Emphasis on the random, as we shall see...
BBC Open Book had a show discussing the short story and why it gets short shrift from British publishers. Tessa Hadley (a British author and literary essayist) was discussing her love for Alice Munro and how her stories don't have a proper ending. Hadley said how dare anyone have the audacity to expect Munro to provide an ending for such real lives. Other thoughts about short stories were that they were more nutritious than novels (packed with more stuff per page) and that the writer had to hook the reader in the first few sentences as readers were more likely to put a short story that didn't grab them then a novel.
180 degrees later, Onion AV was discussing the ever-declining ratings of "Jersey Shore", a show I've still never seen except for clips on "The Soup" and "Beavis and Butthead" (Butthead, "Grandma J-Wow, tell us when you first got chlamydia.") They describe the cast as "seven sentient bottles of vodka-scented tanning oil," a line that's pretty much going to be impossible not to store away for future use.
In which I engage in shallow discussions about books, movies, science, history and whatever else I'm thinking at that moment. And have beers with Captain Howdy.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
What I've looked up thus far for The Dead Hour
Just a mystery series based in Scotland so not a lot to look up, although I am a big Denise Mina fan girl so that's not a slight.
Still, a little geography never hurt anyone.
It was hard to find a map of Glasgow that wasn't too busy. Here's a fairly good one:
The Clyde River of course runs through the city of Glasgow. It's the third largest river in Scotland and the ninth longest river in the UK and too far down on either of those lists to probably ever come up as a trivia question.
From all of the maps, it looks like Glasgow is mostly on the north side of the river. I know some of the poorer areas (like the Gorbals, which is semi-infamous) are south of the river. Here is a whole website dedicated to educating tourists about sights to see south of the Clyde.
Paddy mentions going to St. Columbkille's Church with her mother. I wasn't familiar with this saint but evidently he's a big deal in Scotland and Ireland. According to an eponymous US church, he is one of the great saints of Ireland and the first missionary to Scotland. His name is Gaelic for "dove of the church."
Still, a little geography never hurt anyone.
It was hard to find a map of Glasgow that wasn't too busy. Here's a fairly good one:
The Clyde River of course runs through the city of Glasgow. It's the third largest river in Scotland and the ninth longest river in the UK and too far down on either of those lists to probably ever come up as a trivia question.
From all of the maps, it looks like Glasgow is mostly on the north side of the river. I know some of the poorer areas (like the Gorbals, which is semi-infamous) are south of the river. Here is a whole website dedicated to educating tourists about sights to see south of the Clyde.
Paddy mentions going to St. Columbkille's Church with her mother. I wasn't familiar with this saint but evidently he's a big deal in Scotland and Ireland. According to an eponymous US church, he is one of the great saints of Ireland and the first missionary to Scotland. His name is Gaelic for "dove of the church."
Thursday, February 16, 2012
First and last for The Moviegoer
Sigh, for the sake of completeness recording first and last for this book that I was semi-indifferent to. Loved the prose and Percy's descriptive powers. Not so much into anything else. Unable to pick up on Catholic folderol and thus was happily unable to be annoyed by it.
First:
Last:
I watch her walk toward St. Charles, cape jasmine held against her cheek, until my brothers and sisters call out behind me.
Ok, the lovely prose it not so much evinced by the passages above but my malaise is such that I cannot continue.
(malaise reference would make sense if you're read this. If you haven't, don't bother.)
First:
This morning I got a note from my aunt asking me to come for lunch.
Last:
I watch her walk toward St. Charles, cape jasmine held against her cheek, until my brothers and sisters call out behind me.
Ok, the lovely prose it not so much evinced by the passages above but my malaise is such that I cannot continue.
(malaise reference would make sense if you're read this. If you haven't, don't bother.)
Sunday, February 12, 2012
First and last for Winter's Bone
First:
Last:
"Wheels."
Ree Dolly stood at break of day on her cold front steps and smelled coming flurries and saw meat.
Last:
"Wheels."
Great lines from Winter's Bone
It's been a while since I've read anything properly literary. Or maybe I'm too lazy to record it. Anyways. Daniel Woodrell. Great writer. I really want to see this movie now. The great John Hawkes plays Uncle Teardrop.
I remember visiting the Bahamas when I was in high school and meeting a boy who was the son of an embassy employee and he told me he'd never seen snow. If I had to explain snow to someone again, I think I'd give them this book.
She smelled the frosty wet in the looming clouds, and thought of her shadowed kitchen and lean cupboard, looked to the scant woodpile, shuddered. The coming weather meant wash hung outside would freeze into planks, so she'd have to stretch clothesline across the kitchen above the woodstove, and the puny stack of wood split for the potbelly would not last long enough to dry much...Ree knew there was no gas for the chain saw, so she'd be swinging the ax out back while winter bleww into the valley and fell around her....Jessup, her father, had not set by a fat woodpile nor split what there was for the potbelly...Walnuts were still falling when Ree saw him last. Walnuts were thumping to the ground in the night like stalking footsteps of some large thing that never quite came into view.
Snow covered the tracks and made humps over the rails and the twin humps guided her. She broke her own trail through the snow and booted the mile from her path. The morning sky was gray and crouching, the wind had snap and drew water to her eyes...The world seemed huddled and hushed and her crunching steps cracked loud as ax whacks.
While looking for her father at her crank-cooking Uncle Teardrop's house, Ree contemplates her future:
Ree felt bogged and forlorn, doomed to a spreading swamp of hateful obligations. There would be no ready fix or answer or help. She felt like crying but wouldn't. She could be beat with a garden rake and never cry and had proved that twice before Mamaw saw an unsmiling angel pointing from the treetops at dusk and quit the bottle.
Uncle Teardrop is so named, btw, because of a prison tattoo of teardrops on his face. Everyone in this book has great names. My favorite other than Ree Dolly is Catfish Milton.
One of Ree's relatives, Blond Milton (see? The names are classic), tries to convince Ree that her Dad died in a meth lab mishap. Her reaction:
"You son of a bitch. You go straight to hell'n fry in your own lard. Sonny'n Harold'll die living in a fuckin cave with me'n Mom before they'll ever spend a single fuckin night with you. Goddam you, Blond Milton, you must think I'm a stupid idiot or somethin-there's horseweed standing chin-high inside that place."
Ree keeps looking. Things get bad. She gets the shit beat out of her, literally, by some hillbilly crank cooks (not that getting beaten by Walter or Gus-RIP-would be an improvement) until Teardrop rescues her and explains the hullabaloo about her dad, Jessup, in this soliloquy of Shakespearean import:
"You got to be ready to die every day-then you got a chance...You do big wrong'n it's me that'll pay big. Jessup, he went'n did wrong, the poor silly shit. Jessup went'n turned snitch, and that's only the biggest ancient no-no of all, ain't it? I never thought, but he couldn't face this last bust, couldn't face a ten-year jolt. Plus there's your mom, sittin' home crazy forever. That was heavy on his mind. Them boys. You. He started talkin to that fuckin' Baskin-but I want you to know, Jessup, Jessup wasn't givin' up no Rathlin Valley men. Huh-uh, huh-uh. He said he wasn't. Wouldn't do it. He said, shit, he said all kinds of...If I could do any of my days over, girl, that very first asshole I killed'd still be walking around. But, hell, never been found and I'm...You're forcing me out into the open, girl. Understand? You're puttin' me into the exact picture I been tryin' to dodge. They been waitin' to see if I'll do anything. Watchin'. Listen...the way it is....the way I feel..is, I can't know who killed Jessup. I can suspicion a man or two, have a hinky feelin', but I can't know for a certain fact who went and killed my little brother. Even if he did wrong, which he did, why. ..it'll eat at me if I know who they sent. Eat at me like red ants. Then...there'll come a night...a night when I have that one more snort I didn't need, and I'll show up somewhere'n see whichever fucker done it sippin' a berr'n hootin' at a joke and...shit..that'll be that. They'll all come for me then. Buster Leroy, Little Arthur, Cotton Milton, Whoop Milton, Dog, Punch, Hog-jaw, that droopy-eyed motherfucker Sleepy John. But, anyhow, girl, I'll help you some, take your back so you can find his bones, but the deal is, even if you find out, you can't ever let me know who did the actual killin' of my brother. Knowin' that'd just mean I'll be toes-up myself purty soon, too. Deal?"
Another late night ride with Teardrop to look for her Dad's bones and he gets mad at a guy at a bar for the way he talked and returns to the truck where Ree is sitting there sick, post beating with a probably concussion and highly medicated:
"I just don't like the say he said somethin'...{gets an axe from his truck, goes over and meticulously smashes the entire front windshield of the offender's car, puts the axe away and sits in the cab thinking}...Sassy. Sort of sassy-soundin'."
Things keep happening, including a near shoot-out between Sheriff Baskin and Teardrop. At any rate, Jessup is indeed dead and the women who beat her eventually take Ree to show her the body and cut off the hands with a chain saw (!) to prove to the law that he's dead so the family won't lose the house, they don't and the bondsman shows up to give Ree the money someone (Jessup's killer) paid to make up the difference on Jessup's bond. It's a huge sack of cash.
I remember visiting the Bahamas when I was in high school and meeting a boy who was the son of an embassy employee and he told me he'd never seen snow. If I had to explain snow to someone again, I think I'd give them this book.
She smelled the frosty wet in the looming clouds, and thought of her shadowed kitchen and lean cupboard, looked to the scant woodpile, shuddered. The coming weather meant wash hung outside would freeze into planks, so she'd have to stretch clothesline across the kitchen above the woodstove, and the puny stack of wood split for the potbelly would not last long enough to dry much...Ree knew there was no gas for the chain saw, so she'd be swinging the ax out back while winter bleww into the valley and fell around her....Jessup, her father, had not set by a fat woodpile nor split what there was for the potbelly...Walnuts were still falling when Ree saw him last. Walnuts were thumping to the ground in the night like stalking footsteps of some large thing that never quite came into view.
Snow covered the tracks and made humps over the rails and the twin humps guided her. She broke her own trail through the snow and booted the mile from her path. The morning sky was gray and crouching, the wind had snap and drew water to her eyes...The world seemed huddled and hushed and her crunching steps cracked loud as ax whacks.
Ree felt bogged and forlorn, doomed to a spreading swamp of hateful obligations. There would be no ready fix or answer or help. She felt like crying but wouldn't. She could be beat with a garden rake and never cry and had proved that twice before Mamaw saw an unsmiling angel pointing from the treetops at dusk and quit the bottle.
Uncle Teardrop is so named, btw, because of a prison tattoo of teardrops on his face. Everyone in this book has great names. My favorite other than Ree Dolly is Catfish Milton.
One of Ree's relatives, Blond Milton (see? The names are classic), tries to convince Ree that her Dad died in a meth lab mishap. Her reaction:
Ree keeps looking. Things get bad. She gets the shit beat out of her, literally, by some hillbilly crank cooks (not that getting beaten by Walter or Gus-RIP-would be an improvement) until Teardrop rescues her and explains the hullabaloo about her dad, Jessup, in this soliloquy of Shakespearean import:
"You got to be ready to die every day-then you got a chance...You do big wrong'n it's me that'll pay big. Jessup, he went'n did wrong, the poor silly shit. Jessup went'n turned snitch, and that's only the biggest ancient no-no of all, ain't it? I never thought, but he couldn't face this last bust, couldn't face a ten-year jolt. Plus there's your mom, sittin' home crazy forever. That was heavy on his mind. Them boys. You. He started talkin to that fuckin' Baskin-but I want you to know, Jessup, Jessup wasn't givin' up no Rathlin Valley men. Huh-uh, huh-uh. He said he wasn't. Wouldn't do it. He said, shit, he said all kinds of...If I could do any of my days over, girl, that very first asshole I killed'd still be walking around. But, hell, never been found and I'm...You're forcing me out into the open, girl. Understand? You're puttin' me into the exact picture I been tryin' to dodge. They been waitin' to see if I'll do anything. Watchin'. Listen...the way it is....the way I feel..is, I can't know who killed Jessup. I can suspicion a man or two, have a hinky feelin', but I can't know for a certain fact who went and killed my little brother. Even if he did wrong, which he did, why. ..it'll eat at me if I know who they sent. Eat at me like red ants. Then...there'll come a night...a night when I have that one more snort I didn't need, and I'll show up somewhere'n see whichever fucker done it sippin' a berr'n hootin' at a joke and...shit..that'll be that. They'll all come for me then. Buster Leroy, Little Arthur, Cotton Milton, Whoop Milton, Dog, Punch, Hog-jaw, that droopy-eyed motherfucker Sleepy John. But, anyhow, girl, I'll help you some, take your back so you can find his bones, but the deal is, even if you find out, you can't ever let me know who did the actual killin' of my brother. Knowin' that'd just mean I'll be toes-up myself purty soon, too. Deal?"
Another late night ride with Teardrop to look for her Dad's bones and he gets mad at a guy at a bar for the way he talked and returns to the truck where Ree is sitting there sick, post beating with a probably concussion and highly medicated:
Things keep happening, including a near shoot-out between Sheriff Baskin and Teardrop. At any rate, Jessup is indeed dead and the women who beat her eventually take Ree to show her the body and cut off the hands with a chain saw (!) to prove to the law that he's dead so the family won't lose the house, they don't and the bondsman shows up to give Ree the money someone (Jessup's killer) paid to make up the difference on Jessup's bond. It's a huge sack of cash.
She stood on the porch watching him drive away, then turned to Teardrop. The color of him had changed, paled everywhere but his scar. She said, "What? What's the matter?"
"I know who now."
"Huh?"
"Jessup. I know who."
Without hesitation or thought, she sprang to him, spread her arms and held him tightly, the roiling blood and spirit of her own. She felt she was holding somebody doomed who was already vanishing even as she squeezed her arms around his neck. The shadows had the creek, the valley, the yard, the house. The shadows were over them and she wept, wept against her uncle's chest. She wept, snuffled, wept, and he hugged her, hugged her til her backbone creaked, then broke away. He went down the steps three at a time, hustled to his truck without a backward glance, and was gone.
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