The Living Library

According to the LA Times, the Santa Monica library has come up with a creative idea.

On Oct. 18, the Santa Monica Public Library hosted an unusual interactive event called "The Living Library," in which people were the books and could be checked out for half an hour's conversation. Borrowers were instructed that "the Reader must return the Book in the same mental and physical condition as borrowed. It is forbidden to cause damage to the book, tear out or bend pages, get food or drink spilled over the book or hurt her or his dignity in any other way."

What an interesting idea. I'm not sure I would want to be a book (mostly because I'd worry that no one would want to check me out). I'd like to be a patron though. But would personal issues cause me not to check out a person I was really interested in? It seems that can be a risk.

The first hurdle was the choice of book; the kids had quickly decided to take out a book together. The list offered at the Living Library desk included a Buddhist, a nudist, a raw foodist and many other specialties that didn't necessarily rhyme, such as a fat activist, a feminist, a Oaxacan American and a celebrity publicist. The children briefly considered taking out a formerly homeless person, because they always have questions for their parents about how people actually manage on the streets. However, they rejected that notion as too embarrassing.

Turns out that the idea originated in Europe where, apparently, embarrassment is less of an issue.

"The Living Library" idea originated in 2000 in Denmark, the creation of anti-violence activist Ronni Abergel, as a way to overcome prejudices, bring people face to face with others they wouldn't encounter in daily life and encourage dialogue that might dispel misconceptions. The program has been repeated in many countries, and the "bestseller" -- the most highly sought-after book -- has often been a politically charged character. At the first Living Library in Denmark, one of the hits was a young Arabic Muslim; in Hungary, a former right-wing extremist.

h/t to Bookninja

Crud

I've had a cold this week along with the resulting cough. Fortunately I don't have tickets to any musical or theater events this weekend. Not that I would skip them, but sucking on all the Halls to keep from coughing usually makes me feel worse than ever.

I was happy to read that the musicians aren't as upset by the coughing in the audience as I assumed they were. Sam Bergman, a violinist for the Minnesota Orchestra, blogs that he was skimming the symphony management meeting summary for the last few weeks and:

... the meeting summaries have taken note of a sharp uptick in audience complaints regarding... coughing. Yes, people do actually bother to call or write to us about their fellow patrons coughing in the middle of a performance, and every one of those complaints gets carefully logged and sent up the chain. ... This tends to happen most years around this time, because... well, you know why. We're all coming down with the winter's first salvo of The Crud, that's why. If half the audience is afflicted with Martian Death Flu, or whatever we're calling it this year, there are gonna be more than a few involuntary expulsions during the slow movement, and there's not much anyone can do about it.

But that doesn't stop our more sensitive concertgoers from getting up in arms about it, and I can understand that, I guess, although I have a hard time taking offense myself, unless the offender is well and truly hacking up a lung and refusing to leave the hall to deal with it. And at the moment, I'm truly sympathetic to the coughers, because I'm battling a serious chest cold myself, and truth be told, I was narrowly saved from hacking my way through this morning's first half by the fact that fellow violist Ken Freed happened to have a spare Halls to hand me. (Note to anyone planning to attend a concert with a cold: Halls are the way to go. I'm not saying they're the best cough drops in the world, just that they're the ones that come in soft, pliable, silent wrappers. All those little hard candies in crinkly cellophane? Those are from the devil.)

I was truly surprised to hear this. I always assumed that the musicians found the coughing just as annoying as people in the audience did. But on giving it some thought I guess I can see why they wouldn't. Playing (or conducting or singing) a piece of music is a combination of a physical and an auditory experience. Sure, the musician is listening to hear how his or her playing (or singing) is sounding and how it is blending with the others, but they are also concentrating very hard on the physical nature of creating the sound. (Plus, if you've ever sat on the stage in or near a group of classical musicians, it's hard to hear anything BUT the music.)

The audience on the other hand is there for a purely auditory experience, which can very much be ruined if the person next to you is coughing away.

What was also interesting about Sam's post is that he can consider coughs a feedback on the performance:

I've always divided concert hall coughers into two groups - sick coughers and bored coughers - and their presence signals two very different realities for those of us onstage. (You can tell the difference because, if your hall is full of sick coughers, you can just hear the phlegm behind it. Bored coughers sound like they're trying to alert you to the fact that the person you're saying mean things about is walking up behind you.) The sick coughers signal that winter has arrived, or is still here, or is dragging on into April. The bored coughers signal that something has gone wrong with the performance: either the conductor's interpretation is failing to engage, or the orchestra doesn't seem believable enough in its commitment to the music. Either way, the audience has lost (or failed to ever achieve) the rapt attention we're hoping to inspire. And that's a lot more our fault than theirs.

I don't think I've ever given a bored cough. But now that I know ... hmmm.

Excuse me. I need to go cough some more.

Buy or Rent?

BTT asks:

I’ve asked, in the past, about whether you more often buy your books, or get them from libraries. What I want to know today, is, WHY BUY?

Even if you are a die-hard fan of the public library system, I’m betting you have at least ONE permanent resident of your bookshelves in your house. I’m betting that no real book-lover can go through life without owning at least one book. So … why that one? What made you buy the books that you actually own, even though your usual preference is to borrow and return them?

If you usually buy your books, tell me why. Why buy instead of borrow? Why shell out your hard-earned dollars for something you could get for free?

I buy books for two reasons. I'll buy a book I've already read because I love it and some part of me is simply compelled to own it. Perhaps it is a fear that it will go out of print and disappear. Perhaps it is a preemptive solution to waking up in the middle of the night and wanting to look up a passage. Perhaps it is just an irrational, totally emotional response to certain words that causes me to want them to belong to me.

Back when I didn't have much money that was pretty much the only reason I ever bought books. Otherwise I got all my books from the library.

Once I started to make some money I decided that I wanted to support authors and the best way to do that was to buy their books. After I read them I give them to people who can't afford to buy them or donate them to the book fair. I tend to buy a lot of books these days because I can - but most of them are paperback. Not that paperback books are cheap. The real test is when an author I like comes out with a new book and it is only in hardback. Some I can't resist. Louise Erdrich. A.S. Byatt. Martin Amis. I buy them automatically, sometimes sight unseen. Most others I either wait until they are in paperback or get from the library.

You?

The Duchess

Last Saturday night I went to see The Duchess, the new film starring Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes. Truthfully, I didn't expect much. Mostly because I hadn't heard anything about the film; no one was telling me that it was a "must see." But I did enjoy it. It wasn't the greatest film I've ever seen, but it kept my attention and has given me things to think about. You can't ask much more of a movie.

I'm not going to summarize it. It is, of course, a costume drama but it is a tribute to the film that, although the costumes were stupendous, I found myself forgetting to look closely at them. It wasn't so much that the story was gripping (it wasn't) but that the glimpse into a time when women had no rights whatsoever and were treated like chattel, even women of the highest station in England, was like a car crash - I couldn't look away.

The sole purpose of Georgianna (Keira Knightley's character) as far as her husband, her mother and most of the rest of society was concerned was to give her husband a male heir. She was expected to endure his affairs, illegitimate children and coldness while being held to completely different standard entirely (Ralph Fiennes gives a wonderful performance of the slightly stupid, cold but utterly pragmatic Duke of Devonshire).

Any woman who thinks they would like to have lived in an earlier time period as long as they could belong to the ruling class would think twice after seeing this.

Expressionism

On Sunday I went to see the current exhibit at the St. Louis Art Museum which they call Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976. We rented the ipod audio guides that went along with the exhibition so that we could learn more about the art on display. Surprisingly the narrative turned out to be as much about Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, art critics from the time, as about the artists and their work.

The museum made clear that the exhibition was not intended as a survey of American Abstract Expressionism. It was, the web site proclaimed, "thesis driven". The works were chosen so that Expressionism could be re-examined taking into account the perspective of influential, rival art critics [Clement] Greenberg and [Harold] Rosenberg.

This is the second time in the last two years that I've gone to an exhibition and discovered the narrative was not about the artist. The first was an exhibition of Picasso in which the works were chosen to reflect the influence of the art dealer who promoted his work.

This exhibition took that tactic to a whole new level. One portion of today's exhibition involved no actual art works but instead displayed cases filled with art journals and magazines and even video of the chimpanzee from the Today Show creating 'art' back in the 1960's.

In magazines as diverse as Partisan Review, The Nation, ARTnews, and Vogue, Greenberg and Rosenberg wrote incisively about seismic changes in the art world, often disagreeing with each other vehemently. Their advocacy propelled the artists and their art to the forefront of the public imagination, and by the late 1950s, Pollock and de Kooning were virtually household names. Their reputations were cast not only in the rarified milieu of the New York art world, but also were well-known in the popular culture, thanks to the reach of television and publications such as Life magazine.

I suppose this is a valid way to look at art history. After all, many artists exist but few become famous. And talent alone will not necessarily lead to fame. One always needs a patron. But it was a bit disconcerting; imagine going to an exhibition of Michelangelo only to have the ipod tell you mostly about Pope Julius.

One small section that I found particularly thought provoking was a display about how abstract expressionism was attacked as un-American during the 1950's because it didn't reflect American "values". This seemed unfathomable to someone like me who is an advocate for freedom of expression. And yet, I found the counter idea that this work should be defended as VERY American equally difficult to fathom. Mostly because I doubt that most Americans like it or understand it.

The idea that art is representative of the values of the body politic seems misguided to me. Art is representative of the artist and, to a certain extent, the person who pays for the art. The art of David should not be seen to represent French peasants but certainly might represent the views of the existing French government who paid for the works. Likewise, it seemed to me that this art represented the artists who created it and the art "kings' of the day - Greenberg and Rosenberg. But certainly not "America". Only if all of America was buying it could it approach being representative of "America" and maybe not even then.

I'm glad that I went, although Expressionism is not my favorite type of art. I tend to feel that an art form that still needs lots of explanation 60 years later has some inherent problems. And although it was interesting to hear about Greenberg and Rosenberg's theories of modern art, I still feel that there is a bit of PT Barnum behind some of exclamatory adulation of this type of modern art. I liked the stories of the artists who refused to care about Greenberg and Rosenberg's criticism even though I didn't necessarily like the art they created. Like them, I reserve the right to ignore the critics and like what I like. And dislike what I dislike even if the critics tell me it is a masterpiece. But even when I don't like something, I'm always willing to learn about it.

I hesitated about finding some images for this post because reproductions don't really do this style of art justice. After all, a digital image of the black-on-black painting is likely to come out as just ... black.

But here's one from the exhbition that I really liked called Twilight Sounds, by American artist Norman Lewis, from the collection of the St. Louis Art Museum - you should go see it in person:

Remembrance

November 11. A day for remembering.

Veterans Day in the United States, Armistice Day in France, Remembrance Day in parts of the British Commonwealth. A day set aside to remember those who gave their lives in war, especially the war to end all wars, World War I.

November 11, 1918 was the day that World War I ended. But that is not the November 11 on my mind.

On November 11 I will set aside a moment of the day to remember my friend, Larry, who died November 11, 1999 at the much-too-young age of 41. I won't dwell on his professional accomplishments, which were many. I won't dwell on his love for this city, which was deep. I will remember him as a friend.

I will remember him at the picnics on the lawn at Opera Theatre, entertaining us with made-up synopses of the operas while we ate extra rich chocolate brownies and drank wine.

I will remember him at the race track where we placed our measly little $2 bets and cheered as though we had placed $200,000 bets, as we sat in lawn chairs in the cheap section with the people who had no business being at the track

I will remember him at Bar Italia (the old Bar Italia) where we were celebrating a birthday dinner for friends with lots of bottles of Italian wine and protesting that we couldn't possibly drink any more as the owner of the restaurant insisted on opening the special bottle of Limoncello to share a toast with us after dinner.

I will remember him at our 12th Night Celebration, the year that Barry fixed the 12 course feast that still ranks as one of the best meals of my life.

I will remember him in London standing on the platform of the Tube with the look of horror on his face as the doors of the train slid shut with all of us except him on the inside of the train. Perhaps I might even remember him explaining how the pigeons in Trafalgar Square rose up in a great cloud and showered bird poop down on him - and that was why he was late meeting the rest of us. :)

I will remember him in Paris, at the top of the Eiffel Tower at dusk watching the lights of the city come on as a giant thunderstorm rolled toward us.

And I will remember him, as I remembered him last Tuesday, as he was in November, 1992. Us gathered around the television in his condo, watching the the election returns come in, barely believing that Clinton had won and suddenly all of us piled in cars heading toward Union Station and the big Democratic Victory Party.

Mostly I will just remember ... him.

Mudbound

The little gold medallion on the front of the hardbound copy of the novel said "Winner of the Bellwether Prize for Fiction" so the first thing I did was google to find out what that was. I discovered that the prize was created by Barbara Kingsolver to support "literature of social change."

Fiction has a unique capacity to bring difficult issues to a broad readership on a personal level, creating empathy in a reader’s heart for the theoretical stranger. Its capacity for invoking moral and social responsibility is enormous. Throughout history, every movement toward a more peaceful and humane world has begun with those who imagined the possibilities. The Bellwether Prize seeks to support the imagination of humane possibilities

I've never read anything by Barbara Kingsolver so her imprimatur didn't mean a lot to me, but the prize sounded like a good idea. However, just because something is "literature of social change" doesn't mean that I'll enjoy it. Cod liver oil may be good for you but it doesn't taste good going down. And a title like Mudbound didn't sound encouraging. But it turned out to be a pleasant surprise - like Mississippi Mud Pie.

The novel follows two Mississippi families through World War II and the years immediately after. Specifically, it follows three members of each family. One family (Henry, his wife Laura and his brother Jamie) are white and the other family (Hap, his wife Florence and their son Ronsel) are black. Their lives intersect because Hap is a sharecropper on Henry's land.

Rather than have one point of view, Jordan gives us the point of view of all six, each one taking a chapter at a time. Six unreliable narrators, I thought when I started. I worried that I would lose interest. First person narratives are not my favorite format and six different narratives seemed confusing. I wondered if I would be tempted at the end of a chapter to just stop rather than switch points of view.

But it worked and rather than slowing things down it kept the story moving because I was never with one character long enough to tire of their point of view. In fact, I raced through this novel in a couple of days.

I was particularly impressed that Jordan (who is white) decided to write in the voice of three different black persons from the 40's. There is always the risk, I think, of stereotyping or alternatively making the character "too white" and not really nailing the concerns the character should have. But she succeeded, at least for me.

The plot is a modified "whodunnit?" because the novel opens with Jamie's point of view as he digs the grave for his and Henry's "pappy" who has died under mysterious circumstances. But the mystery isn't really the point of the novel, which explores many social themes.

Laura ends up on the farm only because her husband Henry decided for the whole family that they were leaving Memphis and becoming farmers; she had no say in the matter. Florence keeps house for Laura while Hap works in the fields but Florence is also a skilled midwife who is relied on in the community. Both Jamie and Ronsel fight in the war and come back with their own issues - including a different racial sensibility that does not fit in with the rest of the racist Mississippi Delta area. Hap and Henry love the land but Hap has little chance of ever owning his own farm while Henry's only chance of turning a profit is by exploiting the labor of blacks and poor whites.

The white characters are unabashadly racist and I liked that Jordan didn't shy away from showing that. But they are not all racist to the same degree, which is also realistic. She also didn't try to provide a happy ending where one wouldn't have occurred - although I think she was very creative in making the ending not as unhappy as it might have been. She could have done what many writers of historical fiction do - put modern sensibilities into the characters. That would have made the ending unrealistic. Without giving away a plot twist too much, she used the now-almost-forgotten hatred and fear of the German enemy that existed at the time to shape the direction the story was going. But I still think she shied away from showing the real results of racial violence in the south.

That is a minor complaint, however. All in all I enjoyed reading this novel. This was Jordan's first novel and I look forward to reading more from her.