This is my next choice...it's supposed to be one part Story of O, one part Jane Austen...hmmm.... 

There's an Indigo Girls song that I love, called The Girl with the Weight of the World In Her Hands...Emily sings it, I believe. The girl in the song carries so much of the world's troubles in her soul, in her eyes...Anyway, Jeanette Winterson's book Weight reminds me a great deal of that song. Winterson's novel, the second in the Canongate series that I talked about when I read Atwood's novel, is about Atlas and his punishment to bear the world, his temporary relief when Heracles comes to ask him for a favor(to pick three golden apples from his own orchard), and his eventual return to the task he must eternally endure. This story is an elongated metaphor; not only does Atlas have to carry a literally heavy world, but he also is privy to all of the world's troubles, secrets, desires. He is a lonely man, overloaded with the figurative world, but he takes it as best he can. When Heracles comes to relieve him, the task for Heracles is a challenge to his manhood, he thinks it's only going to be physically difficult, he doesn't realize that the mental burden is just as difficult if not worse. He tricks Atlas into taking the world back and then runs off to continue his playboy antics. What is also interesting, is the author herself inserts her own voice, and a bit of her own history in the narrative, drawing parallels between her life and that of Atlas...reminding us that we can't leave behind any of our pasts, and like Atlas, we carry our own worlds, past, present and future, around on our backs, waiting for someone or something to relieve us of it. I don't know how that can happen, to have someone relieve you of your own cross that you must bear...perhaps a lover can ease it, share in it...but ultimately, I believe, death is possibly, bleakly the only liberator. I have loved Winterson's style of writing and her voice for a long time, her work is so diverse...I even grab at articles that she writes for such publications as The New Yorker. What she has to say about living in a world as a marginalized person, whether as a girl growing up lesbian, Noah building an ark(a man with a dream, I guess), princesses living communally as lesbians, or breaking the expected structures in narrative voice by depicting a relationship in which you don't know whether the narrator is a boy or girl(he/she has a relationship with a woman who is married), or Atlas carrying the Earth on his shoulders, Winterson expresses such wisdom, sometimes humor and just damn good writing. Oh, there were so many many quotes that I loved. At the beginning, Atlas says "I can hear the world beginning. Time plays itself back for me. I can here the ferns uncurling from their tight rest. I can hear pools bubbling up with life. I realise I am carrying not only this world, but all possible worlds. I am carrying the world in time as well as in space. I am carrying the world's mistakes and its glories. I am carrying its potential as well as what has so far been realised.[paragraph break] As the dinosaurs crawl through my hair and volcanic eruptions pock my face, I find I am become a part of what I must bear. There is no longer Atlas and the world, there is only the World Atlas. Travel me and I am continents. I am the journey you must make" (Winterson 25). A little bitty line that made me laugh..."Even a goddess is still a woman" (Winterson 31). At one point Hera is talking to Heracles about himself...she says "'Then I will speak plainly, like a man. No hero can be destroyed by the world. His reward is to destroy himself. Not what you meet on the way, but what you are, will destroy you, Heracles'" (ibid 41). Atlas and Heracles have one of their many philosophical discussions. Heracles says he's not free. Atlas responds by saying "'There is no such thing as freedom. Freedom is a country that does not exist.' [paragraph break] 'It's home,' said Heracles. 'If home is where you want to be'" (ibid 51). Still more of course. "It is fit that a man should do his best and grapple with the world. It is meet that he should accept the challenge of his destiny. What happens when the sun reaches the highest point in the day? Is it failure for morning to become afternoon, or afternoon to turn into peaceful evening and star-bright night" (ibid 71)? And then Winterson "speaks" in her own voice..."The ancients believed in Fate because they recognized how hard it is for anyone to change anything. The pull of the past and future is so strong that the present is crushed by it. We lie helpless in the force of patterns inherited and patterns re-enacted by our own behaviour. The burden is intolerable" (ibid 99). And my final quote is also from her own voice..."That's why I write fiction--so that I can keep telling the story. I return to problems I can't solve, not because I'm an idiot, but because the real problems can't be solved. The universe is expanding. The more we see, the more we discover there is to see. Always a new beginning, a different end" (ibid 137). The idea of rewriting myth is exactly that, a "new beginning, a different end." It also reminds me of how much we create our own personal myths, our stories being told and re-told in either our own voice or those of whom we have come in contact. We are at once our own storytellers, our own stories, and the subjects or peripherals in others'. If the world is a tapestry, we are all its threads. Mmmm...Fiction Junkie is still on vacation from the lists...

This is the book I'm going to read next, so that I can give my lovely Keren all the UW books back before the term ends. It's Jeanette Winterson's take on the Atlas/Heracles myth. 

Sheesh...Well, this is going to be a combination blog(Hi there Mr. Chinese food guy, I'd like one Kung Pao chicken with combination white and brown rice please!)...I just finished Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad a few minutes ago, and finished Dennis Miller's Ranting Again last Friday but as yet have not had the time to write about it...Two extremely different books, with opposing styles...First I'll talk about Miller's book...Hehehehehe...He always makes me laugh. One of the things that I did like about the book was that all of the "articles" or essays if you will, were directly taken from his monologues at the start of his HBO shows, the really funny parts where he just rambles on and on and finishes by saying "Well, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong." It's written pretty much exactly how he speaks. However, this was also annoying...He uses "okay" a lot and starts sentences off with "You know," and of course every essay starts off by saying "Now I don't want to get off on a rant here..." but, of course, it goes with the title of the book I guess. Anyway, he has some extremely insightful and witty things to say about American politics, feminism, OJ Simpson and the human race in general(though he does use Pavarotti as a whipping post a little much)...I just loved his outlook on movies(made Chris read it while I was up in Canada, by the end we were both pissing ourselves laughing and I'd already read the essay at least once and was still laughing) and abortion and fashion...but he had a few quotes I really loved. "Remember, xenophobia doesn't benefit anybody unless you're playing high-stakes Scrabble"(Miller 22). And my favorite, which Kate will laugh at since we spent a year at least being Family Feud ADDICTS(I LOVE LOVE LOVE game shows): "Your family are the people who cut you the most slack and give you the most chances. I mean, when Richard Dawson says 'Name something you find in a refrigerator' and you say 'a dictionary' and the rest of America is screaming 'You moron' at their TV sets, who's clapping and saying 'Good answer! Good answer!'? Your family, that's who" (ibid 18). I've always loved Dennis Miller and been one of his biggest champions, even when he did start pulling all that right-wing nonsense, I still believe his humorous intellect is unsurpassed...If he was a chick, wow...But now I should move on to the chick, that ever prolific Atwood...What is somewhat dismaying to me(though not entirely surprising I guess), is that as I peer over my personal writings: my poetry especially, I find a lot of similarities to Margaret Atwood's work, I guess making her a somewhat subconscious inspiration. When I was first really getting exposed to her in Canada, I felt like she was being shoved down my throat, and that especially in the states she's recognized as the great Canadian voice...this is quite disheartening as since embarking on my book project and also having been exposed to wonderful Canadian writers over the past several years, I've found many amazing Canadian voices, all uniquely gifted in their own personal and national expressions. I must admit, though, that as I've read more of Atwood(and not just all of her poetry, some short prose and several novels)I've really come to respect her work and her themes not only in terms of what she writes about but also how she views her role as the writer...Murder in the Dark is a great collection of short prose and prose poetry in which she explores the notion of poet as murderer, reader as victim( I shouldn't be dismayed that I subconsiously emulate her, I suppose). But, I'm digressing. I just finished The Penelopiad, the first in a myth series that has been started by Canongate books, in which modern authors rewrite classic myths...many authors I greatly admire have been set up for the challenge. The Penelopiad documents the story of The Odyssey from Penelope's point of view, giving it a distinctly feminine voice...this is combined with a "Greek chorus" of 12 maids who give narration of their own, not only commenting on the story as told by Penelope but also dictating their own lives in which they are subjugated first as slaves in Odysseus' house, then subsequently as the rape victims of Penelope's persistant suitors and then finally their brutal slaughter at the hands of the man who could have, if circumstances perhaps had been better, been their protector. Leave it to Atwood to bluntly show the shitty turns that women's lives take at the hands of men. It's not a terrifically long book, especially in light of some of Atwood's novels, and I also found it to be extremely straightforward, which is also, I feel, unlike Atwood, especially the more recent novels...but a writer can change their style given subject matter I suppose. However, in true Atwoodian fashion, her character's voices give way to biting social commentary that is point on...This quote, from the beginning of the book, just struck me. "The teaching of crafts to girls has fallen out of fashion now, I understand, but luckily it had not in my day. It's always an advantage to have something to do with your hands. That way, if someone makes an inappropriate remark, you can pretend you haven't heard it. Then you don't have to answer" (Atwood 8). The maidens themselves are full of the comments that only Atwood could provide, and tell a much more violent story than their protagonist does, almost leaving Penelope in the wings of the theatre when she is supposed to, at least in this arena, be taking centre stage...but the mix of narrative voice makes this book so much greater than its lack of length may deceive. Mmmm...I'm looking forward to the Winterson version of Atlas, which I'm reading next...Fiction junkie is still on GG/Pulitzer vacation...

Okay, so they say that every girl has a bit of a Daddy complex...Dennis Miller reminds me of my dad...perhaps because my dad loves him so. I find Dennis Miller uproariously funny and I must admit that I have a small crush on him...smart and witty and just look at that face! I'm reading this collection of rants and raves while plowing through the Atwood, and I also was reading it while reading the O'Neill...Hey, I've been needing something lighthearted.:) 

Now reading...I have this and the Winterson novel The Weight which start off a new myth series by Canongate books in which established authors reinvent old myths...Chinua Achebe and AS Byatt(yay!) are amongst the others that have books due...I can't wait!!! 

Okay, so I made a deal with Keren, and my end of the bargain involved me going to bed as soon as I could after I got off the phone with her...unfortunately, I'm a creature of habit(and insomnia), so without pills, I'm fucked. I just took them, though, so I should be induced to sleep soon. But, as for the habit part, I've gotten used to the blog thang...documenting all the books I read complete with quotes and contextual basis in my life, so I can't stop now...Today(Thursday morning) I finished Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill. I've never watched anything by him before(or read for that matter)...He's the author of The Iceman Cometh amongst others. Wow. It was pretty sad. It reminded me of my family in a lot of ways, which makes me relate...My mother's parents were heavy drinkers(I didn't know that liquor could be delivered to your house like milk until I visited them and was old enough to answer the door and realize what was going on) and my father's mother's mother was severely mentally ill(enough to be institutionalized for much of her adult life) so both facets of a family life I am quite familiar with. So, in a nutshell, this play is about a family of four, and the mother is addicted to morphine, because when she was having mental issues, a hack doctor prescribed it for her. She is overly dependent on her family because she is lonely as hell, but that makes her feel like a burden, so she uses...The father of the family is an actor, who is also a cheapskate, and a heavy drinker, though at times in the play it is argued that he drinks because he has to deal with the mother, and the shortcomings of his boys, Edmund and Jamie. Jamie is the father's namesake and an actor as well, but he spends all of his money on booze and women...Edmund, it is discovered early on, is creative, a poet of sorts and a big reader, but also deathly ill of consumption...The mother, Mary, cannot deal with that very well, so she needs to use her drugs as an escape, but by returning to her artificial solace, her family's unhappiness grows, and consequently they drink more...It's a vicious circle that whirls and whirls around. The love in the family unit is evident, but their state of miserable reigns. There are of course, as per usual, some quotes that I loved...Mary says "'The past is the present, isn't it? It's the future, too. We all try to lie out of that but life won't let us'"(O'Neill 87). And, a few from Edmund, the poet: "'Don't look at me as if I'd gone nutty. I'm talking sense. Who wants to see life as it is, if they can help it? It's the three Gorgons in one. You look in their faces and turn to stone. Or it's Pan. You see him and you die--that is, inside you--and have to go on living as a ghost'" (O'Neill 131). He also quotes a prose poem by Baudelaire that I had forgotten about(I love Baudelaire, but haven't been a French poetry junkie for a while) "'Be always drunken. Nothing else matters: that is the only question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be drunken continually. Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will. But be drunken'" (ibid 132). And, my last quote is also from Edmund, though slightly morbid(I apologize) it is lovely..."'It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a sea gull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a little in love with death(ibid 154)'"! Mmmm...I have always loved plays. Seeing them of course, I LOVE the stage and everything about it. Though, next to of course reading novels and poetry, reading plays is one of my favorite things. For me reading a play is like reading a "Choose your own adventure" novel. You get guidelines from the writer, for stage directions and how a character should act and obviously what they say, but you can be your own director when you read a play, you're in charge. You can decide what they look like, how they dress, what the stage looks like, and even how you want to have them carry out their lines...It's so open-ended. This play was good and nutritional too! But, I still have a weakness for Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee and Tom Stoppard...geez what I need to do is find some female playwrights. I'm not an O'Neill fan from just this play, but I'm open to what else he's written. I'd also like to see some of his stuff performed. That would be very cool. The play's the thing, right? Junkie is still on vacation from the lists...And is also rapidly growing sleepy...Who hoo!

Okay...I just finished Carrie. I'm tired and I'm sad...this book is not terrifying; my Stephen King cherry has been popped, but not fearfully...It makes me want to cry, not because I'm frightened, but because it makes me realize yet again, that life is brutal, especially brutal to those who deserve it the least. The people in Carrie who become her victims are scared of her, and they have every right to be, but only with the clear knowledge of what they've done to her to create the monster that is hell-bent on destroying them. The reader is aware of this, but King's characters ironically seem not to realize how their even their ignorance of Carrie White and her horrible life made for a hopelessly bleak situation that could only end badly. I read King's introduction that was attached to the "new" release of the novel(the intro was written 1999); he based Carrie White on two girls that he knew growing up who were different...in a socially apparent way. It's about the what ifs? The what if all of us who are marginalized in the world, the sometime freaks, were able to exact our revenge. Carrie is not about an anomaly, a monster, a freak, it's about all of us who are terrorized by a society that doesn't agree with us or want to acknowledge our existence. It should be seen as a novel of warning...which perhaps is why it is banned now...Littleton, Co. and other small towns in the U.S. having seen what happens when people who are mercilessly teased and tormented take matters into their own hands. Perhaps we should look at what we should do to fix the way we talk to people and treat them. Thumper's mom had it right: "If you don't have anything nice to say..." And don't say you're sorry, for anything mean or cruel you've ever said to anyone. As one of the characters in Carrie says, "Sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions" (King 138). But I'm ranting, and I haven't even been to book club yet. I need to take my sleeping pills, read a morbidly depressing play, and go to sleep...I have a date with Kim and my yoga mat tomorrow, before I throw in my two cents about a girl from whom I can't say I don't identify with...The junkie is on vacation from the lists, with a one-way ticket to free reading...

After Carrie, I think I'm going to read this...I've been feeling a tad morose lately(perhaps it comes from being extremely overworked),and I've been wanting to read a play for a long time...This one I've lugged around with me for several years...published post-humously by O'Neill's widow, it's supposed to be terribly depressing, but a good work of literature. Mmmm...The "wee" vacation has begun, however non-uplifting it may be. 

I have to finish the rest of this book for book club, which is meeting tomorrow at 1:30. It shouldn't take me too long, and hopefully I won't be at work that late so I'll get it done right when I get home from work...I've seen the movie, so I know what happens anyway, well sort of... 

Okay, so, as Sophia would say in the Golden Girls, "Picture this..." A few years ago, I would say about four summers ago, Chai, my first girlfriend, and I decided to go to Northhampton, MA, the location of her alma mater, Smith, to spend some time together. I remember lots of images from that trip, me in my hot little Ralph Lauren dress, Chai with her camera taking pictures of me sitting on the dock putting my feet in the disgusting water of the pond(cause I could), finding the mental institution where Susanna Kaysen, James Taylor and Sylvia Plath had been, also the same place where they supposedly filmed The Cider House Rules(great book AND movie). I remember loving her, and feeling so comfortable in that space, because she was. She was unafraid to be seen in the company of another woman who at night was her lover, because Smith is so lesbian-friendly, and it was a nice feeling to have her be okay with us...for once. Sigh. I also remember visiting the house where Margaret Mitchell stayed while going to Smith, and there was this little museum with an exhibit about Virginia Woolf...I have said before and will say again...I think I like the "idea" of Virginia Woolf, but I've read three of her books, and have decided that I'm not crazy about her work. However, when I was there looking at the exhibit, I discovered a book of hers that I had never heard about before(and NO! I didn't buy it!), called Flush...it's a biography of the Brownings(Robert and Elizabeth Barrett, both excellent poets) from their dog's point of view. I remember thinking about what a cool idea that was to me, also pretty wacky(fitting for Woolf), but it would be something I would read, despite my ambivalence towards Virginia Woolf...everyone who I've met who goes on and on about her, I'm like "Have you actually read her stuff? I mean, Faulkner's pretty tough, but Woolf, geez..." Unless you're a total book freak like me, I'm not sure I'll believe you if you say you like her...but that's just me. Okay, enough about Woolf, let me get back to the subject at hand. A little under 50 years after Virginia Woolf wrote Flush Leon Rooke did something very similar(perhaps he read Woolf's "bio" of the Brownings, which would surprise me, since most men don't read Virginia Woolf unless under duress...wow look at me! I'm really snippy today)...Rooke wrote a book called Shakespeare's Dog, which is all about Shakespeare from his dog Hooker's point of view. It won the GG in 1983. Let me say right here: Canadians give prizes to strange and unique books...Marian Engel's Bear won in 1976 and that's about a woman who has a sexual awakening by having a bear eat her out, amongst other things...Weird, yet interesting, especially from a feminist(which sometimes I put that hat on, however briefly) point of view. Shakespeare's Dog is also weird but interesting...I don't think I've ever read a "literary" novel told so wholeheartedly from a dog's point of view...and it's a neat take on Shakespeare, too, especially since I know little of his biographical history(only what was spoonfed to us in school). Hooker is loyal to and loves his master, who is always scribbling, or fucking his wife "The Hathaway," who most of the time just beats Hooker and frustrates him, the children are strange creatures to him, whom he usually just observes in an off-hand way...There are others of Shakespeare's family living in the house, and they are in the peripheral, as well as other dogs on the land that Hooker has daily dealings with. He is a very insightful dog, full of memory(about Shakespeare and his own young life), and views the world in a unique way. He is unreliable as a narrator, just like many humans, for we discover that he embellishes or lies(depending on how you look at it), but even human narrators in novels are almost always flawed. He does spend a couple pages at least on his bodily functions...two pages are where he gets sick, smells his own vomit and decides that it's actually pretty good eating...yuck. Now this book is not just full of his observances, it also has dialogue; Shakespeare makes some great comments, like "'You underestimate the clankings of history,' Will told me. 'There's much to be said for looting the past'" (Rooke 144). But, one of the best quotes in the book comes from Hooker's thoughts: "Aye, indeed. I'd think, for what worth was a scribbler if his weight was not put in with the long march of impugned humanity? Soul endured the ravages of fate; soul was immortal. Soul gets by by hook and crook, by quill and by quiver; it seeks out all manner of things, showing its plume in flower bed or grass or animal or even a limestone field. It will enter anything except hedgehog. Hedgehog will fight its own shadow, thus keeping soul out. Maybe. I'm not hard by my rule, and the hedgehog to his credit would affirm nay--and nay again--to this. The Avon's fish has soul, though we eat them anyhow. But eating's not the test. The soul's plume lays the grandeur over all of life, which is why the witch Moll Braxton, even with her deadly sins, should be spared the mob's high flames. Though she cackles with her sisters around their pot, she influences no injury over you and me. The stars, I'm willing to think, might be another matter. What's stelliferous is beyond dog's howl, though up there is something ever pushing and turning it. For howl never climbs so high as dog would have it go, and many's the time I've heard it crackle and give out and plunge like a sob into the green sea. 'And does the plague have soul?' I'd sometimes ask of myself. To which I'd reply that it was a stinking maggoty world in some regard, but that the true war was one with time. If the Spaniards didn't blow us all up with their cannonballs and Rome didn't tilt over with stored gold and England didn't kill us with its queenly farts, then mercy would out and the soul's plume endure. Thus spake Hooker, mad as a sea captain, pushing the eternal wheel of dog's lore" (Rooke 36-37). Whew. What brilliance, from man's best friend. And this rant, ironically enough, is right after Shakespeare says "'Your lesson's stern, but I've learnt it. I'm a redeemed scholar, thanks to dog'" (Rooke 36). Well, so am I. It's amazing how things come full circle. That summer when I went to Smith, I bought two things, souvenirs you might say...One was a pack of cloves, that I guiltily smoked because Chai kept telling me it was okay, she didn't mind...I felt like a 16 year old again...and a Tori Amos cd that was a bootleg of a live recording of a concert of hers at the Orpheum in Vancouver(it has a great cover of Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You" which is a song that reminds me of one ex in particular and all my exes all at once), and of course I have the memories of the desire to read a biography of famous writers from a dog's point of view(amongst other memories of course)...As I enter my third summer in Seattle, Chai is coming to work here for 10 weeks, I still have a pack of cloves somewhere in my house(though not that one...I think it got smoked forever ago), next week I'm going to Vancouver for a few days to actually see a show at the Orpheum(not Tori Amos, though, Natalie McMaster, the great Cape Breton fiddlist), and I just finished a book about a writer from his dog's point of view, that may or may not have been inspired by Virginia Woolf...hmm. Well, off to work, argh...GG's 20. Who Hoo! Pulitzers-15.

Now reading...I'm afraid that soon I'm going to owe the library all the money I've been saving up to buy my first born(wink wink)! But fortunately, it's the last book I have from SPL. Now I just have 5 from UW! Crap! This one won the GG in 1983. 

Okay, this week, or even the past little while, has been nightmarishly busy...So, I've slowed down reading a little bit. But at 3:30 this morning I finished the second book of Alice Munro short stories to win the GG, A Progress of Love. But before I get to that, I have to talk about some other things and get some stuff off my chest. I HATE BOOK SNOBS. For some bizarre reason, I've encountered more than one in the last few monthes. People who are all, oh, that book isn't literary enough, or some crap like that. I mean, FUCK OFF! I have come to the realization that I am NOT a book snob, thankfully...my choices and loves are quite a variety and I am pretty non-discriminate. So, Gina and I started a book club back in February. It was kind of half-ass, since it was me and Gina only, we read Martel's Life of Pi and went out to talk about it. Gina and I thought it would be cool to read a book together and talk about it, but when it came down to it(both of us are former lit majors)we were so out of practice with book discussions, that it was sort of embarrassing...But, it was still fun. So, we decided to do it again, but I got slammed with all of my interlibrary loan requests and couldn't pick up a new book that wasn't already coming from the library. When it came time to pick a new book, I thought we should pick something highly controversial, to be interesting. I went on the ALA website and printed out the top 100 most challenged books in the past 15 years. Carrie was on the list. So, Gina and I decided to read that; I have never read Stephen King and always wanted to. Well, what I'm upset about is this. We invited a few more people to join the club, one being this university student Becca, who works as a hostess/front desk person at work. She was supposed to come to the first meeting yesterday, but bailed. I ran into her at a party last night, and razzed her a little. She told me that she couldn't come because her cousin was in town at the last minute, but also, she just didn't feel the book was "literary" enough, and that she wasn't into discussing it. I felt like she was belittling my and Gina's choice! She was like, "Well, if you were discussing Life of Pi like you had before, then I would be way more into it. But this, well, I mean it's Stephen King!" Then she went on to say that there was only one real theme she felt that could be discussed, which was the religious aspect and asked me what we actually DID talk about, like there was nothing else that could be talked about. OOOOH. I was not thrilled. Yes, I agree, Stephen King is no Toni Morrison, or Michael Ondaatje or even A.S. Byatt, but he DOES have his place in American literature, and is worth reading just to make sure that one has a wide acceptance of what EVERYONE is reading. Ugh. Book snobs suck. I'm glad to be a book DEMOCRAT.
So, other than that, I was dragging on books this week because Chris came to visit on Monday and Tuesday and we watched 9 movies in 2 days(in the theatres). I'm not only a bookaholic, but I LOVE LOVE LOVE going to the movies. I think it's just stories as a whole that mesmerize me. We saw a lot of really great stuff: Lucky Number Slevin, Kinky Boots, Notorious Bettie Page, On a Clear Day, Brick, American Dreamz, Thank You for Smoking and 16 Blocks. Only one movie sucked, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. OMG it was two hours of my life I WILL NEVER GET BACK. It was Tommy Lee Jones directorial debut, and a major bllllleeeeeecccchhhh in my opinion. It was so boring and the characters so bismally depressing that I wanted to kill myself...just so I would have something to do! But, the others were all good in so many different ways, that it was all in all very enjoyable. My favorites were Kinky Boots, Bettie Page and Thank You for Smoking, and they tie because they were all so unique in their wonderfulness. Thank You for Smoking was ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS in a totally inappropriate way. Two quotes that I loved from that film were "You want an easy job? Go work for the Red Cross!" and "Michael Jordan plays basketball, Charles Manson kills people, I talk. Everyone has a talent." Anywho...I wish I didn't have to work and that everyday I could just read books and go to the movies. Then I would be in HEAVEN.
Okay, back to the task at hand. The Progress of Love. Okay, so before I just liked Alice Munro. now I think she's fabulous. Progress was a better short story collection in my opinion than Dance of the Happy Shades, but Dance was her first collection so I've got to cut her some slack...:) I loved every story in this collection, they were all so finely wrought, her stories are just so...interesting. I also encountered a story that had homosexual characters ("A Queer Streak" but it's not called that wholly because of the characters I think), which I hadn't seen in her writing before. "Circle of Prayer" was funny(strange, that is) because in it, some of the characters at a funeral sing a song that I was taught by my mother: "Today, while the blossoms still cling to the vine..." which is a song I have never heard anyone else sing. I know my mother didn't make it up, but it still struck me, because if I sing it, people have no idea where I'm coming from. I don't think I have a favorite story here, all of them were good. And, like the title implicates, they all have to deal with love, and how it unfolds or unravels, between actual lovers, family members, etc; she covers all the boundaries of love. The great thing about Munro is that her characters are all so unique. So, one of a kind characters deal with love in one of a kind ways, with every page full of little surprises. Mmm...great work. There were two quotes in here, very small, that I particularly enjoyed, tiny gems. "Fifty years too late to ask, Sam thinks. And even at the time he was too amazed Edgar became a person he didn't know Callie drew back, into her sorry female state The moment of happiness he shared with them remained in his mind, but he never knew what to make of it. Do such moments really mean, as they seem to, that we have a life of happiness with which we only occasionally, knowingly, intersect? Do they shed such light before and after that all that has happened to us in our lives--or that we've made happen--can be dismissed" (Munro 160)? This one from "Circle of Prayer" was also rather poignant. "She stood outside her own happiness in a tide of sadness. And the opposite thing happened the morning Dan left. Then she stood outside her own happiness in a tide of what seemed unreasonably like love But it was the same thing, really, when you got outside. What are those times that stand out, clear patches in your life--what do they have to do with it? They aren't exactly promises. Breathing spaces. Is that all" (Munro 273)? Sigh...I have one more Alice Munro collection to read to fulfill her requirement on the list. It will probably be a while before I get to it however, since I am sitting on a ton of other GG winners, AND I plan on taking a break from the lists in a bit anyway, to read some stuff I made Keren borrow for me from UW and clear out my shelves of some things that have been sitting for years, waiting patiently to be read. I am looking forward to reading her again, though; I now definitely have a greater appreciation for the short story. I have one more book from SPL that is just as overdue as the Munro(which I'm returning today mind you!) and then a wee vacation. Heh. GG's-19, Pulitzers-15.