French: Fried

Le jour de gloire est arrive!

Paul Rudnick's Shouts and Murmurs column ("Vive La France") in the March 26 New Yorker is one of the funniest pieces I've read in a long long time.  One page.  You'll laugh out loud.  Favorite line: " . . . the ultimate French film will be a still photograph of a dead mime."  Well, it's really funny in context.

Rudnick was surely inspired by the recently released and much ballyhooed "Bringing up Bebe" by Pamela Druckerman, which touts the French approach to child rearing and family life.

The New Yorker continues to amaze me with the quality of their stuff.  A weekly, no less.  Some issues are better than others, but nonetheless it's still very impressive.

My Wearin' o' the Green

Actually, I don’t think I own anything green to wear for St. Patrick’s Day.  So instead I’ll blog about William Trevor’s ‘Felicia’s Journey’, which I just finished reading.  Trevor is, or course, an Irish national treasure.  He’s been turning out short stories for decades.  Many have appeared in the pages of The New Yorker over the years.  The published ‘Complete Short Stories’ (though how the publisher can claim the collection is complete is beyond me … the author is alive and well and writing) is huge and sits in a very accessible place on my bookshelf.  It’s a go-to volume for me when I want a certain kind of warm and resonant writing.  He’s also published a bunch of novels of which I’ve read maybe four or five.

‘Felicia’s Journey’ won the Whitbread award in 1994.  Its subject matter is unusual for Trevor: a young down-and-out Irish girl’s encounter with an English serial murderer.  It’s quite suspenseful, though not a page-turner in the ‘airport’ sense.  The writing is typical Trevor … lyrical, and downright gorgeous in places.  The riff on the homeless in the very middle of the book is just stunning; he returns to the same theme at the end of the book with chilling effect.  No sensational violence or sex here, though the subject matter could easily lead a different writer to those places.  Trevor maintains an understated, polished, almost polite prose style despite the sensational plot.  And the presence of both murder and abortion in the same plot is unsettling.  Way too many links there to be comfortable.

‘Felicia’s Journey’ was made into a movie.  Not interested.  This work is about words, about writing, about sentences, about prose rhythm and prose style.  Can we just leave it there?

There’s also plenty of Irish generosity of spirit.  Colum McCann comes to mind as a younger counterpart.  Even in dealing with very seedy and unpleasant characters the approach is not judgmental.  As readers we’re led to a greater understanding of some very distasteful characters without being asked to condemn them or approve of them.  

We are gradually led into the mind of the serial murderer.  We never fully understand him, but we do come away with a fuller sense of the human origins of evil.  I’m reminded of Wilkie Collins’s Count Foscoe (in ‘The Woman in White’).  Quintessentially evil, but not totally undeserving of sympathy either.  Collins is less interested in the psychology, but the character is still driven by strong internal forces over which he has little control.

If you haven’t read Trevor, go for it.  Read him when you can afford to read slowly, with patience and an open mind.  He can seem very old-fashioned to modern readers on this side of the pond.  He’s a treasure.  Better than green beer any day.

I did make a corned beef on 3/17.
Too bad it's not an Irish dish. 
Worth having once a year, though.

Play It Again, Sam

Ah, yes.  Contemporary but traditional fiction.  When it’s well done, it does please, doesn’t it?  Penelope Lively.  A British author who’s been around for quite a while, cranking out novels one after another.  She has a Booker prize on her mantel.  Compared to the avant-garde writing that gets so much attention today she’s almost Victorian.  But she can write in a way that gives pleasure.  Read her for pleasure. 

And in her latest, “How It All Began”, there are observations on aging, on time, and on coincidence vs. cause-and effect that ring true.  Every so often it’s nice to read something that confirms our thoughts and suspicions, as opposed to something that challenges us with a contrarian’s approach.  The plot is fun if not innovative.  The structure is straightforward; the writing is tight.  Few surprises.  An older Lionel Shriver.  No need to break the mould.  Just do it well.

Ah, yes. Cheese souffle.  Duck a l'orange.  I’m getting old.