Heartachingly Good Stuff to Read

Arghhh! So it occurs to me that maybe this is not the kind of commitment I am good at—this blogging thing.

Things to see:  Griff the Invisible (an Australian film)— I love both this corny trailer and the plug/review by Richard Lawson (super brief; 2 paragraphs) at  Gawker. Film release: August 2011.



Thing to read:
Recently I have been reading the collected works of Dorothy Parker, 

 
in a lovely hard back edition (not the link above) loaned to me by a friend.  I have also just finished Booker Prize winning author Anne Enright's The Forgotten Waltz. Reading both of these works makes me realize how seldom I bother to pick up books by female authors.


I am not sure why this is (and secretly shudder to think that I might have some horrible V. S. Naipaul like bias) but do think that (sweeping  generalization this), predominately, for female authors (even the weighty ones like Parker and Enright) the only big question addressed is love. [There are notable exceptions:  two of my favourites—Margaret Atwood and Pat Barker—come immediately to mind, but, for the most part, I think, this is a truism.]

The love thing is addressed particularly well by both Parker and Enright.  Neither of their works cloying or overly-sentimental, and both leaving me heart achingly in awe. Parker's bare prose speaks to me in a way that a female author has not for a very long time and exposes my "it sucks to be a girl whining" for its triteness and for the safe and comfortable place from which it comes.  Her stories and poems (self-aware and post-modern before their time) are permeated by her sad-funny delivery—that delivery aching in its non-pitying loneliness.  One is left profoundly struck by all Parker had to give up in the decidedly male world of the 1920s to be true to herself and to write in such a raw and naked fashion.  [Anthony Weiner be damned; Parker's is the true naked picture—one she willing sends to the world, craving both fame and absolution.]

I hesitate to recommend The Forgotten Waltz because it is a gut-wrenching and haunting read—cold and clear—not always comfortable to observe. Its narrator, Gina, is flawed, self-involved, judgmental, and often unlovable, yet painstakingly honest, clear-sighted, broken, alone and full of longing.  It is a train wreck of a story, one from which I was unable to turn my gaze from the impending, incontrovertible full-on collision to which it hurls.   Her desire is infused with grief from the very moment she sets eyes upon her future lover, Sean.  Throughout this adulteress-confession of a story, this first scene is written and rewritten by Gina—a scene in which the promise of grief is as inevitable as the consummation of their forbidden love.


When you need a break from all this heartache, read David Thorne's The Internet is a Playground: Irreverent Correspondence of an Online Genius  This is a book that only an Australian could have gotten away with:  cocky, cheeky and very funny in a laugh aloud way or visit his website 27b/6 for excerpts.