Sunday Sundries, 217

1. HBOTW: The squirrel outside my study window, his nest in a nearby tree, a nest I can see, who works hard every day to keep him and his going. No complaints. No calling in sick (when he isn't). No knowledge of Hump Day. A hard worker (who can be profoundly annoying--to me, to the dogs that can't catch him). Virtues and vices abound in him--just as they do in the rest of us.

2. I finished two books this week ...

     - The first--one of my read-a-little-in-bed-most-nights books--was The Law and the Lady (1875), a later novel by Wilkie Collins (1824-89), a friend of and collaborator with Charles Dickens (1812-70). As some of you know, I've been slowly reading my way through all of Collins' novels, in the order he wrote them ... well, after, that is, I got hooked by The Moonstone, 1868, and The Woman in White, 1860.

I realized, about halfway through Law, that I was reading it out of order: I should have first read The New Magdalen, 1873; it's now on my bedside table. Oh well.

Law is narrated by its principal character a young woman named Valeria Woodville, who discovers not long after her marriage, that her new husband had been on trial for the murder of his first wife; a Scottish court found him neither guilty nor innocent--a final possible ruling at the time. "Not proven."

Valeria is convinced he is innocent, and he, ashamed, flees while she decides she will devote herself to discovering who the actual murderer was.

She does. (Ain't tellin' you who it was.)

Along the way, she gets involved with a witness at the trial--a truly bizarre character named Misserimus Dexter, a brilliant but wildly eccentric man who has legs that don't function; attending him is a violently devoted woman ...

Anyway, an early example of a "woman-detective" novel, and, somewhere, perhaps, Kinsey Millhone is expressing her gratitude.

Collins is a brilliant writer--every bit Dickens' equal. Maybe his superior ...

     - The second was a collection of forewords, prefaces, and afterwords by Michael Chabon (one of my favorites), pieces that that he has written over recent years to be included in the books of other writers--and, in some cases, of his own. It's called Bookends: Collected Intros and Outros (2018).

I had never read Chabon until I saw the film Wonder Boys (2000) with Michael Douglas as a writing professor who is stuck in his second novel, a novel that has swollen to thousands of pages with no end in sight. One of his most talented/interesting students is Tobey Maguire (who's not yet realized he's Spider-Man); another is Katie Holmes. With minor--but great parts--are Frances McDormand, Robert Downey, Jr., and Rip Torn. (Link to film trailer.) I loved the film--have seen it numerous times since its initial release--and it got me reading Chabon. 

I've now read everything by him. A confession: I wasn't' really looking forward to this one, but I really enjoyed it. Lots of cool things he says about writing, about specific writers. He's had a lifelong fondness for fantasy, so there are pieces about that. (I've liked some of it, too, but I'm nothing like the fan that Chabon is.)

Some cool things he says ...

• "realism is ... hopeless" (26)
• "the past is another planet" (37)
• "Writers are mutants" (45)
• "All short stories, in other words, are ghost stories" (57)
• "I did believe in fairies. I did. I did" (105)
• good writers "plant flags at the end of time" (138)

And on and on and on and on. Really loved his piece about his own 2002 novel Summerland (which I loved--a baseball fantasy novel!).

3. Last night, we drove down to the Cinemark in North Canton to join our son and his sons (13, and 9--both very close to their next birthdays) to see a film I'd kind of wanted to see before--but it had quickly disappeared from most local theaters: The Kid Who Would Be King (link to film trailer.)

It's a re-telling of the King Arthur story--set in contemporary England at a school where our "Arthur" is a bullied 12-yr-old kid (one of the bullies is Lancelot--"Lance" here). Fleeing the bullies, he stumbles into a construction site, where he finds ... the sword in the stone (yes, that one), and then the story changes and charges ahead.

About midway through my teaching career I became an Arthur fanatic (can't remember why): read scores of books, saw the films, even took a busload of kids to see Disney's The Sword in the Stone at the old downtown Kent Cinema. (Original release 1963--so it must have been a re-release ...)

I actually liked the Kid film a lot more than I thought I was going to. The writers knew the stories, had some sly references (and obvious ones) to various Arthur tales--from The Once and Future King to Camelot to ...

One actor that really stood out, I thought, was the young man who played Merlin: Angus Imrie. That guy just radiated intelligence and humor. I see on IMDB that he's been in a few things--but he has a future. (As King? We'll see!)

We end up with two titanic clashes between "Arthur" and his "knights" (classmates who are convinced of his "chosen" status)--both with Morgana (aka Morgan le Fay) who's come roaring back from her confinement to the underworld, supported by scary bony dudes with flaming swords on flaming horses. The big confrontation: They attack the school, but, thanks to Arthur, et al., the kids are ready.

I especially enjoyed sitting next to my younger grandson, who loves books and fantasy and legend, and who was brimming with questions, most of which I could actually answer!

4. Enjoying the Netflix comedy special--just available last week--with Ray Romano in a couple of NYC clubs where he began his career. He's funny ... (Link to some video.)

5. Last word--a word I liked this week from one of my online word-of-the-day providers ...

     - from wordsmith.org

nidifugous (ny-DIF-yuh-guhs)

adjective: Well-developed and able to leave the nest soon after hatching.

ETYMOLOGY: From Latin nidi- (nest) + -fugous (fleeing). Ultimately from the Indo-European root sed- (to sit), which is also the source of nest, sit, chair, saddle, assess, sediment, soot, cathedral, and tetrahedron. Earliest documented use: 1902.

NOTES: The opposite of nidifugous is nidicolous (remaining with parents for a long time after birth). Etymologically speaking, these words apply to birds, but there’s no reason you can’t use them elsewhere. For example, if your adult child suggests living in your basement, you could simply say, “Don’t be nidicolous!”

USAGE: “The young of all species are -- as you well know -- nidifugous, and ours will be no exception. And as they go, they will take some of their spirit with them, leaving us, the founders as mere husks.”

Malcolm Macdonald; Strange Music; Severn House; 2012.