the hypnotist collector

Here’s a review I wrote of Toy Story 3 in 3D for The Comment Factory.

The following letter was sent to the editor Pascal Covici by John Steinbeck, along with a box containing the manuscript of East of Eden:

Dear Pat,

You came upon me carving some kind of little figure out of wood and you said, “Why don’t you make something for me?”

I asked you what you wanted, and you said, “A box.”

“What for?”

“To put things in.”

“What things?”

“Whatever you have,” you said.

Well, here’s your box.  Nearly everything I have is in it, and it is not full.  Pain and excitement are in it, and feeling good or bad and evil thoughts and good thoughts–the pleasure of design and some despair and the indescribable joy of creation.

And on top of these are all the gratitude and love I have for you.

And still the box is not full.

John

East of Eden is the best book I can think to recommend for summer reading (not that anybody’s asking), especially if you’re in California, or longing for it.

I found a piece of paper in an old journal.

On it were written quotes from various sources,

including this from Harper’s Findings:

“The brains of obese women expect more gratification

from a chocolate milkshake than is actually experienced;

the brains of non-obese women are more realistic

in their milkshake expectations.”

Also,

Nabokov was a tough grader on everybody,

but himself.  (And rightly so).

Finally,

a thought inspired by Wimbledon:

the follow-through of a stroke in tennis is

(almost) as important as the point of contact with the ball.

Wouldn’t it be cool if that principle applied more in real life–

if thinking about something, for example,

after it happened

could affect the outcome?

Other applications?

Those nights lit by the moon and the moon’s nimbus,

the bones of the wrecked pier rose crooked in air

and the sea wore a tarnished coat of silver.

The black pines waited.  The cold air smelled

of fishheads rotting under the pier at low tide.

The moon kept shedding its silver clothes

over the bogs and pockets of bracken.

Those nights I would gaze at the bay road,

at the cottages clustered under the moon’s immaculate stare,

nothing hinted that I would suffer so late

this turning away, this longing to be there.

-Mark Strand

What are the criteria for gaping? Samson wondered.  Extremes: tremendous beauty or prizewinning ugliness; deformities; violent or noisy behavior.  All rash, obvious reasons to gawk.  But the great candidates for stares seemed more subtle, those that quietly, diplomatically challenged the authority of the norm.

–Man Walks into a Room, Nicole Krauss

On the last day of the sixth grade I spent the afternoon with a group of girls, among us some very popular members of our class.  We decided to ditch out on the myriad pool parties held in celebration of our newfangled freedom and to indulge in the expensive ($5!) summer treat of moviegoing.  We saw Can’t Hardly Wait, which held a certain poignancy for our pre-teen selves.  It may have been the perfect embrace of the change of seasons, an insouciant rejection of conviviality in favor of the solitude, not loneliness, of summer.  It reminds me of the sweet smell of cedar heated by the sun.

The wind whistled and seagulls cawed.  Pam pushed a stroller and I held Emma’s hand as we walked the length of the pier in autumn.  Empty except for a few Chinese fishermen and another couple with a kid.  I took Pam’s picture with the girls.  I can’t remember if it ever came out.  We smelled the salt and listened to the girls giggle at the birds, a sound like popcorn or champagne bubbles.  There’s not much to do out on a pier, but you can spend a long time there.  Finally we turned around and headed back, passing the other couple.  The woman tall, blond, holding a girl against her hip.  The man, shorter, rounded, with a nose like Saint Nick.  Pam stopped short.  “I know you,” she said to him.

“Yeah, ok.  Hi,” he said, good-naturedly, or not.

“Did we go to high school together?” she asked.  He gave a little laugh.  “No really,” she begged.

The couple smiled and walked farther down the pier.  We continued on our way.  “I can’t remember where I know him from,” she thought aloud.

“Are you joking, Pam?”

“What do you mean?”

“That was Billy Joel.”

“Did he go to Stuyvesant?”

So much depends upon

a tiny piece of plastic, a latch that holds the back of the camera flush with the body.

I was worried when that latch broke,

every roll of film unique.

But it turned out ok…

I once read about the photographer Mark Borthwick,

that he intentionally overexposes his film to achieve these effects:

Jonathan Safran Foer’s new piece in The New Yorker’s fiction issue feels like lyrics.  “I’m not forty-five or eighty-three, not being hoisted onto the shoulders of anybody wading into the sea.  I’m not learning chess, and you’re not losing your virginity.”  Like “Turn, Turn, Turn,” which lyrics were taken from another book (Ecclesiastes).  And what if someone set this to music? (Please, someone, do this and let us hear!)

Whatever beef people seem to have with  JSF and Nicole Krauss, couldn’t it just be jealousy?  Sure they’ve written four (soon to be five) amazing novels, have two kids, own a beautiful Park Slope brownstone, are well-educated and well-appointed–yes, there’s plenty to be jealous of.  But couldn’t the jealousy factor better pool its energy in admiration?  Yes.  Yes, of course it could.

[p.s.  A few of my favorites: "You didn't know where e-mails were."  "I didn't know where my voice was between my phone and yours.""We couldn't wait for the beginnings and ends of vacations." "You broke everyone's heart until you suddenly couldn't." "One night I couldn't help him with his math.  He got married." "At a certain point you became convinced that you were always reading yesterday's newspaper." "At a certain point I could hear my knees and felt no need to correct other people's grammar." "I couldn't tolerate magicians who did things that someone who actually had magical powers would never do." "They kept producing new things that we didn't need that we needed." (read it here (with a New Yorker subscription))].