Friday Flashback: Rec. #19: Monologue of a Dog

I decided to start doing Friday Flashbacks in case you missed some early posts the first time around. You're busy; I understand.

What: First, a couple of facts. The poet Wislawa Szymborska* won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. This particular collection includes 26 poems in their English translations alongside the original Polish. Stay with me, now. 

Symborska comes across as a writer who did not say, "I'm going to write some poems, watch me go," but instead began with, "I have some perfectly formed nuggets of thought. How shall I best present them?" The beauty, simplicity, and clarity of the poems remain intact through the translation, which is saying something when each word matters so much.

Comparable to: The light touch in the tone of Emily Dickinson, but Szymborska is much more interested in how the mundane details of everyday (often indoor) life build to bigger things.

Representative quote: "I'm still asleep, / but meanwhile facts are taking place."

You might not like it if: No poetry, no way, no how for you. (Just give it a bit of a chance, though. It's short!)

How to get it: If a place has a poetry section, you'll probably find a Szymborska collection there. Highly recommended as a book to take with you on public transit for a couple of reasons: 1) Frequent interruptions don't faze the short poems, and 2) You'll have something to think about when you pause to look out the window.

*Once you've got the hang of it, Szymborska is very fun to say.

[Originally posted 1/18/11.]

Rec. #329: Bobby

What: The film's title is Bobby, but it's really about 22 other people who happened to be in the Ambassador Hotel the night Bobby Kennedy was assassinated there. So many people are in this movie.

Some of the many: Harry Belafonte, Joy Bryant, Emilio Estevez, Laurence Fishburne, Heather Graham, Anthony Hopkins, Helen Hunt, Joshua Jackson, Ashton Kutcher, Lindsay Lohan, William H. Macy, Demi Moore, Martin Sheen, Christian Slater, Sharon Stone, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Elijah Wood

(Mercifully, writer/director Emilio Estevez refrained from casting his brother.)

Representative quote: "Now that Dr. King is gone, nobody's left but Bobby. Nobody."

Connections to previous Wreckage: I first pointed out that Laurence Fishburne is in this movie in List #29: So You Love the Cast of Hannibal, but Wish Watching the Show Itself Weren't so Psychologically Damaging.

Quote from a Fictional Character #21

"So . . . wishing you well in the way you go, we now conclude with the observation that perhaps you'll go it."

--- Nicodemus (Noddy) Boffin,

Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens, 1865

(Rec. #88)

List #40: Happy Birthday, Edward Gorey

Who: Based on his work, you'd be forgiven for thinking author/illustrator Edward Gorey must have worked alongside Max Beerbohm in Victorian England. Gorey, however, was born in Chicago and didn't start publishing his own stories until the 1950s. It's a nice reminder that it is possible to escape the zeitgeist of your own time and place.

Amphigorey, 1972

(Rec. #207)

Amphigorey Too, 1975

(Rec. #273)

Ascending Peculiarity, 2001

(Rec. #80)

Friday Flashback: Rec. #18: The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip

I decided to start doing Friday Flashbacks in case you missed some early posts the first time around. You're busy; I understand.

What: There is a village called Frip. The people there milk goats. There are these things called gappers. They make the goats freak out. This makes the people in the village freak out. Our heroine is a girl named Capable. Saying anything else would give away crucial plot points of this very brilliant little fable, so I won't.

Comparable to: Something written by George Saunders and illustrated by Lane Smith. Which it is.

Representative quote: "And both Ronsen girls stood very still, and looked sort of pretty, if you like the kind of girl who, to look sort of pretty, has to stand very still."

You might not like it if: I don't know. I think everyone loves this book.

How to get it: The usual places. I would suggest buying instead of borrowing, though. The book is gorgeous and you'll want to keep it.

Connections to other Wreckage: The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip appears on List #11: Books That Are Ostensibly for People Under 18, But Are Actually for YOU.

[Originally posted 1/17/11.]

Rec. #328: Side by Side by Susan Blackwell

What: Are you a theater geek? Are you friends with a theater geek? Are you theater-geek-curious? Then jump on the web series Side by Side by Susan Blackwell. 

For her Broadway.com talk show, Susan Blackwell has done the following:

• Had a sleepover with Zachary Quinto
• Walked dogs with Betty Buckley
• Meditated with Laura Benanti
• Shopped at a comic book store with Christian Borle
• Had a spa day with Audra McDonald
• Decorated a Christmas tree with Joanna Gleason
• Made fudge pie with Billy Crudup
• Had breakfast in bed with Sutton Foster
• Coerced Daniel Radcliffe into cleaning her toilet

She also licks everyone's face. It's very fun.

Representative quote: "Let's play a game called 'Dan Radcliffe, Would You Buy Me That?'"

How to get it: There's a playlist on YouTube, or you can follow the series on Broadway.com.

Connections to previous Wreckage: This show was on my list "If I Had the Sort of Job Where I Could Spend Time Doing Things on the Internet, Here Are Some of the Things I Would Spend Time Doing" (List #21).

Quote from a Fictional Character #20

"What does he do? Oh, he's just in business, you know, the way men are."

--- Emma Newton,

Shadow of a Doubt, 1943

(Rec. #78)

See also: Nine Hitchcock Films Starring Non-Blondes (List #30)

Friday Flashback: Rec. #28: Opening Skinner's Box

I decided to start doing Friday Flashbacks in case you missed some early posts the first time around. You're busy; I understand.

What: The full title is Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century. That sums it up pretty well --- psychologist Lauren Slater examines ten famous and/or controversial experiments, including B.F. Skinner's work on behaviorism. Slater might remind you of the college professor for that class you took that wasn't in your major, but you enjoyed it so much you thought about changing your major (but didn't).

Comparable to: Oliver Sacks or Janet Malcolm.

Representative quote: "So this, perhaps, is the story. There's a man called Skinner, which is an ugly name by any account, a name with a knife in it, an image of a skinned fish flopping on a dock, its heart barely visible in its mantle of muscle, ka-boom."

You might not like it if: You wish the author were more clinical and dispassionate because science is serious.

How to get it: Readily available. Remember, though: Even though it is creative nonfiction, it is still nonfiction. You will not find it in the fiction section.

[Originally posted 1/27/11.]

Rec. #327: You Can't Take It with You

What: The Frank Capra film You Can't Take It with You, based on a Pulitzer-prize-winning play, has pedigree up the wazoo but wears it lightly. It's a movie about money and status and business and "isms" and munitions and Life Choices, but it's also a farce that has a whole subplot about making fireworks in the basement.

Comparable to: George Cukor's Holiday came out the same year (1938) and has a similar blend of social commentary and pratfalls.

Representative dialogue:

"I wonder how many people Grandpa's going to bring home for dinner tonight."

"I don't know --- it all depends if he goes walking in a park."

Representative quote: "Sometimes you're so beautiful it just gags me." [as spoken by Jimmy Stewart]

How to get it: Currently streaming for free with Amazon Prime. Or rent, or borrow, or buy.

Connection to previous Wreckage: The similar-in-tone Holiday, starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, was Rec. #288.

Quote from a Fictional Character #19

"It makes you wonder. All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if we only suspected we knew how."

--- General Benjamin,

Bel Canto, Ann Patchett (2001)

Friday Flashback: Rec. #23: Going to Meet the Man

I decided to start doing Friday Flashbacks in case you missed some early posts the first time around. You're busy; I understand.

What: James Baldwin's first collection of short stories is by turns wise, wry, and heartbreaking. You might have read Baldwin's work in college as an illustration of racial and/or sexual issues in the U.S in the mid-20th century. It's alarming how little has changed and how relevant the characters' hopes and fears still are. Whether this says more good things about Baldwin's formidable skill at cutting to universal truths or bad things about our lack of progress as a society, I'll leave for you to judge.

Comparable to: Maya Angelou cites Baldwin as a major influence.

Representative quote: "There's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it."

You might not like it if: You are already so depressed about the state of the world that one more little nudge would be enough to send you over the edge.

How to get it: Libraries! Big bookstores! Little bookstores! Used bookstores! Face it, they could all probably use our help.

[Originally posted 1/22/11.]

Rec. #326: Little Shop of Horrors, various incarnations

A young man working in a flower shop has a plant that thrives on blood. The mild-mannered young man becomes a reluctant murderer.

Obviously, this is a universal story to which everyone can relate, so it's no surprise that it keeps getting new versions. All of them are dark and funny and satirical and grim and nutty.

Little Shop of Horrors started life in 1960 as a B-movie by Roger Corman (and with a "The" in the title). It was shot in two days and cost $30,000. Jack Nicholson has a small part.

In 1982, it became a musical --- a comedy-horror-rock-doo-wop musical with songs including "Somewhere That's Green," "Suppertime," and "The Meek Shall Inherit."

In 1986, Frank Oz adapted the musical into a movie starring Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene, and Steve Martin. The A.V. Club recently extolled its virtues in honor of the release of the director's cut, which restores the original bloodbath ending.

How to get them: Both movie versions are intermittently available to stream for free on Netflix and/or Amazon. The soundtracks to both the stage musical and the movie musical are widely available.

Quote from a Fictional Character #18

"Chivalry is not only dead, it's decomposed."

--- J.D. Hackensacker III,

The Palm Beach Story, 1942

(Rec. #17)

Other screwball comedies: The Awful Truth (Rec. #219), The Lady Eve (Rec. #129), Libeled Lady (Rec. #229), Midnight (Rec. #194), The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (Rec. #65), (Some of) The Best of Edward Everett Horton (List #20)