2014... and now what?

I have definitely been absent for a while. 2013 turned out to be a complicated, crazy year full of twists and turns.

For 2014, I look forward to a return to, well, calmer waters. I have plans to spend the summer in England, teaching in both London and Oxford. I hope to take a bookbinding class, starting to learn a new skill... an "old school" kind of one.

I am also continuing my attempts to de-clutter my house and life, to get and stay healthy, to develop and strengthen my personal community, and to be more creative on all levels.

What's new, then, in the Pearl 2014 blog?

Recently I've been asked by no less than five friends to give them advice about what to see and do, where to stay and eat, and similar questions about Paris. Not surprising, really, since I've lived there twice (1999 and 2008) and visited multiple times since 1981. I know the city, although I am always learning more. Most importantly, I give great advice about things to do and see and buy while there.

I've decided to post my favorite 50 tips about visiting Paris. This will include information about travel, hotels, cafes and restaurants, shopping, museums and monuments, and even day trips. Since my travel budget was usually small, most of these will be inexpensive (verging on cheap), but some will be splurges worth every euro. I'll also point out etiquette along the way, manners and attitudes that will keep you from standing out as an Ugly American.

To my mind,the whole point of visiting someplace away from home is to engage with that place and its culture--not your own reproduced. Travelling broadens us because we aren't at home and can't act like it.

I'll also include a list of movies, books, and music that you can use to prepare yourself for visting Paris, or simply to indulge in a virtual visit.

This means every week will see a new tip plus new materials about Paris. So if you can't visit in person, you can still enjoy the City of Light.

First Night

Last night I sat down with five women--three of whom I already knew--and plunged into our new short story discussion group. We're meeting monthly to talk short story--our first, "Why I Live at the P.O." by Welty.

Last night, however, there was no short story talk--only introductions that led to talk about husbands, kids, jobs, illness, depression, anxiety, isolation, and re-creating ourselves in midlife (everyone was 40-50). Sounds depressing, right?

Not at all!

We talked, laughed, shared, gabbed, drank $2 margaritas, and planned the next meeting--where we will surely discuss Welty's prose.

It was interesting to hear these other women talk about the same problems I've been dealing with for the last two years. And more. Gave me a better outlook on Tuesday than I've had in some time.

Here's a link to Welty's story online: hilariously Southern!   http://art-bin.com/art/or_weltypostoff.html

Three times the reviews

... for books.

Delightfully, academics are often asked to review books for scholarly journals. I am currently reviewing three books for two different journals. "Delightfully" because reviews are a source of free books in the area of one's expertise--and scholarly books are expensive.

I am reviewing Women, Medicine and Theatre, 1500-1700 for a historical journal. The author links the appearance of women on the theatrical stage with their roles in medical mountebankery... if that's a word. I'm enjoying the book and will turn in the review this weekend.

My next two reviews are for a theatre history journal, both due separately in November. One is of the study Moliere, the French Revolution, and the Theatrical After-Life, and the other Women on the Stage in Early Modern France. Both are by scholars I respect. Which means, I hope, that I will enjoy those reads as well. One is by a retired expert in 17th-century French theatre, and one by an emerging scholar in 18th-century French theatre.

One of my mentors once said to me, do something for your career every day. I think that's mostly good advice (how about, "five days a week" instead of "every day"?), and try to remember that that means doing things not for your career, as well.

Yesterday's "something" was taking on a dramaturgy project by a local playwright (and friend) with a local theatre company, where the play's director is someone I've known for a long time, as well. This is pretty exciting, in fact, because I'll be working hands-on in a new theatre project with two people I really like: the playwright and director.

Conference Paper: Willliam Gillette

The paper I gave last month was on an American actor, William Gillette, who was a very popular performer during the last quarter of the 19th and into the first four decades of the 20th.

Gillette came from Connecticut, where his father was a crusader for a  number of causes--among them abolition--and his mother who was descended from Puritan leaders. And before you jump on that, it was the Puritans who brought intellectual depth to the country from England... as well as a number of other things.

Gillette began an apprenticeship as an actor at a young age, coming in contact with Mark Twain. Twain became his mentor. he was not immediately successful; it wasn't until he was 28 that a job with the Frohman brothers allowed him to incororpate skills as a playwright, actor, and director (at low pay). But his first production carrying all three roles was enough of a success that he co-authroed another with the famous novelist Frances Hodgson Burnett, author of The Secret Garden, The Little Princess, and Little Lord Fauntleroy, some of which titles ought to be familiar.

Wikipedia notes that Gillette is best known for his inventions to the world of theatre (I disagree!), but these include "realistic stage settings, and special sound and lighting effects." He also wrote about realism as a style of acting and staging, articulating for the American theatre what the European theatre already knew--which is not a bad thing. Typically, during Gillette's lifetime American theatre lagged the Europeans in staging avant-garde styles--which realism was, at that time.

Gillette came to international success as the playwright and lead actor in The Secret Service and Sherlock Holmes, in the mid- to late-1890s.

And this is where I came in. My presentation was about Gillette's "creation" of Holmes as an enduring and iconographic character. Gillette co-authored--or authored, depending on how you slice it--the first successful Sherlock Holmes performance script (mixing 7 different stories); his co-writer, perhaps, was Arthur Conan-Doyle himself. Gillette was the first actor to use/wear the deerstalker, the Inverness cape, the bent pipe, to use the words "Elementary" and "Hunt's afoot!" I researched and wrote about Gillette's creation of Holmes as a character on paper, but more importantly on stage: the start of a character image used by scores of actors and writers since, including the most recent actors Downey, Syder, and Cumberbatch.

The crux of my paper was the development of this character by Gillette, and its subsequent development by other actors, films, playwrights, TV writers, comic books, and fanzines... The immediate image of the detective has become incredibly pervasive in our culture, affecting writers like Chandler, Hammett, Grafton, Crais, and Child.

What I'm working on right now

Next Friday morning I'm giving a paper at a conference. I sent off the suggestion to a panel just on a whim--to a fellow academic I knew some time ago but haven't been in touch with for some time.

The title of the paper is "Women Writing Women: Herstory in American Drama."

The subject is three plays, each written by a woman, about three famous American women; the larger, more general topic is biography, gender and American drama. The plays are Alison's Room by Susan Glaspell, Alice in Bed by Susan Sontag, and Charm by Kathleen Cahill. As I said, I proposed this paper on a whim, actually just after seeing Charm here in Big D, and really with an interest to doing something in American dramatic literature again.

But funny connections have emerged as I work on these three plays, which will weave into my discussion and, hopefully, into a longer article.

Alison's Room is the Pulitzer Prize play by Susan Glaspell, possibly the first great women playwright in America. You may never have heard of her because she was a contemporary and friend of Eugene O'Neill, and his fame overshadowed hers. But they were the two playwrights first produced by the Provincetown Players, and nowadays Glaspell is often "known" for that. She was, however, also a journalist, short story writer and novelist, and in fact wrote in most genres with an impressive career. Alison's Room is her "biography" of Emily Dickinson, and takes up the subject of Dickinson's legacy as a woman, as much as a poet.

Glaspell

Dickinson

Alice in Bed by Susan Sontag is a freely imagined biography of Alice James, the sister of William and Henry, who was an invalid almost all her life, until breast cancer killed her at 43. Sontag, of course, is best known as an intellectual and writer of philosophy and critique on many topics, but this is her sole play.

James

Charm by Cahill is about Margaret Fuller, again a kind of imagined biography of the woman who wrote Woman in the Nineteenth Century, the first American document on feminism and a colleague of the New England transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau.

Fuller

All three women--Dickinson, James, and Fuller--lived in approximately the same period, the middle 19th century. All three playwrights--Glaspell, Sontag, and Cahill--take a less-than-documentary look at their subject matter.

But the major things I realized in starting this project are these:

• these "imagined" biographies are the only ones I could find by women about famous American women: meaning published, produced, award-winning, "known" beyond a small circle;
• all of the more famous or successfully produced biographies of American women are written by male playwrights;
• film offers more biographies--again, written almost entirely by men--and is a more successful venue.

Why? I think--and this is part of my discussion in the paper to come--because famous women are not famous for the same action-oriented, active things men are famous for. Women are neither presidents nor generals, inventors nor explorers, public speakers nor society transformers... and yes, I know that is an inaccurate as well as sweeping generality. When women are famous for the things I've mentioned, it is often in a woman-dominated sphere or for a woman-friendly topic (like birth control) that is somewhat controversial and has little "action" (i.e., violence, fighting, or car chases) associated with it.

And in considering those women who do these things, their biography is most often directed to their personal lives: as mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, or women who give up love, or lose love through their ambitions. Who sacrifice for their family, or who sacrifice their family to their ambition/art/cause.

This is not the focus of male biographies--a fact which is not new.

But I am also curious about the attitude these female playwrights take toward their subjects: Glaspell toward Dickinson, Sontag toward James, Cahill toward Fuller.

Oh, and Sontag includes an "Alice" teaparty where James has tea with Fuller and Dickinson... that's one of those weird coincidences I had forgotten about when I proposed the paper. It is a kind of Mad Hatter meeting among these three American women.

In any case, I am hoping this continues to give me insights into my work with French actresses and the men who "imagined" them.

Monday...

Today is the first day of my actual summer... ok, this is a transitional week, as there are two My U events and I have one set of grades to post today.

But the main point is: onto the summer schedule!

Which basically means spending time every day writing. Four hours in the a.m., and four hours in the p.m. I am all about product, baby, not process, which will be messy and rough.

Summer is also about getting my house in order, literally -- getting completely out of the Old Apartment and donating/selling/trashing the stuff I no longer use or want and getting completely into my New Apartment, hanging pictures and arranging the several closets. I find myself already resenting the extra stuff I have and the lose of lovely open spaces of "empty" rooms. Oh, well. Once I finish, everything will be still spacious and uncluttered--or so I plan. Target date: 5.25.11.

I have a lot of books to read to get the 50 done this year--oh, what a problem! I am currently working on Rebecca Skloot's study, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, as an audiobook and Van Gogh's letters with his brother, Dear Theo, as a book-book.

I also have to take care of the details for my trip to Boston, DC, and home, visiting family and friends while giving a paper at a conference (more about the paper later: fascinating topic, just by accident!).

This week, just the start-up is enough. By next week, I hope to have hit my stride completely.

The flowers are from my time in Oxford in 2008, from the Botanical Gardens. I recommend this stop when you are in that lovely town.

JANE EYRE: The New One

Since Jane Eyre was one of those seminal books for me as a young girl (2.11.10), of course I went to see the newest version, starring MiaWasikowska as Jane and Michael Fassbinder as Mr. Rochester, directed by Cary Fukunaga.

General overall comment: go see it if you are a fan of the book or the story.

Caveat: the screenplay by Moira Buffini moves like a house a-fire and has a more Gothic feeling than I think the novel embraces. Buffini includes sizable segments from the three parts of the book: Jane's life prior to coming to Thornfield Hall, her life at Thornfield/with Mr. Rochester, and her time with St. John Rivers (played by Jamie Bell), who actually gets a lot more time than his character warrants.

But everyone is here: Mrs. Reed and her nasty children, Mr. Brocklehurst and Helen Burns, and the crew at Thornfield. In fact, the most famous actor in the piece is Dame Judi Dench, who plays Mrs. Fairfax; Dench is of course spectacular as a working actress in her prime and graciously plays this small secondary role, mostly in scenes with the young Wasikowska.

My major arguments against this new version are personal. One, the screenplay, besides rocketing along so quickly there are none of Bronte's subtleties, also starts in an unlikely and ultimately flawed place: with Jane's rescue on the moor by St. John Rivers. Thus, while she "recovers" and starts to embrace her new life with the Rivers family, she flashes back to her childhood and time with Mr. Rochester, memories triggered by what feel like very cliched comments from the Rivers brother and sisters.



Jane is ogling the mutton-chops!

 And the book is very clear: St. John Rivers is a more typical "hero" than Rochester -- better looking, more selfless, more in keeping with a mainstream religious and political audience. he is the obvious choice, if you will, and the reader is meant to be surprised and affected by Jane's refusal to choose him rather than the problematic Rochester. Jamie Bell is unfortunately hampered by some mutton-chop whiskers that simply became more fascinating than his acting (yes, it's true) and kept him from in any way appearing heroic. No way was Jane even tempted -- which is all too clear.

Gothic Hero

Second objection: Fassbinder was handsome in a brooding sort of way, but did not have the humor or intelligence Rochester amply demonstrates in the novel. Jane doesn't fall for her employer's looks (that is made clear) but for the fact that his spirit, his character, his self is as stubborn, intelligent, quirky, and free-willed as her own. Fassbinder's Rochester is a weeper (oy, the sensitive Gothic hero!) and doesn't have nearly the right amount of self-aware arrogance the novel demonstrates. The Rochester here is more Harlequin Romance than Bronte, sadly. he's not bad, but in my opinion the best Rochester was Toby Stephens (2006 BBC-TV version).

Third objection: there is absolutely no time to breathe, to appreciate, the enjoy the story. It's a roller coaster ride. Which disappointed me, because the end result was more Danielle Steele than Charlotte Bronte: a romance where there is no need for pausing because the whole thing is so shallow that it is like eating whipped cream. No need to chew. Whereas, as I see it, Jane Eyre is actually more like a savory beef pot pie, thick with gravy and veg. Not solely romantic, but delightfully seasoned, filling, and, on a cold winter's night on the moors, something you're glad to linger over.

And Bronte's novel is, in fact, not solely a romance but a social critique, an indictment of class inequity, and a compelling portrait of an intelligent young woman who knows that because of her lack of fortune and pretty face, she has limited opportunities and yet she is a fierce, free, intelligent, compassionate being. It is about atonement and forgiveness, it is about paying for the mistakes of our youth, it is about love (and not merely romantic love, but filial love and deep friendship). it is about judging people by their appearance, and (in a very early form) an indictment of the social text that some people, because they are rich or beautiful, are superior to or more entitled than the poor, the ugly, the crippled in body or mind.

Jane sees the world very clearly, and while she understands that her perceptions are colored by her love, her envy, her fear, or her anger, she records for us her perceptions and her prejudices without being preachy or priggish.

The movie eliminates that in favor of Jane as romantic, helpless heroine, the little girl enamoured of and healing the damaged hero... except (spoiler alert!) he is never damaged as the novel requires in its hard justice. And the film ignores Bronte's sense of justice, which is hard and perhaps thus not comfortable to our pink-clouded romantic eyes.

This is the same kind of Hollywood mishandling that damaged the Pride and Prejudice of a few years ago: way too Gothic, was too emo to be true to Austen's sense of justice and independence... as well as the author's clear-eyed and harder sense of reality.

Huckleberry Finn, revisited via Daily Show

Just what I said! Done better and funnier by The Daily Show's Larry Wilmore.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-january-11-2011/mark-twain-controversy?xrs=share_copy

Brilliant response to stupid "political correctness" of "fixing" Mark Twain's original (and brilliant) text. Larry Wilmore calls it like it should be... if we were really both political and correct.

50 Books

This year my challenge is to read 50 books outside my favorite genres, including re-reading favorites from years past. I’m thinking of the following as a list of suggestions, as well as books I have piled up in my house waiting to be read. These books are not in any particular order, and won’t be read in the exact order below, but around and about. A number of them are books I've had in my "to read" pile for some time, and some are simply books I've wanted to read or re-read.
1. More than Love Letters by Rosie Thornton
2. Paradiso by Dante Aligheri
3. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
4. Life and Death of Anne Boleyn by E.W. Ives
5. Shelley by Ann Wroe
6. The Sentry by Robert Crais
7. The First Man by Robert Crais
8. South of Beach by Pat Conroy
9. Just Kids by Patti Smith
10. Tinkers by Paul Harding
11. The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne
12. The Discovery of France by Graham Robb
13. Balzac by Graham Robb
14. Paris, Capitol of Modernity by David Harvey
15. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
16. The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz
17. The Collaborative Habit by Twyla Tharp
18. Dear Theo by Vincent Van Gogh
19. Orientalism by Edward Said
20. Rhythm in Drama by Kathleen George
21. Living the Writer’s Life by Eric Maisel
22. The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell
23. Too Nice for Your Own Good by Duke Robinson
24. Getting Things Done by David Allen
25. Deep Writing by Eric Maisel
26. Feel the Fear and Do it Anyways by Susan Jeffers
27. Other Powers by Barbara Goldsmith
28. Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
29. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
30. Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson
31. Body Clutter
32. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
33. Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
34. Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
35. The Anthologist by Nicholas Baker
36. The Longest Silence by Thomas McGuane
37. Chez Panisse by Alice Waters
38. An Omelette and a Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David
39. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
40. The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria
41. The Road to Monticello by Kevin J. Hayes
42. Strapless by Deborah Davis
43. The Medici by Paul Strathern
44. Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
45. Touchstone by Laurie King
46. The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
47. The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard
48. Illuminations by Walter Benjamin
49. Montmartre and the Making of Culture by Gabriel Weissberg
50. On Photography by Susan Sontag

And on we go.

I knew it!

As soon as I wrote it... so now I am halfway through The Sun Also Rises and loving it... again, of course, and absolutely homesick for Le Dome and Le Select and La Rotonde, walking the streets of Paris in the soft, blurred evening... breaks my heart, every time. Damned Hemingway!

If I were in Paris... Friday, October 8, 2010

If I were in Paris today... how would I spend my day? Well, it's Friday, so I might, just might, give les archives a pass and do a little sightseeing, a little shopping.

Since it is autumn already in Paris, I might want to go and get myself some hot chocolate at Angelina's. On the Rue de Rivoli, across from the Tuileries, Angelina's serves the best (THE BEST) hot chocolate in Paris. Thick, rich, real l'Africain which must be diluted with cream. If you think, oh, no, too fattening! you are not thinking like a Parisian. Enjoy one cup and then take a looooooong walk through the Tuileries and along the Seine, n'est-ce pas? Pleasure in many forms.

Probably, being me, I would have stopped in to Galignari's, one of my favorite bookstores, right next door to Angelina's, and bought a new book or magazine to pass the time with while I drank my l'Africain. Galignari's is where I saw Karl Lagerfeld, big as life and fully tricked out, with his "assistant." Aside from that, an excellent site for finding new English-language books, great guides to obscure Paris, or glossy fashion or house magazines from all countries (my guilty pleasure).

Today I would probably also take myself back along the Rue de Rivoli to the Musee des Arts Decoratif (1st arr.) for their current exhibits, "Jewelry Art Deco and the Avant Garde" or "Le Belle Epoque de Jules Cheret: l'affiche au decor." The website is: http://www.lesartsdecoratifs.fr/english-439/accueil-710/une-715/english-439/exhibitions/current-events. This poster is one of Cheret's most famous, being Bernhardt herself advertising rice powder.

I might go along to the Centre Culturel Irlandais (5th arr.) to see one of several exhibits they have right now on Irish artists, including an exhibit of work by the sculptress Vivienne Roche, on "The Geometry of Water." Her work, focused on the sea and the beach, sounds fascinating, and it is actually very illuminating to see artists from non-French countries exhibitied in Paris. Here is the site: http://www.centreculturelirlandais.com/modules/movie/scenes/home/index.php?fuseAction=art. Below is one of Roche's scupltures: none of the ones in Paris are this grand in scale, I think. I don't look at sculpture enough: I mostly do the painting and photography route, but my trips to the Musee Zadkine for example, convinced me that I should spend more time looking at 3-D art as well.

Having walked back along the Seine to the 5th, I would probably search through a few stalls of les bookinistes (or bouquinistes), perhaps finding something delightful in an old print or used book, then sit myself down at a cafe that has a fabulous view of Notre Dame for a glass of wine or an expresso. Watch the sun set, the sky turn dark (well before 6 pm), and then wrap myself in my warm coat to hurry home on the Metro.

Tomorrow, I would head back to les archives, to Tolbiac in particular, not for research, but to hear Alain Baraton, the head gardener at Versailles, talk about the potager of Louis XIV. Ooh la la! I have visited le potager, which is open to the public but no on the grounds of the famous chateau: one must search a little bit to find this vegetable garden of the Sun King. And it is worth it! Louis loved his vegetables--artichokes, asparagus, etc., but not the common potato--and had then served in delectable variety. I have also eaten at the restaurant nearby that specializes in dishes made from the vegetables and fruits grown in this garden, all gourmet fare. The talk is free, from 11 am-12 noon, and could be followed by a delightful lunch at one of the many Asian restaurants in the vicinity of Tolbiac.

Below, a view of le potager.

 Happy Friday!