Labor Day

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Labor Day, a novel by Joyce Maynard (William Morrow/HarperCollins: New York, 2009).

There seemed to be a couple of very tiny continuity goofs here: a maternal grandmother dies when the boy is old enough to remember, leaving his mother an orphan (49-50), then had died "so long before," when he was at least too young to remember (146); a man is shirtless (151), then wearing a shirt (154).

I don't know why I get so distracted by such tiny details, but they pull me right out of the story. (This reminded me of a 12/02/2009 Publishers Weekly blog post by Elizabeth Bluemle, in which she said that reading the acknowledgments page(s) in a novel kick her "right out of the world of the story and its magic.") It's so difficult to maintain a reader's suspension of disbelief.

But beyond that, I ended up putting aside the other books I was reading after the first two pages of this one.

Poetry by Sandra Beasley

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"Unit of Measure" by Sandra Beasley (poem from Poetry, July/August 2009; reprinted at Poetry Daily on July 7, 2009)

Fiction by Valerie Vogrin

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"Sisters-in-Law" by Valerie Vogrin (short story from The Summerset Review, Fall 2009)

Poetry and short fiction

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"Local Attraction" by Billeh Nickerson (poem from his collection McPoems, Arsenal Pulp Press, 2009)

"The Golden Age" by Piotr Gwiazda (poem from Linebreak, November 10, 2009)

"Her Untold Story" by Jean Thompson (short story from her collection Do Not Deny Me, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2009)

From pp. 280-281:

On her way home Lynn detoured to drive past Jay's new house. She guessed that if she kept doing this, there would eventually be some kind of restraining order. Jay and Margot had purchased a woodsy, faux chalet in a desirable district. . . . She rolled slowly past, noting the dim light in the no doubt spacious kitchen, and the illuminated upstairs window where Jay massaged his pregnant bride's swollen feet. Or consulted with her over the hipster version of What to Name the Baby. (Elijah? Paola?) Or any of the other things he'd never done with her. . . .

She turned a corner and veered around the block to make a second pass. Stupid and degrading behavior. How long did she intend to keep it up? The child would be born, learn to walk, head off for school, develop questionable friendships. The saplings in the yard would grow to mighty shade trees. The neighbors would wave at her as she made her rounds. Jay would be balding and fiercely deaf. She would have long ago forgotten the different layers of their life together: love, married struggle, boredom, acrimony, but still her curses would gather round him like crows on a wire.

Lynn changed directions and headed home. What could you tell from the outside of a house anyway? Wouldn't her own look just as peaceful and welcoming, no matter how forlorn the life inside it was?

"Her Untold Story" is sort of a continuation of Jean Thompson's story "Wilderness," which was near the beginning of this collection. I read that one when it came out in One Story.

Le temps qui reste

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Sometime in the past few months, I saw a movie about a very attractive, very successful man who was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Now, how will he spend the time he has left? Etc., etc. For a variety of reasons, it was an absolutely dreadful movie.

A few days ago, in my pursuit of other films starring Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (who was mentioned in an earlier blog post), I started watching Le temps qui reste (English title: Time to Leave). It was in French and the main character was gay, but otherwise, the basic plot was exactly the same.

I admit, I wasn't exactly thrilled about the prospect of seeing another trite handling of the topic. This was a good film, though. It was very interesting to compare the two movies because the starting point was so similar and the details (and the effect) were so different.

Le temps qui reste, written and directed by François Ozon and starring Melvil Poupaud as Romain, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (credited as Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) as Jany, Jeanne Moreau as Romain's grandmother and Daniel Duval and Marie Rivière as his parents, Christian Sengewald as Sasha, and Louise-Anne Hippeau as Sophie.

Willful Creatures (stories) by Aimee Bender

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Willful Creatures was published in 2005 by Doubleday. My favorite stories in here were "Dearth," "Off," "Fruit and Words," "The Leading Man," "I Will Pick Out Your Ribs (from My Teeth)," and "Ironhead," which was peculiarly sad and satisfying at the same time.

Now I want to go back and reread The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (stories) and An Invisible Sign of My Own (novel).

Call Me By Your Name

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To me those hours spent at that round wooden table in our garden with the large umbrella imperfectly shading my papers, the chinking of our iced lemonades, the sound of the not-too-distant surf gently lapping the giant rocks below, and in the background, from some neighboring house, the muffled crackle of the hit parade medley on perpetual replay—all these are forever impressed on those mornings when all I prayed for was for time to stop. Let summer never end, let him never go away, let the music on perpetual replay play forever, I’m asking for very little, and I swear I’ll ask for nothing more.

From Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York, 2007), p. 30.

There is also a lovely segment starting with the bottom paragraph on page 237 of the hardcover edition (“And like the old men who sat around the piazzetta—”), but it gives away too much of the story’s ending to type it out here.

Oh, and if you see this, thanks for the recommendation.

Poetry by Tania Pryputniewicz and David O'Meara, Fiction, Films, and David Sedaris' tour

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"She dressed in a hurry (Lady Di)" by Tania Pryputniewicz (poem from Salome Magazine, September 28, 2009)

"Airport" by David O'Meara (poem from his collection Noble Gas, Penny Black, Brick Books, 2008)

"Looking American" by Tai Dong Huai (short story from Raving Dove, Summer 2009)

"Margaret Lives in the Basement" and "Duck Blind" by Michelle Berry (short stories from her collection Margaret Lives in the Basement, Somerville House Publishing, 1998; "Margaret Lives in the Basement" was originally published as three separate stories in TickleAce, Ash, and The Malahat Review)

5x2, in French, directed by François Ozon and starring Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi as Marion and Stéphane Freiss as Gilles. Early on, this film had a scene that I really could have lived without. Still, I thought that overall it was excellent. It was also a pleasant surprise to see the wonderful Valeria Bruni Tedeschi again; I'd just seen her in Il est plus facile pour un chameau... (English title: It's easier for a camel...), which she wrote and directed. (She is sometimes credited as Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi or Valéria Bruni-Tedeschi.)

The Savages, written and directed by Tamara Jenkins and starring Philip Seymour Hoffman as Jon Savage and Laura Linney as Wendy Savage, and Philip Bosco as Lenny Savage, Peter Friedman as Larry, and Gbenga Akinnagbe as Jimmy. This was the second time I'd seen this one. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney are two of my favorite actors, so I'd really looked forward to seeing this the first time around, but some of the themes were so painful that I couldn't appreciate all of the beauty and humor.

Considering that I briefly considered leaving home in order to attend the rest of David Sedaris's tour dates, I suppose you could say that I enjoyed seeing him live. Some of the appearances are already sold out, but if you like his writing and he's going to be visiting a city near you, I'd strongly recommend getting a ticket. He's great on the page, on CD, and on television, but truly, he's even better in person. Ticket information is available on the website of the Steven Barclay Agency: http://www.barclayagency.com/speakers/appearances/sedaris.html.

The Fall 2009 issue of the Apple Valley Review

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The Fall 2009 issue of the journal features prose poetry by Luiza Oleszczuk; poetry by Michael Lauchlan, Marge Piercy, Jin Cordaro, Ioan Flora (translated from the Romanian by Adam J. Sorkin and Elena Borta), David LaBounty, Bernard Henrie, Gail Braune Comorat, Mary MacGowan, Yun Wang, Anne Britting Oleson, Tammy Ho Lai-Ming, Laura McCullough, and Melissa Adamo; fiction by Elaine Barnard and Kathleen Thomas; essays by J. W. Young and Erika Kleinman; and artwork by Jacob Collins.

The Apple Valley Review is a semiannual online literary journal. The current issue, previous issues, subscription information, and complete submission guidelines are available at www.applevalleyreview.com.

"The Bats" by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

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First published in Zyzzyva (Spring 1993) and subsequently included in her short story collection Arranged Marriage (Anchor/Doubleday 1995).

Jane Austen's Persuasion

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"[Lady Russell] could not imagine a man more exactly what he ought to be than Mr Elliott; nor did she ever enjoy a sweeter feeling than the hope of seeing him receive the hand of her beloved Anne in Kellynch church, in the course of the following autumn."

(This passage--from the end of Chapter 17--is one of my favorites despite the fact that it's about her cousin rather than Captain Wentworth.)

Fiction and Poetry

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"The Motherhood Poems" by Beth Alvarado (short fiction from Necessary Fiction, June 3, 2009)

"Death of the Right Breast" by Bernard Henrie (a poem from Stirring, September 2005)

"Yes" by Barbara Crooker

"So I said yes to everything, yes to the green hills
rolling out ahead, yes to the hayfield tied up in rolls,
yes to the clouds blooming like peonies in the sky’s
blue meadow, the long tongue of the road lolling
out before me, yes to the life of travel, yes to the other
life at home, yes to the daisies freckling the ditch, . . . ."

Continued in The Anglican Theological Review, Vol. 91, No. 1 (Winter 2009), p. 113. Also available online at FindArticles.net and in Serenity Prayers: Prayers, Poems, and Prose to Soothe Your Soul, compiled by June Cotner (Andrews McMeel, 2009).

The last line is reminiscent of Molly Bloom's wonderful soliloquy from the end of James Joyce's Ulysses.

The Lives of Others

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Das Leben der Anderen (English title: The Lives of Others), in German, written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and starring Ulrich Mühe as Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, Sebastian Koch as Georg Dreyman, and Martina Gedeck as Christa-Maria Sieland.

IMDb has a good summary of the basic plot:
In 1984 East Berlin, an agent of the secret police, conducting surveillance on a writer and his lover, finds himself becoming increasingly absorbed by their lives.

Two poems, a movie, and another David Sedaris collection

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"House Fire" by Allison Seay (poem from Born Magazine, originally published in Blue Mesa Review, No. 18, Fall 2006)

"Advice for Women on the Graveyard Shift" by Karen J. Weyant (poem from Broadsided Press, May 2009)

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris (Little, Brown and Company, 2008)

La Tourneuse de pages (English title: The Page Turner), in French, directed by Denis Dercourt and starring Déborah François as the adult Mélanie Prouvost, Catherine Frot and Pascal Greggory as Ariane and Jean Fouchécourt, and Antoine Martynciow as Tristan Fouchécourt. This was not the best film I've ever seen, but the music alone is worth the price of admission (or rental, I guess, in this case). It was billed as a thriller and I was expecting a climax along the lines of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, but this was much more subtle.

A Few Books and a Few Movies

Treatment Kind and Fair: Letters to a Young Doctor by Perri Klass (Basic Books, 2007)

Naked by David Sedaris (Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Company, 1997)

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris (Little, Brown and Company, 2004)

Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays by David Sedaris (Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Company, 1994) [though in reality I'd more strongly recommend the essays, especially "SantaLand Diaries"]


Instead of linking these books anywhere, I'm going to take an opportunity to recommend IndieBound, which has a pretty slick Indie Store Finder located at http://www.indiebound.org/indie-store-finder.


Now, a few movies:

The Painted Veil, based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham, directed by John Curran and starring Edward Norton and Naomi Watts as Walter and Kitty Fane.

Synecdoche, New York, written and directed by Charlie Kaufman and starring Philip Seymour Hoffman as Caden Cotard, Catherine Keener as Adele Lack, Samantha Morton as Hazel, and about a thousand other people. Maybe literally. This movie was huge in scope and subject matter, though maybe you could boil it down to a discussion of the meaning of life and death. I found it a little intense.

Lost in Translation, written and directed by Sofia Coppola and starring Bill Murray as Bob Harris, Scarlett Johansson as Charlotte, and Giovanni Ribisi as John, Charlotte's husband. I saw this again recently. It didn't have quite the same effect this time, largely because I had seen it before, I think, and knew where it was going. But I still think that Sofia Coppola very effectively recreated the quiet, lonely world that seems so intimately entwined with extended bouts of insomnia.

A Little Poetry (and Fiction) for Poetry Month

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"Inside Joke, Explained: Jerry" by Scott Garson (short fiction from The Northville Review)

"Poem for the Adoptive Mother" by Amanda Auchter (a poem from Linebreak, April 29, 2008)

"At the Optometrist's Office" by John Hodgen (a poem from Slate, November 28, 2006)

And two pieces of short fiction by Tai Dong Huai, whose story "Backwards" appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of the Apple Valley Review:

"Thirteen" by Tai Dong Huai (SmokeLong Quarterly, Issue 23, December 15, 2008)

"Clasp" by Tai Dong Huai (The Rose & Thorn, Spring 2009)

The Spring 2009 issue of the Apple Valley Review

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The Spring 2009 issue of the journal features fiction by Matthew Grice, Tai Dong Huai, Lydia Williams, Arrie Brown, and Jozefina Cutura; an essay by Suzanne Cope; poetry by William Robert Flowers, Leslie LaChance, Sarah White, Gregory Lawless, Roger Jones, Ruth Foley, Steve Klepetar, Linda King, Lyn Lifshin, James Richard Brown, Chris Anderson, and Asha Choubey; and artwork by Mikel Glass.

The Apple Valley Review is a semiannual online literary journal. The current issue, previous issues, subscription information, and complete submission guidelines are available at www.applevalleyreview.com.

Four Films

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Two (at least obliquely) about writing:

Ficción (English title: Fiction), in Spanish, directed by Cesc Gay, written by Tomàs Aragay and Cesc Gay, and starring Eduard Fernández as Àlex, Javier Cámara as Santi, Montse Germán as Mònica, and Carme Pla as Judith. I liked this film so much that I watched it again the next day, though my sympathies were different the second time around.

Comme une Image (English title: Look at Me), in French, directed by Agnès Jaoui, written by Jean-Pierre Bacri and Agnès Jaoui, and starring Marilou Berry as Lolita Cassard, Jean-Pierre Bacri as Étienne Cassard, Agnès Jaoui and Laurent Grévill as Sylvia and Pierre Millet, and Keine Bouhiza as Sébastien. This was the second time I had seen this film as well. The first time, I have to admit that I couldn't relate to it somehow and found Lolita less than sympathetic as a character. However, this time, I thought that it was an interesting take on what it means to be successful as a writer, parent, spouse, and person in general.

The other two were darker in terms of subject matter but visually stunning:

Da hong deng long gao gao gua (English title: Raise the Red Lantern), in Chinese, directed by Yimou Zhang, written by Su Tong and Ni Zhen, and starring Li Gong as Songlian, Caifei He as Meishan (Third Wife), Cuifen Cao as Zhuoyan (Second Wife), and Shuyuan Jin as Yuru (First Wife). This film was absolutely gorgeous.

Aimée and Jaguar, in German, directed by Max Färberböck, written by Max Färberböck and Rona Munro, and starring Maria Schrader as Felice Schragenheim (Jaguar), Juliane Köhler as Lilly Wust (Aimée), and Johanna Wokalek as Ilse.