The Golden Obelisk

You know me! Sometimes I have a large book and a small book going simultaneously. As I mentioned yesterday, I'm reading CIGARETTES by Harry Mathews. But I am also reading THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, a towering, big, giant, huge, monumental masterwork by Thomas Mann. Now, is it going to knock Wuthering Heights off of my list? Never! But it's got to be a Top 5 novel. Now! I was ruminating yesterday about whether I could even say I have been reading it, given the fact that I am not reading it in German. How could I read it in German? I don't know German. And now I am old and will never know German. That's part of why I'm reading THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, if I am: the oldness. Like, "I'm old, and I have never read THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN." Such were the thoughts that came to me before I began reading THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN. Of course, another part of me was and is like, you are old, why bother? Oldness goes both ways! I'm glad I'm reading it (in the translation by John E. Woods). It has everything! Including an owl. But! Before we get to the owl, it's so funny, I was thinking about not being able to read German yesterday, and then I read this in Harry Mathews's obituary: "His novel 'The Conversions,' otherwise in English, concluded with nine pages in German." But! That's not why we're here. I just wanted to say how weird it is that I'm reading two books, then one book has a hallucination talking about an owl and the next day the other book (THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN) has a ghost reciting a poem with a line about an owl in it! I didn't mention this yesterday, but the hallucination in CIGARETTES has a ghostly quality... it first appears in the form of the character's late grandmother. So you might say I was reading one book in which a ghost talks about an owl then I pick up another book and happen to come to a passage in which a ghost talks about an owl. So: 2 days, 2 ghosts talking about 2 owls. Now! Ordinarily, I wouldn't mash this all together. Back in the days before I stopped "blogging," I would have separated the following into its own "post." But those days are behind us forever! I went to bed early last night but couldn't sleep, so I arose at midnight and turned on TCM, where I saw Lana Turner as a powerful executive. And in her boardroom stood the golden obelisk glimpsed above! I used to keep tabs on obelisks in movies because McNeil cared about them. Now I don't know why I'm doing it. In conclusion, I had another thought about THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, which I shared in emails with some friends (in this case, Ace, Bill, Jimmy, Megan, and Ashly). Feedback has been scarce, because what are they going to say? And I am certain the observation has been made by someone before me, though I am much too tired to google it. So! The TB sanitorium in THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN obtains a record player for its residents. Our protagonist, Hans Castorp, takes it over. He puts together little programs of music, with much thought (and many pages) spent on consideration of how one seemingly unrelated selection will flow into another. Only he has the key to the cabinet! Only he touches the records and decides what to play when! And thus he entertains his audience, becoming, in my limited knowledge, LITERATURE'S FIRST DJ.

Familiar Barn Fight

As you know, I never, ever "blog" anymore unless I read a book with an owl in it or for some other reason. But now I have decided I can "blog" about the TV show THE BIG VALLEY whenever I want. Spurred by Laura Lippman's description of it as "gloriously weird," I decided to revisit THE BIG VALLEY, or maybe just to visit it, because I really couldn't remember anything about it. I remembered a promo in which they put a lot of reverb on the announcer when he said the title: "THE BIG VALLEY-ALLEY-ALLEY-alley-alley-alley!" And I remembered, from the same promo, the description of Barbara Stanwyck's character as "Victoria, a woman of backbone and bite!" All I can say is that was a pretty good promo if I still remember it from when I was a kid. So I watched some of THE BIG VALLEY. When a fistfight started raging in the barn, I thought, you know, maybe I did watch this show when I was a kid, because I felt secure in the knowledge that this was a staple of the show, it was all coming back to me, regular fistfights in the barn. But I can't be sure! I think there was something on the other channel I liked better. But here are some things I observed: 1. It all starts with one of the brothers on a bridge and here comes Lee Majors from the other direction and neither fellow will back up his horse to let the other one pass. So they literally just sit there looking at each other until the bridge falls down! I can't say much for the infrastructure. 2. The introduction of Barbara Stanwyck's character. She swoops into the room where her sons are standing and says (I paraphrase, but only slightly), "You're putting on weight, must you shout, here comes a visitor, I'll see you at dinner." And then she's gone. Like she was never there! She spits it all out like a machine gun and disappears in a flash. I thought maybe she was like Fred MacMurray, who supposedly used to come in and sit in a chair for one day and say all his lines for an entire season of his sitcom MY THREE SONS then get up and put on his hat and leave and they had to shoot around him for the rest of the year. My friend Ward McCarthy told me that about Fred MacMurray and if it's not true it's my own fault, because maybe I'm remembering the details wrong and I'm just too lazy to look it up. 3. Lee Majors kneels down at a lonesome grave (the patriarch has been plopped into the ground in the middle of nowhere, right where he was killed, not unlike the sad case of Meriwether Lewis) and then a young woman rides up on a horse and just casually leans down and starts striking Lee Majors wildly and repeatedly in the face with a leather strap, and she doesn't even know him! That's his half-sister, I guess, as they discover later, but there's an extremely weird vibe they've got going on (pictured). In fact they started making me think of Heathcliff and Cathy a little bit, and Lee Majors's name on the show is Heath, so I wondered whether that was on purpose, but my research methods (as noted above) are far too lazy to confirm or deny. Still, Heath is the brash, mysterious outsider who disrupts family life... for instance when he steals some apples! He's just walking around, trespassing, going through their stuff and finally taking an apple and Victoria catches him. So he takes off his hat. And I thought, oh, this brash, mysterious outsider is going to be respectful for a change! We're about to see the tender, gentlemanly side of this brash, mysterious outsider! But no, he was just taking off his hat to cram it full of all the sweet, sweet apples he could carry. And I was like, gee, Lee Majors sure has a hatful of apples now! He's going to have quite a night eating apples. Meanwhile, Audra (Linda Evans) gets a lot of use out of her leather strap, often with good reason, because they seem to live in a nightmarish hellscape. Right now everyone is shooting each other and I haven't even made it to the end of the first episode yet.

Reading Too Much Into It

I'm lucky enough to have an advance reading copy of Megan Abbott's next book, YOU WILL KNOW ME. I see that a LeRoy Neiman tiger poster appears in it. Megan told me about that poster, which is why it also coincidentally appears in MY next book, MOVIE STARS, in which, as I now see thanks to Megan, I consistently misspell LeRoy Neiman's name with a small "r." But the important thing is that the LeRoy Neiman tiger poster is literature's next big trend. I also came across a subtle allusion to Brian Keith's "Uncle Bill" (pictured) from the TV show FAMILY AFFAIR... a touchstone that is pure Megan, as I know from many a conversation. Last night I was trying to piece together what makes something a "Megan Abbott" novel, other than the fact that Megan Abbott wrote it. Is it that you feel you're on sure footing and then things start to slip away from under you? Characters' nightmares seem truer than their daily lives. I'm grasping here. I know that Megan likes David Lynch, and often cites him as an influence, but it's not precisely Lynchian. Lynch can show you a ceiling fan and fill you with dread. Megan achieves something of the same effect with words. Ordinary things aren't ordinary for her. Uneasiness, I decided. That's what you feel. Megan Abbott is our great author of unease. I already had that phrase in my mind - "our great author of unease" - when I came on this sentence in YOU WILL KNOW ME: "It was upsetting, like the seam of something had been torn, ever so slightly." Yes, it's the "ever so slightly" that marks this perception as Megan's, maybe, and separates her from everyone else. Also, the evocative vagueness of "the seam of something." It's not that Megan "peels back layers" the way people say David Lynch does... it's that the world itself is already hallucinatory and gothic. There's no need to peel back any layers! Megan and I discuss this, or something related to this, in an old interview I hope you will "click" on: see pp. 14-16 (MEGAN: "It’s like the thing that students sometimes say: 'You’re reading too much into it.' And of course that’s what students always say when they’re frightened about what they’re reading"). I'm not saying Megan Abbott and Emily Brontë share a worldview, necessarily, but there's a scene in WUTHERING HEIGHTS that I wrote about for the Rumpus once, "when the housekeeper goes back to visit a sweet little boy she used to take care of, and in the short intervening time something has happened to him. He throws a stone at her head and curses. She tempts him with an orange: '"Who has taught you those fine words, my barn," I inquired. "The curate?" "Damn the curate, and thee! Give me that," he replied. "Tell us where you got your lessons, and you shall have it," said I. "Who’s your master?" "Devil daddy," was his answer.'" Very uneasy, queasy, skating around the edge of normal life. Hmm, maybe it's the orange that seems like a Megan Abbott touch, an otherworldly fruit or shining spot on those bleak moors. In conclusion, there's a significant doodle in YOU WILL KNOW ME that looks "like a cartoon owl." So I can put YOU WILL KNOW ME on my stupid list of all the books I read with owls in them, trying to pin it down and categorize it with my sickening brand of whimsy. Yes, yes, that's it, Pendarvis, laugh your unease away. IF YOU CAN! The last book I read featuring a "cartoon owl" was by Ace Atkins, a close friend of Megan's and mine. Surely this is an area for further investigation, he quipped, narrowly avoiding the abyss.

Seven Deadly Recommendations

The state of the recommendation shelf is... strong. Katelyn (not to be confused with Kaitlyn) took this pic for me just moments ago. You will note that David Simon (speaking at the Courthouse at 1:15 PM on Friday) and Seo Kim (speaking at the Overby Center at 10:30 AM on Thursday) are currently represented. Go to Square Books and get their books and MAKE DAVID AND SEO SIGN THEM WITH HEARTFELT PERSONAL MESSAGES. Did I ever tell you that David Simon's HOMICIDE: A YEAR ON THE KILLING STREETS has my favorite last sentence, but I think you have to read the whole 600 pages first for it to work, so I'm not even going to tell you and please don't peek or you'll ruin it for yourself? I mistakenly showed it to Kate (not to be confused with Katelyn) at the counter today without setting it up properly... by making her stand there and read the entire book first, I mean. (Then there's an epilogue and stuff, but I don't count that.) I was pretty happy to notice that SOMETHING HAPPENED by Joseph Heller had sold from my recommendation shelf. Now that's a book that has been unfairly forgotten. Has it been forgotten? I don't even know. Maybe I'M the one who forgot it! I probably read it last when I was in my 20s. Who do I think I am? Why don't I just shut my fat thought hole? I think during the brief time when Richard Ford lived in town the one conversation we had (that can't be right; it could be right) was about his approval of SOMETHING HAPPENED's placement on my recommendation shelf. I recall Richard Ford saying, "Well, Joe and I were..." and I don't know what they were doing because my brain snapped off. But I kind of think they were doing it in Paris, whatever it was they were doing. I was filled with rage and envy and maybe... sloth? I was like (silently), "OH I GET IT, YOU CALL JOSEPH HELLER 'JOE!'" What a petty, curdled soul I have. Hey, Katelyn has her first short story coming out soon! I'll keep you posted.

Words and Pictures

Dropped by Square Books last night with a snoot full only to discover a hole in my recommendation shelf, which I filled with Céline. I don't think I would have added him under other circumstances. Not a nice man! But that style of his beat me into hysterical submission after only 300 pages or so. Anyway, the recommendation shelf is an ever changing kaleidoscope of literary wonders, ha ha, I'm supposed to be a writer. THE FEVER by Megan Abbott used to be next to that John Wayne bio, so that the Duke was looking askance at the unfortunate girl having some sort of feverish episode on the cover of THE FEVER. Various Megan Abbott books have been spotted on the recommendation shelf from its earliest days. That Lynda Barry book and WUTHERING HEIGHTS are the closest things to permanent fixtures, I guess. You'll note the recent arrival of Seo Kim's masterpiece CAT PERSON. Hey! Remember some years ago when I hosted the first ever "graphic novel" panel at the Oxford Conference for the Book? Come March, I'll be doing another panel with people who write with pictures as well as words. Seo Kim, Kent Osborne, and Natasha Allegri will be coming to town to discuss their work with me. I'll remind you!

"Blog"trospective 13: When Megan Lived Here

Well, it really happened. Megan Abbott moved back to New York. Now what are we supposed to do? Besides vomit and weep I mean. I guess we will attempt to cope by constructing a "blog"trospective of everything Megan did while she lived here (this is not everything Megan did while she lived here): almost made John Currence break his neck---appeared on Anthony Bourdain's television program---appreciated Marlene Dietrich's talent for playing the musical saw---arrived at the record store just as David was putting up the new sign---attended a party where a little girl did that thing where you rapidly stab a knife between your splayed fingers---brought up Sigmund Freud a lot---by example, had me drinking negronis for a spell---called BUFFALO '66 "a child's fantasy" (not in a bad way!)---compared me to Cathy in WUTHERING HEIGHTS---considered a dance called "the mumbly peg"---contemplated the travails of Lucille Ball as a woman in Hollywood---declared intent to be meaningless---defined wildness---discussed Philip Roth a lot---displayed a cheery and tasteful novelty item---drank moonshine (twice... that I know of!)---during a visit by Kent Osborne she witnessed Kent eating chicken wings, which failed to be noted at the time---emailed me about Hank Worden---emailed me about orgone boxes---endured rude scoffing at a ghost story she repeated---expressed a correct opinion about THE GLASS KEY that I undermined with ignorant hyperbole---found a lone pom-pom (this happened more than once)---got scared by a creepy tree---guaranteed weeping---had her first belt of rye---heard Ace's master spoiler for the entire Travis McGee series---helped Dr. Theresa and me avoid trick-or-treaters---hosted a Jerry Lewis double feature---likened something to Poe---loaned me a pen---looked up "querulous" in her dictionary---meeting time at the bar was 4:02---met me at a bar after I improvised some iambic pentameter---participated in an ecstatic roar---pined for some oysters---planned to watch an Elizabeth Taylor movie---pointed a gun at me---professed a generalized affection for wax museums---read Claudia Roth Pierpont's book about Philip Roth---read my tarot cards via cell phone---received a visit from her parents---reminded me of an anecdote about Billy Wilder---researched "friendship clubs"---said something about Mary Steenburgen's accordion---sent me a picture of Bob Hope and Doris Day and Santa---sent me Dick Shawn's obituary---shared her knowledge about an illustrator who drew women with "impossibly long feet"---spent the last warm evening of the year on the balcony of the City Grocery Bar---spoiled a bat attack---started reading the new John Wayne bio---strolled past Robert Mitchum's house from HOME FROM THE HILL---studied the racy cover of UNCLE GOOD'S WEEK-END PARTY, a novel by Faulkner's brother---told a story I misheard about a Depression-era Shirley Temple cream pitcher (and she actually gave us a Depression-era Shirley Temple cream pitcher last night as a goodbye present)---took a picture of a bubble house---took a walk with me while I was wearing a hat (and bedroom slippers, not pictured)---used the old-fashioned term "smoker" to refer to a gathering of rowdy males (she was talking about Bill and Jimmy and me)---visited Elvis's birthplace---visited Faulkner's house with Laraine Newman---was followed on twitter by the manufacturers of a gross-sounding vodka---was harassed by an inflated Batman---was supposed to be on a panel with Adrienne Barbeau (the panel happened but Barbeau canceled)---watched a Norman Mailer movie---watched BARRY LYNDON with Kent Osborne---we possibly left some dvds at her apartment---went to a hobo festival---wondered about tight pants---wowed 'em at "Noir at the Bar."

Frail

Just last Sunday I was bragging and boasting to Bill Boyle about how much of ANCIENT EVENINGS I had raced through - they said it couldn't be done! - and Bill said, "You've still got a long way to go," and I said, "But I'm reading so fast!" Ha! The next day I got sick. I've been sick all week! Which explains my prolonged and unnoticed absence. Don't worry, Dr. Theresa has been on the case, though she is not a doctor of medicine. I'm on the mend thanks to her! But I found myself unable to open ANCIENT EVENINGS again, I just couldn't make myself do it. Was it because of all the gross stuff in it all the time? Not really, I don't think so. I had a thought on Tuesday, something I wanted to look up about Richard Strauss. And today is Saturday and I still haven't quite summoned up the energy to walk across the room for MILTON CROSS' ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE GREAT COMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC. Things seem like an effort! WILL I EVEN GET THROUGH THIS "POST"? There was an advance copy of Megan Abbott's forthcoming novel handy, though, and once I felt like reading again, that's what I went for, though ironically (?) it is called THE FEVER and it's about girls who are suffering from "terrifying, unexplained seizures" as I think it says on the back of the book. Yet it's a tonic! Keeps the old heart pumping and the mind racing. In an appalling coincidence, given its subject, I happened to grab as a bookmark a postcard advertising the Frank Tashlin movie THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT. That's not funny! But it's true. Megan's book will put you in a trance, pull you under. It's dream-like and dangerous, and things are starting to get out of control! That's a terrible description but I'VE BEEN SICK. Megan said, "You're like Cathy in Wuthering Heights! When will you be half-savage, hardy and free again?" But everybody knows I more like Heathcliff's kid, the one he left out in the rain, the one lolling all frail on a couch with a peppermint stick, weak and cruel.

Emblem of My Heart

Finally finished THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL. It had none of the demented strangeness I prize so much in JANE EYRE and especially WUTHERING HEIGHTS... almost none. I mean, the hero did fly into a rage once and beat in an innocent man's skull with the silver horse-head handle of his whip, so that was pretty okay, had a little Heathcliff to it. But that was it. Mostly it was a plain old domestic melodrama. A good one! The ending was just beautiful, though, I have to say. I don't think this will be a spoiler - you will certainly be able to guess within the first few chapters - but consider it a spoiler just in case: if you keep would-be lovers apart for almost 500 pages, it is VERY SATISFYING when they get together. That is a good trick for writers to know! I thought of the blizzard-crushed roses in JANE EYRE when I read this more hopeful image at the end of WILDFELL HALL: a "beautiful half-blown Christmas rose that grew upon the little shrub... This rose is not as fragrant as a summer flower, but it has stood through hardships none of them could bear; the cold rain of winter has sufficed to nourish it, and its faint sun to warm it; the bleak winds have not blanched it, or broken its stem, and the keen frost has not blighted it... it is still fresh and blooming as a flower can be, with the cold snow even now on its petals." And in case we don't get it, our heroine says about a page later, "The rose I gave you was an emblem of my heart." Aw!

Generally

I walked into Ajax today for a late lunch and Randy, the owner, said, "He'll have a Pendarvis!" Once again, he meant the "Osborne Sandwich," which was exactly right, it was what I wanted. As I sat at the bar waiting for my Osborne Sandwich, a priest walked in wearing his full priest uniform and noted a saintly icon that Randy had over the bar, correctly identifying the saint. Then the priest suggested that Ajax would be better off with another saint as its patron, and he named the saint, but I couldn't hear the name because the priest was at the other end of the bar, and then I could swear that the priest said to Randy, about that saint, "He was literally grilled to death." Then the priest cheerfully and innocuously laughed, but my brain interpreted it as maniacal laughter (I am certain it was not): "He was literally grilled to death. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!" After I ate, I walked up to Ace Atkins's office and interrupted his writing. We caught up on things. I tried to talk him into going to City Grocery Bar for a drink, but he was about to take his son to "the squirrel movie" (see also). Then I walked to Square Books and talked to Richard Howorth about history and Kaitlyn, who works there, about WUTHERING HEIGHTS, and I was like, you know, this town is all right. I was having a good time. And by then the bar was open and I walked up and saw Megan Abbott and Bill Boyle there, both recently returned from New York. Megan showed us some pictures of a wax museum she had gone to and said, "I like wax museums, generally."

Tropical Piano Tuner

I am going to tell you the ending of a movie. Sometimes I have to! So if you do not enjoy spoilers, please stop reading here. (Ha ha, you never started. You don't exist! That remains my theory.) We watched a John Wayne movie last night. It also starred a man to whom Dr. Theresa referred throughout as "Mr. Sexy" (pictured). A poor man's Errol Flynn if you ask me! No, not even that: a poor man's Tyrone Power. (Later in this "post" I will realize he was Gig Young.) The movie was called WAKE OF THE RED WITCH and John Wayne fights a giant octopus, something you hardly ever see him do, as I remarked at the time. He gets away from the giant rubber octopus just fine, as we know he will, because it's a flashback. But later he gets tangled up in some more underwater shenanigans and he doesn't make it. He dies. AND THE MOVIE ENDS WITH JOHN WAYNE SAILING A BOAT TO HEAVEN. He's with the love of his life, who is also dead. Yes, this is a John Wayne movie with a pinch of WUTHERING HEIGHTS. I think that's how the old movie of WUTHERING HEIGHTS ended, "happily," with Heathcliff and Cathy sort of reunited as half-dissolved ghosts holding hands and all smiles unless I am making that up. Am I making that up? I don't know. When we turned off the dvd, a P!nk concert was starting on the television. I think it was starting. There was an air of prelude. You remember P!nk. That's how she spells her name! And here is one of the two INCREDIBLE COINCIDENCES of the night: as a pale clown (?) descended - a real Pierrot Lunaire type - (or was he a rascally, grimacing angel?) over a darkened stage, a piano tinkled: the VERY SAME MELODY (I think; Chopin, I think) that John Wayne's dead girlfriend played on the night they met in WAKE OF THE RED WITCH! (And here I include a parenthetical digression. One New Year's Eve I got lost in the woods. At first I found it amusing, but as it began to get dark and cold I started to think, oh, gee, this could be how I die, hmm, help, help. Later, after I was reunited with the rest of the gang, back at the cabin [police had been called!], we watched Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve. This was the year that P!nk had the big hit about getting "the party started," and she came out and sang it, and I danced, friends, oh how I danced, I danced because I had not frozen to death in the woods.) Oh yes, I forgot to tell you that there is a piano in the house on the tropical island where John Wayne and Mr. Sexy are stranded. There always is! Ha ha, "always." But two examples leap right to the top of my head: THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU (Brando version) and THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME. In movies with a tropical island, there is always a mysterious white man already living there, and he always has a piano, representing, I suppose, Western "culture"? As if to underscore the point, John Wayne retires to a balcony and the piano is drowned out by the distant drums of the islanders, get it? Think how hard it must be to keep your piano tuned on an uncharted tropical island, what with all the humidity and the scarcity (I assume) of professional piano-tuners. Maybe I'll write a movie about a Jerry Lewis type who travels from island to island, tuning the pianos of the various isolated madmen. But wait! There is another coincidence! Oh, about three hours later I happened to "channel surf" past TCM, where I saw a man engaged in a battle with a giant red rubber octopus! (It is occurring to me that in both cases the animal was probably a squid, as great billowing quantities of ink were expelled at each of our heroes, but the difference between an octopus and a squid is one of the many things I don't care about.) They dragged this guy to the surface and removed his cumbersome diving helmet and he was Ray Milland, not John Wayne. BUT WHEN I CHECKED THE CAPSULE DESCRIPTION OF THE MOVIE, IT TURNED OUT TO CO-STAR JOHN WAYNE. In other words, friends, after remarking upon the very unlikeliness of it EVER happening, I saw TWO man vs. octopus battles in two separate John Wayne movies last night. The "post" should end here. So, I detected a tang of desperation in the DHARMA & GREG reruns I watched at 3 AM when I couldn't sleep. First of all, they had comically stoic dogs. It felt like an executive decision, like, "People love Frasier, and Frasier has a dog! We'll get TWO dogs and people will love us twice as much as Frasier!" Only maybe the impulse was unconscious, like what they actually said aloud and forced themselves to believe was, "This will be a wry, knowing commentary on Frasier." I found "Greg's" performance in the opening credit sequence very upsetting. His expressions range from bemused to pained. Now, he is SUPPOSED to be bemused at first, when Dharma blows bubbles in his face, signaling the arrival of her free spirit into his uptight life. But even when he is picking her up and twirling her with what it surely meant to represent "a rhapsody of intoxicated glee," he displays an unfortunate look, as if asking his Creator, "WHY? WHY AM I HERE? AFTER ALL MY TRAINING IS THIS WHAT IS TO BECOME OF ME?" (See also.) Wait! Mr. Sexy was Gig Young. I didn't recognize him the whole time. ("I meant it ironically," claimed Dr. Theresa this morning.) Looking for illustrations for this "post," I was reminded of something else I meant to tell you about in WAKE OF THE RED WITCH: John Wayne literally gets crucified. "The Passion of the Duke," said Dr. Theresa, remarkably blasé at this surprising turn of events. So, yes, I just want to remind you before I go: John Wayne grappled with an octopus and got crucified in the same movie and nobody cared.

All Garbling

I was starting to think our Halloween Film Festival would never bounce back from the depressing effects that THE VAMPIRE had on us. It makes you want to stop having Halloween Film Festivals! But yesterday during a discussion of scary movies Megan Abbott's dad - that's right, Megan Abbott's dad! - mentioned "the one where the woman turns into a wasp, what's it called?" And I said, "THE WASP WOMAN?" I happened to know the title because it's sitting there on the old dvr. Hey! Speaking of dads, my dad was a consultant on tomorrow's all-new episode of ADVENTURE TIME. The way I remember it, Pen had an idea called "Everybody Fixes a Car." He sent me a picture of a broken engine and I sent it to my dad - who has been taking apart and putting back together all kinds of engines for well over half a century - and the first thing my dad said was, "That's not a car engine. It's a truck engine." Well, now the episode is called "We Fixed a Truck," so already you can see my dad's influence. Let me explain that whatever my dad told me, I later told the people in the writing room, and then the people in the writing room may or may not have transmitted it in whole or in part to Cole Sanchez and Andy Ristaino, who were writing and storyboarding the episode. So don't blame my dad for any technical inaccuracy that may have slipped through: ALL GARBLING BEGAN WITH ME. I'm the worst! Anyway, Dr. Theresa and I took Megan's dad's comment as a sign and watched THE WASP WOMAN yesterday. It was satisfying! You know why? Because you think it will be about a woman who turns into a wasp and kills people... AND IT IS! (See accompanying illustration.) The imaginative and loony direction of Roger Corman helps too. As I am sure you will recall, Corman directed ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS, a highlight of our 2011 Halloween Film Festival. So of course we were invigorated and in the mood for another Corman movie. So we watched NOT OF THIS EARTH, the original one, not the 1988 remake, which I must confess I saw in the movie theatre. You see, my friend Ben and I had this elaborate ritual of going to see two movies every Monday (I think it was Monday, and I think it was Ben) and there were all these complicated rules about picking that I can no longer remember, but which I believe resulted in us going to see NOT OF THIS EARTH (the remake) and the Run DMC star vehicle/action movie TOUGHER THAN LEATHER on the same day, that was some day! But back to yesterday. A doctor walked in and I was like, "That's the guy with the pipe!" Yes, the doctor from NOT OF THIS EARTH was also in THE WASP WOMAN, and in THE WASP WOMAN he "let his pipe do most of the acting," as I believe I once said in an article about Dick Powell in THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL. Another noteworthy pipe-based performance occurs in the Paul Anka voyeurism movie ("click" here for more details, ha ha! I know you won't). But you know the type of performance. A lot of actorly business with "lighting your pipe" every time you walk into a scene. The curiously sympathetic murderous aliens in NOT OF THIS EARTH dress like the Blues Brothers, as Dr. Theresa first observed - sunglasses, hats, and suits. And may I say that they are much more vampiric than the lead character in THE VAMPIRE? I am still holding a grudge about that. Our main alien keeps his refrigerator well stocked with blood, just like (if memory serves) the vampire in THE NIGHT STALKER from last year's festival. Say what you will about modern technology, it is a real life-saver for today's busy vampire on the go. (Here I should mention for the sake of completeness - ha ha! who cares? - that Dr. Theresa and I watched NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS after THE VAMPIRE. NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS was directed by Dan Curtis, who did THE NIGHT STALKER and TRILOGY OF TERROR, so we had high hopes, and we were coming off of THE VAMPIRE, so we were ready to enjoy something for a change, but it was kind of a mess. It did nothing to inspire us to keep the Halloween Film Festival going! It felt like the last gasp. We were enervated by it! The theme song sounded like a swanky cocktail lounge with a tipsy piano player, like something from THE APARTMENT, with Fred MacMurray and Shirley MacLaine sitting in the dark back corner, and then the theme would be taken up by guitar and a wheezing, melancholy harmonica. The movie itself had weak strains of WUTHERING HEIGHTS and REBECCA... its most effective set was a creepy old slimy swimming pool with a gnarled tree branch lying in it; it kept promising something better and snatching it away... I guess the best thing it did was "introduce Kate Jackson.") Corman fave actor Dick Miller gets murdered by the main alien in NOT OF THIS EARTH. Miller's character was a door-to-door salesman who used beatnik lingo ("Crazy!"), which reminded me that Dean Moriarty in ON THE ROAD is a door-to-door salesman at a couple of points, and NOT OF THIS EARTH came out right after ON THE ROAD, and I don't know what I'm talking about. There's an idea in there somewhere.

Bob, Birds, Brontë, O'Brien

I was standing in Square Books the other day thinking, "Should I read a book by Edna O'Brien? She had a fling with Robert Mitchum!" That is a terrible reason to read a book but maybe no worse than lots of others. I picked O'Brien's novel WILD DECEMBERS because they compare it to WUTHERING HEIGHTS, my personal fave, on the back. Of course you can't always trust the back of the book to give you the best information. But O'Brien's epigraph is from Emily Brontë, and the title of the book comes from it, so okay. And it's really good so far! The book, I mean, not the epigraph, although the epigraph is just dandy. As soon as the second paragraph of the first chapter I thought we were going to get an owl: "There were birds always," writes O'Brien, and then she lists some birds, but owls are not among them. Still, I'm only on page 22 and there have been tons of birds so far and much talk of birds. I believe there is a fair chance of owls.

Leather Goods

Melissa Ginsburg is reading from her new book of poems DEAR WEATHER GHOST at Off Square Books tomorrow. DON'T MISS IT! Recently, Melissa told me about a book I should read because it has some interesting stuff in it about Emily Brontë, my fave. So I bought it at Square Books, natch. It's a book of "lectures" called MADNESS, RACK, AND HONEY, by Mary Ruefle. Hey remember how I love to say dumb things like "this book is like Sam Shepard's 'blog'" or "that book is like Clarice Lispector's 'blog,'" and it's never true? Well, I want to say that this book is like Mary Ruefle's "blog," and it's still not true. She IS irritated (fascinated?) by commercials the way someone with a "blog" would be. Take the print ad for leather goods featuring Albert Einstein's great-grandson sitting under a tree reading a book called WISDOM (!). Ruefle quotes the ad copy: "Paul Einstein is an accomplished violinist who enjoys reading literature, philosophy, and fine poetry." Fine poetry! Ha! Ruefle has a lot of fun digging into that, in a way that transcends any "blog"... though if she knew, as I do, that Einstein's granddaughter married a bigfoot hunter, I feel in my heart she would bring it up in this essay somehow, just like a "blogger" (me!). I feel absolutely safe in saying that Einstein's granddaughter marrying a bigfoot hunter is Mary Ruefle's kind of thing. What else? I was just over at Ajax, having a chicken po-boy, or as I now call it, "The Osborne," because Kent Osborne ate so very many of them on his recent visit. And there was a guy at the bar who COULD NOT STOP TALKING! It was okay, because most of his talk was entertaining. He talked about varieties of apples and his prowess at tic-tac-toe, to name just two of his many subjects. He yelled, about tic-tac-toe, "If I'm playing defense, YOU WILL NOT WIN! YOU WILL NOT WIN!" (See also.)

An Uncomfortable Crisis

I was going around saying this line from VILLETTE out loud last night, "This was an uncomfortable crisis," trying to figure out how I would read it if they asked me to do the audio book, because when they do an audio book of VILLETTE I will probably be the first person they ask. I was saying stuff like "THIS was an uncomfortable crisis" and "This WAS an uncomfortable crisis" and many other variations. The trick is to keep that cool head so essential to a Charlotte Brontë narrator (young Lucy Snowe is dropped off alone in the dead of night among pushy thugs at the wharf - in fact she compares herself to "a dripping roast" [!] and says "This was an uncomfortable crisis"), the cool head being so admirable and pleasantly astringent and yet also what keeps JANE EYRE, for example, from being as insane as I like, as insane as WUTHERING HEIGHTS, you know. I will say that VILLETTE starts off with an uncanny doll-like kid who displays the self-possession of an adult and you almost suspect you've picked up a horror novel. I am reading VILLETTE for myself and feel bad because I'm going to have to put it aside and start rereading ON THE ROAD for my class that starts soon. Nothing against Mr. Kerouac! In fact, I just read BIG SUR and VANITY OF DULUOZ "for myself," though they ended up coming in handy as prep. VANITY is a prequel to ON THE ROAD and BIG SUR shows the downside to ON THE ROAD's success, focusing a great deal on Kerouac's oozing hatred of beatniks, especially the ones who scared his poor old mother so much that she piled furniture in front of the door so they couldn't get in. Though his obsessions are Dracula and The Shadow, Kerouac is more like Dr. Frankenstein, come to think of it!

Research Party!

Prompted by JANE EYRE and WUTHERING HEIGHTS, Tom Franklin and Jimmy and Paul (I don't believe you know Paul) and I started talking ignorantly of moors and bogs and fens at the party and started doing research at the party.

Nice Try

"Lord Ingram... seems to have more length of limb than vivacity of blood or vigour of brain." Ha ha ha! Jane Eyre calls 'em like she sees 'em! I guess that's why I love her! What else can I tell you? The novel - like the John Wayne movie EL DORADO and at least one translation of THE IDIOT - contains the word "charivari." I still haven't come across the expected owl, though "the widest-winged condor on the Andes" makes a metaphorical appearance. Nice try, but not good enough, Jayne Eyre! Also, it's getting pretty crazy now. Still not WUTHERING HEIGHTS crazy, but kind of crazy. SPOILER! If you are my sister, don't read this next part. One dude says, "She sucked the blood: she said she'd drain my heart," and he ain't kidding! Pictured, the climactic scene from JANE EYRE. Not really! It's from the live-action Disney film CONDORMAN. My deepest apologies to Jane Eyre and everyone else, everybody in the world.

Spoony

I was delighted while reading JANE EYRE to discover that Mr. Rochester refers to himself as a "spoony" - a word with which I was previously unacquainted: "I began the process of ruining myself in the received style, like any other spoony... I had - as I deserved to have - the fate of all other spoonies." Still, I cannot help but recall what Philip Marlowe's friend Terry Lennox said about the gimlet: that it "beats the martini hollow." And likewise I must say that so far - so far! - WUTHERING HEIGHTS certainly beats JANE EYRE hollow. Not that it's a competition! (See also.)

Jazz Ghost

You know what Frank Kermode said about Shakespeare: "To be able to devote one’s life to art without forgetting that art is frivolous is a tremendous achievement of personal character." And what about when John Ashbery said that poetry is good because of its impracticality? Plus how can we forget the Maine antiques dealer who said, "I think I’m more and more attracted to things that aren’t worth anything"? Let me add a composer I really like, Thomas Adès, who says in a book of interviews, "I have to make gratuitous things... which the philosophers can't explain." He says a lot of other aphoristic things, too! He's very aphoristic. I'd tell you more except I am teaching this book to my grad students next semester and I want to leave some surprises for them. Well, he says some things about Mahler I don't agree with at all, but he does praise Mahler when Mahler "embraces and celebrates the futility of his life and his music." I can get behind that! And then he says (still about Mahler) "good for him. Grand failures are preferable to sneaky successes, aren't they?" And that makes me think of something I have said on the "blog." I can't tell you more! We're reading DRACULA and WUTHERING HEIGHTS in my grad class too. And GLINDA OF OZ, which I haven't yet read, but I'm getting behind Laura Lippman's interpretation, so I am sure it will be a success. I was going to make them read THE PATCHWORK GIRL OF OZ but the ending depressed me too much. (Spoilers here, nearly a century old, but still.) The Glass Cat with awesome brains like pink marbles is forced to exchange them for transparent brains. She becomes "humble" - ugh! - and boring, which in the world of the book is supposed to be a good thing. We all know it's not so. Well, I mean it's good to be humble, of course, but you don't have to be boring about it, and DO try to stop people from switching out your brains on a whim if at all possible. I am quite disturbed, also, by the political system of Oz. Magic is outlawed! You might think my ideas to be conservative. Am I against government regulation? Well, I guess so in this case! Only a certain few government-licensed employees of the state are allowed to practice magic in Oz. If magic spells are the guns of Oz, then Ozma has repealed the second amendment. On the other hand, if you think of magic as free speech (that's probably more like it - I guess!), then I am a true liberal, and Ozma is a censor. The Patchwork Girl never did become "terrifyingly amoral" in my opinion, as Lippman promised. The closest she came was saying that she would gladly "kill a dozen useless butterflies" to help her friend. That was scary! But I guess "punk rock" is the best definition of her in my book. Finally, I should tell you that our annual Halloween film festival ended with a movie called TORMENTED, all about a jazz pianist practicing for Carnegie Hall (!) who accidentally (sort of, not really) lets his girlfriend ("Wow! Look at that brassiere!" exclaimed Dr. Theresa) fall off a lighthouse and then she's dead and a ghost! I particularly loved the scheming beatnik in TORMENTED and kept wondering where I had seen him before. Turns out that many years later he was the bartender ghost in THE SHINING! I learned that from imdb.

Everybody Torments Raymond

Hey remember that TV show that used to be about Lauren Graham inventing shoes at the shoe factory? She is no longer inventing shoes! Now she is a photographer's assistant, which seems like a demotion, nothing against photographers' assistants! I can't explain her change in fortune, probably because I missed an episode, or maybe she is like the Hulk as he was portrayed on TV, the way he would go from town to town helping people in need, one week at a shoe factory, the next at a photographer's studio, for example. That (THE INCREDIBLE HULK, I mean) was my sister's favorite TV show before she could really talk. She would cry out in delight at the sound of the opening theme, "Huck! Huck!" I told you she couldn't really talk. Then she would sit there in a terrified trance when the Hulk appeared - a bewitchment from which nothing could stir or distract her! I guess she had mixed emotions! (She also pronounced "root beer" like this: "rt br." WERE WE GIVING HER ROOT BEER BEFORE SHE COULD TALK?) Anyway, Lauren Graham's gruff and sullen photographer boss is portrayed by Ray Romano. Lauren Graham sure does complain about him a lot. Maybe TOO much! Or so her (current) betrothed seemed to think as he sat there ineffectually eating ice cream and contemplating the complex series of facial expressions she exhibited, all unknowing! In this show, Ray Romano has a brooding, wounded quality. Like Heathcliff in WUTHERING HEIGHTS! So I think Lorelai Gilmore and Raymond from EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND are going to make out. I guess everybody really does love Raymond! Because he is so tormented! I have to say, though it is a gratuitous swipe, that Jerry Seinfeld could never pull this off. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, I guess! And if the dream of your life is to see Lorelai Gilmore make out with Raymond from EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND, not that it should be, not by any means, it definitely should not be, unless it is, well, I guess your favorite day in the world will be here soon, you mark my words, it will. (See also.)

Hep to the Tragic Flea

Thanks to Kelly Hogan I am listening to a song about a flea who falls in love with a clown who is also a flea and then when the first flea dies the clown flea opens up her grave and gets in there with her - oh no! - just like - SPOILER ALERT! - Heathcliff and Cathy in WUTHERING HEIGHTS. Yeah, that's a real song, all right. Hogan and Mike Bulington were listening to it the other day and agreed I should "get hepped to it," to use Hogan's phrase. PS When Jon Langford was in town he saw my recommendation shelf and kept singing the chorus of the Kate Bush song "Wuthering Heights" in a high, quavering "Kate Bush" voice, just to drive me crazy, I think. It went like this: "Wuthering, Wuthering, Wuthering HEIGHTS!" Over and over.