Sister Wendy

I have been watching the TV programs of Sister Wendy Beckett, who does art criticism and had a few television programs that aired on PBS in the late 1990s and 2000/2001. She is a fascinating art critic: she is confident in her opinions; she comes to interesting (to me!) conclusions; she has a gift for unfolding a painting so that you see much more in it than you ever would have thought was there. Sometimes she comes out with horrible statements like "The natural outcome of committed love is offspring," but whether or not I agree with her, I find her interpretations interesting, and I think her criticism is worth watching. It has taught me a lot about art. I have recently seen disk 1 of her Sister Wendy's American Collection program, and in this program, she goes to the Chicago Art Institute and the Cleveland Museum of Art. It so happens that I have been to these places myself, so I was doubly interested to see what she had to say about them. She is particularly fond of the Cleveland Museum of Art, which makes me happy; I will go visit it again the next time I'm in Ohio.

Sister Wendy is great at communicating enthusiasm for art, and unlike most critics (but like most nuns?), she is exceedingly modest, though she is not tentative about her conclusions. For her, the viewer senses, the struggle is to articulate her feelings/interpretations about the art in a way that will engage viewers and best represent the artist; I believe that she feels a responsibility to the artworks she discusses, and I like that sense of vocation/commitment. She can be quite funny and acerbic, which is a pleasure to see because it is unexpected, and when she is in raptures about a work of art, she speaks softly and clasps her hands together and struggles for words to express herself. She is very charming and intelligent, and her viewpoints are thoughtful. I really like watching her television programs; maybe I'll check out her books one day. From the PBS site for the American collection, here is a list of her other programs and books. This was completed circa 2001. I wonder whether she's done anything since.

One painting she considers at length is Diego Velazquez's Las Meninas, which she gives a great interpretation of in Sister Wendy's Odyssey (or perhaps her Grand Tour; I can't remember) when she goes to Madrid; she calls it, in fact, the greatest painting in the world. It certainly is really fascinating, and I love how, as she points out, the focal point (ostensibly) of the scene that is occupying the figures in the painting is not in the painting itself. Velasquez (the painter) is painting, probably, the portrait of the Spanish king and queen. He is looking at them, and so is his daughter (the silvery little girl with the people all around her), but we see them only in reflection in the mirror at the back of the painting. We, like the king and queen, survey the scene before us—and for a moment, you think that the painting has placed you in that position of royalty and has made you the central point of the artist's and the daugther's attention. However, as Sister Wendy (and others) point out, the true focus of the painting is not the absent king and queen, or even the pretty little girl: it is the painter, whose own canvas slashes across the left-hand corner of the painting itself—and who has replicated several other paintings done by other artists and painted them on the wall in his own painting. He has thus shown us he can do what the other painters can do, and better; furthermore, he stands proudly in the painting and meets us with a direct gaze. He has orchestrated all of the scenes we are considering: the one we are looking at of him and the princess and her maids; the one we are imagining ourselves part of (ourselves standing next to the king and queen); the ones in the images he has replicated on the walls. In cutting the picture with his canvas (the one on the left, the one he's working on), he reminds us of the act of painting, the work that goes into it, and the fact that it is staged, arranged, created—by HIM. It is really a great painting because it places the viewer in a unique place, engages him or her, makes him or her a part of the scene in the picture—and then calls our attention back to the great artist who has arranged it all for us.

A Darker Domain by Val McDermid

A Darker Domain
Val McDermid
Palm Reader edition, December 2008
978-0-06-176189-8

I started reading this on my trusty Treo using eReader. About halfway through I bought an iPod Touch and finished it on there (still using eReader).

McDermid is so good that things that would normally annoy me don't. For example, I don't often find myself liking mysteries that take place over a large amount of time, jumping back and forth from past to present. I'm not sure what it is about this technique that bothers me, I just know that it serves as a red flag warning me that I'm likely to be disappointed.

Here are a couple of my favorite bits from A Darker Domain:

The woman who answered the door had the air of someone who had spent her days lying down so life could more easily trample over her.

--------------------

"It felt like a slap in the face. Nothing glamourous about helping the miners, was there?" A bitter little smile lit up her face. "Could have been worse, though. We could have had to put up with that sanctimonious shite Sting. Not to mention his bloody lute."

From McDermid (via valmcdermid.com):

People sometimes remark that I must work hard to produce a book a year. They look offended when I laugh. Then I explain. And they get it. Both my grandfathers were miners. The one who only had daughters rejoiced that no child of his was going to have to spend a working life underground. Deep underground in the heat and the stink and the filth and the danger, they knew what hard work was, my grandfathers.

I spent a lot of my childhood in East Wemyss, staying with my grandparents. My grandfather once took me underground in the cage, strictly against the rules. I was about six years old, a lover of fairground rides and scary helter skelters. Nothing had prepared me for the way the cage dropped through the darkness, so fast I felt weightless, my stomach left behind somewhere above me. The faces around me, weirdly lit by the lamps on their helmets, were unmoved. They were used to so terrifying a start to their shift. They were destined for eight hours of hell, relieved only by the companionship of the other men on their gang. Me, I went straight back to the surface. My grandfather took me to the canteen for steamed pudding and custard.

Another memory from childhood: a close family friend, Uncle Doddy, was caught in the blast when a fuse burned too fast and a shot fired too soon. His face was wrecked, healing into a mask of scar tissue and blue-black coal tattoos. He lost most of his eyesight, spent months in a hospital bed. Everybody was reluctant to let me visit. They thought I'd be too scared. But it turned out I was too young to be scared. I knew his voice, I knew him. I had no reason to be scared. Other kids, kids who hadn't known him before—they were scared. They were terrified of the man with the melted face.

I didn't realise it then, but those tiny windows into life at the coal face tempered my whole experience of life in a mining village. It saved me from sentimentalising the community spirit that ran through East Wemyss like the veins in blue cheese. It was real enough, that sense of mutual support, that 'kick one and we all limp' mentality. People did take care of each other. It was bred in the bone, a legacy of the grim battles the miners had fought through history to earn respect and a decent living wage. My grandfather remembered when miners were treated as if they were as much the property of the mine owners as the coal itself. He remembered the strike of 1926 when he was barely thirty years old with three children and a wife to support, when they stood in line at the soup kitchen, when he walked twenty miles for a hand-out of new boots for his gang. If you didn't stand together at times like that, you all went under. The miners united will never be defeated.

They played together as well as working together. I remember mass picnics, miners' galas, football matches on terrible pitches, pit bands playing in Sunday parks. I remember visiting my grandfather in the miners' convalescent home when he was recovering from his first episode of heart disease. He'd had rheumatic fever as a boy, which had kept him out of the WWI trenches but not the mines. Years underground compounded the damage. When I was growing up, he'd walked us kids for miles along the beaches and through the woods, teaching us the names of shells and trees. The last few years, he could barely make it to the end of the street. At least by the time he was sixty, they finally had running hot water. And a bath.

Our village got a preview of the devastation that would hit mining communities after they lost the 1984 strike. In 1967 a devastating underground explosion and fire killed nine men. The Michael had been a vast, showcase mine, with seams running under the sea for miles. But there's no way to extinguish a fire like that short of sealing up the shafts. So in 1967 the Michael died and East Wemyss went into terminal decline.

The miners left to find work in other pits, taking their families with them. Only the pensioners were left. As they died off and houses were left empty, so the shops, churches and pubs closed. Then a few years ago, when Edinburgh house prices went through the roof, commuters discovered the Wemyss villages and colonised them. The pit buildings were flattened, the slag heaps trucked away and the Fife Coastal Path was inaugurated. If you want to know the history of East Wemyss, don't bother asking anyone who lives there. Google it instead.

I'm glad my grandfather was dead before Thatcher and her vindictive crew chose the miners to be the sacrificial victims of their policy to emasculate the trade union movement. If he'd been alive, it would surely have killed him to see what happened to his village replicated all over Britain's coalfields. The 1984 miners' strike is part of the history syllabus now. It feels far too recent for history to have weighed those events in the balance. But at least these days, it's not only the victors who have the chance to write the record. A DARKER DOMAIN touches on some of that history. I'm proud that it's also part of my own past.

Links:
Val McDermid talks about A Darker Domain
Interviews with Val McDermid

David Sedaris Update 2

His upcoming visit to Lincoln is now listed on his website (under "June 2009 US book tour"). I should mention that this tour is in support of the paperback edition of Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (I think. No, I'm pretty sure.). When You Are Engulfed in Flames (d'oh).

Perhaps there's a book or two from the University of Nebraska Press that he'd like. Hmmmm . . . might I suggest:

Microfictions by Ana María Shua (translated by Steven J. Stewart)
The Lie Detectors: The History of an American Obsession by Ken Alder
From Our House: A Memoir by Lee Martin

Shameless, I know.

Life Sentences by Laura Lippman

Life Sentences
Laura Lippman
Hardcover edition
978-0-06-112889-9

I'm in the middle of season 4 of The Wire on DVD (thanks, Beth!), I just watched an episode of the Bill Moyers Journal featuring David Simon, and my new boss grew up in Baltimore. And, of course, I just finished reading Life Sentences. I'm starting to feel a little stalker-y.

Here is how Lippman describes Life Sentences:


(Side note: I first found this video on the HarperCollins site, but couldn't see a way to embed it. Thank you Barnes & Noble for making it easy for me.)

Book description:

Author Cassandra Fallows has achieved remarkable success by baring her life on the page. Her two widely popular memoirs continue to sell briskly, acclaimed for their brutal, unexpurgated candor about friends, family, lovers—and herself. But now, after a singularly unsuccessful stab at fiction, Cassandra believes she may have found the story that will enable her triumphant return to nonfiction.

When Cassandra was a girl, growing up in a racially diverse middle-class neighborhood in Baltimore, her best friends were all black: elegant, privileged Donna; sharp, shrewd Tisha; wild and worldly Fatima. A fifth girl orbited their world—a shy, quiet, unobtrusive child named Calliope Jenkins—who, years later, would be accused of killing her infant son. Yet the boy's body was never found and Calliope's unrelenting silence on the subject forced a judge to jail her for contempt. For seven years, Calliope refused to speak and the court was finally forced to let her go. Cassandra believes this still unsolved real-life mystery, largely unknown outside Baltimore, could be her next bestseller.

But her homecoming and latest journey into the past will not be welcomed by everyone, especially by her former friends, who are unimpressed with Cassandra's success—and are insistent on their own version of their shared history. And by delving too deeply into Calliope's dark secrets, Cassandra may inadvertently unearth a few of her own—forcing her to reexamine the memories she holds most precious, as the stark light of truth illuminates a mother's pain, a father's betrayal . . . and what really transpired on a terrible day that changed not only a family but an entire country.

BookArmy is a new social networking site for books

I just joined bookarmy. From what I can tell, what sets bookarmy apart from the other book sites (GoodReads, Librarything, etc.) is that it is set up specifically as a social networking site for books. Before they can lure me away from GoodReads, though, they need to get those apps/widgets created so I can flow my current reading list to this blog.

What is bookarmy?
Bookarmy is a social networking website for every sort of reader. Whether you’re a bookaholic or someone who picks up a book only once a year while relaxing on holiday, bookarmy is the place to discuss and review books, build reading lists, get the best book recommendations, and where you and your friends, family or classmates can read books together.

What makes bookarmy different from other book sites is that here you can make direct contact with authors; see what star rating they have given books, browse their reading lists, ask them questions about their own writing, and recommend titles to them.

Why did we create bookarmy?
Quite simply because we love books and we wanted to design an easy and reliable way for people to talk to other readers and decide what to read next.

For more information, you can also check out their blog.

(via BoingBoing)

Ms. Tomato Goes to Washington

If you recall, readers of Tomato Nation raised over $100,000.00 for Donors Choose last fall. As a result, Sars had to go to D.C. in her tomato suit.

Enjoy.

Lonely Werewolf Girl by Martin Millar

This is what you get when you borrow a book from a copyeditor

I finally finished Lonely Werewolf Girl by Martin Millar (published by Soft Skull Press). If you buy a copy from here, the author will sign it. Apparently, he's working on a sequel. How can you not like a book whose main character is a depressed young werewolf whose only comfort comes from laudanum and The Runaways?

Is it just me or do plot synopses of sci fi/fantasy books always sound silly?

Teenage werewolf Kalix MacRinnalch is being pursued through the streets of London by murderous hunters, while her sister, the Werewolf Enchantress, is busy designing clothes for the Fire Queen (who is unstoppable in battle yet can be reduced to floods of tears if someone wears the same designer outfit at a party).

Meanwhile, in the Scottish Highlands the MacRinnalch Clan is beset with internecine conflict after the Thane of their clan dies intestate. Scandalously, the Thane's death was the result of a mortal injury inflicted by his emotionally unstable teenage daughter, the afore-mentioned Kalix, who it turns out is on the lamm.

As the court intrigue threatens to flare into civil war, the competing factions find that Kalix is the swing vote necessary to assume leadership of the clan. Thing of it is, quite apart from her fear of reprisals, she was never much into clan politics, especially after her father banned her from seeing her boyfriend Gawain. But she is rather into laudanum.

I think this sounds better (both are from Soft Skull):

Lonely Werewolf Girl is an expansive tale of werewolves in the modern world—elegant werewolves, troubled teenage werewolves, friendly werewolves, homicidal werewolves, fashion designers, warriors, punks, cross-dressers, musicians—an entire Clan of Werewolves, getting in trouble from the Scottish Highlands to London, and in several dimensions beyond . . .

And check out this outstanding blurb from Neil Gaiman:

I [don't] understand why Martin Millar isn't as celebrated as Kurt Vonnegut, as rich as Terry Pratchett, as famous as Douglas Adams . . . I've been a fan of his work for almost twenty years.