From McSweeney's: "Famous Authors Narrate the Funny Pages"

I am a total sucker for jokes that apply a well-known author's style to something wholly different from what he or she ever wrote.

Here's a recent example: "Famous Authors Narrate the Funny Pages"

I'm more familiar with the concept as it applies to the improv game "Authors," as seen on the British Whose Line Is It Anyway?, which I watched religiously as a senior in high school.* Here's an example of that (probably not safe for work), and there are plenty of clips on YouTube if you're so inclined. Tony Slattery was pretty much my favorite in any game, but I must admit that John Sessions is rather impressive in "Authors" (though he does come off as a bit of a showoff).

Still plugging away at NaNoWriMo. I've just reached the 10,000-word mark - which actually means I'm about 1600 words behind, but never mind that. Still longer than anything I've ever written before.

*The show used to come on every day at 3:00 on Comedy Central. Since I never got home form school earlier than 3:20ish, I used to set my VCR to record episodes whenever I had a blank videotape. I was pretty hardcore.

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

As for those who hate me because they hate Charlie, hate me by extension, I am curious of this: At what point, in their opinion, should I have done something, and what should that something have been? Should I not have married him? Should I not have discouraged his drinking ("Jim Beam and me, have us both" - is that what I ought to have said?) When he told me he wanted to run for governor and I told him I'd prefer he didn't (though I foolishly thought at least it was better than congressman or senator, at least it would keep us in Wisconsin) - when he decided that in spite of my stated preference, he was indeed going to run, should I have left him? Should I have stayed with him but not campaigned for him? Should I have stated explicitly to the public when my views differed from his? Should I have left him when he decided, also against my wishes, to run for president? Anyone who has been married, and especially anyone married for several decades, knows the union is a series of compromises; to judge the compromises I have made is, I take it, easy to do from far away.

-American Wife

I'm going to try to keep this fairly brief, because NaNoWriMo has commenced, and I've already done a fair amount of writing today (haven't fallen behind yet, hurrah). This is perhaps unfair to Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife, which is an excellent novel deserving of more attention than I have time to offer it.

American Wife is a fictionalization of the life of Laura Bush. I've never regarded Mrs. Bush as a kindred spirit, but reading American Wife has made me, perhaps, a bit more understanding of her situation. Her fictional stand-in, Alice Blackwell, is very much like her in many publicly verifiable ways: both studied education in college and became librarians, both were involved in tragic car accidents, both married privileged men who, against all odds, became president. It's very easy to move from those similarities to think that Alice's interior life, which Sittenfeld creates with seeming ease, is representative of Laura's. Maybe that's not true - Sittenfeld's no psychic, after all, just a writer who did a fair amount of research and is skilled at creating a sympathetic, believable narrator. I quite liked Alice, though, so I rather hope that Sittenfeld is right. It certainly makes the world more interesting when people aren't exactly what you would expect.

I'm not a political buff by any means, but I found American Wife quite absorbing. It's a fairly long read - a bit over 500 pages - but as I kept going I found that I only read faster, which is certainly one of the hallmarks of a good book. One element I particularly liked was Sittenfeld's talent for giving the reader little nuggets of information that pay off much later in the story - for example, mentioning that Alice won't see a character again until 30 years have passed. It's a great device, because, even as other parts of the plot progress, there's a certain part of the reader's brain that is left waiting for that now-anticipated reunion and wondering what its circumstances will be. Quite enjoyable for the reader, I think.

Up next: I picked up Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz at the library earlier. I remember reading a good review awhile back; let's hope it holds true. I dig the ivy on the cover, if nothing else.

Bright Young People by D.J. Taylor

[Son] Matthew furious said if we invited people of this sort to the house we must behave decently & give them their drink (bought by Babe [Plunkett Greene]). He said he had thought of not coming down - & it was our faults for having such people & that we must have known perfectly well they would drink unceasingly. [Husband] A. & I protested, that we had known that they would have sherry before dinner - but had no conception that the drinking of Sherry - Brandy & Whisky would never cease. He appeared to think that we ought never to have consented to have [daughter] E.'s friends & that it was all our own fault. A. got very angry about E. & I tried to explain to M. that having seen nothing like it - & it was impossible to realise what these sort of people were & how they would behave - after all E. Gathorne-Hardy - wretched creature is a gentleman.

-Excerpt from the diary of Dorothea Ponsonby (mother of Bright Young Person Elizabeth Ponsonby), as printed in Bright Young People

In my first year of college, I went through an Evelyn Waugh phase. I discovered Brideshead Revisited*in the stacks and subsequently went back to that section of the library so frequently that I daresay I could lead you to it today (assuming they haven't shuffled things around). Later on, I fell in love with Wodehouse, and somewhere in between I read a magazine article (presumably in Vanity Fair, as it's right up their alley) on the Mitford sisters. From those three sources, I had learned everything I knew about London's Jazz Age.

And who would expect you to know much, really? It's not World War II (not yet) or one of those other eras where at least a handful of facts are fairly common knowledge. In America, common knowledge about the English Jazz Age is...nothing, at least as far as I know.

I'd never had any particular interest in the period, either - yet, for whatever reason, when I stumbled upon Bright Young People at the library, I was intrigued. I guess there's just something about the beautiful and the damned, if I may steal phrasing from our own Jazz Age.

It is quite a cast of beautiful people. The women are fiery and the men dandyish. Everyone drinks to excess and speaks in an over-the-top fashion that, frankly, I love. They throw wild themed parties and absolutely flummox their parents (see the excerpt above). They fritter away money and sleep through the afternoon.

They are floating along in the wake of World War I, which killed and wounded so many of their contemporaries. They can only float for so long, as it turns out - both the economy and the entry of England into World War II hasten the demise of the Bright Young People. By that time, some have become successful - Waugh, perhaps most notably, along with fellow novelist Henry Green and photographer Cecil Beaton. Others - like Elizabeth Ponsonby and Brenda Dean Paul - met tragic ends. And one - Unity Mitford - became a member of Hitler's inner circle. Really.

D.J. Taylor does an excellent job making sense of an abundance of material. He's quite an erudite writer - he sent me scrambling for the dictionary to look up suzerainty and echt. He tells the stories - or at least parts thereof - of quite a number of Bright Young People, which has left me curious to know more - if not more nonfiction, then perhaps some of the novels I've overlooked, like Green's Loving or Waugh's Vile Bodies. If nothing else, I have the 2003 film Bright Young Things (based on Vile Bodies) heading to me via Netflix. No better time for it, I reckon.

I think it is worthwhile to note that, while I found this book quite interesting, I have very little interest in today's pseudo-celebrity culture. That is to say, I admit to being a bit starstruck, but I am perfectly happy knowing nothing of those people who are famous for no discernible reason. It makes me wonder if I would have found the Bright Young People quite so glamorous if I had been their contemporary. Or perhaps it just reveals that the Z-list of today need to be a bit more ambitious and interesting - why no mock weddings? That was a sure-fire headline for Elizabeth Ponsonby.

Up next: I'm reading contemporary non-genre, non-YA fiction for the first time in a while, if my memory serves - American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. So far, so good.


*I loved the 2008 film adaptation, by the way. Perhaps not as faithful as the the 80s miniseries, but Ben Whishaw was quite devastating as Sebastian Flyte.

NaNoWriMo

I'm nearly finished with Bright Young People, and I'm enjoying it pretty thoroughly. One section I found particularly striking was entitled "The Books Brian Never Wrote," concerning the literary non-career of Bright Young Person Brian Howard. Brian planned to write a novel. Then, a German diary. That was scrapped for a philosophical meditation, which in turn was replaced with an idea for another novel. He did manage to produce a book of poetry, which was followed by...nothing. Brian, who at first explained away his lack of productivity (his genius needed to "mature slowly," he reasoned), became concerned. As author D.J. Taylor explains:

By this time, ominously enough, the neurosis about not writing anything had reached such a pitch that it began to produce pieces of writing about not writing. "About Writing," a sketch from this period, finds a nonwriter called "Russell" explaining to a friend that he has just downed a glass of brandy "because of the terror of trying to write." Everything, Russell gravely explains, from money, the consciousness of not keeping up one's position as a clever young man and the necessity of not disappointing one's father, is driving him to write a book. [...] "A novel! Heavens. A novel is a story. I can't make up a story. I can't live other people's lives. I can't live my own." And so incriminatingly on.

I suspect many of us, like Brian, have ideas for books in our heads that we would write if only the stars would properly align. Lucky for us, next month is National Novel Writing Month (link goes to the official website), commonly known as NaNoWriMo. Here's how it works: Sign up to participate at the website. Then, write 50,000 words in the month of November (about 1,666 words a day). If you can do that, you "win."

Easier said than done is a bit of an understatement here. I am a terribly slow writer, and I've never written any fiction longer than about 7,000 words. Nevertheless, I signed up. I'm hoping that a deadline imposed by someone other than myself will encourage me to buckle down and write. Not necessarily write anything good, mind you (apparently if you try to edit, you'll never make it). I think it will be fun. Good, old-fashioned, potentially crazy-making fun.

So if you have an idea for the Great American Novel in your head - or even the Great American YA Fantasy Novel - why not sign up? Remember Brian Howard: the book is never going to write itself. Might as well give it a try.

Hamlet Follow-up II: A Critics' Roundup

I meant to do this earlier - in the interest of completeness, here are links to several more reviews of the current production of Hamlet on Broadway.

From The New Yorker: The production is "barn-burning;" Jude Law is "a sensation, if not a revelation."

From New York: The production "practically wills itself into a state of torpor;" Law's Hamlet "may be the first in danger of blowing away in a stiff wind."

From Time Out New York: The production "has plenty to thrill and hold your attention;" Law is called "Yoga Hamlet," based apparently on both his wardrobe and flexibility. (Okay, also: "he holds court at the center of his scenes with an intensity, intelligence and awestruck wonder that puts most Hamlets [the reviewer has] seen to shame.")

From Entertainment Weekly: The production is "refreshingly straightforward" and "understated;" Law "gives a strong, confident performance."

I find it really interesting to see the different perspectives. Although most of the reviews are pretty mixed, I think the Times one was the harshest.

The Lost City of Z by David Grann

In 1911, the cohort of South American explorers, along with the rest of the world, was astounded by the announcement that Hiram Bingham, Dr. Rice's old traveling companion, had, with the aid of a Peruvian guide, uncovered the Incan ruins of Machu Picchu, nearly eight thousand feet above sea level, in the Andes. Although Bingham had not discovered an unknown civilization - the Incan empire and its monumental architecture were well documented - he had helped to illumination this ancient world in remarkable fashion. National Geographic, which devoted an entire issue to Bingham's find, noted that Machu Picchu's stone temples and palaces and fountains - most likely a fifteenth-century retreat for Incan nobility - may "prove to be the most important group of ruins discovered in South America." The explorer Hugh Thomson subsequently called it "the pin-up of twentieth-century archeology." Bingham was catapulted into the stratosphere of fame; he was even elected to the U.S. Senate.

The discovery fired Fawcett's imagination. It undoubtedly stung, too. But Fawcett believed that the evidence he had gathered suggested something potentially more momentous: remnants of a yet unknown civilization in the heart of the Amazon, where for centuries the conquistadores had searched for an ancient kingdom - a place they called El Dorado.

-The Lost City of Z

Percy Fawcett disappeared in 1925. Accompanied by his son, Jack, and Jack's childhood friend, Raleigh Rimmel, he had ventured into the Amazon to look for the ruins of an ancient city - a place he called Z. Fawcett was a veteran Amazon explorer, well known for his seeming invulnerability to the many dangers of the area. His final journey and disappearance were covered extensively by newspapers all over the world, and subsequently innumerable, often ill-fated expeditions were launched to find him.

And yet, until The Lost City of Z was published earlier this year, Fawcett's story had faded into to history. I always find it fascinating how something that at one point would have been common knowledge can gradually become a bit of trivia. More fascinating still, of course, is the idea of living in an age where there were blank spots on the map. There are still uncontacted tribes in the Amazon, but those pockets that are isolated from the outside world have certainly grown fewer in number since Fawcett's time. Fawcett lived in an age when more was unknown, and thus the possibilities were limited only by one's imagination. It's worth noting that Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, in which an adventurer discovers dinosaurs living in a remote part of South America, was said to be based partially on Fawcett's expeditions.

In 2009, I think we've left very few stones unturned (not a lot of places left to hide living dinosaurs, in other words). The world, more accessible than ever, grows smaller. For instance, author David Grann, following in Fawcett's footsteps in an attempt to ascertain his fate and/or to discover if Z actually existed, spends time with a tribe who, although they maintain many of their traditions, also have a television powered by a generator. Things have changed a lot since 1925.

Grann intersperses the story of his own journey with the story of Fawcett's life: his early travels, his experience in World War I, his family life, and that last expedition. Both narratives are compelling. Fawcett lived a remarkable life; each of his journeys is harrowing as well as utterly absorbing. (Fair note to those with weak stomachs: there are a great number of maggots & other creepy crawlies involved.) Grann's story also grabs one's attention, because he is the man who may solve the mystery, and because one quickly realizes that, despite the modernization of some areas, the Amazon is still a very dangerous place.

In the end, no matter what Grann found (which, of course, I'll leave to you to discover), Fawcett's story is a sad one. Sure, no one put him or his party in danger against their will, but they went into the Amazon with good intentions and sufficient preparation - if anyone could have succeeded at the time, it was them. Jack and Raleigh were quite young - in their early 20s - when they disappeared. Jack wanted to be a movie star (and in the photo Grann provides, he looks a bit like Cary Elwes in The Princess Bride, though it could just be the little mustache). One can't help but think about the hole their disappearance left in the lives of those they left behind - Nina Fawcett, for one, never gave up hope that her husband and son were alive, and consulted with mediums to bolster her spirits. (Fawcett himself also believed in otherworldly phenomena, and some today believe that Z was more of a metaphysical state of being. Cults have been started based on this idea. Seriously.)

Even though the story is tragic, I nonetheless enjoyed The Lost City of Z wholeheartedly. I looked forward to cracking it open every day during my morning and afternoon subway commute. There's just something about great non-fiction* - to read something so extraordinary and know that it really happened. I find that it is a great reminder of the complexity of people, and the breadth of our world.

Up next: I've abandoned Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Sorry, DFW fans - The Lost City of Z was a reminder that I don't want reading to be a herculean task for me. So, while browsing at the library, I found Bright Young People by D.J. Taylor, a non-fiction account of London's Jazz Age. It's an era I know little to nothing about, so I imagine I'll learn something!

*Some of my favorite non-fiction mysteries/crime stories: These books are very well-known, and deservedly so. If you haven't read one, I would get to a library or bookstore posthaste.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote: The granddaddy of them all. A terrible tragedy, beautifully told.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt: I remember this book being quite the craze when I was a child, but at the time I was too young to read it. I finally got to it in the last couple of years, and I can say its popularity is well deserved.

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson: The terrifying story of one of America's most prolific serial killers, set against the magical atmosphere of the 1893 World's Fair.

I'm always looking for more books like these, incidentally. If anyone knows of a good one, let me know.

In Medias Res: The Lost City of Z

Explorer John Hanning Speke

I don't normally post about books until I've finished them, but I decided to make an exception for The Lost City of Z by David Grann. I'm enjoying it so much, and so many passages are standing out to me, that I know I won't be able to get to all of them when I write it up. So, I decided to share one now.

Perhaps the most vicious feud was over the source of the Nile. After [John Hanning] Speke claimed in 1858 that he had discovered the river's origin, at a lake he christened Victoria, many of the [Royal Geographic] Society's members, led by his former traveling companion [Richard] Burton, refused to believe him. Speke said of Burton, "B is one of those men who can never be wrong, and will never acknowledge an error." In September of 1864, the two men, who had once nursed each other back from death on an expedition, were supposed to square off in a public meeting. The London Times called it a "gladiatorial exhibition." But, as the meeting was about to begin, the gatherers were informed that Speke would not be coming: he had gone hunting the previous day, and was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. "By God, he's killed himself!" Burton reportedly exclaimed, staggering on the stage; later, Burton was seen in tears, reciting his onetime companion's name over and over. Although it was never known for certain if the shooting was intentional, many suspected, like Burton, that the protracted feud had caused the man who had conquered the desert to take his own life. A decade later, Speke's claim to having discovered the Nile's source would be proved correct.


I was going to ask if anyone else wanted a Burton & Speke movie, but it turns out there already is one. And a novel! Brilliant. That story just blows my mind.

PS - This book is totally making me want to become an explorer. Just an FYI.

Roger Ebert: "Books do furnish a life"

Roger Ebert is one of my favorite film critics. I remember being 10 or 11, coming home from my early Saturday morning horseback riding lesson and flipping on Siskel and Ebert. A few years later, I got an a 1987 edition of his movie yearbook from Goodwill. I used to skim through the reviews, mostly of movies I'd never seen or sometimes even heard of, particularly looking for the no-star reviews. Ebert really excels in his skewering of the worst: his review of North is a great example. I often disagree with him, but I love the way he writes.

Ebert is also a lover of books. His recent blog post on his book collection is great. He has 3000 or 4000 books, he estimates. Amazing. Suddenly, even with the boxes of books I have at my parents' house, I feel like a minimalist.

Club Dead by Charlaine Harris

"You never told me all this before," I said, by way of explanation. "You all have divided America into kingdoms, is that right?"

Pam and Chow looked at Eric with some surprise, but he didn't regard them. "Yes," he said simply. "It has been so since vampires came to America. Of course, over the years the system's changed with the population. There were far fewer vampires in America for the first two hundred years, because the trip was so perilous. It was hard to work out the length of the voyage with the available blood supply." Which would have been the crew, of course. "And the Louisiana Purchase made a great difference."

Well, of course it would. I stifled another bout of giggles.

-Club Dead

Let's see, where did we leave off in the adventures of Sookie Stackhouse? She'd just survived a massacre in Dallas, and she was not psyched about Bill revealing his more animalistic, bloodthirsty side there. Also, some craziness went down with a maenad. Club Dead picks up only a few weeks later.* Bill is acting secretive and spending a lot of time on the computer (...), and Sookie is feeling a little put out. Then Bill leaves on a mysterious assignment...and disappears.

Bill is gone for pretty much the whole book, which worked out better than I might have expected when I started the series. I've grown a bit disenchanted with Bill.** Instead, we get the always awesome Eric, who comes to Bon Temps to lay out the situation with Sookie once he realizes Bill's disappearance is serious. This results in Sookie heading up to Jackson, Mississippi, where she plans to use her telepathic abilities to pick up leads on Bill's whereabouts. Sookie, accompanied by capable werewolf Alcide Herveaux*** heads to Club Dead, a local vampire/shapeshifter/werewolf haunt. Naturally, events unfold in a way that leave Sookie triumphant but in pretty rough shape. Again. Poor thing.

I found Club Dead a lot more enjoyable than Living Dead in Dallas. The plot was more engaging, even if Bill's computer project ended up being a bit of a McGuffin. I liked the new characters - particularly Alcide, but I was also intrigued by Russell Edgington, the king of Mississippi. I liked the ambiguity of the ending, which leaves me ready to read the next book.

Up next: I've made it a bit farther in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, but I have to confess I'm finding it a bit of a slog. When I read a sentence like, "Kundera here would say 'dancing,' and actually he's a perfect example of a belletrist whose intermural honesty is both formally unimpeachable and wholly self-serving: a classic postmodern rhetorician," I feel like I'm being poked in the brain. Repeatedly. I'm not calling it quits (yet), but it's slow going.

So, to spell myself from DFW, I got The Lost City of Z by David Grann from the library. In case you've missed the press on this one, it's about a journalist's quest to uncover the fate of a long-lost team of Amazonian explorers and learn about the ancient city they set out to find. Only a few pages in and I'm already finding it pretty riveting.

*I actually wish Charlaine Harris would space out the books in time a bit more, as when you realize that prior events have happened so recently, you feel as though you should still be hearing more about their ramifications. This was better handled here than in Living Dead in Dallas, though.

**Particularly given some of the stuff he gets up to in Club Dead. Bill is getting pretty sketchy, you guys.

***Although it is never stated, you have to imagine that Sookie is loving that moniker, considering she laughed herself silly over the ordinariness of Bill's name.

Hamlet Follow-up

A disappointing review from the New York Times today. I totally agree that Jude Law's Hamlet was energetic, but I guess I did not see it as such a negative. To me, he seemed like someone who had lost interest in controlling his impulses. Someone filled with anger and disgust and accordingly starting to spin out of control. Although I have no doubt that the reviewer is much more knowledgeable about theater than I am, I confess I don't understand his feeling that "It is hard to understand the distress of Hamlet’s friends and family when he feigns madness, since the prince, in this case, appears to be as he always was: sarcastic, contemptuous, quick-witted and mad only in the sense of being really, really angry." Really? I didn't get that at all. While watching the play, I distinctly remember thinking that he must have been so different prior to his father's death/mother's remarriage. He seemed pretty far gone to me*. Again, though, at this point Jude Law is my definitive Hamlet, so perhaps I will gain more insight after seeing another actor's interpretation.

Also, what is up with the snide comments about the "Pradaesque" wardrobe? I liked the simplicity of the costumes and, as I mentioned in my previous post, the cool tones. Alas.

On a more positive note, here's a story from NPR with lots of video clips. Not a review proper, but right now I'm a bit Hamlet-obsessed, and I like to have something to balance the rain on my parade that is the Times review. Still curious to see what The New Yorker says.

*And isn't the idea that the madness is feigned, as the review suggests, pretty ambiguous? I thought one could lean either way: this page from the RSC gives some input on how various actors have interpreted it (note the distinction between the decision of this particular company - feigned madness - and the critiques of different Hamlets). My impression is that just because Hamlet has lucid moments and at times is playing up the madness, it doesn't mean he has it together. However, it's safe to say that I'm probably a bit out of my depth.