensky. Also a couple I read about in the papers today: The Inheritance of Ivorie Hammer by Edwina Preston; Red Dirt Talking by Jacqueline Wright and The Darkest Little Room by Patrick Holland. Not because the last three are necessarily my usual cup of tea (Brett most definitely IS) but because they are either debut novels, and/or from independent publishing houses, and/or have unusual narrative structures.

I'm hoping to have some exciting writerly news that I can share soon.

Will put on here once it's all systems go.

Books to buy

I would like the following:

1. Salman Rushdie's new memoir Joseph Anton, about his time during the fatwa (has it finished even?) (for interest)

2. The Lighthouse by Alison Moore (shortlisted for the recent Man Booker) Apparently it's fab.

3. Sixty Lights by Gail Jones (for pleasure)

4. The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville (for pleasure)

5. The Meaning of Grace by Deborah Foster (for 'research')

6. Mateship with Birds by Carrie Tiffany (ditto)

7. The Jesus Man by Christos Tsiolkas (ditto)

Says it all, really

And some links for you, Alex, cause you're not on facebook (and anyone else interested in chatting about these things. I admit I'm starting to move on):

Be interested to see what you make of Anne Summers on Gillard's (and other women's) choice of footwear

Another Summers article published on a New York blog, on the Gillard/sexism/misogyny thing

A link to Gillard's speech re the UN, note at the beginning how carefully she ascends the stage. Poor thing. Get rid of the fucking heels. Go the Stott Despoja Doc!

And finally, something recycled from years ago. Still love it:



And if you like shoes you might like muffins:

Hicks charge ruled invalid by US court

Interesting. I remember a series of posts I did in 2007 about bringing Hicks home. Seems like forever ago. I know he's been 'home' for a while now but it's only today it seems he is validated in calling himself innocent. Others will have other opinions, no doubt. Interesting to read his lawyer, ex-Marine, Dan Mori is now living in Melbourne and practising law.

So Beasts of the Southern Wild

Hmmmm, I think I need to percolate some.

Destroy the Joint

I'm one of the 18K+ followers (or facebook 'likers') of Destroy the Joint, a bunch of people who didn't like that Alan Jones said that women were 'destroying the joint.' (And didn't like a lot of other stuff he's said, too.)

Destroy the Joint have a facebook page, and recently asked followers' permission to make a montage of profile pics and this is the result. I found my face pretty quickly; I think it looks pretty and it represents people who want to stand up and say it's not on. Click on image to make it bigger. Look at the pretty colours. The waves of people power. The faces, some real, some avatar'y, of people who say 'enough'.
This is the kind of activism I like - don't need to go out into Melbourne with placards. It's good for lazy, apathetic people comme moi. Imagine if new ways of activism - like this - managed to capture all the lazy, apathetic people into one huge, rolling Indiana-Jones-ball of protest. Love it.

Couple more montages done, now there are 1800+ people who've given permission to be included:

 

and this one too:

 

Friday funtime

So I haven't done a diarama for a while even though from memory there's still about 18 months if not two years of the 80s to go. Wondering if I should persist? I hate an unfinished project.

In other news, am getting through the David Foster Wallace biography. It's brilliant, I am taking notes. And girding my loins for Infinite Jest.

My father, who I have called a cunt on here, and who I don't think visits much anymore (and not because of that, I hasten to add, probably just because it's boring here) is still talking to the poh-lees about the particular case from several years ago (early part of Bad Eighties Diaries, I think early 1984). His 'detective friend' (as my dad puts it) had gone quiet (required else where in the city a couple of weeks ago) but he's sure to pop up. Dad had to give a proper statement, and he gave the DNA cheek-swab.

I love my dad but gee he's snaky. I spoke to him just before and told him so. Last week he let me down and sometimes it seems like that's the pattern. Here I am - a mature woman - capable in every way, yet she still has a seven-year-old girl living inside of her, who gets hurt. It's pathetic but I'm sure I'm not the only one. Don't we all have smaller versions of ourselves living inside our skins?

Last week we had organised to go to lunch. Him, me, my mother and Princess. (My parents are divorced but still share sweet nostalgic referencing when they see each other; talk of songs remembered, seeing Frank Sinatra together in the '60s, peeps they knew, etc. This is a contrast to the wild scenes of thirty-five years before - love letters found in shirt pockets; soap rubbed into locks; marital beds dismantled; feelings hurt about not being invited to Abba at the Myer Music Bowl.) So Dad cancelled at the last minute. He said he'd hurt his leg. I smelled bullshit and found out today that aroma was accurate. I can't be fagged going into it; it's like politics. Just let it go. But I told Dad today I'd felt he let me down and I felt he was being snaky and not being straight with me. He gets caught in the middle - something that happens to men NOT women. Women are the ones that PUT them in the middle. Men are reeling, fogged-headed and confused, trying to keep everyone happy and not managing to get a smile on anyone's face - so they lie and cover up and bullshit and make excuses. They can't win. I know that.

Anyway.

Anyway.

He and I are good. I don't like it when we're not good. Families suck but they are also really great when they are great.

Busy times, my friends

Am reading the DT Max David Foster Wallace biography and it is brilliant and fascinating and I am learning a lot about writing and processes and things like realism and modernism and postmodernism in ways I never thought about them before. It's an inspiring book too in many ways, despite the known ending for this intelligent, struggling, unusual man.

And then I am doing one last go-through before sending my ms to the agent overseas. Trying to keep a lid on that. Plus fielding calls and emails for the business, Term 4 is traditionally the time when many schools realise 'ooops we haven't done sex ed yet, let's get to it'.

It's all happening at once but this is how I like it.

And THEN, in a situation that is part schadenfreude deliciousness mixed in a vitamiser with the ongoing sombre reality of sometimes depressing/other times uplifting gender and social political struggle, we have this:

One dickhead:

plus one PM who is letting the whole world know what she will and won't stand for.

I love it:

Happy Monday

It's a good day today because:

a) the kids are back at school and I have the house to myself

b) I just bought the following:

I know, I know. It's been out for a while. I've always been a later developer.

And this:

And then this:

My plan is to read the bio, then Infinite Jest but I suspect I will have to intersperse with at least one other book, possibly the Pamuk although I think I'll want to read that exclusively.

I'm also more than half way through The Watch Tower by Elizabeth Harrower. It is interesting, not least because it was published in 1966 I think it was. Good stuff.

*

I'm also still plugging away with my first ms - let's call it The Feeling of Orange although it's had a bunch of other titles, including Moonshadows (there's something just a little too Cat Stevens-y about that.) I have an agent interested in looking at the whole ms - woo hoo. But don't get too excited, even that woo-hoo is possibly premature. I am so careful with the woo-hoos, they can be dangerous. 

And my second one, The Sugar Men I am excited about, that's still first draft stage though (some people call it Draft Zero, which I can kind of come at). Loooong way to go with that one based on how much revision and pottering and tinkering the first one has taken. Who knows?

Moonrise Kingdom. Again.

I went to see it again. I want to take back what I said about the adult actors being pushed to the background. They aren't, they have more screen time than I remembered but still the focus is on the two children and their story and rightly so.

Fucking brilliant movie and I'm especially pleased the three teenage girls I took all loved it too.

Next is another floody movie - Beasts of the Southern Wild which I'm expecting to be wonderful as well. Now I'm worried that it will push Moonrise out of my head, when really I'd like it to linger and ripen a little more. Maybe I'll leave it a week.

In other movie news, I was to see Mental with my mother this coming week sometime but I don't want to now. It looks trite and could so easily be a bad movie (this feeling isn't helped by a review I read today. Where Moonrise got 4.5 stars and Beasts 5, Mental was given 1.

I'm going to tell my mother I don't want to see Mental.

Moonrise Kingdom

I love Wes Anderson's movies but watching Moonrise Kingdom, at first, I was thinking 'no'. The opening scenes echoed The Royal Tenenbaums. The iconic house, the quirky children lounging about, doing their own eccentric things, dressed à la mode d'Anderson. I began to tighten with disappointment. Oh, pffft.

But then, oh then, it snuck up on me and I was thinking 'how could anyone fail to be utterly charmed by this movie?' What hard-hearted soul could see this and not be swayed, undone, dismantled and completely transported by nostalgia (which if it has a colour, surely has to be burnt-orange.)

By the end of it, I had rationalised and accepted that the waste of actors like Bill Murray, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton was necessary in this movie. All the adults except Ed Norton and Bruce Willis were bit players. But then, but then: oh, it's a movie about two 12 year olds in love. You can't have the adults intruding on that narrative. (Recently I had to defend myself against the charge that some of my characters in my manuscript are 'flat'. I like flat characters and it's not just lazy writing that can result in these types of characters. A flat character is one upon which the reader can hang his/her own ideas, almost like one of those cut-out doll shapes and you choose the paper clothes. When I'm reading I don't want everything spelled out, I want very little spelled out, in fact sometimes I want nothing spelled out at all. That way my reading becomes part of the construction of the story. I don't want to know what colour eyes, how long the hair, how rough the beard, how retroussé the nose. And if a character is described as beautiful I hate her immediately and am jerked out of the story.)

I read one review where the movie was criticised for depicting the two protagonists having sex. Say what? I did not see any intimation of that at all. Sure, they get 'married' but this is an innocent movie, delightful and sweet and simple. So simple and so true to how kids have romances, or should have romances, these days.

I need to let it settle. My comparisons to Anderson's other movies did colour my response. There was none of the depth of Tenenbaum switching between adult and child perspectives; none of its humour either. There was no smartness of Steve Zissou. No adult POV therefore no adult angst or frustration or complicated emotion. This makes it all the more delicious; the focus is on the two kids, it's their movie and their story is unpolluted by all things grown up. The attention to detail is gorgeous and lush. The beach where they pitch their tent is a magical place of temporary sanctuary; their journey there and back and their clashes with the 'evil scouts' - what a wonderful movie. I felt it could have gone for another half hour but what would they have done with it? I suppose like the kids at the centre of it, I didn't want the magic to end.

There's still something delicious about John

John Taylor, Duran Duran. Always cute but now with blue hair.

Faith in Australia, gangnam style

When you are in small despair about something like this on a Sunday in Melbourne (yet heartened because it was just a small gathering of dickheads):












You can comfort yourself that in the exact same spot, just the day before, there was this:

Not a review of Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis

I hate having to do a spoiler alert because readers should be able to work it out themselves. But let me hold your hand... don't read if you don't want to know what happens, 'kay?


I'd like to start by saying I didn't realise this was a movie with R-Pat in it. Not that it would have made any difference to the reading of the book but I might have tried to find a copy of the book with a different cover.

It's a good cover, perfectly fitting but knowing it's R-Pat somehow diminishes it?

Now that I've read the book I'm confused about whether to see the movie. You see, I loved this book and seeing the movie will risk a shift in my feelings. It's rare that a movie complements a book properly. Hell, they're not meant to complement; a movie is meant to stand separately to the book and sometimes the book is devoured by the existence of a film version. But R-Pat is a bit cute if a little too skinny. Maybe it's a good film, maybe it's sexy and sharp and true to the book? Dilemma.

DeLillo is such a skilled writer I now want to read his oeuvre. I'm going to look up what he wrote, research his best and read them. I have heard him referenced, along with Thomas Pynchon, as one of those seminal American contemporary writers whose spheres of influence are enormous. Influence in terms of other writers, I mean. I think David Foster Wallace dug DeLillo big time. Or was it Bret Easton Ellis? Both? I forget.

Cosmopolis was the perfect entree into DeLillo's writing. It is deliciously-sized; packed full of action and interior 'idea-scapes' - it's a genius work. To have the limo as a mobile office. To have Eric Packer (the protagonist) hopping in and out of his limo as it inches its way through Manhattan, driving him to get a haircut.

I read the first few pages then put the book down for a few days. When I went back to it, I started again from the beginning. And this is what I wrote note-wise:

- cancer? the haircut and sleep failing him (p1)
- he's dying. Missed it the first time I read 1st 4 pages.

As it turned out, he wasn't literally dying from cancer - he just has an asymmetrical prostate - however he is dying (as we all are) throughout the novel. The ending is ambiguous; the reader doesn't find out whether the kindly assassin Richard Sheets pulls the trigger or not.

As Packer careens like a pinball through the streets of New York - having sex here, having sex there (but not with his wife of 22 days); eating, talking and methodically buying more and more Yen that will perversely lead to his financial ruin - there is much 'outside' action going on. The US President is in the vicinity (thus accounting for road blocks and even worse traffic conditions); there is some bizarre rat protest unfolding and there are credible threats to Packer's security (he has bodyguards, one of whom he himself kills).

Reading this book was electrifying; I found myself uttering exclamations of 'wow' and 'fuck'. I also found myself reaching for scraps of paper to write down the small 'literary' surprises, that in such a dynamic, action-packed story were like manna and balanced the reading beautifully for me:

He liked paintings that his guests did not know.

He'd thought about surfaces in the shower once.

... masturbatory crouch

Her poetry was shit (big LOL at that one)

Packer is like a modern-tech flâneur, wandering the streets, travelling along, seeing 'what happens' on his way to a haircut, but the pace is not that of a typical wanderer; it's edgy and sharp and there are things around the corner on the next page that will make you jump. At times I wondered where we were. Were we in the limo? Were we on the street? I had to concentrate to keep up - this is no idle read - but at the same time, it's not a hard read. You don't have to concentrate and keep yourself in the action, you go there naturally.

I loved the set up of this novel (novella? I reckon the wordage is around 53K); there is no back-story it just begins. Slowly, more characters are layered in, some staying for a while, others just popping in and out, but the question that makes him an interesting character is introduced very early. What's wrong with him, why isn't he having sex with his wife. Why doesn't she know that his eyes are blue?

The car-as-office is a clever device as is the setting of New York City. Anything can happen in New York and the pace is fast. I had to keep up, noting the line breaks which indicated a shift in scene and possibly location. There wasn't always a 'he got out of the car' indicator to inform the dullard reader of a change in location and this added to the pace; there was no extra stuff padding the prose and therefore slowing it down.

I've noted the scene on page 49-50 as being 'very interesting.' It's an erotic scene between Eric and one of the women-not-his-wife  who he has a sexual encounter with. This is where the cover image of Edward Vampire got into my head a little. I couldn't imagine Rob Pattinson talking about his erection and bondage:

This is the woman you are inside the life. Looking at you, what? I'm more excited than I've been since the first burning nights of adolescent frenzy. Excited and confused. I look at you and feel an erection stirring even as the situation argues strenuously against it...

All the same. Days like this. I look at you and feel electric. Tell me you don't feel it too. The minute you sat there in that whole tragic regalia of running. That whole sad business of Judeo-Christian jogging. You were not born to run. I look at you. I know what you are. You are sloppy-bodies, smelly and wet. A woman who was born to sit strapped in a chair while a man tells her how much she excites him.

And Judeo-Christian jogging? Snort.

I have some criticisms but there are only two (and one of them I feel dissolving, though, as I've processed the novel in the day since finishing it).

Towards the end of the reading I made this note: Eric is too young for all this wisdom and awareness. Why have him young?

I can probably answer my own question. Having a young man in this context with this story is more compelling than an older man. The idea that youth is not the answer to everything; that a large life can be lived in a short time; possibly the idea that money and power do corrupt so absolutely. But you never get the impression that Eric is superficial. He is a deep thinker and he's working it all out.

My other problem, and it was tiny, insignificant amongst all the wonderfulness: on page 206 I felt De Lillo was flawless until he explains the reference to Male Z. He has already mentioned all the accoutrements of a morgue: the sliding compartments, the sterile room, the bodies with tags and one of these tags is 'Male Z'. It's all fantastic up until he writes: He knew that Male Z was the designation for the bodies of unidentified men in hospital morgues.

Oh Don, why? You have written until now,  until page 206, refusing to explain, refusing to indulge a less-evolved reader by spelling things out. You have written bravely, putting the words on the page, catering only to yourself, not pandering to a reader. Why these words? Why explain? If the reader can't work out it's a morgue they don't deserve the explanation. You have lowered yourself and it stings me.

Oh, there is another criticism. There is a section where the point of view shifts from close 3rd person to a first person voice for a total of about six pages towards the end of the book. This is 'Benno Levin' ('real name' Richard Sheet)  the man who is preparing to kill Eric. I see and accept the purpose of having his POV inserted in the narrative in this way but it is jarring and is not a seamless addition. Perhaps this jolt in the narrative 'works' alongside the other jolts the reader experiences. Certainly, those six pages are densely packed with personal information, the life of a man who is getting ready to kill another man. The mind of the disgruntled assassin. Perhaps I should re-read those pages, they would make more sense now because at the time I wasn't sure who it was.

The final scene is brilliant, particularly the dialogue, and there are still a few more jolts for the reader. When a work is unpredictable it is an achievement these days. There is so much that is banal and ordinary in writing and in life; to have a scene with two men discussing the reasons why one of them wants to kill the other one, and the intended victim - Eric - is calm and measured which unsettles the 'baddie', a self-confessed 'violent smoker'.

The man fired a shot into the ceiling. It startled him. Not Eric; the other, the subject.

It's writing like this that makes me admire DeLillo. It says so much with so little.

When Eric shoots a hole in his own hand, Sheets bandages it up for him and stops the bleeding. He still intends to kill him, but he helps him. It's details like this that make this book so real. That detail reminded me of a story about Ned Kelly walking to be hanged, and even though he was going to his death, he made sure the hood on his head (piled up, ready to be pulled down over his eyes) was be neatly arranged and wouldn't fall off as he walked. This is what's beautiful about fiction. I don't remember where I read that Kelly snippet and I can't remember if it's true or whether I made it up based on something I read.

So, goody goody gumdrops. This is DeLillo's 13th book and you know what, I read somewhere there are 14 books in total. I canner wait to get my hands on another one. Wonder whether I should read chronologically. I think I shall.

Catherine Deveny

I've never really taken to Deveny (might be something about her being a comedian?) but I do support her right to be 'loud and mouthy and opinionated' about things like homophobia, same-sex marriage, marriage, atheism, religion, immigration. I like this approach (probably cause it's my own) but I know that most people don't like this type of person (read woman). Her recent appearance on qanda last Monday (I just caught up on iview) has caused a bit of controversy it seems, re the way she took on Anglican Peter Jensen. (It's not only women who are called shrill and strident; Richard Dawkins gets it a bit, apparently).

This is a defence of Deveny and it makes for interesting reading, including the comments. It reminds me of the reaction Germaine Greer gets every time she opens her mouth including a couple of weeks ago, and I'm seeing whispers of it about Naomi Wolf too, about her new book Vagina, A New Biography. (That's maybe a whole other post. I'm thinking there's probably stuff I'd agree with, criticisms that is, however everyone just seems so fucking bitchy about everything and everyone. Is this the effect of twitter and blogging? Where everyone is just so out there about their opinions? So critical, so argh).

Connected to this story, is the issue of gaslighting. I'd never heard the term before but boy, I know the process. I read the open letter to Catherine Deveny and realised that it described perfectly what I'd experienced in a previous relationship. Wow. Just wow. I wonder if they really do know they're doing it? (the 'gaslighters'.)

What a find

Just came across this blog, Letters of Note; a compilation of letters between and/or by famous people.

You could spend days on it.

Is Tony going down?

It's not often I do politics on here. I used to a bit, when it got me riled, before I got jaded and old. Before I realised what a time waster it is. It's like people going on about trolls. Time wasting. People who leave comments on the online newspapers - time wasting. People who get into back and forth and arguments with trolls in the comments on online newspapers - time wasting.

It's taken me ages to realise that when people talk about Mr Rabbit they are talking about Tony Abbott. This is how far I've taken myself out of political thinking/discussions. My poor mother, when she tries to talk about Julia, I cut her off saying 'Meh, I'm not into politics any more. So boring.'

But a couple of things lately have caught my interest. First, Anne Summers wrote and delivered a speech entitled 'Gillard: Her Rights at Work' about the sexism/misogynism that the PM's been dealing with - it's worth a read. There's the R-rated version and the vanilla version, as well as today's response on The Drum, answering people who have said 'yeah, but it's no worse than anything male politicians have had to put up with, Larry Pickering's been drawing dicks on pollies for yonks.' [Anne Summers' website]


Then there's the current 'Tony threw a punch' story which is delighting me - that old schadenfreude tinged with very real hope that it will fuck him up so much he just fucks off, right out of the picture and takes his abortion/contraception views with him, along with his attitudes towards women.

I'll never forget what his daughter said about him:

Well, what would you know dad? You're just a lame, gay, churchy loser.

To be fair, these could be the words of any teen or young adult child about their parent and while there is something refreshing about it, the use of 'gay' in it to emphasise the 'loser' qualities of Tony Abbott is something I don't tolerate or support. Apart from this though, this is a testimonial about someone who wants to become PM by someone who knows him well. The church bit is probably what worries me most as an atheist who fervently believes church and state should always be kept separate. ALWAYS. But it was funny and it still is.

So now he's accused of slamming his fist into a wall either side of a woman's head back in uni in 1977. He's accused of being intimidating and violent. Someone else has come forward and backed up the woman's story. The response from the coalition is predictable: he has no memory of this; it's incorrect; it's an ALP set-up.

I really really hope he goes down:

The Bridport Prize 2012 - short list

So other people are announcing, I might as well too. I entered two short stories in this year's Bridport Prize (a UK writing competition).

Both my stories were short listed (again, like the Voiceless Prize, it's a long shortlist). They won't proceed any further but out of 6100 entries, I made the top 100. I am feeling pretty happy about this as it's the first time I've entered and it's my second run on the board in my recent efforts to get published and all that jazz.

I plan to submit both stories to another couple of things to see how they do. And of course, I will let you know if anything happens.

In other news, it's P's BD - SWEET 16. Unbelievable how did that happen etcetera etcetera. Have to go now and make a huge cauldron of chicken, mushroom and pea risotto for twelve people. Might also be time for a glass 'o wine after a huge day teaching.

The Brontes and their world

[Taken from p88, author Phyllis Bentley. This book was on my mother's book-shelf since I was a little girl. Now it's on my book-shelf but I probably should give it back.]

Emily Brontë was a 'space-sweeping soul' to use her own phrase about a philosopher; her thoughts on life, death, immortality, imagination, liberty, deity had a depth and breadth of vision compatible to Wordsworth or Shakespeare.

It has been the fashion to speak of her as a metaphysical poet, but I prefer to call her a pantheist; she saw the universe as a whole, and her vision comprehended the lark, the woolly sheep, the snowy glen, the nature of being and God Himself as all part of the one great harmony. Nor can her thought be called speculative. She writes with a majestic, almost casual certainty. These tremendous themes, these minute observations, are both conveyed with an absolute simplicity of language; no purple patches of metaphor or simile, no elaboration of construction, no experiment with metre - one feels Emily would have thought any artifices contemptibly vulgar. She merely says what she means in the clearest, hardest hitting terms she can find. But if her metres are conventional and her words austere, her rhythms have a poetry so intense as to be deeply thrilling, in the most literal sense of that expression.

Fabulous stuff.

I can't believe that Emily wrote Wuthering Heights between October 1845 and June 1846 and had it published in July of the following year. How much editing? How many drafts? How many copies were sold? Who read this type of novel? Would it get published today?

WH remains one of my favourite books, evah.

Old Hem snippet - he was terribly clumsy

One biography on Hemingway by Jeffrey Meyers has an appendix which covers all accidents and illnesses. It is quite a read:

Accidents
Childhood - falls with stick in throat, gouges tonsils; catches fishhook in back
1916 - 17: boxing injuries; football injuries
Spring 1918: fist through glass show-case
July 8, 1918: concussed and wounded by trench mortar and machine gun
June 1920: cuts feet walking on glass
July 1920: falls on boat cleat, internal hemorrhage
April 1922: burns from hot-water heater
Sept 1925: tears ligament in right foot
Dec 1927: son cuts pupil of good right eye 
Mar 1928: pulls skylight on forehead, needs stitches
Oct 1929: tears muscle in groin
May 1930: cuts right index finger on punching bag
Aug 1930: lacerations from bolting horse
Nov 1930: breaks right arm in car accident
Apr 1935: shoots himself in legs while gaffing* shark
Feb 1936: breaks big toe kicking locked gate
?1937-38: dropkicks foot through mirror
Aug 1938: scratches pupil of bad left eye
May 1944: second concussion when car strikes water tank in blackout
Aug 1944: third concussion jumping from motorcycle into ditch; suffers double vision and impotence
June 1945: car overturns; head goes into mirror, knee injured
Sept 1949: clawed while playing with lion**
July 1950: fourth concussion; gashes head while falling on boat
Oct 1953: cuts face, sprains shoulder falling out of car
Jan 1954: two plane crashes in Africa; fifth concussion, fractured skull, internal bleeding, paralysed sphincter muscle, two cracked spine discs, ruptured liver, right kidney and spleen, dislocated right arm and shoulder, first degree burns
Jan 1954: severe burns fighting fire
Oct 1958: sprains ankle, tears heel ligaments climbing fence
July 1959: car goes off road


Illnesses
Infancy: left eye defective from birth, mysterious minor operation

Oct 1918: jaundice
Early 1919: tonsils removed, operation of injured leg
1920s: appendicitis operation
Oct 1922: malaria
June 1927: anthrax in cut foot
Sept 1927: swollen, itchy hands and feet
Dec 1927: grippe, hemorrhoids, toothache
Oct 1929: kidney troubles from cold stream
Summer 1931: eye trouble, needs glasses
April 1932: bronchial penumonia
Oct 1933: throat operation
circa Jan 1934: amoebic dysentery; prolapsed large intestine***
1934: blood poisoning in right index finger
Jan 1935: recurrence of dysentery
Dec 1938: severe liver complaint
Dec 1944: pneumonia, coughs up blood
Aug 1947: hypertension
Dec 1948: ringing in ears
Mar 1949: erysipelas, hospitalised in Padua
Feb 1950: skin infection
Sept 1950: ?skin cancer from sun at sea
May 1950: leg pains from encysted shell fragments
Aug 1953: second dysentery
Jan 1955: rash on face and chest
Nov 1955: nephritis, hepatitis, anaemia, swollen right foot, 40 days in bed w hepatitis
Nov 1956: hypertension, high cholesterol, arteriosclerosis; strict diet, not alcohol or sex
July 1959 - July 1961: skin rash, alcoholism, eye troubles, diabetes, suspected haemochromatosis, nephritis, hepatitis, hypertension, impotence, mental break-down, electroconvulsive therapy, loss of weight, loss of memory, severe depression

* gaffing: seizing or impaling with a gaffe

** as you would expect

*** from p263 of Meyers's book: 'His large intestine became infected and swollen [amoebic dysentery which he'd contracted on voyage to Africa] and three inches of it dropped out of his body. "He was passing nearly a quart of blood daily." ... He soon had 150 bowel movements a day and a prolapsed intestine that he had to wash with soap and water, and put back into his body.'

[Source: Hemingway, A Biography by Jeffrey Meyers 1985]

Princess comes back tomorrow

Apparently the weather will be stormy and windy and she flies in from Broome. She's been away on a 'school camp' but none of the school camps I've heard of involve a 3-week Kimberley experience where they live and work with local kids from Fitzroy Crossing and community areas up there.

Or is it over there?

They've been doing community projects (building a fire pit and a basket ball court) and working on a cattle station, learning about the local languages and flora/fauna and art. Swimming in water holes, tough life. Going to footy games, staying up til 'whenever' and lying around on the decking outside discussing different types of learning.

I haven't heard much from her about how it's been other than she's 'loving it' and 'doesn't want to come home'. But home she comes tomorrow and it will be a massive catch-up and I can't wait to hear it all.

*

Today I tried again to get my copy of Big Issue. Vendor wasn't in Acland Street either but I went into Readings to ask about him - Dennis is his name - and I accidentally bought two new books.

Fuck I just can't resist. It's like some compulsive addiction thing. Seriously.

I got a Dom de Lillo for cheap (hah just checked, DON) for $19.99 - Cosmopolis. It was the blurb that got me:

Eric Packer is a twenty-eight-year-old multi-billionaire asset manager. He lives in Manhattan. We join him on what will become a particularly eventful day in his life.

When he woke up, he didn't know what he wanted. Then he knew. He wanted to get a haircut.

As his stretch limousine moves across town, his world begins to fall apart. But more worrying than the loss of his fortune is the realization that his life may be under threat.

Now there are several things about this that I like, and one thing I don't.

I like the correct adjectival hyphenation in that first sentence.
I like that he's in Manhattan. It wouldn't be as attractive if it were, say, Auckland. No offence.
I like the bit about him not knowing what he wanted, and then knowing he wants a haircut.

I don't like that it's got Edward the Vampire on the cover (it's a movie, shit, why didn't I notice that before I bought it?)

But then the bit about the potential loss of his fortune and the life under threat bit, hmmm. Is it going to spin off into freak-out territory with over-dramatic plot twists? (I hope not) or is it him descending into some drug-induced paranoia or psychosis? (I like this idea much much better.)

We shall see.

*

The other one is The Memory of Salt by Alice Melike Ülgezer.

This has:

A beautiful cover
A blurb that gets me in but not for the details or storyline, for the fact it's got Turkish characters in it
Her middle name - Melike - is one of my Princess's names (Princess has many names and there was a rumour at her school in Year 7 that she was a Turkish princess. She is half Turkish but not a real princess, just a pretend one on here.)
It's got a circus in it
It's got Australian outback in it, so it's a melange of different settings: Kabul, Melbourne, Aus outback, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, London.

I have to see how this is done. I'm half scared it will be fantastic, half scared it won't.

Again, we shall see.

Beautiful

This pic is attached to an article that is about a father whose boy likes to wear dresses and so the German dad showed his support by wearing a skirt.

I thought it was fitting considering we've just had Fathers Day, not a big deal in my books with the commercialised push that goes on but still, it's nice when you come across a dad who rocks.

So a technical problem

It's like this, Alex. (I know it'll be you who helps me but that doesn't mean other people who know what they're doing can't jump in and assist)...

In the old days, at the bottom of my posts page, I used to have something like 'more posts' or 'next page' and this is gone now.

I'm not sure it's because the blog has grown OR whether something has happened with my settings. But I would like to be able to go to a month on the side list and trawl through all the posts in that month.

Just can't seem to be able to do this.

*

Also, does anyone remember the '80s diaries and how my dad was caught up in a moider? And I don't know if I mentioned on here but I got a couple of comments from a woman purporting to be the killed woman's bio-daughter. Well, it was a cold case and it is now heating back up. All sorts of police interaction (not with me, with my dad). Oral swabs, official statements. At one stage I said to Clokes 'maybe they think he did it?' (not wanting to say 'maybe he did it') and then dad said recently, when I said 'maybe they're saying that to everyone', ie 'we are close to an arrest, we know who did it we're just getting our stuff together' as a way to make people nervous?? and I said 'maybe they think you did it' and dad said 'well I know I didn't do it!'

Anyway, Happy Fathers Day, Dad (don't know if he reads this anymore).

*

Also GO CATS