Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

Foucault's Pendulum combines the worst qualities of chi-chi French films with the worst qualities of low-budget slasher flicks.  On the one hand, it takes a long time to go nowhere.  On the other hand, it's like putting that clichéd scene where the girl goes down alone into the dark basement wearing high heels on endless repeat.  You want to smack her upside the head and say, "If you don't want to die, down't go down there, stupid!"...Advice that the protagonists of Foucault's Pendulum could use.

The book explores the possibility that one or another of the secret societies generally believed to be mythical (or extinct) are, in fact, real and very powerful indeed.   Is it the Templars, the Rosicrucians, the Jesuits, the Jews?  Did they control all of history?  A handful of bookish nerds at a publishing house dedicate much, much too much of their time rifling through crackpot occultist books looking for answers.

The narrator, Casaubon, is dull and hard to like.  His posse of cowardly friends ditto.  His girlfriends are interchangeable, their characters undeveloped.  All the women in the novel, for that matter, are one dimensional stereotypes.  The enemy, the Templars or the Illuminati or whoever, are ridiculous.

The reader is reminded periodically throughout the novel that the protagonists' attempts to get to the heart of the secret society are foolish, that their discoveries are tripe, and that they, the bookish nerds, are insane.  Call me crazy, but giving away the surprise ending before the tension has started to build is not the best move.

Eco's obsession with list-making makes sense in the medieval-set thriller In the Name of the Rose.  Here, it's just annoying.  Adding the diary entries of Belbo, the editor who can't write well and knows it, into the text of the novel is tedious.  Most of all, the book is boring and has no real payoff.  It's more than half over before the plot kicks in, long after I stopped caring.

What a waste of some great one-liners.

NB: I wish I could go back and explain some of my damning comments a little better, backing them up with an example or two, or a bit of plot summary.  Unfortunately, I have no memory of reading Foucault's Pendulum, and this is all I wrote at the time.

I now know that Casaubon is the name of a particularly repulsive character in George Eliot's Middlemarch.  Yet I don't like Foucault's Pendulum any more than I did before.  Curious.

Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy

One sentence review of Anna Karenina: Tolstoy is sending God a job application, in case he's looking for a replacement.  Thanks, Tolstoy.

Full review: When Anna jumped in front of the train, I was relieved.  I'd been waiting for her to die ever since the race when Vronsky killed his horse.  When I turned the last page, I felt more like I'd faithfully accomplished a painful duty than like I was saying farewell to a beloved friend.

I find Tolstoy to be smug and self-satisfied to the extreme.  Tolstoy and Anna Karenina were recommended to me left and right; I was told that Tolstoy really understood women, and sympathized with their tragedy - I was told that there is a special term for his kind treatment of these tragic characters, "Toylstoyan pity."  And I think the term couldn't be more apt - because this is the ugly kind of pity.  The sort that slyly places the pity-er in a position of superiority.  The pity-er gets to enjoy being better off than the pitied person and self-consciously meritorious about his/her bleeding heart.  Such a bargain.

I was constantly aware of Tolstoy's craft, of the author pulling the puppet strings behind the scenes.  Their behavior frequently struck me as unnatural and artificial, and I could only make sense of it as the the author showing off.  He says: see, this horse that Vronsky kills, - this horse is Anna!  He says: see, this ill-fated love affair of Anna's has a foil in the lawful union of Levin and Kitty, such good and loving souls!  He says: see, Anna and Stiva are brother and sister, and they make parallel choices throughout the novel!  He says, over and over again: look at how brilliant I am, with my parallel plotlines and foreshadowing!

I think that Tolstoy is convinced his characters deserve what they get - Stiva deserves financial ruin and disrespect, Anna deserves death, Vronsky deserves pity and death, and Levin and Kitty deserve a happy life in the country.  Tolstoy is happy with himself for having grasped and described human nature, content in his ability to properly penalize or reward the actions and motivations of mankind, summarized so neatly in his characters.

I kept that that every time Levin appeared in the book it was Tolstoy chortling, "Here's the way to go!  If only you others would follow suit!"  Indeed, Tolstoy, if only we could all be more like you.  Thanks for letting us know.

Salome

So I just saw the weirdest opera ever.  Richard Strauss' Salome, at the Met.  I don't know about you, but personally, I just don't associate "The Metropolitan Opera" and "Weird".  Avant-garde?  Sometimes.  Abstract?  Sure.  Gaudy, over-the-top, and spectacular?  That's more like it.  But this one was weird.  And disgusting.

There's not a whole lot of story here.  Salome is a spoiled brat, and she's lingering outside at a big party at her stepfather's palace when she hears John the Baptist ranting and railing from inside his oubliette.  The soldiers guarding the oubliette have been ordered not to let anyone speak to John the Baptist, let alone pull him out of his little prison, but with a bit of bump-and-grind Salome convinces the guy in charge that he can bend the rules just this once.

Here's the weirdest thing about Salome.  It's that Salome herself, history's ultimate femme fatale, isn't the least seductive.  And I don't mean this as a slam against the opera singer, either; the choreography is so awkward it has to be intentional.  She doesn't dance; she jerks around, she squats, she humps the props.  She doesn't seduce the solider; she flashes some flesh in a cheap, vulgar way and he just can't resist.  If that weren't bad enough, there's something childish about her mannerisms which makes the choreography that much more repulsive.  

So out pops John the Baptist.  He's not in a good mood.  The one really fun part of the opera comes next: Salome tells John that he has beautiful white skin and asks if she can touch it.  John says no, you skanky ho, you can't touch my white skin.  And then Salome declares that actually, his skin is digusting and ugly and she doesn't want to touch it.  She starts again on his beautiful red lips, but John's still having none of it, so Salome declares that actually, she never wanted to touch his ugly red lips anyhow.  Etc.  That was cute. 

Eventually spoiled little Salome gets tired of John and sends him back to his oubliette.  Then her stepfather, the tetrarch, shows up.  He's got a crush on Salome; his wife, in tow, keeps telling him how inappropriate this is.  She's wasting her breath.  The tetrarch asks Salome to dance for him, and after several refusals he resorts to bribery: if she dances for him, he'll give her anything she asks for, absolutely anything.  Salome agrees.

Salome has already established her credentials as a provocatrice at this point.  She did a little octopus dance with the soldier to convince him to unearth John the Baptist, wearing a slinky silver cocktail dress, but this time we expect more.  We expect her to pull out all the stops for the Dance of the Seven Veils.  How's that possible?  With a strip tease of course!

No.  Seriously.

And yeah, she takes off the bloomers too.

Interesting, huh?  And while Salome gets nakeder, she's still jerking around on stage in this deeply unappealing, awkward way that makes her look like she's having convulsions.  Or doing aerobics.  Convulsive aerobics.  It's bad.  And weird.

So she finishes her dance and the tetrarch is delighted.  He immediately starts offering her all the riches of his kingdom.  Clearly, he is insane, because these days most guys working minimum wage can afford a classier routine.  But fine, Salome's horrid striptease is worth diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and other such magnificence.

But Salome refuses it all.  She just wants John the Baptist's head on a silver platter.    

Now, you might be thinking the worst is over.  You might be thinking that surely an opera at the Met can't get more risque than an opera singer just past her prime stripping down to the buff on stage.  You might be thinking it can't get much grosser than those aerobic convulsions.  I sure did.  

You would be wrong.

Because once Salome gets John the Baptist's head, she kisses it.  And not just a little peck on the lips, either.  She drops to the floor and rolls around with the head, locked in a passionate embrace with it.  She's singing this thoroughly psychotic song about how she finally gets to touch his white skin and kiss his red lips, as though she can't tell the difference between a live person and a severed head.  Truly, all the previous uncomfortable moments in the opera combined are less uncomfortable than this one.  

The end.

Conclusion: wtf?

Dear All You Novel Writers Out There,

Do not begin your novel by describing the weather. I don't know why so many of you seem to think that grandiose descriptions of seasonal environmental effects (new grass, falling leaves, snow, rain, etc.) make a compelling first line.

In case you haven't heard, the weather is boring. Although you may later have the opportunity to share your uniquely special wonderment at the beauty of nature, please save it for your saggy middle - I'm sure it needs some shoring up anyhow.

The first line of your novel should draw us into the story. It should set the tone, give us an idea of what's to come. Is your book about the weather? I didn't think so. When you start with something bland and irrelevant, the reader draws certain conclusions.

Thank you,
A Sad, Sad Reader of Unpublished Fiction.

How to Recognize a Bottle Blonde

I realize the topic of this entry isn't quite up to the tone I've set for my blog so far. Oh well. It was going to happen eventually. Now, moving on.

1. The bottle blonde's hair is of a perfectly even, uniform shade of blonde. Very few people have hair of a perfectly uniform color - blondes less than other people, because the color is so sensitive to sun. Dye, on the other hand, tends to flatten the range of colors. This only really works when the bottle blonde dyes her own hair, or has it dyed cheaply. An expert colorist will try to mimic the color variation of naturally blonde hair.

2. The bottle blonde's hair is too shiny. When I had highlights in my hair, this was what I noticed most - my hair was unnaturally shiny, all the time. Some people must have naturally shiny hair, and some natural blondes may gloss their hair regularly enough to give the same effect - but if you ask me, this is a nearly foolproof indicator of a bottle blonde. Expert colorists will want to enhance, not dampen, this effect for their clients - shiny hair is good, after all - so even if they manage to realistically blend color, the bottle blonde will walk out of the salon with unnaturally shiny hair.

3. The bottle blonde's hair does not change with the seasons. Natural blondes will have noticeably darker hair in the winter, and noticeably lighter hair in summer/fall. I imagine that this, too, is something that an expert colorist would compensate for - but then, it would take a pretty sophisticated client to want it.

4. Beware of assuming that dark roots always mean the bearer's hair is not naturally blonde. Sometimes hair that grows in dishwater blonde will lighten considerably, especially under the influence of sun and saltwater. Roots are only a good indicator if the line between dark and light is crisp and even along a part in the hair. Similarly, don't assume that anyone with dark eyebrows or eyelashes has dark hair - I can't be the only natural blonde on the planet who darkens my eyebrows and eyelashes every day.

5. Basic sloppy salon procedures - i.e., if highlights are too chunky, if they are scattered through the top layer of hair like silly string, if they are placed too evenly, etc., etc.

6. The people who masquerade best as natural blondes are people who are almost, but not quite natural blondes. They have the right complexion, usually, and especially if they have money to burn on a good colorist it's going to be nearly impossible to spot the difference. However, one of the above methods should work.

These tips aren't foolproof, but I venture to say they'll almost always lead you to the correct conclusion.

super short book reviews

White Teeth, by Zadie Smith: While I was reading White Teeth, I asked at least a dozen people who'd already read it what they thought, and everyone I asked said, "It's good," in the most unenthusiastic voice imaginable. Allow me to join the chorus.

Dry, by Augusten Burroughs: Reminded me of Edith Wharton. I really liked it. Despite all the pettiness, Dry is ultimately humane - the perfect reversal of how White Teeth, with all of its concern about the human condition, is ultimately petty.

am I in the target demographic, or not?

You know that Dunkin Donuts commercial with the hipster song about how hard it is to place an order at fancy coffee shops? The customers in the commerical look at the menu and the song goes "is it French, or is it Italian? Perhaps Fritalian."

Every time I watch that commercial I laugh, because right after "perhaps Fritalian" the ad switches to advertising seasonal latte flavors, and cappucinos. I laugh because - ha ha - those are Italian words.

nb: I decided to write this down while I was ordering a latte at Dunkin Donuts.