New Century Reading

The Penelopiad

I think Margaret Atwood and I have come to a parting of the ways. I'm a big fan of her earlier work--The Handmaid's Tale, Cat's Eye (possibly my favorite), even The Blind Assassin and The Robber Bride, two books which aren't universally loved.

But I didn't feel the love for Oryx and Crake, and I felt even less love for The Year of the Flood. I thought maybe that was just a bit of ennui with dystopia, or at least Atwood's version of it. So when Dolce Bellezza decided to host a read-along of The Penelopiad, which has been sitting unread on my shelves, I thought, great! This'll get me back to Atwood.

Not so much.

The Penelopiad is the tale of Penelope, wife of Odysseus, who waits more or less patiently for him to return from the Trojan Wars, while fighting off the advances of would-be suitors. When Odysseus finally returns, he slaughters not only the suitors, but 12 of Penelope's maids.

It seems like this would be a topic ripe for rewriting, but like Atwood's dystopia books, this one feels coy and tricksy to me. The story is mostly told first person from Penelope's point of view as she wanders the afterlife, sometimes using archaic sentence structures, sometimes using current vernacular, which is jarring. And as in the dystopia books, it seems like Atwood doesn't quite trust her readers to "get it." At one point early on, she describes Odysseus cheating in a running race to win Penelope's hand by mixing the wine of the other contestants with a drug to slow them down. Then, just in case we miss the obvious contemporary parallels, she says: "I understand this sort of thing has become a tradition, and is still practised in the world of the living when it comes to athletic contests." Oh, good, thanks for pointing that out--I never would have figured that out on my own.

I think we're supposed to feel sympathy for Penelope's plight, but essentially she's kind of whiny and lackluster. At one point she wails: "When would [Odysseus] come back and relieve my boredom?" That's not exactly a heartrending statement of loss.

The 12 maids are represented by--what else--a Greek chorus that comment on the action periodically through songs and verses. Some of the verse is just mind-numbingly silly:

"Word has it that Penelope the Prissy
Was--when it came to sex--no shrinking sissy!
Some said with Amphinomus she was sleeping.
Masking her lust with gales of moans and weeping."

This is part of the Canongate myth series, which opens with Karen Armstrong's A Short History of Myth, then is followed by various prominent authors retelling various myths. I'm interested to try some of the others, but I have to admit, this is not a strong start for me.

Great Expectations

But first, this week over on my other blog, it's been Book Week. Check 'em out!

Deeper and deeper do Pip's great expectations come crashing down around him. Not the actual money--but where the money came from. Is it just me, or is there some serious karma going on here in terms of how Pip turned his nose up at Joe and Biddy? I say that while acknowledging that the much-older Pip who's actually narrating this seems to understand that as well. For all his crimes (and it certainly sounds like he was a victim at least once), Magwitch seems to have had truly good intentions towards Pip, which Pip can only view with revulsion.

Of course it doesn't help that Magwitch is confident Pip won't mind sharing living spaces with him. Let's be honest--would any of us want to live with Magwitch, expectations or no? I think not.

Hee--did anyone else think it was funny when Magwitch told Pip to look out for a "fashionable crib"? And MTV thought it was all hip using that phrase.

Ah, Pip. Your great expectations of money have been realized, but the likelihood of ever truly being a gentleman and winning Estella's heart, given where that money came from, seem pretty remote.

Pip thinks he should give up the money. What do you think? I'm torn. On the surface, it seems the right thing to do. But it's the thing Magwitch worked hard to accomplish--is it right for Pip to ignore that?

What Miss Havisham really lacked

 

Great Expectations

Well. Things have taken a bit of an unexpected turn, haven't they? Not that I honestly expected Miss Havisham to be Pip's benefactor; Dickens hinted at that much too long, and it was too obvious. But Pip's great expectations come from a criminal, who was sent to Australia and, apparently, had as his only goal to redeem himself by raising Pip up?

Let's be honest--if anyone finds out where Pip's good fortune came from, it's not likely he'll be accepted into high society. What will Miss Havisham think? Or Estella?

Speaking of the latter, that was quite a row she had with Miss Havisham, wasn't it? Frankly, it's the first time I've felt much sympathy for her. She's very bitter, and she seems to clearly understand how she was raised and is aware that it's not exactly the norm, yet it's been so deeply ingrained into her psyche that she can't tear herself away from it, even as she loathes it.

Very dark, Mr. Dickens. Very dark indeed.

Anne Frank: A Graphic Biography

When Girl Detective mentioned this book, I have to admit to some skepticism. She didn't love it, comparing it unfavorably to the wonderful Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife (which, if you have any interest in Anne Frank, or the Holocaust, or literary process, you should definitely read) and, of course, the Diaries themselves. I thought, really, a graphic novel about Anne Frank and the Holocaust? Nah, that's just not right.

It turns out I found it a more favorable read than Girl Detective did. It might be because I read it long after reading the Prose book and re-reading the Diaries, but I found it a good blend of historical context along with Anne's life and family bios. It looks like the author incorporated some of Prose's findings in terms of Anne having purposefully revised her diaries with an eye toward publication. Even better, this is no Saint Anne, but the Anne of the diary: sometimes petulant, always a teenager, deeply thoughtful and very talented, but no doubt challenging at times.

So, Girl Detective, I throw this one back to you: maybe you'd like it better if you gave it some space?

Great Expectations

Well, now, this was a rather dark and ominous trio of chapters. We find that Pip has been leading a life of perhaps not the most gentlemanly nature, and spending rather a lot of money in the process. Even worse, he's dragging Herbert Pocket along with him, who doesn't have the means or "expectations" that Pip has.

Mrs. Joe dies, which in some ways could be seen as a good thing--she's been a trial for Pip, and for Joe, even if he doesn't want to admit it. But now Joe will lose Biddy, and Biddy clearly understands that Pip, for all his defiant proclamations, will not be a frequent visitor.

And, finally, Pip comes of age, but it's anti-climactic: he still doesn't find out who his benefactor is, nor does he get any clue as to when he might find out, and Mr. Jaggers gives him a what-for about his spending habits (and rightfully so, dear Pip).

It's a bit as if a tide is turning. For all Pip's supposedly good fortune, he's still in limbo, and bit by bit he's losing the things that should be important--his relationship with Joe, his money, potentially the friendship with Herbert if he either drags Herbert too deep into debt, or makes Herbert beholden to him through a business scheme.

These expectations are not looking so great right at the moment.

Great Expectations

"Yet this made me none the happier, for, even if she had not taken that tone of our being disposed of by others, I should have felt that she held my heart in her hand because she wilfully chose to do it, and not because  it would have wrung any tenderness in her, to crush it and throw it away."

Oh, Pip. Listen to your instincts, young man. Any young woman raised by the bitter and cruel Miss Havisham is not going to be the best choice for a hot date.

Blood, Bones & Butter

Subtitle: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef

Gabrielle Hamilton's memoir of her life is a wonderful read, in spite of the fact that it's far from perfect. She changes tenses frequently from past to present, I think in an effort to get the reader more fully involved in specific scenes (but ends up distracting them instead); there are some embarrassing typos (when one wishes to purchase high-end jewelry, I believe they go to Tiffany's, not Tiffanny's); some sections drag a bit and are repetitive.

But so what?

From the opening pages, which were published in similar form in the New Yorker not long ago, Hamilton completely sucked me in with her tales of childhood, an eccentric and large family living in a burned-out silk mill in Pennsylvania, her mother from France, a "housewife" with a six-burner stove and a food fanatic:

"Our mother had her own double-tiered, potbellied couscoussier, and she made tagines with preserved lemons and cardamom pods, pigeon pies with sultanas and pine nuts, painstakingly brushing each fragile layer of phyllo dough with melted butter using a special brush made of white duck feathers, which would neither leave loose bristles in the dough nor perforate it."

Her father was a creator of theatrical scenery and a big proponent of elaborately themed parties, including a spring party with whole lambs roasted over an outdoor pit dug by hand, periodically swabbed with a mixture of olive oil, rosemary, garlic, and lemons.

You'd think from this that Hamilton logically went into the chef's life immediately, but no. A messy divorce and some teenage wild years threw her off-track, and when she did return to the world of cooking, it was only to earn a necessary paycheck. And in order to do that, she entered the world of catering.

Note: if you read this book, you will never, ever, ever again consume a canape at a large wedding reception. You've been warned.

In between catering work, she spends some summers cooking at a kid's camp, meeting Mark Bittman when he comes to pick his daughter up and wants to compliment the cook.In another impulsive decision (she makes a lot of those), she packs up and heads to Europe, where she bums around on a very limited budget before dropping in on people her family knew, and who gave her the opportunity to work behind the scenes at a small French bar and a tiny, rustic cafe on a lesser-known Greek island.

Eventually she became a chef at her own restaurant. Unlike so many star chefs, who begin at low levels in the kitchens of the great, Hamilton didn't work her way up the ranks; instead she acted on a whim when a restaurant space in her neighborhood became available, and decided she would do things her way, even if she didn't have the pedigree. The restaurant, Prune (a childhood nickname), was (is) a huge success, and from that point, Hamilton tells tales funny and touching about the difficulties of running a restaurant, meeting a man, getting married and having kids, and even why spending a month in Italy with your family-in-law every year can get old. Even the current locavore movement comes in for some tart commentary when faced with three weeks of limited choices in a small Italian town:

"In Leuca, there is nothing but eggplant. Local. Seasonal. Those are the words that turn everybody on these days. But twenty-one days of local eggplant season is torture.

"I think when people get all dreamy about local and seasonal, they are thinking of California, where you can get anything any time of year. But they are not referring to Santa Maria de Leuca, a small seaside town at the tip of the heel of the boot of Italy in the state of Puglia. And they are not imagining eating that way--local and seasonal--for twenty-one days straight. They know they can go get a platter of sushi at their local joint any night of the week. Maybe they are thinking of their week-long trip to Tuscany."

At times overly indulgent, at times maddening, Hamilton is never anything less that passionate about food, and this book made me long to hop a plane to New York and eat at her restaurant. The funny thing is, for all the imperfections, the best parts of the book really overrode the problematic parts for me, and I sailed along, not wanting it to end. Hamilton is all too human, and would perhaps roll her eyes at my thoughts on food and cooking, but by the end, I thought she'd be a great person to have a drink with.