Moral Uplift, Dad-Style

Conversation I Just Had With My Dad:

Dad: I sent you a really cute picture of a really cute dog that had to be put to sleep.
Me: BuuUUH?!? But why?
Dad: Because he just looked so cute in the picture.
Me:BUT NOW HE IS DEAD.
Dad: Any your mother cried so much while reading it.
Me: WHY?!?!?
Dad: He looked a bit like a female lion...

This kind of reminds me of the time he picked me up from a movie theatre because I was sick, and spent the ride home telling me about a pet store that burned to the ground, roasting all the lovable beasties inside with it. Then he proceeded to list exactly which kinds became charcoal.

Setting The Paper Of Record Straight

This Sunday morning was spent like many others. I woke up, shoved the nearest edible item in my mouth and turned on my computer to read the New York Times. Not to follow the passage of the health care bill or learn about Iran's nuclear program. Instead, I clicked on the Styles tab and got right to the fluff, namely Modern Love. I don't know whether I like the column better when it's something touching and original (this article about being a lonely Mormon missionary) or an emotional train wreck I'm reading about at a safe distance (almost everything else.)

So imagine my joy to find out from Pop Culture Junk Mail that Slate has been running a series of Modern Love rebuttals, where the subjects of the essays finally get their revenge and get to see their side in print. It's funny to imagine the possibilities of a feedback loop here. Someone writes an article about how they had to ditch their emotionally stunted boyfriend, that boyfriend writes about what it felt like to see his life in print, then the original author can write about what it felt like to read the reaction, and then... and so on and so on until somebody makes a movie or at least gets a book deal.

But the reality is actually more interesting. I particularly liked the first one, which reminded me of the intro to this recent episode of This American life, which pointed out that - unlike pretty much every other section of the paper - the weddings and celebrations page doesn't have to present a fair and balanced take on the facts. Or even try. The first husband is not called for comment when his wife marries the man she left him for, he becomes an anecdote. The drug-addicted daughter doesn't get to give her reasons, no when she's just the mechanism for personal growth.

So when you read Modern Love, you begin to feel as if the authors are piggybacking off the objective reputation the rest of the paper has earned. Their hope that if they're published, their version of the break-up or the parenting crisis will become definitive, almost sweats off the page. It's nice to see that torn down in messy essays that don't have the Times polish and which remind us that someone's got to pay for our emotional epiphanies.

Obscure File Categories, 3

From the Files of "Perfect Songs To Play Over A Shitty Car Radio On An Empty Country Road":

Jolene, Dolly Parton. I think it's the creepy mix of erotic fascination and jealousy. And the waver in the divine and bust Dolly's voice. It kind of makes the goosebumps come out, even when she's wearing a hell of a lot of purple polyester.

Book Covers I Have Loved: Clea By Lawrence Durrell

The last post about the Graham Greene cover got me thinking about vintage covers. From the Night Watch cover I mentioned there, to the hardcover edition of Philip Roth's Indignation, printing a pastiche seems to be the way to go for period books.

And I understand the appeal. Sure, I could bullshit some reason about how mid-century literature represented a peculiar confluence of critical taste and popular appeal that has polarized since, where being middlebrow wasn't a bad thing and Norman Mailer was writing in Playboy, and we're all a little nostalgic for a time when the bestsellers weren't just Twilight and whatever Glenn Beck barfed up on paper. Actually, I'm not so sure that reason is total bullshit, but I'll admit that my personal reason boils down to "They look classy."

No designer credit, circa 1960

Which brings me to this cover for Lawrence Durrell's Clea. My Dad gave me the 75% of the Alexandrine Quartet he owns and I've been trying to make my way through them ever since. The problem is, Durrell knows he can write but he doesn't know where to stop. Still, if I'm not in love with the contents, I'm very fond of the covers. All of the titles share the same font and image of a hand, but come in different colours. I took a picture of Clea only because it happens to be the one I'm reading now and it's in the best shape. The others have all been living pretty rough lives in my backpack.

The fonts used on the cover almost look the same, but they aren't. The slight differences actually end up making the cover look more unified, because using the exact same one would have been noticeable in its banality. It's interesting how the imprint on the side doesn't throw the book out of balance, but keeps it from becoming too open and plain. With too many new books, that just becomes another distraction in an already busy design.

You can't see it in the photo, but the handprint is pretty detailed. You can even see bits of the whorl of skin, a nice human touch. This cover is spare, elegant and perfectly edited. It's what I wish the book inside could be.

Max And The Mopers

There's a way of effectively killing childlike whimsy in about three lines of dialogue, and Spike Jonze has found it. Basically, you get your furry and imaginative critters, faithfully rendered from the delightful Maurice Sendak illustrations, and then you give them more neuroses than the patient list of a New York psychiatrist. It's kind of like seeing a dinner theatre troupe act out a Woody Allen movie; weird, sad and too chatty.

But Where The Wild Things Are isn't always like that. At the beginning of the movie, we get a fleshed-out Max. Instead of the simple and happily destructive character of the book, he's a kid with divorced parents, a sister who's ditched him to be a teenager and seemingly no other friends. But still, his joy at making a snow fort, and then his sadness when it's destroyed, are intense and imaginative in a way that's not present when Max meets the Wild Things, for all the expert production design.

It's sad, because most of the film is beautifully shot. Sometimes the images aren't quite in focus and feel like hazy dream. But before you can get too dreamy, it's back to the monsters processing, telling Max they're "downers" and asking if he "can keep the hurt away." Which left me with one question: Why bother filming a children's book if you're just going to turn it into an adult's therapy project?

365 Days of Something

I know this whole x- in a year thing has been building up on blogs for a while. Whether it's living biblically, living sustainably or just cooking your way through a lot of butter, it seems like we can only be productive people - or at least earn a book deal - if we're doing it in a calendar year. I noticed it, but didn't really care until I read a little article about a NPR staffer who baked a cake a week for a year and, yes, ended up with a book deal. Something inside me broke, and it wasn't just because I was hungry.

Since there has already been tons of blog posts and newspaper articles deconstructing and analyzing this trend, I won't do that.

Instead, I'm going to try and figure out how to get my ass on this gravy train before it pulls out of the station.

1. Live like it's 1805 FOR A YEAR.
Pros: Everyone likes Austen. Ever since her pop culture revival in the 1990s, people can't seem to get enough of those high-waisted gowns and deep, deeply repressed emotions. Plus, I already have the dress.
Cons: Waiting at home because nobody careed about the "Lady Q. Protagitron will be receiving at home from 10-11" cards that I had made up might get old fast. Also, I might not be able to make rent if I quit me job because "it is beneath the dignity of the daughter of a gentleman to labour."

2. Read a Russian classic a day FOR A YEAR
Pros: If this lady can "read" a book a day for a year, I can do her one better. I'll read nothing but Russian, in the original Russian for a whole year. All the books must way 10 pounds each and end with the protagonist's soul being crushed under the wheels of their society. Book deal about books here I come (book?)
Cons: I know Russian. Except for the Russian word for refigerator, and I figure the number of books focused entirely around Firgidaires and originally written in Russian is a small, small number.

3. Eat a different animal a day FOR A YEAR
Pros: Getting back to nature is big and food writing is even bigger. I will take my reader on a adventure through my stomach and around the world as I soak up culinary knowledge and expand my horizons by butchering a different, and probably adorable, animal each day.
Cons: While January would be a breeze what with beef on the 1st and chicken on the 2nd, I feel like my commitment to the project would waver sometime around day #321 when I realize I need to cleave a steak from the back of a platypus.

4. Sleep with a different guy a day FOR A YEAR
Pros: I really need to get out more, and maybe I would meet a nice fellow. Make some babies. Get another book out of motherhood.
Cons: Herpes.

5. Watch an episode of the Simpsons a day FOR A YEAR
Pros: The Simpsons, although perhaps now but a shadow of its former self, might be one of the most influential and quotable shows to ever hit the airwaves. What will be revealed about our society me through as we I regard life through it's prism?
Cons: This is already my life. As well as everybody 20-30 years old with the tv on and nothing better to do.

Alright, so I can't come up with anything. It looks like all the good ones, or at least all of the tasty ones, have been taken. Or maybe I'm just starting to think that this year thing is a comforting way of keeping change clean. Of packaging our growth into convenient time periods we can plan for it to start and to end. I don't know. Give me a year to think about it.

Miss Protagi-Anne Elliot

I didn't mean to take a nine-day break from my blog. I meant to do a write-up on 10 zombies I would chill with (Bub the Zombie's overexposed ass is not on there) and an ode to Ginger Snaps before Halloween.

Instead, I studied for a standardized test, baked a cake while drunk and sewed a Regency-era gown in two days, but that was while sober. And that last bit was the hardest. I am not an accomplished seamstress and period gear isn't the easiest crap to sew. At one point, I made two of the same sleeves and had to re-sew one, because that took less time than figuring out how to amputate and then put one of my arms on backwards. But barely.

Just when I thought I would have the dress finished on time- minus the sash and the hair, but DONE- I got to last part and ended up in a pickle. The dress is held together by two drawstrings, one that goes around the neckline and the other that ties just under the bust. The first neckline threaded like butter, so I was feeling rather cocky as I grabbed my needle and went in for the bust.

And that's when things FUBARed. No matter how hard I pushed and pulled, swore and cried, jabbed a knitting needle in and, the needle wouldn't make it past the first seam allowance. Two hours and one hysterical phone call to my parents later, this had gone past making a fun costume for a fun Halloween. This dress was the litmus of my life. Fail it, and the rest of my life would be nothing but a series of well-intentioned defeats. Succeed, and there would be a 10 percent chance that maybe it would be something else.

That's when I did something I could, and should, have done hours before. I am a knitter. I live in a house of string. I threaded some thinner yarn through and got my ass to that party.

The Early Reindeer Gets The Candy Cane

I don't believe that Christmas music should be an after-Halloween, or worse, post-American Thanksgiving thing at all. Once the first snow hits Montreal, my holiday music comes out. And that could be in August. So if you ever want to re-create part of my daily routine for the next two months, here's the step-by-step guide:

1. Place a breakable object near the edge of a desk. A water glass works well for this.
2. Kill any natural sense of rhythm and gross motor control you might possess.
3. Play this:
4. DANCE DANCE DANCE
5. Sweep up shards of glass

Repeat until you've been filled with the Christmas spirit, or at least a love of synthesizers.

Book Covers I Have Loved: Graham Greene's The Power And The Glory

There are a few topics I'm passionate about, or at least a few topics that make me corner people at parties in order to delivery a lecture. Often that lecture is incoherent and drunken, but whatever. I'm that way about my hatred of Ben Stein, my love of Roadhouse and my quest for the perfect hamburger.

And book design. I'm not a designer. I have more professional training about the content of a book than its packaging. But as the daughter of two librarians who spends more on books than food - and who actually sniffs them in a semi-creepy way - I feel I'm qualified to judge. Or at least rant.

Cover Illustrations: Richard Kenworthy

I still have the book that made me realize that sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. Here's an edition of Graham Greene's "The Power And The Glory" I bought when I was sixteen just because I was fascinated by the way it looked. All this pure space broken up by a busy, scrawled crucifix. The choice of fonts for the title, a retro-looking script, let me date the story without making it seem dated. Compare it with this edition of Sarah Waters' The Night Watch. While it's perfectly tuned to the period of the story, it makes this 2006 book seem fussy.

I took a chance, hoping that anything with a cover like that would be interesting. In a month, Graham Greene was my favorite author, I had The Third Man on reserve at the library, and I was stalking bookstores hoping to collect all of these editions. I'm still working on that project, but I'm hoping this post will be the start of a new one. Every two weeks I'll post a book cover I like, whether it's something I own or something I've furtively photographed in a store. I'll babble about why I like it, and I'll make sure there's no Chip Kidd allowed. Or at least as little as possible, because I swear a lot of his stuff's for people who like Sony Stores.*


*Okay, I'm being mean. But still.

Links To Entertain and Educate

Originally, I was going to write a long post today about street harassment, male privilege and more. Yes, I had yet another creepy run-in with some guy on the street last night. But after sleeping off my spleen, I just didn't want to. Maybe next week, when my bile is back at fighting levels, I'll get around to it. Until then, enjoy photographic evidence of my Indian adventures (matar paneer - paneer made by me, bitches! - saag and rice) and a few links.

I saw Whip It about two weeks ago, and thought it was a fun but predictable movie about doing what you love. Especially if it involves kicking ass on a roller derby track. But according to some dude in Psychology Today, it's really about being a big, old, clichéd lesbian. Fortunately, there's an awesome, line-by-line critique of why that analysis is a load of privileged crap.

I have a lot of respect for Richard Dawkins. Sure, he can be a little condescending here and there, but the man knows what he's talking about. He's got a new book out that's on my to-read list and an interview in Salon. Proof you can't take the professor out of the pundit: he keeps on correcting the interviewer's terminology.

For all you Montrealers out there: How zoning laws and police crackdowns might be bleeding all the fun out of Mile End. I'm somewhat entertained that there's a "Morality, Alcohol and Drug" squad. It's like they came up with an Anti-Fun Taskforce.

Since it's the season of spooky, here's James Hynes' list of the best Halloween stories. The post itself is funny and there's some interesting-looking stuff on it. I'll cop to only having read two of the things on the list, but that just means I have my reading sewn up until October.