Reading on Easy Street

I can't always stick my nose into the heavier volumes of classical literature. Really, I would like to think of myself as one of those "only the classics" types, but every now and then it's good to find a novel and spend a couple nights with less intense fare. It's the same with everything else, really: you could try to live a life watching Bergman films, having dinners of roasted vegetables and merlot, but ever now and then you need to just eat a burger, watch The Mummy, and drink a beer.

So I needed a literature break, if you will. After all, I had just finished re-reading House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (it's still fantastic), and was deciding between finishing Paradise Lost or starting Goethe's Faust. The second part of that sentence alone should make you roll your eyes, or maybe even throw up. Anyway, I was a bit sick of things that required analyzing. So I went to the library and grabbed two books: Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold, and Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen.

In theory, the two books should go hand in hand, and are a good companion to the last "light reading" type novel that I read, The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. Though of course neither come close to Chabon's prose or his story, at least Carter Beats The Devil proved itself to be a satisfying lead, despite a penchant for swashbuckling. Water for Elephants is promising, but falls flat at the end, victim of its own predictability.

Carter Beats The Devil is a very fictional retelling of the life of Charles Carter, one of the more well known magicians of the early 1900s through the 1920s. Though the story does not necessarily pull any new or fantastic plot turns and twists, the vibrancy of it, especially in the world of early 20s San Francisco that Gold paints. In truth, it does almost everything that a good story does; it gives us a hero, a villain, a cast of familiar characters, a love interest, and just enough of a plot twist at the end to leave us impressed and satisfied. Gold's prose is impressive, and though at times he seems to lose direction, the novel's second act is a well-paced mystery-thriller. That, and Gold seems to have such a fine understanding of stage magic and its application, that we are given just the treatment that the audiences back then got: we are both amazed by the effect and impressed by its secrets. The final magic spectacle, where Carter indeed does beat the devil (here in the form of a vengeful and psycopathic rival magician) made the hair on the back of my neck stand up when I imagined seeing it in the theatre. This is a perfect beach or rainy day read, and should only take a few days. Still, if you have nothing else to do, give it a go, it's bound to entertain.

Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants is also a story about entertainers, but instead of creating the mystery and intrigue that it seems to promise (or that any story about circuses in the Great Depression would (think Carnivàle)), ends up being a sappy love story, with colorful images that, unfortunately, don't have enough space to hold the novel up. The story is told as a memory, an old man named Jacob Jankowski remembering his early days working for the circus during the 1930s. Jacob himself is an almost nauseatingly good guy, and his altruism and style of talking ("It's hard to conceive of such evil.") make him seem like an unbelievably flawless character. The "incredible odds" which Jacob and the horse trainer, Marlena, need to overcome are hardly so; and the last few chapters involve nearly everything falling into place so easily that you have to wonder if there was really any struggle at all. The book has so many elements in it that would give it strength, but in the end it all seems thrown away. Certainly it's not a short book, over 300 pages long, but in the end I wanted an expansion of everything--time, place, descriptions of locations and minor characters. Instead, the more colorful elements of the story are rushed through for the sake (I suppose) of Plot. And though Gruen seems to have a pretty good idea of what she's talking about, and the era seems well researched and understood, it's still slightly off, or off-tempo; so she's playing the right tune, but there's something not quite enjoyable about it. Of course, if what you want is total escapism, well, go for it. But in my opinion, if it weren't for the sex, you could do a book report on it in 7th grade.



Now that those two books are over, I have a couple more lined up to read: there's a collection of essays on medieval bestiaries, jung, more folktale books, and, of course, the ever-present Paradise Lost, which I keep coming back to and leaving all over again. It's all right though, it forgives me every time.

Harry Potter's Secretary Files Picture Show, in 3D

Here's my latest Celebrity Look-Alikes, courtesy of the magnanimous time-waster, Hy Heritage.

Personally, I laughed my very famous looking face off.

http://www.myheritage.com/collage

Yup, J.K Rowling, James Spader, Gillian Anderson, and Susan Sarandon. Not shown: Lance Bass?!

untitled, start of something, etc.

One by one the lights in the house go out, until it joins the blue-green darkness of the street. There are houses all around it, identical every one; stucco walls of white or peach, spanich tile roofs, two stories, two cars in the driveway. Moths and flies whirr around the streetlamps. A warm breeze goes by, and the nails that hold the plastic mailboxes to their posts creak.

Behind the row of houses there is a small but deep pond, used to catch all the dirty water and pesticides that the once-a-week landscaping men spray over the grass and the flowers and the privets. Still there is life in the pond, a few dozen catfish and sunfish that the children like to catch. They must always throw them back, though, since their parents say that even though the fish are alive, their lives are poisoned, and not fit for eating. Minnows breed freely, and frogs wait patiently for dragonflies on the algae-covered edges of the water.

There is a girl that lives in the house (her's was the last light to be turned off), and every night before going to sleep she looks out her window at the pond. She is seven years old. The pond reflects the moon grey and the palm trees black. A few ripples run along the surface. She watches them all intently, for she is waiting for the ripple that will mean that She is coming out of the pond.

She knows that the woman will wait until all is silent and all the lights are turned off in the neighborhood. Right now, it is one o'clock in the morning. The girl holds her breath, looking out the window and not moving, not wanting to scare the woman. A fish jumps and the girl gasps. A frog croaks, she presses her hand and nose to the window.

So I'm leaving

For France. In four hours. Or actually, I'm leaving in three hours, because the bus departs at 6, so we don't want to risk missing it.

It's been a weird and possibly impossible last few weeks for me lately, for reasons I do and don't understand and I would rather just, well, not discuss. But I can say that there's been the usual crap: my roommates and their constantly loud and obnoxious habits, the country charging me the equivalent of eight dollars for a cup of coffee, the city being so dull, and so empty, the school being nothing better than AP high school level.

But the school can sit here and get nothing done, and my roommates can scream their heads off, and the sirens can keep going on and on in Norwich all night, and I'll be in Paris. And Munich. And Vienna. And Provence. And Mont St Michel. So it's good by me.

So I lied about updating?

Nothing enough happens here to update about, and I'm not the type that blogs about the mundane. I did that on Livejournal. I'm all grown up now.

If you want a summary, look at this:


Yep, that's me, and that's my room: the glorified storage locker that is Mary Chapman Court, Flat 6, Room B. I hope to heck that I don't die here, because if I do, then I am going to haunt the most depressing place to haunt on this plane. And if you were wondering, yes, those ARE oil pastels that I painted on the wall! How kind of you to notice! The first one I made was of Morgan Le Fey. See? She's wearing a red dress with an apple tree on it!! I rock at symbolism, and I rule at being addicted to mythology. This is an obvious thing, especially because I list myself as an Archetypicalist*, and because I refer to events in life or feelings by what tarot card they relate to best. The second picture is of Eros and Psyche, and it took me way too long to finish, and used too much pastel, so now my black is shorter than ever. The one above it, which you can only see a little bit of, is a work in progress.

I think that the most important thing to talk about is that I've added two writing projects to my schedule. The first is a novel, the first that I've ever planned. It's about a young woman in the 1920s, who becomes a magician in Atlantic City. There's a lot of magical realism and some fantasy in it, but for the most part I want it to be about her and her struggles to figure out the magic that she's trying to master (hint: it's real magic), while also painting a portrait of some sort of American sensibility. Here's a couple extracts or what I've got so far:

They got hot dogs and knee-highs from a stand on the boardwalk the next day and ate them on a bench nearby. The surf whispered under their feet, Maybelle was wearing a white dress with red poppies embroidered on the hem and neckline with black patent leather shoes, Bridget felt dowdy in her pleated skirt and good blouse, which was ivory and had a bow in the front that the wind kept pushing dangerously close to the mustard that dangled from her hot dog. She wore a black hat, Maybelle’s head was bare and her ringlets waved proudly in the breeze.
“I’d like to tell myself that I was just too pretty for the pageant,” she was saying. “Those judges just didn’t know what to do, and that made them too scared to give me the crown.” She laughed at herself and looked at her lap. “But I know that’s not really what happened, anyway. But I like to think that.”
“Well you are very beautiful,” Bridget said, and felt stupid immediately. She was starting to realize that with Maybelle she was a new sort of nervous. She had been nervous when she talked to police officers, or Gimbelli, or her parents, or her landlady, but this was different. She didn’t want Maybelle to get up and walk away.
Maybelle thanked her quietly for the comment and smiled squintingly in the sunlight. Bridget felt more confident. She finished her hot dog and wiped off her hands. “ ‘Ere,” she said, swallowing. “Watch this.” She held her left palm in front of Maybelle, showing both sides. “See? Empty.” She flicked her fingers quickly, and a new silver dollar glinted between her middle and forefinger. She reached over with her right hand and took the coin in her fist. Then she opened her right hand. It was empty.
Maybelle smiled coyly. “I’ve seen that trick, it’s still in your other hand.”
Bridget opened her left hand. Empty. She looked around on the ground, apparently flabbergasted at the coin's dissapearance, then her eyes settled on the side of Maybelle’s face. She grinned and reached behind Maybelle’s ear, retrieving the shining silver dollar.
“Very nice. But I’ve seen that one too. It’s all those hand tricks magicians use.” Maybelle crossed her arms, looking proud of herself for figuring out the illusion.
Bridget looked crestfallen, but only for a second. “Oh,” She said, “I missed one.” Then she reached behind Maybelle’s other ear and pulled out a second silver dollar, holding it next to the first one in her palm. Then she pulled out another. And another. Six silver dollars materialized out of Maybelle’s hair until Bridget finally sighed with exasperation and ran her fingers through Maybelle’s chestnut ringlets, and a shower of silver fell onto the bench and the ground around them.
Maybelle opened her mouth and raised her eyebrows in suprise. Bridget winked, and immediately felt stupid, but Maybelle laughed. “With all those dollars, you should be buying me dinner.” Her skirt was fluttering perfectly, and her lips were red an curved up at the edges, a smile full of friendship and secrets.

......

Herman Gimbal Waite, who called himself the Great Gimbelli until the day he died, had very little about his face or figure that would earn him his assumed title and his renown as a magician. He refused to ever speak of his date or place of birth, though in 1923 most who knew him or knew of him would tell you that he was, at that time, between forty-five and fifty-three years old, and was born and raised somewhere in Ohio. Some claimed that he knew the flyers, Orville and Wilbur Wright, but this was most likely a rumor that he himself planted so that he could have more intrigue around his version of the Levitation trick, which would make his assistant fly circles around the stage, complete with her arms outstretched like airplane wings.
He was not a tiny man, but of no significant stature; but his insecurities about this would make him wear tall shoes while on stage, so as not to be diminished by any female guests or assistants (this happened on several occasions when he was first performing in vaudeville, and it made him blush so much that the ladies would be wrongly flattered). He parted his hair down the middle and waxed it down, though a coffee-colored curl would pop up every now and then, and his mustache was one of the most humble in the business: a simple triangle of hair that stretched to the corners of his lips, which he kept well trimmed. In fact, the Great Gimbelli was quite dashing as soon as he got the hang of performing, and got tailored suits that showed off his slender form, and white gloves that he somehow kept perfectly spotless, and a pair of wire glasses that were the perfect silver to match his perfect blue eyes. To say that he was vain as well is no understatement, Gimbelli was a conjuror and was sure that he had the same effect on women (and, more than likely, certain men) that he did on the coins he would pull out of the air, or the doves he would produce out of hats and tailcoat pockets: they would come to him when he wanted them.
Of course, do not let any of these vanities fool you. Gimbelli was, first and foremost, a fantastically good illusionist. He would not give credit to his inventions and innovations to some secret dead religion or culture, there was no mysterious Sphinx, no Indian Rope Trick, no Alexander The Great’s Vanishing Sword or Solomon’s Magic Flute or any of the other “two-bit foppery” in his act: it was all him. When he spoke about his tricks, he spoke in a strange poetry or mystery and beauty, talking not of old gods and kings but of the cosmos, and fate, life and death, and the inside of the soul and the mind. And few spectators believed it more than Bridget Alcyone.

Not bad, right? By the way, Bridget Alcyone is the main character. I'm doing research about the golden age of magic and so on, and am actually enjoying reading a book called Hiding the Elephant by Jim Steinmeyer. It's not a very difficult book to read, but it's got plenty of information about magic and magicians and, more importantly, illusions and how they were made. The book itself is pretty well outlined for the initial stage, so I think it can be done by the end of this summer if I manage to get more researh done. It's also making me want to take a few magic lessons, which would be fun to look into.

The second project isn't completely mine. For a while now Amanda and I have been looking into the mythology and culture of the American South, and now we're decided that to create a series of American Faerie Stories would be pretty cool. It would be a gradual thing--I don't have anything done yet--and like I said, it's a collaboration project. But it's something to think about. No idea when or if it'll be finished, but I love the idea so I don't mind.

So now I've got Archer, Bridget (whatever the title is I haven't decided yet) and the Southern stories, plus whatever other short stories I write in the meantime. I wish more than anything that they end up, you know, making me money, or at least the pride of being published.

That's it for now, until the next random time that I decide to update; perhaps I'll take a few pictures with my webcam when I take the computer to UEA Tuesday.

Oh, and Henry Smutton liked my Persephone story, and so far I'm pretty confident in saying that, if it isn't the best of the best so far in the class, it's at least very close to the top.




*on Facebook

Valentine's Day is coming!!

I hope that it sucks as much for you as it undoubtably will for me.


Here are some candy hearts that I cooked up for the occasion, for the cynical romantic in all of us:

Vignette 2: Kate

When she sits in class, during the middle of an awful lecture about history or philosophy, Kate likes to set her chin on the desk in from of her and open her mouth until her jaw locks in place, and then wait for a few seconds and let it shut again so that her back molars hit with a dull click. She does it over and over. She flexes her toes in her socks in her sneakers, which are dirty and the left one has a rip in the side from the day when she thought she could walk on a thin wall and slid off, her shoe scraping along the jagged stone (it’s called conchina, a wall made of sharp hardened shells and sand in St. Augustine, where she lived as a child). she hit the wall with the inside of her left thigh, she had a bruise there for weeks that was yellow and made her afraid to wear a bathing suit (as if she needed another reason. There is not a single sixteen-year-old girl who has actual emotions that wants to wear a bathing suit), and she would forget it whenever she crossed her legs at dinner, knee over knee, and she winced but kept sitting that way anyway. She always liked looking like the martyr, like those men who walked away from duels victorious and approached their lady love with bloodstains growing under their waistcoats but a proud, pained smile. Physically, Kate looks like neither the Hero or the Lady Love. Her hair is limp and could be gold if she cared enough to let it glitter, and she keeps going between keeping it skull short and letting it fall across her back, so right now it looks very much like unplanned and indecisive hair that sits in choppy lengths between he chin and her shoulders. Her face is a pouting sort of face, and her eyes are tired, her ears are uninteresting. Sometimes she wears makeup and it’s a terrible mistake where her sea foam green eyes don’t match up and her lips look fat and out of place, like they were scotch taped on, and she resembles, mostly, a porcelain doll that was painting in the dark by a slightly drunk artist. When she does not wear makeup, she is likable, almost pretty, though when she smiles she tends to look more exhausted than excited. She wears the same pair of jeans that she’s worn for three or four years, and unstimulating but flattering tops that are comfortable enough for slumping, which is what she does when she’s around people who make her feel very small, which is almost everyone. The people who make her feel like herself, who is not small at all but moderately tall for her age, are the ones that make her want to walk atop walls, and go swimming in her clothes, or swing her legs in her chair and smile like she means it, and she goes running when she’s all alone, and she doesn’t bother to buy “running shoes” or “jogging pants” but goes in her school clothes with wrinkles from slumping still in her shirt. Right now, though, Kate isn’t thinking of running, because her legs feel like those big stalks of kelp that she saw in the aquarium in Monterray, where she lives now, because she is currently noticing for the seventh time this semester how handsome the back of The Boy Who Sits Three Rows And Two Seats To The Left’s neck is, because it curves like a hill in an Ansel Adams picture, and his hair is always trimmed so neatly. He’s the sort of attractive man that she’s sure she should fall in love with, the sort of man who should save her from getting hit by a bus or from falling off a balcony. Right now, Kate’s eyebrows are cringing with the realization that, if she were to swoon dramatically in class, then she would not be able to see the definitely devastated look of concern on The Boy Who Sits Three Rows And Two Seats To The Left’s face as she lay, her mismatched hair making an straw-colored halo around her suddenly much prettier and dramatic visage, one hand cradling her head and one arm back, her legs crumpled under her, all the room paying attention to the girl who, around Other People was quiet, but still proudly bore the shadow of a bruise on her inner thigh and had countless other scars from when she had dared to vault the small but frightening mountains of her life.