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.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Sunday, May 4, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Petite Anglaise
There is a minute sub-genre of chick lit that I like very much. Let's call it "how to be French". Everyone should want to be French I think, and happily there are a number of authors who feel the same way.
So. We loved Entre Nous - about releasing the inner French girl, and How To Be Impossibly French with loads of quotes and advice from Ines de la Fressange and others. There are books on the French by Edith Wharton and of course Gertrude Stein, too, but let's not get too serious about this. The books on "how to dress like a French woman" are almost universally disappointing and outdated. This is a very, very mini sub-genre as I mentioned.
The newest recruit, currently clocking at something like 200,000th on the Amazon best seller list, is Petite Anglaise, about a British woman and Francophile, moves to Paris, has a baby whom she calls Tadpole, and lives with a husband she names Mr. Frog. Not very nice, that Froggy bit but it's her call.
I should love this book, which is both memoir and a brief history of blogging. The author, Catherine Sanderson, started a blog about being an English girl in Paris a long time ago, (well, long in terms of online if not world history) it took off like wildfire, she rolled the experience into this book.
The memoir is also about how to lose a husband by blogging.
Sadly Catherine is as annoying as the woman who wrote Eat Pray Love.
The mini genre emerging in chick lit is, then, something along the lines of "how self absorbed can I be without you realizing it and throwing the book against the wall?" Or, hitting "close" on the blog -- I went to the source the other day and read the latest entries on http://www.petiteanglaise.com/ where Catherine gets accolades from dozens of commentators on her daughter Tadpole's prowess with a Sharpie, on how clever/cute is the kid, on how lovely life sounds with The Boy (the new man, after Mr. Frog was dispatched) and so on. I guess this is blogging at its best -- the minutiae of the quotidien which we can all relate to and admire. Certainly Catherine admires her own self and what a good mommy she is. Why, she feels really BAD when Tadpole is going off to the grandparents, and is charmed when Tadpole says "it's okay mommy, you'll have The Boy to play with."
Dear god.
But, art follows life follows art.
A good friend of mine recently found himself at a dinner party, seated next to a young woman with a couple of kids. He didn't realize that said mom was an executive VP/creative director of a huge, multi-billion-dollar empire. And why would he know that? All the talk at the dinner table was of the vacation just taken or the vacation about to be taken; plus kids. In fact, the woman didn't become animated or engaged until my friend in desperation launched a question of his own: "So, with the children, the birthdays, uhm, do you give presents to ALL the kids or just the birthday child?"
I'm not saying that this woman needed to talk about work. I am suggesting that being where she is in life, coming from a family of astute art collectors and philanthropists, and being an industry leader, there might have been something......interesting...... to offer a conversation.
It is me who is out of synch, obviously. Catherine's blog is very, very popular and you, my friends, are rare.
Ah, maybe this is all too harsh. Is it deep and profound to love to read books about being something you are not? Hardly.
Though every book, in its way, offers at least the possibility of emerging, after the last page, as something you were not. Something better.
A book or a blog that is really and truly just about me the glorious me me just as I am me me me stands as a failure of imagination. Cute as you and your kid may be.
So. We loved Entre Nous - about releasing the inner French girl, and How To Be Impossibly French with loads of quotes and advice from Ines de la Fressange and others. There are books on the French by Edith Wharton and of course Gertrude Stein, too, but let's not get too serious about this. The books on "how to dress like a French woman" are almost universally disappointing and outdated. This is a very, very mini sub-genre as I mentioned.
The newest recruit, currently clocking at something like 200,000th on the Amazon best seller list, is Petite Anglaise, about a British woman and Francophile, moves to Paris, has a baby whom she calls Tadpole, and lives with a husband she names Mr. Frog. Not very nice, that Froggy bit but it's her call.
I should love this book, which is both memoir and a brief history of blogging. The author, Catherine Sanderson, started a blog about being an English girl in Paris a long time ago, (well, long in terms of online if not world history) it took off like wildfire, she rolled the experience into this book.
The memoir is also about how to lose a husband by blogging.
Sadly Catherine is as annoying as the woman who wrote Eat Pray Love.
The mini genre emerging in chick lit is, then, something along the lines of "how self absorbed can I be without you realizing it and throwing the book against the wall?" Or, hitting "close" on the blog -- I went to the source the other day and read the latest entries on http://www.petiteanglaise.com/ where Catherine gets accolades from dozens of commentators on her daughter Tadpole's prowess with a Sharpie, on how clever/cute is the kid, on how lovely life sounds with The Boy (the new man, after Mr. Frog was dispatched) and so on. I guess this is blogging at its best -- the minutiae of the quotidien which we can all relate to and admire. Certainly Catherine admires her own self and what a good mommy she is. Why, she feels really BAD when Tadpole is going off to the grandparents, and is charmed when Tadpole says "it's okay mommy, you'll have The Boy to play with."
Dear god.
But, art follows life follows art.
A good friend of mine recently found himself at a dinner party, seated next to a young woman with a couple of kids. He didn't realize that said mom was an executive VP/creative director of a huge, multi-billion-dollar empire. And why would he know that? All the talk at the dinner table was of the vacation just taken or the vacation about to be taken; plus kids. In fact, the woman didn't become animated or engaged until my friend in desperation launched a question of his own: "So, with the children, the birthdays, uhm, do you give presents to ALL the kids or just the birthday child?"
I'm not saying that this woman needed to talk about work. I am suggesting that being where she is in life, coming from a family of astute art collectors and philanthropists, and being an industry leader, there might have been something......interesting...... to offer a conversation.
It is me who is out of synch, obviously. Catherine's blog is very, very popular and you, my friends, are rare.
Ah, maybe this is all too harsh. Is it deep and profound to love to read books about being something you are not? Hardly.
Though every book, in its way, offers at least the possibility of emerging, after the last page, as something you were not. Something better.
A book or a blog that is really and truly just about me the glorious me me just as I am me me me stands as a failure of imagination. Cute as you and your kid may be.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Other stories
I say this often but let that not prevent me from saying it again: I would not be able to attend my own dream dinner party.
Martin Amis would be there, and so would Christopher Hitchens and James Wolcott; AA Gill would attend and I'd be horrified to hear the next day what he thought of the ambiance and food; maybe Diana Vreeland would show up and certainly Ines de la Fressange, meaning that no matter what I chose to WEAR to the party, I'd be wrong; Johnny Depp might be there but perhaps the dining room is not quite where we want him; I think maybe Ryan Adams would show up for a drink surprisingly enough, he's great fun at a party and I know that for certain.
Another person who really should come over is David Remnick. A Pulitzer-prize winning author, terrific writer (these two things, Pulitzer winner and great writer are not always the same thing) and editor of the New Yorker he is a guy of whom one of my more clever friends says "if you read anything, read Remnick."
So imagine how thrilled I was to hear that another friend was actually going to a cocktail party chez Remnick!
My friend Jack was given explicit instructions to be my avid emissary, to take note of food, drink, company, interiors, books, art, plants (if any), fashion (who wore what, specifically Rem and wife). He asked if I thought it would be wrong if he took pictures (I said yes but maybe not with the phone) or wore a wire (tough call, that -- I was very tempted and am lousy at turning back temptation).
Jack did a pretty good job though there was no word on the contents of the cabinets and drawers in the loo. Perhaps he didn't go to the loo. Or, perhaps, being a guy, he didn't figure out how to get to the real one and not the pristine and anemic one meant for guests.
It was with great delight that I read Jack's diary notes on the evening as it unravelled. And unravel it did, just a bit, when Jack's date for the event observed slightly loudly (champagne has that effect on me too) that Sir David was spending a great deal of time in a close tete a tete with a very pretty, nubile young woman. Said comment alerted the wife.
Here are snippets from the story Jack sent:
"Spent most of Saturday plotting what to wear. Nancy (his pal) said costumes. Met at Felix Café and immediately riffed the ideas of a fox stole and a king’s jewel-encrusted scepter. The fox was to have been killed in the Royal Hunt at Sandringham, the Queen’s Norfolk estate, and the scepter was that royal touch that kept that nasty critter in line. That was our story and we were sticking to it.
The fox stole was ordered on e-Bay and never arrived until after the fact. The scepter was ordered from a costumer in Albany, arrived on time, but resembled more Tinkerbell’s wand than anything fit for a king. It will now be used by Jack as he looks at creative work. He will point to the best work with the wand.
Nancy and Jack were both very nervous in the final few hours leading up to the event. No fox for the fox, had to settle for Minky, which proved to be the right call. The fox would simply have been too garish, to in-your-face, too much road kill for one girl to pull off.
Nancy wore a fab black wool dress onto which Minky was sewn. A great pelt laid out across her left shoulder. He had very off-putting glass eyes. Those have to go. The dress was set off by a pair of stunning black lace tights that cost as much as Nancy’s $200 hair coloring and blow dry. Ahem.
Jack wore full-on Etro, as dandy as was reasonable. Vivid striped shirt with purple, pink and navy floral tie, and accompanying pocket puff. Pin-striped suit. The coup de grace was his carved wooden Fox head cane from France. Just the thing to keep the mink in line, a mink we should add that was trapped by Nance’s dad when he worked the trap lines for HBC many moons ago. Problem was he snared the beast on hallowed Indian burial ground, thus imbuing Minky with a supernatural spirit. He has been known to come alive at parties and rip into the jugular of the host. Fox Head was on hand as a bludgeoning instrument, as seen on CSI New York.
Nancy picked up Jack at his place just down the road from Remnick in UWS. A glorious, sunny spring evening. On tenterhooks they left the taxi, took a few snaps in front of the house, and, after a limping lesson to make the cane seem more authentic, they ventured in.
A small group of people waited for an elevator. A burly prick of a businessman in a J.C. Penny suit glowered at Jack’s cane and poor Minky. He did not approve. We were clearly not the kind of people he wanted in his building.
In the elevator Jack tested Nancy’s resolve and acumen in telling the HBC trap line story by asking her in front of the others if her father had ever worked traps north of the 60th parallel. To his surprise she informed him that he had laid out a series of traps along the northern frontier, a kind of early warning system to keep out foot-bound Russians, pre-Norad. At least one person in the crowded elevator laughed. It was Jack.
We left the elevator and entered directly into David’s home. A small vestibule at first, then a larger receiving room in which we were, well, received by David Remnick and Drew Schutte themselves. Drew is the new publisher for whom the party was being thrown. Drew shook Jack’s hand and broke it. This was clearly a publisher with something to prove. Jack felt like sending a glancing blow with Fox Head off his temple but that would have got the party off to a dodgy start. David introduced himself to Nancy and Jack. He is tall, good looking, and for a reporter dresses quite well. Navy blazer, pale, open-necked shirt, grey trou. Drew had on a navy blazer and a bolder blue checked shirt, no tie as well. Here is the verbatim conversation that followed:
JACK: “Hi David, Jack Neary.”
DAVID: “Jack, that is one g-r-e-a-t tie.” (said with a drawn-out emphasis, a good thing)
JACK: “Thank you! We do what we can, but the real item worth noting is this fine mink here."(Jack gestures with his cane to Nancy’s black pelt.)
DAVID: “Ohhhhh.” (said admiringly)
JACK: “We are celebrating the retirement of Nancy’s father from his trap line in the far Canadian north.”
NANCY: “This was one of his first catches.”
DAVID: “What a clean catch.”
NANCY: “It was a very clean catch, some of his better work.”
DAVID: “Is this for real?” (we think he meant our story, not if the mink was real)
N & J: (in unison) “Ohhh, yeah, he was a trapper.”
DAVID: “Well, welcome, please make yourselves at home.”
Floating on a thin layer of ether we enter the drawing room."
My heavenly days, how great is that? And isn't my David sharp and charming? Actually, maybe I can't invite Jack either.
You can see why I would be a no-show at dinner.
Martin Amis would be there, and so would Christopher Hitchens and James Wolcott; AA Gill would attend and I'd be horrified to hear the next day what he thought of the ambiance and food; maybe Diana Vreeland would show up and certainly Ines de la Fressange, meaning that no matter what I chose to WEAR to the party, I'd be wrong; Johnny Depp might be there but perhaps the dining room is not quite where we want him; I think maybe Ryan Adams would show up for a drink surprisingly enough, he's great fun at a party and I know that for certain.
Another person who really should come over is David Remnick. A Pulitzer-prize winning author, terrific writer (these two things, Pulitzer winner and great writer are not always the same thing) and editor of the New Yorker he is a guy of whom one of my more clever friends says "if you read anything, read Remnick."
So imagine how thrilled I was to hear that another friend was actually going to a cocktail party chez Remnick!
My friend Jack was given explicit instructions to be my avid emissary, to take note of food, drink, company, interiors, books, art, plants (if any), fashion (who wore what, specifically Rem and wife). He asked if I thought it would be wrong if he took pictures (I said yes but maybe not with the phone) or wore a wire (tough call, that -- I was very tempted and am lousy at turning back temptation).
Jack did a pretty good job though there was no word on the contents of the cabinets and drawers in the loo. Perhaps he didn't go to the loo. Or, perhaps, being a guy, he didn't figure out how to get to the real one and not the pristine and anemic one meant for guests.
It was with great delight that I read Jack's diary notes on the evening as it unravelled. And unravel it did, just a bit, when Jack's date for the event observed slightly loudly (champagne has that effect on me too) that Sir David was spending a great deal of time in a close tete a tete with a very pretty, nubile young woman. Said comment alerted the wife.
Here are snippets from the story Jack sent:
"Spent most of Saturday plotting what to wear. Nancy (his pal) said costumes. Met at Felix Café and immediately riffed the ideas of a fox stole and a king’s jewel-encrusted scepter. The fox was to have been killed in the Royal Hunt at Sandringham, the Queen’s Norfolk estate, and the scepter was that royal touch that kept that nasty critter in line. That was our story and we were sticking to it.
The fox stole was ordered on e-Bay and never arrived until after the fact. The scepter was ordered from a costumer in Albany, arrived on time, but resembled more Tinkerbell’s wand than anything fit for a king. It will now be used by Jack as he looks at creative work. He will point to the best work with the wand.
Nancy and Jack were both very nervous in the final few hours leading up to the event. No fox for the fox, had to settle for Minky, which proved to be the right call. The fox would simply have been too garish, to in-your-face, too much road kill for one girl to pull off.
Nancy wore a fab black wool dress onto which Minky was sewn. A great pelt laid out across her left shoulder. He had very off-putting glass eyes. Those have to go. The dress was set off by a pair of stunning black lace tights that cost as much as Nancy’s $200 hair coloring and blow dry. Ahem.
Jack wore full-on Etro, as dandy as was reasonable. Vivid striped shirt with purple, pink and navy floral tie, and accompanying pocket puff. Pin-striped suit. The coup de grace was his carved wooden Fox head cane from France. Just the thing to keep the mink in line, a mink we should add that was trapped by Nance’s dad when he worked the trap lines for HBC many moons ago. Problem was he snared the beast on hallowed Indian burial ground, thus imbuing Minky with a supernatural spirit. He has been known to come alive at parties and rip into the jugular of the host. Fox Head was on hand as a bludgeoning instrument, as seen on CSI New York.
Nancy picked up Jack at his place just down the road from Remnick in UWS. A glorious, sunny spring evening. On tenterhooks they left the taxi, took a few snaps in front of the house, and, after a limping lesson to make the cane seem more authentic, they ventured in.
A small group of people waited for an elevator. A burly prick of a businessman in a J.C. Penny suit glowered at Jack’s cane and poor Minky. He did not approve. We were clearly not the kind of people he wanted in his building.
In the elevator Jack tested Nancy’s resolve and acumen in telling the HBC trap line story by asking her in front of the others if her father had ever worked traps north of the 60th parallel. To his surprise she informed him that he had laid out a series of traps along the northern frontier, a kind of early warning system to keep out foot-bound Russians, pre-Norad. At least one person in the crowded elevator laughed. It was Jack.
We left the elevator and entered directly into David’s home. A small vestibule at first, then a larger receiving room in which we were, well, received by David Remnick and Drew Schutte themselves. Drew is the new publisher for whom the party was being thrown. Drew shook Jack’s hand and broke it. This was clearly a publisher with something to prove. Jack felt like sending a glancing blow with Fox Head off his temple but that would have got the party off to a dodgy start. David introduced himself to Nancy and Jack. He is tall, good looking, and for a reporter dresses quite well. Navy blazer, pale, open-necked shirt, grey trou. Drew had on a navy blazer and a bolder blue checked shirt, no tie as well. Here is the verbatim conversation that followed:
JACK: “Hi David, Jack Neary.”
DAVID: “Jack, that is one g-r-e-a-t tie.” (said with a drawn-out emphasis, a good thing)
JACK: “Thank you! We do what we can, but the real item worth noting is this fine mink here."(Jack gestures with his cane to Nancy’s black pelt.)
DAVID: “Ohhhhh.” (said admiringly)
JACK: “We are celebrating the retirement of Nancy’s father from his trap line in the far Canadian north.”
NANCY: “This was one of his first catches.”
DAVID: “What a clean catch.”
NANCY: “It was a very clean catch, some of his better work.”
DAVID: “Is this for real?” (we think he meant our story, not if the mink was real)
N & J: (in unison) “Ohhh, yeah, he was a trapper.”
DAVID: “Well, welcome, please make yourselves at home.”
Floating on a thin layer of ether we enter the drawing room."
My heavenly days, how great is that? And isn't my David sharp and charming? Actually, maybe I can't invite Jack either.
You can see why I would be a no-show at dinner.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
The stories you tell, the stories you tell yourself.
Booktherapy is built on the idea that a book can be therapeutic, can tell you what you need to know when you needed to know it, that a good book can nourish your soul.
What is a book, any book, but a story?
So, this is a story I was told, it is not yet a book but I understand it will be. It affected me deeply.
A friend of mine recently had lunch with a woman he has known a long time, a woman who was his right hand and helper in projects that kept his family in ribbons, bows and private school.
This woman is luscious apparently, well known and appreciated for her heavy auburn hair and her delicious curvy and milky body, specifically her glorious breasts, now removed.
Her sister has died of breast cancer and she is fighting same but at lunch, in the way of some brave soldiers against this insidious and silent enemy, she is jaunty and optimistic and actually down to earth funny about it all. Cancer has a focusing effect on some people. As a brilliant lawyer used to say "this will knock the birdshit off the pump handle" -- suddenly you are faced with your own body warring against itself and the truth that we live only in the present, we only know we have this very minute, becomes utterly tangible. Some die of this idea, some thrive with it.
This woman, on her way to her radical mastectomy, asked for one last look and popped her top to take a view of the girls before being wheeled into the killing room, the room of their demise. Her glorious hair is sacrificed to chemo, and much of what you could have thought was her is now gone. What is truly her is shining through.
That last request, the request to take a last look at her breasts is an idea that has intrigued me since I heard it.
I have lost close friends and relatives to cancer, I have a gorgeous painting -- macabre to most people, utterly beautiful to me -- that is an ode to cancer and its defining effect, how it renders us merely a casing, soul against a recalcitrant and unruly body that suddenly turns enemy. Cancer hovers very near to all of us, the lucky among us stand near and not within its grip.
Cancer is the body turning against itself and I think this is the core of why this story has so gripped me.
I have fought against my own body all my life. After an eating disorder, not yet well but not the weight of a child either, I nearly walked with my nose in the air, so horrified was I to catch a glimpse of my own leg, thigh, belly, arms. Today it would seem that to some I am curvy or at the very least "athletic" -- shop girls often admonish me when I am freaking in front of the mirror: "Love your curves! men love curves!" I am not suggesting I have a sexy body but strangers call me so. To me, this body is something to fight against.
This woman revelled in her sexiness and is sorry to see it gone. But not too sorry, it's more like nostalgia, there are more important things now. One of my friends, a wild woman, had a couple of kids and thereafter various things sagged and dropped and she said "oh well, my body served me well, I had a lot of fun with it at the time" -- a perfectly healthy approach I think.
What struck me is this. Would I have wanted to say goodbye to these old friends? I wonder if I would miss them if they were gone. I don't want to sound more shallow than I have to, but they have often gotten in the way.
What this woman has shown me in high relief is that you can turn against your body or your body can turn against you. The salvation is being at peace with the whole.
What is a book, any book, but a story?
So, this is a story I was told, it is not yet a book but I understand it will be. It affected me deeply.
A friend of mine recently had lunch with a woman he has known a long time, a woman who was his right hand and helper in projects that kept his family in ribbons, bows and private school.
This woman is luscious apparently, well known and appreciated for her heavy auburn hair and her delicious curvy and milky body, specifically her glorious breasts, now removed.
Her sister has died of breast cancer and she is fighting same but at lunch, in the way of some brave soldiers against this insidious and silent enemy, she is jaunty and optimistic and actually down to earth funny about it all. Cancer has a focusing effect on some people. As a brilliant lawyer used to say "this will knock the birdshit off the pump handle" -- suddenly you are faced with your own body warring against itself and the truth that we live only in the present, we only know we have this very minute, becomes utterly tangible. Some die of this idea, some thrive with it.
This woman, on her way to her radical mastectomy, asked for one last look and popped her top to take a view of the girls before being wheeled into the killing room, the room of their demise. Her glorious hair is sacrificed to chemo, and much of what you could have thought was her is now gone. What is truly her is shining through.
That last request, the request to take a last look at her breasts is an idea that has intrigued me since I heard it.
I have lost close friends and relatives to cancer, I have a gorgeous painting -- macabre to most people, utterly beautiful to me -- that is an ode to cancer and its defining effect, how it renders us merely a casing, soul against a recalcitrant and unruly body that suddenly turns enemy. Cancer hovers very near to all of us, the lucky among us stand near and not within its grip.
Cancer is the body turning against itself and I think this is the core of why this story has so gripped me.
I have fought against my own body all my life. After an eating disorder, not yet well but not the weight of a child either, I nearly walked with my nose in the air, so horrified was I to catch a glimpse of my own leg, thigh, belly, arms. Today it would seem that to some I am curvy or at the very least "athletic" -- shop girls often admonish me when I am freaking in front of the mirror: "Love your curves! men love curves!" I am not suggesting I have a sexy body but strangers call me so. To me, this body is something to fight against.
This woman revelled in her sexiness and is sorry to see it gone. But not too sorry, it's more like nostalgia, there are more important things now. One of my friends, a wild woman, had a couple of kids and thereafter various things sagged and dropped and she said "oh well, my body served me well, I had a lot of fun with it at the time" -- a perfectly healthy approach I think.
What struck me is this. Would I have wanted to say goodbye to these old friends? I wonder if I would miss them if they were gone. I don't want to sound more shallow than I have to, but they have often gotten in the way.
What this woman has shown me in high relief is that you can turn against your body or your body can turn against you. The salvation is being at peace with the whole.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
On writing well
In journalism school they teach you that Frank Sinatra Has a Cold is one of the best stories ever written. Why? Because it was written in spite of Frank Sinatra, he might say TO spite Frank Sinatra and the story of the story is, Gay Talese could not no how get an interview with Frankie. So he interviewed everyone else and wrote a story about Frank anyway, and it was more revealing than anything that Frank himself could or would have divulged.
Unauthorized biographies should be a lot like this and often are not. Magazine stories should be like this too but nowadays there's no celeb worth her fairy dust who would turn down an interview, so the need never arises.
Or does it?
Celebrity is a science now, for those who have that particular DNA. Having interviewed a few famous people myself I can say that they quickly develop a veneer of .... veneer, actually. It is virtually impossible to get beneath it. Celebrity culture is such, too, that the Faustian deal is never risked, not many writers would dare irritate the publicist (if not the celeb) who might provide the big "Get" later on and down the road.
So, we can only ever see what we are supposed to see.
Or does it?
Celebrity is a science now, for those who have that particular DNA. Having interviewed a few famous people myself I can say that they quickly develop a veneer of .... veneer, actually. It is virtually impossible to get beneath it. Celebrity culture is such, too, that the Faustian deal is never risked, not many writers would dare irritate the publicist (if not the celeb) who might provide the big "Get" later on and down the road.
So, we can only ever see what we are supposed to see.
Imagine then the delight of reading the profile of Madonna in the May issue of Vanity Fair. Madonna, we are given to understand, is a master controller. It's always all about her, with her you get what you get, she sets the agenda and the tone, she is the centre of the universe and the universe is a damn fine place to be...this is what we glean from the lifetime she has spent in front of us. In the fascinating film, Truth or Dare, the filmmaker asks her (as I remember it) if she'd like to do something or other off-camera. Her then boyfriend Warren Beatty, no slouch of a celeb himself, says "she doesn't want to LIVE off camera" -- and you'd have to say he'd know.
I've seen many interviews with Madonna and except for the strange chat with David Letterman where she giggled and cussed and appeared out of control (see the first video above...this is where we learned that if you pee in the shower, you can prevent athlete's foot -- an utterance that made prissy Letterman blanch) she puts the boring into bored so calculated is she. I suspect that she controls her own facade even with her husband and why not, I suppose -- reality can be so messy, and ordinary. In the current case, the VF writer, Rich Cohen, was clearly getting vintage Madonna, a full serving of banalities and key messages with not a hair or a breath out of place.
And so he wrote his own story. Cohen is not Talese, but this story is nonetheless a solid read and far more revealing that Madonna would have otherwise allowed.
And the pictures are amazing. She really is an image.
Friday, April 11, 2008
The Current Cinema
Every once in a while you come across a startlingly fine sentence, one that brings you up short and makes you pay new attention.
I'm not saying anything about dogs, but guess which sentence appealed so much in this excerpt from a review of Funny Games, found in the New Yorker:
And so, like shackled prisoners trudging back to the rack and the thumbscrews, we start once more, with an overhead view of a family car pulling a boat on a trailer along rural roads. The family comprises George (Tim Roth), Ann (Naomi Watts), their ten-year-old son, Georgie (Devon Gearhart), and their dog—a lolloping golden retriever named Lucky. If there is one lesson we learn from “Funny Games,” it is not that malice is rooted deep in our soiled nature, or that capitalist society has made an unhealthy fetish of violence, but simply that, if you want to avoid such unpleasantness, ditch the retriever. Everything that happens to George and Ann could have been avoided with a pair of Dobermans, or an underfed Scottish terrier with a working knowledge of Nietzsche.
Read the whole good thing:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2008/03/17/080317crci_cinema_lane
I'm not saying anything about dogs, but guess which sentence appealed so much in this excerpt from a review of Funny Games, found in the New Yorker:
And so, like shackled prisoners trudging back to the rack and the thumbscrews, we start once more, with an overhead view of a family car pulling a boat on a trailer along rural roads. The family comprises George (Tim Roth), Ann (Naomi Watts), their ten-year-old son, Georgie (Devon Gearhart), and their dog—a lolloping golden retriever named Lucky. If there is one lesson we learn from “Funny Games,” it is not that malice is rooted deep in our soiled nature, or that capitalist society has made an unhealthy fetish of violence, but simply that, if you want to avoid such unpleasantness, ditch the retriever. Everything that happens to George and Ann could have been avoided with a pair of Dobermans, or an underfed Scottish terrier with a working knowledge of Nietzsche.
Read the whole good thing:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2008/03/17/080317crci_cinema_lane
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