Teaching Fun Home to Straight Students Thursday, Aug 16 2007 

books and teaching thisgaudygildedstage 6:21 pm

I’ve been teaching two classes during our second summer session. One is a junior-level literature course on women and literature, the other a junior-level writing course on women and writing. We’ve just finished the fourth week of the session and have one more to do. I keep swearing to anyone who will listen that this has to be my last summer of teaching. It’s exhausting, which makes me cranky, and it’s keeping me from writing (both my scholarship and my blog).

The money’s pretty good, but I’m increasingly convinced that it’s just not worth it. I have career ambitions that aren’t ever going to happen until I get a second book finished. And my second book isn’t going to write itself. Plus, I’ve been doing a little work on an article when I steal a minute or two between classes and fits of exhaustion, and I’m definitely feeling some resentment that my teaching isn’t letting me get it done (which is obviously a bad thing to feel). So, I’m not planning on teaching next summer. Instead, I’m planning to write (and maybe visit the Alps).

But in the meantime, I’m teaching two classes. The writing course has been focused on women’s autobiographical writing. We started with Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko and discussed whether we thought that it counted as an autobiography. We then read Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which is an autobiography and connects back to the issues of slavery and race that Behn raises. Our third book was Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.

We spent one day on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s “White Glasses,” an essay that I absolutely love. In the right context (i.e., not near the end of a summer session), it’s a joy to teach. It’s an amazing piece of writing, in my opinion. And now we’re doing Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home.

I was a little hesitant to teach Fun Home in this class. Of course one never knows for sure, but I assume that all of my students are straight. They’re also not English majors and may not even be particularly interested in reading great literature, which Fun Home is. So, I was worried about how they would respond.

(more…)

 

What I’m Listening to: Paolo Nutini Wednesday, Aug 15 2007 

music thisgaudygildedstage 5:01 pm

This past weekend, I was watching the Vh1 countdown for a few minutes. I think I saw the top four or five videos of the week. One of them was by a new artist, Paolo Nutini. Here’s the video:

I really liked the song’s tender sadness, and Nutini’s voice reminds me a bit of Ray LaMontagne, another musician that I really like. There are times when I’m really in the mood for male folk music, and Nutini certainly showed the promise of fitting into that groove for me.

I then did a little more research on him. He is a twenty-year-old Scotsman, who released his first major studio album last year. He’s now catching on here in the States. Next, I went to YouTube to see some of his other videos. The first one I came across was his song “New Shoes:”

This one kind of reminded me of early Sheryl Crow — something like “All I Wanna Do.”

By this point I liked his music well enough to purchase it. While I like the two songs above, I’m currently in love with two other tracks: “Rewind” and “Jenny Don’t Be Hasty.” Here’s clips of them:

I’m playing both of these over and over. I’m not sure whether Nutini could be lumped in with the other crop of British singers currently trying to conquer the Billboard charts, Mika, Lilly Allen, and Amy Winehouse, but it does make me wonder if we’re starting to experience a new British invasion. I like all four of them, even though they’re all quite different. Even though I’m quite aware of the fact that I’m not a twenty-year-old heterosexual Scotmans, something about “Jenny Don’t Be Hasty” thrills me — it’s now my feel good song that I can’t get out of my head!

(more…)

 

Pamela Aidan’s Darcy Trilogy: A Review Monday, Aug 13 2007 

books thisgaudygildedstage 7:04 pm

coverOver the past few weeks I’ve been reading Pamela Aidan’s “Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman” trilogy: An Assembly Such as This, Duty and Desire, and These Three Remain (pictured here). These books retell the story of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice from Mr. Darcy’s point of view.

Aidan has done a remarkable job of maintaining the spirit and character of Austen’s novel while adding original material of her own. As somewhat of a purist, I would have enjoyed a little less of the latter, but I really enjoyed all three books. They’re all good reading.

An Assembly Such as This relates Mr. Darcy’s viewpoint during his visit to Netherfield. Throughout this first volume, Aidan skillfully recreates Austen’s scenes — the public ball, Jane’s illness and Elizabeth’s subsequent visit at Netherfield, and Mr. Bingley’s ball. I was definitely impressed by her ability to retain much of Austen’s dialogue while creating a full-fledged and believable character in her version of Mr. Darcy. Of the three volumes, this one follows Austen’s original most closely; I found it very enjoyable.

The second volume, Duty and Desire, traces Mr. Darcy’s struggle to overcome his feelings for Elizabeth after leaving Netherfield. In this book, Aidan moves away from mimicking Austen’s plot, dialogue, and characters by filling in the “silent time” of Austen’s novel (as the back of the book says). Trying to get over his interest in Elizabeth, Darcy spends the novel pushing Bingley away from his love for Jane, keeping a watchful eye on his sister, Georgiana, and attending various social events for the London elite, including a country gathering at Norwycke Castle, the home of one of his old Cambridge buddies, a party that nearly turns disastrous for our leading man.

Aidan does a particularly good job of creating a rounder version of Georgiana than Austen provides. She also creates a new character, Lord Dy Brougham, another of Darcy’s college friends. I liked this volume the least of the three, however, since it departs the most from Austen’s original. I especially found the chapters on Darcy’s visit to Norwycke to find some other woman to love a bit tedious and drawn out. Some mystical elements are also introduced into the plot; I ultimately lost interest in this plot line and ultimately couldn’t keep the characters straight — there are several original male and female characters in this section. For someone like me, this novel is mostly filler — the stuff that happens before we get back to the real story.

(more…)

 

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns: A Review Tuesday, Aug 7 2007 

books thisgaudygildedstage 8:56 pm

Batman coverI’m a little late to the party, but over the past weekend I read Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knights Returns, first published in 1986. As I’ve written about previously, the first (and until now only) graphic novel I’ve finished was Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, which is an amazing book. I then started to read about graphic novels in general, picked up a few particular novels, and briefly thought about teaching one of my summer classes on graphic novels by women (I’m teaching a course on Women & Writing and one on Women & Literature).

PJ has been into graphic literature much longer than I have. He read comics as a kid and started reading recent classics — such as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Maus — a few years ago. He therefore wanted to encourage my new interest and so he purchased Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art and Paul Gravett’s Graphic Novels: Stories to Change Your Life. I had read about the latter one online, so I was really excited when he bought it.

Gravett quotes Stephen King, who asserts, that Miller’s Batman is “probably the finest piece of comic art ever to be published in a popular edition” (78). It is an amazing text.

Not having been much of a comics reader when I was a kid, it took me a little while to decipher the codes on how to read this text. It’s very sophisticated and postmodern. Miller tends to pack as much information in as few frames as possible, which can disorient the reader, forcing him or her to make connections and fill in blanks. The images in the novel are also sophisticated, and Miller uses a variety of colors, styles, and techniques to relate different moods in different parts of the story. (I was so excited when I finally noticed — well into the book — that he color codes character’s thought boxes: Batman’s are grey, Superman’s are blue, and the Joker’s are green, for example.) He also plays with perspective, which he often uses to build suspense and excitement. Everything works together to tell a great story.

(more…)

 

Hottie of the Month: JMW Turner Tuesday, Jul 31 2007 

seventeenth- and eighteenth-century 'hotties' thisgaudygildedstage 6:40 pm

Turner While PJ and I were in London earlier this month, we visited the Tate Britain, a museum dedicated to British art from 1500 to the present. I was especially keen on seeing the museum’s exhibition of watercolors by J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851). This is his 1798 self portrait to the right.

Part of the Turner exhibit was curated by David Hockney, himself a great watercolorist. The “Hockney on Turner Watercolours” exhibit features placards written by Hockney that express his opinions of Turner’s art, technique, etc. I first fell in love with Hockney’s work when I was a budding homosexual as an undergraduate at Texas A&M University. While in the same medium, Hockney’s work is so different from Turner’s that reading the former’s thoughts on the latter seemed like a very interesting prospect indeed. Here’s the kind of work Hockney does:

Hockney

Based on this example, I’m sure anyone can see why a burgeoning homosexual might find Hockney’s work enjoyable! But I will also point out that I moved beyond the overtly sexual paintings and found myself enjoying Hockney’s larger oeuvre as well. So, I was excited that an artist I really like was going to comment on an artist that I had seen billed as one of England’s great masters.

While Hockney’s commentary was interesting, it wasn’t the aspect of the Tate Britain’s Turner collection that most impressed me. I’ll discuss what I liked about the exhibit after the jump.

(more…)

 

An Agatha Christie Rant Monday, Jul 30 2007 

television thisgaudygildedstage 9:49 pm

At some point in junior high or high school I spent a year reading Agatha Christie novels. Hercule Poirot, Tommy and Tuppence, Miss Marple, even the other ones. After I’d plowed through the Bryan Public Library’s Christie collection, I moved on to Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, and other classic British detective writers, but Christie was always my favorite.

I was especially fond of Miss Marple. I had seen a few movie and t.v. adaptations of Miss Marple novels as a kid. My parents like older movies, so we watched a lot of pre-1970s movies. I remembered the Margaret Rutherford Miss Marple:

She always struck me as too energetic. There was also Angela Lansbury:

She always seemed too Angela Lansbury (though I’ve always liked her and thought she should have won several Oscars). And there was Helen Hayes (generally forgettable, unfortunately).

But there has always really been just one Miss Marple, Joan Hickson:

She is incomparable in this role. Completely unparalleled. So, why in the world have “they” decided to remake the Miss Marple television series?

(more…)

 

Paris, Je T’aime: A Review Saturday, Jul 28 2007 

movies thisgaudygildedstage 12:42 pm

Yesterday, I saw Paris, Je T’aime, in which twenty filmmakers use Paris as a backdrop for short stories about various kinds of love and relationships. Here’s the trailer:

The movie is organized around eighteen five-minute arrondissements. Each episode is written and directed by a different person. It stars many well-known actors, including Natalie Portman, Elijah Wood, Nick Nolte, Gena Rowlands, Steve Buscemi, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Miranda Richardson, Juliette Binoche, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and includes several famous directors, including Gus Van Sant, Joel and Ethan Coen, Alfonso Cuarón, Wes Craven, and Alexander Payne.

Some of the episodes are less successful than others, but on the whole I really liked this movie. I was a little worried going into it that I wouldn’t like the short format of the individual episodes. But I found the short form interesting, since it allows you to compare the different directors’ styles as well as the different stories’ plots and statements about love. There’s a little bit of everything here: whimsy, sentiment, violence, heartbreak, exuberance, humor, despair. It was also great to see many of the places that we had just visited included in the film. As an experiment in film making, it definitely succeeds.

Four of the arrondissements stood out as my favorites; I’ll briefly explain why I liked them in particular in the order they appear in the movie. Loin du 16e (XVIe arrondissement) was written and directed by Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas and stars Catalina Sandino Moreno as woman who must leave her infant in (what appears to be) subpar daycare in order to commute across the city to her job as nanny for a wealthy family’s infant. It’s heartbreaking in its subtle simplicity as we see the sacrifice she makes to support herself and her baby. We also see the contrast between how she loves her own child and merely cares for her employer’s infant. It’s a great episode.

(more…)

 

La Vie en Rose: A Review Wednesday, Jul 25 2007 

movies and music thisgaudygildedstage 8:23 pm

Over the weekend, PJ and I saw the new bio-pic about the life and music of Edith Piaf, La vie en Rose. Here’s the trailer:

Piaf is, of course, the great French singer who rose to fame in the 1930s and became an international sensation after World War II. She lived an incredibly difficult and sometimes tortured life, but, like Judy Garland in America, she rose above her difficult childhood and tragic love affairs to become a great vocal artist. (Does that sound too prosaic?!)

Piaf's Grave While we were in Paris earlier this month, we visited her grave in Père Lachaise Cemetery, which is also the resting place for Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein (and Alice B. Toklas), Jim Morrison, Moliere, Maria Callas, Richard Wright, Abelard and Heloise, Marcel Proust, Colette, Balzac, Delacroix, Gericault, Louis David, among many others. (While it’s weird to me that a cemetery would be a tourist attraction, I highly recommend a visit to this one if you have the time while you’re in Paris. It’s certainly a good reminder of our own mortality.)

This picture of her grave is from Wikipedia, which claims that it is one of the most visited graves in the cemetery. It is certainly well tended and someone had left flowers on it when we were there.

When we left to go see the movie, PJ admitted that he was a little hesitant to suggest we see it, since he worried that I would almost certainly become an Edith Piaf queen afterwards. It turns out he was right. I loved the movie and immediately came home and bought a two-disk set of her music.

But before I write about her music, let’s get back to the movie. I have to admit that I found it hard going for the first 20 to 30 minutes. In this early section, the film cuts back and forth between her childhood and various points in her adult life. This cutting creates (for me, at least) a coherent view of her early life, but I couldn’t get a handle on the adult stuff — I couldn’t keep track of when each scene was happening in relation to the other scenes of her later life. I also couldn’t keep track of who the other characters were. Consequently, I got a little irritated.

But then I had an epiphany: the movie isn’t really concerned with the minute details of Piaf’s life — it’s not that kind of bio-pic. If you want the dates and chronology, etc. you can certainly go back and watch the movie a second (or third) time and probably get all of that, but on a first viewing this film is more of an impressionistic biography. It wants to recreate the spirit, energy, and artistry of Piaf’s life and music. By giving us these disjointed scenes of her life in a seemingly random order, the film forces us to experience that energy and artistry rather than pay attention to her age or where she is or who she’s talking to.

(more…)

 

Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife: A Review Sunday, Jul 22 2007 

books thisgaudygildedstage 8:01 pm

For each of the last few summers, I’ve read a Jane Austen novel. I usually take whichever one I’m reading with me on the plane to Europe: Emma to London, Pride and Prejudice to Spain. Later this summer, I’ll be teaching Persuasion, so I was going to read that, but I decided to vary the routine a bit this year and read one of the recent books that either continues or rewrites Pride and Prejudice instead.

Darcy Takes a WifeI chose Linda Berdoll’s Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife, a continuation of Pride and Prejudice. It’s quite long, 465 pages, so I read it before we left for Paris rather than take it with me.

The novel begins the day after Mr. Darcy’s wedding to Elizabeth Bennett. As they ride in a carriage from London, where they spent their first night together, Elizabeth is in some discomfort but too embarrassed to accept her new husband’s offer of a pillow. We then enter Elizabeth’s memory as she recalls how she came by her discomfort.

This recollection points to what distinguishes this book: Berdoll more than peeks behind the Darcys’ bed curtains; she gives us graphic account (after graphic account) of their love making. It turns out that Darcy and Elizabeth are quite enthusiastic in their marital union. Anyone looking for a steamy rewriting of Austen need look no further: Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife is very much a romance novel set in the social world created by the decidedly non-sexy Austen.

Berdoll’s world is populated by all of the characters that make Austen’s novel such a treat. Besides Darcy and Elizabeth, we see Bingley and Jane (their wedding night and subsequent sexual activities are less competent than D&E’s), Wickham and Lydia (who almost immediately tire of one another’s company), the other Bennets, Mr. Collins and Charlotte, and even Lady Catherine de Bourgh (we don’t get any part of her sex life, fortunately!).

Much of Berdoll’s continuation fits well with Austen. Bingley, for example, is sexually inexperienced and rather incompetent at first in making love to his wife. This fits well with my vision of the character from Pride and Prejudice. Lady Catherine remains a dour figure staunchly opposed to her nephew’s marriage to his social inferior. Mr. Collins is still a buffoon, and Lydia and Wickham’s scenes perfectly match Austen’s foreshadowing.

(more…)

 

My Life with Gazpacho Thursday, Jul 19 2007 

food thisgaudygildedstage 9:27 pm

I just finished making gazpacho. PJ and I are having a small dinner party tomorrow night, and our first course will be the gazpacho, which of course needs to be thoroughly chilled. I generally love soups, and Gazpacho is my favorite kind of soup. While PJ isn’t as much of a soup fan as I am, we nevertheless agree on our love for gazpacho — one of the many commonalities that makes our relationship work as well as it does. (Never underestimate the power of a good soup to keep your man happy!)

Because of my deep fondness for chilled tomato soup, I often order it whenever I have the opportunity. As one website points out, “There are about as many gazpacho recipes as there are Spanish cooks.” One of the aspects of traveling that I enjoy is sampling as many of those recipes as I can.

The latest addition to my (metaphorical) gazpacho journal occurred while we were in Paris. On our first day there, we stopped for lunch in a little cafe called the Cafe-philo des Phares on the Place de la Bastille. I immediately noticed my favorite appetizer on their menu and ordered it. I should note that my gazpacho tasting has become a kind of hobby — kind of like people who are wine connoisseurs. I want to experience the different varieties available to me but I also want to evaluate and rank them.

The best gazpacho I’ve ever had was in Michigan while PJ lived there for a year. He took me to Kruse and Muer, and we quickly fell in love with their soup. (I also had a great shepherd’s pie at a different restaurant in Michigan, but that’s a different blog entry!) I prefer a balance between the tomato broth and the chunky vegetables. The Michigan gazpacho was perfectly balanced in its quotient of broth to tomatoes to cucumber. (The cucumber is key for me.) I also like a bit of tanginess, which I now know if achieved by using the right amount of lemon juice.

(more…)

 

« Previous Page — Next Page »