THE LOST ECLECTICAS I
Just as I suspected—turns out I'm not dying in a
ditch somewhere, and my hit count dies right off. Oh,
well. Not that you're a bunch of ghouls or anything.
So sorry to hear that Steve
Martinovich has been laid off. His cross
was heavy enough as it was, living in Sudbury and all. As
a boy, I lived there myself. Not Sudbury, exactly, but a
squalid little town nearby called Wahnapitae. I'm sure it
wasn't spelled that way back in the early 1960s, but who
am I to oppose the great god Authenticity?
A reader named Dave Lull writes with some really useful
information—The Report Website may be down
officially, but my archive remains available.
Hurry, hurry! Offer may end at any time. Thanks, Dave.
Before that site became moribund, Kevin
Steel was uploading my stories and columns
regularly, but there were three Eclecticas that
never appeared online. I'm going to reproduce them here,
starting with December 16, 2002. Oh, Eclectica!
Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. E-eclec-ti-ca.
MOVIES: NOW MORE THAN EVER
Elsewhere in this issue, Jeremy
Lott presents the 10 best Christmas movies.
But what about the rest of the year? Christmas is the
season to give DVDs be watched year-round, and in that
spirit, this column presents some of its own choices.
The
Royal Tenenbaums (MPAA rating: R) is a
movie about redemption. Specifically, the redemption of
Royal O’Reilly Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman), a hugely
charming shyster lawyer who decides to win back the
affections of his estranged "family of
geniuses." His genius children Margot, Chas and
Richie (Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson) are
bankrupt emotionally, never having recovered from their
father walking out on them. Royal is bankrupt financially
and eager to exploit them: eager also to prevent his
long-estranged wife (Angelica Huston) from marrying her
gormless but decent accountant (Danny Glover).
Royal is a man of awe-inspiring selfishness, as funny
as he is horrifying. Two examples must suffice. Royal
"commiserating" with his grandchildren, who have
recently lost their mother in a plane crash: "I'm
very sorry for your loss. Your mother was a terribly
attractive woman." Royal to a priest: "I’m
half Hebrew myself, but my children are three-quarters
Mick Catholic." Priest: "Were they raised in the
faith?" Royal: [Blank incomprehension].
That sad clown Bill Murray is terribly affecting in a
"small" role (no small roles, remember, only
small actors) as Margot’s cuckolded husband, Raleigh St.
Clair. Raleigh: "Are you ever coming home?"
Margot: "Maybe not." Raleigh: "Then I just
want to die." Luke Wilson is hilarious as Eli Cash,
the stoner James Joyce: "Well, everyone knows Custer
died at Little Bighorn. What this book presupposes
is...maybe he didn't." And Luke Wilson is
heart-rending as a washed-up tennis star whose life has
been blighted by his doomed love for his adopted sister
and whose devotion to his ghastly father is absolute.
The Royal Tenenbaums is a "dark" movie,
but it also joyous. It is the third feature (after Bottle
Rocket and Rushmore)
directed by Wes Anderson and written by him and Owen
Wilson. Anderson is only 32. That’s pretty
awe-inspiring, too. The two-DVD presentation by Criterion
is everything DVDs can and should be and, at $20 or so, a
snip at the price.
DREAMSPEAKER
Cameron Crowe is another wunderkind, as anyone
who has seen Almost
Famous knows. (At 15 he was writing
cover stories for Rolling Stone.) One can only
suppose that hatred or jealousy of Tom Cruise resulted in
the lukewarm reviews Crowe’s Vanilla
Sky (2001: R) received. Forgive the
vernacular, but Vanilla Sky is a
"mind-blowing" exploration of the persona
and the limits of consciousness. This is the movie Eyes
Wide Shut should have been. And Cameron
Diaz continues to amaze, this time as Cruise’s spurned
trophy girlfriend. Amazing too is Crowe’s use of popular
music. Who else could imagine The Monkees’ "Porpoise
Song" as background to a transition to
eternity?
QUENTIN TARANTINO, CALL YOUR OFFICE
Novelist Martin Amis once poked fun at his father (and
better novelist) Kingsley for his opinion that Terminator
2 was a "masterpiece."
Everyone knows about T2, of course, but one of the
delights of DVD is the reissue of movies neglected the
first time around. And if it’s "non-stop
action" you’re looking for, another masterpiece is The
Taking of Pelham One Two Three. (It
received an R rating in 1974; it would probably receive a
PG-13 today.) The plot: gunmen hijack a New York City
subway car and demand $1 million in cash—in one hour.
(Oh, inflation! Can’t you hear Dr. Evil intoning: One
million dollars!?) This is a supremely intelligent
actioner, one that Hollywood couldn’t make today for 100
million dollars. (Oh, inflation!) The cast is a dream. The
good guys are led by the late, great Walter Matthau; the
bad guys by the late, great Robert Shaw.
THE SINISTER AFL-CIA
Barcelona
(1994: PG-13) is a love story, but it as much about the
love of a city as the love of women. Could Barcelona
really be as beautiful as it is presented here, and could
its women really be that beautiful? The movie is also
about one man’s attempt to reconcile his Christianity
with the modern world and his cousin’s attempt to
reconcile America with Europe. It’s witty, moving, and
the women are gorgeous.
’NUFF SAID
This
is Spinal Tap (Rated R in 1984;
probably a PG-13 today) is Colby
Cosh’s favourite movie. Further comment
would be superfluous.
- Kevin
Michael Grace,
1.14 a.m., March 15, 2003 [Link]
-
HELLO, IT’S ME
Golly, if I’d know what the effect of announcing my
firing and then disappearing for four days would have on
my hit count…
For those who’ve asked: No, I haven’t been in a
drunken stupor all this time. Yes, I did get squiffy on
Monday—as promised—but not a drop has touched my lips
since then. Just as well, as I awoke on Tuesday in a state
of great anxiety. In any event, I usually don’t drink
more than one day a week, and sadly, alcohol has lately no
longer the power to take me out of myself. Not for long,
anyway. How I hope this condition is temporary. The pain
of being a man would be intolerable without drink.
No, my time has been spent in legal consultations,
speaking with well-wishers and sleeping. I have been
rather fatigued, and this explains my desultory blogging.
I require stability for personal expression. How I
wish I shared the indomitable character of a Karl
Marx, who kept bashing away even as he was
crippled by disease, even as the duns pounded on his door
and his beloved children died before his eyes. (Although,
as noted above, more would seem to prefer
"portentous" silence from me than
"trenchant" commentary.)
Whereof one cannot speak, thereon one must remain
silent. There is much I could say about the circumstances
of my termination, and perhaps one day I shall. For the
immediate future, however, I must think first of my
dependents; it would be unjust to jeopardize their
well-being, such as it is.
I would like to thank all those that have expressed
their commiserations, shock, horror, etc. I am a poor
correspondent at best and a frightful one at worst, but I
shall return your messages. A special thank-you to
bloggers Rick Hiebert, Jeremy Lott, Steve Martinovich,
Kathy Shaidle and Kevin Steel. You are too kind.
And now for a shameless personal appeal. Unless I find
work soon, I shall be destitute, and my poor kiddies, far
from crying out for pearls and caviar, shall find
themselves without even a roof over their heads.
I am a clever, versatile and facile writer (as an
examination of this site will prove) and a talented
editor. Let every employer know, whether he or she wishes
me well or ill, that I shall swot any subject, bear any
burden, meet any deadline, support any friend, oppose any
foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of
me. This much I pledge—and more.
(Regular transmissions will resume shortly.)
- Kevin
Michael Grace,
2.35 a.m., March 14, 2003 [Link]
-
MY LONG PROFESSIONAL NIGHTMARE
IS OVER
I was fired today by the Citizens
Centre Report, formerly The Report,
formerly Alberta Report, where I have toiled lo
these last eight years. More to come. I am going to get
drunk now.
- Kevin
Michael Grace,
6.22 p.m., March 10, 2003 [Link]
-
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Nothing’s what I am
afraid of, and there’s more nothing every day.
—Russell Hoban, Kleinzeit
- Kevin
Michael Grace,
7.33 a.m., March 5, 2003 [Link]
-
POETRY CORNER
Luis de Camões
Camões, alone, of all the lyric race,
Born in the black aurora of disaster,
Can look a common soldier in the face:
I find a comrade where I sought a master.
For daily, while the stinking crocodiles
Glide from the mangroves on the swampy shore,
He shares my awning on the dhow, he smiles,
And tells me that he lived it all before.
Through fire and shipwreck, pestilence and loss,
Led by the ignis fatuus of duty
To a dog’s death—yet of his sorrows king—
He shouldered high his voluntary Cross,
Wrestled his hardships into forms of beauty,
And taught his gorgon destinies to sing.
—Roy
Campbell
- Kevin
Michael Grace,
12.48 a.m., March 4, 2003 [Link]
-
SO FAREWELL THEN, JEREMY
Jeremy Lott resigned
yesterday from the magazine that employs me. I worked with
him for less than six months but became quite fond of him.
He was a delightful colleague. He took all my kidding with
good humour, including my latest shtick of labeling
him the goyische Larry
David. He never complained about the Lott
Chronicles or even when I outed him as a fan of the grisly
Shakira.
Jeremy did me innumerable kindnesses at a time I most
needed them. He will discover that I am, if nothing else,
loyal. I won’t forget you, friend.
- Kevin
Michael Grace,
12.17 a.m., March 4, 2003 [Link]
-
LOST IN THE TRANSLATION
Colby Cosh has been watching
CBC’s relay of Doctor
Zhivago. He describes it as "a
gorgeous nullity" and declares that Pasternak’s novel
"isn’t spoken of much anymore as a Great
Book." Zhivago does have at least one notable
defender, the British novelist and biographer A.N. Wilson,
who calls
it "surely the great masterpiece of
20th-century Russian prose and poetry."
Wilson is surely one of the finest novelists of his
generation, and he is also fluent in Russian, so his
opinion carries considerable weight with me.
I read Zhivago about 25 years ago, though apart
from a rather wonderful scene on a train involving a deaf
man, I can’t say it left much of an impression. Perhaps
it was the translation (Hayward and Harari), which Wilson
characterizes as "not all bad [but] far from
completely accurate; and its renderings of the poetry are
pedestrian."
As a young man, I devoured Russian literature: all of
Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Solzhenitsyn and much of Pushkin,
Gogol, Chekhov, Turgenev, Bulgakov, Gorky, Babel,
Kuznetsov, Sinyavsky, Grossman, Voinovich, etc. I wonder
how much I really understood, however, as I read them in
English, my attempts to learn Russian being unavailing. I
don’t really read much literature in translation
anymore, since style cannot be translated—and literary
greatness, so far as I understand it, is primarily a
question of style.
But it could be that I was prejudiced against Pasternak
because of Vladimir Nabokov’s famous condemnation:
Above all I hate the four
doctors: Dr. Freud, Dr. Castro, Dr. Schweitzer and Dr.
Zhivago.
I once adored Nabokov, but he strikes me now as a young
man’s fancy. His novels are a trial to read (except Pnin):
infuriatingly recondite and show-offy. And his literary
judgements are suspect—or worse, simply a leg-pull. One
cannot escape the feeling that once Nabokov discovered he
could pass off any rubbish on American undergraduates, he
could not resist the temptation to do so.
Nabokov was a creature of his zeitgeist and
regarded Christian belief as, he would say, poshlust.
Wilson, though no longer a Christian, does not suffer from
this bigotry. He is, I suppose one could say, a mystical
agnostic. His worldview is best expressed in his roman-fleuve,
The Lampitt Papers. Sadly, a single-volume edition
of these five novels (Incline
Our Hearts, A
Bottle in the Smoke, Daughters
of Albion, Hearing
Voices and A
Watch in the Night) is not yet
available, so interested readers will have to procure them
singly.
Wilson’s numerous biographies are all good,
particularly his life of Hilaire
Belloc, which is quite moving and his life
of Tolstoy,
which is quite funny. Funny? Well, the Sage of Yasnaya
Polyana foolishly contracted and obstinately perpetuated
what was surely the worst marriage ever. And his attempt
to propagate a Holy Fool self-myth while being harried at
every step by a materialistic and (quite rightly)
aggrieved battle-axe of a helpmeet is one of all-time
great tragicomedies.
- Kevin
Michael Grace,
8.47 a.m., March 3, 2003 [Link]
-
THOUGHT FOR THE
DAY
I have a
laughter demon within me without which I would die.
—Muriel
Spark, The
Takeover
- Kevin
Michael Grace,
1.27 a.m., March 1, 2003 [Link]
