 Drinks Too Deep |
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I read Everything Is Illuminated summer before last on planes and trains and pretty much walking through the streets of New York City when visiting Shelley over the Fourth of July weekend. I remember loving it, but I also remember being resoundingly like, "What?" when it was all over. Like, I didn't really understand the ending, but I didn't care, because the book captured my imagination so wholly and was so gripping that it didn't even matter. That wasn't the happiest time in my life, and I typed a passage from the book and stuck it on my refrigerator, where it sat for months. Maybe longer. I don't know why. I think it made me feel a little bit better, knowing that sadness wasn't just mine, but probably everyone's. I was ready to read Jonathan Safran Foer's second novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, almost as soon as it came out, even though a recent profile I read of him practically made me vomit on my own feet. So I did. It moved very quickly, like the first book did, but in this case there was a marked difference. Last time I was confused a lot of the time but still plunged ahead because it was so delicious. This one was delicious for me, too, but even more so because it was just more straightforward. It wasn't completely linear, but it was set up in a way where it doesn't take a person long to figure out who is who and what is what and when is when and where is where in the story, and I have to say that I enjoy that clarity sometimes. Sometimes it's fun to figure out a book like a puzzle, but sometimes you don't want to have to work that hard. And this book isn't about working hard; the story just is what it is. And I'm not going to say too much more about it, but I will say that I really did like it very much. God knows I love a book narrated by a kid, especially a really smart, weird one, and I loved Oskar. He was like Adrian Mole, only more clever, more neurotic, and more broken. I really loved everyone in the whole damn book. You can read it in a day or two or three. I think what I liked most about the book is that Oskar has the most bizarre and paranoid thoughts and it reminded me of the beginning of Adaptation when the Charlie Kaufman character is going on and on in this manic way about all of his horrible flaws. Not that Oskar did that per se, but I really like things that give words to those crazy thoughts that sometimes I wonder if only I have. Things like this remind me that I'm not the only one, and that we're all a little bit or a lot crazy and lonely and scared. I didn't read this book as someone who experienced first hand the horror of "the worst day" or the loss of a parent, and I have no idea what reading it would be like for such a person, but it touched me, all of the intertwined stories in their own ways. I think anything that can remind you that life is precious in a way that is moving without being saccharine is a good thing, especially if it makes you laugh and cry along the way. I got Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith for my birthday, and I loved it. I love her. I'd read a lot of it already in Salon, but having it all wrapped up in a book is different. Anne Lamott just knows how to say what is in my heart. That sounds so gross, I know. I know a lot of people feel that way about her. I can't help it. I curse my first damn TiVo for breaking last year and robbing me of the recorded reading I had saved with her. It was one of the best things I ever watched in my whole life, I swear. Plus, her abhorrence of George W. Bush and how she worried it might be actually making her mentally ill was something I could relate to, especially in November, when I thought many of us might never get out bed again. Years ago, I checked Passion out from the library, but I couldn't really remember the story. I tuned into PBS last night to watch it as performed by Audra McDonald, Michael Cerveris, and Patti LuPone. I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but what I did see was awesome. I love Patti LuPone so much. I have to admit that on the recordings of hers that I have, Evita and Sunset Boulevard, her voice grates. Okay? It does. But all you have to do is actually see her perform for about five seconds before you realize why she is such a legend. I mean, don't get me wrong, she will always and forever be Libby Thatcher from Life Goes On to me and therefore worshipped, but I've never been nuts about her voice. But after her first song last night, the one about reading to live, I was lie -- whoa. All hail Patti. It's not just her voice, which admittedly is shrill and crazy a lot of the time, it's how she totally embodies a song with every muscle and bone and breath in her body. And Audra McDonald was of course perfect and looked better than I've ever seen her look, and Michael Cerveris was good, but I really did not need to see those pasty legs wearing no pants. (Note to my sister: he's the one who played the architect in Titanic, singing at the beginning, "In every age mankind attempts to fabricate great works at once magnificent and impossible. On desert sands, from mountains of stone, a pyramid. From flying buttresses alone, a wall of light. A chapel ceiling screaming one man's ecstasy, one man's ecstasy. Miracles them all, China's endless wall, Stonehenge, the Parthenon, the Duomo…" Anyway.) I thought he'd won the Tony for Tommy, but he didn't, but he did win for Assassins last year, which I would have loved to see, and of course Patti won for Evita and God knows what else. (And I wish I had been able to see Cerveris as Hedwig; there is an interesting bit about him in the role in the special features on that DVD.) So I've been settling into spring with all of these things and more, plus sneezes and busy work days and yard work and shedding pets and wishing I could play hooky every single day. The crape myrtles are starting to grow tiny green leaves, the azaleas are maniacally bursting everywhere, and life is pretty good. Fosca sings in Passion: Delicious nectar at the top and bitter poison underneath. The butterfly that stays too long and drinks too deep Is doomed to die.
I choose not to think like old Fosca. It's spring, and it's time for deep drinking. It's so strange to think that four years ago this month, I was buying my house. Then three years ago then two then one and now I am here. I am thirty, and it is April, and there's finally a new Joan of Arcadia on tonight, and Tom DeLay is a lunatic, and my sister is seeing Oklahoma onstage tonight, and I can't find my season one Felicity box set anywhere, and I just remembered that Elizabeth lent me Firefly and I want to start watching it, and I hear that The Kite Runner is really good, and oh hi, Erin's BOOK is coming out in one month, and I think one of my brothers might be in Mexico. Tomorrow there'll be walking outside and more sneezing and babies in strollers and hopefully even a nap. I ate grapes and a piece of cheese and a spoonful of peanut butter and a popsicle for dinner, just because I could.
About this time in ...
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