Author Archives: maedez

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About maedez

Writer, biographer, poet. History nerd, silent movie maven. Punk rocker, amateur baker, bookworm. Cricket fan, Scotch drinker, craft beer snob.

A Year in Books/Day 168: An Unfinished Woman

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  • Title: An Unfinished Woman
  • Author: Lillian Hellman
  • Year Published: 1969/This Edition: 1999 (Little, Brown and Company)
  • Year Purchased: 2003/2004
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: The Children’s Hour. The Little Foxes. Another Part of the Forest. Watch on the Rhine. The lady knew how to craft plays strong enough to withstand not only their first march across the footlights, but so brilliant as to be timeless decades later. In An Unfinished Woman-the first of three memoirs written in her twilight years-she breaks off pieces of her jaded public persona until something of the real Lillian shows through. Exactly what is anybody’s guess, but the feeling of rightness is there. Her writing is so forceful and engaging, and seemingly forthright, that it is easy to forget that any writer’s autobiography is by nature (if to varying degrees) a study in fiction. Writers are their own best characters, after all. She weaves such a fine story that the ratio of unadulterated fact to pure fiction to soaring imagination is basically immaterial. Her tale, her viewpoint, is riveting. Facts may be found elsewhere; this book is where the entertainment is located. It won the National Book Award. The foreword to this edition is by the incredible Wendy Wasserstein.
  • Motivation: I love plays. Love love them. As in, I want to go steady with them kind of love. Got it? They are my second favourite written medium. I also love weird, strong, talented, crazy-ass smart, contrary women.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 43: “I would like to say these many years later that I remember his questions. But I don’t, and for a good reason: he had already decided on whatever he meant to write and the questions were fitted to his decisions. So most of the time we didn’t know what he was talking about.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9

A Year in Books/Day 167: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Volume 1 and Volume 2

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  • Title: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Volume 1 and Volume 2
  • Editors: W.G. Clark and W. Aldis Wright
  • Year Published: Unknown (Nelson Doubleday, Inc.)
  • Year Purchased: Unknown
  • Source: I swiped these from my grandparents when I was a kid.
  • About: I’ve had this set since I was in fifth grade. I remember picking through it, delicately at first, before gaining steam (and confidence) and plowing through every word. Everything. What I didn’t understand (the majority, to be sure) I loved any way. The words were so alive, magical. I could picture things, even if those images were often fuzzy or incomplete. These books are loved like few others in my collection. A decade later and I was studying Shakespearean Theatre. I no longer act (except in my head), but I still read the plays aloud. How can you not? The Bard of Avon is ever enchanting.
  • Motivation: I had already read my way through most of my elders’ books, including two sets of encyclopedias and various dictionaries and almanacs. I was 10. Shakespeare seemed like the logical next step.
  • Times Read: Unknown
  • Random Excerpt/Page 56: “Thus, with its apparent lightness, there is a serious spirit underlying the play; but the surface is all jest, and stir, and sparkle. It is a comedy of dialogue rather than of incident.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10++++
    Title page of the First Folio, 1623. Copper en...

    Title page of the First Folio, 1623. Copper engraving of Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

A Year in Books/Day 166: The Writer’s Book of Matches 1,001 Prompts to Ignite Your Fiction

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  • Title: The Writer’s Book of Matches 1,001 Prompts to Ignite Your Fiction
  • Authors: The staff of fresh boiled peanuts, a literary journal
  • Year Published: 2005 (Writer’s Digest Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2005/2006
  • Source: Writer’s Digest Book Club
  • About: It took buying a book of prompts for me to realize that it is not for me. Not just this book, but in general: I’m not a prompts type of person. My mind doesn’t work that way. I don’t spark off of random sentences that are thrust in my face as something that will drive my creativity or discipline. I already have too many ideas, phrases, plots and sentences of my own to get bogged down with these. I also get bored, instantly bored. Not a few exercises in, but pronto. Basically, before I even open the book. I’ve tried several times to learn something from this perfectly sound tool, something useful. Something to propel my fiction forward to the place (or places) I know it can go. I am ready to admit-finally, after six or seven years-that the only lesson I have learned is that I really don’t like this kind of thing. At all. But maybe you do, which is lovely and brilliant and just as it should be for you. This book is portable, comes with 1,001 nicely varied prompts, has nifty photos and illustrations. It’s funny, too. I’m actually ready to part with this one. I think I’m going to give it away in a future post, pass it on to a writer who appreciates the idea. Stay tuned.
  • Motivation: I had never used a book of prompts before, or any prompts period. Not in school, not on my own. Now I know why.
  • Times Read: Casually, a sentence here and a sentence there
  • Random Excerpt/Page 80: ” A young woman must run errands while wearing an embarrassing and inappropriate outfit.” (This sounds like that feature in Glamour magazine. Or is it Cosmo?)
  • Happiness Scale: 3 (but only because it is not my thing)

A Year in Books/Day 165: Tragic Muse Rachel of the Comedie-Francaise

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  • Title: Tragic Muse Rachel of the Comedie-Francaise
  • Author: Rachel M. Brownstein
  • Year Published: 1993/This edition: 1995 (Duke University Press)
  • Year Purchased: 1999/2000
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: Tragic Muse is more than a biography. As the title suggests, its subject met a sad end. An actress rising to stardom before burning out whilst still young? You don’t say. Sounds like familiar (and familiar and familiar) stuff. Trite. Fate as formulaic plot twist. Not quite. Continue reading →

A Year in Books/Day 164: The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats

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  • Title: The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats The Beat Generation and American Culture
  • Editor: Holly George Warren
  • Year Published: 1999 (Hyperion)
  • Year Purchased: 2000/2001
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: Whether the Rolling Stone moniker entices or repels you, this is a fine compilation of essays, musings, reviews and treatises on The Beat Generation and its various, and fantastically varied, players. Although many of the entries were written expressly for this book, others are from Rolling Stone’s archives or from outside sources. Lydia Lunch, Hunter S. Thompson, Graham Parker, Johnny Depp, Patti Smith, Richard Hell, and Lester Bangs number among the crazy quilt of contributors. The insiders’ perspective is voiced by Michael McClure, Joyce Johnson, Hettie Jones, Carolyn Cassady and William S Burroughs. The cacophony of opinions, insights and viewpoints is bold and often contradictory, which should be the intent of any decent compilation. The entirety of the beat experience is presented in vivid, emotive, intelligent terms. Each entry is a micro world of its own, quite unlike any of the others. The photos are notable, and many are rare. If you have any interest in the subject-which really encompasses many subjects loosely gathered under a too-small banner-make this part of your to-read list.
  • Motivation: I have a long, deep shelf dedicated to the writers and miscellaneous participants of The Beat Generation. This was one of the earliest non-fiction additions to my collection.
  • Times Read: 3
  • Random Excerpt/Page 85: “Bob Kaufman and John Wieners are the greatest of the nonsense Beat poets, whatever that means-the social second unit?-people who didn’t spend scads of time with the frontrunners. They’re also two supreme sufferers, and Kaufman, in particular, swallowed more broken glass than all the others combined.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9

Daily Diversion #20: Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad*/My Neighborhood is Weirder Than Yours

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This pig has been keeping watch outside the main entrance of our building since Friday. This is totally normal, right? Right?

What is this, you ask?

What is this, you ask?

I recently wrote about one of my main concerns as a writer, which is feeling at home in my surroundings. I’ve struggled with this since moving to the Queen City six years ago. I love our flat, and our building; if the whole thing could be picked up and moved somewhere else, my contentment would shine forth like a lighthouse beacon. I know that I am guilty of focusing on what I wish I could change about our neighborhood, even as I am faced with all that there is to enjoy in this weird little corner of town. Mr. Enormous Pig has reminded me of some of the perks of living in the CW. They are:

  • Sharing a building with an unusual museum (thus, Mr. EP).

    Come closer.

    Come closer.

  • The best (and wackiest) mural of George Washington you will ever see.
  • The ability to get chili at 3:00 in the morning, and the simultaneous people watching opportunity.
  • A giant gorilla hanging off the side of a costume shop building.
  • People watching. Oh, the people watching.
  • The beautiful park across the street (visible from all of our windows), especially the dough boy statue that was dedicated just post-war.
  • The handsome architecture of this neighborhood is truly impressive, even if many of the buildings are derelict or down-right abandoned.
  • The city salt barn directly across the street. Not only is it an easy landmark for guests, it is absurdly fun to watch news crews swarm the premises at the slightest indication of snow. Also, it looks like a voluptuous breast. At least a C-cup.
  • I love being surrounded by manufacturing businesses and a sea of trees. This area is not very residential, but is intensely lush.
  • The minimum-security jail behind the park (also constantly on view from our windows). It sits on the site of an old workhouse, razed many decades ago. Only the stunning stone wall remains. A jail in the neighborhood means that the streets are very well patrolled. Even though some people think the CW is sketchy, it actually means that we have the lowest crime rate in the city.
  • Diversity, diversity, diversity.

Looking out our wall of windows, nine stretching full-height in a salute to the ceiling, I see colour and character; zest and life; dirt and beauty. It’s always interesting. A writer could do worse than to have so much at hand.

Don't look into his eyes, or you will turn to stone.

Don’t look into his eyes, or you will turn to stone.

Belly of the beast.

Belly of the beast.

*This is a quote from George Orwell’s Animal Farm.