TiVo Lady

Book Mourning

Every so often, I read a book that fills me with dread--about finishing it.  I mourn the loss of my ability to dive into the story, to hang out with the characters, to be in that space and time.  Sashenka, by Simon Montefiore, is the world I am now mourning.

The novel tells the story of a dutiful Communist, Sashenka, who became a bolshevik before the Revolution, and was a devoted Commie for several decades, marrying a party comrade, and having two children, Snowy and Carlo, before being devoured by Stalin's horror, disappearing forever.  It doesn't sound all that gripping, but it's well-told and Sashenka comes alive, despite the somewhat awkward sex scenes.  Like, uh, this:  "Oh my God, after twenty years of being the most rational Bolshevik woman in Moscow, this goblin had driven me crazy! . . .  She lost all sense of time and place and decorum.  He made her forget she was a Communist..."  Apparently, the book came in second in a British contest for Bad Sex Writing.

Still.  Still, the descriptions of Russia before and during the Revolution, then during the Lenin/Stalin era, is gripping.

"..She prided herself on her cleanliness, but by now all three of them were dirty, the children's clothes stained with food, grease and piss.  She had a plentiful supply of rubles for food, but Snowy and Carlo, delicate eaters, were used to fine cooking and hated the watery vegetable soup, black bread and dumplings in thin tomato sauce that were the only things available in the canteen."

This is a story of several generations, including the lost children's generation, Snowy and Carlo, who never know their parents.  It's a story about discovering the truth.  It's a good story, even with the stilted sex stuff.  After all, it was written by a British historian, a Stalin expert, and an almost-Boomer (born in 1965).

A Curious Case, This Benjamin Button

What's most curious about the case of Benjamin Button, superstar Brad Pitt's new Christmas movie, is how many critics are slavering and slobbering all over the thing, as if it's the second coming.  (Hey, he is actually a Boomer, born in 1963, though very tail-end Boomer.)

Granted, there is a built-in fascination, a morbid curiousity even, about the premise--that a newborn could be born elderly, and age backward, into infancy.  It's a poignant, and provocative, alternative, though almost more dreadful than the alternate reality.

But, really, this is a very very very long movie--almost three hours--and just about every minute of it crawls.  There is a lot of subtle digital magic here, so seamless that you just accept an elderly-looking newborn, a wheelchair-bound, bald three-year-old, and a middle-aged teenager.  But as Benjamin ages in reverse, throwing out his true age every so often, you get caught up in the mathematics of the fantasy, and they don't quite make sense.  (Wait, he's 49, but looks like a vital 20-something?  And his wife is 43, but looks just as young?  Huh?)  Also, the framing device, of Button's now-ancient wife waiting to die in a New Orleans hospital bed as Hurricane Katrina looms, is just dopey.  As is the reading of Benjamin's diary by his newly-discovered daughter.

This is an interminable fairy tale that occasionally reaches poetic heights of whimsy, but never really soars.

Revolutionary Road: Thumbs down...

As I sat in a suburban movie theatre last night, with hundreds of other suburban husbands and wives, watching a movie screening about the tragedy and "hopeless emptiness" that is married life in the suburbs I felt queasy.  Of course, this was a history lesson, since it's about married suburban life circa 1955.  The movie, Revolutionary Road, stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank Wheeler and Kate Winslet as his wife April, in a grim and depressing film so morose that you will begin to wish, as I did, that Leo had stayed submerged under the icy North Atlantic waves when he went down with the Titanic.  After appearing together in that movie, Leo and Kate should be forbidden from ever, ever trying to duplicate that magic.

In this film, it takes only three minutes, before the opening credits, for Leo and Kate to meet at a party and fall in love.  Then, pooof, they are married and with children (who conveniently disappear for long, long segments of the movie) and living in the suburbs.  He's commuting to New York, in his hat and suit, along with hordes of other men in grey flannels, and she's wearing perky dresses as she vacuums and cooks.  It's 1955:  Welcome to the Age of Marital Misery.

The rest of the movie is an exercise in marriage-based torture:  his on her and her on him.  It's painful to watch, but I was distracted by the near physical perfection of the two stars.  Leo has a few random facial scars--under his chin, near his eye--and I spent minutes pondering their origins.  Also, Kate is a siren, a gorgeous star who grabs attention in every scene.  But.  What's up with her tri-color hair?  She has black roots, it's buttery yellow at the top, and carrot orangey at the bottom. 

As far as I'm concerned, it's a minor character, John Givings, played by Michael Shannon, who steals the entire damn movie.  He plays the insane son of the Wheeler's real estate broker, and he's the only one who tells the vicious, horrible truth about this life of "hopeless emptiness."  He is riveting.

This movie is not about Boomers--it's about our parents' generation--and the only Boomer actress in sight is Kathy Bates (born in 1948) who plays Mrs. Givings, the real estate lady who sold the doomed Wheeler's their Connecticut dream house.  She is, apparently, the only working wife in this entire suburban universe, but April doesn't get the message.  To April, the only way to salvage her boring, dreary life would be to move to Paris--so her husband, Frank, can find himself and so that she can be the one who gets a job and goes to work every day.

The whole story would have been a lot less tragic if she'd only realized that she could have found a job in New York too.

My Common Misconceptions...

I hold many ill-formed opinions and wrong-headed assumptions.  For instance:

1.  That I own a little white dog.  She's little, but.  When it's snows, she becomes less-than-white, especially when she poses near pristine, new fallen snow.

2.  That my new little Prius is infallible, and would never, ever slide completely off the roadway without my approval.  Or permission.  Uh, yes it would.  And did, in the semi-blizzard last Friday.  As a result, it's in the fixit shop, awaiting a new tire rim, plus other stuff.

3.   That I am completely and totally finished writing my new book.  The one that comes out any minute.... at least any minute if you fast forward the time-space continuum until the end of August, 2009. 

Meanwhile, here is this stack, still in manuscript form, along with complimentary purple pencil, provided for my official corrections and changes.  I am permitted to keep this purple pencil, according to my copy editor, who points out that I will need it for the NEXT round of manuscript pages, winging their way me-ward in February.

I'm not sure I can bear to read this One.  More.  Time...

But I do like my new purple pencil

The Crow Road

I just realized that most of the books I write about here are those that I rant and rave about--because they're either really good, A+, or really terrible, D-.  But this one, The Crow Road, by Iain Banks (a surfeit-of-"i" author), is mostly good, a solid B.  Even a B+.  Also, I just noticed that it was published in 1992, and had already been made into a BBC miniseries.  (How come my TiVo didn't tell me this??!!)

The story is set in Scotland, both in Glascow and in the countryside, in Gallanach, which could be made up, or also, real.  Who knows? To me, the whole place seems like an exotic, fairy-tale land.  There's just something about Scotland that is mysterious and dreamy and fun, though it's really just England North.  Maybe it's my high school experience with the great musical, Brigadoon (I starred--in the chorus, mostly in the back, because I can't really sing)....

There are some wonderful descriptions here of drunken epiphanies and hangovers and miscellaneous drinking adventures.  Like this:

"I was so drunk at the time this actually seemed like quite a smart idea....if I'd thought I was remotely capable of coordinating my hand, eyes and brain to that degree.  The only reason I could get my drinking hand and my mouth in roughly the same place at approximately the same time at this stage in the evening was because I'd had so much recent practice at it.  And even that comparatively simple system wasn't a hundred per cent any more;  I'd missed my mouth twice already and spilled small amounts of whiskey onto my chin and shirt.  I'd carried it off with dignity, though."

I like this, too:

"Either I had been put to bed, I thought, as I woke up next morning, in the wee cold room at the top of the house, or my standard drunk-person's on-board auto-pilot facility was improving with experience."

The story hop-scotches back and forth, between generations.  There's Kenneth, young and courting, along with his brothers Hamish and Rory, and then a father of boys, called Prentice and Lewis and James.  Sometimes Prentice is wee boy, others he's a uni student.  (I love that, "uni"!!)  The point of view shifts, back and forth, until it finally stays with the sons.  At first, this is a bit confusing--for my Boomer brain, at least--since I kept forgetting which guy was which age.  Eventually, though, it was not only obvious, but deft and clever.

Like this description of Prentice's exhaustion:

"I had, up until that point, been performing an agonising reappraisal of the indignant signals of total, quivering, painful exhaustion flooding in from every major muscle I possessed.  My body's equivalent of the Chief Engineer was screaming down the intercom that the system just wouldn't take any more punishment, Jim, and there was no doubt that I really should have been pulling out and powering down just then..."

Nice.  Plus, Banks is a Boomer, born in Fife (!) in 1954.

This Just In: Australia is Not Awful!

Australia--the movie, not the actual continent--is not as terrible as some of the reviews might lead you to believe.  It's main problem is that it's at least four movies in one:  It's a cowboy movie, about the perils of ranching in a desolate place;  it's a World War II movie, about the invasion of Darwin by the Japanese;  it's a movie about the forced kidnapping of Aboriginal children by twisted racists;  and it's a love story, a movie about a grand passion between a British aristocrat and the Drover, her Australian cowboy.

One of the main reasons it's not so terrible?  One:  Hugh Jackman.  Shirtless Hugh Jackman.  (Not quite a Boomer, born in 1968.)  That's pretty much it, and it's enough.

Another problem, though, is the costar, Lady Sarah Ashley, played by Nicole Kidman.  She is so very very thin--the great Kathy Griffin calls her "a hanger with a head"--that she's a little scary.  Plus, there is not a line or a wrinkle or a crevice on her entire, 41-year-old face.  Which, also, by the way, Does Not Move.  Ever.

I've Loved You So Long: Frog-alicious!

I've Loved You So Long is a wonderfully delicious French movie, starring Boomer Babe Kristin Scott Thomas (born in 1960!) speaking French like a native and acting up an Oscar-worth storm.  And for most of the movie, by the way, appears as if she's wearing no makeup whatsoever (the better to look despairing).

She plays Juliette, a completely-defeated, deadened woman just released from prison for some  unknown (for the moment) but terrible deed.  Her younger sister, Lea, is played by the amazingly youthful and lovely Elsa Zylberstein.  Born in 1968, she's 40 but could very easily pass for, say, 25.  In fact, somebody should write a book called, um, Why French Women Don't Get Old, or something.  Lea, married and mother of two adopted, Vietnamese daughters, adores this hollow shell of a sister, whom she hasn't seen, we eventually find out, for about 15 years.  Turns out that Juliette was in prison for killing her six-year-old son.

Ack.  Repulsive, right?  Well, this is frog cinema, so there are wonderful scenes over cups of coffee in burnished, Amelie-type cafes, and a weekend in the country, featuring rambunctious kids and wine-addled adults, and lush fields.  And then, Juliette begins to warm up, turning human again, bit by bit, mostly because her little sister never gives up on her.  (WARNING:  Bring.  Plenty.  Of.  Tissues!)  Finally, in what may or may not be borderline ridiculous, there's a twist at the end.  The Reason she did it.  Just so we know that Kristin isn't really a monster.

She's no monster, clearly.  But she's also a fabulous actress, speaking French or English.  Not only that, but she should get an Oscar for this performance, which grabs you by your throat, reaches down your gullet, and rips out your heart.

My Waterfront Property

In some weather--such as this constant, Noah's Ark-type constant rainy mess--I have a view of the waterfront.  A few times, ducks have even started swimming and nesting back there.

Now, all I need is to build a dock, and move my kayak back there. . .

Here's proof that it's winter here in the Northern hemisphere.  Bluest of blue skies, and stark, barrenness everywhere else.

Also, this:

2666: I Just Don't Get It...

I don't get anything about this book, called 2666, heralded as a "masterpiece" here, and also here.  It's by Chilean-born author, Roberto Bolano, and published posthumously, and translated from the Spanish, after his death at 50 in 2003.

First of all, I don't get why this is such a magnificent work of fiction.  Surely, it is long.  Surely, it is hypnotic, with its 800-word sentences and endless endless endless lists.  For instance:

"Then, too, she was against cults and healers and all those despicable people who tried to swindle the poor.  She thought botanomancy, or the art of predicting the future through plants, was trickery.  Still, she knew how it worked, and once she explained to a third-rate healer the different branches of the divinatory art of botanomancy, namely:  Floromancy, or the study of the shapes, movements, and reactions of plants, subdivided in turn into cromniomancy and fructomancy, the reading of sprouting onions or fruits, and also dendromancy, the interpretation of trees, and phyllomancy, the study of leaves, and xylomancy, or divination using wood and tree branches, which, she said, is lovely, poetic, but has more to do with...."

This goes on and on and on;  the paragraph is 10 pages long!  Ten.  Pages.  Long.

Some of the list-y descriptions are short, but also hypnotic.  And incredibly boring:

"All four were put up at the same hotel.  Morini and Norton were on the third floor, in rooms 305 and 311, respectively.  Espinoza was on the fifth floor, in room 509.  And Pelletier was on the sixth floor, in room 602.  The hotel was literally overrun by a German orchestra and a Russian choir, and there was a constant musical hubbub..."

Uh, and this matters, because? 

The book contains five parts, called "Parts," some of which are vaguely connected, but mostly, not.  The hotel room list is from "The Part about the Critics," describing four academics who specialize in the study of Archimboldi, a mysterious German writer.  There's "The Part about Amalfitano," who's a Mexican academic.  "The Part about Fate" is about a black newspaper reporter, and is set in Mexico but not really relevant to anything else.  Then, there's "The Part about the Crimes," an endless digressive list of women who are murdered in Santa Teresa, a city in the north of Mexico.  Finally, there's "The Part about Archimboldi," who turns out to be a pseudonym of a World War II German soldier who lives all over the world, and sometimes in Mexico.

Trust me when I say this:  None of this makes any sense.  Whatsoever.

I don't get the title, either.  What the hell does it mean?  There's no explanation in the nearly 900-page text.  Maybe that's the year when readers might finally understand what this book is about.  There are some great books that are difficult to understand, like Ulysses, say.  But I can tell that it's a work of genius.  This book is impossible to understand.  But I can't tell anything else about it, whatsoever.

I mean:  Whatsoever.

(But, maybe, if you have trouble falling asleep, just start reading, from page one.  I guarantee a Trance-like State, or your money back!)

Role Models... (desperation movie)

Got dragged (persuaded? convinced? pushed?) to see Role Models yesterday by Engineer Boy, who refused, totally and absolutely, to see Australia, with (sigh) Boomer God Hugh Jackman.  Because I expected less-than-nothing entertainment, I was pleasantly surprised.  Not only that--embarrassing confession here--I cried at the end.  Cried, at a lightweight holiday comedy.  How pathetic is that?

This is the story--I use that word loosely--of two losers, who sell a rotgut version of Red Bull, Minotaur, to middle-schoolers.  The guys, Danny and Wheeler, are played by Paul Rudd, a not-quite-Boomer born in 1969, and Seann William Scott, a thirty-ish perma-smirker.  Rudd is surly but likable, and plays the one-note character he has perfected in various Judd Apatow movies and their clones.  He is, reliably, a good-natured sourpuss, the well-meaning guy who gets the girl, even though he's dour and depressed.  The guys have a tantrum in their Minotaur-topped work vehicle, and get 150 hours of community service.  They end up being "Bigs" to needy kids, called "Littles," in a hilarious send-up of do-gooder service organizations.

The children are predictably nasty and foul-mouthed, but in a cute way (all those f-words out of that little mouth, adorable!).  And the uber-nerd, played by Christopher Mitntz-Plasse, is obsessed with a medieval role-playing group that is simultaneously obnoxious and sweet.  This kid, only 19, also played the nerdiest of nerds in Superbad, and is so good at it, he will probably be doomed to repeat teen awkwardness for the rest of his professional life.  The only true Boomer in this movie is Jane Lynch (born in 1960), who plays the former cocaine addict now in charge of the bogus "Sturdy Wings," a Big Brother-esque social agency.  She's hilarious. 

And it all works out in the end, of course, with Littles bonding with Bigs, and the nerd winning the girl, and the nerd's unaccepting parents embracing the boy's inner geekiness.  Sigh:  wipe tears here.

If you can see this for half price, go.