1. HBOTW [Human Being(s) of the Week]: At the grocery store this morning, I saw several people with full carts at the checkout line, people who let other people with only a handful of items go ahead of them.
2. I finished three books this week--the first two are ones at which I've been picking away at bedtime before Streaming Time commences:
- The first was Susan Orlean's latest--The Library (2018)--a book about a devastating fire at the main branch of the library in Los Angeles in 1986. No one is certain who (if anyone) started the fire--though she examines thoroughly the case of the prime suspect, now dead, a man who seemed in some ways to be guilty--but not in other ways. Orlean confesses she doesn't know what caused it.
She also tells the story of the history of libraries in L.A.--and elsewhere--and spends lots of time roaming around the place, talking with librarians, visiting with patrons, considering the problem of homelessness (a problem the library takes seriously--and compassionately). And she realizes with a new clarity the importance of libraries--to her, to all of us.
This was not my favorite of Orlean's books--I'm kind of partial to her book about Rin Tin Tin (oh, my boyhood has not released its control of me!). But this is a fine account, sharpened by her keen eye, softened by her compassionate heart.
Oh, I also like the design of the book--making it resemble a catalogued library book; the back endpapers feature a photograph of an old check-out card-in-a-pocket. It looks so real ...
- I've been reading my way through Ken Bruen's novels about Jack Taylor (I got hooked on streaming the TV series, a series that led me to the books). The one I just finished--The Emerald Lie (via Kindle), 2016--is the antepenultimate in the series. And, as I've commented here before, the Taylor novels get ever darker as they proceed.
This one deals with some brutal murders committed by a ... grammarian. Someone who can't stand usage/grammar errors of any sort, someone who salves his dismay by dispatching the blunderer.
But that case is in and out of focus. Taylor's own personal problems are principal, too--a relationship with a naughty woman (a brutal one), his ever-declining health, his past mistakes that haunt him.
Set in Galway, Ireland, the novels are fun to read--Taylor (a former cop, booted from the force for drunkenness) is a raconteur, a reader, and a bitter commentator on the world around him. This novel shows us that Taylor's world--which, before, we thought was dark--is actually pretty much without any light!
- The third I finished this week was another by the amazing Kate Atkinson, a writer (I fear!) I'd not heard of until reading this item in the New York Times last July 31. She was doing a reading with other notables--all of whom I'd heard of--and so I asked, Who is this?
And, having read five of her novels, I can answer: One of the best novelists I've ever read.
A God in Ruins (2015) is sort of a follow-up to her previous novel, Life After Life (one of the best novels I ever read). That one focused on Ursula, a young woman who dies throughout the novel; then her story begins again--with different results. Her brother is Teddy, the focus of this one. He's a pilot in WW II, and it's evident that Atkinson did a tremendous amount of research on the air war.
(The title, by the way, if from Emerson--a line from his Nature, 1836.)
We follow Teddy on a number of his missions, see how he deals with violence and death--with his guilt about the saturation bombing runs he's involved in--but we also follow his personal story--his marriage, his wife (and her death), and his very troubled relationship with his daughter. We follow Teddy right into the nursing home and hear his daughter talk about how she wishes he would just die, you know?
As always, Atkinson uses time as her marionette--making it dance, change, pause, accelerate, start over, skip ... it's nothing short of amazing.
I don't want to give away too many goodies because I'd love everyone to read her work. I've got her latest, Transcription, on my pile (as soon as I finish the new Joyce Carol Oates I'm reading), and then I'm going to go back and read her mystery series. Then watch the TV series based on them ...
I cannot exaggerate her talent, her achievements. They're beyond my ability to do so.
3. Last night--not charmed by what movies were available at the theaters--we watched, via DVD, the Coen Brothers' 2009 film, A Serious Man, a film I'd borrowed from Netflix back in July 2017, but the copy they'd sent was damaged, and it locked up in the middle. (Link to film trailer.)
I bought my own copy, but we just hadn't gotten around to watching it--until last night. And what a grim and, simultaneously, funny film (the Coens are superb at this). Our "hero" (see on the roof in the poster) is a college math prof undergoing the tenure process. Things seem to be going well--for about five minutes.
And then ... his wife says she's leaving him; he has to move into a motel with his psychologically damaged brother, a student getting an F leaves an envelope stuffed with money on his desk--then denies it, he has a physical exam with his doctor, his two kids act as if he doesn't really exist, his son is smoking pot, someone is writing defamatory letters to the tenure committee, an asshole lives next door, a tornado warning ... and more.
By the end you realize--as if you didn't know--the fragility of ... everything. Every damn thing. The evanescence of all.
Oh, and it's 1967--the Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" is on the radio, etc. People smoke everywhere ...
And, again, you ask yourself: Why am I laughing at this? Because, you realize, you're in the presence of genius--and what else can you do?
When the Netflix DVD of A Serious Man froze up, we had nearly completed our journey, sequentially, through all of their films. Seeing this one, I'm almost up for doing it all over again!
4. At the suggestion of our friend Chris, we started streaming a BBC series Wire in the Blood. And are glad we're doing so. A psychologist helping the London cops with cases. We're only about halfway through the first episode of the first season (it ran from 2002-09), so I'll have more to say later on ... (Link to series trailer.)
5. Last word--a word I liked this week from one of my online word-of-the-day providers:
- from wordsmith.org
yclept (i-KLEPT)
MEANING: adjective: Called or named.
ETYMOLOGY: From Old English geclypod,
past participle of (ge)clypian (clepe). Earliest documented use: 950.
USAGE: “The teenage jam band tragically yclept Fruitful Dave is awfully exciting.”
In Rotation; Reader (Chicago, Illinois); Aug 14, 2014.
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