The Princess Bride

If you've read my blog you might have come to realise I'm a massive fan of the 1987 film, "The Princess Bride". It is certainly one of my favourite films. I often shout in my best Vizzini, "inconceivable" and I can't tell you the number of times I've filled out a "Hello My Name Is" badge with "Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die".

But the book itself, which is read by Columbo to that kid from The Wonder Years? I spent a lot of time looking for it starting some time in the mid-90's. Finally I bought "The 30th Anniversary Edition" last year.

"You know that's abridged, right?" Monsieur Redacteur said to me.

I did know it was abridged. I knew because every copy I'd ever seen was abridged. I was sick of waiting around to find one that wasn't. Except that it wasn't actually abridged. It never had been.

The book, "The Princess Bride" and the movie of the same name is a sort of wonderful joke. The inside title page reads:

The Princess Bridge

S. Morgenstern's classic tale of love and adventure

The "Good Parts" Version Abridged by

William Goldman

Now I don't know why or when or how or what made me think it was and had always been a book originally written by S. Morgenstern that had only been brought to light by author William Goldman, but it got stuck in mind and remained unchanged. The title page above is the only version I'd ever seen. The introduction itself leads you, at least in the beginning, to believe that it is indeed a story William Goldman found and brought to light on the behalf of someone named S. Morgenstern. 

So I turned to Wikipedia. It only made me feel more like an idiot.

S. Morgenstern did not exist. But I wasn't the only one who thought he did.

According to the book's Wikipedia page:

In the novel's commentary, Goldman writes that he added nothing to the "original" Morgenstern text, although he comments that he did write one original scene, a loving reunion between Buttercup and Westley, but claimed that his publisher objected to this addition. He invited any reader who wanted to read the "Reunion Scene" to write to the publisher (formerly Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; now Random House) and request a copy. Many readers wrote in to the publisher and did receive a letter, but instead of an extra scene, the letter detailed the (obviously fictitious) legal problems that Goldman and his publishers encountered with the Morgenstern estate and its lawyer, Kermit Shog. This letter was revised and updated periodically; the 1987 revision mentioned the movie, while the 25th Anniversary Edition publishes the letter with an addendum about Kermit's lawyer granddaughter Carly. The 30th Anniversary Edition has a footnote at this point saying that you can now find the three pages of the reunion scene online. However, if one goes to the website detailed in the footnote, all they receive via email is the text of the three letters.

Now does it make me feel slightly better that I wasn't the only one duped? Not really.

But I suppose it's part of the charm now. The book is very similar to the movie except that there's quite a bit of commentary from the author. I chose to ignore those passages of text and read the story as S. Morgenstern intended. I figured I'd read it with the commentary track later.

Now aside from the joke William Goldman played on me and that I find his commentary a bit boring - I will say that The Princess Bride might just be one of the best stories ever written. It's downright hilarious most times and even the bits that the kid from The Wonder Years thought were "icky" at first (like kissing), had their own special charm. When Buttercup realises she loves Wesley is one of the sappiest scenes I've ever read, but its brilliant use of satire and exagerration somehow render the lines endearing. I got to know my favourite characters, Inigo and Fezzik even better. Thankfully The Man In Black poisons Vizzini when he really starts to deserve it. Wallace Shawn's portrayal of Vizzini is spot on reading the book proves. I'm even more glad that The Man In Black has that inconceivable immunity to iocane powder than I was while watching the film.

It's no wonder that the scenes in the book I liked the most - Fezzik climbing up the cliffs followed by The Man In Black and then the subsequent duel - are also two of the most memorable scenes from the film. William Goldman wrote a number of screenplays for other successful films including "All The President's Men", "Maverick", and what was considered Stephen King's unadaptable "Misery", which won Kathy Bates an Oscar.

If only I'd come across this particular version of the cover in my search for the book then maybe I wouldn't have been so duped.

But read it. Or as Inigo and Fezzik might have said:

Inigo: But really you must read it.
Fezzik: Anybody want a peanut?

* It's also now Number 1 on my list of "Movies As Good As Their Books". "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" / Bladerunner is now Number 2.

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Discovering Ice

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

"One Hundred Years of Solitude" Gabriel Garcia Marquez 

Today is the 85th birthday of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I can't let this day go by without writing something about what his two most well-known works "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Love In the Time of Cholera" mean to me. It's something deeply affecting and not entirely able to be explained - like magic.

I devoured "100 Years of Solitude" and I was not sated. I read through most of Marquez's works, fascinated by this type of writing I knew somehow from reading works by Borges and Rushdie and Murakami, but hadn't known were considered magical realism. 

I didn't give much thought to the labels applied to literature besides fiction and non-fiction, but "Solitude" changed me. It opened my eyes to a way of discovering literature that I'd never bothered with, but suddenly I couldn't get enough of. I Google'd my way around the Internet compiling lists of authors who wrote in the genre like Miguel Angel Asturias, Isabelle Allende, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Mikhail Bulgakov, Italo Calvino, Robertson Davies, Gunter Grass, Kafka, Ben Okri, Jose Saragamo, and Kawabata. 

One scan of my bookshelves and I can see the path that Marquez's work set me upon that was littered with masterpieces I might not have stumbled upon otherwise. 

Asturias' "The Mulatta and Mr Fly" and his children's book "The Talking Machine". His works were so difficult to find I got a membership to The American Library to read "Mulatta". I spent months searching online for an affordable copy of the first edition of "The Talking Machine" (which runs anywhere from $60 - $150 but I snagged on eBay for $3). 

I loved Allende's "House of Spirits" so much that I wrote her an email to tell her, to which she graciously responded and encouraged me to write a book of my own. Allende's TED Talk is undoubtedly one of my favourites. 

Through Casares I discovered a link to Borges who was already a favourite. Their work "The Book of Fantasy" is something I found on ABEBooks for a pittance and would rescue from a burning house. Through Casares and Borges I discovered Alberto Manguel's "The Dictionary of Imaginary Places" - one of the greatest books ever put to print and also worthy of rescue from flames.

I could go on about books I discovered and rediscovered because of the spell "Solitude" cast upon me. I in turn have always pressed it into people's hands, though I know the style and story isn't for everyone. Please, I have urged people, just give it a read. It might change you forever.

Before "Solitude" my mind didn't really understand the freedom the writer has at their fingertips. I'd buried my nose too long in books that were all realism and no magic. I reread  "The Chronicles of Narnia" almost in secret because I thought it was silly to read such things when I was attempting to be the author of serious literature. 

I wanted the notches on my belt of being able to claim to have read "Ulysses" (I've made many attempts and never made it past a few pages) and the other sort of books you hear people discussing at parties to show off. And while I've read many of the books that should give me the right to strut around parties like a pretentious peacock, it's not exactly my style to judge someone based on their taste in books, but I was still worried that somehow if I didn't have the right resumé I was somehow obviously going to turn out to be a shit writer.

After finishing "One Hundred Years of Solitude" I started writing a book. It was the first version of the book I've been trying to write ever since. Not to be like Joyce or Hemingway or Miller or Nabokov, but to simply write a book that one day might have the impact on another in that way that "Solitude" did on me.

Feliz Cumpleaños Señor Marquez y muchos gracias for this book that began with the discovery of ice and brought me to that instant where I began to decipher that I was living.

If you're interested in some of the other books that I've loved, you can find a Henry Miller inspired list here. 

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World Book Day

In honour of World Book Day I decided today I'd spend my day with some books. You know, like every day.

I started by taking a peek as the first book of "The Hunger Games". There are movie posters plastered all over Paris. I started getting curious. I read about twenty pages or so, but stopped because I kept thinking of another book, Koushun Takami's "Battle Royale". Apparently I'm not the only one that thought this.

I look around my desk. There's a worn paperback copy of Richard Jeffries' "After London & Wild England", a copy of Eugene Zamiatin's "We" (which heavily inspired Orwell's "1984"), and a near pristine copy of Takami's "Battle Royale"... I notice that all three books are about a future gone horribly wrong.

This isn't the only theme of the books I find on my desk this afternoon, though it's the most obvious.

Stacked up on the corner are: Dante's "Purgatorio", Sawako Ariyoshi's "The River Ki", Morio Kita's "The Fall of the House of Nire", Andersen's "Fairy Tales" illustrated by Arthur Szyk, [W. Somerset] "Maugham on Kipling", "The Travels of Marco Polo", and Alberto Manguel's "Dictionary of Imaginary Places".

Those books all share a common denominator in a way that makes sense to me. They each contain something important. That's the thing. I don't read for pleasure any more. Not really. The act of reading is a pleasure in itself, but I read for the sake of perfecting my craft as a writer nowadays. I want to see the style, the way ideas were developed, and how the writing is overall.

I asked on Twitter today "What's your favourite book?" Your one favourite. The book you could not live without reading again. It's a question that I cannot even answer simply myself. The books that spring to mind are not books I've read to perfect my craft as a writer. They are instead, the books that made me want to be a writer in the first place.

The books. Not just one book. I cannot point to a single book and say after reading it that I knew I wanted to be a writer. The books that come to mind, most of them are books I wish I'd written myself. In the instance of W. Somerset Maugham's "The Razor's Edge" I wish I'd written each and every single word. Maugham is, without overthinking it, my favourite author (in the English language). I still wax poetic about one his short stories, "Rain" every chance I get. He is the author that has the something I wish and hope I have as a writer.

Writers I'd love to borrow talent from could be their own list. Colette, Nabokov, George Orwell,  Mikhail Bulgakov, Ken Kesey, Yukio Mishima, and Henry Miller along with Maugham would top this list.

Then there's the ideas I wish I'd come up with myself.  

Discovering a world in a wardrobe.

A wrongly imprisoned man uses a treasure to seek revenge.

Satan comes to Moscow.

A cat narrates the lives of Japan's middle class.

(Books in order: C.S. Lewis "The Chronicles of Narnia", Alexandre Dumas Pere "La comte de Monte Cristo", Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita", Natsume Soseki's "I Am A Cat")

Or first lines.

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

You better not never tell nobody but God.

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.

Walking back to camp through the swamp, Sam wondered if he should tell his father what he had seen.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

(Books in order:  JRR Tolkien "The Hobbit", JD Salinger "The Catcher In the Rye", Sylvia Plath "The Bell Jar", Franz Kafka "The Metamorphosis, Alice Walker "The Color Purple", C.S. Lewis "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader", E.B. White "The Trumpet of the Swan", George Orwell "1984")

Then I think back to my first books. The fairy tales stories; the books written for children; the books that seemed written for children, but were for adults too; and then the books I read that weren't for children.

Mitch Hedburg said, "any book is a kid's book if the kid can read". He obviously never read Flaubert's "Madame Bovary", which I read first at age 12 and completely misunderstood. I've read it many times since at 14, 22, and aged 28. At each point in its reading I have had a different gut reaction to the story. This is why it's one of my favourite books.

When it comes to my absolute Top Five Desert Island books, it's hard to make a final selection. This indecisiveness hovers because I can't make up mind about what or which criteria is most important to me.

So fine I'm going to pick five. But I'm not going to hold myself to it. Because I'm going to read all my life. I'll never stop. It's a lifelong disease I've got. Can't walk past a bookshop without having a book. Wouldn't surprise me a bit if I perished in a fire unable to be put out because I, known to the neighbours as the Crazy Book Lady fell asleep chain smoking in a room piled to the ceiling with hardly flame retardant books.

But fine. Here they are:

My Top Five Desert Island Books:

1. George Orwell, "1984"

2. W. Somerset Maugham "The Razor's Edge"

3. R.L. Stevenson's "Treasure Island"

4. Alexandre Dumas Pere "La comte de Monte Cristo"

5. A book of collected fairy tales

I tried to stay away from series of books otherwise "The Chronicles of Narnia", which I read in part or in full every year and have since I was a kid (along with "La comte de Monte Cristo") would have made the list. I might have also picked Mishima's "The Sea of Fertility" tetralogy, of which the first book in the series, "Spring Snow", is one of the most beautifully written books I have ever read.

"1984" will always be on the list. I never knew books like "1984" existed until I read it. I felt the same way when I read Orwell's "Animal Farm".

"Treasure Island" makes the list because the edition I have in my library includes Stevenson's essay from "The Art of Writing" that made me realise that it was time for me to try being a writer and stop feckin' about.

But it's the book of fairy tales that gave me the most trouble. I couldn't pick which collection it'd be. I'd want the complete set of Andrew Lang's "Fairy Books" with me. I'd want a copy of "The Brothers Grimm". I'd want the encyclopedia of fairy tales I had as a child called "Le cabinet des fées", which had forty volumes and is so precious that I refuse to re-read my childhood copy because it's quite old and sentimental to me.

I think to myself for a moment. Would those be my favourite books? The first books I ever loved? Cherished? They're still precious to me. But I cannot remember their stories as vividly as I can recall others.

I look at the shelves. There's about 1,700 books in the library. A hundred of them probably a favourite.

When people come to the house they're always amazed by the library. I tell them it's not even one half of my actual library. There's another 17,000 + books in storage. Then there's the books I want to have in my library and my visions of what this library will be like. What kind of bookshelves I want. How much space I'll dedicate to a library. (A lot.) How it will be organised.

Once I have more library space, I tell them, the first books I plan to buy is a reading copy of "Le cabinet des fées". I will put my childhood copy safely behind glass (there will be bookshelves with glass doors for rare books and first editions) and will dedicate an entire section of my library to fairy tales and mythology. There will be shelves devoted to children's books, reference books, poetry, fiction, philosophy...

I go on.

I will build my library inspired by the collecting and collections of Andrew Lang, Captain Sir Richard Burton (I already have a rare 16 volume set of his Arabian Nights), Jorge Luis Borges (I am a big collector of his works), and of course Peter and Iona Opie - who left their impressive collection to The Bodelian Library at Oxford containing:

A collection of works written or published for children, or related thereto, mainly British, totalling c. 20,000 items, put together from the mid 1940s to the early 1980s as a private research resource, rich in terms of rarity and deep in terms of quantity of variant editions, ranging in date from the 16^th to the 20^th century, including c. 800 18^th century books. Includes much of Roland Knaster’s collection, strong in foreign books and books of the 1920s and 1930s. Arranged in c. 20 categories, relating either to form or subject (when a category contains a good proportion of early books it is subdivided into pre- and post- 1850): stories (over 1,400 pre-1850 and 2,700 post-1850 items); books of instruction (over 360 pre-1850 and 280 post-1850 items); fables, legends, and fairy tales (over 1,200 items); biography and history (over 270 pe-1850 and 250 post-1850 items); moveables (over 70 pre-1850 and 470 post-1850 items); natural science (over 280 pre-1850 and 450 post-1850 items); primers and alphabets (over 340 pre-1850 and 320 post-1850 items); travel and geography (over 200 pre-1850 and 100 post-1850 items); periodicals and annuals (over 40 pre-1850 and 900 post-1850 items);games and pastimes (over 90 pre-1850 and 1,200 post-1850 items); religious instruction (over 360 pre-1850 and 290 post-1850 items); toy-books (over 1,000 items); nursery rhymes (over 1,000 items); poetry and verse (over 540 pre-1850 and 770 post-1850 items); keepsakes and miscellanies, almanacs and birthday books (over 40 pre-1850 and 160 post-1850 items); drama (over 190 items); music (over 170 items); foreign languages (over 1,300 items); hornbooks, cabinets, etc.; copy, exercise and drawing books; manuscripts and original artwork; ephemera. Accompanying the collection are records of the books: catalogue cards, accession diaries, notes loosely inserted into books, etc. Acquired by the Bodleian in 1988 after a public appeal, Iona Opie donating half the value of the collection.

20,000 items, I say excitedly. I don't go into the specifics - that's just for your benefit. I revel in my bibliomania a little more. I confess all my dreams and plans.

When they've suffered through all of that (but I can't help myself) they say "they don't have the money" or "they don't have the space" to indulge their own love of books, but like me they have books they love and lists of books they want to read and sometimes books they hope they'll write.

And that's when my heart breaks a little. I don't go into the stories about how I have starved for books. How I've sacrificed. How I've traveled the world for them and with them. I'm proud of my library, but the purpose has always been to one day share it. 

One day I'll have a house in Amsterdam with a TARDIS front door. A house that like the TARDIS is bigger on the inside. I will make cakes and invite people to tea for interesting conversations about books. I will serve delicious dinners to guests who will gravitate towards the library, who won't hear me calling them to the dining room because they're lost in a book.  I will open my library up to children who can come and look at the books in the collection and read and have little paper library cards like I did when I was a child.

The first book I ever took out of a library with my library card was about coccinelle, ladybugs to Americans, what you call ladybirds in the UK. They became my favourite insect. Nearly 30 years later I still have a special fondness for them. I still remember their wings beat faster than a hummingbird's. It's probably because of that book that I ran outside on a cold grey day to take this photograph.

This is what I can see by turning my head to look out of the window next to my desk.

Happy World Book Day, books. Every day should be World Book Day.

  
 

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Bibliomancy: The Magic of Books

Bibliomancy is defined as the use of books in divination. If you'd like to know more about the history or practice of bibliomancy you can look here. I'll be talking about bibliomancy as a method for writers (which means I'll actually be talking about stichomancy, if only because my method involves using books selected at random.

The Method:

1. Select a book at random.
2. Open it to any page.
3. Point to a line.
4. Record it.
5. Stop when there's no more space on the page.

Like I said this is a method I use when inspiration is low or stress is high or some other sort of exasperatingly intangible thing is getting in the way of my writing. I write down lines or phrases that stand out to me when I read books. They're scribbled in notebooks. This is different.


When I get stuck the first time in the course of my "writing day", I pull out a fresh blank page.I play some music. Roll a cigarette, and stand before my bookshelves. I wait until something catches my eye. I open it, read what sentence I've pointed to, and either stuff the book back on the shelf or I write the line (or lines) down. Sometimes it's because its good or interesting. Sometimes it's because it's crap.

I keep the sheet next to me from that moment until I call it quits for the day. I write on it. I cross out things. It gives me something to think about besides what I don't want to think about (that I'm not writing).

Here are my lines from today:

Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part II, Ch. XVI

"The traveller drew in his rein, gazing in astonishment at the figure and face of Don Quixote, who was riding without his saddles."

Robertson Davies, High Spirits, p. 151

"A hundred and fifty years is a long time, you will agree, for a man to suffer misunderstanding and wrong."   (First line of short story.)

Yasunari Kawabata, The Lake, p107

"They had decided to write their messages at the bottom of the high wall where, hidden by grass, the writing would not be noticed."

Mervyn Peake, A Book of Nonsense, p 39

"I cannot give the reasons,

I only sing the tunes:

the sadness of the reasons

the madness of the moons."

William Styron, The Confessions of Nat Turner, p. 251

"He said keep thee from the evil woman, from the flattery of the tongue of a strange woman."

I've only made two notes so far about the lines from Robertson Davies' "High Spirits" - striking out "you will agree" because I don't like it for a myriad of reasons (It's hokey, breaks the wall between the reader and the first person narrator in a way I don't like, and because quite frankly I don't agree.) and that it's the opening line of a short story because I'm obsessed with first lines in writing. Something I know I've mentioned many times before.

But what's the point? Why am I making such a big deal out of it? Because after typing those lines into this post, I'm inspired again. I want to get back to writing now. I've also added "The Confessions of Nat Turner" to my reading list.

Any little bit helps, the saying goes. I believe that. I'm at a point now where I will never be able to read all the books I want to read or the books I should and maybe bibliomancy or the more appropriate stichomancy is about divining the future from books in a more religious context - but hey, whatever works.

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Ambiance Part Deux - 111 Archer Avenue

My favourite house is both fictional and real. 111 Archer Avenue is how it's known in Wes Anderson's "The Royal Tenenbaums", but the house where the film was shot really exists on the corner of Convent Avenue & 144th Street in Harlem.

The simple answer to what I love about the Royal Tenenbaum house would be everything, but its all about the details.

One thing I quite like about The Tenenbaum house is that almost everyone in the family has an "office" or in Chazzie's case his room is an office.

Chaz's Office

Now I don't particularly like the "70's" office feel of Chaz's room, but I do like where he positioned his desk. I love the nooks and crannies of the Tenenbaum house. In terms of location though, Etheline (who shares her office with Henry) has what would be my ideal spot for an office and if there was a way to enter the house's courtyard it'd be even more perfect.

But the best room in the house is Margot's.

In the film Margot likes her secrets. She also apparently likes her privacy.

I love the wallpaper.

Have I mentioned I love the wallpaper?

I wouldn't transform my bathroom into a darkroom, but it's a cute idea.

Margot's "Library of Plays". Also she's the only Tenenbaum with a working fireplace.

Richie also has great wallpaper, which he paints himself.

In fact Richie is the "artist" of the Tenenbaum family. He has an art gallery in the ballroom.

There are other great rooms in the house with little details I'd love to find in my own dream house. Lots of beautiful wood, swinging doors, a phone cubby, and a closet full of old board games.

Game closet. With two sets of Operation.

The library.

The phone cubby (doors open).

The phone cubby (with doors closed for privacy).

Smaller kitchen or breakfast nook.

The stairway before Javelina (the boar's head) is stashed in the game closet.

Obviously my dream house would need its own flag. Aa "A" for Ama!

But what I love about the Tenenbaum house, aside from what I've posted above has always escaped me. Now that I'm house hunting for a move to Amsterdam I need to be able to tell someone what I'm looking for - and that hasn't been easy.

I can say I want this and this and that - I want more than one bathroom; a library; two offices; an extra bedroom for guests; a massive dining room for dinner parties. I can specify the neighbourhood or that there's a garden of some kind, but it doesn't mean I'm going to get it.

I found this great interview of Wes Anderson talking about the Tenenbaum house where he specifies the things I haven't been able to quite put my thumb on. I want my own little world. A sort of castle. Surroundings that are "dated and dusty". Bohemian. I want a house where each room seems to have its own identity.

Then I remember a house I lived in once. It was massive. Most of the walls were paneled with mahogany. There was a similar sort of staircase and a quirky bathroom with a claw footed tub and a window I always forget to pull the blind on (thankfully there were lots of trees). I like Richie had the attic bedroom.

But I'm being sentimental. Despite what I can call to memory like the porch that ran along the front of the house where I hung a porch swing (that I bought at a junkyard for $5), it was a boring house. I was a poor student. I didn't care very much about the ambiance of where I lived so much as comfort and that I could get 200 people inside it on a Friday night.

Still, looking at the last picture of the Tenenbaum flag flying over the neighbourhood I see houses with fascades like those found in Amsterdam. Haarlem was originally a city in Holland (and New York once owned by the Dutch was called New Amsterdam). It keeps me hopeful that eventually I'll see a place and I'll have that moment when I think to myself - 'this is my Tenenbaum house'.

Now all I need is a Chazz to help me close the deal when that day comes. I've already tracked down Margot's wallpaper.

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I Know Why the Nicolas Cage Acts

I don't blog about this kind of stuff often, but having recently seen "Seeking Justice" and the boycott surrounding the upcoming release of "Ghost Rider", I thought it was time for me to discuss the WTF-ness that is Nicolas Cage.

I've been a fan of Nic ever since the film "Peggy Sue Got Married". I blame my emerging puberty for the little crush I developed on Cage, but this was back when he was kind of good. He was really good in "Moonstruck" and to this day his portrayal of Sailor Ripley in "Wild At Heart" is what makes it my favourite of David Lynch's films.

"This is a snakeskin jacket! And for me it's a symbol of my individuality, and my belief... in personal freedom."

A quick look on IMDB and I see a gap in Cage's career - the films he starred in between "Wild At Heart" and the film that won him his Oscar, "Leaving Las Vegas", which he followed with very Oscar unworthy films such as "The Rock", "Con Air", "Face Off", and "City of Angels" (which gave the world the song "Iris" by The Goo Goo Dolls that seemed to play on a continuous loop on every American radio station).

Now those weren't horrible films. "Con Air" had brilliant moments. John Malkovich's Cyrus Grissom might be my favourite movie bad guy since Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber from "Die Hard". Steve Buscemi is also brilliant as Garland Greene, the mild-mannered serial killer. But Cage? He saves the day, but not the movie.

"Don't move or the bunny gets it."

And that's it. Not another "Leaving Las Vegas" level performance from Cage until 2002 when he starred in Charlie Kaufman's "Adaptation". And not another one since.

Julie Miller of Vanity Fair posted Cage's explanation of his career choices:

 It’s not important to me. In fact, I think that if you go about making movies to win Oscars, you’re really going about it the wrong way. I think that it’s ... right now, what I’m excited about is trying to create a [pauses] kind of a cultural understanding through my muse that is part of the zeitgeist that isn’t motivated by vanity or magazine covers or awards. It’s more, not countercultural, but counter-critical. I would like to find a way to embrace what Led Zeppelin did, in filmmaking.

Then she asks what did he mean? Here's my analysis.

"It's not important to me. In fact, I think that if you go about making movies to win Oscars, you're really going about it the wrong way."

Pretty straight forward and other Oscar winners such as Meryl Streep have said very similar things.

"I think that it's ... right now, what I'm excited about is trying to create a [pauses] kind of cultural understanding through my muse that is part of the zeitgeist that isn't motivated by vanity or magazine covers or awards."

Now it gets tricky. A cultural understanding? For whom? Himself? His fans? The world in general? Traditionally "a cultural understanding" implies a belief that underneath 'we are all the same'.

"That is part of the zeitgeist" could also be straightforward.

 "It's more, not countercultural, but counter-critical. I would like to find a way to embrace what Led Zeppelin did, in filmmaking."


To understand this part you don't need to be a fan of Led Zeppelin, but it helps. The band once called "The Yardbirds" until Keith Moon quipped "this is gonna go down like a lead zeppelin" - a possible reference to the Hindenberg crashing and burning, had a major influence on aspects of the music industry during their career. Musically, it's been claimed that while they're known as a mostly "progressive" rock band, their music managed to transcend any music genre.

So simply put, one translation could be "I don't choose my roles based on winning Oscars because the statue means nothing to me. In fact, I don't like the attention. I want to make films the public will like. I don't want to be type cast because winning an Oscar type casts you. I also really like Led Zeppelin."

Now if Cage likes Led Zeppelin half as much he likes Elvis it can be sure that whatever path the muse has led him down, Cage will probably stay on course. I mean look at how much he likes Elvis. He even married his daughter.

Plus given Cage's tax problems (at one point someone claimed he owed the IRS and the state of California about $18 million), it's not like he can afford to stop making movies. In 2011 alone Cage starred in 5 movies.

But don't trust my translation. Cage's quotes page on IMDB pretty much say the same thing minus the crazy.

One last thing before I go. BleedingCool.com posted an appeal to Cage to save the Ghost Rider creator who recently lost a lawsuit to Marvel to the tune of $17,000. You can read it here: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/02/09/appeal-nicolas-cage-on-behalf-of-gary-friedrich/

As someone who has always watched Cage's films because of what made me love him, even when I cannot understand why I'm watching say, "Season of the Witch" for example, I really hope Nic takes the opportunity to reach out to Friedrich.

It would be very Ben Gates of you Mr Cage.

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Ambiance Part I - Tony Duquette

Every great tale needs the perfect setting and so does every great life. In French ambiance can mean, surroundings in its simplest translation. But ambiance is one of those words in French that means many things from the tangible to the intangible such as the fineness of a table napkin to a feeling in the air - to the obvious (the best champagne) and the more subtle (mood lighting).

Ambiance even comes with it's own unique problem - the lack of ambiance. If someone says, ça manque d'ambiance ici that means going elsewhere until the ambiance is just perfect. If Goldilocks had been French she would have risen from the first two beds because they lacked ambiance. 

The easiest way to create ambiance is through decor. Its what makes walking into a beautifully decorated room feel like entering into a sanctuary. Sometimes if you're really lucky you get to walk into another world. I imagine that is how it must have felt to walk into a room decorated by Tony Duquette.

Duquette started in stage and set design and was discovered by tastemaker Lady Elsie de Wolfe Mendl, who is often credited as the inventor of interior design as a profession. As well as being a Lady of high society in New York, London, et Paris – she was also an actress, authoress, and of course an interior decorator.

Elsie in her later years.

Elsie brought the salons and ballrooms of her wealthy clientele out of the dreary Victorian age by dragging it back to a more 18^th century French aesthetic, but her hatred of Victorian décor had its roots in her obviously cruel mother who often told Elsie she was ugly, but “just what ugly was she (Elsie’s mother) did not know”.

One day Elsie returned home from school to see her parents had redecorated the drawing room.

“She ran [in]... and looked at the walls, which had been papered in a William Morris design of gray palm-leaves and splotches of bright red and green on a background of dull tan. Something terrible that cut like a knife came up inside her. She threw herself on the floor, kicking with stiffened legs, as she beat her hands on the carpet.... she cried out, over and over: "It's so ugly! It's so ugly.”

Thusly Elsie developed a lifelong hatred of Victorian furniture and perhaps it might explain why she wrote her autobiography, from which the above story was taken, in the third person.

A room decorated by William Morris.

A room decorated by Lady Elsie de Wolfe Mendl.

Elsie helped Tony get his first gigs decorating for her friends and he had an amazing career – and life. Tony not only did film sets for Vincent Minelli, designed jewelry - he was also the first American artist to be honoured with a one man showing at le Louvre.

What I love about Duquette’s work is he dumpster dived and was fearless. He was the original Do-It-Yourselfer and he was no snob. He happily put 18^th century tapestries next to some crazy wood thing he’d spray painted gold. His greatest accomplishment though was his house, Dawnridge.

There a great blog with more pictures of Duquette's rooms here.

Now even for me a house that was wall to wall in the spirit of Tony Duquette would be a little too much, but juste. My main complaint would be that I wouldn't know how to fit some of my favourite types of design elements into the oppulence of such a room.

I'd love to find a way to mix my grandmother's antiques, my love for jazzing things à la Duquette, and my love for order, the Bauhaus movement, and industrial furniture because when I look at photos of Dawnridge, I can't see a Barcelona chair and matching ottoman feeling at home in such a room.

And I'm not such a fan of such exacting symmetry as you can see in the second photo above. Looking down the room it becomes obvious starting with the two plant stands to the two chairs and even to the two matching purple pillows.

But like I said ambiance can be obvious and most importantly when I look at pictures of Tony's house I cannot imagine for one second that it wouldn't be a perfect setting for a fabulous life. Maybe not mine specifically, but it was the fabulous setting for Tony's own life.

Stay tuned for Part II where I show you the inside of one of my dream houses. It's not going to be what you expect...

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Like the Dickens

THUD.

That is how I came to know of Charles Dickens. I was twelve years old and I had a British English teacher named Miss Mills who had bug eyes, frizzy hair she always wore up, and a long nose that was still too small for the enormous pair of glasses she wore. She was forever pushing them up with her forefinger after she looked down at me. She was quite comical to me even then, but what I remember most about her was what I call the Day of the Thud.

For a few weeks I had been going to my lessons with Miss Mills with a red leather bound two volume edition of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables that I kept together with a simple but practical elastic.

The thud was Miss Mills' response to my declaration that Hugo was the world's greatest writer. To Miss Mills credit she did listen to my reasons about why I felt this way - but I was obviously wrong. The very next lesson she dropped Great Expectations on my desk.

THUD.

Even then at twelve I was meticulous about my reading. I had a very small and sad bookshelf that had been oddly fixed to the wall above my desk in my room. It was only three shelves, but I couldn't reach the top one without standing on a chair and so I naturally kept the books I'd already read on that shelf. The second shelf was for books I was going to read eventually and the bottom shelf was reserved for books I was going to read right away. Dickens' Great Expectations was placed on this bottom shelf, if only because I feared Miss Mills too much to not at least attempt it, which I did a few weeks later.

I am sure that Miss Mills didn't know that I'd read Great Expectations and form ideas about her. She wasn't the type of person who thought she revealed herself in any way, but the more I read about Pip's older sister Mrs Joe Gargery and became engrossed in Dickens' picture of Victorian England, the more I saw things that made me think of Miss Mills.

I attended class with curious eyes. I started to take a closer look at Miss Mills.

All the time I'd been taking lessons with Miss Mills she rarely sat. She always dressed in the same sort of attire - a long wool skirt (regardless of the temperature), a white blouse that buttoned to the middle of her throat, and over this blouse was always the same sort of jacket and always the same brooch on the lapel - a sort of silver pod leaf with two pearl "peas" tucked inside it.

The length of her skirt hid the fact that Miss Mills always wore high heeled shoes. She wasn't very tall but nor was she graceful. After each class she would linger behind in the classroom and change from her high heels into a pair of tennis shoes. I only discovered this because my curiosity about Miss Mills and her life outside of being my English tutor led me to find a convenient spot in the corridor to observe and follow her.

As she walked I saw the flash of white tennis shoes from underneath her skirt. She carried her shoes in a heavily wrinkled brown paper sack. She walked in timid steps and puffed up like a peacock the minute she crossed anybody in the corridor. She never said "hello" or "good-bye" to anybody. She simply said "good afternoon" in passing, as a greeting, and as a farewell.

"Good afternoon." She said to Mr. Wilkes the janitor who was sweeping up the corridor.  It's then that I noticed because of the blazer she wore how her shoulders hunched up in the presence of a man for longer than it took to cross in a hallway. As if she were gathering up her shoulders like loose sheets of paper. She turned her body in the wide corridor as if it had suddenly narrowed and she couldn't pass by Mr. Wilkes without brushing against him unless she did so.

"It's almost nighttime now," Mr. Wilkes told Miss Mills. "So good evening," he said with a smile.

Now maybe it's because I adored Mr. Wilkes and wasn't fond of Miss Mills to begin with, but it upset me when she stopped, puffed up again, turned the thin metal watch on her wrist, pushed her glasses back to the bridge of her nose, and summarily told Mr. Wilkes that it being precisely five thirty-seven meant it was not yet evening.

"So good afternoon," Miss Mills told him again.

Mr. Wilkes' smile faded and Miss Mills unaware of how she'd treated him turned to continue on her way, but not before the rubber sole of her shoe gave a little squeak that sounded like a pathetic little fart. Miss Mills paused a moment with her back to Mr. Wilkes who was kind enough to keep sweeping down the hall as if he hadn't noticed and I slinked outside to the faculty parking lot just in time to see Miss Mills get into a tiny car brown and orange with rust that made an unbelievable amount of noise when she started it. The car stalled after a few moments and finally when it had restarted she drove away in the exhaust smoke that surrounded it like a fog.

I saw through Miss Mills after that. In a way after that I saw through everyone. I paid closer attention to people and wrote down my observations in notebooks. A few months later I won an award for my writing and my father decided if my English was good enough that I could win writing awards I didn't need a tutor anymore.

I saw Miss Mills one last time before she went off to wherever she went off to after she was no longer my tutor. She'd tried to find another student and asked to stay on at the school but there was no place for her. I returned her copy of Great Expectations with a bookmark - it had a little sparrow painted on it and I'd bought it as a gift for my father, but much like me he never had much use for a bookmark. She thanked me for my present, corrected me for using I'll instead of I will, and though I had her address never bothered with her ever again.

But even now when I think of Mrs Joe Gargery, with her complaints and aspirations and nuances I always see Miss Mills. Who looked, with a slight change in attire, quite a bit like the Wicked Witch of the West.

This realisation - that everybody could be a character and was - had a brief but lasting impact on me. People extol the virtues of Dickens for chronicling Victorian England, but I refuse to limit him in this way. Every writer is a historian of their age. There are greats like Dickens, Hugo, Zola, and Steinbeck who did it better than others certainly - but what is it about Dickens that makes his legacy so profound that Prince Charles himself is involved in the festitivities to mark the author's 200th birthday? Why are there festivals in his honour? Why do people walk the streets to find what is called "Dickens' London"?

In Dickens' work, Great Expectations is one of the keys to understanding why his work is still so beloved in the characters of the convict Magwitch and especially Joe Gargery. Dickens believed that people deserved a second chance, but more importantly he believed that there were those, like Joe, who are good to begin with and will always be good.

The other key and the more significant perhaps is in Dickens' best known work A Christmas Carol. Scrooge is visited by his former partner Jacob Marley and the three ghosts, wakes up, and becomes a better man. The narrator assures us that the transformation is complete and permanent. That Scrooge has successfully "changed the shadows of what may be".

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Happy Birthday Bob Marley

I don't blog about music often, but Bob Marley has come to mean more to me in recent months than just what he's "famous" for (weed smokin' & music). As it says in The Red Hot Chili Peppers song "Give It Away", "Bob Marley was a poet and a prophet, Bob Marley taught me how to off it, Bob Marley walk it like he talk it".

It's the walk it like he talk it part of Marley's legacy that I'd like to focus on today. I could tell you about how I think Marley's music sounds better on vinyl even if the remastered album "Legend" has its own sort of majesty. But what could I say about Marley's music that hasn't been said already? Probably nothing.

"Good thing about music is when it hits you, you feel no pain."

 Marley's beliefs led him to refuse treatment for cancer that led to his passing in 1981. This always sort of baffled me as a teenager, but now in my 30's I've talked to a few real "rastamen" since and I understand for someone who lives their life to the principles of the Rastafari movement why it was the only decision.

Note I didn't call it "Rastafarianism". It's not a religion. It's a movement and an ideology.

“Life and Jah are one in the same. Jah is the gift of existence. I am in some way eternal, I will never be duplicated. The singularity of every man and woman is Jah's gift. What we struggle to make of it is our sole gift to Jah. The process of what that struggle becomes, in time, the Truth."

I could list all the things that Bob Marley said, but he's rather quoteable. Most of his quotes are about love. Marley was quite a romantic. He thought love was pretty much the cure for everything. He didn't mind imperfection or a little pain either. 

“The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” 

My favourite though is one to live by. Really.

"Love the life you live. Live the life you love."

RIP. Poet. Prophet. Legend.

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Burns Night

Today or tonight rather, is the annual celebration of the poet, Robert Burns.

It is only recently that I've become acquainted with all that celebrating "Burns Night" entails, which seems to revolve around the preparation of various Scottish gastronomy such as haggis with "neeps" and "tattie", Scottish tart, and of course generous and copious amounts of whisky.

I confess I am not properly initiated. Love of Burns' poetry yes, but I had to ask on Twitter what neeps and tatties actually are (Swedish potatoes and turnips that are boiled and mashed separately).

Haggis on the other hand is a sheep's stomach stuffed with "sheep's pluck" - the liver, heart, and lungs mixed with onions, oatmeal, suet, spices, and stock that is simmered for three hours. I tried a bite once.

But what I love about Burns Night is how much love the Scots have for their national poet. It's akin to the way we French celebrate Victor Hugo, except oddly enough there is no official food associated with this celebration.

My initiation into the poems of Robert Burns was his poem "To A Mouse". At the time I was obsessed with all things Steinbeck. I had just finished one of his most heart wrenching tales, "Of Mice and Men" when a teacher of mine opened up a book of collected poems and pointed out a verse from Burns' poem.

Burns original verse:

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain
For promis'd joy.

Standard English translation:

But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy! 

 But the poem that really made me fall in love with Burns as a poet is his poem "To A Mountain Daisy".

It gave me such a romantic image of this poet, who, having ploughed over a simple daisy turned his feelings into poetry. I was touched from the very first verse:

Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r,
Thou's met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stoure
Thy slender stem:
To spare thee now is past my pow'r,
Thou bonie gem. 

I prefer Burns' original to the standard English translation, but you can read both versions of "To A Mountain Daisy" side by side here.

It remains to this day my favourite of all of Burns' poems and when I think of him, as I do this morning on the 253rd anniversary of his birth, it still evokes from my "breastie" as Burns might say, the same tender emotion that made me see that there is beauty in even the most ordinary flower even if it not as revered as a Red, Red Rose.

Happy birthday Rabbie Burns.

An added treat gifted via Twitter from Scots actors Alan Cumming for Burns Night.

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A Treasure of PDFs

I was cleaning my computer today (mostly because it involves less work than cleaning the house) and found about 1,000 PDF docs that I'd been storing but had completely forgotten.

Many of these involved the "craft" of writing and I thought why not share them?

Then the first problem arose. How does one embed PDF files on to Blogger in order to share them? I posed the question to Twitter but some simple searches on Google gave me my answer before Twitter did and that was to upload PDFs to Google Docs. (If you want any help, hit me up on Twitter @lafemmeflaneuse or ask questions in the comments.)

Now of course I need to start my list with one of the books on writing that has most influenced me, Robert L. Stevenson's "The Art of Writing". I first discovered it through an essay published at the beginning of "Treasure Island" (Chapter V).


It made me want to write right away. No other book "on writing" has made me feel this way.

The Art of Writing - Robert Louis Stevenson

If you do read Chapter V, this will come to have even more meaning for you. Just looking at it reminds me of Stevenson's words in that chapter and all those wonderful inspiring feelings re-emerge inside of me. Very helpful for those days that I feel less than inspired.

I didn't expect this to be such a gem, but considering the first chapter of Dean Koontz's book on writing begins with the all familiar "Monomyth" formula, that's always a good sign. I went through a few bits and decided to include it because it's specifically about writing what Koontz calls "popular" writing. Now I've only read one of Koontz's books, but his success as an author is obvious. Not to mention he's known for being extremely prolific.

Writing Popular Fiction - Dean Koontz

If being prolific is of interest to you as a writer, who better to take advice from than Joyce Carol Oates who sometimes publishes two books a year? "Writers On Writing" is a series of essays from Oates, Saul Bellow, Barbara Kingsolver, and others taken from the New York Times.

Writers On Writing

Now I'm slapping myself because the next PDF I discovered today happens to be for a book on writing that should be in the library but is currently in a box in Northern Ireland. So that it's been on my computer all along makes me feel like an arsehole. But I digress...

Monsieur Redacteur considers Stephen King's "On Writing" one of the best books on the craft of crafting fiction. King is also a prolific writer and this book sort of explains how the King does it.

On Writing - Stephen King

Now the last little PDF I'm going to include here (I need to go through the others to see if they're any good or not) is a little essay written by H.P. Lovecraft called "Notes On Writing Weird Fiction".

Enjoy!

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