A quick digest:
Writing: Not anything new, but Catholic World Report has reprinted an old blog post of mine on the film Of Gods and Men, referenced in this space yesterday. Also look for CWR’s annual “the best books I read this year” piece to which I contributed.
Other than that, I’m finishing up an edit of the book that’s due in early January. And toying with other things. But mostly wondering what to get everyone for Christmas.
Reading: Two novels over the past few days.
Dog of the South by Charles Portis.
I’m a Portis fan, although he definitely wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea. You probably know him as the author of True Grit – I’ve also read Norwood and Gringos.
He’s a very funny writer, an observer of bizarre, telling details that reveal the truth about a person whether they know it or not. His way into a story is always through a narrative voice – if you’ve read True Grit you know that what makes it a fascinating novel is not so much the story – teenage girl hires bounty-hunter to help her find her father’s murderer – but the fact that it’s told in the first person by the girl as a grown woman in a very distinctive, formal true-believing Protestant Christian voice.
Dog of the South is a ragged escapade, the story of Ray Midge, young man traveling from Arkansas to Belize (then still called British Honduras) to fetch his wife, who’s run off with another fellow. He’s sure they’ve gone to Belize because he knows the other fellow’s father has a farm there. On the way, he meets various characters, including Dr. Symes, the older-middle-aged son of a female preacher with a ministry in Belize City, who hitches a ride (to Belize City to settle a property dispute with his mother) with Ray in San Miguel de Allende because his bus, painted with the monikker Dog of the South, has broken down.
Well, yes. And there’s more. It’s not a long book, and definitely worth the three hours or so I spent with these characters. I felt the middle sagged a bit, but I think that’s because for a time, Portis lost his grip on Midge’s narrative voice – but it comes roaring back in the end. I also like Portis’ books because he spends so much time in Mexico and Central America – some parts I’ve never visited, but many I have – Merida, Belize, Mexico City, and so on.
Anyway, here’s a taste of what I enjoy about Portis. Just spot-on descriptions.
But Jack was a good-natured fellow and I admired him for being a man of action. I was uneasy when I first met him. He struck me as one of those country birds who, one second after meeting you, will start telling of bestial escapade involving violence or sex or both, or who might in the same chatty way want to to talk about Christ’s Kingdom on Earth. It can go either way with these fellows and you need to be ready.
***
He thought it was pretty good but it was old stuff to me, being compared to a rat. In fact, I look more like a predatory bird than a rat but any person with small sharp features that are bunched in the center of his face can expect to be called a rat about three times a year.
***
(In San Miguel de Allende)
Hippies interfered with my work by stopping me and asking me the time. Why did they care? And if so, why didn’t they have watches? The watch factories were humming day and night in Tokyo and Geneva and Little Rock so that everyone might have a cheap watch, but not one of these hippies had a watch. Maybe the winding put them off. Or maybe it was all mockery of me and my coat and tie. The same hippies seemed to be stopping me again and again, though I couldn’t be sure.
Then yesterday, I read Upstate by James Wood. Wood is a fine literary critic who’s written a few novels. What has always drawn me to Wood is not only the value I’ve found in his criticism, but also his faith grapplings. His first novel, The Book Against God, brought these two threads together somewhat successfully, I thought.
Upstate is a low-key, almost meditative short novel about family dynamics. Why do we turn out the way we do? What can be done about it after a certain point? I found myself wondering at times why this book was written – it wasn’t terribly compelling and seemed more like a way to work out some issues and explore questions in a fictional framework.
Watching: Finished Mrs. Maisel and my opinion didn’t shift. In fact, I got annoyed with it for another reason near the end – and this is something I’ve noticed in the current trend to shorter-form television seasons. Without spoiling it, I’ll just say that it seemed, by the end, that most of what transpired in the character’s lives over the course of the season worked to bring each of them to the brink by that last episode – a brink of transition and change, some of which will put them in conflict with one another – but oh, not yet. All of those changes are just over the horizon, the pieces have been moved slowly over the previous 9 hours or so, they’re put in place – and then bam. Closing credits – wait a year to see what happens.
Sure, cliff-hangers are fine. It’s the stuff that keeps us watching and reading. But this annoyed me because it just seemed particularly manipulative.
Cooking: This Chicken Saltimbocca was a hit (Serious Eats has become my go-to recipe site.)
Going to start this as soon as I hit “publish” on this post.