Nothing Like the Sun

I've always been impressed by the ease with which William Kennedy's prose moves from persuasively colloquial and naturalistic dialogue to poetic cadence. His ear for period argot is pitch-perfect, but the narrative frame belongs to a completely different--although complimentary--register. Kennedy's voice openly comments on character, moment, and action, conveying an ironic affection for spiritual outlaws: gamblers, gangsters, drunks, derelicts, and machine politicians. His attitude toward the past (and the past is what Kennedy is all about, but with a sense of humor and direction that, say, Faulkner altogether lacked) is appreciative, not nostalgic, but his sympathy for old Albany's devils, rakes, and dropouts is undeniable.

( More where that came from, pal )

A conversation with a co-worker prompted me to start re-reading Faulkner's Light in August a couple of weeks ago, a novel I had first attempted (and rapidly given up on) before college.

Light in August is reputedly one of Faulkner's more accessible novels--and an important one. Less formally experimental than The Sound and Fury, As I Lay Dying, or Absalom, Absalom!, the book nonetheless wrestles with equally weighty themes: the legacies of racial and religious communalism and bigotry in the early twentieth-century American Southeast. ( Jim Crow, John Calvin, and Joe Christmas )

Interracial sex presented a problem for the slave holding South: above all because it resulted in mixed-race people. ( what's a racial caste system to do? )

The view from my living room window has gotten a little more film noir since the Cap Hill Twice Sold Tales moved in across the street. The five-color neon sign glowers through the venetian blinds on a rainy day like the window of Arthur Gwynn Geiger's bookstore in The Big Sleep:



Some neighbors have complained about the faint glare, but the store's owner is considerate enough to turn the sign off when they close at night, so it's not like they're flagrant about it. And having a weakness for that whole trashy neon aesthetic, I kind of enjoy the ambience.

Inside, the new store has a completely different feel, a labyrinthine quality that reminds me of the monastic library in The Name of the Rose: perhaps a dozen rooms full of books winding around almost the entire first floor of the Abonita building. The space is too small for you to actually lose your way, but it almost feels as though you could.

( And then there are the cats ... )

On Christmas Eve, the family got together as we usually do at my sister Carmen's McMansion in Voorhees, where per our customary practice gifts were exchanged at midnight.

I'm indebted to Carmen's daughter April, "my favorite niece" (we're only a few years apart, so more like siblings), for supplying me with gift suggestions for all of my relatives back there, since I live so far away and I have trouble keeping track of what people are in to and have.

( Potlatch )

I wish that I could include pictures of the event and the ensuing sea of torn paper, but my camera died on the eve of this trip. So I'll have to wait for my relatives to email them to me, then maybe I'll make a separate post.

As a rule, I kind of like depressing movies. But even I have my limits.

marginalia has been my partner in crime through a week-and-a-half-long marathon of some of this fall's darkest (and, in at least a couple of instances, most promising) films.

( No Country for Old Men )

( Michael Clayton )

( American Gangster )

( Before the Devil Knows You're Dead )

I'd been OK with the previous three films, but the last one's uncompromising bleakness left me running for comfort cinema:

So I sought refuge in re-watching Trevor Knight's version of Twelfth Night. As I'd hoped, Ben Kingsley's Feste singing "The rain it raineth every day" and Helena Bonham Carter's Olivia mooning over Imogen Stubbs' Viola restored my spirits.

The qualities that I appreciate about Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union all seem summed up in the following passage, which describes the arrival of the protagonist's father in Chabon's alternate-historical Federal District of Sitka, Alaska:

( speechless with outrage, joy, and wonder )

As marginalia has posted elsewhere, a few of us went out to see Pan's Labyrinth on Friday. We had to trek out into the wilds of unincorporated King County to find a late showing that wasn't sold out, but it was well worth the drive: ( Hey, kids! Literary references inside! )

On Saturday, I ventured out into the uncharacteristically Arctic night air we're experieicing in Seattle again to see Casino Royale a second time. ( You Know My Name )

Sunday night, ryuusama hosted the premier episode of HBO's Rome, which shall we say paralleled events in Act III, Scene II of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. ( Not To Praise Him )

See, lines like that are why I think Brian K. Vaughn is the best thing to happen to graphic novel writing since Alan Moore's Watchmen. I just got around to reading "Kimono Dragons," the latest collection of Y The Last Man, and I was so not disappointed. I continue to be amazed by Vaughn's ability to keep elaborating on the "unmanned" premise, I grow more attached to the characters with every story cycle, and the dialogue still totally rocks.