yearbook portrait, nu?

Reading: The Green Knight

In the midst of: Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Not yet given up on: John Milton, Paradise Lost;

On deck: Don Quijote

Moving: I was good all week, anyway.

House: well, I swept and vacuumed.

Garden: too damn cold

20 April 2002: Books

Today was really unnecessarily cold. In winter, "unnecessarily" cold is under 10; in late April, say today, 35 is unnecessarily cold. I thought I was late putting up screens, having scraped and primed but not yet painted both sides of those for the east side of the house, but having three sides of the house screened might explain why it's so damn frigid in the house. We slept late, shivering under the blanket and the duvet cover (which is two layers of flannel) and a small-hours addition of our two bathrobes, then spent hours on the couch reading.

RDC is reading Touching the Void, about two climbers surviving, Beck Weathers-style, an Andes climb. He would read me bits, telling me about shattered knees and crevasses and being left for dead and frostbite, until I had to kick him. I read The Green Knight, which is unlike any novel I have ever read before.

Now, any good novel will be unlike any novel you've ever read before. Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World News. The Unconsoled. A Clockwork Orange. Possession. Nobody's Fool. The Good Earth. But this is different in a different way. I can feel the influences coming and going--Iris Murdoch had clearly read The Golden Notebook before she wrote this and, if this novel is at all typical of Murdoch's style, I can sense the impact she in turn had on A.S. Byatt. It's not as if it stands alone in English literature, apart and beyond the stream of tradition (which includes, fr'instance, Gawaine and the Green Knight) . It is, I am glad to report, unlike Murdoch's first novel, Under the Net, which I liked not at all. Perhaps it's just unlike the sort of novels I usually read.

Well, anyway, I like it, and I'm glad, because now I can talk about it with RJH. He told me that a character in it reminded him of me, and I know which one he means. Or at least I think I do; if he meant anyone else but Moy I should be surprised. RDC--not RJH--recently spurred me from the dinner table with his impression of my cell phone which with its dying battery was bleeping forlornly, wanting to be fed. RJH recognized me in a character who imbues coffee cups and stones with personality, recognizes the One Correct Pattern in which mugs can be arranged in a cupboard and worries that stones she has removed from their natural habitat miss their other stone friends and the sun and rain and wind. Then there's her older sisters' dedication to English and history compared to her own academic shiftlessness and her adoration of the dog Anax.

What sucked me into the novel by the second page was the sisters' changing their names. They are Alethea, Sophia, and Moira, Greek for truth, wisdom, and fate; they named themselves Aleph, Sefton, and Moy. I'm fond of the name Moy anyway: in Thai, it means Little Sister, and I understand that a younger sister, particularly of an older brother, will often be called that. Or so I learned from my college friend Moy. Everyone in her family except the third child called her Moy; the youngest called her...what, I do not remember. Something meaning Older Sister, maybe.

The importance given to naming is one reason I love Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison, especially The Handmaid's Tale with its nameless protagonist and The Robber Bride whose three heroines each changes her name, and Beloved with its unnamed baby ghost and the heritage of Sixo and Song of Solomon's Not Doctor Street and Pilate.

On the other hand, Invisible Man just isn't compelling me. The pacing of The Green Knight is uneven and even though I like and admire it, I doubt I'll ever want to reread it; but Invisible Man I'll be pleased just to get through once. I realize what a social reject this makes me. I had already read "The Battle Royale" as a short story, and I knew he was going to get expelled and have deceitful letters and that a little bit of dark pigment makes white paint whiter than white, and really that's all that happens in the first 200 pages. The only thing that has struck me so far is the dreamlike quality of the scene in the Golden Day, when he keeps wanting to leave but can't leave and all these happenings and miles of discourse delay him. It reminded me of The Unconsoled.

Meanwhile, really the best book I've read in ages was Zoë's Zodiac. Kymm taunted me by making an obscure children's book reference and then saying you could always tell when she's been reading me because she then makes such references herself. I prostrated myself asking the title and then made the library dig it out of its cellar like a malaria victim--there, my own not-obscure movie reference--and boy, what a great book. I read the first couple of chapters walking back from the library and it made me very giggly indeed and I nearly ran into CoolBoss as I read walking down the hall to my cube. I told her of the book's initial charms: the name Zoë--which I didn't love when it was an age-appropriate book for me but do now--and her waist-length braid, which ditto. Here CoolBoss made a connection: "That's another reason you liked Prodigal Summer, isn't it?" she asked.

Yep. I'm a hair hypocrite. It's not long hair by itself though but long single braids, like Deana's and Zoë's and Turtle's (and, um, hopefully mine). Salamanca's hair was long but she wore it loose, which I hope to persist in considering messy and unflattering and impractical to my dying day. (A single braid can be unflattering too but is neither messy nor impractical.)

CoolBoss didn't like Prodigal Summer, agreeing with me that the expository dialogue was stilted and unnaturally pedagogical, and disagreeing with me that this in addition to other flaws ruined the book. Oh well. Talking to Charenton Friday night, the first non-news thing APB asked was whether I had read this book. They both like all the Kingsolver they've read, and they listen to audio versions of the books which Kingsolver herself reads. That might be interesting; perhaps I should find audio versions of The Bean Trees or Pigs in Heaven or Animal Dreams.

The new news which was the reason for the call was that yesterday TJZD safely delivered a son whom I shall call Red. He is already betrothed to Nisou's daughter, but we shall have to see how they like each other in June.

So. Today we read on the couch, I was saying several paragraphs ago. Of course Blake was with us, deep in his spring moult. Early this morning on the phone with my father I swept the main floor; in the mid-afternoon when we finally ventured out grocery shopping, the couch where we'd spent the interim hours and the floor around it looked like someone had plucked a dove, then cut all their 20 nails, and finally upended a vacuum cleaner bag upon it. Feathers are the highest-maintenance surface covering I can imagine for a sentient critter. Periodically I'd pick up a discarded feather and tuck it up the leg cuff of RDC's fleece pants. 'Cause it was cold, and maybe he needed a downy layer too.

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My sister used some frequent flyer miles on magazine subscriptions--golf for our father, Wine Spectator for RDC, brain candy for herself for the gym, and Smithsonian for me. I am so impressed with her excellent choice. Recently Chile gave me an issue of Smithsonian with articles on both the camera obscura (for the Girl with a Pearl Earring reference) and Usan design, of which there's also an exhibit at the DAM. We've already seen the "Dutch Interiors in the Age of Rembrandt" exhibit and will go the Usan design one sometime soon. The Dutch exhibit includes exactly one Vermeer, A Lady Writing. This we examined carefully, looking for what Griet called the one detail that would catch the light and the eye, the pearl earring of her own painting. I've loved that magazine for a long time and having been subscribed to it I can enjoy it, whereas subscribing myself would make me feel guilty.

Hey, I might go to Vancouver for a long weekend in May. RDC has wanted to bring me there for a long time. I figure water and mountains and water, yeah, I'll like it. Also I'm going home in June when Nisou is cis-pond, and this time I am damn well going to rent a car. I should have plenty of time, too--I just completed my fifth year and am now accumulating four weeks of leave annually. What a great job.