Disillusionment

Mad Men has returned, and it got literary again.

While only one novel was clearly in view, and shown to be actively read — The 42nd Parallel, by John Dos Passos — there's another literary reference straining through Peggy Lee's rendition of "Is That All There Is?" which opens and closes last night's episode. The song's lyrics were inspired by Thomas Mann's short story "Disillusionment."

I zealously fed my magnificent expectations of life with the matter of a thousand books and the works of all the poets. Ah, how I have learned to hate them, those poets who chalked up their large words on all the walls of life — because they had no power to write them on the sky with pencils dipped in Vesuvius! I came to think of every large word as a lie or a mockery.

Ecstatic poets have said that speech is poor: "Ah, how poor are words," so they sing. But no, sir. Speech, it seems to me, is rich, is extravagantly rich compared with the poverty and limitations of life. Pain has its limits: physical pain in unconsciousness and mental in torpor; it is not different with joy. Our human need for communication has found itself a way to create sounds which lie beyond these limits.

Is the fault mine? Is it down my spine alone that certain words can run so as to awaken in me intuitions of sensations which do not exist?

You can read it in its entirety, or listen to it here.

It's not hard to imagine that the story was written with Don Draper in mind. Ennui in extremis.

What did Time smell like?

There was a smell of Time in the air tonight. He smiled and turned the fancy in his mind. There was a thought. What did Time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if you wondered what Time sounded like it sounded like water running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping down upon hollow box lids, and rain. And, going further, what did Time look like? Time looked like snow dropping silently into a black room or it looked like a silent film in an ancient theater, one hundred billion faces falling like those New Year balloons, down and down into nothing. That was how Time smelled and looked and sounded. And tonight — Tomás shoved a hand into the wind outside the truck mdash; tonight you could almost touch Time.

In addition to rereading Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles for this week's unit of the MOOC on fantasy and science fiction that I'm following, I decided to rewatch it as well.

It originally aired in January 1980, and I remember it as a big television event (this was, after all, the golden age of the miniseries). Apparently Bradbury thought it was boring. That may be true from the perspective of the mind from which the story was sprung. But it made a great impression on my 10-year-old self. Possibly more so than the book, which I didn't read till years later.

Low on special effects, and I don't particularly care for how the Martians are represented (they should be brown-skinned and small; I don't know about bald), it manages to convey the essence of Bradbury's novel, an ambiguity that hovers between poignancy and creepiness.

Scripted by Richard Matheson (no slouch as a writer of SF himself), it has an excellent new-agey soundtrack, and a vibe reminiscent of Fassbinder's World on a Wire (which is maybe just a general 1970s tv sfi-fi vibe, I dunno).But I think it's awesome.

You can watch The Martian Chronicles online (parts one, two, three).

The Zola project

I am enthralled by The Paradise. This television series pushes all the right buttons for me, though I can't identify them all. Music is one positive factor, and the beautiful people are another. For some reason I find the department store setting fascinating. Exquisite production value, fine acting, etc., but why I should be so enamored of this program while others leave me cold (ahem, Downton Abbey) is due to some ineffable je ne sais quoi.

(I'm watching on PBS Masterpiece Theater and we're nearing the end of season 1, but I've just discovered that most of the series is available on YouTube. I expect I'll be binging on season 2 before Christmas.)

The Paradise is based on Émile Zola's Au Bonheur des Dames, the eleventh novel in his 20-volume Rougon-Macquart series. The television program has transposed the story from Paris to somewhere in northeast England. Of course, this leaves me wondering how much else has been changed. And what better way to find out than to read the source material for myself?

Meanwhile, my other half has been reading up on L'Assommoir, another novel in that series, after we were speculating about the origin of the name of a local bar that goes by that appellation. And he's become somewhat obsessed with Zola's concept.

The Rougon-Macquart cycle follows the life of a family during the Second French Empire. It includes a couple of Zola's best known works: Nana (which I in fact read, about 25 years ago) and Germinal, and lo they are interconnected.

In Différences entre Balzac et moi, Zola noted:

In one word, his work wants to be the mirror of the contemporary society. My work, mine, will be something else entirely. The scope will be narrower. I don't want to describe the contemporary society, but a single family, showing how the race is modified by the environment. (...) My big task is to be strictly naturalist, strictly physiologist.

The challenge then, for me and my other: to read the whole Rougon-Macquart cycle. Also, to read it in French. (This may take years.)

I will be following Zola's own recommended reading order with the following exception: I will pick up Au Bonheur des Dames first. The fact that I have some familiarity now with the story should help ease me into the language. Plus, I want all my pressing questions answered.

List

Eléazard is not only reviewing a manuscript concerning Athanasius Kircher. He keeps a notebook:

Minor Chinese Officials:
Official in charge of the Confines
Official in charge of insignia made of feathers
Inspector of medicine taters
Commissioner in charge of demanding submission from rebels
Head Clerk of the office for receiving subjugated regels
Grand Master of reprimands
Officer of the tracks
Official in charge of the Entrance and the Inside
Grand Rear Secretary of the Grand Rear Secretariat Official charged with embellishing translations
Official charged with showing and observing
Observer of draughts
Sub-director of the multitudes
Superintendent of frogs
Condemned man of noon
Official charged with keeping his eye glued to the cupboard keyholes
Official charged with preserving and clarifying
Official charged with making good the emperor's oversights
Leader of the blind
Minister of winter
Shaker of hands
Superintendent of leather boots
Regulator of female tones
Participant in deliberations on advantages and disadvantages
Fulminator
Official charged with speeding up delayed dispatches
Musician for secular occasions on a short tour of duty Grand supervisor of fish
Fisher of rorquals
Friend

— from Where Tigers Are at Home, by Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès.

(Hah! Anyone else remember Mr. Shake Hands Man?)

More literary Mad Men

Another season of Mad Men has come and gone, and I thought it time to update the list of books (and poems, and other reading material) sighted or discussed in seasons 5 and 6.

(The list of books that had screen time in seasons 1 thru 4 is here.)

• Trumbo, Dalton: Johnny Got His Gun (S05E01)
• Leary, Timothy: The Psychedelic Experience (S05E06)
• Malamud, Bernard: The Fixer (S05E07)
• Plath, Sylvia: Lady Lazarus (S05E08)
• Pynchon, Thomas: The Crying of Lot 49 (S05E08)
• Shelley, Percy Byshe: Ozymandias (S05E09)
• Alexander, Lloyd: The Black Cauldron (S05E09)
• Francis, Dick: Odds Against (S05E09)
• Brown, Margaret Wise: Goodnight Moon (S05E11)
• Dante: The Inferno (S06E01)
• McMurtry, Larry: The Last Picture Show (S06E07)
• Levin, Ira: Rosemary's Baby (S06E08)
• Massie, Robert K.: Nicholas and Alexandra (S06E11)
• Mad Magazine: Sept 1968, no. 121 (S06E11)

A shoutout also to Hitler — "That's what they said about Mein Kampf, kid's got talent." (S05E03)

Ralph Waldo Emerson belongs on the list, but not a specific title, just the general idea of him (S06E07).

Season 6 also saw references to Edgar Allan Poe and William Wordsworth, and Don's kids watching The Prisoner (not a book, I know, but it has literary qualities and I'll take this reference as an excuse to rewatch it).

(I'd had the feeling that scenes of people reading has slowed down, but listing them out here, that appears not to be the case at all.)

One episode of season 5 featured original fiction by account exec Kenny Cosgrove (S05E05). He refers to his short story, "The Woman Who Laid an Egg and Then Gave It Away," and we're treated to an excerpt of "The Man with the Miniature Orchestra." He describes "The Punishment of X4":

"There's this bridge between these two planets and thousands of humans travel on it every day, and there's this robot who does maintenance on the bridge. One day he removes a bolt, the bridge collapses, and everyone dies."

"There's more to it than that," a nervous Cosgrove tells the hushed room. Don pushes for further details: Why does the robot destroy the bridge? "Because he's a robot," Ken answers, clearly encouraged by Don's interest. "Those people tell him what to do and he doesn't have the power to make any decisions, except he can decide whether that bolt's on or off."

What have I missed? (This more complete list includes books seen of shelves, but we all know that just because a book is sitting there doesn't mean it's been cracked.)

I have a passing acquaintance with many of Mad Men's books, but I haven't read many. I've read Plath and Shelley, and Johnny Got His Gun seriously affected me as a teenager. I don't think I'll be reading Dante's Inferno on the beach this summer, but The Crying of Lot 49 and Rosemary's Baby are more intriguing than ever. Are you still reading along with Mad Men?

"Now that's just showing off"

Finally, a glimpse of the TARDIS library.

The soul is made of stories

"Hey, do you mind if I tell you a story? One you might not have heard? All the elements in your body were forged many, many millions of years ago in the heart of a faraway star that exploded and died. That explosion scattered those elements across the desolations of deep space. After so, so many millions of years these elements came together to form new stars and new planets, and on and on it went. The elements came together and burst apart, forming shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings! Until, eventually, they came together to make you. You are unique in the universe."

— The Doctor in "The Rings of Akhaten"; Doctor Who.

Just some pennies that you pick up off the floor

Season six of Mad Men opens with Don Draper reading Dante's Inferno (tr John Ciardi), on the beach.

Midway in our life's travel, I went astray
from the straight road and woke to find myself
alone in a dark wood.

He is, of course, taking his own journey through hell.

The episode is entitled "The Doorway." Leave it to Roger, simple drunk, guru, to channel Aldous Huxley, to see things clearly:

"What are the events in life? It's like you see a door. The first time you come to it you say 'Oh, what's on the other side of the door?' Then you open a few doors, then you say 'I think I want to go over that bridge this time, I'm tired of doors.' Finally, you go through one of these things and you come out the other side and you realize that's all there are. Doors and windows and bridges and gates and they all open the same way and they all close behind you. Look, life is supposed to be a path and you go along and these things happen to you and they're supposed to change you, change your direction. But it turns out that's not true. It turns out the experiences are nothing. They're just some pennies that you pick up off the floor, stick in your pocket. You're just going in a straight line to you know where."

It brings to mind yet another journey through hell, William Blake's:

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.

Huxley in The Doors of Perception (which title was inspired by Blake's poem) also references "The Door in the Wall," a short story by H.G. Wells, whose protagonist reminds me of someone...

Now that I have the clue to it, the thing seems written visibly in his face. I have a photograph in which that look of detachment has been caught and intensified. It reminds me of what a woman once said of him — a woman who had loved him greatly. "Suddenly," she said, "the interest goes out of him. He forgets you. He doesn't care a rap for you — under his very nose..."

Yet the interest was not always out of him, and when he was holding his attention to a thing Wallace could contrive to be an extremely successful man. His career, indeed, is set with successes.

I rather suspect Don may meet a fate similar to Wallace's.

I am more than half convinced that he had in truth, an abnormal gift, and a sense, something — I know not what — that in the guise of wall and door offered him an outlet, a secret and peculiar passage of escape into another and altogether more beautiful world. At any rate, you will say, it betrayed him in the end. But did it betray him? There you touch the inmost mystery of these dreamers, these men of vision and the imagination.

It ain't like that

I am a very recent convert to and addict of The Wire. Finishing up season 1 this weekend.

Hold it tightly by its little tentacle

"I came," she said, "hoping you could talk me out of a fantasy."

"Cherish it!" cried Hilarius, fiercely. "What else do any of you have? Hold it tightly by its little tentacle, don't let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be."

For a few weeks now I've been scouring local bookstores for a copy of The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon. I have some Pynchon on my shelf that I mean to get to some day, but now, now! — since that episode of Mad Men with Pete Campbell on the train reading The Crying of Lot 49 — I have to read that Pynchon first, and now.

Were it available as an ebook, I'd have downloaded it by the time that episode's final credits had finished rolling.

By an amazing coincidence, the day I've coordinated my schedule to make a lunch-hour trip to a particular bookstore on which I'm betting to have an actual physical copy is the day I receive news that Penguin has struck a deal with Pynchon, and his books are available digitally as of today.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Mad Men effect played a role in nudging both parties to reach an agreement.

See also: Why the Hell is Peter Campbell Reading The Crying of Lot 49?

Making everything ordinary too beautiful to bear

There were phrases of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony that still made Coe cry. He always thought it had to do with the circumstances of the composition itself. He imagined Beethoven deaf and soul-sick, his heart broken, scribbling furiously while Death stood in the doorway, clipping his nails. Still, Coe thought, it might have been living in the country that was making him cry. It was killing him with its silence and loneliness, making everything ordinary too beautiful to bear.

— from "The Man with the Miniature Orchestra," by Dave Algonquin.

Everything just went on and on and on

Sometimes Michelle tried to remember what it was like before the baby came, when it had been just the two of them and they could lie in bed all day, and have feverish, exhausting sex and then eat toast and jam and watch television on the tiny black-and-white set that they used to have at the foot of the bed until Michelle knocked it over because Keith was watching the snooker (on a black-and-white set, what was the point of that?) and the baby was screaming and she just couldn't do it any more.

She did love them, she really did. She just couldn't feel it.

They weren't bonded together, they were like molecules, molecules that couldn't bond together into stable elements and instead bounced around like bingo balls. She should have done science, not spent all her time with her head in novels. Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on.

— from Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson.

I'm reading this just a few short months after having watched the television series, and maybe that's too close, as I can't help but see and hear those TV characters as I read. I can't say which was more enjoyable. The TV production was wonderful; the book is perhaps funnier (I laughed out loud) and grimmer. Both are rather punch-in-the-gut — almost unbearably — honest. People are so complicated. Sigh.

I love how all the cases are interwoven. It's not a big city, it's only normal there should be overlap. And because, of course, an investigator doesn't have just one case at a time.

I can't pinpoint why Jackson Brodie is such a sympathetic detective. He's a middle-aged, heavy-drinking fuck-up. That's fairly cliché for a detective. So what makes this guy so special? Have you read or seen Case Histories? What do you think?

I will definitely be reading more Kate Atkinson. And I can't wait to see more TV episodes. I highly recommend both the novel and the televisation.

Mad Men gets literary again

Season 5 of Mad Men is off to a fine start. Episode 1 culminates in a surprise birthday party for Don. And it's a fabulous party: drinks for everyone, boys looking at girls, marijuana on the balcony, a little yé-yé, and a heated political discussion in the kitchen that references in great detail Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo.

[I read Johnny when I was about 14 and it blew my mind. And boy, do I know it — talking about that book is a great way to kill a party. But then, at 14, I was going to a different kind of party.]

No blatant literary references in episode 2, but I couldn't help but pick up a little Lolita vibe as Lane Pryce obsessed over a photo of aptly named Dolores.

Maybe it's a sign that Simenon is too much on my mind, but it strikes that a couple characters are potentially deeply Simenonesque.

Pete Campbell, junior partner. I don't find him sympathetic, or even likeable, but mostly he's just trying to catch a break. He tries hard. In these episodes I'm noticing a look in his eyes. When he rides in to work on the train in the morning, there's a look like it might be his last ride, he's not riding home ever again. When he returns to his suburban home one evening there's a look of "how did I get here?" (I mean, "how the hell did I end up here?") and for a moment I thought he might snap his wife's neck.

Lane Pryce, finance guy. British, but also deeply sympathetic. He keeps wanting to step out of his box, but always ends up squarely in his box. Now he finds a wallet, finds a photo inside the wallet, calls about returning the wallet and talks to the girl in the photo, returns the wallet, but keeps the photo. It's so small, but it's a transgression, and it's pervy. The others may topple secretaries over their desks, but Lane's innocuous actions are more loaded. My money's on Lane absconding with the company funds. For a girl.

Now, all the characters cross lines, social and ethical. So why do I point to these two as typical Simenon antiheroes? For most of the characters, their morals fall whichever way the 60s are blowing. They fill an immediate need, resolve an immediate problem; they scratch an itch. They're not, on the whole, acting out of any deep-seated unhappiness; they're just reacting. But these two! It's like they're prodding some existential bruise.

Is Simenon colouring the way I look at the world? Am I reading too much into Pete and Lane? Are they any different from the rest of the Mad Men? What do you think makes them tick?

See my list of books referred to in Mad Men's first 4 seasons.

Fairytale update

I had to know how it all turned out. I had to invest in the subsequent volumes of Doctor Who: A Fairy Tale Life.

And it turns out rather well, I think. The Doctor finds the TARDIS, Amy is cured of recombinant yersinia pestis, children thought lost to the serpentine of the Dread Tower are restored to their families, and the galactic tourist industry is well on its way to recovery. (Sorry if I spoiled it for anybody, but really, these resolutions are rather obvious from the start.)

What surprises, and thrills, me most about this SF franchise comic book experience is exactly how much these characters sound exactly how they're supposed to sound, saying exactly the sort of thing they would say. The whole thing was very cinematic, like I'd just watched an episode on TV.

Bonus: Helena's on page 14. So we all read happily ever after.

Lumpy and runneled and cracked

They say a picture's worth a thousand words. I supposed it depends on the words, depends on the picture.

The stink of the Lannister host reached Arya well before she could make out the devices on the banners that sprouted along the lakeshore, atop the pavilions of the westermen. From the smell, Arya could tell that Lord Tywin had been here some time. The latrines that ringed the encampment were overflowing and swarming with flies, and she saw faint greenish fuzz on many of the sharpened stakes that protected the perimeters.

Harrenhal's gatehouse, itself as large as Winterfell's Great Keep, was as scarred as it was massive, its stones fissured and discolored. From outside, only the tops of five immense towers could be seen beyond the walls. The shortest of them was half again as tall as the highest tower in Winterfell, but they did not soar the way a proper tower did. Arya thought they looked like some old man's gnarled, knuckly fingers groping after a passing cloud. She remembered Nan telling how the stone had melted and flowed like candlewax down the steps and in the windows, glowing a sullen searing red as it sought out Harren where he hid. Arya could believe every word, each tower was more grotesque and misshapen than the last, lumpy and runneled and cracked.

"I don't want to go there," Hot Pie squeaked as Harrenhal opened its gates to them. "There's ghosts in there."

Chiswyck heard him, but for once he only smiled. "Baker boy, here's your choice. Come join the ghosts, or be one."

— from A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin.

I can't keep away from these books it seems, even though I tell myself I have other things to do, other books to read first, save these for later. But this series — A Song of Fire and Ice — is addictive.

Frankly, I'm hard-pressed to explain why. And I'm incapable of summarizing the story. Not much happens at all at a page-by-page level, yet so much happens. It's somehow magical, that there should be life on the page.

I'm halfway through book two (even while trying to finish Martin Chuzzlewit and keep up with a couple other reading "commitments") and there's but one mention so far of the walking dead that closed out book one.

Anyway, I'm solidly committed now to seeing how far this series will take me. I have given up on the televization for good. It strikes me as remarkably faithful, and on-screen that can be quite boring (the same fault the Harry Potter books suffered, in my view.) Filmically, so many things might be better cut, or altered, or resequenced. But in this case, with legions of fans, it seems more important to be faithful.

Then there are descriptions such as the above, sure to be shortcutted in a few-second glimpse of an extraordinary set — that's what pictures can do, what film is for — but lost is the... I dunno, the immersion, the feeling of scurrying away to read a wholly different world, a whole other world. Not sure how I can justify the assertion that worlds like this are meant to be read (and imagined), not seen. But there you have it.

"Lumpy and runneled and cracked" — those words so much richer than a picture.

The game

What is honor compared to a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms . . . or the memory of a brother's smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.

Well, I'm hooked. A Game of Thrones (George R.R. Martin) was completely compelling, I'd read it while cooking, while walking, it had me cursing J-F for (unusually) taking the metro with me in the morning and cutting into my reading time.

It's a soap opera of epic proportions. The story lines are somewhat predictable, never straying far from those trusted themes, typical of fantasy novels, of love, duty, honor, and I can't say they're treated with any peculiar nuance, but the characters are interesting and complicated, and sometimes they have wise things to say.

Mostly, though, I just want to know what happens next! I'm mildly pissed off that so many threads are left unresolved at the end of this first book of a five-part trilogy — in particular, a potentially paranormal, zombie-like plot line! — as this means I'll probably be reading another 2000 pages of stuff. Which isn't a bad thing exactly; I just hadn't planned on it, and it's getting in the way of other reading plans.

I have seen an episode and a half of the television series. It's well cast and seems to be true to the book, but doesn't have the same escapist thrill as reading does. I'll watch a bit more, for J-F's sake. I'm kind of hoping it picks up and saves me from reading the rest of the series.

The catastrophe of my personality

Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

— from "Mayakovsky," by Frank O'Hara, in Meditations in an Emergency.

I first heard this bit of poetry quite recently, and it's probably the first I'd ever heard of Frank O'Hara, and I'm sure it's true for many people, when Don Draper recited it at the close of an episode of Mad Men.

It's not the first time Mad Men has inspired my literary pickings, and I'm sure it won't be the last, but something about this recitation made me gasp, and cry a little, and want to know everything about Frank O'Hara and the bar he sat in while writing it.

I think this stanza did all it could do for me, and then some — one beautiful television minute, lingering and working through my bloodstream. Weeks since I first saw it, I think about it every day.

But I ordered this collection for my sister straightaway (happy birthday Ivonna!), because, well, I don't know why. There is no emergency, no urgent need for meditation, not beyond the daily emergency of life. Not for her, I don't think, and not for me. It may be the coldest day of the year, that's all, and we should meditate some.

I think about becoming myself again.

Bunga!

Being mom to a 7-year-old means I get exposed to a lot of crazy TV.

We've come to love iCarly. The show is fun and dynamic. It doesn't patronize or moralize to its audience. Often it's brilliantly weird and random.

Here's the funniest thing I've seen in ages. (Sadly, the video at this link cuts short the barrage of cabbages at the end. To see the full (unembeddable) clip, go to iCarly's cool web show highlights. This video is described as: "Fred meets iCarly — We have Fred HERE in our studio!!! And this is an ALL NEW Fred video featuring US!!!") I don't remember laughing so hard!

"Who's the lady with the log?

We call her the log lady:

Sometimes ideas, like men, jump up and say "hello." They introduce themselves, these ideas, with words. Are they words? These ideas speak so strangely.

All that we see in this world is based on someone's ideas. Some ideas are destructive, some are constructive. Some ideas can arrive in the form of a dream. I can say it again: some ideas arrive in the form of a dream.

I received Twin Peaks on DVD for my birthday, and I'm ecstatic for the opportunity to watch it. I was very aware of the phenomena of it as it happened almost 20 years ago, but for some reason I didn't see most of it. I must've had some crazy job with weird hours, although I remember talking with my coworker Robert about it, or maybe it was on the night I usually went out dancing, and I didn't own a VCR in those days. But I can see it now, as if for the first time.

Adding to my enjoyment — we've just finished season 1 — is the fact that I've now read Infinite Jest, so when the black, billowy triangle-ish shadow flits across the curtain in the red room, I could say, Oh my god, what does that belong to, how creepy is that?!

It turns out that Twin Peaks and Infinite Jest have several features in common. The black, billowy triangle-ish shape of horror, menacing French-Canadians, white hair overnight, the face in the floor (or, well, bloodstain in the carpet, but...), the dream-logic, the weighty significance of dreams, a spiritual dimension that allows for shamans or wraiths.

Not least of the similarities is that they serve as an obsessive puzzle to be figured out almost more than they do as entertainment. And they're both very funny.

Last night I dreamed I was flushing all my clothes down the toilet, and shoes, including the worn out pair I actually threw out last week, only it was like my younger self, only sometimes it was my daughter, and I (we?) were being scolded by my older self for clogging the toilet, for not disposing of them properly.

What weekends are made of

Waking
Sleeping in on a weekend morning. I wake to find the girl perched at the foot of the bed painting my toenails. I don't know whether I'm more amused or disturbed.

Baking
I've devoted far too many hours to considering frosting. The girl's birthday is in a couple weeks, and we decided that it'd be nice to take cupcakes to school to celebrate with her friends. I've never made cupcakes. I found a simple recipe and we did a trial run. The cakes are delicious, but we all concur that the frosting (a pretty standard buttercream) is horrendous. (Yes, the butter was fresh!) The original batch got modified, then I tried something else. Three frosting failures so far. What are we going to do!!?!

Eating
I am really, really, really annoyed about the clementines! They have pits! Not just the occasional 1 or 2 per orange. Lots and lots of pits! I'm talking 4 or 5 per segment, every segment! It's taken all the joy out of clementines. And I love clementines! Just not like this! If this continues, I may have to stop eating them. Oh my god, what if I get scurvy!!?!

Gardening
The last of the balcony-garden tomatoes are finally harvested. The geraniums have been brought inside to winter.

Reading
Am I finally ready for Mann's Magic Mountain? No, I decided. I wanted something small and modern first, as a palate cleanser. So I started The Last Supper, by Paweł Huelle (pronounced "hyoo-la" I've finally learned, in an entirely un-Polish way). Coincidentally, Huelle wrote a kind of prequel to The Magic Mountain, but this novel isn't it. This one's all about Art and Religion — a couple of my favourite subjects — but we're off to a shaky start.

The first chapter is a dream sequence, I found out by accident (looking to see where the chapter break was), and I'm glad I did, and I'm doing you a service by telling you so, because it allowed the chapter to make some kind of sense finally. It's all very frenetic, maybe the more so for having just come off a couple books with intense emotional focus.

On some level I must be hoping to reconnect with my Polishness, or to learn something about Poland today. I still think that Polish literature of the early to mid 20th century is one of the world's best kept secrets. And I'm glad to get, for example, the Mrożek reference (he's like the Polish Ionesco). And I'm glad to have a first-hand recollection of the Gdańsk terrain, physical and cultural. But I don't feel like I'm connecting yet...

Watching
The Tudors! We'll finish with season 1 tonight. Somehow I never did get to watch a full episode while it was airing, so I borrowed it from the library. Full of sex and God and war and intrigue!