Books
Some Books to Remember
Yes, I spend a good portion of my life in front of the tube and screen, but my love is actually stories. To that end, I’ve done pretty well on a summer reading list (thank goodness for Borders buy 2 get 1 free!). I won’t review them all but here’s the list just in case anyone is interested or wants to discuss;-)
The Known World by Edward P. Jones
Wicked by Gregory Macuire
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs (soon to be a movie, I believe)
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (would be a great movie!)
The World According to Garp by John Irving
The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
Transmission by Hari Kunzru
Yet on my list:
House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday (I saw the restored print of the film at NMAI and have wanted to read the book)
Four Spirits by Sara Jeter Naslun (author of my fav book Ahab’s Wife)
Not too shabby considering all of the movies I was watching for work!
In Cold Blood
It’s not hard to get why Hollywood has become fascinated by the 1959 Clutter murder and subsequent covering of the case by Truman Capote taking form in In Cold Blood. The facts of the case are of the sort that agitates with equal measure curiosity and fear. Perry Smith, the triggerman who shot 4 members of the Clutter family during a nightmarish night robbing their home in a sleepy Kansas outpost, after his capture, conjured empathy in most that met him because of his sheer patheticness combined with charisma and sensitive intuition. He was disarming, to Truman, it seems, as well as members of law enforcement who dealt with him until his death by hanging. And though it is hard to feel too sympathetic given the detailed confession of the events, which are gruesome and terrifying, when I closed the cover, it was also impossible to feel that anybody won or even that justice had really been served.
If you haven’t see Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Capote, I recommend it. It is more about the man and his relationship to the story than about the crime. The book is far more disturbing but if you can stomach the details, the writing is amazing - I won’t review it because that is well-trodden territory. But the combination of the 2 stories got me thinking about documentary and the relationship of documentarian to his/her subject.
The Wind is My Mother
Today we honor mothers - those that have passed on, those who nurture us today and those mothers yet to be. I was thinking about what my mother and grandmother mean to me and was searching for someone else’s words to help me. I remembered not a poem or prayer, but a book that I read and reread to help me along: The Wind is My Mother by Bear Heart with Molly Larkin.
When I was old enough to understand it, my mother told me this story: “When you were a tiny baby, you got sick and we thought you were going to die. You had a real high fever and I sat in a rocking chair and rocked you all night long. Neighbors wanted to relieve me and take you, but I wouldn’t let them, I just held you in my arms all night. Early in the morning, just before the sun was coming up, I took you outside and, facing East, dedicated your life to our Creator. I said, ‘If You let this child live, I will do my best to be a good mother. I will raise him knowing something about You and Your great love, so that he can walk this earth and be of help to people. He will be Your feet, Your eyes, Your voice, Your hands. However You can use him, I dedicate him to You now.’” After she came back in the house, the fever broke and I got well (144-145).
Thank you, Mothers. May God bless you and keep you.
Reading Lolita in Tehran
I’m reading Azar Nafisi’s book right now, and I’m having a hard time getting through it. If you haven’t read it, Nafisi was an English lit professor at University of Tehran in Iran, and once she could no longer teach under Ayatollah Khomeini’s rule, she held a small group class in her home with her brightest students from past classes. The memoir is broken into four sections, one of which is Lolita. The others are James, Gatsy and Austen. But the other sections aren’t necessarily about her female students. She recalls different classrooms, and the conversations and controversies that happened around the books she taught. My issue with the book is that she meanders off into lit lessons so frequently that I lose my connection to the people she is trying to invoke, although the Amazon review highlights this as part of the book’s charm.
Sleeping with the Enemy…
Indigo Girls’ Our Deliverance
They’re sending soldiers to distant places
X’s and O’s on someone’s drawing board
Like green and plastic but with human faces
And they want to tell you it’s a merciful sword
But with all the blood newly dried in the desert
Can we not fertilize the land with something else
There is no nation by god exempted
Lay down your weapons and love your neighbor as yourself
In the night fall when the light falls
And what you’ve seen isn’t there anymore
It’s through our blind trust that love will find us
Just like it has before
The US is a contradictory place. The documents that we hold so dear espouse an ideal of freedom and justice for all, but in reality, even at that time, it was partly fiction. The genocide of Native people and enslavement of Africans belied those lofty goals. And obviously we haven’t ever recognized or resolved the contradictions. Nasdijj (The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams) wrote that we are our history and I believe him, but I’m afraid others do not.
Unfortunately I still haven't had a chance to see The Killer Within, but hopefully I can find time soon, especially ...
Thanks, Agnes. Without smart friends like you getting the word out, our films would go nowhere. Such a blessing when ...
Definitely a good meme.
I'm going to weigh in with Lifeguard. This is a low-budget feature from the 70s. Beach movie/B ...
I went to a small liberal arts school in New Jersey, Fairleigh Dickinson. What did you read? 
hey Agnes, where did you go to school? I also took a course called Creative Non-Fiction (though we never read ...