I truly expected more from the estimable Francine Prose, whose New Yorker pieces exemplify intellectual rigour and a lively feminism. (Witness her commentary on the bizarre cancellation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s upcoming novel due to the fear of upsetting certain people.)
Louise Penny is a wildly popular Canadian mystery author whose books sell very well at Shelf Life, so I figured I ought to check out her Inspector Ganache. Found a talking book of Glass Houses at the library and listened to it in the car on a road trip.
Friends, it has been a while since I yelled at the radio, but I was yelling at mine when a crucial plot device, the cobrador, which had already been explained by cop A to cop B, was then explained AGAIN by Cop B to Cop C back at the station. Give me a break, Louise, I yelled. I really was paying attention the first time. It’s insulting, dammit.
On July 25th, the Globe and Mail published an opinion piece by Kenneth Whyte called Overdue. Here’s my response.
Lately I’ve been getting a little irritated at Facebook boastings about all the great and lofty things that people are accomplishing in these COVID days. The ten best lists that highlight a person’s erudition or sophistication, for one thing. So announcing that I have been using this time of self isolation to finally tackle the greatest novel in English risks sounding like a boast. If so, I humbly apologize.
About six years ago, I posted a piece called Westie Wonk on my website – about how in adopting Betsy from the Pound, I had accidentally joined a club. A club in which I can be approached by a total stranger and asked, “Is that a Westie? I’ve got a Westie too! Aren’t they great?”
Though there probably are exceptions, I think that the worst thing an author can do is to read his/her own work. In almost every case, this is a very bad idea.
I loved this book so much that I held it to my lips and kissed the back cover a moment after I read the last page.
I can’t believe that people aren’t outraged and insulted by Midnight in Paris. I cannot fathom how it got an Oscar for screenplay.
The frictionless and cheap online shopping offered by Amazon causes us to make choices that undermine, damage, even destroy the things we truly value – our communities, our social lives, our choices, the very quality of our lives.
I am engaged in a dispute with a woman who signs off the emails detailing her outrageous demands and ridiculous accusations with the phrase “kind regards.” Her minion, who is unfailingly insulting, obstreperous, and rude, has also begun to sign off her emails the...
On the street next to mine, last fall, I noticed that one of the local parents had gone up and down the block with chalk, and had carefully labeled various items by printing in neat letters on the sidewalk.
The world is becoming less literate all the time. Have you ever read the ads on Kijiji? People don’t know how to spell the word “table”. And forget about the difference between “your” and “you’re”. And the apostrophe?
If I write a blog about my cute dog, then I court The Dog Problem. I have been aware of The Dog Problem for some time (it is a relative of the Cat Video or an F bomb – not a lowbrow easy laugh, but a lazy emotional conveyance) but I had never heard that name put to it until a workshop last spring with Meg Wolitzer…
“In England, art was much less likely to be mentioned in polite society than sexual perversions or methods of torture; the word ‘elitist’ could be spat out with the same confident contempt as ‘coward’ at a court martial. It seemed as if prejudice could not be banished without driving some other topic, once freely discussed, or even admired, into a shameful exile…
I didn’t mean to become one. My preferred dog breed is “mutt”. But there she was, at the Pound. Skinny, scared. A breeding bitch. Finally spayed at age seven after being surrendered by an owner who “didn’t like her”…
I suppose what made Mad Men work was that it brought 21st Century eyes to the sixties. And many details are so dead on. The smoking, the drinking—now in season 6 the ridiculous whorish makeup and stiff hair and crotch-skimming miniskirts. The women look insane. Mutant. Impossibly girlish. The womanly styles of the earlier years were so much more attractive, I think.
As the show went on, it lapsed into the usual preoccupation with people’s sex lives, with racial, cultural, social changes pushed to the fringes of the narrative, but the first few episodes of Mad Men delighted me – the sight of kids rolling around untethered in the back seat of a station wagon.
It happened that I was travelling when I heard the news that Mavis Gallant had died. And it bugged me that I had no one to talk to about her. As a writer, she was more to be admired than loved. Her prose was terribly dense, her themes rarely transparent....
I know a fair amount about Philip Roth. I’ve seen two films based on his work – namely Goodbye Columbus, years ago, and The Human Stain, recently (and holy moly, what an incredible amount of PLOT there is!)…
It would be redundant, excessively obvious, to say “the ruins of” wouldn’t it? My guide, Stefano, probably a closet fascist, said “Madame would you mind if I show you the red light district?”
Could I have said no? I suppose I could have but I did not. I was still glowing from his earlier compliment: “Madame, you are very smart. You ask very good questions.”
I wanted to see the documentary Google and the World Brain because the title and synopsis addressed a fear of mine – that Google is conniving to empty out libraries and archives, digitize everything, make us all forget how to do research, how to dig, how to find stuff out the way we used to – and once we are entirely powerless and in their thrall, to start CHARGING us for the information we seek.