K.A. Laity's Blog, page 158

Friday's Forgotten Books: Three Men in a Boat

This might be an odd choice for "forgotten": after all it's a classic, at least as acknowledged by humorists. But I find that the "in print" edition listed on Amazon (that gauge of what's available) is actually a CreateSpace edition, though there's a Tor edition from 2001. I am pleased to see that the version illustrated by comedian Vic Reeves has been scheduled for release here in May.



 Jerome asserts that the strength of this narrative is its root in the truth. "There were four of us," he begins, "George, and William Samuel Harris and myself, and Montmorency. We were sitting in my room, smoling, and talking about how bad we were -- bad from a medical point of view I mean, of course." After discussing various symptoms and ailments (like the Beowulf poet, Jerome's digressions from the stated purpose prove infinitely entertaining), they hit upon the idea of a a trip up the river as a perfect solution.



It hardly seems the sort of genius stroke it proves to be. The novel follows that meandering path of the Thames with a gentle but persistent humor that sneaks up on the reader. You find yourself laughing out loud at the oddest things. And between the comic moments, Jerome slips in moments of poignancy and even history with painless deftness. Sometimes they all combine at once, as when he describes the effect of a hearty meal on the cranky boaters.

It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our digestive organs. We cannot work, we cannot think, unless our stomach wills so. It dictates our emotions, our passions. After eggs and bacon, it says: 'Work!' After beefsteak and porter, it says: 'Sleep!' After a cup of tea (two spoonfuls for each cup, and don't let it stand for more than three minutes), it says to the brain: 'Now, rise, and show your strength. Be eloquent, and deep,  and tender; see with a clear eye, into Nature and into life; spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a godlike spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through the long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!'

The book has been a favourite of many. It spawned Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog (the subtitle of Jerome's tome). Not gut-busting humor, but an inviting story you would be glad to encounter at any time. Like the friend you're glad to see, especially when you don't have time, but gladly neglect your duties to idle away the afternoon. When you find someone who's read it, you need only smile and say "the cheese!" and the two of you will be old friends.



Perhaps the best film version is the one that has a script by Tom Stoppard: Michael Palin has said he counts it among the finest work he has done and remains quite proud of having been in it with Tim Curry (as J) and Stephen Moore (George). Stoppard's script captures the heart of the book, but the biggest laughs end up falling in different places due to the switch from verbal to visual. It only makes sense, after all.



You can find the complete list of FFBs at Patti Abbott's blog.



I have more reviews to write: Fela! the National Theatre broadcast from this week and Mike Leigh's Another Year which I saw yesterday afternoon when I ought to have been working. To say nothing of the hot chocolate I drank while lounging in the café after the film...

BitchBuzz: You Can't Erase Your Past on the Internet

What is it with NY politicians and sex scandals? "Excelsior" must have another meaning I have not considered. So, in a timely manner, I combine my teaching with the news:

You Can't Erase Your Past from the InternetBy K.A. Laity Much has been made of the internet in recent weeks as the golden-haired saviour of troubled nations, who use the magical power of Twitter and Facebook to foment revolution and declare freedom from the hierarchical powers of corrupt fascists dictators.



True enough: while it's overstating the case to call Tunisia and Egypt social media revolutions, there's no doubt that having these handy tools of communication helped keep people informed. Before we all start patting ourselves on the back, let's think about a couple of things: one, that we're all at risk of losing the net we take for granted. Once lawmakers heard it was possible to "turn off" the internet, every little black-hearted gnome was lining up to find a way to do so.



More importantly, we need to remember that most of us will only see revolution from the safety of our armchairs—or more likely, I suppose, our desk chairs (if we see it at all). So we have a lot of time to waste and a raft of temptations. Like children left on their own with a box of matches, we're far more likely to get into trouble than to build a scale model of the Guggenheim. Much of the internet allows a kind of passive consumption that releases the inner Homer Simpson in us all. I always remember the "Soul Mate" episode where Marge tracks down her wandering husband by heading in the direction that Springfield slopes down and looking for something shiny...

Read the rest here: http://tech.bitchbuzz.com/you-cant-erase-your-past-from-the-internet.html#ixzz1DZunneK5



I am behind: this, I realise, is not news. I have an incredible amount of work to accomplish before I head off for Rome. I must continue to believe that it is possible. I do this by not looking at the entire stack of things, but only at what's just ahead of me. It's the only way. And as those on Facebook have seen, practicing saying "no" -- for a while I had been doing well on that front, but I've slipped a little since the first of the year and now I am shaking a finger at myself (is that physically possible) and affirming I will do better.

Kit Marlowe Speaks / TOF: Impromptu

Kit Marlowe makes a visit over at JoJo's Book Corner today where she reads from The Mangrove Legacy and gives away prizes including an exclusive mug! This is all part of the building excitement for Authors After Dark where Kit and I and a whole host of lovely writers will be converging on Philadelphia for various high jinks this August.



Tuesday's Overlooked Film:



  Impromptu is a fave of mine: I've used it in the "Writers in Motion" course which examines films about the writing life and how it gets romanticized. But sometimes you really want that romanticism: if only life were as breezy and entertaining as this film. The dull slog of the writing life wouldn't make for a gripping film, but we do get hints of the work -- and its cost -- here. The iconic iconoclast George Sand, born Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin and later becoming Baroness Dudevant, here played by the always engaging Judy Davis, struggles with her writing and her relationships. Because the film focuses on her relationship with Chopin (Grant), her trouser-wearing breakthrough and tempestuous relationship with poet Alfred de Musset (played with real brio by Patinkin) are already in the past. A big part of Alfred's contempt has to do with the amount she's able to write, which he dismisses as just "regurgitation" of her life. As someone who's been sneered at for writing "too much" I guess I feel a lot of sympathy for George.



The heart of the movie is the hilarious visit to the country by all the Parisian artists. Emma Thompson shines as the ambitious Duchess D'Antan who, marooned in the provinces, seeks to bring the glitterati to her. Along with Sand and Chopin, she imports painter Eugene Delacroix (played with laconic humor by Ralph Brown) and of course composer Franz Liszt (Julian Sands at his best) and his amour, the disgraced Countess D'Agoult. Peters is just perfect as the unhappy and envious Marie, who seeks to poison everyone else's happiness.



It's not great art, but it's charming fun. There's a little too much of the strong-woman-must-seek-weak-man motif (I'm sure some do, but most strong women I know like strong men), but for the most part


Hop on over to Todd's blog for the full list!

Review: Magus

[image error] Carey Harrison's play Magus offers a melange of people and times, jumping back and forth between the early twentieth century and the late sixteenth. Kafka, Shakespeare and Cervantes all meet in a vision conjured by the madness of Kafka's sister Ottla, overseen by the multi-skilled consultant to Queen Elizabeth, John Dee, who invites the audience into the vision. Dee's quest for life eternal seems to have been answered as he speaks to the audience in the present time before stepping back to the sixteenth century, then moving forward to appear as Sigmund Freud for Kafka. I love the idea of Dee having lived on and taken up new personas like Freud, but Harrison didn't really develop that angle and I think it's a missed opportunity. Harrison's magus is kindly and warm-hearted but yearning for that eternal life -- seemingly only for himself, though. His wife is barely in his thoughts (or the play, a shame for the lovely Naomi Hard), though there is an allusion to the wife-swapping alleged between Dee and his partner Edward Kelley (played with nervous malevolence by Phillip Levine). Kelley's only interest is gold and he has a bottomless and urgent hunger for it that makes him willing to countenance tricking his partner and plotting the murder of that troublesome young Shakespeare.



The invention of this meeting between Shakespeare (Rudi Azank) and Cervantes (Richard Bennett) had all kinds of potential for explosion, but nothing much happened with it. You set the bar high when you include historical figures of such talent. Surely even as a callow youth Shakespeare had wit and insight, but in the play he's just a kind of laddish troublemaker, though Azank made sure he was charming. Bennett had even less to do with Cervantes.



George Konrad's Kafka centered around a heartfelt sorrow for his sister's madness. Although Ottla's vision formed the play, her role was peripheral. Nonetheless Brittany Sokolowski managed to infuse a fragile quality to her performance that made her brother's obsessive worry understandable. But again, Kafka wasn't especially Kafka-like despite his transformation scene. The sudden injection of realism through Ottla's trip to the deathcamp Auschwitz gave me the feeling that everything including the kitchen sink was being thrown in.



I don't want to sound too negative: after all I'd take a play with ambitions that don't quite work over a less ambitious play any day of the week. The care that went into the production was obvious. The costuming was quite good and the sets simple but effective (loved the satyr!). David Temple's beautiful classical guitar music offered both dramatic ambiance and reverie.   



This was my first visit to the Center for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck; it's a interesting space and I'm glad they're willing to branch out from the usual repertory staples to do an unusual and ambitious project like this play. Well done!

Things to Celebrate

UPDATE: I'll be reading as the narrator for the College of Saint Rose Women's Initiative's presentation of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues Saturday night at 7pm. The show plays on Sunday at 3pm with my fabulous colleague and friend Angela Ledford as narrator. Tickets benefit Equinox. Girls Next Door will be performing at the interval.



The desk wombat announces (though the odd angle makes it look like a two-legged creature, eh?) that there is some news to share. First, that my William Blake-inspired short story "Eating the Dream" has received the FEMSPEC: The Best of the Second Five Years first prize in fiction. They're going to announce the prizes at the Popular Culture Association Conference in San Antonio and also at Wiscon, but I won't be able to be there. FEMSPEC also gave prizes for criticism, memoir and poetry. A big party has been planned to celebrate. Congratulations to all the winners!



The other good news is that I have my ticket to Rome for spring break where I will be staying with the fabulous Alessandra. I can't wait! I've never been to Italy. I was hoping to go last fall, but things didn't quite work out. So tell me your useful Italian phrases and recommendations! I definitely want to see the Caravaggios and probably the Coliseum and the catacombs and who knows? Dance in the Trevi Fountain! I want to relax and eat good food and drink good wine and laugh and talk. Whatever happens, I'm sure I will have a wonderful time.



Kit Marlowe has been busy, too, talking about making book trailers at Tease Publishing's blog and she'll be reading from The Mangrove Legacy for the Tuesday Talking Teaser this coming week over at JoJo's Books.TODAY! Kit is the Friday Guest at Isabel Roman's blog: stop by!

BitchBuzz: Should Writers Abandon Social Media?

Three guesses what I'm going to say -- what's that? You only need one? Yeah, go on then. Read it anyway:

Should Writers Abandon Social Media?By K.A. Laity

Is social media getting to be too much to manage?



This week over at Publisher's Weekly, Andrei Codrescu castigates the use of social networking as a complete waste of time. His interactions with his 5,000 "friends" has left him bitterly disappointed, complaining that "the camaraderie utopia of Facebook and every other social network is just pixel puff, literally a u-topos, the nowhere place where data bots work overtime to reduce you to a brainless consumer" and further, it's "nothing but lies and fake grins," so you can't even get good material out of it.



Codrescu declares, "The time has come for writers to become inaccessible again." Not, he says to cultivate a mystique, but because "no real writers ever lay down anything real in public." Anis Shivani's "New Rules for Writers" (which may or may not have been "satire" as belatedly claimed) likewise suggests avoiding publicity and shunning crowds. Writers need to be solitary iconoclasts: not a good match for social media. Most writers, however, are not likely to follow their urging because social media still offers the best way to get the word out in an ever-expanding market. But many do feel a sense of exhaustion from keeping up with everything.

Read the rest: http://tech.bitchbuzz.com/should-writers-abandon-social-media.html#ixzz1CuWn5VbU



Codrescu ought to have looked around a little more, because apparently "real writers" do "lay down" something real in public, especially when they think they're talking between friends (h/t Simon Mason) and don't expect their words to be lifted from Facebook and printed by a newspaper. You may know how to use the privacy settings, but does everyone you know know?



And Codrescu? If you can't get good material out of Facebook, you've really got to get more interesting friends. I'm surrounded by passionate, funny, knowledgeable and fascinating folks who inspire me. I love the internets!



-- and have you checked out the latest pages of JANE QUIET ? Awesome work by Elena! We finally gave the new arc a title, too.

Top Ten: "High Plains Lazarus"

Snow Day

An official snow day: a rarity! It's eerily quiet around here. The only birds to be seen are the crows. The usually-busy street below my eyrie has only the occasional car. The drummer downstairs, however, is home. It was snowing quite hard yesterday morning as I walked to campus. During the short walk, here's how much snow accumulated:

Crazy, huh? And it continues to fall. Well, I plan to use the day to get some writing done of course! So go entertain yourself. What, you're bored? Well, I'll read for you for a little while, but then you'll have to find someone else with whom to while away your day. If you need something to do, start planning your submission to The Journal of the Women's League of Ale Drinkers .  All right, then?

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Old Acquaintance

Why do I like pseudonyms? I don't know. I'm sure it means something. For the first novel I wrote back in high school, Ace Spies Incorporated (my friend Carla claims to have the only existing copy as blackmail material), I gave myself a nom de plume. Weird, eh? So my taking up the moniker Kit Marlowe continues an existing habit.



The original Kit Marlowe was of course the playwright who would have outshone Shakespeare had he lived (being far more daring and audacious). Less well known is Bette Davis' character from the movie Old Acquaintance , a big favorite of mine, based on the play by John Van Druten (he's worked on the script, too), who also wrote Bell, Book and Candle (love that movie, too). Bette Davis stars as Kit Marlowe and Miriam Hopkins as her best pal who envies her success and then emulates it. Of course, Kit Marlowe is the "arty" writer while Miriam Hopkins' Millie Drake is the popular romance writer. Why didn't I choose hers as my rom nom de plume? What can I say? I'm perverse that way.



One of the gratifying things is that the friendship between Kit and Millie outlasts both their rivalry and the man they both love. In fact, you can easily read the film as a coded lesbian narrative, with a lot of elements coming across as far campier to a modern audience than they would have done to most contemporary viewers, I suspect. Just look at the masculine way they dress Davis at the start in contrast to Hopkins' flounces and frills. Davis actually has a tie. She's very guy-ish and at their reunion at the train station gets swept away by a giggling gaggle of co-eds -- her fan club -- leaving the jilted Millie fuming and spilling milk (literally!). Hopkins' character embodies the ideal of the flibbertigibbet, but she's spurred on by a very strong sense of competition with her best friend, yet can never quite settling for winning. She alienates her husband and then her daughter, both of whom turn to the more gentle Kit for comfort. Kit continually forgives Millie's excesses despite the latter's lack of emotional generosity, until one day her patience finally runs out -- and provides one of the most satisfying cinematic moments ever:









The film was remade as Rich and Famous in 1981. It was George Cukor's last film and starred Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen. I also have a fondness for that film, though it's not as good as the earlier one. I do love the way Bergen, upon having her work called "trash" by her increasingly estranged husband, snarls to correct him that it's "successful trash!" Here's to success, however trashy.



See the full list of TOFs over at Todd's blog.

Twice as Fast

"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

I shall now attempt to run twice as fast...



Sorry for being so quiet lately: I am a victim of my own fabulousness. I'm hoping that by the end of the week I shall have a couple of things sent off and will be able to relax a little more.