LEISURELY THOUGHTS
from Howard
31 December 2003. I rush to add one more thought before 2003 bites the dust. New Year's always seemed like kind of a sad holiday to me -- one of those reminders that life travels quickly and that we are left at the end of a year looking back with melancholy. Five years ago tonight, being the non-celebrating person that I am on New Year's Eve, I met Jerry for the first time. In a chat room. He can be a wild party guy, so what he was doing in an internet chat room on New Year's Eve I don't know. He was in Minneapolis, and I was living across the river in St. Paul at the time, so we ditched the chat room, got together for a drink, and the rest, you might say, is History. So tonight is our five-year "anniversary".
I'll celebrate an anniversary, but I still won't put on a party hat to welcome 2004. And I'd just as soon curl with up the last two chapters of The Fourth Hand. The Fourth Hand! I have to tell you, by the way, how much more I am appreciating this book than the first time I read it in July 2001. There are so many good Irving-isms in this book! I'm glad that this is the book I am finishing up the year with (my only John Irving book all year!), the only down side being that I am re-reading that happy ending at Lambeau Field in the same week when, in real life, our beloved Minnesota Vikings gifted this year's playoffs to the Green Bay Packers. Damn!
So, anyway, I wish a Happy New Year to all of you. I hope 2004 brings you happiness, peace, good books to read, and, with any luck, a new U.S. President.
13 December 2003. Yet to be determined is what the world-wide readers who have John Irving as their favorite author have in common. I can tell you that, as of right now, one thing that they seem to have in common is that they are ready and anxious for something new from John Irving. Carole in Nigeria says that she needs "a John fix". Elke in Germany keeps telling me how she needs a new Irving novel. After all, it has been two and a half years since the release of The Fourth Hand. If you look at the history of John Irving, however, you will see that he is not a man to be rushed. It was, after all, five years between A Prayer for Owen Meany and A Son of the Circus and then another four years until A Widow for One Year. On the other hand, some Irving readers wonder whatever happened to that longtime work-in-progress, Until I Find You, which Mr. Irving interrupted to write The Fourth Hand, a shorter novel that some see as only a partial "John fix".
So, I guess, we find other things to read (Elke has managed to find 43 other books to read so far this year), or we re-read earlier Irvings and find some sort of comfort in them. I have been enjoying two autobiographies, A Sort of Life and Ways of Escape, by British novelist Graham Greene (John Irving is an admirer of Graham Greene. Discussions of Greene come up in at least two Irving novels, A Son of the Circus and A Widow for One Year). The Greene reading also fit in well with my recent trip to London, as did two newer books by Ben Elton, British author/comedian. In addition, I read the new novel by fellow Twin Citian Garrison Keillor, Love Me. Mr. Keillor, of Prairie Home Companion/Lake Wobegon fame, has written a book that is very un-Lake Wobegonish, and I enjoyed the wit and intelligence of it from beginning to end. Try it!
And now a side trip back to Irving-Land, a planned re-reading of The Fourth Hand. My book group has graciously agreed to try The Fourth Hand for our next month's selection. Several of the group members in doing this are reading John Irving for the first time. Courage, group! You may find a world of Irving readers waiting for you!
01 December 2003. A week in London isn't nearly enough, especially for a first-timer like me. I would have liked another month or two there (but who can afford London for that long?). Jerry and I did manage to fit a lot of living into six active days, however. I saw all of the required sightseeing spots, without dwelling too long at any of them, and also went to the theater two different nights, saw a movie (Love Actually), spent some good quality time in the pubs, finished reading three books, and had lunch with the queen (No, not that Queen!).
London did jump somewhere into my five favorite cities list. It's not quite as wild or simultaneously charming as Amsterdam is (but with more things to do), not as intensely exciting as New York is (but more civilized), not as beautiful as Paris (but with less dog poop on the sidewalks). We stayed in a great apartment in Piccadilly (Jermyn Street at Haymarket). And it only rained about a third of the time we were there!
And such good theater choices! How's this for versatility on our part? One night we went to see a fine production of Oscar Wilde's A Woman of No Importance at the elegant Theater Royal Haymarket, which is where that play had its premiere in 1893. Great acting and some familiar faces from film (including Samantha Bond, who is the Miss Moneypenny of the more recent James Bond movies, and Rupert Graves). Then, for absolute contrast, we went on our last night in London to Jerry Springer: The Opera, the current hot ticket in London. As for the latter production, let me say this: If you have never seen The Jerry Springer Show on TV, please never watch it -- conserve the life of your television. BUT, if you have ever seen that awful show and you happen to be in London, you need to see Jerry Springer: The Opera. You will find it to be an elaborate, well-done, hilarious musical, if, that is, you can handle liberal sprinklings of the F word and such, not to mention in-your-face blasphemy, set to music. The music is good, the actors/singers are phenomenal. The story line, if you are also an opera buff, might seem to be an updating of Gounod's opera Faust or Mozart's Don Giovanni as Jerry Springer is dragged off to hell, but by that point you will find this to be a satisfying conclusion.
22 November 2003. On our way to London... Back next week.
19 November 2003. On Saturday, Jerry and I leave for a few days in London. This is a spur-of-the moment trip, thanks to some good air fares, but I am looking forward to seeing England for the first time. Most of my ancestors can be traced back to the British Isles, so it's about time I made it there. We arrive there just after president bush and his wife Laura leave from their current state visit. I wish we could be there to join the protestors that are trying to pry Tony Blair's lips from bush's butt, but, oh well, maybe we can mend some U.S./U.K. fences after our so-called Leader does his damage.
I met actress Jessica Lange the other night at a fundraiser for the new Sheila Wellstone Institute. I asked her how her other half, Sam Sheppard, is doing and whether he's still writing. She said he's fine and of course is still writing. I'm a big fan of his plays, some of which are very far-out, and read most of them through at least the mid 80s -- I wonder what sort of writing he's doing now.
Am currently reading Child of My Heart by Alice McDermott, because it is my book group's selection this month. Halfway through it, I'm finding it remarkably unremarkable. I'm not sure I was meant to be in a book group. One of my favorite parts of reading books is finding the next book to read, and I miss that process when somebody else chooses. I look forward to finding a couple books to take to London.
03 November 2003. I sat through a miserable football game at the Metrodome last night, with the Vikings playing pathetically and losing to the arch-enemy Green Bay Packers. Not a happy day in Minnesota. Somewhere, though, I know that Patrick Wallingford, Doris Claussen, and little Otto are smiling.
Novels to movies, again. I still haven't heard whether John Irving needs some help with the screenplay for The Fourth Hand -- he hasn't called me, that's for sure (Will there be any scenes at Lambeau Field, John?). You know that I usually complain about the movie versions of novels that I like, but I saw two new films over the weekend that bucked that trend. The first one was Runaway Jury, based on the John Grisham novel. The Grisham movies so far have been mostly disappointments, especially for me The Firm, which is my favorite Grisham novel but an insulting movie (I think I might be off Grisham once and for all, by the way -- I haven't read his last three). Runaway Jury the movie stars John Cusack, Gene Hackman, and Dustin Hoffman, all of whom are excellent in their roles. Interesting revision in the screenplay: the corporate bad guys in the movie are the gun manufacturers, in the book they were the tobacco companies. Apparently, the gun companies make for more current villains. Lots of suspense and surprises and good acting in this film.
Another movie that I saw over the weekend was the long-anticipated (at least by me) Human Stain, based on the fine Philip Roth novel. Movie critics are giving this film mixed reviews, but I found it to be a credible adaptation of the book and very moving in its own way. I liked Anthony Hopkins as Coleman Silk (if you don't think about the casting too much) and Nicole Kidman as Faunia and most things about this film. But of course I'm wondering what Philip Roth thinks about it.
28 October 2003. Sunday night, I was sitting there at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, along with 16,000 other enthusiastic souls, listening to Simon & Garfunkel in concert, thinking how words and music might affect eternity. Will untold millions or billions of us still be humming Paul Simon songs in the afterlife -- or hearing Art Garfunkel's heavenly voice singing Bridge Over Troubled Water?... I wonder. Great concert. It's good to have them back together to nourish our memories for a little while.
I was reading the other day about this year's fiction nominees for the National Book Award, the "winners" to be announced next month. I don't know how much value I put on book awards, or any kind of awards, and I don't know a great deal about the National Book Awards, but I am in favor of any mechanism to get more people reading books (or, in the case of the Academy Awards, of having people see good films that they wouldn't see otherwise). Here are the five nominees for best fiction this year (and I admit that I know none of these books): Drop City, by T.C. Boyle; The Great Fire, by Shirley Hazzard; The Known World, by Edward P. Jones; A Ship Made of Paper, by Scott Spencer; and Evidence of Things Unseen, by Marianne Wiggins. Anybody out there have anything to say about any of these nominees? Or the overall credibility of the National Book Awards?
If you want to know more about the National Book Awards, including a list of prior year winners, here's a link to their web site: www.nationalbook.org.
16 October 2003. Last night, we went to see and meet Al Franken, comedian, political satirist, and author of the current #1 non-fiction bestseller, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. Mr. Franken is an out-spoken critic of the current administration and its right-wing collaborators in the news media and "entertainment" world, so of course I like him. The book is good, informative reading (as was his earlier book, Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot), and his talk was fun. The crowd was enthusiastic and appreciative and liberal -- my kind of people.
Otherwise, I've been overburdened with work for the last month or so. Not much reading or relaxing time and an urge to be writing, as my friend Elke in Germany is doing these days. Jerry's parents will be visiting us from Illinois as of tomorrow, so we will be busy being the perfect hosts for the next week. Wish I were better at multi-tasking.
And, speaking of Illinois, how surprising it is to see how sad most of the country is to see the Chicago Cubs not going to the World Series! Such lovable underdogs.
03 October 2003. Frosty mornings already, the Twins vs. the Yankees in the baseball playoffs, the Vikings at 4 and 0. Autumn in Minneapolis, and all is well, I guess.
I joined a book discussion group, met the group for the first time the other day over lunch. Very nice people. Our book for discussion this month was The Human Stain by Philip Roth, a novel that I read two years ago but didn't mind re-visiting because I liked it a lot (I have read maybe a third of Roth's books and found this to be the best of the ones I've read) and because the film version, starring Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman, is due to come out any day now (Trivia question: What was the last Philip Roth novel to be turned into a film?). Anyway, my book group tended not to like the book too much, or at least not the Roth style. I think the women members of the group may have found Roth to be a bit too sex-obsessed (can you imagine that?) and all were impatient with Roth's tendency to beat an idea into the ground. But they all said that the last chapter made the book worth reading. I still think it's a remarkable book. Try it, let me know what you think. Next month's book: Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood.
Trivia answer: I'm not sure -- please correct me if I'm wrong -- but has there been a film version of a Philip Roth book since Portnoy's Complaint in the early seventies?
19 September 2003. We've been back about a week from our annual September vacation in the Netherlands. This year, we stayed in Amsterdam for a week (houseboat near Waterlooplein) and then a week in Northern Holland, in the village of Woudsend (near the city of Sneek). Two of our friends in Germany, Grietje and Peter, own a vacation home and a boat in the boating resort town, Woudsend, and were gracious enough to invite us. Their next door neighbors in Germany, Elke and her Peter, also drove over from Germany so that the six of us could spend a few days together. Elke, of course, is "German Mama", whom I met here through needahand.com and is one of the driving forces for this web site. We had a good time with all of them -- boating, eating, drinking strangely enticing blends of Absolut vodka and elderberry juice...
And now here we are, back to fall 2003 in Minnesota. No new trips for a while (Retraction to 18 August: Looks like we won't be going to Guam after all). The summer was great, but there are good things about the fall coming, I suppose. As I sit here writing this, I watch the Mississippi River go by, and it is beautiful. Sunday night, we walked across the bridge to the Metrodome to watch the Vikings beat da Chicago Bears. The problem with football season starting, though: suddenly, it's Christmas.
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