Images from the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts (ENSBA)

Ran across this photo on the webpage of the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts and thought it was cool. No other reason for the post, except that I'm long overdue on writing up something informative and witty. (the pressure!) This photo, obviously, is from when the sculptor was at work on the Statue of Liberty in Paris.


This image is cool, too; it's the frontispiece from a book of plates, c. 1770, by one G. Volpato and representing the loggia of Raphael in the Vatican. Notice (how could you not?) the dramatic use of one-point perspective.

The Vice Presidency to Nowhere

I have labelled this blog "Journeys in Visual Culture," and my only departures from that theme so far have been book reviews. It was never intended to be a political blog; not Hilary, Barack, or John McCain could tempt me to make an exception. But I can stay out of the fray no longer: McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate is the worst thing to happen in American politics since George W. Bush stole the presidential election in 2000 (though the fact that he really DID win in 2004 is almost as frightening).

McCain's selection is a huge slap in the face to the American people that even the most cynical among us could never have anticipated. He offers us a candidate not only with no experience in national politics, but one whose limited experience in state and local politics have been characterized by large doses of both incompetence and corruption. She is the female George W. Bush, all the way down to her arrogant ignorance and her involvement in Big Oil. Her new campaign has as its two main features deception and nastiness.

I am grossly offended by the tone of her speech at the Republican National Convention. The sneer in her voice was visible even over the radio (my news medium of choice). The edginess of her voice as she mocked Barack Obama for being a community organizer was more suitable for a mud wrestling match than a contest to lead this great nation. Her jeering at the opposition was welcomed by the equally jeering mob who demonstrate the principle of "mob mentality." To sum it all up: YUCK.

[and by the way - does it come as a surprise to anyone that a Replican doesn't know what a community organizer is?]

In another speech, of which I caught only a brief snippet on the radio on Friday afternoon (I don't know whom she was addressing), she railed against Obama's tax plan as hurting the middle class and small businesses -- both blatant lies. But will her adoring Republican fans bother to find out the truth?

I strongly feel that this sort of behavior does not belong in public discourse. I would give anything for some civility right about now. Even George W. Bush didn't behave this way in his campaigns. Her candidacy is appalling and galling. (Is that redundant?) I just hope this national nightmare will go away come November, and Sarah Palin's candidacy will vanish into the realm of Trivial Pursuit questions (there will be a lot of them). God help this country if it doesn't.

According to one of my colleagues, John McCain responded to the charge that Palin has no foreign policy experience by saying something to the effect that "of course she does - Alaska is very close to Russia." This colleague said that either A) McCain really believes this, in which case he's stupid; or B) McCain thinks Americans are dumb enough to believe him. (And this colleague says we should point that out to our students, though of course we would never point that out to our students, because we never talk about politics in the classroom...)

Time magazine reports that McCain's first two choices for vice president - Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge - were "vetoed" by "the Republican party elders," who wanted him to choose Mitt Romney. (Lieberman and Ridge are both pro-choice.) As a result, McCain went with a little-known candidate who had evidently not been properly vetted. What I want to know is, how can McCain continue to be perceived as a maverick when he can't even select the vice presidential candidate he wants? (See "How McCain Makes Obama Conservative" by Joe Klein, Sept. 4.)

McCain's selection of Palin is the only thing that has made me wish Obama had chosen Hilary as his running mate, because I'd give anything to see Hilary debating Sarah Palin.

I often think that Republicans are the most guilty of the kind of political nastiness we are now seeing in Sarah Palin; the kind of nastiness one hears on right-wing talk shows. They blame "the press" (whoever that is) of being liberal, but only because these so-called "liberal" venues don't engage in the vile rhetoric of hateful, propagandistic name-calling. I keep in mind, however, that many Republicans see Democrats as being the ones at fault for the partisanship in American politics, and although I think they're wrong, I recognize that everyone, including myself, has a bias. (I think liberals, at least, are more honest about their own biases...)

The current state of division in American politics is addressed in a new book, which I have not read, but heard about it yesterday on a radio program called "Weekend America." The book is called The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart, by Bill Bishop. (It seems that if you want your book to be a best-seller, you have to have the word "WHY" somewhere in the title.) Jim Gates, the reporter in the story "RNC Undercover," is a Democrat, and he attended the Republican convention with his friend Hugh, who's a Republican. Here's an excerpt:

Hugh and I have moved to cities that reflect our lifestyles. And that's typical of what's been going on in America. In the 30 years that Hugh and I have known each other, Americans have become more mobile and Republicans and Democrats have been moving further and further apart. Literally. Democrats have moved to densely packed cities and Republicans have moved to spacious suburban enclaves. Author Bill Bishop calls this mass movement "The Big Sort." It's also the name of his new book.

"By seeking out those places comfortable to them culturally," Bishop explains, "the decision is to avoid those places that are uncomfortable. They really are avoiding different points of view." And as Americans spend less time talking to people with different points of view, it's no surprise that the people they elect are more partisan than ever.

"There are incredible differences from place to place," says Bishop, "But what's missing then is any ability of highly different areas to ever get together and make any kind of policy nationally. So we have great consensus locally but no consensus nationally."

Bishop is probably right. One thing I like about Obama is his sentiment that there are not "two Americas, there's one America." And one of the few things I always liked about McCain was his bipartisanship - until, of course, he won his party's nomination, and now he has chosen a VP candidate who will only deepen the divide.

I was at the bookstore today and noticed a truly bizarre-sounding book on the "politics" new releases table. It's called Makers and Takers, and has this unusually long subtitle: "Why Conservatives Work Harder, Feel Happier, Have Closer Families, Take Fewer Drugs, Give More Generously, Value Honesty More, Are Less Materialistic and Envious, Whine Less...and Even Hug Their Children More Than Liberals." (With a subtitle like that, who needs to read the book?) Funny, it doesn't describe many of the conservatives or liberals I know...and as a liberal, I can assure you I don't know anyone who hugs their child more than I do.

The one political book that I bought today, and have started reading, is The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, by Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter with Kansas? (which I still haven't read). Stay tuned to this blog for a post on it soon.


Also in the media:

On Thursday, Sept. 4, Amy Goodman (on Democracy Now!) interviewed Shannyn Moore, an Anchorage-based radio talk show host who has closely followed Palin's career and has interviewed Palin numerous times. See "Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin Accepts GOP Nomination."

Gloria Steinem's Op-Ed essay in the Los Angeles Times on Sept. 4, "Palin: wrong woman, wrong message." (Thanks to my aunt for sending me this link.)

Terry Gross' interview about Sarah Palin with journalists Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten, authors of the 2006 One Party Country, Sept. 3. See "'One Party Country' Dissects Why Republicans Win." (Thanks also to my aunt.)

Sarah Palin believes that an Alaskan oil pipeline is "God's will;" she urges folks at her church to pray for the pipeline because "God's will has to be done." Also the Iraq War - that's right, "God's plan." See the Sarah Palin Church Videos on YouTube. (Thanks also to my aunt!)

(Speaking of Sarah Palin's church, I want to know how all these so-called Christians can support the Iraq War? Don't they worship "the prince of peace"? How can these supposedly "pro-life" people have no qualms at all about all the innocent Iraqi lives being destroyed?)

Finally, one of my "Facebook friends" posted a link to this article entitled "An Open Letter to Governor Palin on Women's Rights" from the blog "Alternet." I urge you to read this letter, because it points out that the same reproductive freedom that pro-choice advocates defend is not just access to abortions, but also a woman's right TO give birth - when, where, and how she chooses. As a mother myself who elected to have a home birth (in one of the last states in the Union where midwifery is still illegal!), I do have something in common with the lady.

"Vicky Cristina Barcelona" (film review)

Readers of this blog know I'm a huge fan of Scarlett Johansson, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona delivers not only Scarlett but also the stunning sexiness of Spanish actors Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz. I found the film to be satisfying all around, despite the abrupt ending that some viewers left the theater grumbling about; after all, how can that many gorgeous, young, wealthy characters in a smart Woody Allen screenplay fail to excite and amuse? This is my favorite Woody Allen film in years (despite the presence of one of my least favorite actresses, Patricia Clarkson).

Rather than discussing the obvious aspects of the film, though - a realm thoroughly covered by all the other reviews - I wanted to say something about a theme of the film that has been of special interest to me this semester as I am teaching a film studies & art history class called "Artists' Lives on Film." Vicky Cristina Barcelona has at its Spanish center (as opposed to its American center, represented by the Vicky and Cristina characters) a pair of painters. Juan Antonio and Maria Elena (played by Bardem and Cruz) are a divorced couple embroiled in the, dare I say, stereotypical Latin romance, in which heated passion takes the form of violent fighting more often than of reckless sexual abandon. They are also artists.

Many of the films I have taught in my class treat famous artist couples: Surviving Picasso, about Pablo Picasso and his lover Francoise Gilot; Frida, about Frida Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera; Pollock, about Jackson Pollock and his wife Lee Krasner; and Camille Claudel, about the French sculptress Claudel and her lover, Auguste Rodin. All of these biopics (fictionalized biographies) take as their subject matter actual, historical artists, and therefore have to maintain at least some slight level of historical veracity. Vicky Cristina Barcelona, with its fictional artiststs, is entirely free to invent those characters from scratch. Woody Allen nonetheless adopts and reifies many of the stereotypes that are associated with artists in the popular imagination, but he subtly undermines some of them, especially the negative stereotypes about male artists. (Not surprising given that he is one.)

In all of the above-mentioned biopics, the artistic couple follows a familiar pattern of the male as domineering womanizer, and the female partner as either driven mad or driven away by his cruelty. Those men - Picasso, Rivera, Pollock, and Rodin - are megalomaniacs whose success (based on their artistic genius) overshadows the careers of their partners. The women, meanwhile, struggle for recognition in a male-dominated world. As women they are victimized both by their male partners and by their societies which see women as less creative and less "important" artistically. The men are egotistical, destructive and/or self destructive; the partnerships are destroyed by the partners' competition and their unequal power in their relationships. At the same time, the women are expected to subordinate themselves and to support their men's careers.

This is not to say that those films misrepresent the nature of those relationships, but rather that filmmakers (Hollywood and otherwise) are drawn to that subject matter as the kind of story that audiences want to see, in part because of the implicit moralizing that underlies those narratives.

Three common artist mythologies prevail in these films. Two of these myths are gender-neutral: the artist as crazy (Camille Claudel is eventually committed to an insane asylum), and the artist as self-destructive - a slight variation on the "crazy" theme. Attempts to commit suicide, or at least very high-risk behaviors, characterize artists like Jackson Pollock, who dies as a result of drunk driving (he's a major alcoholic). The third common artist mythology applies specifically to female artists: the woman as victim, driven to desparation by her faithless and cruel husband. Picasso, Rivera, Pollock, and Rodin all are womanizers who subject their partners to emotional cruelty. Frida Kahlo is portrayed as the most victim-like female artist in that her very paintings are read (by art historians as well as filmmakers) as testaments to her pain and victimization.

Woody Allen's male artist, Juan Antonio, is a womanizer, but he's not cruel. He's represented as a generous lover to all the women he sleeps with, guilty only of a libertine lifestyle that flies in the face of bourgeois notions of monogamy, but noble for his honesty and for the great respect he shows to these women (none of whom are bourgeois enough to demand monogamy from him, with the exception of his wife). Woody Allen, whose own relationship history has been the subject of scandal, wants us to believe that a man who sleeps with as many women as he likes (up to 15 years his junior in this film) can be blameless; Juan Antonio is a very sympathetic character.

Surely this is, to some extent, Allen's fantasy (and that of many middle-aged males) projected on the big screen. But what is the alternative? Is the stereotypical artist biopic, in which the men are cruel womanizers, any more desireable as a message? Allen avoids moralizing, which is part of what's so refreshing about his films.

And it's not only a male fantasy we see projected here; the film offers women the fantasy of being swept off their feet by a gorgeous stranger in an exotic land. One of the best scenes in the film is Juan Antonio's first encounter with Vicky and Cristina, in which the two women debate whether to accept his invitation to spend the weekend with him. While Vicky (the voice of reason) has all the dialogue, Cristina (the risk-taker) has all the body language. The conflict between their responses to Juan Antonio could almost be the inner dialogue of any woman in such a situation, trying to decide between safety and adventure.

Penelope Cruz's Maria Elena falls more squarely into both the artist-as-crazy and the artist-as-destructive stereotypes. She enters the film after a failed suicide attempt, and her last scene is one in which she brandishes a gun, trying either to kill herself or Juan Antonio, or both (it's unclear). One of the best essays on artist mythologies in film is Griselda Pollock's “Artists Mythologies and Media Genius, Madness and Art History,” in Screen, vol. 21, no. 3 (1980), pp. 57-96. In discussing this essay in class yesterday, I learned that many of my students do strongly believe that artists ("great" ones, anyway), genuinely are mad, despite Pollock's arguments to the contrary. (For the record let me say that I do not share this opinion.)

Some of my students believe that commitment to one's work (which some call obsession) exhibited by some artists is a sure sign of insanity. I, on the other hand, believe that passionate commitment to one's work (which might also be described as being a workaholic) is the one characteristic shared by all highly successful people in ANY profession. Even the great comedian George Carlin, whose public persona was the slacker and anti-establishment rebel, was a genuine workaholic; noone could rise to his level of accomplishment without such dedication to his art.


Getting back to Vicky Cristina Barcelona, we do see these two artists, Juan Antonio and Maria Elena, at work. Both create abstract painting in the manner of Jackson Pollock. We see Juan Antonio slathering paint on his canvas with enormous brushes and fluid brushstrokes. We see Maria Elena (dressed in a teddy) dripping and drizzling paint onto a canvas that lies flat on the floor (Pollock's famous method). When Juan Antonio performs the same type of art-making ritual outside in his garden it appears to be a deliberate quotation of the famous Hans Namuth documentary of Jackson Pollock at work. Woody Allen has his painters work in this manner, I think, because it is a shorthand for the modern artist. The paintings themselves are unremarkable, but what is remarkable is the fact that the two painters produce stylistically similar works rather than having individualized artistic styles. (I also like the poster for a Paris exhibition of Juan Antonio's work that is discreetly displayed in the artist's kitchen, which serves to confirm his identity as a significant painter.)

It is Juan Antonio and Maria Elena's artistic productivity and creativity that Cristina envies. Together the two encourage and inspire Cristina to develop her own creativity as a photographer, so that in the film she becomes the third artist represented on screen. At the heart of their creativity, for all three artists, is sexuality, and herein lies yet another favorite theme for films about artists. In their menage a trois, uninhibited sexuality provides the creative energy for both work and inspiration.

The close connection between art and sex is the theme of another of my favorite essays on artist biopics: Susan Felleman's “Dirty Pictures, Mud Lust, and Abject Desire: Myths of Origin and the Cinematic Object,” Film Quarterly 55/1 (2001): 27-40. Felleman discusses both Camille Claudel and Artemesia as prime examples in which the sexual relationship between artist couples is the prerequisite for artistic greatness. Woody Allen gives further credence to this notion in his latest film. Art equals sex, and artists are incredibly sexy, despite any emotional imbalances they might suffer from.

The Age of Plenty - Review of documentary film "King Corn"

Tonight I watched Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis' first feature documentary, King Corn, which records their year spent in Greene, Iowa, growing one acre of corn. This turned out to be a thorough investigation not only of modern industrial corn farming, but also industrial beef feed lots, American agriculture subsidies, the high-fructose corn syrup industry, and the health crises caused by our national diet (specifically obesity and diabetes). The filmmakers do a nice job of tying together all these various causes and effects. As one of the experts interviewed for the film put it, "the subsidy system that rewards the overproduction of cheap corn makes the raw material available for an overweight society. We subsidize the happy meals but we don’t subsidize the healthy ones."


Cheap food was the goal of agriculture policies put in place in 1973 by Secretary of Agriculture Earl L. Butz, who today sees his program as an unqualified success. He refers to "the age of plenty" (today's world) in which food costs us about half of what it did in the first half of the century.


Cheney and Ellis' film was inspired by Michael Pollan's work, and Pollan himself appears in the film being interviewed about corn and beef. I was pleased to see him, as I am also a huge fan of Michael Pollan. A few years back Pollan undertook the same sort of agricultural experiment represented in King Corn by purchasing a steer and following it from feed lot to dining table; his experience is described in the essay "Power Steer," New York Times, March 31, 2002. That essay made an enormous impression on me. I was already a vegetarian (moreso than I am today, in fact), but Pollan revealed in that article that more than half of the antibiotics consumed in this country are fed to cattle, and why (a fact also explained in King Corn). Pollan also revealed the connection between high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and obesity, and it makes sense: cattle are fed corn to fatten them up more quickly, so it makes sense that this insidious sweetener can't be good for us humans. I have tried to avoid HFCS since reading that article in 2002.

Pollan is the author of a number of books on food, including The Botany of Desire (2002), The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006), and In Defense of Food (2008). He has also been a contributing writer for the New York Times since at least 1998; for a sample of his work see "When a Crop Become King," New York Times, July 19, 2002; "Our National Eating Disorder," New York Times, October 17, 2004; "The Modern Hunter-Gatherer," NYT March 26, 2006; "Mass Natural," NYT June 4, 2006; "The Vegetable-Industrial Complex," NYT October 15, 2006; and "Unhappy Meals," NYT January 28, 2007. Or search the New York Times website under his name and you will come up with dozens more essays and articles.

I didn't intend to write a post about Michael Pollan, but rather Cheney & Ellis's film King Corn. However, the debt that the latter owes to the former is phenomenal. Nonetheless, they interview a large number of "experts" on various subjects, all of whom contribute significantly to our deeper understanding of these complex issues. Following are some of the ideas and facts that emerge in the film:

• “America’s favorite meat is ground beef, hamburger meat. Hamburger meat is really not meat, but it’s rather fat disguised as meat. It contains 65 percent of its calories by energy as fat.” - Loren Cordain, University of California. (A grain-fed steak contains 9 grams of saturated fat compared with 1.3 grams in grass-fed beef.)
• If you were born in the last 30 years in America, chances are you’ve only ever tasted corn-fed beef.
• In the last 30 years, America’s consumption of table sugar has fallen, but our overall consumption of sweeteners has gone up more than 30 percent, largely because of a dramatic increase in our consumption of high-fructose corn syrup.
• Drinking one soda per day almost doubled the risk of developing Type II diabetes compared with drinking it only occasionally or not at all.
• The agriculture our great-grandparents had helped build is now growing fast food.
• “It [the corn in Iowa] has been selected for high productivity. This means a high-value starch production. Well you never get something for nothing in the world of biophysics, and what you give up in the bargain is nutritional value.” -- Ricardo Salvador, Iowa State University
• “Most of what we’ve done in agricultural so-called improvements and in food processing have actually degraded our food supply from a nutritional standpoint.” -- Walter Willet, Harvard University

Dinosaur World, Cave City, Kentucky

Cave City, Kentucky, about 90 miles south of Louisville, exists primarily to support the tourist industry surrounding Mammoth Cave National Park, home to the longest cave system in the world. It’s not the huge tourist trap one might expect, unlike, say, Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri (a.k.a. “the redneck riviera”). And the one major tourist attraction we visited turned out to be a lucky find for the three-year-old crowd: Dinosaur World.

Funnily enough, my son independently came up with the idea that he wanted to visit a “dinosaur land” two months ago, and it was by sheer luck that we found one, having already planned a family reunion in Mammoth Cave. Dinosaur world boasts of 100 life-size, paleontologically correct dinosaur replicas, and it turned out to be educational but also fun. These prehistoric beasts are arranged among a beautiful forested parkland, which is pleasant enough in itself. Each species of dinosaurs – represented by two or more specimens – is accompanied by a paragraph or so of information about the animals’ diet (carnivore or herbivore), its social structure (living in groups or not), and its geographic extent. There were also some non-dinosaur species, such as pterodactyls, and even some woolly mammoths (which lived much later than dinosaurs and were contemporary with early humans).

Some of the dinosaurs were arranged in family groups – mother and father with two babies – in anthropomorphized, gender-specific roles. At one vista point in the park you can see a very large life-size diorama with half a dozen dinosaur species; the triceratops adults are arranged in a circle to protect their young from the threatening T. Rex, while brachiosaurs off in the distance tower above the trees.

My husband reminded me that the first such dinosaur park in modern history was built for the Crystal Palace after it was re-erected in Sydenham in 1854 as a permanent exhibition space. Outside the building, a display of life-size models of the "Extinct Animals" or "Antediluvian Creatures" were exhibited on islands arranged within a lake. England’s contribution to dinosaur park history is not surprising since early dinosaur discoveries were made in England. (Last summer we made a pilgrimage to Lyme Regis, in Dorset, England, home of Mary Anning, the first female dinosaur hunter.)

The Dinosaur World in Cave City is a little pricey, but if you are travelling with a child who’s into dinosaurs it’s well worth the price. In addition to the life-size dinosaurs there’s a dinosaur movie, the obligatory playground, a large sandbox with “dinosaur bones” to be excavated, and even a “fossil dig” in which kids can unearth several dozen fossils and get to keep their favorites. These are real fossils – my son found tiny ammonites, shark teeth, crinoid stems, sea urchins, brachiopods, and other specimen types.

Dinosaur World provides the perfect antidote to the infamous Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, which seeks to refute all scientific evidence for Darwinian evolution, and argues that the earth is no more than a few thousand years old. As a Kentucky native I am frankly embarrassed that my state gave rise to such a ludicrous institution. Happily, Dinosaur World was full of young Southerners who took no issue with the idea that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago and that their existence can be proven by scientific evidence. That’s an institution worth supporting.

Architectural Loss (Notes from Los Angeles)

The Final Chapter of 217, 219, and 225 Bicknell Avenue


One powerful and sad experience I had this summer was the final visit to my home of 14 years in Santa Monica. Final, because the building is slated for demolition this summer. All the tenants were evicted as of April 1, 2008, with demolition scheduled for that month. Then it got pushed back to May, then June, and when I left on July 8 it was still standing, looking melancholy in its state of abandonment.

The building, a complex of 13 units arranged around a courtyard, was probably built in two stages: the first in 1940 (10 single-story units), with an addition in the 1960s or 1970s consisting of 8 garages with three units above them, closing the courtyard off from the street. (I say probably because this is just an educated guess). In the 1940s, Santa Monica was largely a vacation destination, a seaside community of beach cottages. The building had no insulation against the weather, leading me to suppose it was intended only for short-term vacation rentals (though I don't know this for a fact). The building is two blocks from the beach, so it would have been a perfect location for vacationers.

My apartment, a one-bedroom unit, was in the rear, right-hand corner; in this photo taken of me in 1998, the door to my apartment is visible.

The courtyard was so beautiful. There were three lemon trees, which bore fruit year-round. The black-and-white photo shows my friend Marc's younger son (who is now 12) climbing in the largest of these lemon trees. There was an enormous apricot tree, which bore abundant, sweet fruit. There were fig trees, jacarandas (the purple-blossomed tree that is so popular all over Southern California), roses; most of the ground-floor units had individual plots for flowers. The red-haired baby in the next photo is Olivia (now 11) when I was babysitting her; she toddled in this courtyard during the first week that she was walking.

When I lived in Santa Monica (1988 to 2002) the owner was Edna Hummer, a nice old lady who loved the building and took incredibly good care of it. Gardeners came weekly to mow and water and prune. Today the lawn is turning brown, with large patches of dirt.

Sometime after I moved away, perhaps 2003 or 2004, Mrs. Hummer sold the property to Tony Dow (of "Leave It To Beaver" fame) whose intention from the outset must have been to develop it. Property values in Santa Monica were skyrocketing -- had been doing so for decades -- and it's a miracle that this little gem of an apartment complex survived as long as it did. Under rent control it was not generating much revenue for its owner, though evidently enough for her to be satisfied. Mr. Dow, though, seems to have much higher expectations for financial return. So he finally evicted everyone and is planning to erect seven condominiums, each of them close to 3,000 square feet (which, incidentally, is larger than the average single-family house). All those beautiful trees will be destroyed, not to mention a real relic of Santa Monica's past. I will never watch "Leave It To Beaver" again.

Joan Didion on Architectural Demolition

Just before my visit to Santa Monica I read Joan Didion's memoir The Year of Magical Thinking. In it she describes the destruction of a house she lived in in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter Quintana:

“In point of fact the house in Brentwood Park from which I had seen the red flashing light and thought to evade it by moving to New York no longer existed. It was torn down to the ground and replaced (by a house marginally larger) a year after we sold it. The day we happened to be in Los Angeles and drove past the corner of Chadbourne and Marlboro and saw nothing left standing except the one chimney that allowed a tax advantage, I remembered the real estate agent telling me how meaningful it would be to the buyers were we to give them suitably inscribed copies of the books we had written in the house. We had done this. Quintana and Friends, Dutch Shea, Jr., and The Red White and Blue for John, Salvador, Democracy, and Miami for me. When we saw the flattened lot from the car, Quintana, in the back seat, burst into tears. My first reaction was fury. I wanted the books back.” (pp. 133-134)

A Little of This, a Little of That - Miscellaneous Notes from the Blogosphere

This is my first post in over a month, the longest hiatus in my brief blogging life. My humble apologies to regular readers of this space. What I offer you now is by way of making up for lost time, but may seem a bit disorganized compared to my usual approach.

Blog News: My friend Amy has launched a blog documenting her move from London to Austin, Texas, after 20 years of living abroad, with hubby and three (adorable) kids. The blog is called "Couldn't Stand the Weather," and you can find a link on the right side of this page. Welcome to Blogger, Amy! And more importantly, welcome (back) to America!!

More Blog News: I have been hard at work on other stuff, one of them being a review essay of the 2002 documentary film "How to Draw a Bunny," about Ray Johnson, "the most famous unknown artist." As of today it can be found on the blog of the Museum of Art and Archaeology. For this, too, you can find a link on the right side of this webpage. (If you live in Columbia, you can catch this film on August 1, when it will be screened on campus; more information available by clicking on the link.)

Book News: While I was in L.A., I read Claire Massud's novel, The Last Life, which was fabulous. It's the best novel I've read in a really long time (though Atonement was another highlight). The Last Life recounts the history of an American-French family from the point of view of the 14-year-old daughter. The novel is powerfully written, many-layered, and highly intellectual. Now I'm reading The Parable of the Sower, a science fiction novel by Octavia Butler, that was recommended to me by E.C. I'm not really much of a sci-fi fan, but I'm halfway through this book and am finding it compelling enough to continue. It is a real switch from Massud!

Film News: Once I was back in Columbia I went to see the film Before the Rains with friend K.R. It's a Merchant-Ivory film from a young Indian director. I think we were both disappointed with it, though it was entertaining enough to merit the 90-minute investment. It just didn't have a lot of depth. It turns out it's based on an Israeli film called Yellow Asphalt (a trilogy), which I'm curious to see. Last week N. and I watched the 1955 film Picnic, starring William Holden, based on a friend's recommendation. I really disliked the film, which was very sexist, though the cinematography and editing were quite well done.

Architecture: Lots of interesting architecture to report on, both in L.A. and Columbia, though I want to post a slide show but I cannot figure out how to do it. Stay tuned.