The CJR headline that is an Egalitarian Bookworm Dream Come True

"Elizabeth Bennet, Meet Elizabeth Edwards"

The article, which discusses Edwards' use of irony and third-person narration (I believe the author meant free-indirect discourse by that), isn't bad either.


[Ht, Tommy and Greenlight's Google Readers]

Monday Morning Poem: "Truth," by Gwendolyn Brooks

Truth

And if sun comes
How shall we greet him?
Shall we not dread him,
Shall we not fear him
After so lengthy a
Session with shade?

Though we have wept for him,
Though we have prayed
All through the night-years --
What if we wake one shimmering morning to
Hear the fierce hammering
Of his firm knuckles
Hard on the door?

Shall we not shudder?
Shall we not flee
Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter
Of the familiar
Propitious haze?

Sweet is it, sweet is it
To sleep in the coolness
Of snug unawareness.

The dark hangs heavily
Over the eyes.
-- Gwendolyn Brooks

Well, this poem may have religious overtones, but I picked it because it feels relevant to everything I've been thinking and feeling about how our society is reacting to this election year and how irresponsibly the media has been keeping us in the dark, literally, as Elizabeth Edwards so brilliantly described it this weekend. How hard it is for people to wake up to their own oppression, how we "cling", yep "cling" to scapegoats rather than facing the truth.

And now, to cling to the propitious darkness of this rainy day.

Jane Eyre Comix!

A graphic adaptation of an appropriate title, Jane Eyre.
click here to see enlarged version of the "red room" scene, which one of my English profs brilliantly linked to "redrum" in The Shining.

Via Bronteblog, &c. This looks pretty freaking cool. Other titles in the Classical Comics ouvre inckude adaptations of Macbeth and Jane Eyre.

(This strikes me as an awesome awesome tool for getting kids to read classics, says the ex-teacher in me.)

Jon Krakauer's New Book Will Kick Some Powersthatbe Ass

My posse and I , while watching a censored version of The Big Lebowski for the second time in 24 hours, got to wondering what uber-amazing journalist and chronicler of lives on the edge Jon Krakauer is up to now, besides general badassery. It turns out he's turning more and more leftist and investigative by the book.

Here is the description of his new project, via Wikipedia:

---

It has since been announced that Krakauer's new book, The Hero, will be released by publisher Doubleday on October 14, 2008. The Hero will be about former NFL football player Pat Tillman, who enlisted in the US Army after 9/11 to become an Army Ranger and was eventually killed in action under suspicious circumstances in Afghanistan. In addition to performing research in Afghanistan, Krakauer was able to interview members of Tillman's family and read Tillman's diaries and letters, to prepare for writing the book. Doubleday's David Drake says Krakauer's interest in Tillman reflects "the fascination he has with extreme people, who push themselves to the very limits of their capabilities".

---

So what were those suspicious circumstances?

Well, for those who don't remember, Tillman was a soldier in Afghanistan, who happened to hold atheistic and anti-Iraq-War and anti-Republican beliefs. He also happened to be killed by "friendly fire" (likely murder), which was presented to his family for weeks as enemy fire, even though army higher-ups knew the truth.

I fully expect Jon Krakauer to do justice to this fascinating guy who died far too young, and also to do a different kind of justice to the insidious forces that kept the truth from Americans. And not only are JK's books well-done and thoughtful, he's the basically most gripping nonfiction writer I've ever read, besides Capote. I can't wait to read more of his words.

Immortal.

That's what AO Scott said about the original Harold and Kumar in his review of its just-released sequel.

And he was right. Oh, he was right.

Long after we have abandoned our world to cockroaches and nuclear fallout,

Harold and Kumar will live on.

Thoughts on Sean Bell--We're Not Innocent, Either

This is a little off-topic for the blog, but as a former Bronx schoolteacher, and a New Yorker, and a feminist, I had to comment, briefly.

Above all, I blame the Sean Bell killing on a bunch of trigger-happy, racist cops, and a horribly racist judge, and unfair laws, and a fascist police state, and a white supremacist society.

But I also can't deflect blame from most Americans--yep, even us well-meaning bourgeois liberals, and our presidential candidates--for not calling any attention to our ghettos, our inner-cities, our youth of color, except when somebody gets shot. It's a huge injustice, but it builds off of smaller injustices that happen every day, injustices that we let slide.

And I ask these questions of those who are comfortable in our skins, literally:

*Would we be willing to see our suburban and prep schools lose fancy trimmings in order to have true educational parity? Really?

*Would we be willing to stop blaming violence on hip=hop and confront the deep, deep history of violence our country was built on? I'm talking about slavery and genocide, and how those violences, and the violence of our foreign policy and our leaders, has just as much if not more effect than a video which 99% of kids are smart enough to understand is just art?

*Would we ever be willing to accept the premise that drunken white fratboys at strip clubs engaging in violence-tinged braggadaccio deserve be shot because their behavior was uncouth? Or it's unfortunate that they were shot but look at what they were doing!

*If it's okay for cops to shoot young people of color, whom will it be okay for them to shoot next?


I include myself in this challenge.

The Sean Bells of this city are brought into a world that has no place for them but prison or death. I will never forget the looks on the faces of the young men in my class--even the ones who were always trying to convince me they were "hard"--when I said they were "nice" or "good" kids. Over and over again, those two words brought the most genuine smiles, the most unaffected reaction, I saw throughout those long months. To be told they were good when society tells them they are bad, bad, all the time, was the most positive thing they could hear. I'm not trying to paint myself as some sort of crusading white saint. I fled my teaching post because I felt that the authoritarian-ness required to be effective would crush my soul, but also because it was too depressing.

I'm just saying what I learned from those small interactions profoundly touched me. Sean Bell lived in a society where people did not accept that he could be "good" because of the color of his skin and where he was born. And now he's dead, and he's still being demonized.

How much of our own comfortable lives will we be willing to change to make sure this doesn't happen again? Because we're going to have to tip our society upside down to really change things. No more band-aids.

Here's some more Bruce, cause he's always right for the occasion.

Thursday Link-O-Rama, "Ben Stein Can Kiss My Lapsed-Reform-Jewy Butt" edition

All expelled, all the time, folks. That LOLStein never gets old.


So my life-partner et moi spent too much of our sunny Monday watching this piece of hackneyed right-wing propaganda. But what we both got out of it was an opportunity, an opportunity to sharpen our literary claws, so to speak. It's rare that an entertainment writer specializing in the hip-hop world and a feminist writer who loves womb-autonomy get to tackle the same topic.

So far, ironically enough, it's his post that has attracted the batshit-insane wingnuts like bees to honey, while mine remains rather un-challenged.

Still, check 'em both out. As [greenlight] and I said over gchat after I shamelessly-self-promoted:

10:49 AM [Fellow-ette] http://digg.com/movies/Ben_Stein_s_Expelled_I_saw_it_so_you_don_t_have_to?OTC-em-sh1

10:50 AM http://digg.com/movies/Expelled_Unintelligent_Design

mwa!

10:53 AM [Greenlight]: the one-two punch

[Fellow-ette]: yeah exactly

heehee

10:54 AM [Greenlight]: ID has never met a foe like this

[Fellow-ette]: the wrath of the culturally jewish atheists!

10:56 AM [Greenlight]: [tommy] & [fellow-ette] = marx & engels

10:57 AM [Fellow-ette] bringin' you a dictatorship of the proletariat, and the TRUTH

The end.

The Brooklyn Literary Sczzzzeeene...

So the New York Observer and a bunch of its sisters in bourgeois pseudo-intelligent snark are all up and writing about talented, famous trendy over-wrought wordsmiths with the exception of Jhumpa Lahiri who is a goddess among mortals literary folks who live in Brooklyn. Which is a pretty big borough!

As an Egalitarian Bookworm Chick, I feel it incumbent upon me to say something about this flurry of excitement over Teh Writerz.

All I can muster is, in the immortal words of Sacha Baron Cohen's alter ego Ali G at Harvard commencement, "wot, who cares?"

Seriously. Good literature, even occasional pretentious variations thereof, is interesting to this EBC. Real estate, on the other hand, is most definitely not. Unless my landlord kicks me out. Then it may be.

(And yes, part of me is just just jealous, and I wish there was, on this map, a satellite of the Brooklyn writerland up here in Morningside Heights just 'specially for ME, but maybe someday there will be and then I'll be a total hypocrite, so there!)

South Pacific @Lincoln Center

My absolutely disgustingly intense adoration for the golden age of Broadway musicals is somewhat out of keeping with my other, at least somewhat hipper tastes. My life-partner recently marveled at a particular early-90s pop culture phenomena of which I was ignorant . I explained that while all the other kids were getting their first taste of MTV, I was still putting kerchiefs on my Barbie Dolls and having them dance around and sing "Matchmaker" from Fiddler on the Roof.

Anyway, no other musical has meant more to me than South Pacific, Rodgers and Hammerstein's best (imo) collaboration, about culture clash and love on an island during World War II. The way the show confronts racial prejudice so head on in the pre-Civil Rights era, as well as its unforgettable music, just vault it into the top tier of its genre (waayy better than the overrated Sound of Music, which was probably pretty good before it became a shmaltzified kiddie film). An old scratchy and wonderful South Pacific cast record with Mary Martin and Ezio Pina was literally the soundtrack to my youth. Just hearing the notes makes me tear up. Here the two stars are singing 'Some Enchanted Evening." His voice obviously rocks--he was an opera star--but hers is so compelling and gorgeous. If you recognize it, it's cause she's Peter Pan!





Of course, these unbelievably talented singers weren't cast in the film cause they weren't "pretty enough" so the decent-to-good movie version featured Mitzi Gaynor instead. She's aight I 'spose, but her voice doesn't have the warmth of Martin's. Still, aren't Hammerstein's lyrics, particularly in the intro, amazingly clever?




I saw the remarkable revival last night at Lincoln Center. It's been getting total raves all over the NY press. Ben Brantley called it "perfect" and the audience last night was just totally enraptured for all three hours. The female lead, Kelli O'Hara, was last seen sexing up the stage in the Pajama Game with Harry Connick Jr (yes, the last musical I saw/blogged on Broadway.) She is a complete wonder, a real old-school, spunky, physical, honey-toned bombshell of an actress. Last night's show was one of the best three hours of non-Springsteen entertainment ever. I was so absorbed in it I forgot about the shitty shitty election.

Here is the final video of the day: O'Hara giving Connick a serious run for his money at the Tony's:

My thoughts on the American party system

The best lack all conviction
while the worst are full of passionate intensity

-WB YEATS

and yes it's a cliche to quote "The Second Coming" but it's a cliche cause it's true.


(although at this very moment, as I hear Obama's supporters chanting "yes we can!" I think that at least some of the best have passionate intensity. But is it enough?)

This Needs Little Explanation

Created by OnePlusYou


I guess Victorian/Shakespearean curses don't count for this, eh? 'Zounds! 'Sblood! Bloomin, Blimey, Boody 'ell!



Hts, Cara and the Shakespearean insult generator.

Monday Morning Poem: When We Look Up

When We Look Up by Denise Levertov He had not looked, pitiful man whom none pity, whom all must pity if they look into their own face (given only by glass, steel, water barely known) all who look up to see-how many faces? How many seen in a lifetime? (Not those that flash by, but those into which the gaze wanders and is lost and returns to tell Here is a mystery, a person, an other, an I? "When We Look Up" by Denise Levertov, from Poems: 1960-1967, copyright © 1966 by Denise Levertov. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

via

This poem, from a very good poet I recall from my Norton Po-mo anthology, is about empathy: the circular thought pattern we encounter when we face others and try to understand that they are the same as we are, that s/he feels the same feelings, reacts the same ways. But as hard as we try, we are stuck in our own perspective, and ultimately though we may accept the premise that s/he is "another I" it's hard, nay impossible for us to do that without referencing ourselvess, and therefore the other remain as "mystery" (thus the open parentheses?)

But it's not an entirely pessimistic poem, because IMO it celebrates the struggle to reach another person's perspective, (even if ultimately fruitless, always going back to the final "I"), which is ultimately all we can hope to achieve, and that, my friends, is a beautiful thing in and of itself.

She uses some nice imagery when she talks about reflections--amazing her ability to conjure up strong visuals with so few words.

Maureen Dowd is SO BITTER (and other stuff too)

From Kathy at the G-Spot, there's a long and excellent post about Mo'Do's elitism/bitterness and general psychological problems.

The salient little gossipy tidbit follows below (ellipses, emphases mine):

Now we come, at last, to my little Modo story. Eight or nine or ten years ago, someone fixed up Modo with a friend of mine (whom I'll call "X.").

...

So how did it go? X. told me that, the whole night, all Maureen could talk about was which women Bill Clinton was sleeping with. Literally. "Do you think he's having an affair with B.? I think he is. But maybe they did and it's over now and he's moved onto someone else. Ya think? Maybe he's messing around with C. -- she seems more his type. I'd bet he'd love to have an affair with D., but I'm not sure she'd fool around with a married man." And on and on and on and on and ON in this vein. The whole night long. X tried to engage her on other topics. The world, after all, is full of a number of things: Books. Movies. Theater. Travel. Music. Food. And how about, not what Bill Clinton was doing with his penis, but what he was doing with his policies?

But alas, in spite of my friend's ministrations, he could not get the lady off Topic A.

Suffice it to say, it was a long night.

....

Please go read the rest. I did, and loved it. She compares MoDo to Miss Havisham, which is a wonderfully egalitarian bookwormy thing to do.

In Memory of Danny Federici, and In Honor of The Warm Weather

... and all the girls flitting around Morningside Heights in long skirts and sundresses.




Thanks for the music, Phantom.