Thursday, June 28, 2012

Morning Person

I have a tricky time of it, kickstarting a morning. A cup of tea is always essential, of course, but where to go from there?

I mean, I'd love to hang around taking bad photos of the teacup in question and uploading them to Instagram, but I'm told that some people do this thing in the morning called "getting dressed".

Now, I can never decide on an outfit, especially since I'm closetly-challenged and everything I own tends to require ironing from being left in the wrong place. This is a problem that I've surely got the brains to correct, but I can't make those same brains stick to the process of doing so. My brains are too busy floating through the stratosphere, plucking bits of cloud. Which I suppose is educational, in its way.

As for the rest of me, I looked in the mirror and realized that my hair had decided to look good all on its own for once. So I haven't touched it. Why ruin a good thing?

Ah, I love a morning in summer.


Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Photos from yesterday

Orientation at Hofstra. Didn't have much time to take pics, really, especially since my phone ran out of charge. But I really love the bust of Shakespeare!

Review: Indiscretions of Archie by P.G. Wodehouse

This is my favorite Wodehouse title. Not favorite book, not by a long shot, but certainly my favorite title. (Isn't there something so evocative about that word 'Indiscretions'? It has the air of Jeeves tactfully sweeping Wooster's latest idiocy under the rug.)

This book is one of many proofs that Wodehouse's true genius lay, not in merely creating a comic idiot--which he certainly could do, for no one is more deft when it comes to daft--but in creating a noble comic idiot, an idiot that the reader loves and roots for and sympathizes with. The tragedy of this idiot--and thence the comedy--is not the fact that he's an idiot. It's the fact that no one bothers to look past his idiocy and see his pure heart and his ready humor and a hundred other qualities that your average highbrow lacks.

I recall a brief image in a Peanuts special that sums this character type up nicely. Charlie Brown gallantly throws his jacket over a puddle for a passing girl. The girl, though by no means adverse to this gesture, reacts, not with thanks, but with prim indifference--and as Charlie makes ready to go on his merry way, he slips on the jacket and falls flat on his face. Such is the fate of the Wodehouse hero, but unlike Charlie, he hasn't time to be depressed as long as there are people around that want helping.

So here's Archie Moffam (pronounced "Moom", I'm told, though that never figures into the story). He's pretty much just Bertie Wooster in a different suit, but I love Bertie too much to be overly critical. And the premise allows Wodehouse to try something that falls strictly outside Bertie's formula--Archie, bless him, is a married man, with all the trials and tribulations that come with the job description. He's head-over-heels in love with his Lucille and can't think why she condescended to wed him. Unfortunately for him, neither can her father the American hotel manager. Still more unfortunately, Archie differs further from Bertie in having barely a cent to his name. He must find a way to earn some money.

...Or just deal with whatever random crisis the author feels like dishing up in any given chapter. It was originally published as a sketch series, after all.

Therefore, we have an escaped snake. We have a bet on a ball game. We have a sausage-selling amnesiac. Anything goes.

While the pacing and format isn't close to what Wodehouse is capable of, it's always fun to read about, and towards the end moments of genuine genius begin to shoot up like so many crocuses in the spring. They don't exactly make up for the format, but at times they appear to transcend it. (I call particular attention to a poem about a pie-eating contest that would arguably have been funnier out of context. Who knew Wodehouse could write genuine American comic verse?)

The dialogue is zippy enough to beg for a sitcom adaptation. Archie in particular is eloquent, though only when he's on top of the situation (needless to say, the presence of his father-in-law reduces him to babbling imbecility). Lucille, though not terribly deep, is sweet and funny and forgiving, everything a Wodehouse hero could want in his better half (or "better four-fifths", as Archie puts it). Other characters pop up with their own quirky storylines in tow, contributing the Homer Price-like disdain for realism that would later form the bulk of the Mr. Mulliner series. It all comes to a sort-of conclusion that's extremely charming and makes you close the book with a smile.

Jeeves and Wooster it isn't, but once you've accepted that, it's great fun.

Friday, June 15, 2012

A Complaint, Punctuated By Optimism

Pity the writers. It's not all pretty paragraphs; it's gasps and groans, it's days spent holding up an antennae trying to get a signal from Mount Olympus. It's thinking you've hit on a way to get the words to come and having it turn out not to work every time you try it. It's that indescribable pang that sends you reeling when you hear about people younger than you getting published.

But here's the good thing about being a writer: you're allowed to talk to yourself as long as you type everything you say. Which means you can provide yourself with a bit of comfort. Which is why I'm sitting here writing a blog post.

All while my sisters beg for the computer to watch a TV show on one end and the characters I'm supposed to be writing about lodge complaints on the other.

Photography

A few of the day's images.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Review: Psmith in the City by P.G. Wodehouse

I just read an article on what modern writers call the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl". You know the character type--the crazy, impulsive, imaginative young lady who charges into the male main character's life, shakes it up, changes it forever, and then makes ready to go on her merry way. (Whether she actually does so or not depends on the story; she can also take a third option by dying unexpectedly but remaining forever in his heart.) The article asked the following question: Is there such a thing as a Manic Pixie Dream Guy?

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have found the Manic Pixie Dream Guy. I submit to you P.G. Wodehouse's Psmith (self-invented surname, silent P, first name varies between books)--a character created to fill, not the need for an interesting romance, but the equally-pressing need for an interesting ally. In Mike and Psmith, Psmith is a young man at a boy's school; in this installment, Psmith in the City, he's aged a bit and begun to grapple with the adult business world. Book three, Psmith, Journalist, sees him ditching dull responsibility and having a battle of the wills with gangsters in New York City, just because he can. He's a man's man (not a gentleman's gentleman, though--that'd be Jeeves) in a slowly widening man's world. In the fourth and final book, Leave it to Psmith, his universe finally expands enough to include a love interest. It's like an extreme version of the masculine coming-of-age process.

The reader stand-in is Mike, a nice enough guy whose entire purpose in the series is to not be Psmith. The first two books follow a fairly winning pattern--a) Mike is stuck somewhere he doesn't want to be, b) Psmith shows up and it's not so bad. But interestingly, it's not Psmith's tendency toward bizarreness and anarchy that improves things for Mike (though that helps)--it's simply and solely the fact that Psmith is in it with him. Mike, like most of us, is an uncomplicated character at heart, and all he really wants is someone who can agree that, yes, this is a grim situation, but it doesn't have to be that bad, now let's go get something to eat. And honestly, can't we all relate? If I ever wash up in a new and lonely place, my prayer is that someone like Psmith will be hanging around saying, "You too?"

This time, Mike's parents have lost a lot of their money, and Mike has to drop out of Sedleigh and work at a bank in London. (Poor Mike--it seems it's his lot in life to clear out of a place as soon as he's gotten used to it.) It turns out Psmith is there, too, for a reason which escapes me but which is, frankly, completely irrelevant. There's not much of a plot--it's really more a series of scenes--but Psmith's commentary is always hilarious. You may find yourself tempted to apply his methods while on the job.

The problem with characters under the Manic Pixie category is that, by definition, they hold all the personality, and their poor partners get the short end of the stick. I always prefer my literary duos--whether they be couples or comedy teams--to have equally developed, but conflicting, personalities. (Wodehouse later mastered this dynamic when he wrote the Jeeves and Wooster series.) Mike is a human springboard for Psmith's dialogue, which is fine, but occasionally I get aggravated by his unimaginative responses. If I had a buddy who talked like Psmith, I'd spend all my free time thinking of witty comebacks.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Bemused

I love to write, in theory. My problem is lack of motivation. Whenever I'm away from my laptop, I'm practically drooling, dreaming about attacking that keyboard and filling the world with wordy wonder.

Whenever I'm at my laptop, I…go on YouTube for a couple hours. I google-search all the same things I google every day. Then someone boots me off, because when I say "my" laptop I mean "the family laptop, used for everything from legal documents to online paper dolls". And I wail and gnash my teeth, because I was just getting started.

What I need is a permanent muse. Not the kind that gives you an idea, hangs around while you're getting it off the ground, then blips off with a "see you later!" and leaves you to fend for yourself. I need a muse-for-hire. I could pay her wages in word-filled pages and…oh look, I bet there's a poem in that. See, this motivation business is not that hard.

…now where do I begin?