It seems odd to me how unknown this woman is in the States. Or else everybody knows about her but me. She's famous, and/or notorious, in the mother country---an Observer piece on a play about her a few years ago called her "the brilliant, unpredictable, outrageously outspoken writer who has an iconoclastic, usually offensive, view on everything." Her life-as-art notability seems to exist, or to have existed, in contexts in which she can be both hero and anti-hero. Foul-mouthed self-destructive youthful wildness. Unruly sexuality. Unapologetic bad mothering. Fat. Compulsive bridge burning. How come I never heard of her? Even when her recent teen lezzie novel was made into a TV series?
I haven't gotten terribly far into the book yet, but after getting a taste the other night before closing time here (with more than one library-inappropriate burst of laughter), I did read this online transcription of a funny fax fight between her and Camille Paglia.
I keep finding myself wondering whether
After a fun, wiffle-bally work picnic at Delhi Park yesterday, I passed out for a bit and then rallied to get out and see the late show of the new Woody Allen movie, Scoop, with
Going to see the newest Woody, preferably as part of a good-sized, responsive audience, is, no kidding and even with the occasional stinker, one of my dearest pleasures in life. And no, that isn't an indication of a humdrum existence! Not that mine's the most hoppin' on the planet, by a long shot... But. Good movie. Do go see it. Me, I remain grateful that he makes one every year, and I keep my fingers crossed that he and I both live for at least several such years more.
I felt a little bad after blanking on the name of this woman we ran into in the lobby, on the way to see what Smilka and Dan thought of the movie, and so not introducing her & C. I hate name-panicking & not doing that---seems tremendously rude to me. Why didn't I just say some version of "What the heck is your name again?"? Of course it popped into my head as soon as we walked out of the theater. I think the degree to which I thought I shoulda remembered, even though I barely know her and she's been abroad for the better part of a year, was influenced by the fact that she had been mentioned several times during that interval in reference to a foiled near miss of a sexual encounter she was headed for one night last fall with another one who's been abroad (not
Perhaps as I get older and this situation presents itself to me more and more (it happened not too long ago when I ran into a friend of
Enough for now. Now to a nice comfy chair, with my visited book, in this oasis of A/C on this muggy hot day.