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missroseroseHello, book-friends! The Joffrey is putting on Giselle, which I've wanted to see literally since I was in the single digits. I inherited my mother's beautiful oversized book of illustrated ballet stories, with the most gorgeous art, done (I think?) in oils and in a sort of half-classical, half-Impressionist fashion; I remember the characters were portrayed in more naturalistic settings than they would have been onstage but still were always dancing, and the artist had a real gift for getting across that sense of movement, as well as heightened realism. (I remember wishing I could visit these places where dance seemed to be as natural a part of life as eating and sleeping. This probably also explains my love of musicals, heh.) It told the stories of several famous ballets, such as Petrushka and Swan Lake and Coppelia, but I always loved the fierce romanticism of Giselle. This is the last weekend for it, and between now and next Tuesday I have exactly one night - Thursday - when I'm not teaching or massaging or picking Brian up from the airport or something.
Guess who just bought a ticket for Thursday night? I may be tired this week, but dammit, I'll have my art.
What I've just finished reading
The Hummingbird's Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea. Finally finished this book, and I continue to have mixed feelings about it. I'd say the second half is far stronger than the first; there's more of a feeling of cause and effect, less of "things are happening because stuff just arbitrarily happens because it's God's will and/or we're all at the mercy of life/chance/politics/the elements/the universe and we just have to suffer through and get on with it". (That is pretty much the philosophy of Teresita's people, and while that's maybe not surprising - being a subjugated class living in squalor is unlikely to give anyone much sense of agency - it's more than a bit depressing to read about.) I really liked Don Tomás' arc, how he goes from being basically an overgrown boy playing at macho-ness into a man who cares for his family and his ranch; it reminded me of Steinbeck's Flight, in the scene where Pepé Torres' mother tells him he's not a man yet, because "a boy grows into a man when a man is needed." I could've done without the (luckily mostly implied) sexual assault on Teresita that causes her death (and eventual resurrection with healing superpowers); I don't know whether that was part of the historical record or artistic license, but seriously, isn't there another way for women in fiction to come into their powers? That said, I enjoyed the rising political tension in the last section, and the payoff - where Teresita defeats the distant President Díaz by forestalling the bloody battle he'd set her up to incite, purely by the power of her charisma and the belief of her people in her message of peace - was genuinely satisfying. I see that there's a sequel telling the story of her subsequent banishment to America; I'm tempted (you see so few stories of saints and holy people who actually get to have lives outside of their callings, especially with women!) but not sure I'm down for another four-hundred-plus pages right now.
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, by Ruth Franklin. This is a satisfyingly in-depth look at Jackson's life and works; I particularly like how the author ties together the themes that haunt her life and her stories and show how the effectiveness of her seemingly contradictory genre work (both psychological horror and lighthearted domestic humor, much to the puzzlement of many critics) came from the same wellspring of love, frustration, ambivalence, and repression. It's a little odd, then, that after hundreds of pages arguing that her abilities were far more varied than most critics seemed to grasp, Franklin walks it all back in the last couple of pages, putting Jackson precisely into the "horror writer" pigeonhole that Jackson herself loathed. Did she feel that Jackson's dual-classing made her ineligible for literary canonization? Similarly, while I realize a biography's going to end pretty soon after the subject's death, I would've liked a little more retrospective as to her effects on future writers, as well as maybe some more input from her children. The evidence Franklin presents heavily implies that she'd finally decided to leave her dysfunctional marriage when she died of a heart attack; it's more than a little tragic, but also strangely satisfying, as her children report she seemed oddly happy and at peace during her last few months. Still, after spending a lifetime under constant criticism from her mother and then her husband, I'm sad she never quite got the opportunity to see whom she would grow into on her own, without it. Perhaps the prospect was just too terrifying.
What I'm currently reading
Howl's Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones. I've seen the Miyazaki adaptation of this story a couple of times and quite enjoyed it, and although I've just started the book it's already cleared up a lot of questions I had about Sophie's state of mind at the start. In the film she comes across as weirdly complacent and unemotional, almost depressed - she talks about how she doesn't think she's pretty and how she's content to just sew hats in her shop, but that doesn't seem to account for her passivity. In the book, we learn that she's the eldest of three children in a fairytale land, and everyone knows it's unlucky to be born first of three - when you and your sisters set out to seek your fortune, you're bound to be rude to an old lady, or to miss the tinker's advice, or insult a wizard in disguise or make one of any number of other mistakes that can lead to all kinds of nasty outcomes. Given that weight of expectation, it's far less surprising that she'd prefer to meekly take the path laid out for her, sitting in her parents' shop sewing hats.
My Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante. Elena and Lila are friends growing up on the outskirts of Naples in the 1950s (I think? the year isn't mentioned but at the start, when the women are grown, it mentions that Lila had become a computer whiz who started in the days of punch cards). They're pretty clearly underprivileged, Lila a little more so than Elena, but haven't quite figured that out yet; everyone around them (with the possible exception of the mysterious and menacing Don Achille) is poor, so they have no real basis for comparison. Elena is smart, but Lila is, as the title implies, brilliant; also rebellious, angry, and brash, but with flashes of compassion at the strangest times. Their relationship is an odd one; I dislike the trendy-teen-ness of "frenemy", but it does fit the way they seem to simultaneously bring out the best and the worst in each other. I'm not terribly far in but I am enjoying how skilled Ferrante is at evoking the heightened emotions of childhood, the acute pain of every small betrayal, and the lessons we have to learn surprisingly quickly.
What I plan to read next
Still eyeing Gaiman's Norse Mythology, although I'm eager to get to Ancillary Sword too - in my copious spare time (hah).
Guess who just bought a ticket for Thursday night? I may be tired this week, but dammit, I'll have my art.
What I've just finished reading
The Hummingbird's Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea. Finally finished this book, and I continue to have mixed feelings about it. I'd say the second half is far stronger than the first; there's more of a feeling of cause and effect, less of "things are happening because stuff just arbitrarily happens because it's God's will and/or we're all at the mercy of life/chance/politics/the elements/the universe and we just have to suffer through and get on with it". (That is pretty much the philosophy of Teresita's people, and while that's maybe not surprising - being a subjugated class living in squalor is unlikely to give anyone much sense of agency - it's more than a bit depressing to read about.) I really liked Don Tomás' arc, how he goes from being basically an overgrown boy playing at macho-ness into a man who cares for his family and his ranch; it reminded me of Steinbeck's Flight, in the scene where Pepé Torres' mother tells him he's not a man yet, because "a boy grows into a man when a man is needed." I could've done without the (luckily mostly implied) sexual assault on Teresita that causes her death (and eventual resurrection with healing superpowers); I don't know whether that was part of the historical record or artistic license, but seriously, isn't there another way for women in fiction to come into their powers? That said, I enjoyed the rising political tension in the last section, and the payoff - where Teresita defeats the distant President Díaz by forestalling the bloody battle he'd set her up to incite, purely by the power of her charisma and the belief of her people in her message of peace - was genuinely satisfying. I see that there's a sequel telling the story of her subsequent banishment to America; I'm tempted (you see so few stories of saints and holy people who actually get to have lives outside of their callings, especially with women!) but not sure I'm down for another four-hundred-plus pages right now.
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, by Ruth Franklin. This is a satisfyingly in-depth look at Jackson's life and works; I particularly like how the author ties together the themes that haunt her life and her stories and show how the effectiveness of her seemingly contradictory genre work (both psychological horror and lighthearted domestic humor, much to the puzzlement of many critics) came from the same wellspring of love, frustration, ambivalence, and repression. It's a little odd, then, that after hundreds of pages arguing that her abilities were far more varied than most critics seemed to grasp, Franklin walks it all back in the last couple of pages, putting Jackson precisely into the "horror writer" pigeonhole that Jackson herself loathed. Did she feel that Jackson's dual-classing made her ineligible for literary canonization? Similarly, while I realize a biography's going to end pretty soon after the subject's death, I would've liked a little more retrospective as to her effects on future writers, as well as maybe some more input from her children. The evidence Franklin presents heavily implies that she'd finally decided to leave her dysfunctional marriage when she died of a heart attack; it's more than a little tragic, but also strangely satisfying, as her children report she seemed oddly happy and at peace during her last few months. Still, after spending a lifetime under constant criticism from her mother and then her husband, I'm sad she never quite got the opportunity to see whom she would grow into on her own, without it. Perhaps the prospect was just too terrifying.
What I'm currently reading
Howl's Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones. I've seen the Miyazaki adaptation of this story a couple of times and quite enjoyed it, and although I've just started the book it's already cleared up a lot of questions I had about Sophie's state of mind at the start. In the film she comes across as weirdly complacent and unemotional, almost depressed - she talks about how she doesn't think she's pretty and how she's content to just sew hats in her shop, but that doesn't seem to account for her passivity. In the book, we learn that she's the eldest of three children in a fairytale land, and everyone knows it's unlucky to be born first of three - when you and your sisters set out to seek your fortune, you're bound to be rude to an old lady, or to miss the tinker's advice, or insult a wizard in disguise or make one of any number of other mistakes that can lead to all kinds of nasty outcomes. Given that weight of expectation, it's far less surprising that she'd prefer to meekly take the path laid out for her, sitting in her parents' shop sewing hats.
My Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante. Elena and Lila are friends growing up on the outskirts of Naples in the 1950s (I think? the year isn't mentioned but at the start, when the women are grown, it mentions that Lila had become a computer whiz who started in the days of punch cards). They're pretty clearly underprivileged, Lila a little more so than Elena, but haven't quite figured that out yet; everyone around them (with the possible exception of the mysterious and menacing Don Achille) is poor, so they have no real basis for comparison. Elena is smart, but Lila is, as the title implies, brilliant; also rebellious, angry, and brash, but with flashes of compassion at the strangest times. Their relationship is an odd one; I dislike the trendy-teen-ness of "frenemy", but it does fit the way they seem to simultaneously bring out the best and the worst in each other. I'm not terribly far in but I am enjoying how skilled Ferrante is at evoking the heightened emotions of childhood, the acute pain of every small betrayal, and the lessons we have to learn surprisingly quickly.
What I plan to read next
Still eyeing Gaiman's Norse Mythology, although I'm eager to get to Ancillary Sword too - in my copious spare time (hah).
