Getting back to the fraction of the whole

I suspect this book is what is known as a "romp." It is wry, funny, ridiculous and yet hits at many truths despite its Alice Through the Looking Glass aspects.

The biggest truth is, of course, the truth about weakness and I will hammer away at this so all bored by it should leave now. See, weak people are destructive people. They want to avoid responsibility and certainly cannot bear to actively hurt anyone but man o man, what havoc they end up being responsible for. In this book, Martin is the weakest of the weak and he manages to burn down a town, send his brother into a life of crime, blind a man, break a few hearts, send a woman to her death. All for wishy washing around.

Yet sins of the fathers are not necessarily borne by the sons. Martin's son Jasper shows some strength of character in spite of himself, even though at one point he is shamed to admit that his one passionate decision is to murder someone. Well, it's that kind of book, it kind of works at a certain pitch.

The book is nicely cynical, too. In one instance the players are admiring a sunset, a vivid and extravagantly coloured spectacle made so by smog -- an instance where man's doing surpasses God's.

Ostensibly this is an amusing tale of family and character. Family. Can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em.

Well, in THIS family, maybe you can.......

A room of one's own.

Misery loves company. Does it? Actually, no, I don't think so, I think misery loves solitude and the comforts of hiding under a pile of coats. As well, I have never approved of the "it could be worse" school of thought. What is that, something to look forward to? That even in grief you are outdone by others?


Of late, and at the behest of someone looking out for my improved psyche, I have been reading books on the subject of surviving childhood. Many quirks of personality it seems are actually old, fossilized habits learned long ago to offset the power and control of those who looked after us. Lots of the characteristics of those around us are also based on these primal fears and deprivations -- how anyone survives childhood is a central mystery and we should all try our best to be reincarnated as beloved cats. Hell is other people? Hell is being people.


We may survive the past but do we thrive, and what changes are indelibly wrought by the baroque cruelties suffered? Here's the thing. I don't adhere to the idea that to be an artist one must suffer, but suffering does sometimes lead to beauty. Think of natural wonders of the world -- it's the stress that creates the diamond. And here we come to Henry Darger.


A friend sent me the images here, and suggests this book is incredible. Why? Here is what she says: "Incredibly interesting (albeit sadder than sad), self taught artist/writer, a recluse, a janitor. These photos reveal the tone of his environment in a very intimate and quiet way. Here's the photo that inspired him to begin his writings."

She goes on to say "I like this excerpt from the guardian: Why is Darger so popular? Many would argue that it's because his art is truly different and truly beautiful. That may be so. What is certain is he led a life of such suffering, neglect and isolation that he makes Vincent van Gogh look like a party-going fat cat."


You want to come back as a cat. Trust me.

A Fraction of the Whole

The weak shall inherit the earth the slidey bastards and you want to know why? Because they don't care about anything but their own weakness and so they can crash, burn, wreck and ruin like nobody's business. They really are terrible to have around.

A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz spells all this out very succinctly. We have Martin our fifth-business who instigates all sorts of things in his slidey weak way. Like what? Like getting his brother not just into trouble but into crime because HE, Martin, didn't want to get beat up in a schoolyard fight.

How so you ask? Pretty easy when you're a weak bastard. Martin was in trouble with the bullies and so told his avid little brother, a terrific sportsman, a phenomenal athlete, that the bullies were CHEATERS. Well. Gasoline to a bonfire. The little brother goes on to beat up the bullies and the bullies stab him in the leg, ending his sports career. Then they tell him that so long as he joins their lives of crime they won't kill Martin (big loss if you ask me but I'm not the little brother in this one.) The brother, Terry, takes to crime like fish to algae and goes on cleaning the world of cheaters.

Terry, you see, believes in something. Martin not so much. So he goes on wreaking havoc by trying to slide out of things left right and centre.

The Martin story is very funny and I'd tell you more but I'm not finished yet. But it's pretty clear, weak wins. Well, maybe the weak don't WIN but they don't seem to get hurt or roughed up much either so we might as well call it winning.

Jekyll & Hyde

It's good to have friends who read, because they do a lot of the legwork for you. One good friend and terrific reader recently told me he had read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for the first time, in fact read Robert Louis Stevenson for the first time, while on vacation in Jamaica and was so mesmerized by it and so enchanted by the good writing he's now on to (what may have been more appropos in the first place) Treasure Island.

Now, it is not many who would take a misty and dark gothic horror to the beach. Yet fewer would be riveted while the sun plays on the waves and screaming children make sand castles but there you have it. But he spoke so highly this book has been on my list ever since. He once said to me, when I was complaining about how hard it is to find a really good book among any season's new releases, "Why do you waste your energy when there is so much that is tried, true and has passed the test of time?" He sent me on the path of Iris Murdoch, splendidly prolific and a rich vein should you like her work. Sigh. Back to Sue Grafton.

As I am still avoiding any book with anything to do with love (why o why is every damn book about love? honestly, as a culture we are obsessed with love. Why when there's so many of us are people still alone??) I took J&H with me to the country house where I do my best reading. It is back to school time at my local bookstore and there were piles of "classics" on the first table you trip on, prominent among them being this one and it seemed sort of a sign from God.

Imagine my distress when I opened the book and discovered that it is one among SIX "books" in a rather narrow tome.

I asked Kristin, a publisher and whose house I was in, if this could possibly be right. Is Jekyll and Hyde a SHORT STORY??

"I have no idea I've never read Stevenson. Or Dickens. Let me look at the book," she said, helpfully. She read the copyright page and a few others that tell things to publishers and handed it back. "Ask Tom."

Now, Tom has been in publishing since Christ was a cowboy and all Kristin and Tom's homes are made tinier for being lined with every book ever published in this fair land. Even the bad ones. Of which there are, sadly, many. You'd think he'd know about so commonplace a "classic."

"I have no idea. Ask Rebecca," he said. Rebecca is sixteen and had no interest in this exchange, as she was deeply immersed in Blindness, a book I have never been able to make head nor tail of. I think it's about a bunch of people who go blind for some reason.

I was loathe to read a book that might be a fake, to spend the time on the wrong thing but plunged ahead anyway. My Reader had said the fascinating thing is Hyde (the scary one) freaks people out, they feel immediately cold and unsafe in his presence but there is virtually no description of what he looks like, he is faceless and amorphous.

In fact no one and nothing is much described in this novella, as I have learned it definitively is. The premise is interesting. Jekyll wants to obliterate his dark side, and so invents a potion that separates him from his monster. Hyde becomes his alter-ego, so that he is all good, the other is all bad. The problem is, as time goes on it is harder and harder to revert back to Jekyll, it takes more potion and more energy and more time until eventually Hyde is the ego, and Jekyll all but disappears.

Stunning to me is the psychological relevance of this -- and this, before Freud had committed a word to paper. Try to supress that which is negative and it will grow and destroy you. It will BECOME you. What you fear becoming is what you will be, if you cannot integrate and synthesize the pain of it. Think of what ensues with those who supress sexuality, or those who want to be seen as ONLY sweet-natured and then turn passive-aggressive and truly horrible. Interesting that this and other stories came out in the suppressive Victorian era. The artists were clear about the destruction they saw, and no one heard a word.

I liked also that the bad part could be hived off with a potion -- hello cocktail hour.

Fascinating really, essential reading for Psych 101.

Smart guy, this Stevenson.

My Life.....In France

I had lunch today with someone I have known for years, but who would not have become such a friend were it not for the fact that two years ago she was dying. Or, if not precisely dying, fighting for her life against a cancer she seems cured of. That she was ill gave her time and a timorousness that allowed me in -- prior to that she was a hard driving, ambitious, fabulously successful ad executive living a life I could barely imagine, and her life didn't allow for the likes of me. She was on a fast track and I was busy picking daisies. Or something.

In fairness her cancer was merely the biggest of her concerns at a time that tested her strength. Her beloved father died, her daughter fell and broke both arms, she was fired after about a year of abuse from a job she loved and hated. And then she was sick.

As she proceeded through treatment she needed other things to think about and so we worked together on a small project, and I think loved one another's company; we became friends, finally, not merely acquaintances. Because of the grief and pain we were both going through, while our own, we now had very common ground and the kind of wide open space that allows you to say things and admit fears you otherwise would protect both yourself and your listener from. In our case there just didn't seem to be much reason to bother with such niceties. What we were going through was in the book of Life's Hard Lessons, it seemed stupid not to share the wealth.

Today we met at a favorite bistro where we order the EXACT same thing every time, a delicious and simple French lunch with a glass of wine. We caught up. She is healthy, seems completely recovered and is gorgeous and robust again, the papery quality of her skin gone and a bloom in its place, her ginger hair now wildly curly and finally utterly her own. She has eyebrows, eyelashes, energy.

And now comes the rest of her life. I feel I have a second chance now she said. I feel I have been given a special opportunity and I think to myself, is this what my life is? This job, this routine, this? This is all it is?

So change is brewing.

Mid-life crises have been given a bad name, maybe by the disgruntled, content spouses left on the curb and the families perfectly happy with the routine, the job, this. My friend says perhaps if she hadn't gotten sick she wouldn't have noticed the routine or thought there was anything MORE at stake. I'm not so sure. I am also having a mid-life crisis, I prefer the term "awakening", without one drop of chemo or one night's fear of imminent death.

There is a yearning, she said, for more, to follow a dream, to live somehow more creatively. "I want to do something, I just don't know what it is." The question then is, what is your bliss? What are you passionate about? Easier asked than answered! It is so hard in adulthood to dream a dream or unleash from expectations and disappointments and what IS.

I don't know what I love, she said. And then she said "actually, I love food. I would love to eat and drink, how do you make a life about that?"

How indeed.

Which brings me, and I hope her, to My Life in France by Julia Child, a wonderful memoir of Julia's awakening at an age not so much younger than us. Julia followed her husband to Paris and France after the second world war and discovered a love of....food. She and her husband followed this food with an unswerving passion, taking time off from eating only to repair their gall bladders. If there was a dish reputed to be excellent at a small restaurant on a cow path in southern France, they went. If there was something rarely concocted but would be concocted this once, at this cost, they saved and they savoured. The result of this passion as we all know now is Mastering the Art of French Cooking (which took YEARS to create) and the first ever cooking show on newfangled TV -- this spawned a massive industry.

Julia's unadulterated love for food and all things French is refreshing, as is her candour which I suspect is unbeknownst to her. She stole that cookbook out from under a French woman's nose, it would seem her beloved husband might be a touch...exuberant as my boss would say, gay as the rest of us might. He was also a bit of an underachiever shall we say, and perhaps an artist only in her eyes. They were an eccentric couple of bachelors, really, but all of that is by the by. The wonderful thing is the boundless enthusiasm she feels for this amazing discovery: Food is meant to be a pleasure, it is not merely fuel, something that hadn't dawned on her Yankee self until she found herself in Europe.

Passion and enthusiasm are always not merely attractive but compelling. Finding passion, what we love, what part of life gives us the most pleasure, is what God meant us to seek.

What We're Not Reading, take two

This is so commonplace now that I hesitate to bring attention to it but earlier this month as I was paging through the New York Times I came across a story, rather small, on an inside page, about an Army private sentenced to 110 years for the rape of the Iraqi girl and the killing of her and her family.

Perhaps this story didn't need to played any larger -- after all, this is not the first soldier involved in the incident to be sentenced. It's not the first time that the story has been reported. Still, it is an unusually high sentence for such a crime, a remarkable sentence really. And for whatever reason, while this story is well known it has never, to me, grabbed the attention it deserves. That the soldiers involved are facing such penalties has not received the attention this deserves -- usually there is something of a pass given to soldiers who lose it, their penalties have never, to me anyway, seemed large enough.

As it happens I was at dinner with an old friend, a sound engineer (is this what they are called??) who had that very day finished the last touches on a new Brian de Palma film -- a remarkable feat, shot and completed within four months. The subject? The rape and murder of the Iraqi girl and the murder of her family. The movie, she says, is harrowing and a return for de Palma to his days as a maverick. It is shot as though by news cameras, security, rogue grabs on videocam -- raw, real, unrepentent.

The movie is receiving positive buzz so far but is deeply disturbing and I cannot imagine what it was like for her to lay down the sound. I remember well the trial of serial rapist and serial killer Paul Bernardo -- no one but the jury was allowed to see the actual video he and his wife took of their rape and torture of two young girls but the sound of the thrill, the barely contained joy, in his voice and the keening of the girls torments me still.

My friend said she feels the movie makes us complicit in the crime but I disagree. It forces us to look at it, to understand who to hate and how much. This is the important new role of communicators other than media. This child was raped while her family was trapped in another room, unable to help her but able to hear what was happening as soldiers one by one attacked her, as other soldiers held her down. Her family was killed before she was, and then she was shot in the head. In my experience in covering crime I would say this was the soldier's only mercy -- one of the cop reporters I knew used to say rape victims are the same as murder victims, they're just not dead yet. Afterward, her small body was set on fire. It is terrible to read these words, worse yet to witness the acts even as a fictionalized account and yet all this happened. It happened on our account, as an outcome of the "war on terror". I don't feel I've been able to read nearly enough about these events despite what some might call a "media saturation"; that the longest sentence in memory was doled out a few weeks ago and that the story didn't warrant better play is a shame. Therefore I think it is honorable that de Palma saw fit to document this atrocity, and it is probably a duty of ours to witness it. It's a shame we will need to go to a cinema and pay for the privilege when it all should have been on the news, but that's the way it is. The Canadian Broadcasting Company once saw fit to call television "the fifth estate" and I would suggest that the fourth, media, typically newspapers, are no longer any estate at all. We are lucky there are always storytellers, though, ready to take up the cause.

Pictures are a thousand words

Reading is all very well but sometimes the best thing in the world is to look at pictures, like a child, imagining a life behind the image.

To this end I spend an inordinate amount of time on The Sartorialist, a delicious blog about style. Sart simply goes off into the world and photographs people who look intertesting to him, and his egalitarian and kind disposition to what makes a great picture and good style is refreshing and rare in the fashion world. Not only that, he's a lovely writer so if you do find yourself craving the written word, it's occasionally there for you. He captures all kinds of people including those with the etched faces and demeanors of people who would be shocked to be considered "fashionable", appearing to be far busier simply living or thinking or working hard or suffering or enjoying, un-self-consciously.

I am excited to the point of not sleeping, too, to know that the September Vogue, Bazaar, the European editions, Harper's Bazaar and various style sections will soon drop on the doorstep. I love fall -- the time of re-invention. The real beginning of the year.