My "radio reader" reading of Kate Chopin's "The Awakening" debuts next Saturday at 5 pm on WFHB - 91.3, 98.1, 100.7 and 106.3 FM in and around Bloomington, IN.
This classic of feminist literature was published in 1899 and ended Chopin's already long and well-respected literary career. It was called "vile," "depraved," "sordid" and "depressing" by critics, was pulled from libraries, and prevented Chopin's latest collection of short stories from being published.
Having read it several times on the page and all the way through aloud, I think what transgressed the bounds of "good behavior" for literature was that Chopin succeeded in bringing the 19th-century reader into the expanding consciousness of a young woman and mother who discovers that she truly has a self, full of desire and talent and decision, that is separate and alive apart from her husband and children. Chopin's protagonist goes as far as a woman can in that era, and knows she can never go back. It was the "Thelma and Louise" of its day. Give a listen.
Episodes will be archived for download and podcast at WFHB.org.
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Thursday, September 13, 2012
New Review Up!
PJ Swanwick's site, Fiction for a New Age, seeks to define a new genre of "spiritual fiction" that goes Way Out There instead of just to church. I got to meet PJ Swanwick at the Buddhist Geeks Conference in Boulder, Colorado back in August, and could not be happier to have made this lady's acquaintance.
To read her review of YU: A ROSS LAMOS MYSTERY, go here.
Excerpt:
"Laughter’s jade stories burst at the seams with elegant, concise, and yet restrained prose that pierces the true nature of each character. She evokes sympathy for a villain with a single, well-crafted line: “He carries so many more secrets than I. We both need so much comfort. ” Spare and beautiful, each word of the many jade stories performs double and even triple duty–prose haiku. Even the act of eating in public becomes an intimate, sensual act filled with tension and danger, more highly charged–and more thrilling to the reader–than the most explicit passages of a romance novel."
PJ's reviews of other books on her site have swelled my "must-read" list - and if you are hungry for fiction that takes the spiritual dimensions of story seriously, these books will land on your list, too.
To read her review of YU: A ROSS LAMOS MYSTERY, go here.
Excerpt:
"Laughter’s jade stories burst at the seams with elegant, concise, and yet restrained prose that pierces the true nature of each character. She evokes sympathy for a villain with a single, well-crafted line: “He carries so many more secrets than I. We both need so much comfort. ” Spare and beautiful, each word of the many jade stories performs double and even triple duty–prose haiku. Even the act of eating in public becomes an intimate, sensual act filled with tension and danger, more highly charged–and more thrilling to the reader–than the most explicit passages of a romance novel."
PJ's reviews of other books on her site have swelled my "must-read" list - and if you are hungry for fiction that takes the spiritual dimensions of story seriously, these books will land on your list, too.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Friday, June 22, 2012
A Perfect World Made By Us -- 2
h/t to Barbara Rhyne Tucker, and her Facebook album, Cool By Design.
A Perfect World Made By Us -- 1
h/t to Barbara Rhyne Tucker, and her Facebook album, Cool By Design.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Tinker, Tailor, Whatta Guy
I make it a rule to see a movie that's been adapted from a book before I read the book. There are two reasons for this.
First, this is how I can see the movie for what it is, on its own terms, as a movie. Cinema. Which is a very different creature from a book -- different technology, different method of consumption, different emotional affect.
Second, with the cinema version running in my subconscious while I'm reading the book, I get to read two texts at once: the text the original author wrote, and the screen adaptation that wrenched, torqued and hammered literature into cinema.
I have seen Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy twice now in the cinema - I think twice is the minimum required viewings to catch everything and absorb the subtle cinematic structure built by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan, and notice how much character backstory and and information is delivered by the casting. (Can you imagine having Toby Jones suddenly become your boss? Yeeeeesh!)
In a bookstore today I picked up Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by LeCarre, read the first page and bought the thing on the spot. It was obvious that reading the book was going to be a rich pleasure, completely different from the movie and yet overflowing with meaning.
Two chapters in, I am committed to this book, because I know I am in the hands of a master storyteller. It doesn't matter how complicated things get - LeCarre will carry me through it.
He even does something right off the bat the usually drives me crazy: chapter two is so different from chapter one, in setting and characters, that it could be a second beginning to the story.
Only it's not. That's not how LeCarre works. Lesser writers may take LeCarre's success at the "second beginning" as permission to proceed, but they do it badly, and only succeed at jerking the reader around.
LeCarre succeeds because he weaves in just enough references to the characters and setting of chapter one, so that you know that chapter two is happening in the same world, with the same rules, and the people of chapter one are of course going to show up again and be very, very important.
I am also half in love with George Smiley already. So much feeling under the placid surface. LeCarre places us inside Smiley's point of view, so of course watching a "Smiley" from the outside - as one must in cinema - he might come off as dull. Of course he does. That's his whole intention.
"I like big books, and I cannot lie," as the needlepoint sampler says. Read on!
First, this is how I can see the movie for what it is, on its own terms, as a movie. Cinema. Which is a very different creature from a book -- different technology, different method of consumption, different emotional affect.
Second, with the cinema version running in my subconscious while I'm reading the book, I get to read two texts at once: the text the original author wrote, and the screen adaptation that wrenched, torqued and hammered literature into cinema.
I have seen Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy twice now in the cinema - I think twice is the minimum required viewings to catch everything and absorb the subtle cinematic structure built by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan, and notice how much character backstory and and information is delivered by the casting. (Can you imagine having Toby Jones suddenly become your boss? Yeeeeesh!)
In a bookstore today I picked up Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by LeCarre, read the first page and bought the thing on the spot. It was obvious that reading the book was going to be a rich pleasure, completely different from the movie and yet overflowing with meaning.
Two chapters in, I am committed to this book, because I know I am in the hands of a master storyteller. It doesn't matter how complicated things get - LeCarre will carry me through it.
He even does something right off the bat the usually drives me crazy: chapter two is so different from chapter one, in setting and characters, that it could be a second beginning to the story.
Only it's not. That's not how LeCarre works. Lesser writers may take LeCarre's success at the "second beginning" as permission to proceed, but they do it badly, and only succeed at jerking the reader around.
LeCarre succeeds because he weaves in just enough references to the characters and setting of chapter one, so that you know that chapter two is happening in the same world, with the same rules, and the people of chapter one are of course going to show up again and be very, very important.
I am also half in love with George Smiley already. So much feeling under the placid surface. LeCarre places us inside Smiley's point of view, so of course watching a "Smiley" from the outside - as one must in cinema - he might come off as dull. Of course he does. That's his whole intention.
"I like big books, and I cannot lie," as the needlepoint sampler says. Read on!
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
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