Challenge

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Essay Challenge Recap

November 30, 2011 in Challenge, essay by Kim | 1 comment

I coming in just under the wire this year, this challenge must be completed today!!  The Essay Challenge over at Books and Movies is the only one I joined this year, even so, I didn’t keep up with it the way I have the past two years.  Not that I haven’t read essays all year long, I just haven’t kept track or written about them.  Here I am an hour before the challenge ends trying to figure out what I read this year!

Most of my essay reading, in fact these days almost all of my reading, was art based.  My favorite art essay collection was in The Steins Collect catalogue for the SFMOMA.  Combined the essays gave a picture of the family and their experience with and impact on modern art.  The collection was organized by family member:  Leo Stein, Sarah and Michael Stein, and the most famous of all, Gertrude Stein.  By happenstance, I was reading the collection when Woody Allen released “Midnight in Paris.”  The essays provided a scholarship background to many of the Owen Wilson Paris scenes.  I read 10 essays in this collection.

In response to an photography exhibit at the Getty Center about trees, I read an extended essay called The Tree by John Fowles.  I wrote about it for Earth Day earlier this year.  Whew!  At least I wrote about one essay!

 

Although I read it and listed it for last year’s collection, once again I read “Here is New York” by E.B. White while sitting in a cafe in New York City.  It is an essay worth reading every time I go to New York City, it adds a dimension to the visit that doesn’t diminish upon re-reading.

In preparation for the de Kooning exhibit at MOMA, I read two Clement Greenberg essays that discussed this artist:  ”‘American Type’ Painting” and “The Late Thirties in New York.”  Plus, the dense and long introductory essay in the exhibit catalogue “Space to Paint” by John Elderfield.

Last, but not least, is my companion in the car, the Mark Slouka collection Essays from the Nick of Time.  Through carpools and quick lunches this book kept me company.  I have notes and comments throughout each essay, I’ve loved them.  I’ve read “Hitler’s Couch,” “Arrow and Wound,” “Listening for Silence,” and “Historical Vertigo.”  Actually, I’ve read “Arrow and Wound” twice and will probably read it again tonight now that I’m thinking about it.  This is a stellar collection.

That’s it for this year, 19 in total that I can document although I’m certain I read far more.  Next year I’m going to be do better!!  If nothing else, maybe I should buy fewer essays and read more of them.

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Reading L.A.

March 2, 2011 in art, Challenge, history by Kim | 2 comments

I find it interesting that books about L.A. tend to be dark.  There’s usually some sort of cataclysmic event or at the very least most likable character ends up destitute or dead.  Day of the Locust?  Dark, gloomy and ends in a riot scene (and if that isn’t enough, the author Nathanael West died in a car crash on the way to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s funeral).  Golden Days?  Starts with a strong female character, ends with a nuclear bomb.  The Tortilla Curtain?  My favorite L.A. novel washes away with a massive flash flood.  Honestly, a reader could think no one gets out of here alive.

Keith and I enjoy learning about our city, so much so that a few years ago, we spent 10 weeks of our date nights attending a History of L.A. course at UCLA.  We learned some of the reasons behind the literary and cultural views of the city.  It was born on a bed of hype.  The sales pitch has variations, but from the beginning L.A. has been sold as an image and, as we all know, images rarely live up to their promise.  It’s almost doomed from the beginning to disappoint.  Knowing our city, rather than just living on the surface of it, has added a lot to our lives.  That’s why I’ve been excited to follow Christopher Hawthorne’s Reading L.A. series on Culture Monster.

Christopher is the architecture critic for the L.A. Times and he’s spending this year reading about Los Angeles.  He’s picked 27 books, all non-fiction with a variety of history, memoir and architecture choices.  There’s even potential that some of them won’t be dismal.  Working through the books chronologically, the first two discussed in January were fairly obscure, I think reading his overview of them is sufficient.  However, my favorite and in my opinion the best history of L.A., Southern California: An Island on the Land by Carey McWilliams, was on tap for February.  If you are only going to read one book about L.A., this is the one.  Hawthorne acknowledged it as the source of future books on the city:

Southern California: An Island on the Land is, if not quite our urtext, then easily the most significant volume ever published on L.A.’s civic and urban character.  What makes the book feel so definitive begins with the way it knits skepticism with consistent, if always clear-eyed, enthusiasm — and in so doing anticipates the whole diverse spectrum of later studies of Los Angeles and its architecture, from the upbeat rhapsodies of Reyner Banham to the bleak-black critique of Mike Davis.

There are a few other books on Hawthorne’s list that I’ve read, most notably City of Quartz by Mike Davis (very dark view of L.A.) and Holy Land by D.J. Waldie (a lovely memoir that I think of every time I travel south on the 405).  I know I can’t keep up with all the books, but February’s post on Five California Architects by Esther McCoy caused me to look for a copy and there are a couple I’m going to try to read with Hawthorne.  GOOD Magazine’s Book Club is taking on Reyner Banham’s Los Angeles:  The Architecture of Four Ecologies in April, I’m going to join in.

Check out the list of books, let me know if your interested in reading any and we can pair up to read together, along with with Christopher Hawthorne.

 

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Essay Challenge Complete!

August 5, 2010 in Challenge, essay by Kim | 2 comments

As much as I love essays, I seem to get distracted and wrapped up too much in books.  I decided in July I would make a concentrated effort to read essays–in part to finish the essay challenge (I’m actually completing a challenge), in part to develop a habit of reading essays, and in part because I just seem to do better if I set a specific goal. The full list for the month is on the essay page, but here are a few thoughts:

I Love Anne Fadiman

I spent a good portion of my essay reading reveling in Ex Libris. If you love books and you haven’t read her volume of essays on reading and books, buy it right now and read it.  Anne’s parents raised her in a reading household and, as a mother who is trying to do the same with her children, it’s reassuring to see that she loved it.  One essay describes how her family loved to discover long, difficult words.  In our family, my husband collects words all year long (most from the word-a-day service from dictionary.com), writes them on 3×5 cards and then during meals on our big family vacation (because three meals a day, every day, for two weeks is too much family conversation for teenagers) he quizzes all of us.  Kyle tries to find meanings from his Latin classes, I tend to know the word or just make up a definition, and Kelsey is highly motivated by the dime the kids get for every correct definition.

For our upcoming vacation, I’m going to copy “Never Do That To A Book” and read it over a leisurely dinner.  We are a family of doing everything to a book.  We stick things in them, we prop them open, I write all over mine, we use them as door stops (two summers ago we used The World is Flat, last year War and Peace, and I’ve been trying to  use the volume of law review journals that Keith edited 20 years ago this summer, but he keeps putting that hefty book away), our books are under the car seats and stuck willy nilly through out the house.  My kids will be astonished to hear that our treatment of books, something we love, would offend some people.

Her “You Are There” essay rang true for me.  Whenever I travel, I look for books about where I’m going (Idlewild Books is a great resource).  My stack for Read the rest of this entry »

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The Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musee d’Orsay

August 1, 2010 in art, book review, Challenge, translation by Kim | 2 comments

The Birth of Impressionism is the catalogue for the show of the same name on view at the de Young Museum until September 6th.  Exhibit catalogues can be an iffy proposition.  Some are just expensive picture books, others have pedantic essays, but this one strikes the right balance–interesting essays interspersed with the relevant pictures.  Even without visiting the exhibit, this book is a worthwhile exploration of the roots of modern art.

It can be difficult for some to understand what was truly revolutionary about Impressionism.  Looking back from Pop Art to Abstract Expressionism to Surrealism, by the time our eyes land on Impressionism, what’s the big deal?  The Birth of Impressionism grounds the reader in the 1860s art world describing the Salon monopoly and the popular art of the time.  The first section includes four essays on the accepted art of the time: realism, soft porn nudity sold as classicism, grand history painting, and Orientalism.

The catalogue and the show set up Manet as the turning point from the conservative art to modern art.  The essay entitled “Manet:  Innovation and Innovation” nails his pivotal role as an artist who wanted to succeed in the Salon world but opened the door to displaying modern life in a manner that loosened the restrictions of formal painting.  The catalogue doesn’t limit itself to the paintings in the exhibition.  Especially with Manet, it is important to show his development with such works as “Luncheon in the Grass,” “Olympia,” and “The Dead Toreador” none of which are in the show but the book discusses in the context of his career.  The third section of the catalogue, entitled Impressionism and the New Painting shows how Read the rest of this entry »

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The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

April 18, 2010 in book review, Challenge, memoir by Kim | No comments

I’ve owned this book for ages.  I went to a charity literary lunch for my kid’s school at least three years ago where a room full of strangers (or at least almost everyone was a stranger to me) ate wonderful food and talked about books.  There is something unique about a group of strangers who gather only once to discuss books.  The conversation is very focused, we don’t know about each other’s lives or preferences, nor do we ever need to, it’s a one-shot, one-subject dialogue.  Of all the books discussed at the table, the one that stood out to me was Jeannette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle.  So  much so, that I immediately bought the book.  However, as is the case with so many books, it lingered on my shelves, surviving every clean out, but not making into my hands to open up and read.  It wasn’t until child abuse month for the Social Justice Reading Challenge that I finally picked it up (okay, child abuse was for March, and I read it in March, it’s just the review that’s a bit late.)

People who have read the book describe the opening scene:  Jeannette is in the back seat of a taxi in NYC going to a dinner party and she looks out the window to see her mother digging through a trash dumpster.  While the scene pulls the reader in from the beginning, after hearing about it multiple times and nothing else in the book, it all sounded too depressing and heavy to read.  It isn’t.

Jeannette had a horrible childhood, no doubt.  The book is appropriate for child abuse month because the parents are far more concerned with themselves, whether it be from drinking or narcissism or laziness, to provide the very basics for their children.   The children often go hungry (Jeannette describes hiding in the girl’s bathroom at school to steal the lunch bags thrown in the trash), do not have enough clothes, don’t bathe, and are frequently cold or living outside.  The father returns home drunk when he show up and the mother is incapable of leaving him or holding down a job.  Both parents justify their behavior as lifestyle choices, which I don’t have a problem with until they  have children and refuse to provide for their basic needs.  Once all of their children moved out of the house, the fact that Jeannette’s parents decided to live as squatters digging through dumpsters is fine, they are adults who have the right to choose their own lifestyle.

Yet, the picture isn’t black and white.  Jeannette describes a life with strong elements of adventure and love.  One of the most heartwarming scenes was the Christmas Jeannette’s father took each child outside to pick a star for their Christmas present.  It’s clear that for Jeannette every time she sees Venus (she traded up for a planet), it carries her father’s love for her.  Personally, if Jeannette’s parents couldn’t afford to give their kids presents because money was tight rather than because the father drank away their funds, the story would have meant more to me, but it isn’t my story to tell or my life to accept.  I’m impressed by Jeannette’s ability to overcome the physical and financial circumstances of her life and for finding ways to forgive and love her parents for themselves.

It is this aspect of acceptance that raises The Glass Castle beyond a hard-luck childhood memoir to a story of hope.

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