recently i discovered a indie rock group from canada that i liked ( thanks to a friend who loaned me their newest cd Neon Bible). i found their lyrics to be magnetic (ie. they stuck rather than suck). than i remembered my favorite group during the 80's and
90's was Talking Heads a favorite song was Once in a Lifetime. i guess i haven't come so far. ...same as it ever was ...
Arcade Fire is an indie rock band based in Montreal, Quebec which is based around the husband and wife duo of Win Butler and Régine Chassagne. In 2004, their first full-length album Funeral was recorded. The group uses of a large number of musical instruments in addition to mainstays rock instruments of guitar, drums, and bass guitar, such as bowed string instruments, accordion, various brass and harp.
THE ARCADE FIRE LYRICS
"Keep The Car Running"
Every night my dream's the same
Same old city with a different name
Men are coming to take me away
I don't know why, but I know I can't stay
There's a weight that's pressing down
Late at night you can hear the sound
Even the noise you make when you sleep
Can't swim across a river so deep
They know my name cause I told it to them
But they don't know where and they don't know
When it's coming, when it's coming
There's a fear I keep so deep
Knew its name since before I could speak
Aaaaah Aaaaah Aaaaah Aaaaah
They know my name cause I told it to them
But they don't know where and they don't know
When its coming, oh when but its coming
Keep the car running
If some night I don't come home
Please don't think I've left you alone
The same place animals go when they die
You can't climb across a mountain so high
The same city where I go when I sleep
You can't swim across a river so deep
They know my name cause I told it to them
But they don't know where
And they don't know
When it's coming, oh when is it coming?
Keep the car running
Keep the car running
Keep the car running
ONCE in a Lifetime lyrics :
And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful
Wife
And you may ask yourself-well...how did I get here?
Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.
And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!
Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
a little humour and a little irony
1) irony
As i was driving around the backroads of nebraska last week i was turning thru the radio stations and i noticed russ limbaugh was on about four different channels. After listening a bit, the phrase "Nattering nabobs of negativism" came to mind. i
thought it ironic that a phrase popularized by spiro agnew as an insult to the press
would seem to fit russ so well who by all accounts would be a political bedfellow.?
Nattering nabobs of negativism" is one of the most popular turns of phrase associated with U.S. Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, who served under Richard Nixon until resigning in October 1974, after pleading no contest to charges of tax fraud. Agnew, who had a particularly acrimonious relationship with the press, used this term to refer to the members of the media, whom he also deemed "an effete corps of impudent snobs."
According to the Congressional Record, this term was first used during Agnew's address to the California Republican state convention in San Diego on September 11, 1970. In context, it was used together with another well-known Agnew alliteration: "In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H Club -- the "hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history."
Although this phrase is often credited to Agnew himself, it was actually written by William Safire, the legendary columnist for The New York Times, who was a speechwriter for Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. Some of Agnew's other pearls were actually written by Patrick Buchanan, another White House speechwriter at the time.
na·bob n.
1. A governor in India under the Mogul Empire. Also called nawab.
2. A person of wealth and prominence.
2) humour
when i was in highschool one might say after making a dumb joke: ' a little humour'
(which was stolen from johnny carson). a reply might be: ' yes, very little'.
consider the following "a little humour' :
How I Want To Be Remembered
by Jack Handey
March 31, 2008 Text Size:
We are gathered here, way far in the future, for the funeral of Jack Handey, the world’s oldest man. He died suddenly in bed, according to his wife, Miss France.
No one is really sure how old Jack was, but some think he may have been born as long ago as the twentieth century. He passed away after a long, courageous battle with honky-tonkin’ and alley-cattin’.
Even though Jack was incredibly old, he was amazingly healthy right up to the end. He attributed this to performing his funny cowboy dance for friends, relatives, and people waiting for buses. All agreed it was the most hilarious thing they had ever seen, and not at all stupid or annoying.
Jack’s death has thrown the whole world into mourning, and not in a fakey, sarcastic way. He was admired by people of all ages and stripes, and by all animals, including zebras. Even monsters liked him. He had his playful side and his serious side, but ninety-nine per cent of the time he had his “normal” side.
He started out life as a baby but worked his way up to an adult. But even when he was a full-grown adult he never forgot that he was a baby. His philosophy of life was a simple one. “I’m-a no look-a for trouble, because-a trouble, she’s-a no good,” he would often say, in his beloved fake Italian accent. He was quick with a laugh, but just as quick to point at what he was laughing at. Children loved him, but not in the way his teen-age niece claimed. He was always thinking of ways of helping people, and was wondering how he might do some of those things when he died.
Jack was an expert in so many fields, it’s hard to say what he was best at: the arts, the sciences, or the businesses. If you talked to him at a party, you couldn’t tell; he seemed to know it all. He has been compared to Captain James Cook, and not just because he was severely beaten by some Hawaiians, and to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, and not just because he liked to be driven around in a jeep.
As hard as it is to believe, he never sold a single painting during his lifetime, or even painted one. Some of the greatest advances in architecture, medicine, and theatre were not opposed by him, and he did little to sabotage them.
Although he lived in Paris, in a mansion famous for its many trapdoors, he was always proud to be an American. However, he was ashamed to be an earthling.
He was fabulously wealthy, but he would pretend to be broke, and often tried to borrow cigarettes and money from people. Little did they know that those who gave him stuff would later be rewarded in his will, with jewels and antigravity helmets. Women who refused to have sex with him are probably wishing that they could turn back the clock and say yes.
Generous even with his organs, he has asked that his eyes be donated to a blind person. Also his glasses. His skeleton, equipped with a spring that will suddenly propel it to a full standing position, will be used to educate kindergartners.
He has asked that no shrines be built to him. But he pointed out that this did not mean he didn’t like Shriners. According to our scientists, with their electronic soul trackers, Jack is in Heaven now. And not just regular Heaven, which any jerk can get into, but special secret Heaven, which even some angels don’t know about.
So let us celebrate his death, and not mourn. However, those who appear to be a little too happy will be asked to leave.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy is that a lot of the things Jack said and did seemed wrong at the time, but now we realize it wasn’t him; it was we who were wrong. Let us hope we don’t make the same mistake with his clones.
In closing, it is unfortunate that Jack’s friend Don could not be here. However, Don died many years ago, from a horrible fungus.
And now robot Elton John will sing “Candle in the Wind.”?
As i was driving around the backroads of nebraska last week i was turning thru the radio stations and i noticed russ limbaugh was on about four different channels. After listening a bit, the phrase "Nattering nabobs of negativism" came to mind. i
thought it ironic that a phrase popularized by spiro agnew as an insult to the press
would seem to fit russ so well who by all accounts would be a political bedfellow.?
Nattering nabobs of negativism" is one of the most popular turns of phrase associated with U.S. Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, who served under Richard Nixon until resigning in October 1974, after pleading no contest to charges of tax fraud. Agnew, who had a particularly acrimonious relationship with the press, used this term to refer to the members of the media, whom he also deemed "an effete corps of impudent snobs."
According to the Congressional Record, this term was first used during Agnew's address to the California Republican state convention in San Diego on September 11, 1970. In context, it was used together with another well-known Agnew alliteration: "In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H Club -- the "hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history."
Although this phrase is often credited to Agnew himself, it was actually written by William Safire, the legendary columnist for The New York Times, who was a speechwriter for Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. Some of Agnew's other pearls were actually written by Patrick Buchanan, another White House speechwriter at the time.
na·bob n.
1. A governor in India under the Mogul Empire. Also called nawab.
2. A person of wealth and prominence.
2) humour
when i was in highschool one might say after making a dumb joke: ' a little humour'
(which was stolen from johnny carson). a reply might be: ' yes, very little'.
consider the following "a little humour' :
How I Want To Be Remembered
by Jack Handey
March 31, 2008 Text Size:
We are gathered here, way far in the future, for the funeral of Jack Handey, the world’s oldest man. He died suddenly in bed, according to his wife, Miss France.
No one is really sure how old Jack was, but some think he may have been born as long ago as the twentieth century. He passed away after a long, courageous battle with honky-tonkin’ and alley-cattin’.
Even though Jack was incredibly old, he was amazingly healthy right up to the end. He attributed this to performing his funny cowboy dance for friends, relatives, and people waiting for buses. All agreed it was the most hilarious thing they had ever seen, and not at all stupid or annoying.
Jack’s death has thrown the whole world into mourning, and not in a fakey, sarcastic way. He was admired by people of all ages and stripes, and by all animals, including zebras. Even monsters liked him. He had his playful side and his serious side, but ninety-nine per cent of the time he had his “normal” side.
He started out life as a baby but worked his way up to an adult. But even when he was a full-grown adult he never forgot that he was a baby. His philosophy of life was a simple one. “I’m-a no look-a for trouble, because-a trouble, she’s-a no good,” he would often say, in his beloved fake Italian accent. He was quick with a laugh, but just as quick to point at what he was laughing at. Children loved him, but not in the way his teen-age niece claimed. He was always thinking of ways of helping people, and was wondering how he might do some of those things when he died.
Jack was an expert in so many fields, it’s hard to say what he was best at: the arts, the sciences, or the businesses. If you talked to him at a party, you couldn’t tell; he seemed to know it all. He has been compared to Captain James Cook, and not just because he was severely beaten by some Hawaiians, and to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, and not just because he liked to be driven around in a jeep.
As hard as it is to believe, he never sold a single painting during his lifetime, or even painted one. Some of the greatest advances in architecture, medicine, and theatre were not opposed by him, and he did little to sabotage them.
Although he lived in Paris, in a mansion famous for its many trapdoors, he was always proud to be an American. However, he was ashamed to be an earthling.
He was fabulously wealthy, but he would pretend to be broke, and often tried to borrow cigarettes and money from people. Little did they know that those who gave him stuff would later be rewarded in his will, with jewels and antigravity helmets. Women who refused to have sex with him are probably wishing that they could turn back the clock and say yes.
Generous even with his organs, he has asked that his eyes be donated to a blind person. Also his glasses. His skeleton, equipped with a spring that will suddenly propel it to a full standing position, will be used to educate kindergartners.
He has asked that no shrines be built to him. But he pointed out that this did not mean he didn’t like Shriners. According to our scientists, with their electronic soul trackers, Jack is in Heaven now. And not just regular Heaven, which any jerk can get into, but special secret Heaven, which even some angels don’t know about.
So let us celebrate his death, and not mourn. However, those who appear to be a little too happy will be asked to leave.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy is that a lot of the things Jack said and did seemed wrong at the time, but now we realize it wasn’t him; it was we who were wrong. Let us hope we don’t make the same mistake with his clones.
In closing, it is unfortunate that Jack’s friend Don could not be here. However, Don died many years ago, from a horrible fungus.
And now robot Elton John will sing “Candle in the Wind.”?
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
looking forward
in a 1996 film A Family Thing (written by billy bob thorton) a character played by robert duvall says "..the secret of happiness is always having something to look forward to" . i strongly suspect there is some truth to that.
now that my 6 month driving prohibition is up i can look forward to hitting the road
again this spring. my first trip will be to the platte river near grand island,nebraska
to see the sand hill crane migration. maybe i will reread the echo-maker to get me primed. being able to drive again is a real psychological boost. things tend to even
out as jack handy points out in the following new yorker story:
How Things Even Out
by Jack Handey March 3, 2008
Things tend to even out. Religion, some people say, has caused wars and fighting. Yes, but it’s also boring to sit through a church service, so it evens out. One moment you’re depressed because your doctor tells you that you have alcoholism. But then you cheer up when you go home and find a hidden bottle of vodka you had forgotten about.
Things are evening out all the time, if you take time to notice, like I do. Let’s say you want a big cupcake, with lots of icing, so you go buy one and eat it. But then you realize, I don’t have the cupcake anymore. Or maybe you take a bite of salsa that’s labelled “HOT,” and it doesn’t seem that hot, but then about a second later it seems really hot.
You might hear that some guy you know is having a party, so you call him up, but he says there’s no party. But then you call back, using a different voice, and suddenly there is a party.
One day, you ask people to take a look at a skin rash you have. Then, a few days later, you’re looking at their rashes. You send someone a death threat and then, mysteriously, the police come to your house and threaten you.
Maybe you find a nice flat pebble on a riverbank, and when you pick it up and throw it it skips across the water several times. But then the next pebble you can’t even pry loose because, what is this, glue mud? You notice an ant drifting away on a leaf in the water. Then you look up to see your aunt drifting away in a rowboat.
Eventually, I believe, everything evens out. Long ago, an asteroid hit our planet and killed our dinosaurs. But, in the future, maybe we’ll go to another planet and kill their dinosaurs.
Even in the afterlife things probably even out, although I can’t imagine how.
Still don’t believe that things even out? Try this simple test: flip a coin, over and over again, calling out “Heads!” or “Tails!” after each flip. Half the time people will ask you to please stop.
Once you realize that things even out, it’s like a light being turned on in your head, then being turned off, then being turned to “dim.”
Probably the perfect example of things evening out happened to me just last month. I was walking to the post office to mail a death threat. It was a beautiful day. I was happily singing away in my super-loud singing voice. I didn’t step on any chewing gum, like I usually do, and when I threw my gum down it didn’t stick to my fingertips. As I rounded the corner, there was a bum begging for change. I was feeling pretty good, so I gave him a five-dollar bill. At first I tried to make him do a little dance for the five dollars, but he wouldn’t do it, so I gave him the five dollars anyway.
Not long after that, I was reading the paper, and there was a picture of the bum. He had won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry! He had a little bigger nose and straighter teeth, but I’m pretty sure it was him. So, my five dollars had made him change his ways and become a chemistry guy.
A few days later, I was walking by the corner again, and there was the bum, back begging. So, things had evened out. He had gotten the Nobel Prize, but now he was a bum again. I asked him for the five dollars back, but he started saying weird stuff that I guess was chemistry formulas or something.
I told my friend Don the story, but he said it wasn’t an example of things evening out so much as just a stupid story. That’s interesting, Don, because you saying that evens out what I said to your mother that time.
I have a lot of stories about things evening out, but I think the one about the Nobel Prize-winning bum is the best. I’d say it would take about three of my other stories to even out that one.
now that my 6 month driving prohibition is up i can look forward to hitting the road
again this spring. my first trip will be to the platte river near grand island,nebraska
to see the sand hill crane migration. maybe i will reread the echo-maker to get me primed. being able to drive again is a real psychological boost. things tend to even
out as jack handy points out in the following new yorker story:
How Things Even Out
by Jack Handey March 3, 2008
Things tend to even out. Religion, some people say, has caused wars and fighting. Yes, but it’s also boring to sit through a church service, so it evens out. One moment you’re depressed because your doctor tells you that you have alcoholism. But then you cheer up when you go home and find a hidden bottle of vodka you had forgotten about.
Things are evening out all the time, if you take time to notice, like I do. Let’s say you want a big cupcake, with lots of icing, so you go buy one and eat it. But then you realize, I don’t have the cupcake anymore. Or maybe you take a bite of salsa that’s labelled “HOT,” and it doesn’t seem that hot, but then about a second later it seems really hot.
You might hear that some guy you know is having a party, so you call him up, but he says there’s no party. But then you call back, using a different voice, and suddenly there is a party.
One day, you ask people to take a look at a skin rash you have. Then, a few days later, you’re looking at their rashes. You send someone a death threat and then, mysteriously, the police come to your house and threaten you.
Maybe you find a nice flat pebble on a riverbank, and when you pick it up and throw it it skips across the water several times. But then the next pebble you can’t even pry loose because, what is this, glue mud? You notice an ant drifting away on a leaf in the water. Then you look up to see your aunt drifting away in a rowboat.
Eventually, I believe, everything evens out. Long ago, an asteroid hit our planet and killed our dinosaurs. But, in the future, maybe we’ll go to another planet and kill their dinosaurs.
Even in the afterlife things probably even out, although I can’t imagine how.
Still don’t believe that things even out? Try this simple test: flip a coin, over and over again, calling out “Heads!” or “Tails!” after each flip. Half the time people will ask you to please stop.
Once you realize that things even out, it’s like a light being turned on in your head, then being turned off, then being turned to “dim.”
Probably the perfect example of things evening out happened to me just last month. I was walking to the post office to mail a death threat. It was a beautiful day. I was happily singing away in my super-loud singing voice. I didn’t step on any chewing gum, like I usually do, and when I threw my gum down it didn’t stick to my fingertips. As I rounded the corner, there was a bum begging for change. I was feeling pretty good, so I gave him a five-dollar bill. At first I tried to make him do a little dance for the five dollars, but he wouldn’t do it, so I gave him the five dollars anyway.
Not long after that, I was reading the paper, and there was a picture of the bum. He had won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry! He had a little bigger nose and straighter teeth, but I’m pretty sure it was him. So, my five dollars had made him change his ways and become a chemistry guy.
A few days later, I was walking by the corner again, and there was the bum, back begging. So, things had evened out. He had gotten the Nobel Prize, but now he was a bum again. I asked him for the five dollars back, but he started saying weird stuff that I guess was chemistry formulas or something.
I told my friend Don the story, but he said it wasn’t an example of things evening out so much as just a stupid story. That’s interesting, Don, because you saying that evens out what I said to your mother that time.
I have a lot of stories about things evening out, but I think the one about the Nobel Prize-winning bum is the best. I’d say it would take about three of my other stories to even out that one.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Mavis Gallant
Its always a great pleasure to discover a new writer that you like,
or an old writer that you hadn't paid attention to before. Such is the
case with Mavis Gallant. I was on the New Yorker web site where I found an audible short story selected and read by Antonya Nelson (whose father was a college professor of mine).
Online it was entitled Waiting but the real title is "When we were almost young". It was originally published in 1960. It stuck me as such a great story I had to rush to the library to
check out the complete Collected Stories.
Here is the abstract summary of the story:
Mavis Gallant, Fiction, "When We Were Nearly Young," The New Yorker,
October 15, 1960, p. 38 October 15, 1960 Issue
In Madrid, 9 years ago, the writer & her companions lived on the
thought of money. The re were four of them: two men & two girls. The
men, Pablo & Carlos, were cousins. Pilar was a relation of theirs. The
writer was not Spanish & not a relation, just an accidental friend.
The thing they had in common was waiting for money. Carlos & Pablo
shared a room in a flat; writer lived in another room in the same
house. Pilar had her own small flat. They were all in their 20's &
worried about approaching their thirties. Getting along on their
meagre funds was a constant challenge. The Spaniards' characteristic
trait was a certain passiveness. One day the writer received some
money, but it aroused bitterness. Carlos remarked that the difference
between them was that something would always come for the writer but
not for them.
(That doesn't do the story justice.) There are a couple of quotes I remember:
"Poverty is not a goad but a paralysis."
..."we were not afraid because after all, what was the worse that could happen. No one seemed to know."
Thats when I thought, that would be a good question for the Buddha.
Me: What is the worse that can happen?
Buddha: Life is suffering.
Biography
An only child, Gallant was born in Montreal, Quebec. Her father died when she was young, and her mother remarried. Gallant received her education at seventeen different public, convent, and French-language boarding schools. In her twenties, she worked as a reporter for the Montreal Standard (1944-1950). She married John Gallant, a Winnipeg musician in 1942. The couple divorced five years later in 1947. Gallant left journalism in 1950 to pursue fiction writing.
Gallant has been forthright about the protectiveness she feels towards her autonomy and privacy. In an interview with Geoff Hancock in Canadian Fiction magazine in 1978, she discussed her “life project” and her deliberate move to France to write by saying, “I have arranged matters so that I would be free to write. It's what I like doing.” In the preface to her collection of stories, Home Truths: Selected Canadian Stories (1981), she uses the words of Boris Pasternak as her epigraph: “Only personal independence matters.”
In 1981, Gallant was honoured by her native country and made an Officer of the Order of Canada for her contribution to literature; that year, she received the Governor General's Award for literature for her collection of stories, Home Truths. In 1983-84, she returned to Canada to be the writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto. Queen’s University awarded her an honorary LL.D. in 1991. She was promoted to Companion of the Order of Canada in 1993.
In 1989, Gallant was made a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2000, she won the Matt Cohen Prize, and in 2002 she received the Rea Award for the Short Story. The O. Henry Prize Stories of 2003 was dedicated to her.
With Alice Munro, Gallant is one of a few Canadian authors whose works regularly appear in The New Yorker. Many of Gallant’s stories have debuted in the magazine before subsequently being published in a collection.
[edit] Critical assessment
Grazia Merler observes in her book, Mavis Gallant: Narrative Patterns and Devices, that “Psychological character development is not the heart of Mavis Gallant’s stories, nor is plot. Specific situation development and reconstruction of the state of mind or of heart is, however, the main objective.” Frequently, Gallant’s stories focus on expatriate men and women who have come to feel lost or isolated; marriages that have grown flimsy or shabby; lives that have faltered and now hover in the shadowy area between illusion, self-delusion, and reality. As well, because of her heritage and understanding of Acadian history, she is often compared to Antonine Maillet, considered to be spokesperson for Acadian culture in Canada.
In a critical book, Reading Mavis Gallant, Janice Kulyk Keefer says, “Gallant is a writer who dazzles us with her command of the language, her innovative use of narrative forms, the acuity of her intelligence, and the incisiveness of her wit. Yet she also disconcerts us with her insistence on the constrictions and limitations that dominate human experience.”
In a review of her work in Books in Canada in 1978, Geoff Hancock asserts that “Mavis Gallant's fiction is among the finest ever written by a Canadian. But, like buried treasure, both the author and her writing are to discover.” In the Canadian Reader, Robert Fulford has said, “One begins comparing her best moments to those of major figures in literary history. Names like Henry James, Chekhov, and George Eliot dance across the mind.”
[edit] Major works
Gallant has written two novels, Green Water, Green Sky (1969) and A Fairly Good Time (1970); a play, What is to be Done? (1984); numerous celebrated collections of stories, The Other Paris (1953), My Heart is Broken (1964), The Pegnitz Junction (1973), The End of the World and Other Stories (1974), From the Fifteenth District (1978), Home Truths: Selected Canadian Stories (1981), Overhead in a Balloon: Stories of Paris (1985), and In Transit (1988); and a non-fiction work, Paris Journals: Selected Essays and Reviews (1986).
[edit] Current life
Although she maintains her Canadian citizenship, Gallant has lived in Paris, France since the 1950s.
or an old writer that you hadn't paid attention to before. Such is the
case with Mavis Gallant. I was on the New Yorker web site where I found an audible short story selected and read by Antonya Nelson (whose father was a college professor of mine).
Online it was entitled Waiting but the real title is "When we were almost young". It was originally published in 1960. It stuck me as such a great story I had to rush to the library to
check out the complete Collected Stories.
Here is the abstract summary of the story:
Mavis Gallant, Fiction, "When We Were Nearly Young," The New Yorker,
October 15, 1960, p. 38 October 15, 1960 Issue
In Madrid, 9 years ago, the writer & her companions lived on the
thought of money. The re were four of them: two men & two girls. The
men, Pablo & Carlos, were cousins. Pilar was a relation of theirs. The
writer was not Spanish & not a relation, just an accidental friend.
The thing they had in common was waiting for money. Carlos & Pablo
shared a room in a flat; writer lived in another room in the same
house. Pilar had her own small flat. They were all in their 20's &
worried about approaching their thirties. Getting along on their
meagre funds was a constant challenge. The Spaniards' characteristic
trait was a certain passiveness. One day the writer received some
money, but it aroused bitterness. Carlos remarked that the difference
between them was that something would always come for the writer but
not for them.
(That doesn't do the story justice.) There are a couple of quotes I remember:
"Poverty is not a goad but a paralysis."
..."we were not afraid because after all, what was the worse that could happen. No one seemed to know."
Thats when I thought, that would be a good question for the Buddha.
Me: What is the worse that can happen?
Buddha: Life is suffering.
Biography
An only child, Gallant was born in Montreal, Quebec. Her father died when she was young, and her mother remarried. Gallant received her education at seventeen different public, convent, and French-language boarding schools. In her twenties, she worked as a reporter for the Montreal Standard (1944-1950). She married John Gallant, a Winnipeg musician in 1942. The couple divorced five years later in 1947. Gallant left journalism in 1950 to pursue fiction writing.
Gallant has been forthright about the protectiveness she feels towards her autonomy and privacy. In an interview with Geoff Hancock in Canadian Fiction magazine in 1978, she discussed her “life project” and her deliberate move to France to write by saying, “I have arranged matters so that I would be free to write. It's what I like doing.” In the preface to her collection of stories, Home Truths: Selected Canadian Stories (1981), she uses the words of Boris Pasternak as her epigraph: “Only personal independence matters.”
In 1981, Gallant was honoured by her native country and made an Officer of the Order of Canada for her contribution to literature; that year, she received the Governor General's Award for literature for her collection of stories, Home Truths. In 1983-84, she returned to Canada to be the writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto. Queen’s University awarded her an honorary LL.D. in 1991. She was promoted to Companion of the Order of Canada in 1993.
In 1989, Gallant was made a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2000, she won the Matt Cohen Prize, and in 2002 she received the Rea Award for the Short Story. The O. Henry Prize Stories of 2003 was dedicated to her.
With Alice Munro, Gallant is one of a few Canadian authors whose works regularly appear in The New Yorker. Many of Gallant’s stories have debuted in the magazine before subsequently being published in a collection.
[edit] Critical assessment
Grazia Merler observes in her book, Mavis Gallant: Narrative Patterns and Devices, that “Psychological character development is not the heart of Mavis Gallant’s stories, nor is plot. Specific situation development and reconstruction of the state of mind or of heart is, however, the main objective.” Frequently, Gallant’s stories focus on expatriate men and women who have come to feel lost or isolated; marriages that have grown flimsy or shabby; lives that have faltered and now hover in the shadowy area between illusion, self-delusion, and reality. As well, because of her heritage and understanding of Acadian history, she is often compared to Antonine Maillet, considered to be spokesperson for Acadian culture in Canada.
In a critical book, Reading Mavis Gallant, Janice Kulyk Keefer says, “Gallant is a writer who dazzles us with her command of the language, her innovative use of narrative forms, the acuity of her intelligence, and the incisiveness of her wit. Yet she also disconcerts us with her insistence on the constrictions and limitations that dominate human experience.”
In a review of her work in Books in Canada in 1978, Geoff Hancock asserts that “Mavis Gallant's fiction is among the finest ever written by a Canadian. But, like buried treasure, both the author and her writing are to discover.” In the Canadian Reader, Robert Fulford has said, “One begins comparing her best moments to those of major figures in literary history. Names like Henry James, Chekhov, and George Eliot dance across the mind.”
[edit] Major works
Gallant has written two novels, Green Water, Green Sky (1969) and A Fairly Good Time (1970); a play, What is to be Done? (1984); numerous celebrated collections of stories, The Other Paris (1953), My Heart is Broken (1964), The Pegnitz Junction (1973), The End of the World and Other Stories (1974), From the Fifteenth District (1978), Home Truths: Selected Canadian Stories (1981), Overhead in a Balloon: Stories of Paris (1985), and In Transit (1988); and a non-fiction work, Paris Journals: Selected Essays and Reviews (1986).
[edit] Current life
Although she maintains her Canadian citizenship, Gallant has lived in Paris, France since the 1950s.
Ask the Buddha
For Christmas I received a "Ask the Buddha" plastic statue which
works like the "Magic 8 Ball" which was popular a few years ago.
To ask the Buddha a question you shake the statue then turn it over and read one of twenty possible Zen like responses. For example : Seek Enlightenment, or Live with Joy, or Where is my monkey, or Seek the truth etc. There is a little 20 sided geometric
figure that floats in some kind of liquid. A 20-sided flat figure (polygon) is called an icosagon. If it is a solid figure--three-dimensional--it is an icosahedron. You can have very in depth conversations with the Buddha or shallow if you prefer:
Me: What should I do today, Buddha?
Buddha: Live with Joy
Me: Should I go to the all you can eat buffet?
Buddha: You are not ready.
Me: Should i vote for a Democrat or Republican?
Buddha: You know the answer.
Me: But which one?
Buddha: Seek the truth
Me: maybe i should just go back to bed?
Buddha: Meditate on it
Me: Seriously, what should I do today?
Buddha: Rub my belly
... Such is the life of the retiree.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
New Year Resoution - 7 months later
Realizing the folly of the previous post i'll copy this article by Andy Borowitz:
New Year’s Resolutions, Seven Months Later
by Andy Borowitz August 9, 2004
Resolution No. 1: I Will Quit Smoking
On New Year’s Day, I started using nicotine patches, nicotine gum, and nicotine lozenges but stopped when I began to hallucinate that I was a Lucky Strike. January 2nd brought a new, less arrogant resolution: “I will smoke only cigarettes I did not pay for.” Unfortunately, I hadn’t anticipated how easy it would be to steal them at the 7-Eleven, especially when the girl behind the counter was on her cell phone trying to cast a vote for “American Idol.” Seven months later, I’m actually smoking slightly more than I did last year, but that may be because I’m more focussed on trying to quit stealing.
Resolution No. 2: I Will Lose Thirty Pounds
Successful dieters say it’s not what you eat but how much you eat that counts, which is why, back in January, I resolved to eat only while driving. After all, there’s only so much you can shove into your mouth when one hand is on the wheel and the other is holding a cigarette. I guess we’ll never know whether my diet would have worked, since on January 3rd I drove my Sentra into the display window of a roofing-supply store in Long Island City. Since then, I’ve actually gained about five pounds, most of which I chalk up to the nervous eating I’ve been doing while awaiting my trial. On the positive side, now that I have to walk everywhere it’s only a matter of time before my unsightly love handles are ancient history.
Resolution No. 3: I Will Be Nicer to My Co-Workers
I’ve never exactly been Mr. Popularity at work, but I’ve never been Mr. Unpopularity, either. (That would be Dale, especially since I spread the rumor that he, and not I, was the one who had been stealing everyone’s yogurt out of the refrigerator.) Still, I resolved to be a little nicer around the office, as this January 4th exchange with my co-worker Barry demonstrates:
Me: Hey, Barry, how’s it going?
Barry: Real busy—got a big presentation tomorrow and I’m nowhere near ready.
Me: Oh, well, let’s have a pity party.
Barry: What did you say?
Me: See ya—wouldn’t want to be ya!
O.K., so maybe I could’ve been nicer than that, but if being nice means sucking up to self-important shits like Barry I’d just as soon ditch this dopey resolution altogether.
Resolution No. 4: I Will Stop Sneaking Up Behind People and Poking Them with a Sharp Wooden Stick
I did this only three times last year, so it’s a reach to call it a “habit.” And yet, those three incidents, plus the time I spent online shopping for just the right stick, constitute a troubling pattern of behavior. Here’s the good news: so far this year, I have sneaked up behind only one person and poked him (Barry, on January 5th), so, at that rate, I will do it only twice this year—well off last year’s pace. The bad news is that these incidents could pick up in frequency during the cold-weather months, when it’s easier to conceal a sharp wooden stick under a heavy overcoat. But even if I wind up poking, say, four or five people, total, this year, I’m not going to beat myself up about it. What with all the other resolutions I’ve made, this is one of the few simple pleasures I have left. ♦
New Year’s Resolutions, Seven Months Later
by Andy Borowitz August 9, 2004
Resolution No. 1: I Will Quit Smoking
On New Year’s Day, I started using nicotine patches, nicotine gum, and nicotine lozenges but stopped when I began to hallucinate that I was a Lucky Strike. January 2nd brought a new, less arrogant resolution: “I will smoke only cigarettes I did not pay for.” Unfortunately, I hadn’t anticipated how easy it would be to steal them at the 7-Eleven, especially when the girl behind the counter was on her cell phone trying to cast a vote for “American Idol.” Seven months later, I’m actually smoking slightly more than I did last year, but that may be because I’m more focussed on trying to quit stealing.
Resolution No. 2: I Will Lose Thirty Pounds
Successful dieters say it’s not what you eat but how much you eat that counts, which is why, back in January, I resolved to eat only while driving. After all, there’s only so much you can shove into your mouth when one hand is on the wheel and the other is holding a cigarette. I guess we’ll never know whether my diet would have worked, since on January 3rd I drove my Sentra into the display window of a roofing-supply store in Long Island City. Since then, I’ve actually gained about five pounds, most of which I chalk up to the nervous eating I’ve been doing while awaiting my trial. On the positive side, now that I have to walk everywhere it’s only a matter of time before my unsightly love handles are ancient history.
Resolution No. 3: I Will Be Nicer to My Co-Workers
I’ve never exactly been Mr. Popularity at work, but I’ve never been Mr. Unpopularity, either. (That would be Dale, especially since I spread the rumor that he, and not I, was the one who had been stealing everyone’s yogurt out of the refrigerator.) Still, I resolved to be a little nicer around the office, as this January 4th exchange with my co-worker Barry demonstrates:
Me: Hey, Barry, how’s it going?
Barry: Real busy—got a big presentation tomorrow and I’m nowhere near ready.
Me: Oh, well, let’s have a pity party.
Barry: What did you say?
Me: See ya—wouldn’t want to be ya!
O.K., so maybe I could’ve been nicer than that, but if being nice means sucking up to self-important shits like Barry I’d just as soon ditch this dopey resolution altogether.
Resolution No. 4: I Will Stop Sneaking Up Behind People and Poking Them with a Sharp Wooden Stick
I did this only three times last year, so it’s a reach to call it a “habit.” And yet, those three incidents, plus the time I spent online shopping for just the right stick, constitute a troubling pattern of behavior. Here’s the good news: so far this year, I have sneaked up behind only one person and poked him (Barry, on January 5th), so, at that rate, I will do it only twice this year—well off last year’s pace. The bad news is that these incidents could pick up in frequency during the cold-weather months, when it’s easier to conceal a sharp wooden stick under a heavy overcoat. But even if I wind up poking, say, four or five people, total, this year, I’m not going to beat myself up about it. What with all the other resolutions I’ve made, this is one of the few simple pleasures I have left. ♦
New Years Resolutions
I heard this morning on NPR that one out of ten people actually
accomplish their new year resolutions. I think about one out of
ten years i actually achieve mine. With that in mind and realizing
their likely failure here are my 2008 resolutions:
New Years Resolutions 2008
1) read 10 non-fiction books - biographies and history)
possiblities : The Beatles by Spitz, Einstein, Will in the World ,
Truman, Battle Cry of Freedom, Peoples History of U.S., Biographies
of Kant, Whitman, Edison, World is not my Home by Michener
2) read 10 books on Buddhism and Mediation
possibilities : Best Buddhist wrintings of 2007, Buddhist Bible,
Wheel of Life and Death, Seeking Heart of Wisdom, One Dharma,
Enlightened Mind , Zen Keys
3) resee 10 film classics,
possibilities: Amacord,Wild Strawberries, Fanny and Alexander, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Nashville, Dr Strangelove, Citizen Kane,
To Kill a Mockingbird, Apocalypse Now, Everyone says I love,you,
Annie Hall
4) Attend 10 live concerts:
eg.: Wilco,DM Symphony, Bues Festivals in Davenport and Wintrop Wa., SXSW in Austin, any String Quartets, NiteFall on River
5) see live theatre when possible
6) Travel - see friends, wildlife refuges and nat'l parks:
Arizona,Texas, Minneapplosis,Omaha,KC, Ohio -rock and roll museum in Clevland,Kentucky, Vermont, Georgia, Carolinas
7) See 10 bird species i have never seen before
8) write 10 bad poems - including haiku
9) Make CD compilations : eg. favorite songs and poems of 2007,
compilation of songs and excerpts from books that i was exposed to in high school(62-65)
10) laugh as much as possible (with of course not at)
11) lie less (except to produce laughs - see #10)
12) lose 30 pounds
accomplish their new year resolutions. I think about one out of
ten years i actually achieve mine. With that in mind and realizing
their likely failure here are my 2008 resolutions:
New Years Resolutions 2008
1) read 10 non-fiction books - biographies and history)
possiblities : The Beatles by Spitz, Einstein, Will in the World ,
Truman, Battle Cry of Freedom, Peoples History of U.S., Biographies
of Kant, Whitman, Edison, World is not my Home by Michener
2) read 10 books on Buddhism and Mediation
possibilities : Best Buddhist wrintings of 2007, Buddhist Bible,
Wheel of Life and Death, Seeking Heart of Wisdom, One Dharma,
Enlightened Mind , Zen Keys
3) resee 10 film classics,
possibilities: Amacord,Wild Strawberries, Fanny and Alexander, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Nashville, Dr Strangelove, Citizen Kane,
To Kill a Mockingbird, Apocalypse Now, Everyone says I love,you,
Annie Hall
4) Attend 10 live concerts:
eg.: Wilco,DM Symphony, Bues Festivals in Davenport and Wintrop Wa., SXSW in Austin, any String Quartets, NiteFall on River
5) see live theatre when possible
6) Travel - see friends, wildlife refuges and nat'l parks:
Arizona,Texas, Minneapplosis,Omaha,KC, Ohio -rock and roll museum in Clevland,Kentucky, Vermont, Georgia, Carolinas
7) See 10 bird species i have never seen before
8) write 10 bad poems - including haiku
9) Make CD compilations : eg. favorite songs and poems of 2007,
compilation of songs and excerpts from books that i was exposed to in high school(62-65)
10) laugh as much as possible (with of course not at)
11) lie less (except to produce laughs - see #10)
12) lose 30 pounds
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