* Finally caught up with my newsletter of the Dorothy Sayers society (conference comin' quickly!). The newsletter is sooooooo Barbara Pym. I don't mean that in a casual way--British, sort of academic--I mean, in all its very small particulars, attitude, focus. The trivial round, the common task, the nerdfully responsible...sort of hard to explain if you're not a Pym fanatic, but trust me, it's all so deliciously there. Very No Fond Return of Love, certainly, topically. Adorable.
* Speaking o' which, I see that Excellent Women is being Penguin Classics-ed, which is a first for her--her books have hiccuped through strange reprints over the years: pre- & post-wildness, pre- & post-her death. Interesting that EW is always the central Pym, the one that (as people say) they recommend to people first. Anyhow, I guess she's officially part of the canon now? Odd. Interesting. I think she'd find it so too. This is a major step. (!)GAWD, is there a lot of academia surrounding Pym. I love her dearly, but can any author support it? That's a dumb question--look at how lit crit works, count the number of disserations about ____ (anything)--but still. I dunno...
* In other literary news, the collected hard-to-find works of MKF Fisher, A Stew or a Story, was just published (by Avalon in Oct). The book was anthologized and edited by (dare I call friend) Joan Reardon, who wrote the Fisher bio that I ended up doing a little research work for (I got to know Joan when I interviewed her for an article before the book came out). There's no way that doesn't sound like bragging, I suppose, but I'm quite proud to have been involved with that book--it was an example of a decades'-long personal obsession flowering into an actual connection, involvement. Those things still amaze me. Plus it was incredibly fun.I was looking at the table of contents--I've read at least a few of the pieces, xeroxes I got from Joan and from a Fisher acquaintance whom I know was instrumental in collecting all these Fisher pieces that got flung to the publishing winds as she tried to support her family. One of them, strangely, which was held for publication because of anti-Japanese sentiment during/after the war, made its debut in my alma mater's miscellany (have always wanted to know why). I'm really glad they went with that Fisher caricature on the cover--a little tired of the classic Pym glamour shot. Think this might serve her a little better.
This book arrives at a time when I have to say that I am more than full--surfeited, glutted, gorged, stuffed, bursting, over-laden--with food writing. To the point where I'm not even reading it much right now (all these new books!!). The only thing I've really wanted to read was Fisher or Pepin's Apprentice, which is definitely making a place on my serious Re-Read List.
* Insomnia/overwork has created a lot of strange late-night viewing, including:
- Doing Time on Maple Drive (or Ordinary People-Lite). Lori Laughlin: good actress! What the hell. I'd seen it before, but it was kind of interesting to rewatch--NOT, exactly, as ye might think at an easy guess, for how our attitude towards gayness has changed, but just because...all of a sudden it seems like everything has changed. Is that quite what the uptight upper-middle class (forlackofabetterterm) family is working to uphold these days? All of a sudden it just seems like things are different.
I do miss funny ol Bibi Besch. I've recently been noting how tiringly typecast actors are these days, but boy was she good at being the suburban wife. Brought a lot of oomph to it.
- The Mystery of Love on PBS. This program was completely fascinating. The interstitial graphics were distractingly awful! But the program--I think my mouth was hanging open the whole time. Really interesting, thought-provoking. Want to see again.
- Too many other things to remember or mention, but I did finally watch Old Acquaintance and sweet jebus! It's very boring to call things gay all the time (everything is) but BLEAGHOILKJI! It's really gay. It's mostly Miriam Hopkins' fault, for being such a melodramatic spazz, and turning it into farce (not to mention making Bette look completely sane), but it's just so...hammy. Campy. And I just can't get all excited about the ending--if I liked Millie at all, I could have, but even having marginal sympathy for that character it was just a limp conclusion--damn, Kate should have gotten Preston back! I'm a sucker. This was another movie (like my recent Ross Hunter obsession) that made me think--duh. We think of camp, of queer, as a quality that is visible in movies only in retrospect, now that it's safe to see the imprint because enough time has passed--but--no way. Somebody knew what they were doing here. Elizabeth Taylor was right when she said that Hollywood couldn't have been built without the gays, and not just the hopelessly closeted folks.* I have a headache and a half reading about 1) the current Dream Girls movie and how whatshername is "big" compared to Beyonce and 2) the plot of the story, the original inspiration for it, and how whatshername was "big" compared to Diana Ross. Nobody...repeat...NoBODY in this scenario was ever big, or ever even pudgy. Judy Garland? Never pudgy. The differences in body size that drive all this shit are--VERY VERY SMALL. Our definitions and ways of looking at this stuff gotta change tout, but fucking suite. I'm so sick of it. This is related to the fact that EVERY fat girl I know has looked at pix of herself when they were young and said, "Wow--I was never as fat as I thought--I was never that big." Those differences that are seen as so huge when we're young/unformed...they're not. Of all the little platforms to built eating disorders and lifelong obsessions on...this ain't it. Really makes me mad. Leave people alone. Let them grow up.
* The main reason KH should never have married Tom Cruise? She looks terrible, just terrible in those ginormous Bono/Jackie-O/celebrity-hiding sunglasses. Just awful. Like a stick insect topped with big googly eyes. Her face is too small, too midwestern, too flat, to carry them off. Terrible. At their worst, they make her look like a little girl playing dress-up, infantilize her. All contributes to the creepitude.* Since you asked: actually, somebody did ask what my my favorite Christmas "songs" were the other day and I realized anew that I don't believe in them as such. I mean, I guess I like some of them pretty well (secular Christmas songs), but that's not Christmas music to me. When did Christmas music move from something we sang to something we listen to? I am officially an old stuffy fuddyduddy, but I know the difference with this and I'm stickin to it.
* Uncool thought #398,201: I am starting to wish I had a few....housedresses. Schmatte. Muu muus. Those things. Long coaty-dresses you can throw on for puttering around the house--the absolute opposite of contemporary yummymummy wear. Not even zippers, just - thrown em on. The kind of garments perhaps that others fought for us never having to wear again...esp fat girls! But for puttering around the house?--they seem incredibly handy. Esp. for someone like me who (excuse) hates to wear clothes sometimes, I think they'd be darn handy for housekeeping, puttering around--for taking out the trash, not necessarily being seen naked by your neighbors when you are tottering around the appartmente and alternately caring and not caring about that. Nobody ever seems to wear them anymore (my mom certainly never did) except people in SNL sketches wanting to make fun of Italian grandmothers, but I dunno, I think I might indulge. Hmmm. Hmmm! It's very hard to even think about this without worrying that I just put a cautious toe on a fast slippery slope to major middle-age, but I'm not sure I care.
* Using YouTube like my jukebox these days, esp for all the songs I can't iTunes! Like the "Human Nature" remix of "Right Here" by SWV, the radio remix with sung chorus of "Ladies First" by Queen Latifah/Monie Love, "Keep Ya Head Up" by 2Pac, that jenniferlopez-Big Pun/Fat Joe song I can't quite bear to buy... Fun.
* Showing on our local PBS this week? Documentary about the Christmas windows of Marshall Field's, complete with sound-bite in the preview: "Chicago is Marshall Field's--Marshall Field's is Chicago." What the )*$*#(&%)(@*&.
No comments:
Post a Comment