Archives for November 2007

“I call people rich when they’re able to meet the requirements of their imagination.”
Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

I’ve been doing a fair amount of gadding about lately with family and friends. The plan is to hunker down and work hard on the book for the next six weeks before the holidays start and the Festival of Peppermint Schnapps begins. But this past week’s break from the hermit lifestyle has been welcome. A few highlights:
• On Saturday, Roy Kesey came to Malaprop’s to sign copies of his new collection of short stories, All Over, a book which also marks the debut of the Dzanc imprint. Mr. Tingle and I went downtown to hover uncomfortably over Kesey at his signing table for a bit, then went with him, fab Dzanc publicist (and recent Asheville transplant) Lauren Snyder, and her charming feller Seth up the street to the Sky Bar.
The Sky Bar consists of three balconies (read: glorified fire escapes) hung off the side of the Flat Iron Building, one of Asheville’s best buildings. About the rickety dilapidated glories of the Flat Iron all I can say is that if you ever wanted to open a detective agency where you hoped to solve cases despite an ongoing problem with whiskey and women, this is where you would hang your shingle. I used to keep an office here — used to even sleep there when on deadline — and it was odd to ride the familiar hand-operated elevator up to the top of the building and have it open not on dusty offices, but a Euro-flavored bar selling Tanqueray and espresso. But the views are great — facing west, with downtown below and the mountains beyond — and the drinks, as Lauren noted, are poured with a generous hand.
The company was excellent, with the conversation ranging across everything from the travel writing of Pico Iyer to the perils of entertaining with asparagus and cranberry liqueurs. Previous to his book with Dzanc, I only knew Kesey from his dispatches for McSweeney’s, but he’s someone you can talk to for only a short time and feel like you’ve known much longer. I believe it’s part of the training of a diplomat’s spouse.
In addition to his collection, you can find a story by Roy in this year’s Best American Short Stories, edited by Stephen King, and I also recommend this interview he conducted with George Saunders, even though there he’s the interviewer, not the subject.
• On Sunday, the lovely Cinetrix made a visit to the mountains, and we went to see a matinee of Darjeeling Limited at the plush Fine Arts Theatre. Watched alone, on iTunes, I found the movie’s prequel, “The Hotel Chevalier,” stultifying and a little creepy. It becomes much more meaningful when seen in tandem with Darjeeling, when the stultification and claustrophobia seem more purposeful, less a byproduct of an overly curatorial director, and give way to ravishing color and the open vistas in the movie’s finale. (See the Cinetrix’s remarks about the film.)
Afterward we moseyed around downtown in the dusk, hopping into Malaprop’s to admire the books and then creating an inadvertent Indian theme to the day by dining at Mela, where we drank pints of Guinness, ate green peppers so hot they temporarily gave me the ability to “see through time,” and were waited on by the Unctuous Homunculus whose attempts to upsell us on our ordering were to little avail. (The appropriate Simpsons reference was Trixie’s, natch.)
• Then Halloween! My favorite holiday, my husband’s least. I played hooky from writing class, and we went out for the traditional Hallloween sushi. Then Mr. Tingle (very tolerantly) chauffeured me on various field trips related to my novel. Asheville is low on sidewalks and so trick-or-treaters tend to congregate in great hordes along a few major streets. As we clipped along Montford on our researches our car’s headlights kept picking up bits of shiny costumes and yards overrun with princesses and dinosaurs.
When we got home we built a fire off the deck and sat outside, drinking coffee and eating candy; each year we have a giant bowl full, and each year we get no trick or treaters and must eat the candy: It’s a vicious cycle. Our yard is heavily wooded, but there’s a clearing around the back, and so the fire had room to shoot up and the stars were popping out of the sky because it was so chilly. Then we went in and watched To Die For (still marvelous) and made lists and notes until it was time for bed. A very quiet evening, but one of the nicest Halloweens I’ve spent.

• A profile of Paris Review editor Philip Gourevitch in The Observer explores how the magazine is changing to flourish in the post-Plimpton era.
• Lately, Jerry Seinfeld has been reminding me of the retired guy who doesn’t want to be retired. You know the type — the former titan who roams around the house looking for something to do, people to chat up, a “Bee” movie to promote.* Another new hobby: Calling people “wacko” on national tv. (Via Syntax of Things.)
• Yesterday, walking in the woods I came across a giant orange spider with black-and-white striped legs (like tights!) hanging in a web across the trail. Looking it up on the Web later I came across this photo essay on Vietnamese spiders. Spiders are so strange and beautiful in close-up, and the ones shown here should be good for a couple post-Halloween chills.
I still haven’t been able to identify my spider, the tangerine glob, although the one that appears in this fuzzy YouTube footage looks to be the same type. Except mine was prettier and kinder in the face.

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.

BROADWAY:

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• A Chorus Line (musical, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• The Drowsy Chaperone (musical, G/PG-13, mild sexual content and a profusion of double entendres, reviewed here)

• Grease * (musical, PG-13, some sexual content, reviewed here)

• Pygmalion * (comedy, G, suitable for mature and intelligent young people, closes Dec. 16, reviewed here)

• The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (musical, PG-13, mostly family-friendly but contains a smattering of strong language and a production number about an unwanted erection, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children old enough to enjoy a love story, reviewed here)

“The more I taught my Henry James course, the fewer seemed the students who appeared able to stay alert even to the point of following the plot. The last time I taught James, I felt that only perhaps six out of a room of thirty could really return the master’s brilliant American twist serve.
“Toward the end of this course, I led off one of the three sessions devoted to The Portrait of a Lady by asking a nice young man to describe Gilbert Osmond, one of the richest characters in nineteenth-century fiction. ‘Well,’ he said, without any malice toward me or any intention of shocking his classmates, ‘he’s an asshole.’ (I suppose this marked an advance over the student who, in a longish essay two years earlier, had consistently referred to Osmond as Oswald.) Shocked his classmates may not have been, but I have to confess I was. Something, I realized, had changed in the nature of civilized discourse in America. I decided right then never to teach Henry James again.”
Joseph Epstein, In a Cardboard Belt!