A Halloween Book

When I moved to Ohio, I was startled to find that sometimes people here don't celebrate Halloween on Oct. 31. Instead, they declare some other night to be "beggar's night" because it's before daylight savings time ends and they don't want to let children walk around in the dark, or because there's a high school football game and god forbid anything else should be happening in town, or just because. Lately, though, most of Ohio seems to have gotten with the program on when Halloween is. They've stopped calling green peppers on pizza "mangoes," too. I guess even rural parts of the country have gotten less provincial in recent years.

As if you can't tell, I'm a big believer in celebrating holidays on the day, rather than on the day "observed." And I like to experience a season thoroughly, including the books I'm reading. Well, for Halloween, I've been teaching the last act of Othello (in which Iago says he won't tell anyone why he's been so evil--as if he doesn't have a motive and just did it because he could) and listening to the audiobook of Ariana Franklin's The Serpent's Tale, which picks up a few months after the ending of her previous novel, Mistress of the Art of Death.

This new novel centers around the poisoning death of Rosamund Clifford in a tower surrounded by a serpent maze. Adelia, now living with her baby in England, and Rowley, now the Bishop of St. Alban's and trying to live up to his vow of chastity, travel to the tower to investigate and get caught up in fictionalized events involving the nuns at Godstow and the arrival of Queen Eleanor of Acquitaine. Now, I'm a fan of books about Eleanor and I named my daughter after her. But this Eleanor is way less heroic and even less fun than usual. Despite an elderly nun's effort to open Adelia's eyes to the way Eleanor is trying to subvert the misogyny of the twelfth century from within the system, Adelia's anachronistic and straightforward style cannot be thwarted. So, even though I'm rarely irritated by the way historical characters are treated in historical fiction, this one got under my skin a little. Still, it's a good story and kept me well entertained on the road. And there are plenty of dead bodies, including Rosamund's, which is prominently featured.

Even though I like holidays, I have decided not to become one of those older ladies who acquire a holiday sweater for each one. I'm wearing black today. Eleanor is wearing purple jeans and a purple blazer with a green vest and going out as the Joker tonight. Walker has a tailcoat and is going out as Napoleon (he and I are amused at this, since he's about five foot three, so short adult height). We have carved four jack-o-lanterns for our front porch. We will make sure our cats come in before it gets dark, especially Chester, who is black.

Do you think that the more history you know, the more irritated you become when fiction writers take liberties? If so, is becoming curmudgeonly inevitable if you hope to become wise?

See the Movie First

This fall, I've seen two movies that couldn't possibly live up to the books, City of Ember and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.

To use Eleanor's word, City of Ember is "cheesy." There was no reason to add huge, bloodthirsty animals except that it added some excitement to the movie. If you like that sort of thing.

There was definitely no reason to follow Norah's friend Caroline throughout the movie version of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist when she's out of the picture fairly quickly in the book, particularly as it led to one of my all-time least favorite scenes in a movie ever--the close-up vomit scene.

Luckily, I saw the Nick and Norah movie before I read the book, and that's the way to do it, if you want to enjoy the movie. (Isn't that pretty much the rule with all movies--are there any movies that are actually better than the book?)

The book is wonderful! It alternates chapters between Nick, written by David Levithan, and Norah, written by Rachel Cohn. Early on in the evening, Nick is trying to talk to Norah about where they could go next, and the conversation culminates in this exchange:
"Know any other bands playing?"
Tumbleweed blowing down the armrest between us.
"Wanna watch some nuns make out?"
Am I even speaking out loud?
"Maybe see if E.T. is up for a threeway?"
This time she looks at me. And if she isn't exactly smiling, at least I think I see the potential for a smile there.
"No," she says. "I'd much rather watch some nuns make out."

Later Norah refers back to the E.T. proposition in a charming way that makes you realize that she was, in fact, paying very close attention to everything Nick has said the entire evening. I also enjoyed the movie quotations they each throw out, to see if the other one recognizes them, especially this one of Norah's:
I stand up from the table and wiggle my index finger at Nick. He'll never get it, but I borrow from Heathers as I leave him to follow Tris. "A true friend's work is never done," I singsong.
"Bulemia is so '87, Heather," he answers.

There are several almost-sex scenes, including one from Norah's perspective, against an ice machine in a hotel, where they're discovered by an elderly couple and Nick says:
"would you be a dear and shut the light off again on your way back out?" and then the elderly woman says "Oh my"...but bless her heart, she does flick the light switch back off, but not before shooting me one parting look, and I swear in that last lingering second, I see that she recognizes my hunger because she's felt it at some point in her life, too, and she winks at me before they're gone....
I also like it that they don't end up having sex on this particular night, and that Norah says "I want him so very much, but it's too soon. I have to figure, with this many stops and starts, surely this train will pull out of the station eventually. What's the big fucking rush?"

The way the novel gets its title is also a nice part of the story, and Nick tells it. He's been writing a song for Norah, and says "I shouldn't want the song to end. I always think of each night as a song. Or each moment as a song. But now I'm seeing we don't live in a single song. We move from song to song, from lyric to lyric, from chord to chord. There is no ending here. It's an infinite playlist."

Many of us have songs that we associate with certain periods in our lives. Sometimes there's an interesting overlay, like how the music I was listening to in the car with Walker this summer--the soundtrack from Mama Mia--made me remember dancing to ABBA's "Dancing Queen" the year I was seventeen and also made me think of last winter, when I adopted the Scissor Sisters' "I don't feel like dancing" as my theme song during my recuperation from knee replacement.

So, two questions for you, dear reader. Is there a movie that's better than the book? And is there a song or musical theme you associate with a certain period in your life?

Is this for a grade?

It's single parent week here. My oldest has rehearsals for her high school musical (HMS Pinafore) all week, after school and in the evening. She just "broke up" with the guy she's been dating (he texted her and said "very well, will you do this, or should I?" because, evidently, there's no such thing as no-fault dating, at least in the local high school). My youngest has started a chess club and has soccer practices in the early evening, culminating in the end-of-season tournament this weekend. I have symphony rehearsal tonight, and so had to finish grading my pile of papers (I finished! Just now!) because I couldn't work on them into the evening.

I should feel like I can't do any lasting psychological harm to my kids, since I won't see them all that much. But sometimes I get a bit snappish when I'm running on little sleep and there's so much chauffeuring to be done. Then I think of this poem:

This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Well, too late for that. They'll just have to go on being had. But I can work on not handing on too much misery this week at home. They're in 8th and 10th grade, after all--that's misery enough, if you think about it. Especially when we all have to get up an hour and a half before sunrise to start our long days.

Stage (and screen) Beauty

I've been teaching Othello at the college I commute to. As you know, it's my favorite Shakespeare tragedy. And I've been getting ready for a presentation to the Board of Trustees about the Writing Center (student tutoring service) that I run at the local college. And I still haven't finished grading that third pile of papers. So I haven't been reading much at all.

The most fun I've had in the land of fiction has been going through all the film versions of Othello that I own and borrow from libraries, and I've rediscovered a movie that wasn't as big a commercial success as it deserved. It's entitled Stage Beauty, and it stars Billy Crudup and Claire Danes. The story centers around productions of Othello, and the final scene is an (anachronistic) entirely passionate and satisfying conclusion to the story and to the play within it. That's a good trick, wouldn't you say?

My favorite version of Othello has to be the severely edited Kenneth Branagh/Oliver Parker one that came out in 1995. But I also like Janet Suzman's 2000 South African cast, and Tim Blake Nelson's and Geoffrey Sax's 2001 screenplay versions.

Do you have a favorite movie based on a Shakespeare play?

ATTENTION ROBOTS!!!

I VOTED TODAY! SO QUIT CALLING ME!!!!!!!

WARNING

ACCORDING TO WHATEVER, TODAY IS INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY!!!!!
AND AS HE OBSERVES, IT LOOKS EVEN BETTER WITH PLENTY OF EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I WANT TO WARN YOU AGAINST READING MEG ROSOFF'S NEW NOVEL, ENTITLED WHAT I WAS. IT IS ONE OF THE WORST BOOKS I'VE TRIED TO READ ALL YEAR. I FOUND A COPY AT THE PUBLIC LIBRARY AND BROUGHT IT HOME BECAUSE I LOVED HOW I LIVE NOW. IT IS ONE OF THE BEST YA NOVELS I'VE EVER READ, AND I RECOMMEND IT TO YOU A HUNDRED TIMES OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BUT I HATED WHAT I WAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ELEANOR TRIED TO WARN ME. SHE READ THE BLURB ON THE BACK AND SAID "LOOK, A BOARDING SCHOOL BOY WHO SHATTERS THE LIFE OF A FRIEND NAMED FINN!!! HOW ORIGINAL!!!" (SHE JUST READ A SEPARATE PIECE AS A SCHOOL ASSIGNMENT.)
BUT WHAT I WAS TURNS OUT NOT TO BE AN IMITATION OF A SEPARATE PIECE, DESPITE THE BLURB. JUST RESIST PICKING IT UP IN THE FIRST PLACE. OR IF YOU DON'T RESIST, DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But Did He Jump, Or Was He Pushed?

I was amused to see this snippet of dialogue over at Spynotes yesterday:

AJ: [To his mom, Harriet: read about] Schrödinger’s Cat.
Harriet: Oh yes. [reads the section in question to AJ]. So do you understand what that’s about?
AJ: It’s not a real cat.
Harriet: That’s right.
AJ: And they won’t know if she’s alive or dead until they open the box.
Harriet: Sort of. But what Schrodinger’s saying is that it’s not that we don’t know until we open the box, but that the cat is neither dead nor alive until we open the box. It’s not just about what we don’t know. It’s the fact that we don’t know it changes what the cat is.
AJ: Oh! Like Coyote and Road Runner!
Harriet: [looking puzzled] What do you mean?
AJ: It’s like how Coyote doesn’t fall until he looks down. There’s no gravity until he notices there’s no gravity.
Harriet: I never thought of that, but that’s exactly how it is.

My amusement stems from the fact that I recently came across Nick Flynn's poem "Cartoon Physics, Part 1":

Children under, say, ten, shouldn't know
that the universe is ever-expanding,
inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies

swallowed by galaxies, whole

solar systems collapsing, all of it
acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning

the rules of cartoon animation,

that if a man draws a door on a rock
only he can pass through it.
Anyone else who tries

will crash into the rock. Ten-year-olds
should stick with burning houses, car wrecks,
ships going down--earthbound, tangible

disasters, arenas

where they can be heroes. You can run
back into a burning house, sinking ships
have lifeboats, the trucks will come
with their ladders, if you jump

you will be saved. A child

places her hand on the roof of a schoolbus,
& drives across a city of sand. She knows

the exact spot it will skid, at which point
the bridge will give, who will swim to safety
& who will be pulled under by sharks. She will learn

that if a man runs off the edge of a cliff
he will not fall

until he notices his mistake.

My amusement also stems from the fact that I know A.J. is only in the second grade (and so younger than ten), but from reading about him for a while, I can tell that he's one of those kids who is ready to plunge into things more advanced than the rest of his age group is ready for.

I have one just like that at home. People like the speaker of this poem will say "oh, you're pushing him into things he's not ready for." I say that the only way I could keep him from jumping in is to hold him back.