Real Jewelry

Finished I, Claudius. That’s the last miniseries I’m renting for awhile – at least when I get a mad jones on to swallow a book whole I can take it to work and read it on lunch breaks, maybe on the metro – but then the principal thing is BOOKS AREN’T ON A DAMNABLE SCREEN. I stare at damnable screens all day at work, either the computer or the screening television. Oh flashing pictures.

One lovely-ass book I just finished reading more or less concurrently with watching I, Claudius and drafting my cocksucking thesis for the third cocksucking time is Angels and Insects, by A.S. Byatt. How do I read, write, and watch all these things while drinking, smoking, and socializing too much? A cocktail of insomnia and multi-tasking. Anyways, I read half of Angels and Insects – Morpho Eugenia – some time ago. The other half is the novella The Conjugial Angel.

The novellas are jewels of books. Coherent stories and breathing characters running through an atmosphere of thought, poetry, the body and physical sciences; the sorts of thing Leonardo da Vinci might have written if he wrote intimate suspenseful novellas. All the while using kind, simple language. Language like silk! Provoking the reader to thought while not dictating. The Conjugial Angel, especially; that one novella brings more light to the marriage of the male mind to the female’s than any other book I can think of offhand - all in the framework of the Victorian séance craze. It almost hurts to read because it hurts so little. Like putting on Blundstones after walking around in platforms like a bloody coked-up fool for a month (wonder how I know how that feels).

I heart A.S. Byatt, to rip off an expression from Smellypants. I read Possession a few years ago too. I liked it a lot, though not as much as these novellas. Possession got made into a movie. Hmm. The movie from Morpho Eugenia, Angels and Insects (starring Patsy Kensit among others – remember her? That cute blonde pixie who got with all those Britpop guys?) wasn’t bad; quite beautiful in fact, but suffered from all the texts that got left out. More so than usual with film treatments – read the novella and you’ll know just what I mean. Even though I liked Possession less than Morpho Eugenia, and usually the more I like books the less I want to see the film, I really don’t want to see the movie Possession. The way Gwyneth Paltrow always looks like she’s about to stamp her foot and cry stops me from suspending my disbelief. Except in the Royal Tanenbaums, where it fits into that sweet-ass movie like a key in an oiled lock. Anyways, I’m reading The Game now – first twenty pages are awesome – I’ll let you know how it comes together.

On another note, I fell deeply in love this morning. Five minutes later, my heart was broken. Fastest passion of my life to date. It was a Quebecois man, narrating a series of cooking commercials dressed as a chef, on a campaign for a food store that shall remain nameless. He showed me how to stuff portobello mushroom caps, roast vegetables in duck fat, and make panna cotta - and then the trafficking woman in Montréal told me - she told me - she told me he was just an actor pretending to be a chef. NOOOOOOOOO! OH, WILL THESE DECEPTIONS NEVER END! The lying bastard, toying with my emotions like that. WHY GOD? WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS HEARTBREAK?

All of which is to say, I'm kind of hungry.