Burr
by Gore Vidal
This was another book picked by my book group. It seems like we have better discussions when we read books that aren’t contemporary. More to talk about than just whether we liked it or didn’t like it. For Burr, we talked about Burr’s version of events versus Vidal’s views versus what actually happened in history. I didn’t really remember much about the standard history book version of Burr other than the duel with Alexander Hamilton. Vidal celarly knew a lot more than that—his research is impressive in its scope and detail. The historical detail sometimes makes reading Burr feel more like reading a history than a novel. Interesting as Burr was, I did find myself getting bogged down in the history at times, particularly in the political machinations. Sometimes it was hard to remember which character was which, only helped by the fact that many of the names were familiar.
What Vidal adds to the history and what keeps the book interesting are the characters’ opinions and motivations. After all of the worshipful books about the Founding Fathers over the last few years, it was fun to read Vidal cutting them down to size. From Washington’s fat arse to Davy Crockett’s drunken ranting, no one makes it through unscathed.
By describing the beginning of America’s democracy and early presidents establishing and pushing the boundaries of presidential power, Vidal is commenting on the risks of an imperial presidency. Burr was written in th 1970s, so he was probably talking about Nixon, but reading it now, it could just as easily be about Bush.
My company published The Zuni Cafe Cookbook a few years ago, and I had never really gotten around to making anything from it. Everything seemed too involved. And since our grocery store is small and not very well stocked with anything not Polish, it seemed like too much of a pain to get a long list of fancy ingredients.
The only real problem was that cooking the chicken on very high heat managed to set off our smoke detector over and over. Lucky for us, we have an extra-safe one that’s wired into the building and only has battery for backup, so we couldn’t even take out the battery to make it stop. We finally pointed the fan directly at the smoke detector for the rest of the cooking time. If I ever make this again, I’m definitely turning on all the fans and opening all the windows before I start.
So far I have this. I know it’s just two stripes, but it’s progress. It’s far from perfect, but I’m pretty happy with it. It’s taking a long time partially because I’m pretty slow and partially because it’s really wide—I want it to fit on our queen size bed. I bought a pile of yarn in bright colors—red, orange, celery green, chocolate brown, royal purple, pale blue, teal, and navy—to match the bright colors in our apartment. I have no plan for color sequence, just going to make it up as I go along. I am finding crochet easier than knitting—it seems to only need two hands, one for hook and one for yarn, whereas knitting always seemed like it needed three. And the size of my stitches seem to be more consistent with crochet.
At first this was reminding me a lot of The Secret History, Dead Poets’ Society, etc., where a group of private school students become incredibly close, guided by a special teacher, and then something tragic happens. Plus a heaping dose of postmodern pretentiousness. But in the last part of the book, Pessl throws in a completely unexpectedly plot twist. On one hand, it made the end of the book a page-turner, but on the other hand, it was unexpected because it was extremely implausible. A fun read overall, but I didn’t think it held together very well.
After 3 days of watching live music for 12 hours a day (1 p.m. to 1 a.m.), I’m exhausted. I’ve seen so many bands that they all run together in my head. Alex had to spend his days at the Blender House, working on his chicken and bee drawings, so I went to the day shows on my own. That was probably my favorite part—what could be better than escaping New York winter to hang out in the Austin sunshine, listening to music, beer in one hand, taco in the other. For the curious (Toby), these are the bands I saw. Most of them I even sort of remember.
I wasn’t sure if I would love this movie or hate it. In the end, it was something in the middle. Sofia Coppola tells pretty much the same story in every movie, a lonely girl overwhelemed by her world. And her movies tend to be much more about mood and images than about plot. Her first film, The Virgin Suicides, was my favorite. The melancholy mood and misty camera work really work with the suburban gothic story. I had liked the book by Jeffrey Eugenides, and I was pleased that the film captured the mood of the book. With Lost in Translation, I found it very captivating in the theater and got swept up in the movie’s slow rhythm and introspection. When I saw it again at home, I found the main character whiny and annoying.
Comparing this movie and the book it’s based on really illuminates some of the strengths and weaknesses of film and writing. In the book we see everything entirely through Barbara; the reader is in her head. In film, the viewer can’t be in a character’s head in the same way. Barbara’s narration is there in voice-over, but as viewers, we still see her from the outside. The ending of the book is much creepier than the movie—I suppose they wanted the movie to have a friendlier ending with a bit of hope.