Sunday Sundries, 180

1. AOTW: All you Facebook trolls: Get back under the bridge where you belong! (Some Billy Goats Gruff are getting annoyed!)

2. We're enjoying a very amiable comedian, streaming his new special on Netflix. Wry, quiet humor--but the dude is very lithe and agile, adding much to his stories. France via Morocco. Gad Elmaleh. He talks about everyday things, about the American language. Fun, not crude. (Link to trailer.)

3. I finished just one book this week--but an excellent one.

     - The Price of the Haircut, stories by Brock Clarke (2018). I should introduce this a little bit. I'd never heard of Brock Clarke until I read in an issue of Kirkus Reviews about his forthcoming novel (at the time), An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England (2007). How can you not order a copy of a book with a title like that? I ordered it (duh) and liked it so much I decided to have my 11th graders at Western Reserve Academy read the novel near the end of the year (after they'd read most of the writers he alludes to in the book)--and I decided to invite him to spend a day with us, visiting classes, making a presentation to the entire school community, etc.

He came; he saw; he conquered. Late April 2008.

Well, to prepare for his visit, I read his previous books--Carrying the Torch, 2005; What We Won't Do, 2002 (both of these are story collections), and The Ordinary White Boy, a novel, 2001. My admiration did nothing but increase.

After his visit (more about that in a minute) I read his new books as soon as they appeared--Exley, 2010, and The Happiest People in the World, 2014--both are novels.

Okay--we had a great time with him on campus. He was wonderful with the students in class--listening, answering, asking. It was fun for me just to sit there and listen (I always tried to be silent during these author visits--to let the writers engage with the kids.)

At the bottom of this post I've included photographs of Brock with two of my classes.

We've stayed in touch over the years (he now teaches at Bowdoin), and he's a FB friend.

And now his new one--another story collection (and he has a new novel coming out pretty soon).

The Price of the Haircut comprises eleven stories, one of which ("Grand Canyon") contains basically a single sentence (several pages long!), the mental processes of a woman on honeymoon in  a relationship that is a little ... stressed? And "stress" is a factor in these tales: men and women, parents and children, people and the society they're in. The first story (the title story) deals with some white guys who aren't happy with their haircuts and are perfectly willing to head into a dangerous neighborhood (where there's been a recent police shooting of a black teen) because there's a guy there, they've read about, who gives a cut for a low price. Save a few bucks, you know?

Another painful (and funny) story is "That Which We Will Not Give," a series of Thanksgivings in a family. We trace the sad arcs of characters' lives--not just here, but throughout--and see how things, for so many, just don't work out. Not the  way they do, say, in stories!

I mentioned "painful" and "funny"--and Clarke is a master at this. I sometimes ask myself, reading him, Why am I laughing at this? And the answer is that he can see the lightness in darkness--and he can show it to us with humorous clarity. So I opt for laughter rather than weeping. (Though I admit I did some of both here!)

4. Final Word: A word I liked this week from one of my various online word-of-the-day providers.

     - from Oxford English Dictionary

titivating, n. [TIT-uh-VAY-ting]

Forms:  see titivate v.   and -ing suffix1.

Origin: Formed within English, by derivation. Etymons: titivate v., -ing suffix1.

Etymology: < titivate v. + -ing suffix1.[—possibly from tidy]

colloq.

Definition:  The action of titivate v.; esp. the action of improving or smartening up the appearance of a person or place.

1827   Sporting Mag. Apr. 341/2   The shot manufacturers want titivating too; for the way in which they graduate their shot is quite unpardonable.

1827   Manch. Guardian 13 Oct.   Gentlemen whose heads, chins, and countenances required titivating by the hair-dresser.

1851   Weekly News & Chron. 13 Dec. 711/3   For tickling and titivating it has nerves of exquisite sensibility.

1958   R. Gathorne-Hardy Tranquil Gardener x. 193   There is something lost if too much is devoted to design and a careful titivating of the place.

2015   Sunday Tel. (Nexis) 17 May (Discover section) 12   The nine bedrooms..could do with some titivating (only the ground floor has been revamped since reopening).

photos of Brock Clarke with two of my classes at WRA, April 28, 2008.