Morality Tale by Sylvia Brownrigg and Monica Scott
Reviewed by Aisling Foster
Times Literary Supplement
"Nobody wants to be a second wife . . . . It's like moving into a new house that still has half the previous owner's furniture in it. You'd like to get rid of the all-plaid living-room set, but somehow you're stuck with it, forever.
"In my case, the plaid living-room set is called Theresa."
Morality tales are never quite like this. This one is set in California, in "a country where a divorce occurs every thirty seconds"; each character is a blend of modern knowingness and storybook classic. The narrator is delightfully lacking in the preachy righteousness of the genre, describing the confusion of a woman who, after five years of marriage, finds herself pushed aside as her husband and hysterical ex-wife continue to tear one another apart. Living in the same neighbourhood and sharing custody of their two children, Theresa produces a non-stop flood of telephone calls and bills, causing him to approach the mail box "like a person heading off into the rioting streets, with a flashlight and a club
Recently I was having a discussion with a publisher's sales rep about Steve Erickson's Zeroville, one of my favorite novels of 2007. The novel is set in the era of 1970s Hollywood, which produced films ranging from Bonnie and Clyde to The Godfather to Apocalypse Now. The rep is someone I often discuss films with, and he was mentioning that he had finally gotten around to reading Zeroville. Through the course of our conversation, I asked if he'd read another great novel centered on the movies, this one from 1991 and recently republished, called Flicker. He had never heard of it.
A quick sampling of my fellow readers/cineastes turned up a similar result. Almost nobody had heard of Flicker, and even those who had never actually read it. I might have missed this book myself if somebody else hadn't pointed it out a few years ago.
Flicker is a novel that presents the reader with the world of movies just as film studies was emerging as a serious academic discipline. The protagonist is Jonathan Gates,
Created by Simon Oliver and Tony Moore, the comic centers on an ex-con who joins an exterminator company, working with a freakish supporting cast of characters.
In its Showtime incarnation, "Exterminators" will revolve around the Bug-Be-Gone crew, an extended dysfunctional family of exterminators whose greatest enemies aren't the insects and rodents they meet and kill on a daily basis but rather their own self doubts, vices and inner demons.
"[A] comics classic in the making," raves Booklist.
The original comic...followed a tribe of elves known as the Wolfriders in their attempts to survive and link with other dispersed elves on an Earth-like planet with two moons while on the lookout for tribes of humans and trolls, both of which acted as allies and enemies.
Thurber most recently directed an adaptation of Michael Chabon's debut novel The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. ...
We won a close one against Bridges in the second round, but we're up against Plunging Necklines in round three — and we're pretty far behind.
Of course, I would never tell you how you should vote... but if you feel so inclined, drop by the tournament and choose whether you prefer a bit o' decolletage or 2 million used and new books.
Who Watches the Twilight Trailer? Did anyone not skip work to see The Dark Knight? Maybe it's just people I know. Anyway, in honor of the new Batman flick's opening weekend, I thought going I might just stick a bunch of movie trailers up here and call it a day.
No good? Maybe there's book news somewhere? Fine, I'll keep looking.
In the meantime, all you swoony teenage vampire romance types can sink your fangs into the new Twilight trailer:
Unfortunately, I can't embed the new Watchmen trailer yet — but I can provide a link to the Apple page, where you can view it in all its glory.
Although mean Nurse Ratched was pure fiction, the Oregon State Hospital has struggled with some very real troubles over the years, including overcrowding, crumbling floors and ceilings, outbreaks of scabies and stomach flu, sexual abuse of children by staff members, and patient-on-patient assaults.
[...] Although Cuckoo's Nest was filmed here, neither the movie nor the 1962 Ken Kesey novel on which it was based makes any specific references to Oregon State Hospital. Kesey drew on his experiences working at a veterans hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., and set his satirical story at an unnamed institution in Oregon.
One hopes the new facility will be completed in time to serve as the location for the remake of Cuckoo's Nest, starring future Academy Award-winner Adam Sandler.
Losing Neverland: Is it time again to wonder if Peter Pan author J. M. Barrie was a pedophile? Seems like it's been a few weeks since the last round of speculation.
Dudgeon's portrait of Barrie — as a man who filled the vacuum of his own sexual impotence by a compulsive desire to possess the family who inspired his most famous creation, Peter Pan — is entirely at odds with the Hollywood version, Finding Neverland, in which Johnny Depp portrayed the author as a charming hero, devoted to large dogs and small children. Here was the quirky little man who had already been celebrated by his contemporaries as a genius with a great heart, not least for his bequest of the copyright of Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, thus ensuring that the golden fairy-dust of his writing was liberally sprinkled over those in need.
It should also be noted that the real Barrie looks nothing like Johnny Depp. Not even in Jack Sparrow mode.
Also, I confess I never realized Daphne du Maurier was one of the children Barrie looked after/compulsively desired, depending on which version of events you believe. That makes me a bit more interested.
Mark Your Place In Case You're Wrong: You have encountered a resurgence of Choose Your Own Adventure-style stories, this time on the Internet.
Do you:
(A) Click on the link to read them?
(B) Back slowly away from your computer, hoping it's just a short-lived case of nostalgia?
(C) Swing your pick-axe at the Yeti's head and hope the Martian Warlords don't fire their phasers before you can reach the Time Warp back to Shangri-La?
Choose wisely...
Tin Summer: Fearless Leader Dave Weich attended a reading at the Tin House Summer Writing Workshop on Wednesday night, and came back with these photos of the event.
In a few cities around the country we've gotten access to bicycles and been able to tour around. This is my preferred method of sightseeing, as the pace is slow enough to take in detail but not so slow as to only see a small slice. You get to stop wherever you want for as long as you want when you do see something cool, unlike with public transit (or even a car, for that matter, since parking is always an issue). We've done some great biking in Chicago, Minneapolis, and Albuquerque, and even rented a tandem bike and cruised down the bike path from Santa Monica to Venice Beach to check out the tchotchkes people have for sale there.
Talking to cyclists, one thing that's been disappointing to us is the derisive attitudes towards electric bicycles. I was hoping this pigheadedness was limited to my own particular circle of bicyclists in North Carolina. Americans, it seems, cannot do any activity without turning it into something competitive. Take Frisbee, for example. Here's a simple sport that anyone can play in a relaxing way. But there's a problem: there's nothing ...
Reviewed by Jane Smiley
Washington Post Book World
Jack, 65, builder, often a Muse. Jane, 58, writer, often amused. In their bed in the house that Jack built.
Jack: What are you reading?
Jane: Intercourse.
Jack: What is that? Is it a novel?
Jane: I can't tell. It's cute: 50 short monologues, in pairs, from various couples while they're having sex. His previous book like this was about severed heads. You know, those alleged seconds between when the head is cut off and the brain dies.
Jack: This must be more of a comedy.
Jane: It has its ups and downs. There's a pair of newlyweds who are interrupted by the sinking of the Titanic. On the other hand, he has the same woman sleeping with Hitler and JFK.
Jack: Wow. Is that true?
Jane: Well, JFK is a very young man, during World War II. I'm willing to suspend disbelief.
Jack: How long do you have to suspend it for?
Jane: About four hundred words altogether.
Jack: Who's the first couple?
Jane: Adam and Eve. I would have started with Gaia and Uranus, myself, and gotten some Big Bang theory in.
This Land Is Their Land is a collection of short essays, mostly previously unpublished in print. The largest single theme is the increasing division of America into the rich and the rest of us. But there's a lot more here, plus plenty of bold new ideas — such as the need for veterinary care for children and abstinence training for middle-aged people... and how the economy would benefit from replacing our current CEOs with undocumented immigrants.
Introduce one other author you think people should read, and suggest a good book with which to start.
How about my son Ben Ehrenreich, author of the brilliant novel The Suitors. Or his friend Seshu Foster, author of Atomik Aztec.
Writers are better liars than other people: true or false?
Fiction writers should be better liars since they're always making things up, but I haven't known my son to tell a lie since he was 14 and took the car off for a spin.
How did the last good book you read end up in your hands and why did you read it?
On the fiction side, I'm reading River of Gods by Ian McDonald right now because a friend recommended it. I'm addicted to novels and am terrified that I'll run out someday and have to live in the real world full-time.
What makes your favorite pair of shoes better than the rest?
"Buried in that book is this white-knuckle four-hour flight that frames out the most dangerous moment in the history of the world," Davis said. "As Fidel Castro was trying to convince Khrushchev to let these missiles fly, this pilot is (initially) unaware he's flown off course. The Soviets think they're being attacked and get their bombers up to 50,000 feet. The plane (is about to run) out of gas, and this pilot has to get out of the Soviet Union before his plane drops down to where those Soviet planes are waiting for him."
"[A] book with sobering new information about the world's only superpower nuclear confrontation," declares the New York Times.
Known for her sly, compact poems that revel in wordplay and internal rhymes, Ms. Ryan has won a carriage full of poetry prizes for her funny and philosophical work, including awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1994, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, worth $100,000.
[...] Ms. Ryan has carved out a life conducive to poetry writing. She has taught the same remedial English course at the College of Marin in Kentfield, Calif., for more than 30 years. When asked if she thought her new position would make it harder to write, she replied, "No, uh-uh. I think it will make it impossible."
For those who were wondering, the position of Poet Laureate comes with an annual stipend of $15 million, the use of a sprawling, plantation-style mansion in a gorgeous Virginia suburb, an entourage of assistants including your own Secret Service detail, and instant worldwide recognition from every man, woman, and child in the United States.
PV stands for photovoltaic, or solar electric, for those of you on the learning curve out there.
I'm a PV installer, and also a licensed electrician. I went to electrical and solar school and apprenticed under an electrician in order to get my electrical license — specifically to be a solar installer.
So here's my confession: I might be nearing the end of my PV career. But let me explain! I used to get the biggest thrill from PV. I loved seeing and touching the panels, their shiny black blueness, their silver electric lines, the magic that, without sound or motion or pollution, turns sunlight into electricity. (How cool is that, anyway?) I even loved inverters, the straight-laced, complex electronic boxes with snazzy graphics that turn the panels' direct current (DC) into the AC current we use in our houses.
I had hoped it would be a long-term relationship, a marriage so to speak, and I have to ask myself, is the honeymoon over and I now need to adjust to the longer-term commitment, more stable but not quite so exciting?
Stephen and Rebekah Hren live in Durham, North Carolina, where they are both actively involved with renewable energy, natural building, and edible urban gardening.
Writer, photographer, and naturalist Stephen Trimble has won awards for his nonfiction, his fiction, and his photography, including the Ansel Adams Award from the Sierra Club.
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Stephen Trimble
