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594. arkymalarky - 4/28/2006 10:51:12 PM Uzmakk+Nilsson=innovation
Uzmakk+Malarky=REVOLUTION! 595. Jenerator - 4/28/2006 10:51:53 PM webfeet,
That is so interesting. A friend of mine has older parents who survived the holocaust. When you're at their home, food is literally bursting out at you from every pore of the kitchen. They even have three deep freezers full of meat!
I asked the son why they had so much food and the dad heard me and responded, "My dear, we went without for so long, that we will never go without again. If you have ever starved, you will know how important it is to always have cake."
596. NuPlanetOne - 4/29/2006 5:28:35 AM
Web…then I definitely will not read Marquez. Truth be told, my ignorance of modern literature is profound. It is possible that I have not read a living author of fiction in 20 years. I have always entertained the notion that one day I might write a novel, or at least a collection of stories. At some point I decided I didn’t believe I could be original if I absorbed the desire to emulate, or conform to, or compare myself to what is considered exceptional prose. Fortunately, as with my poetry, I can exist in a vacuum here in The Mote with you guys and safely take a crack at it. And by all means, I am the one who attempted to write a serious piece, and you reacted with a serious critique on your way to encouragement. It reflected objective on this end and exhibited nothing harmful and merely pointed to some springs that could be wound a little tighter or loosened to help the flow. I admire your prose, so I will use the advice as the prodding of an editor, rather than react egotistically. I’m not sure how it works actually, these are first drafts, and I have also realized that first person narratives are not the darling of many publishers. What say you of that?
…thanks Mac. You’re right twice. The thread is for fun and it seems Web has the confidence to give real advice objectively. Forgive me Jen, but she’s my new best pal. (“At least till I sign a book deal,” he dreamed.) Anyway, I have scallops to deal with.
597. webfeet - 4/29/2006 5:29:28 AM I hope your friends are always happy. I'd love to raid their fridge in the middle of the night.
With cakes I don't discriminate--sheet cakes, angel cakes, flourless cakes, carrot cake --all are delectable. The only cake, sadly, that sunk, literally off the crest of winners, was belle-mere's 'reine de sheba' or Queen of Sheba that she insisted on making to show off for a french family she had met here, in NY, while walking Juliette in the park.
"il faut que je fasse un gateau!" she said, as she ran to her suitcase to fetch her apron. I couldn't intervene; how could I?
Now, one has to be either quite a good chef to pull off baking a cake if a) you are in a foreign country b) you arrive without your livre de recettes which, if you are like belle-mere you never use anyway because you don't cook, and c) if you are unaccustomed to your daughter in law's kitchen--or--you are an ass.
The cake was disastrous. No-one touched it. It wasn't even the kind of cake you could just take a few bites of, and then leave politely to the sides. Pauvre belle-mere didn't understand my 'baker's chocolate' and it was impossibly bitter.
Apart from the cake, the company, a french bourgeois family who arrived bearing a grotesque assortment of flowers, a bouquet that was obscenely expensive and ridiculously unfit for the occasion--was even worse. The pere de famille, a stiff investment banker, prodded the gateau with his fork, as though it was a turd and then left it aside to the shame of belle-mere. after they'd gone, she couldn't stop talking about it, such was her offense.
It was possibly the most awful afternoon I've spent with anysingle group of people in my life ever. Dimanche apres-midi in hell.
598. webfeet - 4/29/2006 5:55:30 AM Oh, Nuplanet. Another night owl..I'm just in this zone of writing right now, and editing, styling is what I do instinctively. I am like Karl Lagerfeld--fussy. only with words.
While I am no Marquez, I find that by reading great writers I instinctively become a better one without trying to consciously emulate their styles. The point is obviously to find your own voice. But first you have to have an ear.
I wasn't advising you to imitate Marquez, perhaps it was simply a glib way of saying go back and edit until what you want to say comes out. That was very Karl of me, I'm afraid. If I were to really give you advice, I would say resist the impulse to give a play by play commentary on the dialogue because it doesn't always need it. But that's what anyone would tell you what a first draft is for.
Your writing has a lot of exciting moments--or verve, as Karl would say. Anyway, this night owl must go to bed. 599. alistairConnor - 4/29/2006 10:45:42 AM The visceral antagonism with Mère-Belle has such great potential, I hope it's in the novel. Not just as a running gag, though that could be very useful, but as a wellspring of subtle tragedy too. Like a cake of marvellous potential, baked with the best of ingredients and intentions, and which turns out disastrously wrong. 600. Jenerator - 4/29/2006 2:38:21 PM Nu,
I won't be mad. 601. Jenerator - 4/29/2006 2:48:47 PM Webfeet,
The Queen of Sheba is the quintessential French cake. I find it amusing and ironic that belle-mere was able to mess up something so traditional yet simple to make - I imagine that in her mind she blames our nationality (our inability to taste and our lack of real food) for the rejection of her gateau.
Ha ha ha ha
My MIL is a wonderful woman and despite her culinary quirks and idiosyncracies I am charitable with her cooking. Besides, I believe that all older woman have at least one great recipe in their repertoire. She insists on teaching me everytime she's down to visit. Last time she wanted me to learn how to make the best enchiladas this side of the border.
Ingredients - canned sauce, canned chiles, corn tortillas and velveeta.
!!!
I wonder what we will teach our daughters? 602. Jenerator - 4/29/2006 3:31:19 PM And since it's early and my brain is prone to random thinking let me tell you an amazing story about my friend's parents.
Dad [Jacek - the father of my American friend Dan] was a small boy with three siblings when Hitler invaded his country. Jacek's father was an officer of some sort and the family had been preparuing for invasion "just in case".
Jacek was shown where the family's personal weapons stash was hidden (in one of the walls) and all the kids new where the best hiding places were in their home. They all just assumed it would be easier than how it turned out.
Mom and dad both practiced a secret knock for the children so that worst case scenario, if they were split up, they would recognize one another by the secret knock.
Jacek's home *was* raided and the stash was found and the family heirlooms and jewels were sent to Germany. Their father was immediately taken into custody because of who he was and then the wife and children were shipped off to various camps.
Jacek was sent with his mother (wish I could remember where), and his sisters were sent to Dachau. That was the last they ever saw of each other.
Anyway, Jacek went on to tell me that he was in the camps with his mom for years and he watched with horror all of the atrocities we read about in our WWII books. He and his mom became emaciated and louse ridden. Children starved to death, and old men and women just died around them. Nazis treated them all with rude indifference if they were lucky, fatal hostility of they weren't. In total, he and his mom spent time in three camps.
It was hell.
Eventually, the camp he and his mother were in last was liberated and they found themselves in Russia! Once "free", they moved and hid like nomads among the people who wanted to help them. No family really reached out to them emotionally because all were still afraid of what might happen.
I cannot imagine what it must have been like for them - speaking a different language, depending on the mercy of strangers who may or may not be their enemy, not having had any souce of income and really not knowing if they were safe, ever.
There had been rumors of retaliatory killings and raids throughout the part of Russia they were in and so Jacek and his mother were more cautious and nervous than ever. They had survived the camps, they had survived starvation and disease - yet now, they faced the possibility of being recaptured or killed on the spot.
The family they had been staying with kicked them out for fear of Russian military intervention and so they gave them a loaf of bread and sent them on their way. They luckily found a sympathetic farmer and stayed with him for the next two months.
One fall night, as the farmer and his family sat down to dinner with Jacek and his mother, they heard footsteps on the porch. The entire family froze dreading the worst. Jacek said that he could taste his heartbeat - and then the secret knock came.
Jacek's mom literally passed out and he ran to the door!
There stood his father, noticeably thinner and with completely white hair. He had found them after looking over a year in Russian countryside!!
---------
I just cried and begged him to write down everything he remembered.
603. Jenerator - 4/29/2006 3:32:52 PM I forgot to mention that the family was/is Polish. 604. Jenerator - 4/29/2006 6:15:49 PM Webfeet,
I meant to ask you, how did you find this out about Maurice Sendak?
I have the copy of Where the Wild Things Are that my mom bought me when I was little, it was my favorite book. I had no idea how prolific he was or how intense he was.
Have you been reading this childhood classic to your kids and did it pique a curiosity in you? Or do you smart literary types always know who the geniuses are?
;-)
I would have never known about Sendak if you hadn't brought all of this to the table. It's fun - thank you.
605. webfeet - 4/29/2006 8:18:18 PM First of all, I'm extremely moved by that story, especially the part about not seeing his sisters again. Maurice often discusses the courage of small children. I think in that interview, which is all accessible if you google Sendak, he mentions Max's courage in "Where the Wild Things Are." The monsters were actually his eastern european relatives. I think many of them were killed. I say I think because those two thoughts are cobbled from two different interviews.
Secondly, that was a great subtext for discussing Sendak. It fit right into the emotional context of 'milk' and 'cake'.
Did maurice pique my curiosity? Not always. "Where the Wild Things Are" never really did it for me, to be honest. We bought "Gather Round' Songs from Kids and other folks' at Starbucks (that's what you get for calling me a 'smart literary' type. Im bound to disappoint you.) and on it Carole King, who does the music for Sendak, sang 'Chicken Soup with Rice.' To music, the lyrics really stood out. And by familiarizing myself through the entire video anthology of 'Little Bear' the themes stand out. There is also a little video of Sendak explaining how he draws little bear and I just saw him as a vital, sexy person all of a sudden. It took time.
But Roald Dahl? We spend a lot of time with him, too, but the same generosity of spirit never comes through. And he's quite a sadist. You feel like you've bit into a cupcake and are picking out the pins.
You know, I'm not in grad school anymore. I have a job but it's inside my head, so I don't know if that counts. It's up to us to generate ideas and keep discussions going since we no longer have college. That 's why it's great to have such a forum.
606. webfeet - 4/29/2006 8:30:37 PM Alistair, I thank youfor recognizing the comic minefield that characterizes my relationship with belle-mere. She figures so prominently in my novel, in fact, that I'm afraid I'm going to have to join the witness protection program--if it ever gets published.
As 'Odile' in 'Sleep Camp', she is thinly disguised as a cosmetics saleswoman at a "Marionnaud" (you must know it--but it's that perfume and cosmetics chain that is in every single city in france I've ever visited from the blue collar like Narbonne to--well, everywhere.) Obsessed with my diet, obsessed with outdoing me at every turn, BM is a kind of star in this novel; she is a champ at clobbering my spirit, but at the same time, in the novel at least, she can hold the fort together.
Fortune has presented me with a nice package deal this summer: a week in a mobile home at some fucked up lake in Lelandes with belle-mere, ta-ta, beau-frere and his Italian girlfriend, Graziana, who is an art restorer. And don't forget les cousins! Those naughty little peeping toms who eavesdrop on my phone calls and make fun of my tits. I think "big mama" is what I was called. You can imagine what is in store for me. And then, I have like a month in the alps alone with mylaptop until michel comes.
The only tragedy is that my laptop doesn't have internet.
607. alistairConnor - 4/29/2006 8:51:46 PM Les Landes -- one of the few French departements I have never been. Purely out of lack of interest. As flat as Kansas, with fuckin' pine trees everywhere.
Just think of it as raw material. Really, really raw.
What do you mean, your laptop doesn't have internet? We will find you a workaround. Every laptop in the world has a phone jack. If it's busted, get someone to lend you a modem, nobody uses them any more now they've got DSL. 608. judithathome - 4/30/2006 1:32:26 AM It was possibly the most awful afternoon I've spent with anysingle group of people in my life ever. Dimanche apres-midi in hell.
How wonderful that the in-laws can provide such amusement...to think, the bitch mother-in-law, trying to provide a nice dessert for the pretentious assholes who thought to bring the wrong flowers...I guess these ignorant people should be properly ashamed of themselves. What fools!
Have you ever thought how you might appear to them?
609. Jenerator - 4/30/2006 4:14:20 AM I remember when you told us about how belle-mere basically starved you to death at her place - dinner of salade du rien.
Make sure you bring treats for yourself when you're stuck in a trailer with the herd. You could even keep them hidden in a box of tampons in case their curiosity extends farther than you know. I mean, give them something to work for - ha ha ha.
Does she refer to you by any nicknames? I'm curious. 610. Jenerator - 4/30/2006 4:19:21 AM My grandmother (the one I mentioned awhile back) insists on knowing how much people pay for the gifts they buy her and she must know where they were bought.
This used to frustrate me but now I play with it a bit.
Wondering how far she'd go to know how much I spent on her one Christmas, I intentionally hid the price tags in with some nasty wet garbage.
After I went back home, she called to thank me again for the gifts but said that one didn't fit so she was taking it back to the department store - she named the correct one that was on the tag!
Neurotic! 611. judithathome - 4/30/2006 5:03:17 AM Which one? 612. alistairConnor - 4/30/2006 9:25:08 AM Ding!
(counting points here)
Did I mention that I met Belle-Mère? But I have very little to report on her. She delivered Webfeet to my door and barely took time to shake hands before leaving again. I was mildly offended, put it down to snobism (bourgeois chez les ploucs) and lack of curiosity and elementary politeness. I thought I might have tamed her, had she consented to stay for a drink.
But, to be fair to her, she'd just spent four hours trapped in a car with her DIL, and no doubt was eager to start the four hour trip home rather than spend another ten minutes in her company... 613. alistairConnor - 4/30/2006 9:29:01 AM One thing to bear in mind with Webfeet's writing is that it is necessarily slightly larger than life, for satirical effect, while remaining entirely plausible in the details. Evelyn Waugh comes to mind.
Thus, the culture-clash thing. She plays on the mutual cultural incomprehensions in a pretty deadpan way, as if she were entirely a foreigner in France and destined to remain so eternally... which obviously isn't so. (surely?)
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