14 posts tagged “books”
I found myself renting a storage unit for the first time last month. It's strange to realize that a part of my life has outgrown one building. I had to prioritize how to inhabit my new space and what should go dormant. An interesting exercise but a little sad, too.
DK had another art opening last Saturday.
One of the last things I want to do is go to a child's birthday party. I don't have kids. I like kids but when they're under 4, they really only want to interact with their own parents/nannies/family.
Lately, I've been reading books where people prepare an amazing dish (or even meal). I've wanted to do a Literature Dinner Party for a while -- one where I assign what people bring (I hate bad food combination, but I'm open to very good cooks bringing whatever) and we eat a meal, referring to the books that each dish came from. My very first Vox entry ever referred to what French Colonel Mercier craves from Polish cafes when he meets with Polish Colonel Vyborg in 1933 and in Alan Furst's novel, : ponczki.
Billy Psalms was in the kitchen making gumbo from a recipe his grandmother, Rita Psalms, had passed down to him. He fried the slime out of his okra and make a dark brown roux from white flour sprinkled into blistering hot Crisco oil. It was real gumbo made with blue crabs, Andouille sausages, dried shrimp, and even a few oysters thrown in. The base was a chicken stock, made from a whole fryer, and it was finished off with powdered thyme and sassafras leaves for extra thickness and spice.
Socrates had worked an entire month doing pickup work down on Exposition to raise the money for the meal....
"You want Darryl to come out here an' make the rice, Billy?" Socrates asked. "He cain't do much in the kitchen but I taught him how to make a pot'a rice."
"Naw, baby. My mama told me that if I want to be proud'a what I cook then I got to do the whole thang. An' you know I learnt almost everything from my mama"....
Antonio and Mustafa rushed over to grab hold of the big pot. As soon as they had taken the weight the gambler announced, "Louisiana blue crab gumbo is in the house"....
Next to the gumbo pot stood stacked a pile of a dozen porcelain bowls, also borrowed from Miss Northford. Billy used a teacup to put a dome of rice in the bottom of a bowl and then ladled the dark green stew on top of that -- making sure that each serving received at least one of the small crabs.
Leanne carved the cornbread. People took the large squares as the platter was passed down the center of the table toward the front....
"I thought you called these blue crabs," Wan Tai sad across the broad plank to Billy. "But these are red."
"They turn red when you cook 'em," Billy said. "But you know them li'l suckers got the best tastin' crab meat anywhere."
"I don't always look like a dog, you know. You'd be amazed what a little hair does for me." She hesitated. "I -- er -- I suppose you wouldn't like to look me up in a month or two when I'm presentable?"
He shook his head. "Not really."
She blushed with embarrassment. "It was just a thought, Dr. Protheroe. Rather a stupid one. Sorry."
There was a loud knock on the door. "Jane, are you in there? It's your father."
Alan lowered his voice. "The name is Alan, Jinx, and who the hell needs hair? I only ever fantasize about bald women."
Another knock. "Jane? It's your father."
Her eyes gleamed. "I'll be with you in ten minutes, Adam," she called. "There's something I have to do first. Can you wait in the foyer for me?"
"Why can't I wait in there?" Adam Kingsley demanded.
The Nightingale's administrator lifted an eyebrow. "I'll be psychotic in two months," he murmured. "It does a man no good to keep his feelings zipped up as tight as this. I'm in considerable pain here."
Jinx was shaking with laughter as she quietly locked the door. "It's a woman's thing, Adam," she called to him in a quivering voice. "You'd only be embarrassed."
"Oh, I see. Well, no rush," said her father gruffly. "I passed Dr. Protheroe's office on my way in. I'll have a word with him while I'm waiting."
"You do that," she said, wiping the tears from her eyes. "You'll like him, Adam. He's your sort of man. Straight as a die and larger than life."
Minette Walters, The Dark Room, 1996
Well, it's happened again. Read my third Minette Walters. This one was cleverly written. No keen, incisive thinking in sharp relief -- the pattern of her thoughts -- this time, but here again is that sparkling, pungent dialogue. The unexpected courtship between a man and a woman beginning the book at odds with each other and then slowly pressing through the dark soil of the book into a different kind of interaction, a sunny interaction, one so bright and dazzling that they can barely handle the light. It glares in their eyes and makes them smile yet pretend to be slightly cross.
The Breaker.
Minette Walters.
2002
I find that the dialogue doesn't bear to be quoted out of the context of the whole book. It sounds lame by itself to someone who hasn't had the opportunity to become acquainted with the characters and their idiosyncracies. When the reader has spent some time getting to know Mr. X and Mme. Z, then whoa! it's quite a treat to find. Think something as classic and crisp as Bogey and Bacall. But not the same style, just the same feeling of electricity suddenly crackling between two people. Wow.
("Summertime" Dance West. Photo: Michael Burr. Dancers: Michael Melton, Yumi Nakatani)
Ross Macdonald.
Driving to dance class, driving to work, sewing alone in my apartment on days I was not with my boyfriend at the time, I would listen to public radio. I remember hearing Ross Macdonald's "Sleeping Beauty" driving to and from dance rehearsals. I remember it rained heavily. Perhaps this was during Southern California's "El Nino" storms in the '90s.
I heard parts of the book. I never heard the beginning. I never heard the end. Years later, I wanted to hear the whole story. My local library didn't carry the audiotapes so I checked out the book.
And the rest is history.
Macdonald's protagonist, the detective Lew Archer, lies somewhere between the film noir of Phil Marlowe and the canniness of TV's Dragnet. There's a hint of Hammett in how Archer reacts to Anne Castle, a character witness as he questions her about her former boyfriend who's the primary suspect in a murder (in Archer in Jeopardy):
"I'm a hopeless creature," she said, and flung herself sideways with her face in the pillow, her legs dragging on the floor.
They were good legs and I was aware of it, in the center of my body as well as in my head. A wave of feeling went through me; I wanted to comfort her. But I kept my hands off. She had more memories than she could use, and so had I.
Photo: Kallie Marie in "Triptych (iii)" Photo: Debra Pasquerette
I got this from an email from one of my favorite bookstores, Open, owned and run by creative artist who supports avant garde arts Shea Gauer.
Watching "A Room with a View" after years of not seeing it, I remember that teenager I was and how reading E.M. Forster made me want to be an English Major. To be more precise, a Humanities Major, emphasis in English literature. The Merchant Ivory film reminds me of the repetition and development of themes that Forster threaded throughout his narrative and how lovingly the English Major learns to discuss and play with such themes. In my collegiate infancy, that play was so delightful to learn and discover. And then it was not. The collegiate adult version no longer had that sense of play while maintaining the full feeling of a narrative work in all its richness.
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