And the Noble Goes to...

Have you read any of Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio’s books lately? Hmm. Or maybe you’ve recently picked up 2006 Noble Winner Orphan Pamuk’s Snow.

I don’t want to give the impression that the prize is politically motivated or is a kind of Lifetime Achievement Award, although it does raise brows and draws new readers to the chosen one. Whatever drives new readers is great for literature. To draw to the literary landscape today is a great challenge as we already know. Whatever the motivation to pick up Herta Mueller’s work is well worth it.

I’m a firm believer in expanding the literary landscape. Writing style, subject matter, and rules of syntax lure readers to their favorites, but I’m one who approaches my reading like my wine. I relish a diverse sample. I’m not hung up on Kirkus Reviews, plugs from Slate, or tweets from Salman Rushdie. I read what I read.

Some might consider mine an eclectic, unfocused approach— cherry-picking. I call it stylized discrimination. A healthy lust for poetic memes. But, seriously, I don’t pretend to have the inside dope on all the words, critical and otherwise. I take the Socratic approach, I admit I knowing nothing and work from there.

I am a slow reader and want to experience a book for the work of art it is. In other words, I cannot speed read so I wouldn’t bother reading the plethora of airport fluff. I do take recommendations. I will not pigeonhole everything. I’m a New Yorker, I honor our sacred bird.

So far I know this about our 2009 Noble Laureate. She began her career in 1976 translating for an engineering factory, and was canned in 1979 because she wouldn’t play by the Communist regime’s rules. Herta’s husband Richard Wagner is also a novelist.

I’m not sure if I’ll start with Ms. Mueller’s debut collection Niederungen or Oppressive Tango as I’ve always had a weakness for the Argentine dance. I will make it a point to acquaint myself with her work because I want to expand my reader and writer’s eye.


Tidbit

The Noble Prize in Literature has been awarded since 1901. The only years that no awards for literature have been given are: 1914, 1918, 1935, 1940, 1941, 1942, and 1943.

Virtual Belly Button

[Click here to enter The Literary Lab Genre Writing Contest]


Webfetti and gadgets are the buttons of our day. It used to be a sign of solidarity to wear a a pin, a patch or button on your denim jacket to show off your favorite band, presidential candidate, ballplayer. Since our days revolve around the keypad it's only natural that we look for stuff to dress up our cyberdomains. Wallpaper is too insular. Too old hat.

When you have a blog or website you want to share it with the world. It a part of of you. Your very own virtual belly button. I've stuck a Duotrope badge on my page. I will soon tack on one for NANO because they are mega keen. I have quotes from Twain because he was the Mack Daddy of his day- for ours too.

If you haven't already done so I suggest checking out the Genre Wars they have a cool badge to stick on your blog. They have a fiction writing contest that embraces all the sub-genres and it will a literary slugfest- so to speak. Above is the picture of the contest and is sponsored by the esteemed The Literary Lab.

One last note before I go. Do you remember candy buttons? Those Technicolor sugar-hopped strips of paper that were usually stuffed into your goodie bag for b-day parties. That was one button I was never really fond of, but I did once proudly wear Billy Joel and The Police buttons on my stonewashed denim jacket.

Long live The Piano Man and Sting.

A Movable Desk

I’m a mobile scribbler. My movable desk (AKA my lap) finds its way onto buses, planes, trains, and other automobiles. I’ll sit on a rock with my notebook and take stock of the confluence between the world around me and the one passing through my brain.

Yesterday, I decided I needed a real desk. What with my recent move I’ve been typing away on the dining room table. I probably could have kept up for a little while longer, but I’d already been testing my better half’s patience long enough.

My buddy offered me a retro office desk. The thing was as big as a Greyhound. I had no idea where to put it. I needed something simple. Fortunate for me that I live in the neighborhood Furniture Central, Steinway has so many table shops, good stuff, junk, and so-so. You have to have a good eye. The prices are another story. I’m convinced there’s a black hole parked between taste and tacky. Prices not commiserate.

I’m not cheap, but I’m not willing to plunk down a month’s rent for gaudy or impractical. When I veer off onto a side street and see a piece I can imagine in my bedroom/office I poke my head in the shop to inquire on the price. Nobody. I could sweep the desk off the sidewalk and be on my merry way. My bad back is my conscience for the day. I rub my hand over the flat top. Pretty smooth. But, it’s a street model.

A middle-aged man in an ill-fitting fishnet cap and fleshy ears walks to the desk. He has handout written all over his grimy face. I stand my ground.

“Nice desk,” he says.

“It’s ok.”

“How much?” he asks.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

He scratches his fleshy ear and lopes into the shop. At this point, I say to myself you’re not horning in on my desk, bub. When I make it into the shop he is already sidled up to the counter, but there is no attendant to wait on him.

Two can play at that game.

“How much would you pay?’ he asks.
And there’s no way I’ll let him bait me. “You first.”

“Strong pine, last you a long time. Seventy dollars.”

I do a quick mental calculation to make sure I have enough cash on me. My fishnet-hatted foe probably only carries sweaty bills and this place doesn’t look like it takes plastic. When I figure I can beat him by twenty-odd bucks, if the bidding were to go that high, I make a kind of smirk.

Then a skinny kid comes out of the storage room. Finally, we’re going to get a little service around here.

“It come in tan or you like burgundy maybe,” the man says.

“Excuse me?”

“Yuri, go bring burgundy piece for show.”

The skinny kid ducks back into the dusky storage area and then it hits me that this clown is the owner. Somehow I feel more embarrassed for him and the flat beak of his cap that makes me think of a duck-billed dinosaur.

I take two crisp twenties and a crinkled ten out of my pocket.

“Fifty bucks.”

“Strong wood. Yuri carry it for you home and put it together, seventy-five.”

“That’s ok, I can take it myself.”

“Sixty five, we tie it up neat to the roof of your car.”

“I’m walking.”

“You’ll hurt your back.”

“I’ll be fine.”

I take the initiative, put the fifty bucks in his hand. He looks at it briefly as if I’m giving him quarters for the laundry, but then accepts it. Yuri takes his sweat ass time finding the box. They were out of the tan so I settled for the burgundy.

The whole way home, which although wasn’t technically far but it was sure as hell awkward, I reminded myself that I had to put the desk together. And though my back ached, my knees and thighs were bruised from trying to prop the box upright, I had this sweat moment of triumph coming to me. I hadn’t put anything together in as long as I could remember. What better way to get a creative boost than to build my own writing desk.

A Sliver of Turturro

Back in August, I posted about bit players I noticed as guests on sitcoms. This is sort of a hobby of mine, but today I feel compelled to share two minor parts played by John Turturro that I just discovered. I'm a big fan of his work. He covers a wide range: grandmaster chess wonk in Luzhin Defence, pizza parlor primogenitor in Do the Right Thing, newfangled celluloid writer in Barton Fink, Herbie Stempel in Quiz Show.

When I saw Turturro in Desperately Seeking Susan, playing the part of cheeseball MC Ray I was surprised. It's been quite a while since I've seen the film. And, unlike Barton Fink, starring a more mature, painstakingly brooding Turturro the cheeseball MC had a touch of the actor's unmistakable flair. By voice he is recognizable and you can't forget his face.

I also caught a glimpse of him haggling Woody Allen in Hannah and Her Sisters. If you are not acutely attuned the glimpse is missed. It's towards the beginning and during a madcapped scene of merging and diffusing throngs. Turturro plays a young writer who stops Woody for maybe 5 seconds. There's only a peripherally view, but a good shock of John's curly locks.

I did a quick scan to see some other films I haven't seen him in, mainly recent ones. Transformers and Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen. I won't catch either of those though I was nuts about the toys as a kid. But, I might be on a lookout for him on Flight of the Concords or on a Monk rerun. I'd love to see him teamed up with Tony Shalhoub.

A Glass of Mastroberardino

I have a proclivity for wines from southern Italy more so than their more famous Northern regions. I think it has something to do with the volcanic soil. Aglianico is king among the southern Italian red varietals though I have had many other pleasant quaffers.

Piediroso may not be a household name unless your house is somewhere near Campania or Apulia. Recently, I had one of Mastroberardino’s entry level reds, Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio. I hasten to pigeonhole this wine with the unflattering moniker, but I'm going strictly by price point. Mastroberardino has great depth in his portfolio, nevertheless, as price points go, the Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio is a bargain. It doesn’t have the complexity as say the Taurasi, but then again the Taurasi is predominantly Aglianico. Think of the Lacryma Christi as the introduction to Villa dei Misteri which hails from Pompei and is comprised of 90% Piediroso and 10% Sciascinoso.

Lacryma Christi is made up of 100% Piediroso. The wine is redolent of violets and undergrowth. You see these descriptions all the time and say to yourself “what are kidding me?” but this wine smells like somebody’s garden. It doesn’t carry the whiff of industrial-strength fertilizer or chemicals. It’s pleasantly bitter on the palate enough to know there is a balance between fruit, acidity, and only an insouciance of tannin.

Drink it with fennel-encrusted rack of lamb or fried eggplant.

Pysanky

Pysanky are Ukrainian-stylized eggs. A wax resist method or batik is used to decorate the eggs and a special instrument called the kistka etches the design.
They are usually made for Easter, but folk artists make them all year round. Some have extremely intricate patterns. Most have designs of animals, wheat crops, flowers, trees.

Their origin comes from a myth in which the egg is symbolized as the source of life. Though Christian Ukrainians adopted it by 988 AD (with the rise of Christianity) the pysanky had a long illustrious pagan tradition.

Iryna Bilianska from the Sokol region of Western Ukraine used an embroiery pattern on her pysanky. Hers are more floral-designed than my mom's. My mom made many with deer patterns, trees, and interwoven geometrical shapes. We had a china bowl full of eggs many years ago, but our cat tested her soccer skills with virtually all of the ornaments in that bowl including a few treasures my grandmother had made.

Helen Levitt

A small tribute to Helen Levitt hangs in the Met’s halls en route to the Contemporary art wing. Her photographs capture the kinetic charm of the city’s urban landscape. There's an influence of documentarian geniuses Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans although Levitt has less edge, focusing on urban youth in all its free-spirited glory. One of her standout shots is a Mid 40’s picture of two adults and a child stylized into a kind of totem pole. The woman stands tallest has a slack mouth and peers toward the east probably Uptown. The darker-skinned, chunkier man wears a stern look and faces the opposite way. Below him, is a messy-haired child in dreamy, yet frazzled consternation. The boy gapes in the same direction as the woman. His vantage point both physically and chronologically lower may hold the answer to what has grabbed his attention.

Notice the mimetic play of frames within frames in the first shot. The theatricality comes purely from the children (subject's imagination) rather than the artist.