Lilian Nattel's Blog, page 65
February 8, 2011
if only poppies could run cars–or maybe they can
If the Marines could prove that biofuels work on military bases, he figured that his poppy- to-biodiesel concept, which is more tailored to helping Afghans, might still stand a chance.
via theatlantic.com
Filed under: Miscellany
The Perfectly Unprolific Poet, Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop wrote 2-3 poems a year, a total of about 100 in her lifetime, each one "crafted with scrupulous care" and worthy of the highest regard. According to Dana Goia (who had Bishop as a teacher at Harvard):
One hundred years after her birth in Worcester, Mass., in 1911, Elizabeth Bishop stands as the most highly regarded American poet of the second-half of the 20th century. She is admired in every critical camp—from feminists to formalists—who agree on little else.
Bishop was born to a Canadian mother who went mad after her American father died when Bishop was a baby. She had a wandering life, a few years with her loving but poor maternal grandparents in Nova Scotia, then another few with emotionally distant but well heeled paternal grandparents in the States, then an aunt, and finally boarding school.
In midlife she had a settled interlude of 15 years, living with her partner, a successful architect in Brazil. (In the 1950′s and 1960′s, two women achieving success both in their work and in their home life together strikes me as remarkable. That Bishop's partner, Lota de Macedo Soares committed suicide makes me wonder how much stress they experienced because of being smart and lesbian in the mid-20th c.)
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of her birth, new volumes have been produced from her published and unpublished work, including letters and journals: Prose and Poems.
Here's a confession: I don't know her work. But I'm going to very soon. I'm curious about this woman and inspired by her, being a writer who is not very prolific myself. She chose her words carefully and was respected for it. "What animates Bishop's poetry is the deep authenticity of a writer who knew exactly what she was and never tried to seem otherwise." One couldn't ask for more.
Filed under: Literary Tagged: 20th c women poets, Elizabeth Bishop
how memories turn into poetry according to Charles Simic
First remember Grandpa, write some lines, put in a dog, and lose Grandpa, he explains.
One hopes that a poem will eventually arise out of all that hemming and hawing, then go out into the world and convince a complete stranger that what it describes truly happened…Compared to the other arts, poets spend most of their time scratching their heads in the dark. That's why the travel they prefer is going to the kitchen to see if there is any baked ham and cold beer left in the fridge.
via nybooks.com
It sounds a lot like writing a novel, except that I'd be looking for humous and carrots.
Filed under: Literary Tagged: poetry
February 7, 2011
doomed to war? a rebuttal to Restrepo's Sebastian Junger
The oldest clear-cut evidence for lethal group violence by humans dates back not millions or hundreds of thousands of years but only 13,000 years. Moreover, as an excellent recent article on this Web site points out, tribal societies in regions such as the U.S. Southwest did not fight continuously; they lived peacefully for centuries before erupting into violence. These patterns are not consistent with behavior that is instinctual or "hardwired."
via scientificamerican.com
Restrepo, Junger's film on American soldiers, is supposed to be magnificent and I'm planning to see it. But John Horgan is disturbed by Junger's thesis, explicated not in the movie but his accompanying book, War, and puts forth his own counter-argument that humans are not hardwired to go to war, nor men universally excited by it.
Filed under: Miscellany
channeling anger over war
The natural tendency in anger is to attack. The attack of an intellectual like myself tends to be verbal. Yet, as we know from studies of bullying, verbal abuse can be deeply wounding. Smashing plates is physically destructive. It is only slightly better than smashing people.
via bps-research-digest.blogspot.com
John Sloboda writes about his anger at his country's involvement with the war in Iraq and his involvement in projects to record and honour the deaths of civilians.
Filed under: Miscellany
the reality of reality tv in Russia
And beyond that was the final, most important and least conspicuous of all the inconspicuous doors, with a code that few people knew: it led to the office of Tim and Ivan, and the room where the real accounts were kept. This whole elaborate set-up was intended to foil the tax police.
via lrb.co.uk
A fascinating essay by Peter Pomerantsev on tv production in Russia, the bribes, the propaganda, the juxtaposition of sit coms and bizarre "documentary" (for eg: a film on fictious mold produced by anti-mold business; another about psychic spies). Apprentice style tv shows with a Russian "Donald Trump" failed because Russians, based on experience, believe that any brilliant young apprentice would end up in jail or exile.
Filed under: Miscellany
Molly Fox's Birthday: A Review
Molly Fox's Birthday by Deirdre Madden is the first purchased ebook I've read on my Kobo and it was an excellent choice. I want to re-read the book to see just how Madden does what she does with such admirable skill, like an athlete or dancer who makes everything seem effortless.
I found this novel engaging, engrossing, thoughtful and thought provoking. It was a terrific read. I say this upfront because this book doesn't have the sort of one line hook that invites instant interest.
The novel takes place in one sense over a single day, the birthday of the title, which is also summer solstice, while the (unnamed) narrator, a playwright, attempts to begin a new play. But throughout the day she reminisces over her life, her close and enduring friendships with Molly Fox, an actor, and with Andrew, an art historian. Moving in and out of these reminiscences are memories of other family and friends, her brother (a priest), Molly's brother (mentally ill), Andrew's chilly ex-wife. Interspersed with these, the narrator goes about the business of the day, while several unexpected and revealing encounters spur further revelations.
What the novel is really about–at least for me–is the fiction of life: every person is creator and created, author and audience, living with the tension between the unknowable and the drive for integrity. What is persona, what is truth, what is truth to oneself, to others?
Throughout the novel, the narrator is continually surprised in the events she is remembering, which changed earlier perceptions of the people she knows, or in her current reflections on those people and events. The three most dominating characters, the narrator, Molly Fox and Andrew all have lives that revolve in some way around creation and the created, artifice and reality, primarily through theatre but also in other artistic forms.
As a writer, I found these themes engrossing, and highlighted on my computer (using Adobe Digital Editions) passages that I wanted to quote. Although she's written 19 plays, the narrator feels panicked at starting another.
Sitting at Molly's desk, there were times when I felt I had never written a line in my life, and the idea of my producing a work that any professional company would wish to stage struck me as an absurdity. My past experience counted for nothing. This feeling was in itself a normal part of the process of writing: I knew this. I also knew that for the act of writing to become increasingly difficult rather than easier with each work was logical. It would have been easy to repeat things that had been successful, to slip into stale and formulaic writing. But I wanted every time to do something new, something that would surprise the public, something that would perhaps surprise even me. I wanted to do something of which I hadn't, until then, known I was capable. And this too was a normal part of the process. While it sometimes got me down, it was also usually what got me out of bed in the morning…No, there was a particular reason why getting to grips with my twentieth play was such a struggle and it was this: my nineteenth had been an unprecedented disaster. (p 40 Adobe Digital)
Passages like this spoke to me, articulated for me, and fascinated me. Here is another about acting that applies equally to writing:
Many actors spend years doing exactly what Molly had dismissed: they pretend to be other people. They select voices and movements that might plausibly suit a particular character, and they assume these…in the same way they might put on a costume…There was always something unmediated and supremely natural about her [Molly's] acting, it was the thing itself. Becoming not pretending. It was a showing forth of her own soul, something about which she had always been fearless…It was all there, a whole magma of dark emotion that could have destroyed her but which she had controlled and made central to her art. (p 53 Adobe)
Madden is just as astute in writing about other aspects of life, friendship, family, sexual attraction, jealousy, being the odd one out, making a life for oneself, what can and can't be revealed between people.
I first heard of this book through Litlove, and more recently was reminded of it at Books and Bicycles. Now I'm here to recommend it most highly: five out of five stars for me.
Filed under: Literary Tagged: Deirdre Madden, Molly Fox's Birthday
February 6, 2011
what's the appeal of Mad Men? NYRB explains
If so much of Mad Men is curiously opaque, all inexplicable exteriors and posturing, it occurs to you that this is, after all, how the adult world often looks to children; whatever its blankness, that world, as recreated in the show, feels somehow real to those of us who were kids back then. As for the appeal: Who, after all, can resist the fantasy of seeing what your parents were like before you were born, or when you were still little—too little to understand what the deal was with them, something we can only do now, in hindsight?
via nybooks.com
Daniel Mendelsohn has an intriguing theory about why "Mad Men" is such a hit. First he trashes the show, lucidly putting all its failings on display. And yet he doesn't trash its fans, for he places the show's appeal in a touching light, as an act of forgiveness, one generation for the other.
Filed under: Miscellany
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