Lorrie Moore, you have my heart.

Can we talk about Lorrie Moore for a second?

I've devoured most of her short story collections (try Like Life to start) and was so incredibly and nerdishly excited when she published a novel late last year, A Gate At The Stairs. It finally came in at the library for me, and I've spent the last couple of days wishing I could just unplug the phone, hunker down, and do nothing but read it. It's the story of the ludicrously named college student Tassie Keltijn (this name alone nearly threw me off but don't let it get to you, seriously), who takes a nanny job for a couple in the process of adopting. This incredibly simple premise spirals out into a really remarkable universe of troubled characters, social tension, and amazingly hilarious turns of phrase. Moore is one of those writers whose command of the structure of a sentence is just so perfect, so poetic and so clear, that you find yourself reading bits over and over again. A Gate At The Stairs is part post-9/11 satire, part bildungsroman (how long have I been waiting to use THAT word?), part strange, dark, psychological study. Okay okay, it drags a little at some points, but the dizzying linguistic highs totally compensate for the occasional forays into over the top socio-cultural commentary.

So just so I can prove it, here's the best passage in the book, between Sarah, Tassie's boss and a new adoptive mother, and Tassie. The first part is Sarah's reminiscence of a favourite food:

'"When I was little Dannon made this delicious prune yogurt that came in a waxy brown eight-ounce container. Well, now they don't make any of those things. Completely gone. Although I was in Paris last year and found some there."

'I nodded, trying to imagine the very particular sadness of a vanished childhood yogurt now found only in France. It was a special sort of sadness, individual, and in its inability to induce sympathy, in its tuneless spark, it bypassed poetry and entered science. I tried not to think of my one excursion to Whole Foods, over a year ago, where I found myself paralyzed by all the special food for special people, whose special murmurings seem to be saying, "Out of my way! I want a Tofurkey!" '

My god, the woman is a genius.

Saturday Night at the Movies.

Burrowing time is Caitlin time. I love nothing more than coming home after a long day, heating up a can of Chef Lonelyheart's soup (or maybe just some Habitant Split Pea) and taking full advantage of the library's DVD collection. Tonight it was The Apartment, starring my time travel secret husband (ie., I would really only want him in or around 1960), Jack Lemmon. Also featuring Shirley MacLaine in my second favourite role of her career (the first is, of course, Ouiser in Steel Magnolias). I love this movie. I hadn't seen it since I was a doe-eyed undergrad on summer vacation, meticulously watching my way through another library's video offerings, on a personal journey of filmic edification. I was really into Billy Wilder. (That was also the summer I developed a mild obsession with Jon Voigt as a sexy paraplegic in Coming Home, but that's a story for another day.) The Apartment has always stuck with me, for a few reasons.

1. I love stories set in mid-century offices, all those people crammed in close, riding the elevators in shifts, sneaking out to the Automat over lunch, throwing crazy Christmas parties.



(Skip ahead to about 1:20.)

2. I love unrequited love that works out perfectly in the end. Coincidentally, this is the second movie I've watched this week where the lovers never even kiss, and yet it is so endearing and romantic and kind-hearted. Sincerity in the face of flaws and downfalls--that's what this world is missing these days.

3. I love that the apartment is a character in the story, because I always feel like my homes are major players in my life too.

4. Jack Lemmon's character is sort of the 1950s Seth Cohen. Not a day goes by when I don't miss The OC with all my heart.

5. Ray Walston, who later went on to play the judge on Picket Fences, has a minor role. Remember Picket Fences? CLASSIC!

6. I love the closing shot of Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine playing cards. It just makes me feel all cozy inside.

7. Billy Wilder was a man ahead of his time.



Then, to undo any quasi-intellectualizing I might have gotten myself into, I watched 2 hours of old episodes of Friends on the internet. I think I'm a Monica.

that's the one-second time travel machine i told you about.

Last night I couldn't sleep, so I watched The Science of Sleep, the next best thing. Seriously, I think this is one of the most overlooked movies of the last ten years. I've seen it a few times and everytime I watch it I pick up some new esoteric existential question. It's in three languages and you hardly even notice the transitions. It's visually mind-boggling. It unpacks a lot of the issues Michel Gondry obsessed over in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (maybe my favourite movie of all time): the tricks our minds play, the tricks we play on each other without even knowing it, all the time unconsciously feeling like it's the best thing, like we can't live without someone, like it's the only option, all the time stuck in our own minds, unable and unwilling to tell dream or memory from reality. Also, I defy you to not fall in love with Gael Garcia Bernal when you watch him in this opening scene.



The little dance he does while playing the keyboard around 1:09 is particularly endearing.

Also also, for a wannabe crafster like me, some of the effects are like sweet sweet porn:



Optical illusions as flirtation: Genius.

I have a bit of a lady crush on Charlotte Gainsbourg.

You must see this movie. Really.

don't tell anyone anything. if you do, you start missing everyone.

Well, friends, I'm back.

And JD Salinger is dead.

I'm taking it pretty hard, I have to admit. I know everyone probably has that Catcher in the Rye moment, the memory of reading it at some pivotal moment in your life. For me, it was the loft at the cottage we used to go to. I was thirteen, and pimply, and I read it because I'd just finished an article in Seventeen where they asked a bunch of people their favourite and most influential book and a whole load of them said Catcher. And I admit, at the time, I didn't really get it. I sure did wish I could get my hands on a copy of the Little Shirley Beans record, though.

A few years later I read Franny and Zooey, and that was the book that sealed the deal for me. I loved how weird the Glass family was, and I loved all the 50s details, the train stations and the radio programming and smoking cigarettes in the bathtub and all that. And the perfectly articulated spiritual and existential malaise, the trap of your own family, the love and the hate and all the emotions running together till you don't really know what you're doing anymore. After that I devoured Nine Stories and had nightmares about Bananafish for years. Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and Seymour: an Introduction followed. I've since read my way through Salinger many, many times, usually while incredibly freaked out about something going on my life. I have a distinct memory of reading Franny and Zooey on a plane from Vancouver to Toronto, sleepy and confused and wondering whether I was flying to my home or away from it. Last summer an incredibly clever person at my library put Raise High the Roofbeam out on a Home Repair book display and I lauded them for their ingenuity and then picked it up again. God, I hope my wedding is that chaotic and anticlimactic (and as much of a non-event, now that I think about it). Like the Times obit says, he just had this knack for writing the way people speak. I could hear those voices in my head. Sure, maybe the slang was dated and the references went right over my head, but my oh my, did I ever want to be a fly on the wall in the worlds he created.

One time I went on a date with a guy who had somehow gotten his hands on what he said was Salinger's unpublished manuscript. He showed it to me, and I got through about three sentences before we started making out, and was it ever a romantic moment. Maybe I should have gone on a second date with that one, just to see how it ended. I guess I'll never know now.

Au revoir, JD.

arrrrrrrriba!

So I'm off to Mexico tomorrow, which means I won't be posting anything here for awhile, which probably won't throw anyone off, given how sporadic I am with this blessed blog. Anyway, I've just come to the realization that I have the most ridiculous vacation reading list ever. I didn't want to bring any library books with me in case I am somehow set on fire or buried in sand, so I've spent the last two weeks pillaging the Friends of the Library's booksale shelf. The result is pure madness.

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink--Holocaust!
My Sister, My Love by Joyce Carol Oates--Murdered siblings!
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams by Sylvia Plath--Suicide!
Rant by Chuck Palahniuk--Dystopia AND murder!

My only saving grace is going to be Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, which I've been urged to read by many people I really trust. It's probably just as bleak as the rest of them, but at least I know it comes highly recommended. And if all else fails, I'll have my standby copy of the New Yorker, which I always buy for travelling and then fail to read past the movie review section.

Later, skaters. Here's some music that's bound to be more painful than waiting in the airport.

can't stop don't stop.

Guys, I'm obsessed with Best Ofs. I don't think I ever want to read or write anything that isn't in list format, ever again. Although I just read the Time Person of the Year issue and that was pretty much the worst. I just don't care about the economy, or the people who are trying to improve it. Sorry, folks. I was more entertained by the totally ludicrous drug ads that seem to be on every second page than by the content itself, save a truly lovely old photo of John Updike (which I cannot find online), who will always be one of those writers I like better in theory than in practice. Anyway, I'm sure you're quite sick of indulging my list-whoring but here's one last one to sum up what has probably been the silliest decade of my life.

Best library checkout: a huge Eightball compilation from the Vancouver Public Library's Renfrew branch, summer 2005. At the time I'd read Ghost World over and over, but I had no idea what a genius Daniel Clowes really was till I started reading Eightball. His comics were the reason I got into comics, and I can't even imagine where I'd be without that particular obsession.

Best apartment: a two-way tie between 1836 Arbutus Street in Vancouver and my current Kingston homestead. It's hard to top the view of the ocean and North Van, though, and sometimes I feel like a piece of me is still tucked behind the gas stove in that living room.

Best TV series: Six Feet Under. This show messed with my head, consistently and thoroughly, for the better part of 5 years as I slowly made my way through each season. When I watched the last episode I felt like part of me had died too. Hands down the best character development and combination of creepiness and integrity of all time.

Best movie: A two way tie between The Royal Tenenbaums ("Did you say you were on mescaline?") and Almost Famous ("It's all happening."). What can I say? I'm a sentimental girl. The movies I loved most were the ones I watched at the Cumberland Cinema and then on DVD, over and over again, in the dorm rooms and dive houses of the Annex.

Saddest literary loss: Carol Shields. Her death was my nerdy version of the JFK assassination: I remember exactly where I was, and I totally cried. No one will ever construct and deconstruct characters the way she does, taking them cradle to grave, holding them up to the light to make sure she hasn't missed anything, sitting next to them at the kitchen table. I'll love her forever and like her for always.

Best concert: This could probably be a seventeen way tie but I'm going to narrow it down to Wilco in Vermont, June 2007. (aka the day we nearly puked on John Stirratt). Free Ben and Jerry's ice cream? Jeff Tweedy making fun of the hipster kids in the audience? Nearly breaking down a snow fence from rocking out so hard next to it? Watching the sun go down behind the stage? HELL YES. Waking up the next morning in a tent without any sleeping bags, still clutching cans of 50, was so worth it.

Best feeling: That it can only keep on getting better from here.



See you next year.

but wait! there's more!

Best Of lists are fun! Especially when you write one and then you are plagued by insomnia and spend the loneliest hours of the night coming up with things you should have included in the first place!

Best audiobook that made a completely unreadable book totally amazing: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation by M.T. Anderson; read by Peter Francis James. This is a historical epic about slavery and the American Revolution. There is no good reason why I should enjoy this book, and yet, I absolutely did. The reader is frigging unbelievable and the story is so twisted and weird. It's one of those audiobooks that make you drive around the block an extra time or two so you can keep listening.

Best celebrity memoir: Moon River and Me by Andy Williams. Laugh if you want, but this book is fascinating. Therapeutic LSD experiences, Christmas specials, and criminal exes.

Best Flight of the Conchords song: Hurt Feelings.



Best film set decoration/confirmation that suburbs=beautiful death: Revolutionary Road.

Best meal: The tuna platter at Casa Domenico.

Most dangerous drinks menu: Atomica. (bottles of prosecco, you are the key to my spiritual depantsing.)

Best breakfast: Star Diner. Although the waitress dressed as Michael Jackson on Halloween was somewhat off-putting.

Best essayist: Zadie Smith. My fondest wish is to be half as smart and sassy. She gives intellectualism a good name and makes me feel so much better about watching bad movies. And I'm pretty sure that distillation of her writing is completely insulting, but whatever. I'm high on advent calendar chocolate and regret.

Best movie trailer: Where the Wild Things Are. I probably watched this five times the first day it surfaced online. It gave me goosebumps. It made me teary and anxious and nostalgic. Jen pointed out that this is also the best use of a pop song (Wake Up, by the Arcade Fire) in a movie trailer this year, and I'd go one further and wager that it might just be the best trailer of ALL TIME. It was so good that it made me nervous about whether the movie would live up to it. I never did see the movie.



Happy New Year.