Sunday Sundries, 190

1. AOTW: No question this week. Last night, Joyce and I were driving on a scenic road (Barlow Rd./Kendall Park Rd./Truxell Rd.--it's the same road--changes names) down into the Cuyahoga Valley National Park--on the longer but lovelier route up to Montrose, where I wanted to get some goodies at Mustard Seed Market. Anyway, on the entire length of the 3-roads-in-one, the AOTW tailgated me (even though I was going 5 mph over the limit). Finally, worried that if I had to stop suddenly (wildlife, biker, whatever), there would surely be a crash, I pulled to the side, and he roared off toward AOTW-Land, where, upon arrival, he was surely greeted by cheering crowds and presented his award.

2. I've been streaming John Wayne's last film, The Shootist, 1976, which I remember well from back in my Glendon Swarthout days (he wrote the novel; I have a first printing--1975). I'd "met" Swarthout because of his 1970 novel Bless the Beasts and Children, which subsequently became a popular film directed by Stanley Kramer and released in 1971. (Link to film trailer.)

Anyway, The Shootist is about a dying gunman (Wayne, who actually was dying) and features a who's who of a cast and crew: director Don Siegel and performers Ron Howard, Richard Boone, Lauren Bacall, and James Stewart (among many other notables).

It's fun to see all these people, "doing their thing." (Link to film trailer.)

2. I finished two books this week ...

     - The first was Paula McLain's latest--Love and Ruin--her novel about the relationship between Ernest Hemingway and the woman who became his third wife, Martha Gellhorn. (There was a 2012 HBO film on the same subject with Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman in the principal roles.) (Link to film trailer.)

McLain wrote another novel about Hemingway and one of his wives (#1--Hadley Richardson), The Paris Wife (2011)--which I also enjoyed.

Anyway, this one is narrated (mostly) by Gellhorn herself--though there are some other chapters distributed throughout which, via 3rd person, give us some of Hemingway's point of view. The novel tells how they met, how they got "involved," how he separated from wife #2 (Pauline Pfeiffer) to be with Gellhorn, how he married her, how they competed (she was a wonderful writer and fearless journalist), how they separated and divorced.

It was fun to read the book. I've read all of Hemingway and have traveled all over the place (except to Cuba--sigh) to see his homes, his grave. So, for me, there was a tremendous amount of dramatic irony as I was reading it: I knew what was going to happen, and I enjoyed seeing how McLain set it all up.

My only real complaint: She too often slips into cliche, to the expected. And she's too good a writer to do that.

• "But clocks don't turn backward" (29).
• "Was this all a dream?" (46).
• "Spain was a chance to find my voice as well as my compass" (100).
• "my heart constantly in my throat" (109).

You get the idea ... and there are lots more of these.

Joyce and I saw McLain speaking at the Hudson Library and Historical Society last Wednesday evening. There was a full house. And she spoke easily and without a text. She's done her work on Hemingway and Gellhorn--and that was patent. Her manner of presentation though (to me), seemed--what?--a bit too bubbly--almost like a cliche of woman comedian trying to get laughs instead of trying to help us understand. I enjoyed the humor (sometimes) but wished, I guess, for more ... gravity from her.

     - The second was a short book of essays about fatherhood, the latest by Michael Chabon, whose complete works I've loved reading. These pieces are touching--and very self-deprecating (appealing in a writer--especially one of Chabon's accomplishments and experience and fame). 

He writes about his son Abe, who has long been "into" clothes and how the boy had to endure middle-school taunts and bullying. Bud did so. Another nice piece about watching a movie with his daughter. There's another good piece about reading Huck Finn to his children--about dealing with the language of Twain's novel.

Another son has issues with Little League.

He ends with a powerful piece about his own father.

A few things:

• On p. 51 he used the term spatchcocking---a word that sent me swirling back to grad school, where I came across the word spatchcock (don't remember where), employed it in a grad-school paper, got a note from the prof saying I'd made him go to an unabridged dictionary. (Good!) spatchcock = 1. A fowl split open and grilled after being killed, plucked, and dressed in a summary fashion. (from the OED, which traces it back to the 18th cent.) I haven't seen the word in decades--but smiled when I saw it this time.
• "... fatherhood is a favorite sideline of assholes" (80).
• "the crushing orthodoxy of middle school" (100)

3. We're still streaming "our" shows each evening--about 10-15 min of each for about an hour: Shetland (nearly done with the most recent season), Bosch (ditto), Vera, Arrested Development (the new one), Barry--and some others. We sometimes get the stories and characters mixed up!

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

     - enantiodromia (i-nan-tee-uh-DROH-mee-uh)

noun: The tendency of things, beliefs, etc., to change into their opposites.

ETYMOLOGY: From Greek enantio- (opposite) + dromos (running). Earliest documented use: 1917.

The concept of enantiodromia is attributed to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus (c. 535-475 BCE). Later it was discussed by the psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875-1961) as “the principle which governs all cycles of natural life”.

USAGE: “The union that Philip Murray had founded in 1936 as a way of combatting the wretched excess of management had come full circle in the cycle of enantiodromia, and had fallen victim to its own wretched excess.”

Tom O’Boyle; Excess, the Golden Rule; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Sep 4, 1994.