More things I love about Nora Ephron

Her essay The Lost Strudel from I Feel Bad About my Neck. I read this very short piece on the subway one morning, years ago, and laughed out loud. And then re-read it immediately.

I’ve had a craving for cabbage strudel ever since (which objectively sounds disgusting), but I’m a bit afraid to try it, since it likely won’t live up to Nora’s praises (even Nora had trouble meeting her own expectations of strudel). And then I’d just be disappointed.  I’m sure Nora would tell me that’s not a healthy way to go through life (were she still with us).

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/28/opinion/the-lost-strudel.html?_r=0

I especially admire the line “I dropped Ed Levine’s name so hard you could hear it in New Jersey.” 

Nora Ephron’s tribute to Meryl Streep. Brilliant, funny – and her delivery is impeccable.  The crowd is mesmerized — when she talks about going into Meryl’s trailer at the end of her tribute, the entire audience of celebs and self-important people hang on her every word:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4Moh-Sw7xE

Plus – what a great outfit, right?

Nora Ephron’s tribute to Mike Nichols (only Nora can make a really bad pun hilarious):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkFEmVD3qw4

 

 

Book review: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

I’m a big fan of Nora Ephron.  I first fell in love with her through the short essays she published late in her life, I Feel Bad About My Neck and I Forget Everything.

One of her essays, in I Feel Bad About My Neck, was about the transformative power of great novels.  She wrote the essay having just finished reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, a book I’d vaguely heard of but that’s about it.  She talked about being swept away in the world Michael Chabon created, and crying when one of the characters died.  And a lot more than that.

I didn’t rush out and buy K&C the first time I read I Feel Bad About My Neck, but the second or third time I did. It was December 30, 2015; I know because I kept the receipt in the book as a future bookmark.

I didn’t start reading K&C on December 30, 2015, for a couple reasons at least. First, it’s a doorstop, and I knew I’d need a good swath of time to dive into it and finish it.  And second, I’ve been on a bad reading streak for a couple of years now. Reading far too much crappy chick-lit and fluffy fare; easy for the subway, easy for the brain.

I just finished a two-week vacation in Antigua, where I go with hubby (ideally once a year) to get away from work, clients, contracts and colleagues and to indulge in a good mental health break and reading jag.

K&C was the third novel I picked up to read, sitting on a lounge chair beside the quiet pool we frequent. I knew it was going to be good from the first and second pages; I had to put the book down, run to our room and get a pen. There were sentences and phrases I had to underline because they were so perfect. Sammy Clay is described as disheveled on the first page (like he’d just been “jumped for his lunch money”), and exhausted Josef Kavalier is described soon after, slumped “like a question mark” against Sammy’s door after a dramatic escape from Prague to Brooklyn. I may be remembering these turns of phrase incorrectly; I don’t have the book beside me, but I hope I am because they jumped off the page. And that was just pages 1 and 2.

K&C was a bit of a battle of the inner wills for me. The prose is sumptuous. It cries out to be read out loud. Now I understand why John Irving’s Dr. Larch read to the orphans from Charles Dickens every night in Cider House Rules. Sometimes a book doesn’t really come alive unless the words are read out loud, rolled off the tongue, and truly heard and appreciated. The book made me wish, once we were back at home in Toronto, for an ice storm or a thunder storm – something to knock out the power for an extended  period (but not too extended period –it’s winter mind you), just to have an excuse to light some candles in the darkness and read the book aloud to Graeme. I thought he would enjoy it. Now he’s across the aisle on the airplane reading it; I hope he’s enjoying it.

But the prose battled every page with the plot. I’m a big fan of plot, with big stories and big characters. One of my earliest favourite books, possibly still my faviourite book, is Irving’s The World According to Garp.  K&C reminded me of Garp a lot. It reminded me of his Hotel New Hampshire and A Widow for One Year.  It made me want to read Garp and New Hampshire again.  Big juicy audacious reads.

Back to K&C – I repeatedly struggled with savouring the prose vs. skimming ahead to find out what would happen next.  Would Rosa Saks remember that Joe Kavalier was the young man who walked in on her naked in bed in the artists’ den, on the day that K&C create the Escapist? Would Joe rescue his family and bring them to America? Would Sammy find love or lust with Tracy Bacon?  (I loved Tracy – “Mensware?” he says as he leaves the elevator of the Empire State Building to meet Sammy on his volunteer watch for air raids over Manhattan. “Do you have anything in a gabardine?”)

Did I love K&C as much as Nora? I don’t think so.  I loved a lot about it, obviously. Especially the first three parts.  Part Four, Radioman, almost killed me. The shortest of the five parts, it was brutally bleak. Joe Kavalier has volunteered for the Navy to avenge his family’s fate in Nazi-occupied Prague, and a more recent tragedy, and ends up in Antartica of all places on an apparently pointless mission, literally sleeping with the dogs.  Radioman gets bleaker from there, reminding me of the once book club favourite A Fine Balance, where the protagonist ends up limbless on a skateboard at the end of the novel. I mean, holy shit, shoot me now. I felt like that about Radioman.  I suppose its purpose was to test and then restore Joe’s humanity; but it crushed my soul a little bit (did they have to shoot Oyster??), and then Part Five was a bit of a letdown for me too.  I kept comparing it to Garp, which I’m going to re-read, and maybe on re-reading its end will let me down. But it’s hard for any novel, even K&C, to compare to that ending.

I also re-read Nora’s essay, and her love of the book makes me love it that much more.  Let’s cross our fingers for a short-lived ice storm or a lengthy winter thunderstorm. I’ll get the candles and K&C.

You can (and should) read Nora’s essay here:

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/marian-finucane/features/2012/0630/351253-nora-ephron-book-extract/

 

Book review: Miller’s Valley

I finally finished Miller’s Valley on vacation last month, and I have to say, my least favourite Anna Quindlen ever.  And I love her work -especially One True ThingBlessings, and Still Life with Bread Crumbs. And her essays, including Lots of Cake, Plenty of Candles (which I recommend every woman of a certain age to read).

I really disliked Miller’s Valley‘s narrative voice (flat, resigned). It didn’t make me motivated to see the story through, which is why I kept putting it down and reluctantly picking it back up. I wasn’t interested in the narrator, quite frankly (although you would think I would be interested in a smart, studious female narrator).  Mimi was bland.

The central plot of the government flooding her valley was an inevitability (and presented as such); there was no narrative tension at all.  Water’s a standard metaphor for the relentlessness of time, death, etc., and it worked, but it wasn’t fresh.

I also wasn’t captured by the subplot involving her agoraphobic aunt Ruth and the “did they or didn’t they” speculation involving her father and Ruth. Meh. I’m not sure the final discovery in the attic explained everything (or anything) about Ruth.

I do love her writing, but didn’t love this book.

Hawaiian pizza

I heard on the radio yesterday morning that Hawaiian pizza is a Canadian invention. And Wikipedia supports that. Apparently invented in a Chatham, ON pizzeria in 1962.

What troubled me was the knee-jerk reaction of the dude on the radio, who said “Obviously not Canada’s finest hour”. And everybody laughed, ha ha ha.

Really? It’s not my go-to order, but every now and then, I love a simple ham and pineapple pizza. I didn’t even know ordering it was patriotic.

Wikipedia also says that the Hawaiian pizza is the most popular pizza in Australia, accounting for 15% of pizza sales! 15% of Australians (an entire continent!) cannot be wrong.

What do you think of Hawaiian pizza?

Worst app idea, ever

I saw an ad on the subway yesterday for a new app. It’s called “Frank: Your Social Mirror”, and here’s the pitch:

Find out what your friends really think about you, and tell them what you think about them, too – anonymously.

Frank claims that:

By answering your friend’s questions on Frank, you will be supporting them through their everyday decisions. Everything from what to wear to a party, to what qualities they can work on to improve their social relationships.

(I’m not even going to parse the grammar of that first sentence.)

Examples on the website include:

Should I purchase these pants?

What do you think I can improve about myself?

Dear freaking Jesus, no.

Let’s just create a vehicle to allow girls to bully and name-call each other anonymously. Because, that’s what it’s going to be. I’ve been a teen girl, I’ve gone to high school with teen girls, and I’ve watched Tina Fey’s documentary Mean Girls.

I don’t mean to demean my gender, but come on. Young girls easily and mercilessly break through the thin veneer of civilized society all the time. They are vicious. They do not need encouragement to do it over social media and without attribution.

We all know what the answers to those questions are going to be:

No, Brittany, you shouldn’t buy those pants, you fat cow. We all hate you and you have no friends.

Stop being a horrible skanky slut Marissa. You are a loser. And keep away from my boyfriend.

It’s never going to be:

Brittany, trust your own judgment. You know yourself best.

Marissa, just be yourself. You are perfect the way you are.

I’m traumatized at the very thought of anyone, especially a young girl, willingly using this app. Everyone I’ve mentioned this app to OVERWHELMINGLY thinks it is the WORST idea ever.

Or as hubby put it, I’m already full of self-loathing. I don’t need it validated by my so-called friends.

Screw off, Frank.

 

Hubby responds to taking the long view

I keep telling hubby he needs to start his own blog; he’s brilliant, articulate, and very opinionated. He disagrees with my post about the TO Star editorial being comforting. He thinks it encourages complacency. Which was not my intention – March! Protest! Fight! For sure! But please let’s not have the world end, please make me feel like it’s going to be OK.
So here is his take:

Re take the long view: allow me a polite riposte, not of course to my precious KOB, who is just trying to see the bright side (albeit one I don’t perceive), but to the Toronto Star, which I believe to be flabby and complacent in its editorial. Clearly, I should shut up and start my own blog, but just this once…

It is true that constitutionally, the American Presidency is designed to have limited powers, particularly when it comes to making war and raising and spending money. It’s also true that Congress can thwart many ambitions of the sitting President, as we saw only too well over the past eight years.

However, it bears remembering that we are nowadays in a murky constitutional grey zone of Presidents using military force without Congressional approval, executive orders supplanting legislation, and unconstitutional behaviour going without protest or even comment.

Here’s what President Trump has the unequivocal power to do, all by his lonesome:

  • he can emit a tweet that causes stock prices to crash, or foreign powers to become alarmed, signalling sea changes in US policy without the filter of Congress or even his own Cabinet – recall how much of geopolitics and the global economy runs on perception, giving his intemperate little 140 character rants appalling power;
  • he can tear up environmental regulations that Obama instituted by executive order;
  • he can allow his Cabinet cronies to gut the agencies he’s picking them to lead, with dire consequences for the EPA, Dept. of Labour, HUD and so on;
  • he can reverse course on Gitmo;
  • he can use his authority over institutions like the IRS and FBI, and the massive national security apparatus in general, to make life miserable for his countless perceived enemies, it being obvious from the Comey affair that elements of the federal bureaucracy are quite willing to ignore their own ethics and protocols – under Trump, who craves revenge against all perceived slights, civil liberties and freedom of the press may come under savage assault;
  • to which end he can boot the press corps out of the West Wing, and refuse to subject himself to media questioning, preferring instead to Tweet random gibberish at 3 AM;
  • he can sidle up to Putin and undermine NATO in a thousand ways, great and small, while generally wreaking geopolitical havoc, emboldening dictators and terrifying allies;
  • he can move, and indeed has moved, “the goalposts”, just as Reagan did, shifting political discourse such that the far end of the spectrum becomes the middle, ushering in a new era of crassness, vulgarity, and the shattering of norms, damage of a sort that tends not to get undone;
  • he can initiate an almost continuous period of constitutional crisis, as debate ensues over the breadth and meaning of the Emoluments Clause, whether his apparent collusion with Russia is something tantamount to treason, whether his close family exercises too much power within Cabinet, contrary to anti-nepotism laws, whether his limitless conflicts of interest are something the law needs to be changed to address, and so on;
  • he can inspire, and already has inspired, politicians at state and local levels to attempt to pass new laws that restrict voting and reproductive rights and attack the LGBT community, which only a soon-to-be-stacked judiciary can stop;
  • he can create, and already has created, an atmosphere of licence in which the gutter dwellers of America’s alt-right and white supremacist communities sense it’s now permitted to give vent to their darkest urges;
  • he can, of course, pick up the phone and kill every living thing that walks or crawls, and none of you should believe for one second that the military will do anything except salute smartly and execute an authenticated order to employ nuclear weapons;
  • and so much more, really.

Let’s also remember that the constitutional checks on the executive branch are supposed to be a vigilant and incorruptible judiciary, and a suspicious and uncooperative Congress. As to the judiciary, The Donald now gets to stack the Supreme Court, and fill literally hundreds of vacancies at the federal circuit court level that Congress prevented Obama from filling; as to Congress, be serious. This is the Congress of Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz and the Tea Party. True, these yahoos may quietly spike some of Donald’s plans, for example when it comes to international trade, but they’ve proven themselves thus far to be craven bootlickers, quavering in terror of Trump’s deranged base, which is also their base. In any case, they could ignore Trump altogether, and it wouldn’t do the world any good: this is a group of sour white men devoted to the denial of climate change, the ravishing of the environment, the disenfranchisement of the poor and non-white classes, the savage restriction of female reproductive rights, the cutting of taxes on the super-wealthy, the dismantling of the social safety net, the repealing of health care reform, and the list goes on. Does the Star think Trump will be exercising his veto when that legislation crosses his desk?  So long as the current Congress simply does what it says it wants to do, American society will enter what amounts to a privileged white man’s revanchist wet dream.

Let’s be clear: these grey men don’t just want to undo Obama. They want to undo LBJ, and FDR too.  They want to undo Roe v. Wade, Brown vs. Board of Education, and Miranda, and The Donald has just the Supreme Court nominees to make it happen.  They want to undo social security, medicaid and medicare, and they want to repeal the already anemic financial regulations like Dodd-Frank that were enacted to try to put a firebreak between the freebooting capitalist buccaneers of Wall Street and the global economy, as if it wasn’t just recently that Henry Paulson was wondering whether the lights would still be coming on when he got back to his office.

The best hope is that the American people resist, in droves, vehemently, and soon, once they figure out what’s going on. Maybe it isn’t too naive to hope that something can change with the midterms in a couple of years, despite the relentless gerrymandering of Project Red Map. Maybe undoing the 20th Century will be harder than the likes of Paul Ryan can possibly understand, as they snuggle into bed each night in their Ronnie Reagan Pajama Roos, clutching tight to their well-thumbed copies of Atlas Shrugged. Maybe. But now is no time to wait and see.

The long view? I’m with Keynes; in the long run, we’re all dead. Yes, we manage to live through bad Presidencies, but not without semi-permanent damage. The likes of Nixon and Reagan had lasting impact, and the world still rocks in the reverberations of the Bush years – just ask the people of Iraq and Syria about that.

That said, O’Leary is indeed an asshat.