*Angel*, Elizabeth Taylor: "Fashions Change. Time Is Cruel"

Angel (2007) a Francois Ozon film, adapted from the same-titled 1947 novel by English novelist Elizabeth Taylor (1912 - 1972).

“Fashions change.  Time is cruel.”  This is the epitaph pronounced by the publisher upon melodramatic Romance novelist Angel Deverill’s vast bibliography. When Angel begins to publish, around the turn of the 20th century she supposedly is 15 or 16 or 17. This, like much else is unclear as this is a Romance; such specific and mundane details are expected to be glossed over. She dies in the inter WW era, supposedly as in her old age but she looks the same, except frail and ill as she fades away regretted by no one but her faithful, aristocratic, perhaps lesbian retainer.

Trembling, exquisite hand of expiring Angel reaches tenderly up, the whisper in the ear, "You are the only one who truly loved me." How often had Angel finished her novels with those words and that scene! But o, the difference in what the scene meant in Angel's life.  Yet, they are true, for no one loved her truly and so passionately as Nora did all her life.

The Modern had nothing whatsoever to do with Angel, though the art produced by her aristocrat of a husband, a painter  and bohemian, exemplars of the Modern in art.  Angel, however, remains true to her vision of Romance all her life, in her novels, which no longer sell, and in her death.  This romantic vision not only lost Angel her husband, but kills her too, but not before wild success, the adulation of millions, millions in revenue, and wild passionate love.

This film presents on screen all the conventions of Romantic Fiction and the fantasy imagined by the readers of the author who writes such works, without changing a thing from the pages of such books.  Rather it presents all of it in concrete detail: this is a film that is about fabulous clothes, precious jewelry, lush, opulent interiors and settings that are as full of bad art, hangings, bibelots, pets, unlikely devotion of inferiors as the reader wishes for his / her own life. (Not to mention revenge upon the mandatory Mean Girls.) 

This Romance unavoidably falls into camp when presented on the screen, because the screen is lacking the passionate convictions of the writer, Angel, who marshals all these elements out of her own passionate imagination of desire. This is even more interesting because this highly reputed director marshaled a stellar cast that includes, but is not limited to, Sam Neil, Charlotte Rampling, with Michael Fassbinder as the Romantic Aristocratic lead. Unfortunately the Romantic Writer lead was given to the ever-grimacing and constantly unconvincing Romola Gerais.

This is a novel-to-screen adaptation that fiction writers of any kind should not be able to resist watching. More information about the author, from whose satiric book this film was made – the classic Virago author -- can be found here. 

More information about the novel (pub. 1957)can be found in the NYRB here.

Perhaps it’s not a coincidence then, that I watched this movie while waiting for the last installment of Paradise Postponed, since both are mostly shot in Buckinghamshire County, and neither of them have likeable characters that lend themselves to comfortable submergence of watcher's self into their bigger than life representations.  Indeed, Angel is so unlikable from start to finish that you believe in her, but not the way Angel herself believes in herself.  She is so selfish and self-centered you do not fault her mother for slapping her, and indeed, you really can't understand how her mother then comes and begs for her forgiveness for doing so.  But then, this is Romantic fiction, in which all who come in contact with the protagonist, for better or worse, fall under her spell, can never forget her and will always stand by her, no matter what.  It's those moments when we see outside of Angel's own vision that we can see truly, and see her for the monster she is -- one of those Magnificent Monsters of which Hollywood is so fond ... As I say, this is a very interesting film, which among other things is about the difference between how we, whether writers and artists or anyone else, see ourselves and our work,  and how others may or may not see us.

Country Music Association (CMA) Awards Nominees & Other Country Stars' Opinions Of The Gay Community

Number 12 of the 15 is Willie Nelson, who name checks You Know Who for "Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly."

{ " Nelson's manager David Anderson, who came out in 2004, noted, "This song obviously has special meaning to me in more ways than one... I want people to know more than anything -- gay, straight, whatever -- just how cool Willie is and ... his way of thinking, his tolerance, everything about him." " }

All 15 have interesting stories -- check it out.

*Dark Tangos* by Lewis Shiner

I picked up a copy from the library this afternoon of this Subterrannean Press publication -- a CUNY grad center colleague -- a Texas native -- told me I had to read it. Examining the book -- copyright page, etc. -- as I'm wont to do, I saw it was autographed. Then I see this is s "Deluxe hardcover edition." I wonder if there was a shelving mistake because this press's works aren't usually available for borrowing, but rather go into the humantiies research library's collections, and thus can only be requested directly from that facility and read there, in the reading room.

Like Shiner's previous novel there aren't sf/f elements in this one either. It's a suspense novel, the subject of which is Argentina's Dirty War of the 1970's. Well, it being Shiner, it's also about the lonely heart of the solitary journalist who once was a musician, and will he ever again find someone who can fill that empty heart -- while encountering immediately an exotic, mysterious beautiful woman with secrets. Location is Buenas Aires, thus that coupled with exotic mysterious beautiful woman of secrets = dark tangos. But the tango is dark, that's what its about, at least in some way. Have you ever heard of tango as frothy and opéra bouffe? Unless danced by the Marx brothers? Which I think they do, or at least Groucho does, in -- maybe, Night at the Opera?

Tangos notoriously are danced in dark, smoky clubs, often underground, and that is meant literally.

The great book of tango is Robert Farris Thompson's Tango: The Art History of Love (2005). Bob spent a lot of time in Buenas Aires working his way through the origins and significance of the form, including specifically the music and the rhythm, as well as the postures, tracing them all back to Africa. Ned conducted an extensive interview with Bob on the occasion of the book's publication, which is included in the art book collection of Bob's essays, Aesthetics of Cool: Afro Atlantic Art and Music (2011 -- though for some reason this edition is still not shipping from amazon, it is in museum stores).

Shiner's novel is available as a free pdf, if you go to his website and click the link.

*The Betsy-Tacy Treasury* Published Today - HarperCollins

Betsy-Tacy and Tib, Deep Valley, Minnesota, 10 books in all, culminating in 1955 with Betsy's Wedding.

I didn't discover these books until about age 10 or 11, and when I did they were already in high school -- Betsy Was a Junior. It immediately became one of my most re-read volumes on our tiny rural school library's shelves. So the young girls -- age 5 when the first book comes out in 1945 -- never much interested me. It was teenage Betsy, Tacy and Tib, in their somehow wondrous lives in my recognizable midwest -- but o, so sophisticated! they lived in Town, not on a farm like I did! -- and also fantastical because they lived so long ago, in a different world that happened before World War I, a war I hardly knew other than my paternal grandfather had been a part of it. Who were these people? I didn't know anyone like them, but now I did, inside these books.

[ "But there may be no world that provokes such profound girlish longing as the bucolic century-old Minnesota of “Betsy-Tacy.” " ]

*Paradise Postponed*

Paradise Postponed was a 1986 BBC series written by John Mortimer, the creator of Rumpole of the Bailey; PBS broadcast it in the U.S.  Mortimer wrote the novel of Paradise Postponed at the same time he wrote the scripts for the series; critics have written that the novel is inferior to what we see on the screen.  I've not read the novel, but I'm watching the series, and it is wonderful.

U.S. critics say the series is excruciatingly slow and most of it, if not exactly dull, is inpenetrable to most U.S. viewers.  This is the case because what turns the narrative is rooted in the changes in the English political landscape over a period of about 50 years.  The narrative flashes back to the 50's, 60's and 70's, not necessarily in that order, always returning to the present of the 80's in which the oldest son of one of the families attempts to fight the will that leaves the family money to someone who isn't part of the family.  During these back-and-forths the narrative traces the rise and fall of families and communities and classes, among the ebbs and turns of the Labor and Conservative party currents, and the Thatcher Tory triumph of the 80's.

But I find this series engrossing and amusing from the language, the characters, the location, and the history of politics and class relationships.  The language spoken by every single character, no matter how peripheral or how central, is sharp as a box cutter, and has the rhythm appropriate to how actual people speak.  Of course, it is enhanced by a supremely gifted writer, presented by highly trainded and skilled actors, so though the words are emoted as in natural mode, the delivery is not, by and large, that of everyday communication -- but you do wish it was! It is cerebral, but it is firmly rooted in a place, because the families of all the characters of whatever class are firmly rooted there -- and this county in such easy commuting distance from London, is beautiful.  The characters are not conventionally likeable, but they are all in the round, and always fascinating, to listen to, and to look at.  There is no leavening of one or two likeables among them, as we have in, say, the Barchester Chronicles, with Donald Pleasence's role as Mr. Harding the godly and sweet clergyman.  The most ruthless among Paradise Postponed -- the working class social climbing entrepreneur and politician, Lesley Titmuss -- lacks the satirical comic turns of Alan Rickman's Obadiah Slope, that allow the viewer's comfortable sense of superiority, and that all shall be well in the world.

However, you cannot turn your eyes from Titmuss.  In some ways he will remind a constant reader of Kenneth Widmerpool, from Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time, as the series will remind one to a lesser degree of that 12 volume fiction series tracing England from WWI through the end of the 1960's. But Titmuss doesn't provoke even the peripetetic twinges of sympathy that Widmerpool does. Titmuss's speech to the members of his local Conservative party's candidate selection committee is brilliant.  For that alone, if you are a U.S. leftist or liberal or reformist, you should see this series and re-play that speech a hundred times.  It explains, briefly and entirely to the point, the rise and triumph of our regressive, mean, and successful politics of the far right.  It is the distillation of the failure of the left to understand the very people they think they are representing.

There is a sequel to Paradise Postponed, Titmuss Regained, broadcast in the early 90's, also written by Mortimer.  This single disk sequel is built around the out-of-control land development and despoilation that only -- so far -- the crash of 2008 has slowed to  degree.  Titmuss is now Conservative secretary of state for Housing, Ecology, and Planning.  Will it be as good as Paradise Postponed?  The rumor is that the title could just as well be Titmuss Redeemed.

Books & Libraries, Girls & Education -- This Person Tries

Here is something else that like Occupy Wall Street, though in a different way, is delightfully inspirational -- or, perhaps, not that differently after all, upon reflection.

His Libraries, 12,000 So Far, Change Lives, Ny Times Op-ed today.

[ " The cost per girl for this program is $250 annually. To provide perspective, Kim Kardashian’s wedding is said to have cost $10 million; that sum could have supported an additional 40,000 girls in Room to Read.

So many American efforts to influence foreign countries have misfired — not least here in Vietnam a generation ago. We launch missiles, dispatch troops, rent foreign puppets and spend billions without accomplishing much. In contrast, schooling is cheap and revolutionary. The more money we spend on schools today, the less we’ll have to spend on missiles tomorrow.

Wood, 47, is tireless, enthusiastic and emotional: a motivational speaker with no off button. He teared up as girls described how Room to Read had transformed their lives. " ]

Books still matter, the printed-words-on-paper kind. Classrooms still matter, the room-pupils-teacher kind. Giving still matters, a person with means-with an idea-executes idea kind.

If you click the link to Friedman's blog where this piece went up originally or maybe the same time, comments are enabled. The very first one is really interesting because the commentator says:

[ " May be it is just me, but Microsoft employees are frequently in news for doing these kind of things. I have never seen Apple employees in similar articles. Everyone loves Steve Jobs but all I read about him is how self involved he was. Compare that to Bill Gates and you could not have a greater contrast.No matter how much an Iphone adds to your life, it could not be more then saving a life or giving the most deprived people an avenue to reach their goals. " ]

Librarians in the public systems have noticed this, re Microsoft vs. the cult of Jobs. Apple has never provided a thing for the common good. Public libraries may well have gone down back at the end ofthe 80's early 90's without all the donation of monies, equipment and upgrade provided by Gates's foundations. Librarians may feel deeply constrained by IE but without Gates they'd still be rooting around in the print indices -- or more likely without jobs at all. Not to mention all the collateral jobs that came into being as libraries digitized (though also the collateral loss of jobs as well with automization that came with digitization). Still, at least here in NYC, we still have public libraries and they are used more and more by more and more people, while still expected to provide more and more with less and less.

Thank the lordessa for people like this gentleman, and like a woman I met last night at a dinner party uptown. She works in the Financial District, supports the Occupy Wall Streeters, and donates thousands of dollars to the NYPL every year. 

One of the first components of the Occupy Wall Street camp communities to get established, along with community kitches, are libraries ....

Gub Walker Gets Mike Checked! Plus Oakland's Mayor & the Cops

For whatever reason stupid blogger isn't putting in YouTubes.

Go here because it is a powerful action to watch unfolding.  The participants did some strong work in planning the infiltration.  Only fair, yes, since the cops and Others are forever planting criminals and provocateurs into the Occupy Wall Street actions to cause violence.

As with the Oakland cops who hate the mayor and have overtly said they will use this to take her out.  She defeated Their Guy, who was in cops pockets, and has gotten the cops to pay more out of their pockets into their pensions.  This, according to a friend of ours reporting in from Oakland where he's lived for many years.

We have so many different security and police forces now, they are wagging the national dog for sure.  Can we mike check Praetorian Guard?