Umm...Sap??

As you may already know, Norman Mailer passed away earlier this month - November 10th to be exact. Well, I must confess to not being a huge Mailer fan. I frankly consider him to be a rather sexist couchon. But, no one take away his many accomplishments, especially those of the posthumous variety. Imagine my "pleasure" when I read that Mr. Mailer won the Bad Sex in Fiction Award!

I won't keep you in suspense...

His mouth lathered with her sap, he turned around and embraced her face with all the passion of his own lips and face, ready at last to grind into her with the Hound, drive it into her piety.

"The Castle in the Forest"

Now really, what does one say after that?

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Shame!

I was very disappointed to read this article in the Globe and Mail today. Banning books?? What's happening in Burlington? A shortage of real challenges to resolve? As a reformed agnostic (some may incorrectly term me a lapsed Catholic), nothing strengthened my desire to leave religious thought and practice behind like the dogmatic, illogical assertions of some of my "teachers". So in that respect, the good folks at the Halton school board are doing a great job urging thinking students out the door. Good one!

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Can't Hardly Wait

I love books, and I also love trashy celeb biographies, so you know that I can't WAIT until Andrew Morton's biography of Tom Cruise comes out - January 15, 2008.

Rumour has is that Morton is going into deep hiding because the Scientologists are after his ass - you know this means this book is going to be TRASH-tastic. And mostly true, of course.

Another Winner

The Giller Prize was awarded this Tuesday in Toronto - Elizabeth Hay's Late Nights on Air was the winner. I'll confess to being ignorant of this book, but I've read another of her novels, A Student of Weather, and thought it was a good book. We'll put it in the maybe pile - but with Alice Munro in that photo I'll admit to being swayed.

Dr. Watson isn't quite so dear

So, it would seem that winning a Nobel prize doesn't wipe away racial prejudice. Sadly, Dr. James Watson (you may recall from high school Biology that Watson was a co-winner in 1962 with Francis Crick for deciphering the double-helix pattern of DNA ) felt the world would be much improved if he were to opine on intelligence and "racial" differences. Among the bon mots he shared on people of colour:

“All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really.”

I refuse to sully my blog with more of his reprehensible tripe - for more of a blow by blow, along with his half-baked apology, you know what to do. Just click here.

I'm just happy he was suspended from his duties at the Cold Springs Harbour Laboratory. What a boor!

On Lobotomies

I was pleased to read a piece in the Times about My Lobotomy: A Memoir. The book came out of a radio documentary presented on NPR in November 2005. I had an opportunity to hear it when I worked at StoryCorps a project that springs from SoundPortrait Productions (which also produced the My Lobotomy radio documentary). The documentary is about Howard Dully, a man who had an "ice-pick" lobotomy when he was 12 years old. Mr. Dully has no recollection of the procedure and basically sets out to find out all that he can about what happened to him and why.

I don't know if I'll actually read the book - the radio piece is pretty grueling emotionally and I'm not sure if I'm all for re-hashing. In any event, I urge you to listen to radio piece if you can. Just click here.

The Dark Horse Takes It

The Man Booker Prize was awarded today to Anne Enright, for her novel The Gathering. It wasn't a heavy favourite in the betting. I haven't read it yet, but I think I'll add it to my list. I was sort of pulling for Nicola Barker's Darkmans, because it sounds so interesting and it's higher on my To Read List, but hey, you win some, you lose some.

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Tuning Up

We're taking the IMac into the shop for some repairs tomorrow. I don't know when it'll be returned, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it won't take forever. Say a prayer.

In the meantime, I'm steadily making my way through the Edith Wharton biography by Hermione Lee - a very thick tome. More on that on my return.

Rewarded Reading

I went through a phase, somewhere near the end of secondary school, when I was obsessed with reading award winning fiction. It started when I read Possession for the first time in 1994; it won the Booker in 1990. I made up all these lists and started reading with zeal. I fell off the wagon about a month later and have looked back on that industrious period somewhat longingly. I've had to face the fact, with a twinge of guilt, that I'm just not that directed a reader. For those among you who are more disciplined than I, click here for the shortlist for the National Book Awards. Incidentally, the winner of the Booker will be announced in one week's time. Click here for that short list.

Rhode Island is Famous For...

I just came back from a weekend sojourn in Providence. I was at the husband's 10 year reunion for RISD. I had a great time and managed to pick up this little pocket tome for 10 cents - a whole 85 cents off the cover price. I just love that Dell published a mass market paperback on modern art for under a dollar. It's got a whole section of colour reproductions too!

Sweet Vindication, sort of

That big smile on Ms. Anucha Browne Sanders face was photographed this morning before the verdict came down in her sexual harassment suit against Isiah Thomas and MSG. She's surely popping the champagne now, since the jury found that MSG will have to pay her $11.6 million in damages. Unfortunately, Isiah Thomas escaped personal liability, but I guess you can't win them all. At the very least, Thomas has been exposed for the classless pig that he is (in his book it's ok for black men to call a black woman a bitch, but is totally wrong for his white counterpart to do the same). Living in NYC, the sordid details of the case of have been in the tabloids and on local TV regularly, and while my lady's intuition told me that Sanders claims were more likely true than not, I was concerned that the boys would circle the wagons and that would be that. I'm glad that I was wrong.

Unfortunately, I was not wrong about Clarence Thomas (you may recall what he termed a "high-tech lynching" during the confirmation hearings leading to his appointment to the Supreme Court) . He's got a book out (titled My Grandfather's Son), and he was on 60 Minutes this Sunday past for what can only be described as a fawning infomercial for his book. He used the opportunity to make more unflattering comments about Anita Hill. My personal favourite was his assertion that she "wasn't as demure and conservative as she seemed, and could take care of herself". Weak characterizations like this switch the focus to her, instead of him. If she was an alcoholic slut she still wouldn't find his pubic hair joke amusing. He simply struck me as an angry person - the wounds of the very real injustices he has suffered in his life are so raw and open. 16 years or 16 minutes have not tempered him. Should you care to hear more from him, click here.

I was pleased however, to read this oped by Anita Hill in today's Times. It is well-written, surprisingly even-handed and refrained from characterizing the perpetual victim Justice Thomas, as an unmitigated prig. She's a bigger person than I.

Vanity Fair Funk

So, I'm reading my October issue of Vanity Fair - and I'm excited about it for a couple of reasons. 1) Nicole Kidman is on the cover (although she's flashing her brassiere in a dubious cover shot). I've been a fan on Ms. Kidman for some time, although lately her film choices have really tried my patience. Perhaps she'll recover for the adaptation of The Golden Compass coming out this fall.
2) There is an excerpt from David Halberstam's book on MacArthur's Korean War strategy, The Coldest Winter. This turned out to be Halberstam's last book - he died tragically in a car accident in April. More on that in a post to come, but back to Nicole.

The claim is that Ms. Kidman bares all in the interview- and I'm sorry to report that she does not (it's not available online). I got the distinct impression that she didn't want to "bare all". Not that I blame her; who among us would relish such an opportunity? Nevertheless, here she is, and here we are reading the article. The interview dwelt on her life post-Cruise, aspects of which she didn't want to discuss. So absent of juicy gossip, why not talk about her career, her acting, her process - she's an Oscar winning actress, for God's sake. Frankly, I was bored - and I didn't expect to be. And the spread was dull, too - Nicole in a swimsuit, Nicole on a boat, Nicole looking intensely into the camera, quelle snore. Where's the style and panache? It was very meh.

All A Girl Could Ask For

I must say that I had a little thrill when I read that Harlequin Enterprises (the romance publisher) will be making all new titles available online for downloading. Some of you may not be aware of the fact that Harelquin Enterprises is a Canadian company. So that thrill was national pride, not anything else. The worthy classic to the left notwithstanding. Source

Another Item on the Wish List

I'm so looking forward to this edition - Edith Wharton is a master and one of my very favourite authors. October 9th is the day.

Without Remembrance of Things Past

I've finally been able to dig into to The New Yorker - My God, that magazine piles up week after week and before you know it, you've got a mountain of them sitting next to the sofa. Well, I'm reading this week's issue and I come across the most fascinating article by Oliver Sacks about a gentleman, Clive Wearing, who suffers from the worst case of amnesia ever recorded. His amnesia is so profound that he has no short term or long term memory; he is plagued by moments where he is thinks he is experiencing everything for the first time. He describes it as being dead and waking up. He keeps piles of journals that are filled with these same lapses and contradictions.

Clive was struck by an brain illness that wiped out critical structures in the brain that retain episodic memory. However, he still has what is called procedural memory; he is a musician and musicologist and is able to play songs he says he has never learned before. He also is still very much in love with his wife, although he can't describe her appearance if she is not in front of him and has no recollection of their years together. It's as if the impression of their relationship has been imprinted on some other part of his brain - he instinctively knows her.

I spent much of the article feeling a deep sadness for Clive and his wife - it struck me as an awful disability since he has been twice robbed - not only of his past (as he knew it), but also of the ability to create a new past. Every day is terribly new. And yet, Clive carries on and finds moments of happiness.

Early Halloween Reading

I've been re-reading some Edgar Allan Poe tales lately, and I've been struck (all over again) by his mastery of suspense. Admittedly, what was considered scary in the nineteenth century must be quite tame by our standards, but one still gets quite a thrill from reading The Masque of the Red Death, The Pit and the Pendulum and my personal favourite, The Cask of Amontillado. I suppose that Poe knew better than most that man's potential for cruelty is boundless. And he was not afraid of plumbing those depths in his work.
But back to that suspense. The tale The Cask of Amontillado is particularly skillful on that score. Although you as the reader knows what must happen - he tells us in that fabulous first line "The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge." - Poe draws you inexorably on, putting little crumbs in your way until suddenly, you've bought it all- hook line and sinker. It really is a rather outrageous tale. But it is a masterful display. My collection is hardly exhaustive (the Penguin Classics edition The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings), but you can get free texts on the Free Library. Just click here.

The Higher, The Fewer

Welcome one and all! This is the first of many postings for this my maiden blog. For some late Saturday night reading, take a look at this story in the Friday Times. I've got a fascination with lady body builders - they absolutely transfix me for a multitude of reasons which I'll not go into yet, and Eva Birath fit the bill. Vive la Femme!