Bike fantasies. . .

This recent post on Nonsuch Book's blog made me giggle, because it's so true! It's all about the fantasy that she, and I, and many of us have, about riding the perfect bike through a European town to buy our baguettes and cheese, our skirts blowing in the wind. This is the bike she is in love with:


I find it very attractive as well and would be tempted by it, if I didn't live in a tiny apartment with no storage locker. But when I was craving a bike again this spring (I haven't had one for about six years due to said apartment), I started investigating folding bikes and ended up buying this nifty little Dahon 7 speed number two months ago. I LOVE IT! It is super fast to fold up, rides very smooth, and goes much faster than I thought, given its small wheels. I have a 22km commute to work with a stretch that has some big hills and no dedicated bike lanes (the Europeans are so far ahead of us on bike-friendly city planning), but I fold up the bike and hop on the bus for that portion. The rest (about 14km) I can do via bike paths. I've christened him Charles Ryder after the character from Brideshead Revisited (another fantasy - bumping into Jeremy Irons riding a bicycle around Oxford). And best of all, this is what it looks like folded up:

The only drawback is its weight - about 26 pounds. Not a huge problem, but if I'm loaded down with a backpack with my laptop and - ahem - books, it feels very heavy. Still, I'm so delighted with it. If I'd had a bigger budget, I would totally have gone for their oh-so-European-looking Ciao model though! Isn't this a beauty?

And I just need to rant for a moment about the idiotic policies of VIA Rail. Last month, I had to work 12 days in Ottawa, which has such wonderful bike paths all along its canal. It's an extemely bike-friendly city. So I was looking forward to bringing my bike along - but wouldn't you know it, VIA doesn't put a baggage car on its Toronto-Ottawa route and so you can't take bikes on the train. Never mind that it's our bloody nation's capital, has several universities, and its bike paths are a major tourist attraction! I can't tell you how frustrated I was with them, and how sad I was to have to leave the bike at home.

On visiting James Joyce, sort of. . .

Back to blogging after a period of intense busyness - work, work, work - but then thankfully followed by a lovely and restful vacation. This photo (one day late for Bloomsday, I know) of James Joyce's grave will give you some idea of where I've been. Yes, I spent nearly two weeks in Switzerland including a few days in the lovely city of Zurich, where one of my first excursions was to hike up a very steep hill (is nothing about Joyce easy??) to visit the cemetary where he, his wife and children are buried. He lies next to another writer - Nobel prize winner Elias Canetti. Is it strange or disrespectful to take photos of graves? Does anyone else do this? I've made several pilgrimages to many authors' final resting places - the Brontes, George Eliot, Oscar Wilde, to name a few - and I usually snap away but always with a teensy bit of guilt and a little sense of the ghoulish.

The Little Tramp Goes to War. . .

I've been reading and enjoying Glen David Gold's new novel Sunnyside, which follows three Americans - one of them Charlie Chaplin - during the last years of the First World War. The novel begins with a surreal event - hundreds of apparent Chaplin sightings are reported all over the U.S. including one by a lighthouse keeper, named Lee who tries to rescue him in a storm.

Chaplin spent part of the war touring America to help raise money for liberty bonds, but he also made the silent movie Shoulder Arms in 1918. Having enjoyed Blackadder's take on the trenches, I was curious to see what an early comedy would make of the war. The movie is packaged with other shorts from those early days - including Sunnyside - on a DVD entitled The Chaplin Revue. While studio execs worried that the movie would be negatively perceived as making fun of the soldiers and the carnage, Chaplin was such a star that he could pretty well do whatever he wanted. And I quite enjoyed the movie's portrayal of the absurdity of war. There are scenes of Chaplin trying to keep pace with the marching soldiers while in tramp shuffling mode, scenes dealing with all the rain and mud in the trenches and a hilariously silly episode where he is sent to infiltrate enemy lines disguised ridiculously as a tree. In his dreams he captures the Kaiser and saves a beautiful woman.

There's another connection between Hollywood and the First World War that is revealed in this entertaining novel: the original Rin Tin Tin was rescued from a bombed building in France during the war by Lee Duncan, an American serviceman (and character in Sunnyside) and brought to America where the dog also became a huge Hollywood star. I'm always interested in contemporary fictional takes on the war and Gold's novel was original, well-written and fascinating in terms of its look at American war propaganda and the part that the rising film industry played.

An Exhibit of Woolf's Own. . .

On a recent buisness trip to Edmonton, I was able to pop into the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library at the University of Alberta and see their exhibit of Hogarth Press Books. Titled"Woolf's Head Publishing: The highlights and New Lights of the Hogarth Press", the exhibit has now been extended to May 28th.
Apart from the thrill of seeing so many original editions (I was salivating in front of a first edition of Mrs. Dalloway) and the range of books that the Hogarth Press published, I was pleasantly surprised by how beautiful the accompanying catalogue was - a lovely addition to my Woolf book collection (alas, no first editions there). Written by Dr. Elizabeth Willson Gordon, it uses fonts, paper, and production elements selected, "with the hope of evoking something of the aesthetic feel of the Press books: colourful, exuberant, pleasurably tactile, pleasing to the eye without being precious". The catalogues costs $25.00 and while I don't know if the library will ship abroad, it's worth contacting them to inquire, as I can't imagine a Woolf fan who would not want to own this.

While it does not include a photograph of every book in the exhibit, there is an entry for each one giving some information about the author, the content of the book, the initial print runs, and sometimes a bit on the cover designer. There is also a brief introductory essay. I read the whole thing in one sitting after I returned home and gleaned many interesting tidbits such as:

* The Hogarth Press published 29 books in translation between the two world wars, from Russian, German and Italian.

* The first Hogarth Press book to have a dust jacket was Jacob's Room. The design was by Vanessa Bell and it was not well received. Leonard Woolf is quoted as saying the design, "did not represent a desirable female or even Jacob or his room, and it was what in 1923 many people would have called reproachfully post-impressionist. It was almost universally condemned by the booksellers."

* One of the more unusual books published by the Hogarth Press in 1937 was Diet and High Blood Pressure by Dr. I. Harris. This was part of the exhibit. The catalogue goes on to note however, that a second title by Harris was published in 1942 called The Calcium Bread Scandal. Now, that's the one I'd like to read!

* The Hogarth Press published many writers besides Woolf herself. Reading this catalogue got me interested in looking up the poetry of Joan Easdale, Nancy Cunard's long poem Parallax (I've always meant to read more about her and her own small press, The Hours Press), The Autobiography of Countess Sophie Tolstoi , Libby Benedict's 1938 novel, The Refugees (isn't that a powerful jacket?) and Different Days by Frances Cornford whose poems purport to "focus on the female view of academic life at Cambridge and the English landscape".

* And finally, is there anything more lovely than this page from the 1927 reprint of Woolf's Kew Gardens with its extra attention on melding art with literature? So, so beautiful.

Cool German reading campaign. . .

Reading and walking (but not at the same time) are two of my favourite activities so I love this German campaign that combines the two, and uses the legs of famous authors to publicize it. Read more about it here in English at the blog love german books, or if your German is a lot better than mine, lesen gehen here.

Dizzy For This Disc. . .

Call me old-fashioned, but I hope what I still call record stores don't ever disappear in my lifetime. It's great to be able to download music and I love my iPOD, but as with books - online purchasing only really works if you know exactly what you want. And I still like the serendipity of coming across something completely unexpected while browsing through CDs, hearing something really interesting playing in the store, and accessing the brains and passion of the staff for recommendations. It's my favourite way to shop. And I'm one of those geeks that actually reads all the notes in the accompanying booklets. I also like having the lyrics handy, although I do wish music labels would stop producing CDs in those non-recyclable plastic cases and go to the cardboard ones instead.

Case in point: I recently went to one of my favourite classical CD shops - L'Atelier Gregorian - looking for a compliation of Maurice Jarre's film scores, as I'd recently been reading his obituaries (he died last month). Well, I didn't find the collection I was looking for, but while flipping through the jazz section, I came across Dizzy Goes to Hollywood, which lo and behold contained his take on Lawrence of Arabia. Now, this is a very upbeat and almost unrecognizable version, but I loved it all the same. The whole disc is great - there's a bouncy, jazzy "Moon River", a sensually moody "Walk on the Wild Side" and it ends with a terrific toe-tapping "Carioca" which got me into the mood for popping Flying Down to Rio into my DVD player. Great music to perk you up on a Monday morning, but don't listen to it just before going to sleep - because you won't!

Of Liza and Huxley and a Real New World. . .

I was browsing the newspapers a couple of weeks ago, rolling my eyeballs at the mediocre reviews of Britney Spears' concert and wondering why anyone would shell out so much money to basically watch someone lipsynch on a jumbotron. And then I turned the page and there was an ad for Liza Minnelli's concert and I thought well, now there's someone real - she'll be belting out every word herself, backed by a great band and in a venue where you can actually see the star without having to squint at a huge video screen.

I immediately went and ordered a ticket. And how glad I am that I did. The concert was last night and it was terrific. What incredible energy! I was exhausted by intermission, just from watching her. She was funny, gracious and the power in her voice was incredible. I feel very privileged to be able to say I've now heard her sing "Cabaret" live. And I teared up, both when she sang about watching her mother perform, and during the encores where in complete contrast to all the flamboyant, powerful numbers, she beautifully sang "Everytime We Say Good-bye" with just a piano accompaniment. During her last encore, she was completely alone on the stage, sequins replaced by a t-shirt, high heels shoes kicked off, lit by a lone spotlight and then, "I'll be seeing you in all the old, familiar places. . . "

Of course another great reason to go to Roy Thomson Hall, is to check out their music store in the lobby where I always find the most unusual stuff. Last night's find was a 1956 radio dramatization of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, where Huxley himself plays the narrator, and with an original score by Bernard Herrman (which is really why I bought the CD - Herrman is an incredible composer doing the scores for lots of Hitchcock movies such as Vertigo and North by Northwest, but also Citizen Kane, Fahrenheit 451 and so on). I've only listened to a bit of it, but I'm enjoying it so far. Huxley's voice has an old-fashioned, but elegant school teacher tone to it and the score is like a mysteriously sinister lullaby. In the accompanying booklet, they quote from a Time article describing the challenges of getting the sound effects just right:

"It took three radio sound men, a control-room engineer and five hours of hard work to create the sound that was heard for less than 30 seconds on the air. The sound consisted of a ticking metronome, tom-tom beats, bubbling water, air hose, cow moo, boing! (two types) oscillator, dripping water (two types) and three kinds of wine glasses clicking against each other. Judiciously blended and recorded on tape, the effect was still not quite right. Then the tape was played backward with a little echo added. That did it. The sound depicted the manufacturing of babies in the radio version of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World."

The notes also talk about how this production was an attempt to revive CBS's Columbia Workshop which had produced a lot of experimental radio drama in the late 1930s before television arrived to lure the audience away. I however, am going backwards and rediscovering the joys of radio. I've just recently cancelled my cable tv, deciding that there was nothing worth watching that was worth the $500 annual fee and I was wasting far too much time on my couch, lazily sucked into persuing inane programming. So my television set now exists solely to allow me to watch DVDs. I don't think I'll miss it. The older I get, the more I crave real experiences - theatre, live music, travelling, walking - and if I'm lazing on my couch, I want to be accompanied by a good book, or be listening to great music. Or perhaps now, a radio drama.

Nothing artificial about this reality. . .

Many thanks to Dovegreyreader for this post, in which I first read about the German writer Irmgard Keun. I just finished her novel The Artificial Silk Girl, which first appeared in English translation in 1933 and was reissued (and is still in print) by Other Press in 2002 with a new translation by Kathie von Ankum.
Doris - a pretty, young, ambitious girl who wants to be a movie star and famous - scribbles her adventures in a notebook covered with white doves: "I think it will be a good thing if I write everything down, because I'm an unusual person. I don't mean a diary - that's ridiculous for a trendy girl like me. But I want to write like a movie, because my life is like that and it's going to become even more so." She lies her way into working as an extra in the theatre, schemes to get a line in the play, steals a fur coat from the cloakroom and then confidently escapes with it to Berlin to seek her fortune. The introduction calls Doris a precursor to a Bridget Jones or Carrie Bradshaw, but while she has some of the same cheerful optimism as her fictional heirs and is also constantly searching for love, her experiences on the street, basically working as a prostitute to support herself, are far more serious than anything you'll find in the chicklit of today. I'd compare this more to Alfred Doblin's 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz - Keun is articulating the female voice and reality behind the many prostitutes that pop in and out of that novel. Or even to Stefan Zweig's The Post-Office Girl, in which a bored and frustrated woman also engages in an unhealthy fantasy life. All these novels do illustrate the real and desperate economic options placed on unmarried women in the post WWI era. Doris has a great and admirable talent for making the best of situations, and this comes through her gutsy narrative voice, so that the reader keeps rooting for her. But though she attempts to conquer her fear and loneliness behind her writing, it becomes another facade, another "pose" to help her get through the daily grind. Mind you, it's her best talent; her observations are frequently quite funny and yearningly childlike as in the following. She's describing the party goers in a Berlin restaurant to a blind WWI veteran:

" a handsome man just kissed a woman fat as a tadpole - old men are kissing each other - the music goes one-two, one-two - there are lamps hanging from the ceiling that look like Paul's starfish collection stuck together - the music is covered with flowers like a chiffon dress which tears very easily - let me tell you, Herr Brenner, a woman should never wear artificial silk when she's with a man. It wrinkles too quickly, and what are you going to look like after seven real kisses? Only pure silk, I say - and music - "

That phrase - "seven real kisses" - oh, the longing in that. I found this novel fascinating to read and I certainly want to explore more of Keun's work. There's a brief biography at the back and her life also reads like a novel. While The Artificial Silk Girl became a bestseller, her books were later banned by the Nazis. She left Germany during the beginning of the war, met authors Stefan Zweig and Ernst Toller, had an affair with Joseph Roth, and then returned to Germany hiding under an assumed name. Like many Virago authors, her work was rediscovered and republished in the 1970s during the feminist movement. She died in 1982.

Women Writers, Women's Lives. . .

Coming soon are three new biographies that I'm extremely interested in reading.
Once upon a time, I had grandiose notions of writing a PhD thesis on Storm Jameson (abandoned alas, because a gal has to pay the rent). I'm always fascinated by writers - particularly women - who lived through, and wrote about both world wars and Jameson's additional work in publishing and for PEN made her all the more fascinating to me. So I'm very excited about Margaret Storm Jameson: A Life by Jennifer Birkett. I've read Jameson's own memoir, Journey From the North, but while beautifully written, it's a bit coy about her personal life and doesn't focus as much on her books as this biography promises to.

I've dipped into Frances Partridge's diaries from time to time and have come across bits of her story as a minor figure in the biographies of Carrington, Lytton Strachey and various other members of the Bloomsbury Group. But I'm delighted she'll take center stage in Anne Chisholm's upcoming book, Frances Partridge: The Biography. I first heard about it listening to this delightful podcast from the Guardian, interviewing the indomitable Diana Athill, whose latest book, Somewhere Towards the End, is also on my to-be-read pile. At one point Athill talks about her love affairs with married men and mentions she is reading a proof of Chisholm's book. She admires Partridge's tolerant attitude to her husband's affairs and her disdain of the "geometrical approach to emotional relationships". This, Athill contends, closes one to the "tender curvaceousness" of life and love that is everywhere in the world. I love that phrase and as Athill acknowledges, "there was plenty of tender curvaceousness going on in that set!".

And finally, I can't wait for Nicola Beauman's biography of writer Elizabeth Taylor, being published by her own Persephone Books. There's no information yet on the Persephone site, but The Other Elizabeth Taylor is coming out in April, so I imagine one will be able to order it soon. I've read a few of Taylor's novels - Blaming, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, and At Mrs. Lippincote's - and have several more on my shelves. In particular, I want to read Angel, as I just saw the movie version, directed by François Ozon and starring a rather stunning Romola Garai. The story follows the rise of Angel Deverell, a poor girl with a vivid imagination who finds fame and fortune writing bestselling romances, but who lives in her own fantasy world, constructed like one of her plots, and face up to the reality that surrounds her, particularly turning a blind eye to her philandering husband who has only married her for her money. Ozon filmed it completely over the top - Anne Shirley meets Scarlett O'Hara - but I thought it worked wonderfully as a visual metaphor for the type of books Angel inhabited. And the costumes and make-up were incredible. If you liked Ozon's 8 Women, you'll enjoy this; it has some of the same - almost camp - humour. I find Ozon to be a very interesting director who clearly is fascinated with the ongoing relationships and resonances of the written word. I love his movie Under the Sand (the wonderful Charlotte Rampling plays a professor who teaches Woolf, trying to cope with the grief of her husband's disappearance) and The Swimming Pool (Rampling again, playing a thriller writer who escapes to a French house to try and write her next novel, but encounters more than she'd bargained for). Rampling also has a role in Angel.

Recently watched: Our Man in Havana. . .

Despite also being directed by Carol Reed, this doesn't come close to the brilliance of his Third Man, but regardless, there are certainly worse ways to pass a couple of hours. I'd never seen this film before and always wanted to, if only because of Noel Coward's appearance as Hawthorne. The scenes between him and Ralph Richardson are delicious - especially a moment towards the end when Coward is trying not to insert vacuum cleaner puns into the conversation. And I always enjoy Alec Guiness in whatever movie he appears in. Graham Greene wrote the screenplay, based of course on his novel. Good fun.

Dada, what did you do in the war?. . .

I celebrated St. Patrick's Day by having a bit of an encounter with the Irish, although a few countries removed. Last night I saw Soulpepper's production of Tom Stoppard's very challenging play Travesties, which imagines James Joyce, Vladimir Lenin and Tristan Tzara in 1917 Zurich. Joyce is working on Ulysses; Lenin is working on a book about imperialism and trying to get back to Russia and the revolution and Tzara is creating poetry out of random words pulled out of a hat and establishing the Dada movement. Commenting on it all is Henry Carr, who works in the British consul and has a tiny footnote in Joyce's bio - he took part in a production of Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, organized by Joyce, and later was involved in a lawsuit over the cost of a pair of trousers. Stoppard makes the most of this quirky encounter and inserts some of Wilde's best lines right into the context of Travesties.
Oh, the whole play is brilliant - non-stop verbal puns and in jokes about artistic movements, political schemes and some very poignant and observant bits about the war. Wonderful language to listen to, and I'm very impressed that Soulpepper tackled this play. It wasn't an outstanding production - in particular the weak link was David Storch who played Joyce somewhat cutsy - he reminded me of a leprechaun challenging his inner Lytton Strachey. But the rest of the cast was very good, even if their accents, alas, tended to roam all over the European map. The set and lighting were gorgeous and the director added a clip from a 1920s surrealist movie that opened the show very effectively. A great start to Soulpepper's ambitious season. I'm looking forward to their next offering - David Mamet's great Glengarry Glen Ross.

Woolf's Hogarth Press Books on Display. . .

Many thanks to the Woolf listserve which alerted me to this exhibition running until the end of April at the University of Alberta. On display are a number of books published by Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press. Since many of the dust jackets were designed by artists such as Carrington, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, this promises to be a very interesting and beautiful exhibit. And perfect timing - I'll be in Edmonton briefly for work in April and will definitely try to drop by. The exhibition booklet is also for sale - just contact the library.

I'm in a New York state of mind. . .

Just back from a lovely week of vacation spent in New York City - I hadn't been there in over a decade and I was so lucky with the weather (the city had a huge snowstorm right after I got back). It felt like spring - sunny and 5-10 degrees - perfect walking weather, and I pounded those pavements, let me tell you. Visited a lot of bookstores and museums, saw two films, drank a lot of lattes, ate far too much chocolate and pastries (there seems to be a bakery or cupcake store on every corner) and managed to avoid many Deborah Kerr moments by keeping my feet firmly on the pavement every time I craned my neck to look at an interesting bit of architectual detail.

I also went to the theatre every night and was lucky enough to catch the first preview of Blithe Spirit (of course I had to go!) starring Angela Lansbury and Rupert Everett. It was a fairly traditional production - lovely use of music, standard drawing room set (bit too much fussing with a small table that was not only used for the seance, but also breakfast the next day), and decent performances from all the cast. It was such a treat to see Lansbury on stage (there was huge applause at her first entrance and at every scene exit) - she played Madame Arcati as wonderfully dotty and slightly ethereal, getting big laughs as she eccentrically moved around the stage in her swirling velvets. Yes, she forgot some of her lines but so did Everett, and Lansbury hid it much better (it was a preview after all). The most solid actor in the cast was Jayne Atkinson who played Ruth and it nicely showed what could be made of that part - in some ways the most interesting, as it doesn't depend on theatrics. I found myself listening much more closely to her lines, than I have in previous productions. All in all, a very enjoyable evening, although I prefer the Soulpepper production done in Toronto a few seasons ago, which was more daring in its interpretation - the dead ghost of Elvira showed up in a striking red dress for example, instead of the traditional white or silvery grey. If I have one big beef with the New York Blithe, it's with the artwork used for the posters and the programmes (which I normally like to frame but I don't know if I can bring myself to do it with this one).

Ghastly, isn't it? It looks as if the cast is about to make an appearance in a Scooby Doo cartoon. I wish they'd had time to take a photograph of the cast instead of this silly rendition.

One theatre company that did it right is Roundabout's production of Hedda Gabler, starring Mary-Louise Parker which I also saw. See their poster here. I went in with some misgivings as it had received mixed reviews due to its modern translation, but while I can quibble with the set design and some of performances by the supporting cast, I thought Parker was magnificant and completely embodied the spirit of Hedda. She owned the stage and the music and costumes were terrific. I also sat (suffered) four hours of a rather dreadful Mourning Becomes Electra, saw one of my favourite British stage actors - Simon Russell Beale, along with an excellent cast - in Sam Mendes' production of The Cherry Orchard, and ended my stay on a really high note with a new play called Becky Shaw, written by Gina Gionfriddo. This incredibly sharp and funny comedy about complicated family dynamics, a blind date that goes horribly wrong and debates about how honest one should be in relationships, had me in stitches. The writing was just so fresh and clever, and it was well served by great ensemble acting and a very inventive and effective set. I will see anything in the future by this playwright!

The Essays of Virginia Woolf: Volume 5

What a glorious day. I now have my copy of the recently published fifth volume of The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1929-1932, edited by Stuart N. Clarke. I'm not alone in thinking Woolf one of the best essayists (as well as novelists) of the twentieth century and while many of these pieces have previously appeared in her Common Reader: Second Series collection, or in other anthologies, I'm still pretty excited to add this 700 page tome to my shelves. As Clarke notes in his introduction, "The essays fertilised the fiction, and vice versa" (his emphasis) and he's noted the parallels in the footnotes. Woolf was writing The Waves and Flush during this period and if I ever get around to starting my 2009 resolution of re-reading her novels in chronological order, I will definitely be dipping into a similar selection of her essays alongside the fiction.

You can hear a radio interview with Clarke here (scroll down a bit).

A Flock of Holman Hunt comes to Toronto. . .

There's a great exhibition on at the AGO which I saw last weekend - Sin and Salvation: Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision. And to my great delight, one of my favourite paintings was on display (Our English Coasts painted in 1852, and pictured above). I always go to pay homage to it at the Tate when I'm in London and now that it's hanging in Toronto until May, I'll definitely be making multiple visits to see it again. One of the best things about being a Cinematheque member is free admission to the AGO with every film ticket stub. This exhibition is also part of the regular admission price, so if you haven't yet checked out the renovations, here's one more great reason to go.
It was fascinating to learn about Holman Hunt's Canadian and even Toronto connections (there's a stained glass window in one of our churches that is based on one of his paintings) and I enjoyed viewing many of his other paintings, particularly a striking piece called Isabella and the Pot of Basil, based on a Keats poem which depicts a beautiful woman clutching a wild and healthy pot of basil containing the skull of her murdered lover. Alas, in the poem the pot is taken away from her:

And so she pined, and so she died forlorn,
Imploring for her Basil to the last.

Can I ever look at pesto the same way again?

My kind of love story. . .

There was a recent article in The Globe and Mail about Michael Ignatieff, our Leader of the Opposition, and how he and his Hungarian wife Zsuzsanna, recently read War and Peace to each other (a similar article definitely couldn't be written about our Prime Minister Stephen Harper - he'd doubtless think reading books was too elitist, never mind reading them aloud). Meanwhile, single booklovers across Canada are sighing, and suddenly a dozen roses on Valentine's Day looks pretty ho-hum.

I've always thought the most interesting love stories are cross-cultural, especially when literature becomes a common point of reference. Such is the case with Tokyo Fiancée by Amélie Nothomb, translated by Alison Anderson. It's published by Europa Editions, which is also responsible for translating Muriel Barbery's wonderful The Elegance of the Hedgehog and the two novels, though very different, make wonderful reading companions. Again we have the story of a friendship between a French woman and a Japanese man, though Nothomb's story involves younger characters who are more romantically involved, and instead of sharing a passion for Tolstoy, it's Marguerite Duras's Hiroshima mon amour that is referenced(about yet another French/Japanese couple).

Amélie first meets Rinri when he answers her ad offering French lessons. She has come to Tokyo to work, learn about the country and improve her Japanese, and while their initial encounters are full of cultural and linguistic misunderstandings, they quickly become a couple and end up spending a lot of time together, though never at Amélie's own flat. But even as she revels in the beauty and customs of the Japan that Rinri introduces her to, her increasing uneasiness about the future of their relationship dampens her enthusiasm and independent spirit. In the end, she is forced to make a decision about both the man and the country that she loves.

This is a lovely, wistfully funny novel for world travellers, romantics and those who ponder (or obsess about) the "what ifs" in life. There's a beautiful chapter describing the climb up to the summit of Mount Fuji (definitely high on my list of things of things I want to do someday) and an instructive chapter on why tiny live octopuses are best avoided on the menu. Nothomb has a very breezy, personal style of writing - I read most of this delightful tale in one sitting. She's definitely an author I want to read more of, but I think I want to try and tackle her next in French. I have a copy of her earlier novel Stupeur et tremblements (actually referenced in Tokyo Fiancée) sitting on my shelves.

Three mysteries in translation. . .

It's been one of those weeks when my brain has been feeding on nothing but crime novels. So I managed to fully complete one of the categories in my Lost in Translation reading challenge, by devouring three mysteries in translation. And I can highly recommend them all.

Bernhard Schlink's bestselling book The Reader has been in the news a lot lately given the movie's Best Picture Oscar nomination and all the accolades and acting awards coming Kate Winslet's way. I also enjoyed Schlink's recent novel Homecoming which covers some of the same themes of second generation Germans trying to grapple with their Nazi past. Self's Punishment by Schlink and Walter Popp, translated by Rebecca Morrison, is the first in a series of crime novels featuring Gerhard Self, a man in his late sixties who also has to deal with a personal shameful episode stemming from the war. It is many years later, and he is hired to investigate a possible security breach at a local factory run by an old friend. Just when he thinks he has found the man responsible, a murder ensues, and the case becomes far more complicated. Of course I won't give it away, but the ending was shocking and unconventional for a mystery novel. I very much liked the character of Self - he's self-aware and self-effacing - and I look forward to reading more of his adventures.

I've been a big fan of Fred Vargas for a few years and love her Commissaire Adamsberg mysteries. My favourite so far has been Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand, mainly because it was partially set in Canada and featured a terrifically improbable but no less brilliant and original take on how to foil the police and exit a country via a major international airport without detection. I've just finished her latest to appear in English - The Chalk Circle Man, translated by Siân Reynolds - even though it actually is the first Adamsberg book she wrote (don't you just love how translation decisions are made?) This doesn't really pose a problem as all her books read perfectly as stand-alones and can easily be read out of order. It's nice to go the beginning however - Adamsberg has just arrived in Paris and his new colleagues are eyeing his methods rather suspiciously. Still, he knows that there's something sinister behind a series of blue chalk circles that show up on Paris sidewalks during the night. Each has the same engimatic quotation written around its edge and contains a seemingly innocuous object in the center. Until one night a murdered body is found in one of these circles. And then another. Vargas excels at interesting, quirky characters - suspects and members of the police force alike - and her plotting is second to none. She's probably my current favourite among contemporary mystery writers. I loved this book!

I also enjoy Nordic crime novels and my newest fave is Iceland's Arnaldur Indridason. His latest is Arctic Chill, translated by Bernard Scudder and Victoria Cribb. His detective Erlendur, must surely be the gloomiest of all the fictional sleuths working the bookshelves, and probably the only Icelander who has ever preferred the winter to the summer (Iceland only gets about two or three hours of daylight during the winter). He has problems with his estranged grown-up children, a complicated love life, and an unhealthy obsession with missing persons reports, stemming from a childhood trauma when his younger brother disappeared during a blizzard and was never seen again. This latest mystery touches on some of the current racial problems facing many Scandinavian countries as immigrant workers try to integrate into society despite language and cultural barriers. A young Thai boy is found murdered near his apartment building and in searching for his killer, Erlendur comes up against these racial tensions. It's an apt title - the identity of the killer truly is chilling. This is the fourth Erlendur mystery that I've read and I think it's the best one so far. I look forward to seeing if (and how) Indridason deals with Iceland's current bankruptcy in future novels.

Time for a break from mysteries now - I feel the classics calling to me.

Joan of Arc x 2. . .

Cinematheque Ontario is presenting yet another fascinating series of films this spring - I'm basically camping out there for the next few months. One of their themed offerings is a look at six very different films about Joan of Arc. I decided that three was about my limit for watching the maid burn and I've now seen the first two - both rare cinematic treats. First up last night was Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc. Focusing on the end of Joan's trial and her death, this movie is a stunning example of the power of black and white films and why even a large tv can never replace the effect of the big screen in a darkened theatre. Dreyer zooms in on stark close-ups for most of the film with the faces completely dominating the screen against mostly a white or gray background. It's an astonishingly work of visual power - even scary at times. Every tear that slowly coursed down Maria Falconetti's face was riveting. This film also takes an extremely bleak look at death, from shots of maggots squirming in the empty eyesockets of a skull to the slowly blackening form of Joan dying on the stake. A special treat for this silent film screening was its live accompaniment by pianist William O'Meara. While I've certainly watched silent films on DVD from my couch (a favourite is Pabst's 1929 Pandora's Box with the enchanting Louise Brooks - the Criterion DVD allows you to choose from four different scores to accompany the film), this was the first time experiencing a silent film the way they were originally conceived in the cinemas. I was in awe of O'Meara - not only for being able to play non-stop for 80 minutes, but to completely react to the various moods and timing of the film. I think I now need to get the DVD, which has a different musical accompaniment - an opera entitled Voices of Light, composed by Richard Einhorn who was inspired by the film. It will be interesting to compare an orchestrated and multi-vocal musical score with the piano that I heard, though I think in some ways, one piano seems more appropiate for the camera's singular focus on mostly one character at a time. This was a wonderful, unique experience and I'm so grateful to Cinematheque for screening this film as it was meant to be seen.

It was back to the theatre this afternoon for a Hollywood treatment of Joan - Otto Preminger's 1957 Saint Joan, starring Jean Seberg in her first movie role, Richard Widmark (who I kept thinking bears an uncanny resemblance to Ed Harris or vice versa), and John Gielgud. This is based on the play by George Bernard Shaw. I've seen it on stage at the Shaw Festival and it's one that I like very much mostly because of the epilogue where all the main characters re-unite as ghosts some years later. It always makes me laugh at the brush-off given to Joan by the men. The screenplay was written by none other than Graham Greene who effectively starts and ends the film with parts of this epilogue. He also gives Gielgud an absurdly ridiculous bit of dialogue (something along the lines of how heaven and hell are like Oxford and Cambridge - they don't mix well) -and Gielgud delivers it so straightfacedly, one can't help but giggle. One doesn't often picture Joan of Arc as a woman with a fetching beauty spot on her cheekbone, but Seberg is so earnest and charming in many of her earlier scenes and so defeatedly haggard and hollow-eyed during her trial, that in the context of Shaw/Greene's character, I think she was a perfect casting choice.

These were two completely different films in tone, focus and technique and yet I very much enjoyed them both. We'll see how Ingrid Bergman fares next week in Victor Fleming's 1948 Joan of Arc. The film won an Oscar for Best Cinematography - it's in colour - and I'm curious to see how it will differ emotionally and artistically from these two black and white films.

I think I also need to dig out my copy of Marina Warner's book Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism, which looks at Joan's constantly changing image over the centuries.

Easy on the ears. . .

Feeling a little blah this January? Tired of all the dull, cloudy, cold days?

Well, while waiting for the movie to be widely released, get a copy of the Easy Virtue soundtrack. Based of course on the Noel Coward play, the CD is full of upbeat, toe-tapping songs from the era, many of course by Coward. There are also more contemporary songs such as Tom Jones' Sexbomb and Billy Ocean's When the Going Gets Tough, that are orchestrated as though they had originated from the 1920s. The CD opens with a not-bad rendition of Mad About the Boy sung by Jessica Biel who stars in the film along with Ben Barnes, Colin Firth, and Kristin Scott Thomas (the latter two don't sing, but Colin does have a speaking line in the last song). One of the tracks is the instrumental tango that Colin and Jessica dance to near the end of the movie. I saw (and really liked) the film at the Toronto Film Festival last fall, and let me tell you - that tango was very hot. Lots of female sighs in the audience.

I'll definitely be seeing the film again when it opens - in the meantime, listen to the soundtrack. I guareentee an immediate mood improvement.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog. . .

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson is the first book completed in my Lost in Translation reading challenge and it is as stylish as its title.
The "Hedgehog" is Renée Michel, a fifty-four year old widow who works as a concierge in an apartment building made up of wealthy, snobbish people. To them she's a dull, slow and shuffling servant who is easily ignored. And Renée is happy to project that image to the tenants to divert their attention from her real passions. Once her door is closed however, she escapes to a world of books and foreign films in an ongoing attempt, not only to educate herself, but to engage with the beauty of art and life. Her world changes when two of the apartment dwellers - an introspective and intelligent 12 year old named Paloma, who is planning to commit suicide by her next birthday, and the newest tenant, a middle-aged Japanese businessman named Monsieur Ozu - suspect that Madame Michel is not who she is and set out to prove it. As Paloma writes:
Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside, she's covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary - and terribly elegant.

The narrative alternates between Renée's story and excerpts from Paloma's two journals which inscribe her "Profound Thoughts" and "Movements of the World". In the latter, she dissects everything from synchronized diving to the spectacle of two women fighting over the last pair of panties at a lingerie sale as "masterpieces of matter" that constitute examples of art and beauty as she searches for reasons to continue living. A bonding moment with Monsieur Ozu in the elevator occurs when they realize they've both been closely observing their secretive concierge, and the three form an unusual friendship - Ozu and Madame Michel initially connecting over a shared love of Anna Karenina. Ozu's friendly overtures in particular, initiate some big changes in Renée's life and allow her to confront a painful episode in her past.

But this novel is far more than just a modern day Cinderella story (Madame Michel doesn't go to a ball, but does get invited to a fancy dinner). It explores and celebrates so many things we often forget in the craziness of daily routines, such as the importance of really appreciating - and in fact creating - those tiny little moments of life, as simple as luxuriating in the taste of a delicious pastry, or looking closely at a beautiful flower. Reading a wonderful book. Paying attention to the placement of commas. Or truly taking the time to connect with another person, whatever their age or background. It illustrates how art and literature transcends all cultural divides and is the most universal entity that we have. And it makes you think. Have you ever negatively judged a person by their occupation? Or alternatively have you ever dumbed down your own abilities (or reading passions) to fit in at a party or even at work? Even if you work in the book industry? Guilty on both counts. As such, this is such an inspiring novel (I love Proust, Tolstoy and foreign films, okay, and I'm proud of it.)
This novel will make you smile, laugh, grimace, and weep. It will make you feel. I absolutely loved it.
And now if you'll excuse me, I need to make myself a cup of green tea and find some films by Yasujiro Ozu.

The Human Factor. . .

It's been a horrible day weatherwise in Toronto - snow, freezing rain, ice pellets, more snow, blowing wind - I was so glad to have the day off and not have to venture out into it. Instead it felt like a lazy Sunday. I spent the day taking intense, grateful pleasure in the warm, cozy things that are part of my apartment, such as these two pillows:

I found the material - which has a soft velvet texture, lovely to rest one's head against - in a sale bin at a fabric store. It only cost $3.00! and there was just enough in the remnant to get two pillow covers out of it. I sewed these over the holidays and I just love them - they pull together all the colours of my living room.
Today I needed to read not only something enjoyable but aesthically beautiful as well. Folios have always been my weakness. I've belonged to the society for some years now (you only need to buy four books a year) and I just love their selection, the bindings, the paper, the illustrations -these are truly beautiful books to hold and behold. And the volume calling to me today was Graham Greene's The Human Factor.

I've read about five books of his (The End of the Affair is my favourite) and he never disappoints. He's the type of writer I turn to when I have the time to sit and read a book straight through in one or two sittings. And I'm partial to spy stories. The Human Factor follows a group of ordinary men who work in an office of the British Secret Service, and the investigation that follows when a leak is suspected. As with all of Greene's work, morals, loyalty, politics and love are all individually questioned, defined, and debated. The cover, designed by Bill Bragg who also illustrates the interior, is absolutely perfect, capturing not only the utter loneliness and anonymity of doing this type of work, (and the insomnia that goes with it) but re-enforcing the recurrent theme of knowing your particular "box" in life and staying within it. Here's a wonderful passage in which one character uses an abstract painting by Ben Nicholson containing squares of different colours to articulate a certain cold, bureaucratic philosophy:

Percival pointed at a yellow square. "There's your section 6. That's your square from now on. You don't need to worry about the blue and the red. All you have to do is pinpoint our man and then tell me. You've no responsibility for what happens in the blue or red squares. in fact not even in the yellow. You just report. No bad conscience. No guilt. . . Nothing to keep you awake. Do just try to understand that picture. Particularly the yellow square. If you could only see it with my eyes, you would sleep well tonight."

But of course that yellow square isn't just paint but contains a human being. And the reader, perhaps is also bathed in a yellow square of their own, cast by their reading lamp. Delicious chills abound. A used bookstore - Halliday & Son - also plays a large role in this thriller, as does the incessant rain. Here is one of the interior illustrations by Bragg.

Yes, it really was the perfect book to read today.

Lost in Translation Reading Challenge. . .

One of my many New Year's Reading Resolutions - along with trying to read 125 books this year, to re-read all of Virginia Woolf's novels, (some of which I haven't dipped into in over 20 years) and to finally tackle Dante - is to participate in this very interesting Lost in Translation Reading Challenge which is not only a great way to get tons of reader recommendations, but also to discover some very interesting blogs. Bloggers sign up and agree to read at least six books in translation this year, and then blog about them. Frances at Nonsuch Book who has put the challenge together, then links to reviews and reading suggestions as well as blogging about books she has also come across.

I'm going to put my own individual spin on the challenge though, incorporating another of my reading resolutions which is to read more of the books already sitting on my shelves. I already rather voraciously read literature in translation - I took a count in my 2008 reading diary and I read 29 books last year in translation - so reading six won't be a problem at all. But as I was browsing my shelves to pull out potential titles, the pile just got bigger and bigger. So instead of just six books, I've devised six different categories of reading in translation - my personal challenge will be to read at least 3 books in each category. Here they are and I hope they also offer some good reading suggestions for others participating in this fun challenge.

1. Books that mirror the (admittedly loose) literary aims of this blog (i.e. books that were written in the period of Virginia Woolf's lifetime (1882-1941):

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, Jenny and Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke, Shoot! and The Late Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello, Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig, The Last Days by Raymond Queneau and The Pure and the Impure by Colette. I also want to read more of Iceland's Hallador Laxness since I recently read and loved his most famous book, Independent People. Iceland's Bell, World Light and The Fish Can Sing keep staring at me from the shelves.

2. Books by contemporary writers:
There's so much to choose from in this category, but these are the ones on my shelf demanding immediate attention:

To Siberia and In the Wake by Norweigan writer Per Petterson (I loved his novel Out Stealing Horses)
After tackling 2666, I need more Roberto Bolaño- The Savage Detectives and By Night in Chile.
All Our Worldly Goods and Le Bal by Irène Némirovsky
The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
Gargoyles by Thomas Bernhard
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
New Lives by Ingo Schulze
Beijing Coma by Ma Jian
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
The Sailor from Gibraltar by Marguerite Duras

3. Writers from Quebec:

I really should be reading more in my own backyard; I'm horribly ignorant about Quebecois literature and definitely need to read more. These are some of the books I've picked up over the years:
The Cashier and Windflower by Gabrielle Roy, Charles the Bold and The Years of Fire by Yves Beauchemin, Birth of a Bookworm by Michel Tremblay, Mauve Desert and Yesterday at the Hotel Clarendon by Nicole Brossard and Spring Tides by Jacques Poulin.

4. Mysteries:
I currently have many unread mystery and crime novels sitting on my shelves by Henning Mankell, Fred Vargas, Georges Simenon, Arnaldur Indridsson, Leonardo Sciascia and the one whose title I absolutely love (so it really should go to the top of the pile) is Carlo Emilio Gadda's That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana. Also, I just finished Roseanna, the first in the series of Martin Beck mysteries by Swedish couple Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö and I want more. The Man Who Went Up in Smoke is the next in the series.

5. Classics:
This is probably being overly ambitious but two big classics in translation that I've always wanted to read are The Tale of the Genji by Murasaki and Boccaccio's Decameron. Then there is Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan, Goethe's Faust, and oh, I really need to tackle Dante's Divine Comedy sooner rather than later. And does Sir Gawain and the Green Knight count as a translation? I certainly can't read the original Middle English. Plus I've always wanted to tackle Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and for the winter months, I think Ivan Goncharov's Oblomov would be the perfect choice (about a guy who spends an inordinate amount of time in bed).

6. Children's Books:
For fun!
Emil the Detective by Erich Kästner, Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson, Rock Crystal by Adalbert Stifter, Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, Inkheart by Cornelia Funke, The Killer's Tears by Anne-Laure Bondoux, and The Pull of the Ocean by Jean-Claude Mourlevat.

Whew! This should keep me busy for awhile.

My Favourite Reads of 2008. . .

Happy New Year!
I spent the day tidying up my apartment, ostensibly because my mother was coming for lunch, but also to start the year somewhat fresh and clutter free. And it was time to dust the bookshelves. Then I went through my reading diary for 2008. I finished 109 books last year, somewhat shy of the 125 I had hoped to complete but several of the books were over 800 pages so I'm not going to beat myself up about it. As I look over the list, I realize I've read mostly contemporary and new fiction (nothing wrong with that, I enjoyed most of it) but didn't tackle anywhere near the number of classics, books about Woolf, books set in the period of Woolf's life, Viragos, Persephones, and books about WWI that I've been madly collecting over the last few years. And they're now glaring at me from their shelves. So these are what I'm determined to focus on in 2009.
But I read some terrific books last year and here are my top 10 favourites (in alphabetical order by author - I just can't pick the best of the bunch)

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
This should have won the Man Booker prize. One can quibble about the ending, but I didn't see it coming and I was so enthralled in the story that I didn't even think to question it when it did arrive; I was completely caught in a narrative spell the entire time.

2666 by Roberto Bolaño, translated by Natasha Wimmer
One can't help but admire the immense writing skill behind this - a very long, but entertaining, thought-provoking and original novel.

The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley
Probably the most beautifully sustained writing of any novel I read this year.

A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and their Remarkable Families by Michael Holroyd

One of the last books I read this year and I'll blog about it in more detail soon, but these lives were fascinating and I can only remain awed and grateful for the years of research this book must have entailed.

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, translated by Thomas Teal
Just a perfect little gem about the wonders of childhood, the experience and wisdom of aging, and everything in between. This is a book I know I'll return to many times in the future.

Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance by Lloyd Jones
Two interconnected love stories spanning the world and decades. I am now hooked on Argentinian tango music.

In Spite of Myself by Christopher Plummer
What a storyteller - this book made me laugh and laugh, sometimes with an almost prudish horror and ultimately with delight. Plummer is a great writer as well as being a terrific actor.

Unforgiving Years by Victor Serge, translated by Richard Greenman
I've always been fascinated by the interwar years, spies and the complicated relationships - political, personal, and ideological - that people had with communism, especially during the 1930s. This powerful novel was horrifying and unputdownable.

Between Each Breath by Adam Thorpe.
Thorpe is one of my favourite British writers who has a real ability to make readers feel morally uneasy about the smugness of our comfortable lives. This novel is about a frustrated composer and his guilt over sponging off his wife's money; his problems only escalate when he has an affair while visting Tallin, with an Estonian waitress. It's a novel about creativity and music, and the re-evaluation of one's life and values, and the writing is just so beautiful. Here is one of my favourite passages:
It's as if walking without looking where I was going - walking backward, heels first, virtually improvising - I have suddenly turned my head. I very much like what I see stretching out in front of me. It was always there too, I just didn't realize it. It just needed a turn of the head.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

2008 was definitely the year to finally read this masterpiece as I also managed to watch Sergei Bondarchuk's 7 hour plus 1968 film version all in one day at Cinematheque, and I also saw the Canadian Opera Company's production of Prokofiev's opera this fall. I was surprised by how immensely readable and gripping this was.