53

53!

48

The last slice!

Cuarenta y ocho

That Time of the Year

News Bits + Word Quiz (Angela Carter)

Nelson Mandela, 93! & family
(Peter Morey/EPA)

Some news links that struck me today:

NY Times: "Obama taps former Ohio official for Consumer Agency"
(No Elizabeth Warren, but Obama does pick one of her close associates and a foe of the banks' excessive power and sway)

McClatchy: "Justice Dept. lawyers contradict FBI findings in anthrax case"
(i.e., the case against Bruce Ivins was weak, and the real culprits remain out there, as Glenn Greenwald and others argued long ago)

Guardian UK: "News Int'l hacking whistleblower Paul Hoare found dead in his apartment"
(Talk about strange "coincidences"....)

LA Times: "Borders finds no buyer, moves towards liquidation"
(One of the major chains is on its last leg, or half of one, and could be gone by the end of this week)

Raw Story: "US Senate confirms first openly gay district judge, Paul Oetken"
(Another major advance for LGBTQ equality, a month after NY State's approval of same sex marriages)

Mail & Guardian: "South Africans mark Nelson Mandela's birthday"
(Madiba turns 93)

The Mainichi Daily News: "Over 500 cows found shipped after having eaten radiactive straw near Fukushima reactor disaster"
(The ongoing worst nuclear reactor disaster ever, in northeastern Japan and exceeding that of Chernobyl, has not gotten anywhere near the coverage it deserves, and the Japanese government's response remains inadequate)

LA Times: "NFL owners may approve new labor deal on Friday"
(More revenue money for players, a lower salary cap, lower bonuses for rookies, $1 billion for pensions and benefits, and greater emphasis on safety, especially brain injuries)

***

WORD QUIZ: ANGELA CARTER

Most J's Theater readers in the US are probably well past their PSAT, SAT and ACT experiences--though I keep it fairly clean, so the youngsters can drop in here too if they like--and are probably not thinking about vocabulary tests. (I can't recall if there are vocabulary tests on the GMATs, MCATs, etc.--if so, keep reading). Recently, however, in the course of returning to stories in Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories (London: Chatto & Windus, 1995), by the late, prolific and ever beguiling British writer Angela Carter (1940-1992) who, as her biographical dates suggest, died far too young, I found myself noting down a number of words from her stories that I had to look up or that I knew but felt compelled, because of their beauty and rarity, to record, in my notebook.

Carter usually incorporates these words, most of which are Latinate in origin, in such a way that they feel integral to the narrative voice and the narrative itself; in Bloody Chamber's stories, for example, the narration is often elevated in such a way as to take the reader outside of any chronological time, yet Carter will then juxtapose the exalted and sometimes baroque diction and syntax with a very contemporary word or phrase, a very up-to-date intonation, so as to jar the reader out of any easy or simplistic identification or understanding of what's going on. It also makes for thrilling prose; with language so arrestingly vertiginous, the plot and characters need not do all or even most of the work.

One quote, from "Master" (p. 76):

He travelled by jeep through an invariable terrain of architectonic vegetation where no wind lifted the fronds of palms as ponderous as if they had been sculpted out of viridian gravity at the beginning of time and then abandoned, whose trunks were so heavy they did not seem to rise into the air but, instead, drew the oppressive sky down upon the forest like a coverlid of burnished metal."

So: here's the challenge. Without looking up the words, see how many of the follow 10 you can define off the top of your head. The answers appear after the break (if you're reading this on the iPhone/iPad app, I'm not sure how it'll appear, so perhaps cover the answers with your fingers). I should add that I used one of these words in my second book and in my current one, and it remains as strange to me now as it did then, which is why I have employed it.

1.  palliasse
2.  lancinating
3.  stertorous
4.  osier
5.  linnet
6.  castellated
7.  reticule
8.  cloisonné
9.  lustratory
10.  prothalamion

46! + Riding the Roosevelt Island Tram

That annual day has arrived!

The delicious strawberry shortcake C made for my birthday!

The cake, with candles

Me blowing out the candles!

***

For my birthday I was trying to think of touristy places I'd never visited or things I'd never done (up to a reasonable point, of course) in New York City, and realized that I had done most of the things that would come to mind. I've visited all five boroughs, ridden every subway line, been to City Island, Coney Island, Liberty Island, Ellis Island (which is in New Jersey, of course), and the various beaches, to the two stadiums (the old ones, not the new ones, yet), watched several matches at the National Tennis Center, seen exhibits all the major museums and many of the art galleries, attended many a Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway play, musical and art performance, viewed the City from the Empire State Building and even from the now-gone World Trade Center's observation floor, and I'd even seen (last year!) a dance performance on the site of the former Fresh Kills Land Fill in Staten Island, which meant taking the Staten Island Ferry, always a delight (it's free!) and on and on, but I realized that one thing I've never done is ride the Roosevelt Island Tramway.

Since childhood I've seen it in many a film, had classmates in grad school who took it regularly to teach in the poetry program at Goldwater Hospital, and have wanted to ride it, though I have to admit desire curdled a bit into dread not only after 9/11 but when the tram got stuck in the fall of 2005, and then again in the spring of 2006.  The last place I want to be is suspended for hours, with little reprieve or answers, above the East River. The tram, however, was completely renovated last year, and has been operating quite smoothly, so I thought, why not try it today?  And I did! It's a brief ride, no more than 4 minutes or so--thankfully!--at about 18 mph, so it's almost over before it begins, but when it ascends to its apex, about 250 ft above the East River, with the Queensborough Bridge  to the south and Roosevelt Island and in the distance Queens far below, it feels as if you're climbing into the clouds, and exhilaration mixes with terror--perhaps sublimity is too strong a word--and even time slows, if only for a few minutes.

I actually did feel a bit of nerves as we powered towards the top of the highest tower, but taking photographs brought instant relief.  Seeing and walking around Roosevelt Island was also enjoyable, and the views of the east side of Manhattan outdo any postcard.  Below are some of my snapshots. The view of the East River must be experienced live, so if you're in New York and have a half-hour or so (the coming, the going, etc.), it's only $2.25 or a standard MetroCard ride. Soar away!

Before the Roosevelt Island tram leaves

Waiting for the tram to depart

The East River, looking north

On Roosevelt Island

East River barge

Looking north, to the Upper West Side, from Roosevelt Island

The East River looking south, from Roosevelt Avenue

Boarding the tram on Roosevelt Avenue

The East River from the tram

Approaching Manhattan

The east side of Manhattan

Queensborough Bridge on-ramp and the east side of Manhattan

York Avenue, seen from the tram

The Queensborough Bridge

Cars entering the Queensborough Bridge

2nd Avenue from the air

Graduation Day + Birthday + Adeus Saramago + Adios (Old New) New York

Although I've already congratulated this year's graduates, since today is GRADUATION DAY, let me extend my deepest CONGRATULATIONS again!

∞∞∞

Yesterday was my birthday. C made a delicious pasta dish (penne con funghi), and baked one of his signature desserts, a coconut-lemon cake, which, as the photo below shows, we dove right into. I'm willing to turn 45 weekly if it results in that meal and one of these cakes!

∞∞∞

Yesterday around the time that Reggie H. sent me the link I saw online that José Saramago (1922-2010) had passed. He was, without a doubt, one of the major writers in contemporary world literature, and one of Portugal's greatest novelists.  I must confess that although I can read Portuguese (to some extent), I've only read his novels in English; years ago, when after teaching myself the rudiments of Portuguese I realized I couldn't speak the language, so I engaged an Azorean tutor-conversationalist in Cambridge who had me read selections from the works of Fernando Namora, Jorge de Sena, José Cardoso Pires, Augustina Bessa-Luís, and several other major 20th century Portuguese (but never Brazilian) writers, including some whom she wasn't so fond of, like Antonio Lobo-Antunes. But Saramago was, I recall, "too difficult" for a beginner. By this, I later gathered as I read his work in English, his formally experimental prose, often comprising long, paratactic and sometimes hypotactic sentences, broken up mainly by commas and few periods, and shifting at times abruptly between points of view and perspectives, while interspersed with direct authorial commentary and philosophizing, certainly would have proved a challenge. Yet I've found that in English at least, Saramago's works, once you engage the prose's rhythms, aren't as narratively difficult in the way that William Faulkner's, Juan Goytisolo's, Claude Simon's, or  are. Nor are they philosophically demanding in the way that superficially more formally simple novels of Clarice Lispector are, or linguistically as impenetrable as Julián Ríos or João Guimarães Rosa (i.e., untranslatable). Saramago is very interested in the traditions not just of the novel but of storytelling, and stories, sometimes remarkable ones, often allegorical and symbolic, his novels do tell. Saramago attributed this deep devotion to story to his illiterate grandparents, great storytellers thesmselves, who reared him when his parents left the small Santarém district village of Azinhaga, where he was born, to look for work in Lisbon.

44

The delicious coconut-lemon cake is courtesy of C (and delicious it is!)

My Birthday

Today's the day! (And the cake is delicious.)