Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern

When you are in your bed by 7:30pm and willing the sun to go down on a dreadful, oh call it a baroquely dreadful day filled with anguish and unusual cruelty, the very last thing you think you need is to read a book about a father who says things to his son such as, on his first day of kindergarten, "You thought it was hard? If kindergarten is busting your ass, I got some bad news for you about the rest of life."

There is a certain ring of familiarity to this sort of parent. One of mine would say to us as we crawled home after a schoolyard brawl, "It's a dog eat dog world, get used to it."

The other parent would look at my tattered brothers and say "Looks like you were talking when you should've been listening."

So, cold is the temperature of the comfort we are accustomed to, sadly. But still. Does a whole book of it sound like the sort of thing you want to read? Especially when you've surely lived with it long enough to satisfy anyone not fully a masochist? More to the point, at this special moment in the history of our life, is this the sort of book that's even healthy?

Turns out Sh*t My Dad Says is astonishingly good company on a bad day, if for no other reason than it does a body good to laugh out loud when you think you might have lost the knack altogether.

The seal of sadness was broken with this gem:

On Spending the Night at a Friend's House for the First Time
"Try not to piss yourself."

Sage advice indeed.

Justin Halpern's dad is full of sparkling gems of advice like this. Halpern Senior has a remarkably foul mouth for someone who is a doctor of nuclear medicine,whatever that is, but maybe we don't know enough about the profession. What comes between your garden variety foul-mouthed mean parent's "I just tell it like it is" and the elder Halpern's is that beneath the crusty crust, he is truly and magnificently decent. He notices that the smelly unreliable pitcher in Little League is the troubled son of an alcoholic and takes him under his wing, in a brusque and crusty sort of way, then tells off the smirking self-satisfied parent who dissed the kid, you know, "trash talking" such that the poor hapless child was utterly thrown off his game. You have the impression that telling off a kid is ok in certain circumstances, dissing a victim is not. No, that's just being a bully. And, for that matter, Little League is about playing a game and therefore everyone gets a turn regardless of whether you're winning or losing. "You pitched a great game, you really did. I'm proud of you. Unfortunately, your team is shitty....No you can't go getting mad at people because they're shitty. Life with get mad at them, don't worry."

You learn a lot of valuable lessons from Mr. Halpern. Liars are number two after Nazis as the worst thing to be. And it's best not to cheat. "Cheating's not easy. You probably think it is, but it ain't. I bet you'd suck more at cheating than whatever it was you were trying to do legitimately." Now, that is worthy of consideration. As one who cannot tell a lie in part because my memory is so bad I immediately get caught, this had a pragmatic ring to it that gets you to the right answer without any fancy high-stepping around thorny ethics issues: Don't cheat, it's harder to do it well than you think it is. Play nice with others. Don't leave your toys where someone else likes to put their ass. And so on.

And, "you always have the right to be an asshole -- you just shouldn't use that right very often."

Can't argue with that.

It would be interesting to know what Mr. Halpern might offer as advice to someone trying to reach a coma state at 7:30pm. Probably something like "Get over yourself. Everyone has the right to be an asshole, but it's not worth feeling this bad about one."

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society + The Other Hand

It is a rare and fine thing to find a book so good you can't wait to get home to it, and lucky me, I've found two in a week.

Both are anchored by the direst of circumstances and times but both have such a life affirming lightness, without being affirmation-oriented in the least, so as to make it true that great art must come of great hardship.

Let us begin with Guernsey, and because this is vaguely British it might well be pronounced "Jersey" and mean that other place in the ocean, off the big island. But no, Guernsey it is, in print anyway, Jersey really is somewhere else. No idea how it's pronounced by natives, but I'm suspicious that it isn't as obvious as it should be.

The mouthful of a title -- The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - is a bit of a set-back to be honest, promising something along the lines of the Ya Ya Sisterhood or maybe those large lady detectives, both referring of course to a series of books with cutesy titles which run perilously close to cloying cutesiness. But don't let the cuteness put you off. Nor the format -- it is a story told in letters but each is so compelling and funny and alive with character that you more or less forget that this is a literary trick that grows tedious.

Geurnsey is a gorgeous island occupied by Germans during the second world war. The hardship perpetrated on both the soldiers and the civilians was horrible, but maybe less than what was happening on the continent. Evil and cruelty and grief are revealed slowly, as are the character flaws and gold-star good things about each person within the tight circle of the literary group, a kind of book group where each member talks about what they've read or loved. But that's just the back drop of course. The interesting thing is what is endured and how, and what comes of it. Can a book about war be joyous? Ya ya it can.

The Other Hand meanwhile is dark and beautiful in a completely different but somehow related way. It has a slight scent of that other book with a mouthful of a title, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close in that a great deal of the pain that is felt is articulated through a very small, very clever boy. It is another book about struggle and unfairness, but it also is so anchored in engagement and life that it, too, is somehow rendered a joy to read.

The Private Patient, PD James

The great thing about reading murder mysteries when life is stressful is that no matter how bad your day was, it was certainly a lot worse for that poor dead person. Somehow we horrible members of mankind find it comforting to know we're slightly better off than someone else. And then there is the lovely predictability of the form of the genre, and habit is always soothing.

PD James is especially good for the seeming paradox of the comforting mystery. She is more British than the Queen, always has people dressing in "fawn" as though beige were the answer, and then her characters drink lots of tea and want to reach out and hold beloved people undergoing grief but hold back and merely watch, yet somehow we are to understand they are nonetheless good and caring....the formality of her world restores order in the troubled mind.

The Private Patient is a relatively recent work, and having just read a very, very old James it had a ring of familiarity. Much like The Skull Beneath the Skin (circa 1982), there is a group of people in a mansion in the country, alas one of them is murdered and then one by one each of the guests is revealed to have motive and means. Well, James churns out these books at a clip and can be forgiven for revisiting a few story lines.

Those who follow her detective, Adam Dalgliesh, who sounds like the dreariest man alive if you strip out James' own infatuation with him, might be distressed to learn that in this one he marries some equally dreary sounding woman named Emma, who for no apparent reason is apparently beloved and revered by everyone who meets her. Dalgliesh is a detective and a poet, and anyone who has ever met a real detective will know how deeply unlikely it is that such a man would exist, if for no other reason than he'd have been laughed off the force long ago. Cops are macho boys' club members, "poets" not allowed.

In this novel the dreary Dalgliesh, who ruminates a lot, doesn't say much, leads a carefully controlled existence, really feels bad that his girlfriend/fiance Emma's close friend has been raped, and really wants to reach out and hold good old sobbing Emma, but decides it's not appropriate to do so. He aches to do it though, but doesn't, because he felt it would be "an insult to her grief" (huh??) and he was "afraid she would withdraw. Anything would be better than that." The man is clearly a cold hearted nutter. If such a response occurred in the real world Emma would have called off the wedding after putting a dagger through his icy chest.

Nonetheless it's an entertaining read with lots of twists, Big Reveals, murky motives, the whole lot. A classic.

There is a nice, very literary bit at the end which is worth pondering -- something you don't find in your average murder mystery:

"It was for her, not him, to decide how much she had been harmed by him. He could have no lasting power over her without her connivance."

Then

"The world is a beautiful and terrible place. Deeds of horror are committed every minute and in the end those we love die. If the screams of all the earth's living creatures were one scream of pain, surely it would shake the stars. But we have love. It may seem a frail defence against the horrors of the world but we must hold fast and believe in it, for it is all that we have."

Breakfast at Tiffany's

London was a-twitter about the new Breakfast at Tiffany's, the first-ever stage production of the book and beloved story of Holiday Golightly, a young woman of sketchy morals and indeterminate provenance who delights in New York and goes to Tiffany's when the world is too ruthless. The book by Truman Capote was selling out at bookstores, and magazines and fashion spreads were devoted to the "new" Holly, or at least the actress now playing her.

The play's producers were very careful to warn all that their production was 'very different' from the movie, and they followed Truman Capote's novella extremely closely. Alas they followed the words and not the nuance of it, and thus their play is indeed very different from the movie. It is not stylish.

Breakfast at Tiffany's is an iconic fashion movie, and there is not a woman alive who has not at some point in her life wanted to look a little like Holly. Or, show me the woman who denies this and I'll show you a liar who no longer fits into the little black dress she owns.

So pity the poor star and pity the poor costumer who must walk in the footsteps of Audrey Hepburn and the movie from which a million fashion dreams were made. The producers of the theatrical version avoided the trouble by setting the story in the 40's, with more or less period costume, rather than the uber-elegant late 50's of the film. This is accurate in one sense -- while the story is told in the late 50's, the narrator is recalling events that occurred 15 years earlier.

Why the playwright chose to lift dialogue and copy directly from the book and yet the producers ignored the very specific descriptions of Holly is a mystery.

Truman Capote, being a southern gentleman and maybe on account of being a gay man, had an acute sense of women and their style. He loved the "swans" as he called them, Babe Paley and Slim Keith, Marella Agnelli -- his friends and all wildly gorgeous and elegant, who indeed live in popular imagination as fashion icons even today.

The swan of his imagination is of course Holly, and she emerges fully formed-- small, slim, elegant and ephemeral. She comes from no where, she makes herself up as she goes along, she is an enigma that is nonetheless as identifiable as the statue of liberty.

Capote describes her extremely carefully. Her cropped hair is various shades of tawny blonde, her eyes are wide set and flecked, slightly squinty from the need for glasses. She wears only sunglasses though, prescription, day or night. She is ballerina-like, and wears simple, elegant black dresses; she is never seen without pearls in her ears and excellent shoes. She won't read bad news without putting on her lipstick first.

Given that Holly exists during the war years, what Capote has described and the movie depicts is an utterly modern and fresh style -- Holly's is simple, spare, fresh and elegant despite the depravity of her actual existence. Her refined, intelligent style is a counterpoint to her utterly modern set of values. She won't turn on a friend, she is open to the weirdnesses of others (in the book she likes dykes as housemates and is willing to spank men if that's what gets them through the night) and though she profits from it in the form of $50 per trip to the loo, she has compassion for the freaks and fragile souls that cross her path, making a point of ensuring even the ugliest little man feels tall and handsome. She is utterly American in that she is her own invention and always on the road to somewhere else, a free spirit who nonetheless gets scared of all that freedom. Moreover, she is open about the fact that the only real career path for a woman is a man and so she wants a rich one. This forthrightness, if that is a word, is out of its time; Holly is set in the war years and born in the straightjacket 50's. The clue that she knows it, Capote knows it, and the subliminal affirmative message in the movie is her style. Simple, straightforward, and not as easy as it looks.

In the book and the movie, Holly is different from the others; younger, less constrained, more sleek and modern. In the play she fits in, she is part of the scenery rather than standing away from it as a beacon of what is to come. While it might be "just clothes" to many, Capote and the filmmaker used clothing as semaphore of something bigger and better than mere cloth. Her style is as much a character as the character of Holly herself. How profoundly the players on the stage and those guiding them have utterly, totally, missed the point.

And what a shame. It would be interesting to see what Holly might look like now.

Direct Red -- Read it, STAT!

Direct Red, subtitled "A Surgeon's View of Her Life-or-Death Profession" is an unlikely candidate for the term "good read" -- how sympathetic are we really to surgeons, those aloof and arrogant uber-doctors who swoop in, make a pronouncement then move on? Who cause such terrific agony and evoke such great fear?

Perhaps Gabriel Weston's book is so wonderful to read because, while she clearly has a vocation as a surgeon, she also had a passion for books and studied literature. Each chapter describes another aspect of what it means to have a life in your hands, literally, and each shows another example of how there is no such thing as "easy" surgery. Even a simple tonsillectomy can go awry.

But the book is also very much about Weston's inner conflict between being a cool intellectual and a person with a soul -- both are necessary for greatness as a surgeon, but neither quality sits well with the other. She talks about how she overlooked an ailing child, essentially gave him an aspirin and told him to go back to sleep without really considering why a young boy would have such a severe headache. He died. She talks about how terrified she was to make her first difficult call as the senior surgeon on a case, knowing that in the world of surgeons she'd be a laughing stock and her career would be over before it properly began if she were wrong. In that instance, she saved a life.

Direct Red is not a long book. It is probably a necessary book, humanizing a group that doesn't really want to be seen as merely mortal, and describing a side to health care rarely seen and poorly understood. Luckily it is so wonderfully written you won't mind taking the medicine in the message.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; The Girl Who Played With Fire

It is rarely a good idea to know much about the author of any novel, lest the "novel" part begin to seem less a work of imagination and more one of therapy. But the author of these two books, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire, is a shadowy figure lurking in the pages and is curious, mysterious and puzzling in his own right.

The main character of the books is an idealistic journalist and what a great coincidence, so is Stieg Larsson, the author! the "Girl" is a super-brainy computer geek who can find out anything with a few keystrokes. This sounds about as interesting as your average newspaper but hang on, the stories take flight despite the reporter-rhetoric.

By his author picture on the back covers we can see he is a typical reporter -- soft and squishy, not that attractive but not entirely un-; a bit nerdy, clearly a guy who didn't score big in highschool. He is dead, and these two books were published, part of a trilogy, posthumously. We anxiously await the third, as they improve as we go.

Larsson is also a bit pervy if the books tell us anything at all, a plain-faced and doughy man with a big kink and wild imagination, who is unlikely to have had much of the action he writes about. But then again, pervs don't often care much for beauty. His main character is a sexually voracious skinny boy-girl, almost autistic, who dislikes much communication. Talk about gift-wrapped for a man. The great news is she gets breast implants in the second novel so is skinny as a teenage boy, but with knockers. Gift-wrapped with a bow.

Larsson, it is said, is dead, felled in some way mid-story, while covering some intrigue. Sounds a bit perfect to me. I hope this is instead a massive marketing stunt and there's even more where the Girl came from.

American Wife, Curtis Sittenfeld

It is hard to imagine that the bland Laura Bush could inspire anyone to do anything other than yawn, and this is why some people write books and you don't. Curtis Sittenfeld has written a terrific novel imagining the inner life and background of the woman who puts the "dull" into dullsville, whose automtaton smile and colour blocked clothes seem to suggest Stepford is not too far from Reston, Virginia. American Wife is an imaginary look into that blank brain, and in fact any brain of a certain generation of good upstanding women who somehow manage to cause no harm, or at least manage never to be actually blamed for the harm they do. That's quite a skill.

The young "Laura" is actually Alice, to whom some dreadful things happen. So far so interesting but as imprinted as she is by tragedy or startling discoveries she manages to actually say very little. She owns up to nothing, really, not even a christly crap that wrecks the plumbing in the one and only bathroom a dozen people must share -- she lets events wash over her and smiles and nods and goes with the flow.

Alice is called up short by two people, and not until the near end of the story. The great question is then posed -- is being "good" the same as being not too bad? Is "good enough" ever good enough? And what responsibility does the president of the free world's intimate partner have to ensure he doesn't run off and kill thousands in a country he previously would be unlikely to be able to find on a map? But she got away unscathed from something similar -- perhaps that then becomes simply the way things are done. You simply smile and get away with it, and everyone thinks you're nice. What a rich reward for doing and being so little.

The Believers, Zoe Heller

Zoe Heller is a phenomenally gifted writer. Her novel What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal is delicious in its cunning, perfectly describing the malevolent passive-aggressive manipulation that either is caused by or causes loneliness. She perfectly captured the essence of a character we all know but who slips away from us at the moment we think we've nailed her. There are so many "sweet" old women (and they are so often women) who tabulate and track the actions and foibles of others strictly for the purposes of judging them harshly. The momentary feeling of righteousness is the essence of their addiction. No one is allowed to be too happy, or too carefree.

The Believers, Heller's newest book, is already slated for the movies. In it is an acerbic mother whom many of my friends will recognize, a true bitch of the "it's a dog eat dog world, get used to it" school of maternal feeling. So relentlessly cruel is she that we can't quite pity her for wanting so badly to believe in the story of her marriage rather than the marriage itself. It's hard to see her side of things or to feel sorry that she stoically put up with a philandering husband knowing that the marriage was a constant while his flings were flings, only to find out that he actually did love someone else and moreover, had a FAMILY with her. No, actually, we sort of see his point. I'd run to the nearest warm heart, too.

This book will be a movie and probably a very good one -- Patrick Marber, who wrote Closer and Notes on a Scandal is not only a friend of Heller's but the screenwriter of this, too. The book is entertaining enough, Heller is a terrific writer, but it is not altogether good. The Believers of the title are those in an idealistic family who are struggling to believe in a higher purpose and reason to live while being unable to actually connect with life. Each character is cut off and shut off save one, the one who didn't believe in much malarkey at all. She is the tragic sister who believed what her bitch mother and father told her -- that she wasn't very pretty and certainly not that smart, she shouldn't expect much. Luckily for her she got over that, a sign that not being a believer is maybe the best route to happiness.

So, this is a decent book for discussion purposes, a book club pick if there ever was one. But it's just that. Decent, not delicious.

Waiting for the blow

I've taken a break from Edgar Sawtelle, because my own life has become slightly more tense and the sense of impending doom was getting to me. Something will happen to these mute, sweet, defenseless characters and I don't know what it is except it will be sad, and bad.

In being mute Edgar taps into a heartbreaking boy who has followed me all my life, in different forms and found in different books. These are the boys I grew up with, and boys who grow up anywhere where having a feeling is simply not discussed. Not that it is un-masculine, it simply isn't there. When I asked my brother how his friend was doing after a breakup with a woman and mother of his kid, whom he'd been with for at least a decade, my brother shrugged and said "he's awright I guess, saw him at the bar the other day." In their inability to say, process, live whole, these boys get into big trouble. Another friend was one of these, a brilliant boy who appeared that he really was going to beat destiny. He was the youngest-ever full time photographer at a photography-heavy newspaper, he was fearless but also sensitive enough that he could always get the amazing picture of the victim, or the family, or the utterly raw look of someone who has found pain unbearable -- all the stuff of daily news photography. There was something young and vulnerable about him and even victims of terrible crimes felt some kindred spirit.

He was a bright light and going far until destiny grabbed him in a near-Shakespearean way. Drugs given by his Iago quickly became an addiction, or perhaps drugs were the Iago, making him paranoid, bitter, angry. He was no longer the hard-working wunderkind, he started to mess up, not show up, started to be aggressive where his sweet self would have opened doors and hearts.

Finally he seemed like he was going to pull out of it. He went to rehab, he came back to work, he seemed if not his old self at least someone we recognized.

One day he missed work, then the next day, then the photo editor suggested a friend and fellow photographer go round to the house to see what was up. I think they expected the bacchanalia of the past -- women, bikers, smoke, coke. What he found was our sweet friend in the back seat of his car, in the garage, the car having run dry of gas. Dead but looking merely asleep.

This is what happens to boys who cannot speak, express, deal. I don't know what will happen to Edgar Sawtelle or his dogs, but there is an Iago at work or perhaps a Claudius...someone up to no good. Too scary to go on, I've taken a break to read murder mysteries. At least with these we care less about the characters and know what to expect.

Reading the writing on the wall

And here we are, on the eve of an election and the eve of history. But what history? America is not the first racist country to elect a black person or a woman; it is, however, more proud of this achievement than others.

Every newspaper and blog is covered in thick election coverage and what a journalist friend calls the "hagiography" of Obama. No one thinks he will lose, and so as the heir apparent will soon, perhaps as soon as tomorrow, start to have his day in the light.

Of all the dark horses in this race and all the hiding in plain sight, it is Obama who has gotten off lightest.

During the primaries it was Hillary Clinton who took a lot of the fire, today it is the bumbling of the Palin-McCain camp. Palin's outfits alone have taken many an eye off any appropriate ball. Obama had the good sense to tell his own story in a couple of books, being sure to add the odd, small mea culpa -- I wonder if any of it is terribly sincere. The comment that his memory of his first kiss with his now wife "tasted of chocolate" sounds very Judy Blume. Or Ross and Rachel. A bit twee, in other words. It's a small thing, but it has the tone of an oft-repeated story valued for its "cute"; it reminds me of someone trying to show his affectionate side rather than really having one.

Now he will take on the full weight of history. He can't but fail. Far too many hopes, dreams, ill-defined expectations are resting on his head.

Great campaign though.

Edgar Sawtelle

Five years ago, on the heels of a few setbacks and a sorry breakup, I got a dog. My first.
The decision was as thought out as anything life changing can be, as in, not very well thought out at all because how can you decide on the unknown? I realized that I don't get along with people, I live a life with no responsibilities beyond getting myself out of bed and washed in the morning (and getting out of bed proves harder to do than you'd think), a life of utter self-indulgence when you look at it. I was living a life very much as I'd lived it since the age of 18, as a student....relentless "what do I want now, how can I make ME happy now?" and it was frankly boring.

So, with no partner and no children to look after I decided on a dog, a very small one because I am actually afraid of dogs. I thought tiny would be easier. I have had a great many cats in my life and a cat didn't answer the urge -- they are too independent, I wanted something that needed me. Some reason NOT to head to a bar after work. I needed a reason to go home and to like it there.

Enter Bear, as seen to your right, a very teeny beast and one, I'm given to understand, only her owner could love. She is haphazard in terms of obedience, annoyingly yappy, and a bit of a fright to look at with her long hair that is almost constantly in dreadlocks because she despises being brushed and prefers to wash her own face. In fact, though her teeth are all of 1/8 of an inch long she can indeed draw blood if you have a brush in your hand. However, despite her flawed character she is decidedly my dog, never fully happy when I'm not with her (or so I try to believe). She likes to be nearby at all times, content to watch me read books if that's what's going on; when she sees the mascara come out she starts to cry at the bathroom door by way of persuasion, "please please take me with you". When I was most depressed over yet another hard breakup she sat at my feet and stared into my face, whimpering and crying as I did not allow myself to do. My only fear in life now is that somehow I will not perfectly look after her, and if real harm were to come to her, it would kill me. I don't know how people have courage to have children -- it must be terrifying to love anything or anyone that much.

And so we come to Edgar Sawtelle, a wonderful book sometimes told from a dog's perspective, about a relationship between a silent boy and man's (and a boy's) best friend. When the boy forgets himself and Almondine can lick his face, the dog spins with joy. The dog is the boy's voice and protector, the dog is thrilled to have a job to do.

Permeating this story is a sense of dread, quiet and almost hidden but there. You know that maybe on the next page or the one after it, something will break your heart. This is the way of mute beings whether they are silent because they cannot speak or silent because they don't know the words to use. They will break your heart because you want to protect them from what they cannot comprehend or communicate, and as such they are a victim to it.

I don't know what doom is impending, just that I feel it. I have not finished this gorgeous book. But you should start it as well.

Signs of the times

It is very difficult to read a book when current events are so compelling.

You won't know this because no one cared and no one voted and nothing changed but Canada had its own attempt at an election. But off course the real extravaganza is the American one.

Here we have America choosing its prejudice as much as its president, selecting between a white woman of girlish affectation and gargantuan ambition and a black(ish) man who felt glorious enough himself to pen not one but as I count it three memoirs already at the ripe old age of 47.

Though this choice would seem to suggest that America will be forced to take a step forward toward enlightenment regardless of who becomes president, one half of the choice is a big step back.

Sarah Palin is no modern woman; rather she is All About Eve, the duplicitous bitch from high school, that catty Joan Collins character in a TV show, an archetype we'd hoped had disappeared.

She has spent $150,000 since August on clothes and make-up and why not, it's showtime. The self-described hockey mom is running her campaign exactly as she ran them as a would-be beauty queen -- all cute winks and charming "you betcha"'s, answering those tough questions about foreign and economic policy as cleverly as any Miss America contestant who is required to be prepped for that sort of thing to show dimension, to show that she is not merely just another pretty face. And Palin, as vice presidential candidate for a man The Lancet suggests is medically fragile, is sitting in that cat-bird seat -- as any beauty pageant watcher knows, first runner up will ascend to Queen should the winner be unable to complete her rein.

For we women raised to assume the radical feminists just before us had strafed the chauvinistic world so we could live without having to turn the world on with our smile, it is disconcerting to see a woman succeed on the basis of a wink and a prayer. She uses all the wiles we thought, or hoped, would have no further resonance anywhere but a dinner party. Like so many Cassandras we say that such tactics don't really work anymore but we are wrong, they do work, we still live in a world that likes its women perky and cute -- and substance, well, that's great for people doing the boring stuff like foreign secretary work or something. What we have here is someone doing Sexy Secretary, up-do, glasses and pencil skirt included. She exhibits a calculating, raw ambition and for all her claimed affection for Joe Six-pack seems about as warm as her native state.

That "cute" works is depressing. But it works all over the show -- in a recent article, Kate Moss describes her relationship with her boss as one where she has merely to wheedle "please Uncle Phil" and her wish is his command. To connect a model with a presidential candidate may seem crazy but look at it -- Moss is supposedly one of the most successful entrepreneurs in history, a self-made success story, cleverly turning her stylishness into money by partnering with Topshop. Sadly she is a business woman who gets by on cute as much as acumen but perhaps it is excusable if not laudable -- she does get by on her looks. It makes you appreciate Madonna more, another savvy businesswoman who would bust a ball as much as play it. Thank heaven for her, one of the few girl-powerhouses who, we suspect, never wheedles.

It's a troubling time to be female. I would say it is a troubling time to be American, but sadly, the significance is larger than that. Imagine Palin, defender of the free world, in discussions with Putin. Let's hope he has a kid in hockey or we're toast.

Always say thank you

Margaret Visser has the kind of voice that a Brit might call "plummy" though it seems to me to be something closer to caramel or dark fudge sauce. In other words, she is someone you want to listen to even if she's merely reading the phone book.

Who is she and how do we know this? At first we thought she was an academic dug up by the diligent producers of the CBC -- she was a regular on Morningside back when it existed; she may still be a regular of the CBC but I am not.

Lucky for us, though, she is also and perhaps foremost an author of remarkable books on tiny subjects, "micro histories" they are now called, now that this has morphed into a full-on genre.

A beloved much earlier book, Much Depends on Dinner, was about dinner --she traced the history and social mores behind the most typical of plain suppers, roast chicken with potatoes, corn -- and how each element came to be on our plate and its place in the world of agriculture, commerce, culture. She spoke of it weekly on the radio, and reading it was even better. Delicious.

Her newest book is The Gift of Thanks, a clever bit of scholarship on the history and meaning of gratitude. Fingers crossed that if there is an audio version, she is the one who is reading aloud. That would be something to be grateful for.

Gratitude is often in short supply.

There is very little that is more alluring, charming, engaging, warm.

Twenty-four hours ago I left the memorial service of a woman I never met but wish I had; a woman who had such a force of personality, whose life force was so strong that I, a total stranger, was touched by her, moved by her example, and I like all of her friends and her family am determined to learn from her so that she did not die in vain.

In short, she was a great many things that can be summed up by the fact she was grateful. She loved life and knew it to be a gift, she lived every moment, she fought for things worth fighting for and laughed at the rest. She could see the funny side, she chose to be thankful for what she had rather than lament what she didn't -- and what she didn't have was profound. She didn't have health and therefore didn't have time, the time to see her kids grow up or to see her garden bloom. No matter.

From the stories her friends and family told of her, from the deep grief they feel, from the photographs that show her bright smiling, always smiling, face it is clear she was remarkable and someone put on earth to show the rest of us how it's done. In particular there were two photos of her with her husband -- one on their wedding day, one where she is leaning her head against his shoulder and what we see is the utter contentment and quiet happiness of loving and being loved, and knowing that love will never be forsaken.

She loved. Loved life, she loved her family, she loved her friends, career, books, music, her garden, her home. She was postive, a light in the darkness, she did not take for granted, not anything, not one thing.

Appreciate more. Be more kind than is necessary, everyone has their own struggle. Show gratitude.

What a good book at the right time.

Reading like a man

There is a stack of books on my bedside table which makes me feel quite manly. I've never known one, a man I mean, who has the stick-to-it-ive-ness to settle on just the one; rather, I've witnessed the casual browse through this book until it gets sloggy, then that one, maybe back to the first, always on a search for whatever it is they search for. Excitment I suppose.

It's enough to make a girl shake in her Laboutins. But let's assume a reading pattern isn't a lifestyle....

When Will There Be Good News is another fantastic story by the fantastic Kate Atkinson. Her first book, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, is on my permanent list of suggestions for anyone jaded by books and in need of a read. The direction her writing has taken was not predictable by this first excellent attempt; she's moved from the initial appearance of literary fiction tending to chick lit to become a sort of mystery writer but of the best kind. There is a story, there are real characters and real pathos, the mystery feels eerie and sad rather than formulaic. And, Atkinson can capture a child on paper like no other. That we did see in Museum.

Lover of Unreason is a biography of a minor character (a personal favorite though you won't find these on the best seller lists), the tragic second wife of Ted Hughes, a man who is either a cad beyond comprehension or the unluckiest bastard on earth. Perhaps we should check the bedside table for clues. You will recall his first wife Sylvia Plath offed herself after giving the children their lunch, sticking her head in the gas oven. At least the children were saved. Not so the child of Ted and Assia Wevill, a tortured (maybe by Ted, maybe not) beauty and a poet in her own right. Assia grew up the cherished and spoilt daughter of a lazy physician and his wife; the family fled Nazi Germany for Israel where daddy was one of a multitude of physicians caring for impoverished and not very sick people without healthcare insurance to mitigate any costs. So, times were a little tough. How she meets Ted and why she ended up with her own pretty head in the oven we don't know yet. As I say, I'm reading like a man, a little here and a little there.

Both books are equally compelling in their own way you see.

Maybe that's a larger metaphor than I think......and an answer to the mystery of Mars.

It's been a while

Writing has taken the place of reading over the summer -- there has been scant time to sit on the terrace with a good book and a glass of wine, few free Saturday afternoons to lose to someone else's story.

What a shame.

A summer without reading, a summer without a whole wodge of great books and the adventures they bring is a summer without sunshine.

And we've had that, too!

The good thing about rainy fall days is....it's wonderful to tuck in, light some candles, adjust the lighting and dive in to the books again. This we will do.

The banality of evil

I have never understood the term "the banality of evil". Having seen it, evil seems anything but banal; in fact, quite the opposite, creating a gushing, sickening wash of adrenalin that is perhaps addictive to some. That the perpetrators of real cruelty seem so casual about it might lead one to think that there is a banality to evil but even then the effect of the actions is so profound that their relative calm in the face of it seems to add to the horror. That one becomes inured to evil, or cruelty, is also nothing but a mask.

So why think about Hannah Arendt's apparently wise words now?

I have just watched, twice, a police interview almost exactly a year ago with serial rapist and killer Paul Bernardo. The police were questioning him about the 1990 disappearance and murder of Elizabeth Bain, as the man convicted of killing her, her boyfriend, has been freed by the courts and there is no one else around to take the blame.

Canada is a small country and once we have a star that star will serve for everything. Ralph Benmurgi is a TV personality of dubious merit who will always find a home somewhere on the CBC; you'd think only Margaret Atwood ever wrote a book and the poor woman is called upon for a quote about everything from what is "Canadian" (answer: a beer) to the weather; Anne Murray needs never record again and will still be our national songbird and we have the one good serial killer so let's let him fill in for every mystery remaining on the books.

Bernardo, I had been told by insiders, had gone to fat in the dungeon-like prison he will die in but that's not true -- the interview, broadcast today on national television, shows a man who looks somehow younger than he did at trial as though there is a picture in an attic somewhere growing more haggard and wrinkly by the day; he is thin as to seem delicate. I didn't cover all of his trial and so only heard his voice on tape as he was raping young girls, when there was a barely contained joy in it, and that joy was chilling. In the tape of his interview his voice is light, airy, slightly whiny, hardly scary at all except in its somewhat flat tone and weirdly feminine quality. He looks not like a vicious, sadistic torturer, rapist and slow murderer but rather like a guy who'd be beaten in the schoolyard just 'cause.

Is that what the banality of evil means? I don't find it that at all. He is terrifying for being so easily hidden, he really can pass for one of us. For a nothing-to-be-scared of less-than-us in fact.

I interviewed his last rape victim who lived, if living can be what you'd call it. She was nearly dead from the attack and police told me that they were convinced that whoever did this to her would murder the next victim, her injuries were such that their guess was he was scared off somehow. She spent the next weeks and months shattered, unable to leave her home, sleeping curled at the end of her parents' bed like a frightened dog. How did it happen that she was raped? She knew there was a rapist afoot in her neighborhood when she got off the bus late that night, someone got off right behind her. She turned around, scared, and saw Bernardo and thought "whew, I'm okay." THAT's how mild he looks.

Having heard the interview I would have to say I have no idea at all if he was lying or not. He didn't admit to abducting and killing Elizabeth Bain, a young university student who vanished one sunny afternoon and whose body has never been recovered. He seemed to have little interest in what was being asked of him and the police seemed to have little interest in asking it -- you have never seen or heard anything as deeply boring as a real police interview. I suspect they save the good stuff for when the recording machines are turned off. Given that he will live for the rest of his days in a 5x8 ft. cement box you would think he'd be willing to trade information on where her body can be found for cable TV or a lakeside view -- the dungeon he lives in is on the shores of Lake Ontario -- but it seems no such deal was offered. If he killed Bain he couldn't be assed to say so, and he couldn't be assed to deny it very vehemently. Why should he do either? Nothing much changes in his world and her parents' torment about simply not knowing what happened to her would matter not and nought.

Bernardo seems utterly harmless and yet is capable of unspeakable acts. The court artist who drew him daily during his trial suggested maybe he raped and then killed and then tortured-and-killed in an escalating madness simply so he could feel .... SOMETHING, to be relieved of the bland dullness to which an unfeeling psychopath is sentenced. So how perfect that his criminal sentence was not execution, but life -- actual life, not criminal justice life, he will never be released from prison in a small blank cell to the end of his endless days -- he has been sentenced to utter boredom. The worst and only torture for someone like him.

I think my own understanding of the banality of evil must be in this flat affect, that the only one who suffers is the victim and those around the victim, that the perpetrator apparently moves on to live much as he did before. Maybe in a nice flat somewhere, maybe in a prison cell. Maybe it doesn't matter. Evil only matters to the victim, the perpetrator will never hurt. He can't be made to hurt, he doesn't have the stuff. Victims of casual cruelty will suffer the more for this. Their pain cannot possibly be answered.

The living rape victims and the parents of the dead girls must be driven insane by thoughts of what Bernardo has done and what he has destroyed, and I liked the idea that Bernardo was sentenced to boredom, it seemed Biblically fitting, it seemed like it would really get to him, really drive him equally mad. But there is no justice. The calm and casual guy the police interviewed that day seems just fine. He is in prison, sure. He really doesn't seem to mind much.

On Hillary

The weekend papers are filled with "what she did wrong" stories and analysis but the best words that say the most about Hillary Clinton are Hillary's own.

In true Clinton tradition, her final going away speech seems to have been tear-jerking, memorable, historic. The NYT reports that "For 28 minutes, standing alone on a stage in the historic National Building Museum, Mrs. Clinton spoke not only about the importance of electing Mr. Obama, but also about the extent to which her campaign was a milestone for women. She urged women had supported her -- who had turned out at her headquarters, flocked to her rallies and poured into the polls to vote for her -- not to take the wrong lesson from her loss.

" "You can be so proud that from now on, it will be unremarkable for a woman to win primary state victories, unremarkable to have a woman in a close race to be our nominee, unremarkable to think that a woman can be the president of the United States....To those who are disappointed that we couldn't go all of the way, especially the young people who put so much into this campaign, it would break my heart if, in falling short of my goal, I in any way discouraged any of you from pursuing yours."

"At that point the cheers, mostly from women, swelled so loud that Mrs. Clinton's remaining words could not be heard."

That is an elegant bit of reporting and if you think it's easy to pull off in the heat of such a moment, it isn't. But more than that, what an elegant speech. Obama did himself proud as well, in being respectful to Hillary for her role in inspiring his own young daughters.

History will tell, but it seems that Hillary's team failed to fully understand the effect of online to influence people and to drive community, a movement. Much as historians now say the dramatic shift that swept JFK to power was his ability to intuit the power of television while Nixon did not, this may be the great learning and deeper understanding we are to have about the media age we now live in. More traditionally, it seemed to me that Hillary could not win for losing -- that the candidates were neck-and-neck but it was spelled as her failure and her loss, not his failure to gain a greater groundswell if he was so damn popular. Maybe that's the rub when you were a front-runner. She seemed to play an old-fashioned political game of pulling in chips, playing hardball with her opponent and risking "bitch", of being a down and dirty. We are told now that this was the tone of the Clinton years and it is out of fashion now. Who knows what went on in the backrooms at Club Obama. He seemed to be able to keep the weather sunnier, regardless of what may become the truth.

Obama became a master showman, his early tentative and timid tone now replaced with glorious presidential (at least as far as we see in movies) rhetoric. Maybe that's all a president needs to be, much as that is all (I think) a Queen needs to be. Stand for something, give the people something to believe in, stir their flagging hope. After that, doesn't much matter what you do. Maybe you shouldn't go to war unless it's really, really clear you need to. Aside from that, being president might be the easiest job in the world.

We love Bill Clinton, and why? Because he spoke so well. Seemed so charming. We forgave him everything including ....what did he do for a living again?

How perfect that he now makes his living....speaking. Play your best game, that's the message.

For all the talk of "change", ironically, Obama seems very Clinton-ish, with his warm wash of wonderful words. We may have seen Obama's best game. I don't think we've seen Hillary's. And right now, that seems a pity.

Sex and the City

Boys have their toys plus Matrix, Die Hard, James Bond and Val Kilmer films. Girls have Sex and the City.

Who would have thought that a so-so column in a so-so newspaper would become a so-so book would become a blockbuster mass movement?

During my more annoying or pathetic jags my brother will call and say "Hi Carrie, is Samantha there?" in an attempt to conjure a more cheerio my deario attitude, to help me get my groove back. My brother lives in a tiny town in the middle of the bald open prairie -- that he, a man's man in a remote empty wilderness not only knows that there is a Carrie and a Samantha but can articulate their relative merits and differences shows just how deeply the friends from NYC have permeated the culture.

Millions of words have been written about the SATC movie launched last week -- apparently most tickets are being purchased in groups, a sure sign that girls and their girlfriends are flocking; Cosmo parties are held in theatre lobbies; even a group of breast cancer survivors added seeing the flick to the panapoly of things they bond over, as reported in the New York Times.

Critics suggest that the movie isn't that good, which seems to be missing the point of it. The movie exists because there is not a woman in North America who can't identify which of the four friends she most resembles. The series itself was not much more than a fantastic cartoon that somehow wiggled its way into resonating with the way women really live, or would really like to live, in all life's messy glory. As television, SATC dared to show women as both venal or silly and at the same time deeply loyal at least to each other -- as caricatures they managed to be more nuanced than a lot of other versions on a lot of other shows. The fab four were both decent and shallow, they fought and made up, they drank too much and swore far too much, had sex with deeply inappropriate men and were as non-committal in relationships as men appear to be. In the early going someone wrote that SATC was not actually about girlfriends at all but rather about four gay men or more accurately, four big queens. Over time, what made them hugely appealing was that not one of them was good or bad, they were flawed just like real people but they had one huge dreamy advantage over the rest of us -- they had each other, through thick or thin. They didn't have to put their eggs in a relationship basket, each had THREE strong people in their corner at all times.

That bond of friendship is the real appeal, because it's so wonderful to contemplate and so rare. Years ago, when I was suffering my first huge heartbreak a friend -- a guy -- looked at my tear-dripping face and said simply "You need some good girlfriends." He was so right! and yet good girlfriends, or friends period, are hard to find. Twice in my life great friends, colleagues I worked with for years, turned out to be about proximity; once we were no longer in each other's faces, quite literally by means of workspace, I saw little of them. Girlfriends come and go with the vagaries of boyfriends and husbands and babies and soccer to attend to; there is almost always something a bit more important than getting together with your gal pals. So the luxury displayed weekly on SATC, TV version, was not so much the Manolos or the thousand-dollar t-shirts, the luxury was the solid footing each woman had with the others. Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte each knew she could call at 3am and the others would rally, she could count on the others to show up for brunch, she could count on her friends to both celebrate with her and save her as the moment required.

The movie may have messed with this essential DNA a bit, rendering the girls a little less distinct -- one criticism is that in the film they've even started to dress alike -- but the groundswell of grassroots approval shows that real live women, grown ups, weren't ready to say goodbye to their fake friends. Perhaps the series and the movie also stand as a template for creating better real ones.

The things you read....

The Purity Ball is a nine-year old invention created by the Wilson family, a family with a ton of children some of whom have names like Khrystian. That's Christian, in case their prediliction escapes you.

This is ostensibly a really nice thing, sort of like its sister the Debutante Ball, wherein girls are presented to the world and each other by their fathers.

Both the Deb Ball and the Purity Ball, to my way of thinking, and you can call me cynical, put the ick in sick.

Let's return for a moment to the Purity Ball. Here girls get dressed up in ballgowns to go on a date with Dad. Their dads stand up and swear that the girls will remain virgins until their wedding nights. Or until death if no one takes them off the market. The dads swear they will be good examples, keep it in their pants, and won't run off with the secretary leaving the moms behind. The language is probably crafted more nicely, but that's the gist.

See for yourself:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/us/19purity.html?scp=1&sq=purity+ball&st=nyt

I have one of those non-modern dads who brought home the bacon and cooked it on Sunday mornings, who fixed things, who was the go-to for discipline when my brothers and I were particularly badly behaved, and who remained largely silent in my life. He was always very gentle and nice to our kittens, and adores my tiny dog. It's quite amusing to see this huge 6-ft 2-in man playing with a 3-lb scruffy mutt. We lived with a nice sort of benign indifference -- I knew he was always there should I need him, and I never did mostly because I knew he was always there. If you see what I mean.

Growing up is never easy, but it is especially not easy when you are closely scrutinized. How do you become yourSELF when other people are weighing in on what you should think, do, decide? Add to this the perceived humiliations and mortifications of adolescence. To have your dad stand up and talk about your purity, to talk about sex, strikes me as a huge infringement on something deeply personal and quite frankly none of his business. That he should have such an interest strikes me as a bit creepy.

How about this. How about if dad behaved like a good father every day, and how about if mom and dad sort of led by example? You know, skipped the "do as I say not as I do" trip? How about they raise their kids to have self respect and confidence? And then how about they simply step back and watch you flourish?

Rather than take you to a dance and swear to your virginity, which is fundamentally and utterly yours to protect or abandon as you choose. One of the few things you can use as a marker of the transition between childhood and being a grown-up.

Mommy dearest

So you think you have the mother of all mothers.

Read this, from the Times:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3842502.ece

"Michel Houellebecq is a literary icon whose novels have been acclaimed by critics as the cruel illumination of a troubled era.
But France's most celebrated and controversial contemporary author could be pushed off his pinnacle following an astonishingly vitriolic attack from a critic with a unique insight into his oeuvre.
She is his mother - and she is threatening to knock his teeth out with her walking stick if he mentions her again in one of his works.
In a book of her own to be published next week, Lucie Ceccaldi depicts the cult writer as an untalented social climber whose ego is only matched by his dishonesty. "

And oh, she does go on:

" “This individual, who alas! came out of my tummy, is a liar, an impostor, a parasite and especially, especially, a little upstart ready to do anything for fortune and fame,” Mrs Ceccaldi, 83, writes in L'Innocente, an autobiography."

Seems he started it, according to her. See, he wrote a book in which a despicable character called Ceccaldi abandonned her kids and took off to have sex in a sex community on the Riviera.

He could at least have changed the name I suppose.

The mother of imagination is a warm and soft place to go to be told that everything is going to be alright, you are just fine, you are wonderful, you are everything you hope you are. The maternal instinct, we are told, is an instinct, that it automatically kicks in and swathes progeny in the warm glow of unstinting love and approval.

Would that this were so. "Mother" is one of the enduring myths of civilization but in fact, if we were to look at the facts and the writing on the wall, that instinct kicks in intermittently and relatively infrequently.

My view may be warped by years of crime reporting where I was daily astonished by mothers who backed their abusive husbands versus supporting their sexually abused daughters; who stood by as fathers shook their babies to death or frankly, shook them themselves; who weekly participated in the shocking physical and emotional abuse of their own children. It always interested me that so long as there was a man to blame the courts would punish him more harshly, giving more prison time to him than the mother when in fact, to my way of thinking anyway, it is SHE who is further against nature. But the myth is so prevalent that even crusty judges cannot quite believe clear evidence and therefore mommy mustn't really have been entirely to blame.

But my view is also influenced by my circle of friends -- I have just one acquaintance who says she has the best mother on earth and who turns to her mother for love and support when she's feeling the world is against her. The rest of us have a slightly more distant relationship. Another of my friends has a mother who asked her if she were putting grey highlights in her hair now, and who was constantly petulant about the lack of attention she was receiving despite daily phone calls and weekly visits. My own mother is famous for various quotable quotes from my childhood, including "It's a dog eat dog world, get used to it" and "you look okay when you're fixed up" and "you think we're the Waltons -- well we're not." For those too young to know what the Waltons might be, it was a television show about dirt poor southerners in the Depression who nonetheless got along and loved each other deeply. Despite poverty they were a blissfully happy family. What a fairy tale! Interestingly, old age and forgetfulness has led my mother to query "I am not sure why my children don't come for Christmas, I always thought of us as being like the Waltons." Another girlfriend, daughter of a harsh mom, always said there was no way Madonna could be Madonna if her mom were still alive. That's worth pondering.

That said, the cold splash of water that was often my mother's advice or input sometimes had exactly the right effect. She could in a comment, something like "oh for god's sake", take the air out of my adolescent and neurotic horrors and make them manageable. She was kind of a checkpoint. If she thought no biggie, no biggie it is. I far prefer this to someone who joins in the madness to help sort it out -- this is the style of another friend's mother who is constantly nattering and worrying and fussing that her granddaughter seems unfriendly and what's going on in her mind and should we call a doctor. The granddaughter is adolescent and suffers age-appropriate moodiness, so what if she doesn't want to hang with an old lady. I want to scream at this woman, "It's a dog eat dog world, get over it!!" One of the nicest things about an ex of mine is that when I was upset about stuff, like being hideous and deformed or something, he'd listen, clearly drift off into a reverie about some football game or errand he might have to attend to, and then say in a perfectly pleasant tone: "oh shut up you dreary bitch" and instantly I was laughing and felt entirely better.

We believe, though, that we should have constant approval from our mother and mine was of the view, well, you know her world view as stated above but essentially, "I don't want to send you in the world thinking you're amazing so that the world can shoot you down". In protecting us from that eventuality, she often made even home seem a tad scary.

The other day I was whinging about fatness and my colleague, in frustration or just to shut me up so he could get back to work actually turned around and took a look at the lamentable legs in question. "It's not so much that you're fat as your pants are too tight" he said, totally misunderstanding the intended effect of the outfit. As I freaked with all kinds of sputtering "WHAT?!" comments, he quickly wrote a number on a piece of paper and said "Hey, I think you are an 8.5 despite anything you are wearing." EIGHT POINT FIVE??? The attack on his poor psyche continued, despite "What, that's a good score!" and so on. He could not understand that I don't want truth from my friends, I want consoling. I want "no, actually, have you lost weight?" and "wow, you're hot, you are a 14 out of ten."

Poor lad could not understand that truth is not intrinsically valuable, truth is actually of no use. If I wanted truth I could look in the mirror. If I wanted truth, I could call my mother.

What we want is the warm bath of approval, from the only one on earth whose approval we crave and the only one who can actually make us believe it. Interesting that even the cleverest and most talented among us struggle for and don't receive it.