Nom de Plume

Thomas Hoving is the former director of the glorious Metropolitan Museum of Art, and I heard him on a podcast of Studio 360 a few weeks ago. He was actually talking about a new book he’s just written (detailing how to play a memorization-type game with famous paintings), but he mentioned this one, and I was riveted.

So. He talks about great art scams. Actually, his main point is that there are a lot more fakes out there than the average museum-goer ever realizes, and when it comes right down to it, the fakes themselves are antiques. Take the Romans, for instance. We all know that they weren’t creative enough to come up with their own gods. After all, Eros by any other name is still Eros. (Okay, okay, really bad pun, but only if you inflect it properly. If you don’t, it’s just incomprehensible. Look, it’s been a long day.) Fact is, they were good at building viaducts and expanding their Empire and stuff, but the creme de la creme of Roman society didn’t have viaducts and bloody heads in their living rooms. Nope. They had Greek art. And once real Greek art ran out, they had fake Greek art. Ditto everyone who came before them and after them — not Greek obviously, but whatever was old at the time. It’s kind of funny to think about, and it made me want to embrace popular art from Tar-jay and Ikea out of principle. Then I came to my senses.

Hoving isn’t that great a writer — and he certainly has a high opinion of himself — but this was a ravishing romp through the ages of art and the greatest scams of the past couple of centuries. Have a bit of fun; crack it open.

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Should I take the plunge and upgrade to WordPress 2.0? Or 2 point whatever it is, rather? The thought of having to restore a mySQL database frightens me, even though I managed to back it up.

This morning discovered that Blogger (my account is still active) republished over my WordPress files and screwed everything up. It’s okay because at least I had everything backed up and I just restored the files. But I’m puzzled about what happened.

I can’t remember where I read a recommendation of this kiddie lit, but got it from the library and read it in a couple of hours. The Penderwicks — a family of four sisters, their father, and faithful dog — rent a summer cottage in the Berkshires. The owner of the property is a dragon, but her son and gardener are a delight. I was rather expecting this to be a magical novel a la Harry Potter for some reason (the description on the front says it’s “A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting boy”). It’s not. But then again, it doesn’t need to be. This was one of those old-fashioned kids books in which the ordinary seems magical. Birdsall remembers what it was like to be a child — and she knows how to write about it.

Eloise Kelly is a graduate student who goes to England to research the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Purple Gentian, two dashing spies during the Napoleonic Wars. Imagine her surprise when she is given full access to the papers of an old English family and discovers a third spy forgotten by history. Her excitement knows no bounds at the prospect of learning more about the Pink Carnation — and so does her irritation with the gorgeous nephew in the family. Love in two time periods! A Regency-esque romance! Compelling plot! What’s not to love? Finished the book and realized that it was the first of the series — and thank heavens the second book is already written and I am only number nine in line at the library. Light reading at its best. Very fun and highly recommend.

First, a little detour through the travesty that is becoming our school system and public policy (and making me think about moving either to Canada or Holland).

A Texas school superintendent removed Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale from a curriculum after a parent complained about its sexually explicit content. The Handmaid’s Tale is a feminist retelling of Orwell’s 1984 in which the oppressor is a fundamentalist Christian regime. The few fertile women left are pressed into bondage as surrogate mothers for infertile couples. If you haven’t read it, you should — it’s one of Atwood’s most chilling and memorable novels (second only to Oryx and Crake).

And prescient too. It was written about twenty years ago, but according to the San-Antonio Express News:

Lyman said he found some of the descriptions in the book too sexually explicit for high school students. He said his beliefs as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints didn’t influence his decision.

(He went on to say, “The tone of the book does not support, in my opinion, the effort by our state Legislature to encourage abstinence outside the bonds of marriage.” What does THAT have to do with anything? Literature isn’t about reading about something you agree with — it’s about being exposed to ideas that make you think. Apparently, not something he feels the need to do.)

The parent who complained claimed to feel “responsibility to the country and our community to speak up for the values that will strengthen our society.”

We, of course, don ‘t need to bother pointing out the irony. Atwood is a feminist. Lyman is a Mormon. So too, I’m sure, is the complaining mother. And the two are diametrically opposed.

Which leads me right into what this post is supposed to be about: Atwood’s The Penelopiad, a feminist retelling of the Iliad and Odyssey told from Penelope’s perspective. I have to say, I was terribly disappointed by this. Oh sure, it was beautifully-written and imaginative, with flashes of humor. It even made use of a Greek chorus — the 12 maidens Odysseus slayed on his return and who form the basis of Atwood’s story. I like the idea. I like the execution, even. But somehow it fell flat. It was a slim little book that really didn’t say that much.

Actually, what it really felt like was a copout, like she had this deadline and left it to the nth degree (not that I would know anything about that) because she was focused on that ridiculous book signing device.

And perhaps I’m displaying nothing so much as my own ignorance. Perhaps this is a brilliant rendition that takes on certain forms of the homeric tradition and turns them on their heads. So be it. Here’s my opinion: Don’t bother.

But I seem to be alone in this. Call me Cassandra.

Think the visual’s great? Try the story.

And he’ s dispensing advice…

My betrothed, a most wicked man, betrayed me near as bad as Tereus did Procne. His woman of choice commited, though, that villainy which women do best, and tempted him away. Presently it is not legal, where I live, to have either of them killed for this treachery — what shall I do to avenge the wrong they both have done to me, and to my virtue? Their joy at my grief does pain me so.

Cor Fracta Est

Ma Cher Coeur Brisee

Thoughe y love a goode revenge tragedie as much as the nexte guye, y muste counsel yow to a bettre path. Yow sholde maken pece and kepe faithe, not wyth thyne betrothede nor wyth this womanlie Diomede, but rathir with yowrselfe. For vengence aperteneth and longeth al oonly to juges. Remembre yow that pacience is a greet vertu of perfeccioun, and remembre that ther are tymes ordained unto al thynges by the first moevere — of the ookes, and of the hard stones, and of man and womman seen we also, in youthe as well as age, alle shal be dumped , a kyng as shall a page – som dumped on dates, som dumped by telephone, some dumped in compaignie, som dumped allone – ther helpeth noght, al goth that ilke weye.

And thus, take two pintes of hagen dasz dulce de leche, a ful seson of buffie the vampyre slayre, and calle me in the morninge.

Le Vostre G

link via Boing Boing

This is something, by the way, that I tell her on a regular basis and she says, “Well, at least you inherited it legitimately.”

So. My mother is going to Iraq. I’m still not precisely sure what she’s doing, but it has something to do with leading a team out in the field to help put democracy in place.

Personally, I think she just likes the idea of flying in there wearing a flak jacket. Wayne, on the other hand, is beside himself. The last I heard from him was an e-mail in which he mentioned her appearing on an al-Jazeera feed not once, or even twice, but three times. Okay, it was a pretty long e-mail.

It’s not that I’m not worried. When she called to tell me my father had died — I remember this vividly — I was in the grocery store, and I knew what she was going to tell me, so I sat down at the blood pressure machine. People were walking by with their shopping carts, prosaic lists in hand. I said, “Well, it’s just us now.” And it was — still is. She’s an only child; I’m an only child. Sure, I have Steve and she has Wayne, but in terms of blood relatives, there are distant cousins … really, she and I are it. Which is a long-winded way of saying that I would be devastated should something happen.

But as she likes to point out, danger is a relative term. We take our lives in our hands every single day just by getting into a car. Getting on her horses to ride can be dangerous, especially with a replaced hip. Flying somewhere is dangerous. (She also felt the need to point out that me running around in USA 57, the LandRover I drove in Freetown, after curfew with stoned 16-year old soldiers with AK47s manning the roadblocks was dangerous. I prefer not to remind myself of how stupid I was at 18.)

And here’s the thing: she’s so happy about going and doing some good that it’s hard not to be happy for her. We have made plans to meet in Jordan for her next R&R and she has just bought an iPod for the extremely spartan living conditions.

It was actually pretty cute; she called me to ask how to turn up the volume.