Girl Detective

#53 in my 2007 book challenge was Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. This was a long,uncomfortable read for me. It reminded me of my experience reading Confederacy of Dunces. I didn’t like it. I knew it was supposed to be funny but I didn’t find it so. Yet I also could see why it was important, well done, and in the case of IM, a classic.

An unnamed black everyman careers through a series of circumstances that are often excruciating. Slowly, he learns about society, race, and the pressures of history. It’s frustrating to read because of the main character’s naivete and frequent inaction. Also unpleasant are the many injustices done unto him. But his journey to the end and his transformation make this a kind of bildungsroman. Interestingly, my use of a German term isn’t as incongruous as it might be. Ellison was clearly influenced by the philosophy of Hegel, as well as many other dead, white, males. He took a great deal of criticism for this in the wake of the book’s publication and subsequent success–it won the National Book Award, among other plaudits. He notes in the 1981 introduction, though, that he was trying to have an intellectual black main character, something he found lacking in most other literature.

I noticed several writing themes throughout the book. Ellison used terms for light and black deliberately and with positive and negative connotations, respectively. He rarely, if ever, identified characters by their race, and left it to the reader to piece together whether they were white or black through other details. And his prose was influenced by the musical style of the blues. It often had a dreaming, wandering quality that nevertheless carried the narrative through with strength.

I did not enjoy reading this book, but race is always an uncomfortable subject. As an example, I’ve used “black” in this review rather than the more modern and PC “African American”. This book is well worth reading, and I’m glad I did.

Knuffle Bunny Too is a worthy sequel to Mo Willems’s Knuffle Bunny, and a welcome addition to his impressive oeuvre. While I don’t consistently love all his books (such as Leonardo and Edwina) my kids, 4yo Drake and 21mo Guppy, are gaga over Pigeon, Knuffle Bunny, Elephant, and Piggie.

As in its predecessor, KB2 meshes photos with Willems’s illustrations to great effect. Trixie is back, and she’s gone on to great conversational lengths (if not heights) from the conclusion of KB1. She is disturbed to learn that her beloved Knuffle Bunny (pronounced Kuh-nuffle, as it is in German) is not unique. Rivalry and hijinks ensue. Dad gets bossed about; happiness is restored in the end.

Careful observers can detect the slight differences in the bunnies, as well as three appearances of Pigeon. Like Hitchcock, the Pigeon appears somewhere in all of Willems’s books.

Looking for toys that will bring joy? Both The Pigeon and Knuffle Bunny now are in plush form!

#77 in my 2007 movie challenge was Hot Fuzz, Simon Pegg’s parody of bad buddy-cop movies. It’s silly, goofy fun, though the blood, gore and violence make it not for the squeamish. While it runs a little long at two hours, it’s really quite good, which is an impressive feat, given the less-than-high-art source material, like Bad Boys II and Point Break. What’s more interesting to contemplate, though, is how studios keep churning out bad buddy-cop movies, whether drama or comedy, that don’t hold a candle to this spoof.

When I brought the DVD home from the library, 4yo Drake asked what it was called. Once I told him Hot Fuzz, he pestered me to watch it constantly, and was crestfallen when I said I’d returned it. It has a very catchy title.

#76 in my 2007 movie challenge was How to Marry a Millionaire, a classic good bad movie. Bacall, Grable, and Monroe play models who rent a posh NYC penthouse in order to lure a better class of suitor into marriage. Unsurprisingly, the scheme goes awry. They are forced to sell the furnishings in order to stay, and Grable and Monroe end up marrying for love, not money. Bacall thinks she does the same, but her ostensibly happy ending rang false, and her comeuppance was too slight.

The scheming sexism is a disappointment, as is the predictable story. For a film starring three beautiful actresses, there was a curious dearth of close-ups. And the seven-minute long orchestra intro, followed by long credits over loving shots of NYC, made me wonder if the movie was ever going to start. But there’s a sass and style that overcome the film’s faults. The costumes are by turns beautiful and deliberately outrageous, exemplified in a very funny modeling scene. All three end up renouncing their mercenary plan. And there are several surprisingly post-modern references to the stars’ previous famous work: Monroe wears an outfit named “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend”; Grable re-enacts her famous over-the-shoulder pose; and Bacall, defending the attractiveness of older men, remarks, “Look at Roosevelt, look at Churchill, look at that old fella–what’s his name–in The African Queen. Absolutely crazy about him.”

Enjoyable, as long as your expectations aren’t high.

#52 in my 2007 book challenge was 1001 Nights of Snowfall, written by Bill Willingham and illustrated by many. It’s a graphic novel original collection of linked short stories, set in Willingham’s mythical Fables world. Fables, for the uninitiated, is a monthly comic from the Vertigo line of DC Comics, very much in the tradition of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. It takes mythic elements–here, characters from fairy tales–and transforms with new, and very modern, twists on the ancient tales. In the series, a group of fables, e.g. Snow White, escaped a rampaging other-worldly Adversary and established a “safe” community within New York City.

1001 Nights of Snowfall has been sitting on my metaphorical shelf for some time. It is a series of short stories set within a larger frame. Snow White, as ambassador for Fabletown, visits a sultan in the East. He says he is going to marry her, then kill her. Instead, she beguiles him with stories, all of which provide details into the past of many of the Fables characters. As in all good fiction, the stories answer many questions, but beget even more.

As in the Sandman series, there are different artists for different stories. The amazing Charles Vess illustrates the framing story. The other stories are done by some of the brightest talents in the arts and comics world, all of whose work is beautifully suited to the fantastic world of the Fables.

My one concern, and it’s a big one, is Willingham’s disturbing sexism, which I’ve noticed occasionally in Fables, but was more prevalent in his previous fantasy works. He’s done a decent job of overcoming, or perhaps hiding, this in the ongoing series by making both male and female characters by turns nasty, loving, loyal, and depraved. In 1001 Nights, though, there is a troubling rape scene in the Frog Prince short story, which is unnecessarily depicted in the art. The story would have been more powerful, IMO, if the story and the illustration showed this in a more sophisticated, allusive and less graphic manner, as was done in the first Snow White short story in the book. As written and illustrated, it places itself squarely in the realm of the torture porn so prevalent in recent movies like Saw and Hostel. It’s a short part (two or three panels) within a longer, very moving story. But for me, it marred the entire work.

I enjoy Fables the series, and I thought this book was quite good. But my reservations about some of the depictions of women in both the series and 1001 Nights result in a qualified recommendation of both.

#75 in my 2007 movie challenge was Noah Baumbach’s Squid and the Whale. I’d avoided watching this. While I heard it was good, I also was rarely in the mood for a depressing divorce movie. But it’s been mentioned so many times recently, since Baumbach has a new film out soon, that I felt it was time to check it out. I’m glad I did. This is a dry, darkly funny and very moving film. The acting is across-the-board outstanding, and the characters complex. It was hard to watch the toll the divorce took on the two young sons without squirming, though. The quirky script and well-chosen music reminded me of Wes Anderson, so I wasn’t surprised to see his name in the credits as a producer.

I’ve been on a home-making tear. Starting Sunday, I weeded our yard and cut down the hostas. I roasted a pumpkin, then toasted the seeds and pureed the flesh. Yesterday I managed to do laundry AND put it away. I made pumpkin chocolate-chip cupcakes with maple cream-cheese frosting* for Drake’s preschool snack today. (He’s getting better at baking: he didn’t sneeze in the batter. I’m getting quicker: I stopped him before licking the frosting utensils at least three times.)

I’m not sure what’s prompted this nesting phase; perhaps it’s the looming of winter. But I’m exhausted. I’m off to make sure those cupcakes turned out well. (Again.)

*Recipe from the Jessica Seinfeld cookbook, Deceptively Delicious that all the moms I know are talking about, and which my kind mother-in-law brought me as a gift when she visited. It’s given me minor notoriety among friends: Gasp! “You HAVE it? Can I SEE it?” I’ve tried a few recipes, like sneaking pumpkin into mac and cheese, or sloppy joes, or cupcakes. She goes too far in making the recipes low fat, though, so she’s sacrificed both flavor and texture in the recipes I’ve tried so far. But it’s a lovely, hardcover, spiral bound book with good photography and clever “talking head” illustrations. The art director should be proud.

#51 in my 2007 book challenge was Marrit Ingman’s Inconsolable: How I Threw my Mental Health out with the Diapers.

To borrow her phrase, reading this book made me wonder if Marrit Ingman had been reading my mail.

A good friend, and post-partum depression survivor, lent it to me in the wake of my own struggle with PPD after the birth of Guppy, now 21 months old. Ingman is smart, funny, and often brutally honest about the often ugly underbelly of new motherhood. From a birth that deviated from plan to a rash-y, colic-y infant, Ingman’s experience was so physically and emotionally exhausting that I can’t imagine anyone going through it and NOT becoming depressed. Shifting hormones, sleep deprivation, and the bewilderment of breastfeeding are just a few of the circumstances that make new motherhood less than idyllic.

Ingman details the exhaustion, the ambivalence, the recurring regrets, the suicidal thoughts, and the waves of anger that were all part of her experience. I empathized, I laughed, and I cringed at various points. The book sometimes felt a little disjointed; it’s more a collection of essays than a linear memoir. But the insights into the struggle, and the importance of surviving, are present throughout.

It is taboo for mothers to confess their anger, their confusion, their frustration, their resentment…Looking back now from a place of relative sanity, I see maternal anger everywhere, bubbling through the veneer of politesse, reaching out from inside the platitudinous language we turn to when we are confounded: “I thought I was going to lose my mind.”

I kept taking the Paxil. I started writing and here I am. I woke up to a rash and a screaming kid this morning at 3:30. It’s more manageable most days. You could say it’s better.

I’d discovered from my own experience socializing with other mothers that we could talk about just about anything other than mental illness. We could eat braised puppy and defecate on each other before the topic of PPD would come up.

You have become the person you sneered at when you were young and single and knew everything. You are That Mother.

“You’re very judgmental, you know,” The Good Therapist had pointed out one time. “Do you realize how critical you are of others? You think you’re smarter than everyone else.”

In the end, she reminds us of something I’ve written about many times. Mothers don’t need judgment, especially from other mothers; we need help. When you feel that snarky comment coming on, ask if there’s anything you can do, instead.

Mothers of the world, we’ve got to have each other’s backs. Without working together, we literally cannot survive. Because we are divided–into “working” and “stay-at-home” parents, into “natural” or “attachment” parents and “mainstream” parents–we remain marginalized as a group. We just haven’t noticed because we’re too busy shooting each other down, trying to glean little nuggets of self-satisfaction from an enterprise that is still considered less significant than paid work

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is one of my favorite books I read this year. I recorded her appearance on Oprah. It was mostly Oprah gushing about the book, and an appearance by Richard from Texas, whoEat, Pray, Love was almost completely ignored. I was feeling especially bad about having wasted an hour (and tricked 4yo Drake into watching it with me) when O asked EG for ideas. Gilbert offered these three pieces of advice, not from the book:

1. Begin the morning by asking yourself (and possibly writing in your journal), “What do I really, really, really want?” She was firm about the need for three “really”s.

2. End the day by writing down a short description of the happiest moment of the day.

3. Change your mantra to something positive.

I know it sounds cheesy, but I’ve found that #3 is a big deal. When I was floudering in my post-partum depression I had a discouragingly wide repertoire of bad messages for myself, which included, but are not confined to: I suck at this; I can’t stand this!; I could kill myself; Oh, shoot me now; I hate my life; I’m a moron…

Lather, rinse, repeat.

In April, I attended an outpatient program for my depression, and my mantras have improved dramatically since then. Negative ones still creep in, but I notice them now. Instead, the one getting the most play in my head lately is the chorus from the Disney Cinderella: You can do it. Fortunately it’s not in the squeaky mouse voices.

#74 in my 2007 movie challenge was Johnny To’s Triad Election. I borrowed this from the library after I read the glowing piece on his films at Salon by Stephanie Zacharek, who called it a Hong Kong movie for people who don’t think they like Hong Kong movies.

The 96-minute Asian gangster film was well acted, well shot, well directed, and had a fabulous musical score. But it wasn’t for me. There was a great deal of violence, and it’s hard to follow a subtitled movie when my face is turned away from the screen. And to me it felt like yet another “I tried to get out and they keep pulling me back in!” mob movies. Yet I loved Infernal Affairs, so I can appreciate Hong Kong mob films.

So if well-made Hong Kong action mob movies are your thing, you’ll probably like it. If torture violence bugs you, or if you’ve developed mob-film ennui, skip it.

#50 in my 2007 book challenge was Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. My goal for the year was fifty, and I’m happy I’m going to exceed it. See, it IS possible for parents of small children to read, and to read books of substance!

This is labeled memoir/graphic narrative, since it can hardly be called a graphic novel. This is one of the best books I’ve read this year. I’ve not read her comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For, but friends have and recommend it. Bechdel’s art perfectly reflects her memoir–gentle, sad, measured, careful, and caring. It is both expressive and engaging. Interestingly, it called to my mind the style of Carla Speed McNeil, who writes/illustrated in the very different genre of fantasy.

The fun home of the title is how the family jokingly refers to the family business inherited by her father, a funeral home. Bechdel deftly balances myriad elements–her own memories, childhood journal excerpts (that amazingly manage not to be dull or irritating, but rather deserving of empathy or pity), literary interpretation, humor, and sadness–to tell the story about her family and specifically her father, a complex and intriguing person. It would be easy to read him as a villain if Bechdel didn’t so meticulously make him human and complicated. Further impressing me was that the story jumped back and forth in time, yet was easy to follow. This book is lovely to read both literally and pictorially. It’s a beautiful example of the power of graphic narratives.

Today I took 4yo Drake to the theater to see The Sound of Music. I had realistic expectations. He started to cry minutes into the last movie I tried, Ratatouille. He loves music, though, so I a nearby showing would a reasonable gamble. Things started off well, since there was an old-time organ concert of the movie music beforehand. I hadn’t known that the showing was a benefit, though, so there were several long speeches after the music but before the film. Drake began to get antsy, but then the movie began. In the olden days when this movie was made (1965) the credits were at the beginning of the film. The considerable list of names ran on, and Drake asked, “Is the movie over, Mom?” I didn’t think that boded well for the 2 hour 54 minute movie. But when the credits finished and the movie began with the panning shots over the mountains, Drake was enthralled. He stayed mostly still for almost two hours, nodding when I asked if he liked it, and shaking his head no when I asked if he wanted to go. Eventually, though, he said he wanted to go home. This happened at a good break in the movie–right after the kids go to bed at the party.

I can’t remember how long it’s been since I’ve seen the movie. Probably not since I was a kid myself. But the welcome familiarity of the story, music, and lyrics was a comfort, and sharing it with Drake was a joy. I even found my grinchy old self tearing up, incongruously during “Do-Re-Mi.” Drake says he wants to get both the CD and the DVD.

So, to borrow a trope:

Movie tickets: $13
Popcorn with real butter, plus drink: $5
Introducing childhood classic to my music-loving child: incalculable.

#49 in my 2007 book challenge was Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma.

The blessing of the omnivore is that she can eat a great many things in nature. The curse of the omnivore is that when it comes to figuring out which of these things are safe to eat, she’s pretty much on her own.

Pollan’s thoughtful, thorough, and provoking book is one of the best I’ve read all year. In fluid prose that is neither needlessly academically esoteric, or dumbed down for the masses, Pollan examines four food systems, the meals they produce, and their hidden costs and suffering. The four are agricultural industrial, organic industrial, organic sustainable, and hunted/gathered. In the end, it’s not hard to determine where Pollan’s bias lies after all his research and experience. What makes this book so compelling, though, is that he takes effort and time to explore and explain all the alternative views. The cruelty and problems of industrial farming are clearly delineated, but Pollan’s book situates them in time and place to make them understandable, though nonetheless disturbing.

I was surprised and concerned to learn how prevalent corn byproducts are in the North American diet. Another point I especially liked was that eaters must either be ignorant of where their food comes from and how it’s processed, or choose from smaller, more challenging method of eating, like vegetarianism, or a focus on locally farmed and sourced organic food.

To visit a modern Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) is to enter a world that for all its technological sophistication is still designed on seventeenth-century Cartesian principles: Animals are treated as machines–”production units”–incapable of feeling pain. Since no thinking person can possibly believe this anymore, industrial animal agriculture depends on a suspension of disbelief on the part of the people who operate it and a willingness to avert one’s eyes on the part of everyone else. Egg operations are the worst,

Pollan quotes Levi-Strauss about the ideal that food should be both good to think and good to eat. According to Pollan, this means that the eater knows how and where her food is produced, and feels good about. There’s another interpretation of the Levi-Strauss, phrase, though, that lends itself less well to Pollan’s text. As Pollan does, though, I find it a useful phrase that will help to guide my food choices. I’m no longer willfully ignorant of the provenance of much of my food. Already I do most of my family’s shopping at our local grocery cooperative. But after the book, I’ve resolved to seek out even more local, organic food, eschew products with high-fructose corn syrup, and cut back on the non-local, non-seasonal organic items that have hidden costs (e.g., petroleum used in transportation) in addition to their high prices.

This book has changed the way I think about food, and will change the way I shop and eat.

#73 in my 2007 movie challenge was Michael Clayton. In spite of hype, the fall films this year have received mostly mixed reviews. MC is one of the few I strongly wanted to see, and I wasn’t disappointed. Clooney plays the title character, and is believable as a tired, disappointed, struggling man. Tom Wilkinson tears up the screen as his manic-depressive colleague, though I think Tilda Swinton may steal the show as a falling-apart corporate lawyer. Though things are a bit confusing at the start, the movie ably fills in the details as it goes, and the end pulls it all together. The story, about subterfuge by a huge agri-corporation, has been done many times before. See Erin Brockovich and The Constant Gardener for two strong examples. But the solidity of the plot is cemented with able direction, and elevated by the strong performances of the entire cast, not just the leads. I thought this film was both enjoyable to see, and good to think about.

Greg Mortenson is fighting a personal war on terror that has an impact on all of us, and his weapon is not guns or bombs, but schools. What could be a better story than that?

–Parade editor-in-chief Lee Kravitz

#48 in my 2007 book challenge was Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. I was not excited when a friend picked this for one of my book groups. It sounded dull and a bit sappy. Once I started to read, though, my grinch-y heart melted, and the book completely won me over. Mortenson’s story is extraordinary, and it shines through all of Relin’s overwritten prose and Penguin’s sloppy spelling and typography mistakes.

After a failed attempt to climb K2, Mortenson got lost in Pakistan, and wound up in the village of Korphe. When he learned that the children were schooling themselves outdoors in the harsh climate, he promised he’d build them a school. Not only did he keep his promise, but he discovered a calling that led him to build schools throughout Pakistan, and into war-torn Afghanistan. By educating children, particularly girls, he continues to build a legacy of peace and understanding that defies the roots of terrorism. The details of Mortenson’s adventures are astonishing, and his story provides interesting insight into America’s conflict in the east, and with the Taliban and Al-Quaeda.

Read this book. Buy it, or request it at your library. Choose it for your book group. It’s a rich, provocative narrative; the effects linger after the last page.

If you buy the book at their site, 7% goes to girls’ scholarship in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

#47 in my 2007 book challenge was Elizabeth Swados’s My Depression: A Picture Book. With simple black line drawings and minimal texts, Swados sketches out her history of depression and anxiety, as well as her “little cloud” that grew into a “black hole”. She bravely admits how badly she behaves when she’s depressed, both towards herself and others. She also has amusing lists, such as things people have told her to try to get out of the depression on her own. In the end, though, a combination of medicine and therapy are what worked for her, and her story is of hope and self-acceptance. Her illustrations, reminiscent of Shel Silverstein’s, are deliberately messy, conveying the frazzled ugliness of depression, as well as the silly joy in well-being. I recommend this book for those who have gone through a depression, who are in a depression, or who have known someone who’s been depressed. That should pretty much cover us all, I think.

#46 in my 2007 book challenge was The Amber Spyglass, the final book of Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy. The third book felt a bit bloated compared to the first two, and the action slowed in places. But Pullman’s skill at multiple-world building continued as a strength, and the details, of the land of the dead, especially, were very satisfying. The polar bears are back, as are the fascinating daemons, but they’re both given short shrift compared to angels and heaven. The adults switch allegiances so often I lost track–who’s good and who’s bad, now?

Pullman’s narrative became much more anti-religion, as he expounded on in an interview with Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair when TAS was published. Interestingly, though, the absence of religion created voids that Pullman filled in the narrative with very similar things. Religion was a giant mistake, and there was no creator. But Dust was sentient, and had “gifted” humanity with consciousness, so it was a common, creative, animating spirit. The character of Will symbolizes free will, yet so much of the story is driven by fate, related to Lyra by the alethiometer, the witches from prophecies, and Mary Malone by the I Ching. I think Pullman worked hard to have an atheistic fantasy, but the end result was an agnostic one, which is a much richer, more complex result, I thought.

I liked the series a lot; I didn’t love it. Lyra never felt fully realized to me, though Will did. Some aspects of Dust were overexplained, while others were given less time. For example, why did the Dust stop rushing out of the world only because of humans–why hadn’t it done that before with the mulefa? But I was engaged with it from beginning to end, I cared about the characters, though some of them didn’t ring completely true with me, and the plot drew me through. It was fun, it was mostly well-written, and it had some big ideas that are interesting to discuss. It was well worth my time, even if I didn’t connect so completely as to love it.

Oh, I do rather miss the childish phrase, “No, duh!” I read a few things recently that brought it to mind.

1. Children need sleep.
2. Boy children shorten their mothers lives. (What? Only 34 weeks? I swear it feels like more than that already.) (Links from Arts and Letters Daily)

And, finally, one not-so-obvious thing that wasn’t at all surprising. I felt chagrined that I hadn’t intuited it between the lines:

3. Dumbledore was gay.

I am enchanted at how J.K. Rowling has the entire complicated backstory of her universe rattling around in her head. She could probably just do Q & A events for the rest of her life.

#72 in my 2007 movie challenge was Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole, supposedly a lost classic resurrected by the Criterion Collection. I can easily see why the movie bombed when it came out. It has Wilder’s hallmarks of dark humor and sarcasm, but in the end it’s too bitter. Kirk Douglas is a sleazy reporter who thinks he’s found his ticket out of small-town exile when he comes across a human interest story about a trapped treasure hunter. He and the other characters are almost beyond redemption, and their manipulation is queasy to watch. Smart and sharp, but too heartless for me to enjoy.

Recently released by the Criterion Collection, #71 in my 2007 movie challenge was David Mamet’s directorial debut, House of Games. Joe Mantegna is arresting in his first starring role, and it’s easy to see why Lindsay Crouse’s character was drawn to him. (Crouse was married to Mamet at the time. I am more familiar with her as the psych. prof. from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.) Crouse is a therapist with a patient who says he owes thousands of dollars. Crouse promises to try to help him, and gets drawn to a group of grifters. It’s a twisty, noir movie that turns some of the conventions upside down. Crouse is more the innocent bystander than the femme fatale. That role is filled more by Mantegna. The end is also not typical of noir; Crouse is not crushed by either the city or by crime. The transfer on the Criterion print is lovely. Crouse’s hair and wardrobe, though, are laughably typical of the 80’s, reminding me of Patrick Nagel prints and shoulder-padded power suits.