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674. Jenerator - 5/17/2006 10:10:11 PM Arky,
Still teaching. How about you? 675. Jenerator - 5/17/2006 10:11:08 PM Webbie,
Great interview.
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I love how subtle he is with the relationship between Mum and Dad. 676. arkymalarky - 5/17/2006 10:28:26 PM I'm out for the summer after next week, but I didn't know if you were still on maternity leave. We've got three or four pregnant teachers, so next year's going to be a real juggle for the district trying to cover for them. 677. Jenerator - 5/17/2006 11:10:53 PM I didn't get maternity leave - I had to take my once a life supplemental leave and that was for 6 weeks.
It was hard going back to work so soon.
I'm ready for summer, how about you? 678. arkymalarky - 5/17/2006 11:15:00 PM Oooh. We work leave differently, evidently, and I accumulated enough days to take the rest of the year off after surgery in April. I had Mose around Thanksgiving and came back around mid-January, if I recall (21 years ago).
I'm ready for July. I have a 12-day, 12-hour a day seminar in June, as part of my Masters. But once I get it behind me I'll be halfway through and the rest of the summer will be nothing but fun. 679. arkymalarky - 5/17/2006 11:16:17 PM That is the hysterectomy I had last April. I'd accumulated enough between having Mose and the surgery because I hadn't had to take off much in between. 680. Jenerator - 5/17/2006 11:18:40 PM You're lucky you had so much time. We only get 7 days of leave per year and with a young child at home, taking 7 days off per year (or close to it) was easy. 681. webfeet - 5/18/2006 2:06:02 AM Mirror mirror on the wall, who'se the scariest of us all?
Why...it's Ulgine!
Ulgine, instead of your usual vagina monologues why don't you charm us with a story? 682. webfeet - 5/18/2006 4:57:31 PM On second thought, maybe you shouldn't. "If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, :When you're ready." --Black Swan Green
We're all vampires here..come join the dead.
683. webfeet - 5/19/2006 9:44:56 PM NUPLANET-I think what I would really love to read is Chicken Piccata, part III.
I'm not going to critique--I promise. karl has the vapors again and will have to stay on his Louis XVI daybed and repose. I think, as macnas and alistair have intimated, that this might really be deconstructive to this thread.
Getting published for me right now is life or death. M.A.'s depreciate and children grow up and then what? Let's not answer that. 684. webfeet - 5/19/2006 10:15:04 PM On second thought, yes, let's answer that.
Answering an ad in the pennysaver, I go to work as a bookkeeper in a mid-sized vacuum-cleaner company and play darts every thursday night with my colleagues, Roy and Cherish at a bar. My novel fossilizes inside a drawer beneath our income tax files and medical receipts. I don't look back.
On my seventieth birthday a spirit visits me in my sleep and whispers.."open it" then flies out again into the ethereal blue night. I bolt awake, or some approximation of that as I gather my dressing robe about my twiny shoulders. And, candle in hand, I reach inside the drawer, the burial ground for all my wasted emotions, and pull it out with a triumphant cry!
The clock strikes two, I sit down and then start from the beginning, all over again.
685. webfeet - 5/22/2006 3:51:38 PM A few final thoughts as I approach the end of Black Swan Green. Even though Mitchell dislikes the term "coming of age story" when describing BSG, the name, too clumsy and pedestrian a term for a book that soars over the other titles in that category, it is nevertheless, a coming of age book, just not an ordinary one.
Mitchell is so intense and passionate a stylist---and his aesthetic sense is so far developed he is practically extra-terrestrial--that he can, with the power of words do just about anything. He recreates the poetry inside Jace's head with eye-popping metaphors that sometimes, however, pop a little like cherry bubblegum, landing in your face.
Sometimes I wondered if Mitchell was on crystal meth or lost in his own thought-tormented music under an I-pod when writing. With fresh intensity, Mitchell does succeed in capturing the tormented beauty in the mind of a thirteen-year old who writes poetry under the name of Eliot Bolivar and is bullied by the blowhard Ross Wilcox.
And talk about a book that smells this book reeks! Lots of evocative, sensual and, er, earthy passages.
That said, it's a novel that dazzles, surprises--but surprises in a formulaic way--that was actually my surprise-- in reading Mitchell. His plot twists lack originality even though they are brilliantly and imaginatively executed. Maybe the hitch is that Mitchell wrote each of the thirteen chapters as a short story, so that in themselves they work, but as a whole, the novel is disconnected, making you feel less for any of these characters than you expected to at the start. Which may be Mitchell's way of giving the finger to the ordinary coming of age story.
On the subject of schoolyard bullies--David Mitchell has a long way to go before he can get in the mud with heavyweights like Philip Roth, who pack more punch in a sentence than the light, effete jabs Mitchell swings. But nobody boxes like Philip Roth. Maybe Mitchell just needed to grow up in New Jersey.
686. Jenerator - 5/22/2006 9:31:23 PM My God you're good, Webbie. 687. webfeet - 5/22/2006 9:52:28 PM Do you agree, though? Help me out here. I want out of Black Swan Green! You are the only person, in the world, who has been there, too.
I bet the book is sitting under a baby blanket as we speak, and, if so, a part of me does not blame you!
688. Jenerator - 5/25/2006 5:33:57 PM Webfeet,
I admit to not being as far through BSG as you are. IAnd you are right, it is addictive even while being mundane (in certain parts). I got chills reading about Hangman - all I could think about was Dylan's speech delay and if it will be like this for him when he gets to Jason's age.
I am new to Micthell and found him because of you; what a world you have opened up for me!
What I think I like best about Mitchell are two things: his *mastery* of the simile, and his rippling, resonating effect. His words remain after reading them and few authors do that for me.
Roth is an apt comparison because Black Swan Green is a hybrid of Portnoy's Complaint and Goodbye, Columbus with Mitchell's take on 80s adolescence. 689. NuPlanetOne - 5/25/2006 5:47:42 PM
Web...I am working on chap 3. Ah, but it is such work for a lazy poet. I understand now why novelists need benefaction and solitude.
690. webfeet - 5/31/2006 6:02:53 AM It was really fun to read. Just go do do your voodoo. don't listen to me.
691. webfeet - 5/31/2006 6:12:20 AM What I think I like best about Mitchell are two things: his *mastery* of the simile, and his rippling, resonating effect. His words remain after reading them and few authors do that for me.
This is now what I like least. In this book, anyway.
No, honestly, he's formi-dabluh, but 'Cloud Atlas' was what stays with me. Have you gotten to Madame Crommelnyck? 692. NuPlanetOne - 6/3/2006 11:29:33 PM Chapter 3 Joe Basil and The Ring
The idea was to use the incredible Turkish olive oil Joe ‘Basil’ gave me that he got from ‘doin dat ding’, you know, with Tony ‘Shishkabobs.’ Joe Basil was an unmade soldier. The stereotypical caricature of everyone’s idea of a mob wiseguy. He marched into the back door one day with a basket of beefstake tomatoes, a cache of young pristine arugula, and the most robust and piquant basil I had ever seen. This basil had an aura. Once you got your face next to it, the perfume, the unparalleled purity of the aroma had my eyes widening like an archeologist that had just dug up the missing link. I didn’t even flinch or ask who he was. He just plodded to the nearest open spot on a work bench, put down his treasure, and waited without a word or a sign. I looked up scrunch faced, then serious scanning face and sauntered over to check it out. It was a good season for tomatoes. His were the best I had seen to that point. I tasted the arugula; my eyes went immediately to his. He had the faked pained grin of a mother that knew her baby was about to be adopted. It was mild, no bitterness and the peppery afterthought was quick and inoffensive. Then I saw the basil. The sheen alone was worth the price of admission. It was like hearing Mozart for the first time, thinking you had heard a piano concerto before. Things raced through my head. We already did pesto the ancient authentic way, even though the commercial stuff made it a year round thing. But now, all in a second, I knew I could make my basil arugula pesto. My uncle Carmine invented it, he said, back in the old country. And to taste his, you could believe him. And as I remembered eagerly and tenderly fondling the basil that day, I remembered our first conversation when Joe Basil started talking.
“See, see how it rubs off,” he said with one eye frozen in a wink with his head nodding as he watched me squeeze a leaf. The resin was consistent and cloying. I cleared my sinuses and made a sweep by it with my nose like a crack-head doing a refresher line. The high was spontaneous.
“Ooof, Mingha,” he bellowed like he was verbalizing my reaction.
‘Nice, pure.” I sighed like a Drug Lord.
“Who are you?” I said as we savored the experience.
“Oh, scuza, Joe Giovanucci, Joe Basil. At your service. Joey D over at Fat Domenic”s Auto Body said I should swing by. Said you buy this shit. If it’s golden. Charlie, is this shit like ice cream, or what the fuck?”
Hearing him talk was like being home on the corner. Every other guy was just like him back then and back there. They always had a story. They might be in the middle of the most incredible shit in their day to day dramas, but they always had a story. A passion. An incredible slice of fiction or fact. Never about their personal business, the mob stuff, just an exuberant false analogy or coded allegory of some mischief or misfortune. And a bizzare logic bordering on philosophical truth. They would sum it up in a succinct maxim, then, like the coming dawn in the wake and residue awash after a sip of a true cabernet, it would smack you. They would then change the subject abruptly and coldly and fatally deliver the news. Might be you pissed someone off. Could be you had to double up on your payments. At worst, you might be shitting your pants the whole time knowing he would have to get to the point. Fortunately, I only got bad news like that once, and my brother just happened to be nearby. I got a pass, but even though it was over a woman, I knew I didn’t have the stomach or right stones for that kind of work. And even though that life killed my brother, the big son of a bitch saved mine. I didn’t understand the way it worked, but he used up one of his big favors with The Ghost, his boss, everyone’s boss. In the end he went down for some other shit labeled natural causes, but I don’t care what the coroner said, because at that point I learned to stop asking questions. I walked away on good terms, that is, I walked away.
693. NuPlanetOne - 6/3/2006 11:30:14 PM “Giovanucci.” I said blankly. “North Shore, or South Shore?”
“Sout Shore.” He said nodding behind him. Then shook his head with a firm lip and pointed at the floor. “Right here, don’t like to go up there. Rat bastids everywhere. Dooshbags. No matter anyway. I’m a fuckin farmer now.” He chuckled under the big sarcastic grin with the automatic wink.
“Ya, how you know me?” I said with the make believe worried look of the guy with unbeatable hole cards.
“Fat Domenic,” he answered and grabbed a tomato as if he was about to raise the pot.
“Ya, what he say?” I picked up a tomato and weighed it with my hand.
“Dom, he don’t say nuthin. You know him. But we get talkin. I knew your brother back in the day. Nobody liked to see him come down here. He was like the god of bad news with the winged feet. Never came to see me, but we cooperated on a couple a tings. I loved the big prick. Sad what happened.”
“Sad? No, it’s sad when a baby dies. My brother’s death was the sadness of a wasted promise. The sadness was in no sadness. Nothing left behind. No tears. No tragedy.” I put the tomato back in the basket and grabbed another one I had been ogling.
“Oh, oh ya,” he muttered as if I just played my hole cards. “Absalutely! He coulda been anything. What a waste.” He screwed his face up like a pug.
“So what’s your deal?” I just dropped the subject and his face fell to normal with a thud. I could tell he wasn’t ready to go down that path.
“My old man ran the west side down here. I was like the Prince who couldn’t be King. Couldn’t be a made guy either. Trouble on my muther’s side. Just like you, well, your brutha.” He made the pug face for a split second. “Anyway, that shit’s done. I’m out. I survived the Feds, they got what they needed without me, and I did some easy time. First class accommodations. But it’s all gone. Now, I got my little spread out in Stonefield and almost two fuckin acres to grow shit like this.” He fanned out three bunches of basil like he had just called the pot and was going to lay down his cards.
That’s the part I remember. When he held the basil there was a look of genuine affection. I could see, I could feel; that part was sincere. It was his identity. People that have done things all their life that they didn’t believe in always had that one real thing that made them glisten. Gave them their connection to reality. Gave them the tranquil solitude in which they could debate their morals or identify their spirituality. I’ve always had the notion that sanity was the result of successfully managing a dual personality. Realizing that contentment lies in understanding our individual interface with this so called reality we exist in. And because you can not really know what lies on the other side of a person’s eyes, you have to decide on what to let in. You know it can contaminate. You know it can wreck your world. Yet, if you are solid in your identity and have tweaked the firewall, your sane self will survive. It might even prosper. You might even be happy some of the time. And I would see this connection, this sanity, on my old man’s face when he worked in his garden as he meticulously manipulated his tomatoes.
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