Category: Books

Tidy Times: Films & More

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ENJOYABLE CINEMA

We ended the Sarasota Film Festival on a high note with two very good films, one a feature and the other a documentary from Argentina.

The Congressman.  Starring Treat Williams with George Hamilton, this feature-length film was written by former Long Island representative, Robert Mzarek.  Set in Maine, it’s an old-fashioned film with a straightforward plot about an embattled congressman who returns to his district and simultaneously deals with embittered residents there and a contretemps brewing back in DC.  There’s an overly ambitious aide, an attractive woman, and beautiful Monhegan Island.  Mr. Mzarek was at the screening and called it a “message film” and in the style of Frank Capra.  I predict success at the box office when it goes into distribution.

Our Last Tango.  Prepared to be seduced by dance.  This documentary about a very famous dance couple is both a celebration of the tango and a dissection of a partnership.  Argentinians Maria Nieves and Juan Copes were tango dance partners for more than 40 years.  He selected her and they were both professional partners and for a short time husband and wife (married in Las Vegas during their tour of the States).  In the film, she’s now 80 and he 83 and interviews with each of them separately are interspersed between clips of their tangoing.  She is alternately sparkling about her love of the dance and philosophical about being old and alone.  He, on the other hand, is taciturn and a man of fewer words, but still loving and living for the tango.

RELEVANT THEATER

Asolo Repertory Theatre continues to delight and entertain us.  We just saw “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.”  The set with its view of the Golden Gate Bridge from the dining room window brought on a touch of nostalgia for our San Francisco years.  Although the play takes place in 1967, it still seemed relevant, and I credit the cast for achieving the right balance of humor and seriousness.  I saw the movie (starring Sidney Poitier as a surprising guest) when it first came out, but had forgotten how meaty some of the dialogue is—at least in this version.  Well worth seeing.

2016-04-14 11.11.40

COMPELLING NONFICTION

I’m currently about half way through Rebecca Traister’s new book, All the Single Ladies:  Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation.  It is informative and well-researched, as you would expect, but written in a very lively fashion with bits of humor along with Traister’s observations and anecdotes about her own life experiences.  As such, it’s a very pleasurable read and I recommend it!

I should add that while I don’t know Ms. Traister, I was predisposed to like this book since I’ve known both her parents.  Her father was a colleague in Penn’s libraries and her mother I knew at Lehigh University where she was an English professor.

 

 

 

 

Header photo:  Golden rain tree  (cJW Farrington)

Tidy Tidbits: Bits & Bites

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THOUGHT-PROVOKING THEATER

We were at the first preview performance of Asolo Rep’s production of Disgraced and it was excellent!  Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize winning play is simultaneously hard-hitting and nuanced about issues of race and religion.  Amir, a young lawyer on the track to partner, has hidden and, to a great extent, set aside his Pakistani and Muslim roots.  His wife, Emily, is a white artist; one of his law colleagues a black woman; and her husband, Isaac, the art curator promoting Emily’s work, is Jewish.  Add to this mix Amir’s Muslim nephew who arrives with first one request for legal help and then later a second one.  How this initial request impacts Amir and Emily’s marriage and then leads to an explosive dinner with Isaac and his wife is the stuff of uncomfortable theater, but uncomfortable in a good way because it makes you squirm and ponder your own reactions and behavior. If you have the chance to see this play, do!

ON THE SMALL SCREEN

I’m currently in love with a very finely drawn Australian drama series set in a small town near Sydney in 1953.  Entitled, A Place to Call Home, the lead, Sarah Adams, is a widowed nurse new to town whose interactions with the townspeople and the ruling Bligh family are cause for consternation.  Sarah is Jewish and has not shared her past nor her activities during WWII.  Elizabeth Bligh, the matriarch, is determined to run Sarah out of town despite her son George’s involvement with her.  Add in matters of social class (as in who is a suitable mate for Elizabeth’s granddaughter, Anna), homosexuality (best kept secret and viewed by most as a condition that can be corrected), and lingering resentments from the war, and you have all the elements of a family saga in a time of change.  As a bonus, the accompanying score features popular songs of the period.

The series is available from Acorn which means it isn’t free, but definitely worth either purchasing a season at a time or subscribing to all of Acorn’s appealing offerings.  And, no, I’m not on Acorn’s payroll!

SHORT FICTION

I am not a big fan of short stories (probably should be), but do occasionally nudge myself to read them.  Most recently, I’ve been dipping into Elizabeth Tallent’s latest collection, Mendocino Fire.  Tallent is a professor of creative writing at Stanford and this is her first collection in 20 years, which is perhaps why her name was not familiar to me.

Her stories are peopled with individuals who are vulnerable and occasionally broken involved in relationships that sag and sometimes unravel.  Here’s 48-year old David  in “Tabriz” reflecting while in conversation with his third wife:  “In his work, he’s a good listener.  More than that he solicits the truth, asks the unasked, waits out the heartsick or intimidated silences every significant lawsuit must transcend.  Someone has to ask what has gone wrong, and if the thing that’s gone wrong has destroyed the marrow of a five-year-old’s bones, someone has to need that truth or it will never emerge from the haze of obfuscation.  Of lying.  But this isn’t work.  This is his wife.”  These are good stories.

MANHATTAN INTERLUDE

We were in Manhattan over the weekend meeting our new granddaughter and chanced upon what turned out to be a great addition to our restaurant repertoire.  Located on W. 9th Street, Omar’s combines a busy bar scene (we might have been put off by the crowd and the noise on this late Thursday night) with a pleasant, and mostly empty when we arrived, dining room.  We sampled some light bites and found the hamachi tostados with avocado to be excellent, also the marinated Parmesan chunks with Marcona almonds and truffle oil, mounds of burrata with lightly dressed strands of jicama, and the octopus.  Definitely a must for a return visit!

Header image:  Spring in Manhattan (copyright JWFarrington)

Reading & Eating

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PRAISE FOR FICTION

You may have seen the reports that reading fiction can improve your social skills.  Ann Lukits of the Wall St. Journal writes the following:  “People who read a lot of fiction are known to have stronger social skills than nonfiction readers or nonreaders.  A new study suggests that reading fictional works, especially stories that take readers inside people’s lives and minds, may enhance social skills by exercising a part of the brain involved in empathy and imagination.”  So, all you novel readers, rejoice!  There is an added benefit to getting lost in “novel-novel land” (as the Chief Penguin calls it).

WHAT I’M READING NOW

The spate of historical novels about wives of famous men and about overlooked or understudied notable women continues apace.  We had The Aviator’s Wife about Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Loving Frank about Frank Lloyd Wright’s second wife, The Paris Wife about one of Hemingway’s wives, and Circling the Sun about Beryl Markham.  Now I’m reading The Arrangement by Ashley Warlick about a 5-year period in the life of M.F. K. Fisher.  I saw it on Amazon and was attracted to it because I like reading about food, and I don’t know that much about her personal life.  My paperback copy arrived and looks like a proof copy—no publisher or date, no blurbs front or back, and unusual page numbering.  I’m instantly suspicious about its merits.  But I’ve started reading it and am mildly entertained so we’ll see how it goes from here.

DOCUMENTING CONFLICT

I received this book as a gift several months ago and it has been sitting in my “to be read” pile.  I re-discovered it the other day and, having heard New York Times war correspondent Carlotta Gall talk about the conflicts she had covered, it seemed the right time to read it.  Lynsey Addario is a prize-winning freelance photojournalist who has been in the thick of crises in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya and Congo.  She aims to document the human story, especially that of the women, and to show the impact on ordinary people of bombs and airstrikes be they enemy ones or American.

Afghanistan 2009 by L. Addario
Afghanistan by L. Addario (www.youtube.com)

The book is It’s What I Do:  A Photographer’s Life of Love and War.  Addario is frank about her need to do this—it’s a calling more than a profession—and she willingly and eagerly puts herself in harm’s way.  It’s a risky, dangerous life (she’s been kidnapped and almost killed) and hard on lovers and family left behind.  Early on, she thought she’d never marry or have children, but she did and her story of combining work and family is both impressive and daunting.  Adding to the text are her compelling color photos.

 

 

EATING

With all the meals out I report on, some might think I’ve given up cooking.  Not so.  One of the joys of this phase of life is the luxury of preparing a meal without pressure.  No more hurrying home from work and hastily assembling ingredients to have dinner ready in the next 45 minutes.  Now I can select a new recipe, do the prep work in a leisurely fashion, and then do the actual cooking late in the day.

The Chief Penguin and I first became acquainted with contemporary Israeli food at Zahav (chef Michael Solomonov) in Philadelphia, thanks to good friends.  We returned solo and have since become fans of another Israeli chef, Yotam Ottolenghi, and his cookbooks, Plenty and Jerusalem.  Chicken with caramelized onion & cardamom rice is a tasty dish I’ve made in the past.

Source: purewow.com
Source: purewow.com

Yesterday I dared to try and serve to guests his roasted chicken with clementines & arak.  Arak, not being that common, I used the suggested Pernod instead.  It was a lovely combination of fennel bulbs and fennel seeds with soft notes of orange and brown sugar perfuming the chicken thighs.  Epicurious has a version of this recipe which is quite close to the original, but uses a much lower oven temperature.

 

 

SOMEONE TO WATCH

We had the pleasure, and pleasure it was, of seeing and hearing baritone John Brancy perform songs by Schubert and others last week.  Marilyn Horne told our interviewer, June LeBell, to get him while he was still affordable.  In conversation, Mr. Brancy was charming and engaging, and oh, what a voice and a presence.  Definitely a name to follow as his career gains momentum in the opera and recital worlds!

Tidy Tidbits: Mothers & Meals

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NOVEL PAIRING

The Expatriates by Janice Y. K. Lee

I really enjoyed Lee’s first novel, The Piano Teacher, and so approached her new one with enthusiasm.  It too is wonderful, but in a different way.  Set in the present rather than the past, it details the daily lives over the course of a year of three expatriate women living in Hong Kong.  Like Anne Beattie, whose own stories delineate the fine structure of daily life, Lee knows this turf and her novel is rich with references to specific shops, clubs, and neighborhoods.  Two of these women are acquainted at the start (Mercy had worked for Margaret), but by the end all three, Mercy, Margaret, and Hilary, have intersected.

It is a novel mostly about motherhood—the angst of wanting a child, the tentativeness of trying out a child on loan, and the pain of losing a child coupled with, in Margaret’s case, the joys of cuddling and cosseting one’s existing children.  But it’s also a depiction of being an outsider in a culture, even if, like Mercy, you are half Asian.  I felt that Lee kept the reader at a distance from her characters; you knew their lives and habits, but you didn’t inhabit them.

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Like Lee, Celeste Ng is a mother as well as a writer.  This first novel, winner of several awards, is a poignant story about a mixed race family in Ohio in the late 1970’s.  Husband James is Chinese American and wife Marilyn, a Caucasian from Virginia.  James and their three children stick out in small town Middlewood and each must deal with being singled out and looking different.  Sixteen year old Lydia bears the heavy weight of unrealistic parental expectations and when she goes missing, the family implodes.  It’s a book that makes one reflect on the sometimes unspoken demands we place on our children to their detriment.  Sobering and yet believable.  Marilyn is something of a Tiger mother.

SARASOTA SAMPLER

Expanding our local dining forays, but, we hope, not our waistlines, we tried two new restaurants this past week.

Yume in downtown Sarasota is a perfect choice for a Japanese lunch.  Among the four of us, we enjoyed several lunch specials:   chicken teriyaki and the eel, accompanied by rice and stir fried vegetables plus a small green salad or miso soup, and the spicy tuna roll with a side of seaweed salad.  Prices are very reasonable and the restaurant was not crowded.  Their longer menu also includes some Thai dishes.

Mozaic.  This is one of Sarasota’s fine dining restaurants (read a bit more expensive) and we ate here before the opera.  The menu is more creative than some other places, and we were pleased with what we ordered.  I thought the sautéed shrimp over lemon risotto was very tasty, and my spouse loved the crab cake salad and his side of lamb merguez sausage.

SMALL SCREEN SCRIBBLES

Mercy Street.  So far, I’d give this series a B, maybe a B+, but not an A.  It’s PBS’s first attempt at this kind of historical series and they just haven’t done it like the Brits do.  I’ve now watched the first three episodes.

Downton Abbey.  I’m mourning the end of Downton Abbey and the finale is still 24 hours away! I thought last week’s episode was one of the best and was particularly struck by the scene between Mary and her grandmother.  The dowager duchess opines about love and its importance in one’s life and then gives her granddaughter a hug.  Hugs are seldom seen between these folks, and I found this one touching and somehow very right.