Oct

20

I Am Sorry, John Updike

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I don’t think it’s that uncommon to be somewhat literary and have some built in prejudices against writers you’re not very familiar with.  Personally, I have never felt much love towards the big male late 20th century writers like Updike and Cheever and Mailer and such.  (I make an exception for Roth, whose great work makes up for his not-so-great work.)  I haven’t done much reading in this area due to my prejudice, and now I must apologize.

Because, John Updike, I just read The Witches of Eastwick, and it was incredible.  I have been unfair.  Not only is Witches incredible, it’s also a book about and involving women.  Few men even attempt that kind of book and even fewer succeed.  Beyond a few missteps (I have to assume a bit of vanity when he has a female character think something great about having sex with a much older man…) it really hit the spot.  And one thing I really loved about it was just how old school it was.  While written in the 80’s, it’s set in the 60’s, and the women are all quite young (early and late 30’s) but have several children and the way Updike writes about their bodies with such honesty was one of the book’s high points to me.  He manages to be captivated by them, but also allows them to look upon themselves critically.

It was also a refreshing change from the current trends in magical realism, which is getting to be really tired and overdone.  Updike just eases you into it slowly and makes it all fit really well with the characters and the plot.  Yes, they are witches, more than that, they are witches in a world where witchcraft is not unheard of.  Even better, Updike’s magical realism has an actual point.  (Oh, how many of today’s young writers need to learn this lesson.)  They are witches and they are ostracized; but they’re also divorced and working and not all that interested in wifely or motherly duties.  (Actually, their neglect for their children was one thing that seemed off to me.  Updike wants to praise and admire women’s ability to bear children, but then seems to want them to cast off the same children once they show up. )

Reading the book was a pleasure (or listening, in my case; it was a new-ish recording with a great reader).  It was well plotted and always interesting, even if it ended a bit abruptly.  I am almost a little curious to see the movie.  I expect it to be completely wrong.  But I admit, I knew when I read the book that Jack Nicholson was in it and while I like him I think he’s often miscast.  I doubt that’s the case here.  This is actually one time when he’s really perfect for the part, I could visualize him the whole way through.  On the other hand, the women seem awfully miscast–Cher as the matronly Lexa?  Susan Sarandon may have the snap to play Jane, but Sukie’s the redhead…  And Michelle Pfeiffer in there makes me think they see Sukie as nothing more than the “hot” one.  I certainly doubt any of them will have anything resembling the bodies Updike describes so well in his book.  It is a very sensual book, for sure, so much took of bodies and skin and features.

As for where to go from here, I am not sure if I should read Updike’s recent sequel, The Widows of Eastwick, which I heard wasn’t great, or his classic Rabbit books, which I see as not being really my thing.  I’m undecided.  I’ll probably wait a while anyway, since I have plenty of books on reserve these days as it is.  I am nearly at 100 books for the year, and I don’t think it’s possible to hit 141 like I did last year, but I think 120 is a reasonable goal.

Oct

11

Love and Hate

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Finding a new tv show I love is kind of like a teenager getting a new boyfriend.  I get a little obsessed and convince myself that there is no show that is as good as this one.  Then it ends, I get depressed, and eventually move on to find another show that starts the cycle over.

Watching shows from week to week is all well and good, but there’s something nice about watching an old show on DVD with all the episodes in a row.  I got into this habit really heavily when I had morning sickness and couldn’t really move.  It’s stuck around since then and I tend to watch just one thing.

Last month I watched The Wire, a show I’d tried to watch once before but was a bit too close at the time.  I guess the public defender thing was all a little too fresh.  But now there’s some distance and I could enjoy it without feeling anxious or depressed.  It’s often called one of the best shows ever, and I did really like it.  I found it somewhat overhyped.  I admit, at times they were so spot on in conveying a sense of place and character.  But I also feel like their strength was often more in the long season arcs than in individual episodes.  I also think they had a couple of pretty weak seasons.  I wasn’t really into the discussion at the time, but I’m imagining everyone agrees season 2 was no good.  They got off track and never got back on.  Season 4 I’d read was the best but I have to disagree.  I saw it as one of the weaker seasons.  While the plots following the young kids were really well done and strong, the constant idea that things were going to change and get better rang really false to me.  Of course, that was borne out in season 5, but I honestly didn’t believe these characters would think anything would really change.  It all felt too sweet.  I was very very happy to see everything go to hell in Season 5.  I thought the show was at its best when it let the cops not be such good guys all the time, and Seasons 1, 3, and 5 were the ones that really explored that.

Now I am watching The Shield, which makes me laugh because it reminds me a lot of The Wire, which everyone said was so one of a kind.  It’s not, really.  The Shield beat The Wire to the air by a few months.  These shows really did pave the way for a show like Southland, though, which I am really really hoping gets picked up by another network.  (As if NBC wasn’t making bad enough decisions already.  Goodness.)  It took me a little while to warm up to The Shield.  It’s trying so very hard to be shocking in the first few episodes.  (Halfway through the first season, there were already two instances of people selling young girls as sex slaves.)  But it found a rhythm and it’s very firm in its characters.  And it’s really impressive how they get you to both love and hate Vic, the main character.  (In that way, I think it’s better than The Wire, where I always thought McNulty was a jerk and never liked him.)

I am doing some things non-TV related.  I finally saw Synecdoche, New York and had the reactions I expected: like it, admire it, kind of in awe of it, totally confused by it, sort of get it, have a lot of things to think about.  I do like how Charlie Kaufman movies always get you thinking, ideas roll around in your head for days afterwards.  I don’t know that I’m one of those people who will watch the whole thing over again but that’s probably because I’m not much for re-watching lately.

In books things have been a little slow.  I read The House on Fortune Street by Margot Livesey.  I’d read one of her earlier books and wasn’t crazy about it.  I liked this one but didn’t love it.  It felt very patched together.  It had four different sections following a different character though they were all intertwined.  But when you’re reading the first section you feel like it’s about one thing, then in another section it becomes something totally different.  It’s not such a bad thing if everything fits together, but I didn’t think it really did.  I guess at its heart it was about a friendship between two female characters, but I never could get a firm grip on that relationship.

I just finished South of Broad by Pat Conroy.  I love Pat Conroy.  His books may be just slight variations on the same theme, but there’s always something so lovely about slipping into them.  It’s like taking a warm bath with bubbles.  But unfortunately this one was not so warm a bath and the bubbles had all popped.  It was the first time I actively disliked a Pat Conroy book.  I’m not a big fan of The Prince of Tides but I didn’t really hate it.  This time after the first 50 pages I just couldn’t stand it and it never got better.  All the things that Conroy does all the time just didn’t work this time.  The tight knit group of friends that are supposed to be the core of the book just felt like a bunch of phonies.  I didn’t get a real sense of their friendship, there were at least 2 or 3 too many of them, and the way they were so conveniently paired off rang very false.  Conroy’s characters are often prone to great action for the love of a friend and that was again the case here, but since I wasn’t really buying the friendships to begin with, the action felt manufactured.  And since it was undertaken by the group en masse it didn’t feel as intimate.  One of his other flaws is the way his characters talk.  Often this is a weakness that becomes a strength, it’s one of the things that makes his books so enjoyable.  No, people don’t really talk like that, but wouldn’t it be grand if we did?  Here the constant repartee felt very constant and never seemed to reveal anything about the characters.  It felt like several copies of the same person talking to each other instead of the very diverse group they were supposed to be.

For example, one character, Molly, is a rich girl who ends up married to a rich boy.  It’s unclear what is so great about Molly or what her unique character traits are, besides her being lovely and desirable.  It’s unclear why she loves the man she does, especially when he’s such a jerk and never seems to redeem himself.  Conroy explains this many times by saying this was the life she was born to lead, but I didn’t buy it.  It seemed such a passive acceptance of fate, especially for a girl who was friends with all the crazies she was friends with.

It is so sad to be disappointed by Pat Conroy.  For a little while I wondered if he’s always like this and I just never noticed before, but I really don’t think so.  I adore Beach Music, and it’s only in the last two years that I read The Water is Wide and My Losing Season, both of which are nonfiction and just wonderful.  I was surprised that I cared so much about the latter, which is a book about a basketball team.  Conroy is such a friendly narrator that you feel like you’re having a chat over a good meal.  It’s a shame to see that go to waste here.  Perhaps he has run out of demons?  The ones in this book seem rather repetitive and pat if you look at the stuff he’s been into before.

Finally, I did get the BBC adaptation of The Forsyte Saga.  Sadly, it was so dreadful that I didn’t even finish the first disc.  Some people don’t seem to understand that some books should not be adapted, or should be adapted with a very very light touch.  This is one.  (Revolutionary Road is another cautionary tale.)  The first part told twenty years of backstory that the book was so good about revealing bit by bit.  And it wasn’t at all subtle about it either.  The book can have its omniscient narrator ruminate on property, but the movie had the characters dropping rather clunky and obvious lines about it to get the themes across.  And the casting was pretty dreadful.  Irene was not blonde, which is forgivable, I suppose, though I always pictured her standing out with her light coloring.  But while she was a striking looking woman, it was definitely not the right look for Irene.  Normally this wouldn’t matter, but the thing is that the character’s look is actually quite important to the story.  And it’s strange to hear all the characters describing her when she doesn’t at all fit their descriptions.  I couldn’t take it anymore.  I wonder if the 1967 version is any better.  I’ve thrown it in the bottom of my queue to take a break.  (Probably a very long break.  My queue has over 100 items in it.)

And just to keep track, I did get a mention on Filmspotting for the 3rd time.  I thought it might happen, since I did mention that I listened to the podcast while I was in labor.  Totally true and was actually quite nice.  After I’d had my epidural it was quite pleasant to find that they completely agreed with me on Public Enemies.  You can listen to the episode here.  I’m not around until nearly the end, around 39 minutes in.