New England Noir

the dirty pretties

J.D. Salinger was a strange, looming figure in my life before I recognized his many-varied significances in American literary culture. My grandfather John was the first to claim his genius, one afternoon in the living room where I eventually grew up. He had a leather recliner, which smelled vaguely of tobacco, and was the same shade of brown. His feet half-up, the slanted afternoon sun casting his side of the room in a slight shadow, I wanted to know why his book had no pictures,  and could we please read How the Grinch Stole Christmas now?

And he told me that sometimes grown-ups read chapter books, which were far superior to picture books because you could make the pictures in your mind. I believed everything he said, so I then asked him what was happening in his book. He was reading Franny & Zooey.

He told me that Franny was feeling very sad, and described her state in a way that made me picture her as a ghost, as though she’d left the world for despair. I was afraid of feeling like Franny, and wondered why someone would write a story about such a sad girl. (I don’t know how old I was when this memory takes place. Best guess is 4-5, because John died when I was 6, and I had moved on from the Grinch to the New Kids on the Block by first grade.) By 6th grade, I bought Tails because it had a WBRU screamer of the week single (Do You Sleep?) and a Salinger reference in the band’s name. I was working on the “big geek” thing early, clearly. Despite having never read a word of his writing, ghostly Franny (who had morphed into a Courtney Love-esque character, how wrong was I?!) still came to me from time to time.

wikipedia

So, my real introduction to Salinger came in Ms. Weston’s last period English class, in 9th grade. And then, I met Holden Caulfield. His cynicism, sarcasm, and anxiety mirrored my own, just as it did most people in the class. After that, I dug out Bup’s first-edition (!!!) Franny and Zooey, sans paper jacket, unfortunately. Franny made more sense to me in 1999; 9 Stories followed, and I pieced together bit by bit the Glasses and the Caulfields and the grand loveliness of their imperfections. Some of those stories influenced me politically before I fully understood the real-life implications within them. At 15, you’re invincible and impenetrable–the heroes of Salinger’s writing were anything but those things, and thus infinitely less egoist. As an egoist teenager, it is impossible to bond with characters whose defining characteristics are reflective of perceived flaws within.  Holden had flaws and embraced them rather than capitulating to some peevish, conservative neck-vein. My inner badass rejoiced, while my outer badass dyed my hair purple.

So, when it showed up in my google reader during lunch last week that Salinger passed, the sense of surreality ran strong around me. Yeah, he hadn’t published in 40 years, but who cares? I immediately turned to my favorite poem of all time, Billy Collins’ Marginalia:

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O’Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
“Nonsense.” “Please!” “HA!!” -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
why wrote “Don’t be a ninny”
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls “Metaphor” next to a stanza of Eliot’s.
Another notes the presence of “Irony”
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
“Absolutely,” they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
“Yes.” “Bull’s-eye.” “My man!”
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written “Man vs. Nature”
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake’s furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents’ living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil–
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
“Pardon the egg salad stains, but I’m in love.”

So, that’s it, really. I’m sad. But I have a first edition Franny to console me.

audreyhepburncomplex:: brightlywound ::fuckyeahprettybows

That girl looks like she’s having a great time in her overstuffed bed, enjoying a cafe au lait and the sunshine. I plan to take one week this summer to do that every day if it strikes me, because my brain has felt like this:

via audreyhepburncomplex

…and thusly, I’ve been neglecting my book almost entirely.

Then, I want to take my wonderful husband on a trip–somewhere like this:

pia jane bijkirk

…Where it will be nothing but

via audrehepburncomplex

…and after which we will no longer  feel like

junker jane

It will be spring in 7 weeks. Let the sunshine begin!

“He told me to look at my hand, for part of it came from a star that exploded too long ago to imagine.”
Tillie Hunsdorfer, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds

In 1971, Paul Zindel won a Pulitzer for his play, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. In 1972, Paul Newman was nominated for a Palm d’Or, for the film of the same title. In 2009, I bought a brand-new copy from my school’s book fair for $1, because I liked the illustration on the cover.

The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds

This is the first time I’ve attempted a post about a character before I’ve finished reading her story, but simply reading the description in the playbill splayed before me a thousand images from which to rend a portrait. Within the first pages, Matilda, called Tillie, our subject for today, radiates a primordial individuality. From the first, she and her mother Beatrice  are what the Equator is to the North Pole: hot and cold, horizontal and vertical, science and religion. No truer opposites could exist in nature, except mother-to-daughter. Tillie’s desire for learning is expressive of her desire to find meaning in her life, something we all struggle with in the same way as we struggle not to become our mothers.

Tillie’s journey across the pages of this play represents Paul Zindel’s hectic relationship with his own narcissistic mother; he “found” the play in its entirety one morning upon waking up, stacked neatly next to his typewriter. Beatrice wasn’t a stretch for him, I can tell, but Tillie’s subtle optimism strikes me as a tapestry of infinite delicacy, a self-made challenge extraordinarily well-met. As a writer, that sort of dedication to sculpting character (especially in a play! so much less time for fancy descriptions!) is fascinating and admirable.

So, I picked a fascinating and admirable young lady to play Tillie. She’s not an actress, but a rockstar in her own right–  reminiscent of Tillie Hunsdorfer in ways both obvious and indescribable: Tavi, the new girl in town.

illustration by la robotique

I could spend a whole post discussing why Tavi is the bish, and how I would love to introduce her to my sister (they’re the same age, and I kinda want to drive them to the mall just to hear what the conversation would be like) but you can do your own research. Basically anyone who stirs up this much controversy over a hat at age 13 is my hero.

Tillie (played by Tavi) would not be an Abercrombie girl. The Hunsdorfers are poor, but Tille could make by-the-pound clothes become more stylish than an Urban Outfitters muse, discovered puffing menthols on the steps of the Chelsea Hotel. Today, looking slightly mad-scientist wouldn’t be as socially awkward as back then, and her old clothes could be considered vintage rather than old and un-stylish.

McCarthy Era Tillie and modern-day Tillie are presque identicales. For her marigold-experimenting, Tillie would use a beat-up old MacBook for spreadsheets and data analysis. Like any true romantic, she’d keep a Moleskine close by at all times, full of drawings of nature and collages of mixed-up glossies from the pages of Vogue, National Geographic, and outdated road maps. She’d paint her eyes in club colors & glitter, warning all the boys to think before they speak, and wears ancient smelly Chucks she rescued from limbo over a telephone line.  She’d modify Salvation Army tshirts into halters, fringed tube tops, and ruffled skirts, and wear a lab coat tie-dyed and still smelling vaguely of the vinegar rinse. Her radioactive seeds, when she can get to school, either die or become lovely, alien blooms; when the world gives us no beauty to sink gratefully into, we we must find validation in the chance to create our own.

The Montague Book Mill. Photo from unknown source

I am  good at disappearing. Truth is, I don’t have a lot of time in my life for blogging at the moment. I guess I’ll just have to fix that. Been working on a self-schedule that has, honestly, been impossible to stick with. I’m so burnt out intellectually by the end of the day that, unless propelled by many coffees, usually means I’m sleeping within two hours of getting home. I’m so cool, it hurts. All the girls wanna be like me.

And because all the girls wanna be like me, I am going to show y’all (erm, all two of y’all) some things I am obsessing over at the moment. What better way to jump into a post than blatant materialism? This is the Internet, after all.

I cave. I want a Kindle. They’re so pretty and light and convenient. This doesn’t mean, however, I am going to buy one yet. Perhaps a tablet will be available soon, which will be like Ender’s ancible and which I will find more than one use for. I also want (need) new glasses. This will help me see a potential tablet/Kindle/real book. I like seeing. It is also convenient. And a robe to lounge about looking fetching in on weekends.

Something we do actually need to think about is a rug for the living room. We got rid of an olllllllld one a few months ago, without having replaced it yet. I don’t want another Target/Ikea throwaway, so I’m saving my pennies for the one above, at Anthropologie. It’s pricey, but we both adore it, and want to make a point to stop bringing things into the house that we haven’t intentionally set our sights on & researched. Having fewer, more elegant things was something we discussed when we started looking at real estate.

Oh yeah, and there’s that. 2010 will be a big year for our little family.

Happy New Year!

Happy birthday, New England Noir!

An interesting thing happened today.

I was told to remove a book from my book list because of “explicit content.” The book was Stardust, by Neil Gaiman, and the questionable content was the scene in the beginning where Dunstan is seduced by the witch. Luckily, due to the fact that the book isn’t really that risque for a teenager, I was able to get away with a gracious “Thanks for letting me know!” (I knew, I’ve read it) and leave it on the list.

It brings up a compelling & multi-faceted argument, though. I bookmarked Claire’s take on it back when she wrote it, because I love hearing other young teachers’ opinions on classroom politics. I thought of her (and in conjunction, this one from the Guardian book blog) today. Do we have a right to censor what kids read?

The answer is, ostensibly, yes. But is it good for them? No. Life isn’t pretty. People die. Pets run away. Genocides happen. People have babies in one night stands with faerie-slaves. It’s life. So I tweeted earlier that I wasn’t going to take it off the list.

My parents (all 4 of them) never censored what I consumed in any form, especially not books. Sure, Beavis and Butthead were verboten, but I read The Diary of Anne Frank when I was 8. They knew I was smart enough to ask questions if I had them, research what I didn’t understand, and most importantly, they knew that I was intelligent enough to understand the difference between reality and fantasy. In fact, I still mostly can! Bonus.

Do some books blur the line? Absolutely. But riddle me this: what’s worse? A skanky faerie-witch, or a main character whose whole relationship is predicated on saying ‘No’ and being forced to do things anyway? The whole Twilight franchise glorifies ignorance and sexism, and yet… No… Stardust?  We’ll encourage unrealistic teenage relationships, unrealistic teenage marriage fantasies, and unrealistic teenage pregnancy, thanks.

Great.

I clearly win.

via perez hilton

Open scene: Couch time, on a random Sunday evening (read: tonight.) Lovely dark-haired wife with minimal makeup and a sweet laptop from work is listening to Lady Gaga remixes, and comes across the Hercules and Love Affair version of Bad Romance. Husband is working on new blog design, putting up with wife’s obsession with said song. Wife is jamming, husband’s temples visibly throbbing. Cue lights:

Husband: All right, when this remix is over, can we PLEASE call it quits on this song for the day?
Wife: I’m a free bitch, baby.
Husband: That’s fine. Use headphones.

Have I mentioned lately that I luuuuuurve him?

Emma Bovary is one of the most influential female characters in literature, behind Moll Flanders, Edna Pontellier & Anna Karenina . While I don’t love Emma, her pathetic attempts at a magical life make her tangibly pitiable; I end up rooting for her every time I read it. For a role like Emma Bovary, an actress with some flexibility is necessary, because the novel begins when she is a teenager and ends when she is about middle-aged. I thought Elizabeth Banks would be good for the role:

I chose Banks for a few reasons– one, she’s beautiful, and I always imagined Emma’s beauty as too big for the tiny market town she resides in. Two, she has that classic, ageless loveliness that has the ability to look young and naive or mature and vampy with a change of neckline and some extra rouge. Third, her versatility as an actress is important for a role like Emma Bovary: she must simultaneously portray a woman who is utterly unhappy, swamped in guilt for that unhappiness, “ripe for seduction” (as her later lover called her), and flagrantly apathetic about the consequences her behavior has on anyone but herself.

Emma is a dreamer & a romantic, having read a great many novels during her time in the convent school. With more education than many women of her time, her proclivity to dissatisfaction is organic: she can see past the provincial delights of the stultifying market town in which she resides, past her bumbling husband’s mediocre attempts at love, and past the practically-written-in-stone mores of mid-19th century France. When even motherhood’s veiled secrets escape her, she is left listless and depressed, falling to affairs and insurmountable debts.

If Madame Bovary were set in today’s society, there would have to be some superficial changes to the plot. For example, I feel like Emma must be more of a “kept woman” than she is in the original story. In the novel Emma’s husband Charles Bovary has a second-rate medical license; since things are more regulated now, he could simply be a nurse, or a physician’s assistant– something that doesn’t require the same amount of school as an MD.

Their life together should be comfortable, but not luxurious. Modern-day Emma would constantly be looking at catalogues and browsing the internet for things lovelier and more decadent than they can afford. She is prim and childlike in the beginning of their marriage– and her daughter does nothing to alleviate the boredom and sadness that has seeped into her life– in fact, motherhood seems to make Emma’s dissatisfaction even greater. The novelty of having a child wears off quickly for her, and she begins to torture herself with the first of two ill-fated affairs.

The second affair, however, proves to be her undoing. Emma is enamored of and ensnared by the rakish Rodolphe Boulanger– in my version, he is a more successful version of Charles Bovary– perhaps a plastic surgeon or something equally superficial– and a womanizer, of course– a la Christian Troy in Nip/Tuck. When he abandons her on the eve of their elopement by leaving a cursory apology at the bottom of a basket of apricots, Emma falls apart. She is ill and unmanageable, even briefly turning to religion before discovering her true love: Shopping.

The collage above is meant to show Emma’s decadent tastes– while she is beautiful and loves luxurious things, I never pictured her to have a very sophisticated palate. Her clothes would be expensive but over-the-top, her closet overflowing with things your mother might have worn clubbing in 1987. The debts pile up quickly, and before she knows what has happened to her, she is begging money off of the men she’s used and who have used her, including Rodolphe. Without a penny and with no man to save her, Emma attempts to take her own life with arsenic, but ends up dying slowly, painfully, and without the dignity of anyone thinking it was an accident. A fitting– if messy– end for a woman whose disregard for those around her brings down her entire family.

senseandsensibility via flickr

I am a competitive person. So competitive, in fact, that if I’m not sure I’ll win, I often won’t even play. That’s also called “Being a Giant Brat”, but that’s a post for another time. I’ve noticed that the posts that get the most hits–either search engine hits or pageviews–are my Literary Ladies posts. Those also happen to be the least frequently posted of all my rambling. (You can see some old Literary Ladies posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. The very very first is here.)

But, back to my brattiness competitive edge: because I like reading my stats, and because they are fun to write, I am going to make the LLs a bigger part of the writing I do for this website. I’ve learned that the only way to do something right it to do it better, more frequently, and geekier than the rest. Geekier I can certainly manage, no question.

Now, it’s your turn: Who do you want to see here? Which actresses are you interested in seeing reprise your favorite leading role? Check out the last poll for some inspiration, and please leave a comment if you have any ideas.
That said, I’m glad to be back to blogging with a bit more regularity! I know it’s not perfect, but things are slowly improving on the stress front, for various reasons.

What’s making Monday less manic for you, today?

After months of complaining that I have nothing to wear, nothing trendy or exciting or reflective of my current fashion identity, I broke down and went shopping. I plan on mixing some of the things I already own (ie, the black pencil skirt, the sequined clutch, the epic sparkly cuff bracelet (vintage, was my grandma Mimi’s!), the tights & feeling a bit more like myself at work tomorrow! Just because I’m a teacher, and 85% of the times I dress up are work-related, doesn’t mean I have to look like a marm just yet. For less than $60, these are 4 items that will be wearable in every situation this winter. Yay!

I bought the striped t, the gray dolman cardigan, the drapey black floral blouse & the ankle boots. The boots pictured are simply lookalikes, because for some reason I couldn’t find them on the XXI website. For $25, they were a steal. I’m not into bulky sweaters or heavy pants; I live in jersey, cotton-blends, and the occasional piece of gifted cashmere– so winter clothes are a problem for me. I’m in denial all winter long, and usually layer lighter fabrics of several textures for a cozy look. the slight drape in the striped boat-neck t, the shaped flow of the long cardigan– they’re exactly what I pictured when I set out, obliging husband in tow. (He was so nice, I bought him a coffee & cookie on the way home.) Since it’s next to never I come home with something I like, let alone love, like I love these 4 items, I’d say it was a successful trip.

What did you do this weekend?