I mentioned this in a recent comment, but for those of you who don't read those obsessively, and who use this blog as a convenient way to keep up on my general whereabouts, here's the news: I have a job. About a month ago, I got laid off from Project Renewal. The city's fiscal crisis spelled budget cuts for the agency, and since I was paid out of overhead, they could no longer afford my services. (They also laid off our Director of Real Estate, in what I called the Great MBA Purge of 2003.) But the budget cuts also mean that PRI needs to step up the fundraising efforts, so they asked me to put my grantwriting hat back on and help out. I still had to attend an exciting Unemployment Orientation at the NYS Dept of Labor yesterday (actually, it was Mostly Painless) but for a while at least I'm off the dole.
Wednesday I celebrated the end of my Vast Free Time by going to a matinee of Stone Reader, a film about a book. I'd read a review and was intrigued: the documentarian had this book, The Stones of Summer, which he had bought in 1972 but not read for a good 25 years. He loves the book. He wants to read more by the author, Dow Mossman. But Mossman never wrote anything else, and apparently just disappeared. So he sets out to find him.
That's the general plot, but mostly it's a meditation on reading, and our relationship with books. Which sounds kind of deadly for a movie, I know, but Moskowitz makes you want to run, not walk, to your nearest bookstore (or library!) and read. And read. And read some more. He interviews lots of people along the way, many of whom are entirely tangential to finding Dow Mossman, but who like to talk about books, like Arthur Fiedler, author of Love and Death in the American Novel. There are some beautiful sequences, including a section where Moskowitz talks about discovering Catch-22 -- although I would gripe that there are just too many shots of falling leaves while the Windam Hillian soundtrack hums. ("What's the moon got to do with it?" is one of the first questions posed in the movie, by the cinematographer, although astute readers will note the Harold and the Purple Crayon reference.) I won't tell if Moskowitz finds the author, or what happened to Mossman (OK, OK -- he's a sled!), but I do wanna know: Xeni, is this required watching at Iowa?
The Stones of Summer is still out of print, although you can buy a copy of it on Ebay -- bidding now stands at $750.
Hey! I should get back to work.
| Literary Theory | Documentaries |
As fairly regular reader of non-fiction history and organized crime stuff, and most James Ellroy novels, I have to offer these approximate and contrarian quotes from Paul's Grandfather in "A Hard Day's Night", when he sees Ringo sitting in a room reading a book:
Paul's Grandfather: What'chu doin' with that book?! (says "book" with great contempt)
Ringo: (surprised) I'm readin' it. Why?
PG: (anger building) You sittin' in here, readin' a stupid book when there's a whole world out there to parade about in?! To see things in?! To have adventures?!
R: (not sure what to say) Well... I was just -
PG: Put down your stupid book and get out there paradin'! Go on, now! Get up and go out paradin'!
(To an instrumental of "This Boy", Ringo goes walking about London, meets people, and has adventures.)
ME-L: After my gloom-and-doom, New-York-is-f@#?!d pronouncements of the other day, I offer sighs of relief and praises to the Almighty that you are gainfully employed again. Anything we can do to keep you around makes me happy.
M-----: Great quote. But then I'm predisposed to say that. Here I was, all set to agree with Mike that reading is life-giving, yadda-yadda-yadda, and then you find a counter-argument in one of my favorite movies. Sneaky...
Anyway, I'm in no position to talk about the life-giving power of reading since I've had Mike's copy of Motherless Brooklyn in my possession for more than a year and still haven't read the darn thing. That's the last time he lends me a book. (Mike, Emily got me a paperback copy of my own, so I can give yours back.)
Paul's Grandfather's reading diss is, to this sometime-reader, all about proper context: Reading other people's words can be fun & enlightening, but it's rarely a substitute for "paradin'" in the real world, when parading is feasible. As much as I was moved by Steinbeck's "Grapes" and "Cannery Row", etc., when I was a kid, I later found out by traveling around those locations that reality was a lot more complex than what he depicted. In fact, his undying romanticism in relating historical events disserved a comprehensive understanding of those events.
CMM, if you're at all inclined toward fiction crime novels steeped in true-story circumstances (there's a category you won't find at Barnes), I suggest James Ellroy's "The Black Dahlia". If you're into that tome, he's got a sequential series of later novels that thread characters chronologically from "The Big Nowhere" to L.A. Confidential", "White Jazz" (my fave all-time novel), "American Tabloid" and "The Cold Six Thousand." You can follow hard-boiled guys as they go from solving a 1947 murder in L.A., to staging RFK's hit 20 years later.
But when I want real, real life-thru-fiction, I reach for the nearest Bukowski.
And I await a tongue-lashing from Paul's Grandfather.
