From one Cunningham to another

StuckinaBook All 12 Comments

I’ve been reading quite a lot of non-fiction at the moment – I’m in one of those moods where fiction isn’t working as well as it should be – and I decided to extend that to films too.

Bill Cunningham New York

I haven’t watched a lot of documentaries, but one of my all-time favourite films is a documentary (Life in a Day, which I wrote about here), and I’ve really enjoyed others like Stories We Tell and The September Issue. So I looked through an article on the best documentaries available on Netflix in the UK (this article, since you ask) and settled on a couple: Catfish and Bill Cunningham New York. Both were well-worth watching, but I’m not sure I have all that much to say about Catfish. All of my thoughts about it would hinge on whether or not it’s fake, and the internet jury seems to have remained out on that one. If any of y’all know the answer, lemme know.

But I did want to bring Bill Cunningham New York to your attention, if you don’t know about it, because it turned out to be rather lovely. It came out in 2010, when Bill Cunningham was 81 and still working full-time as the photographer for two pages in the New York Times – ‘On the Street’ (street fashion) and ‘Evening Hours’ (charity social events). With admirable restraint on the part of the director, Richard Press, the film largely skews towards looking at the former – which gives rather less opportunity for gratuitous shots of socialites, but is clearly where Cunningham’s passion lies.

I hadn’t heard of Cunningham before seeing his name in this list, but he is so extraordinary that a novelist would have to event him if he didn’t exist. For decades he has cycled the streets of New York, taking photos of everyday women, men, and dogs, and bringing together pictorial features on a certain trend that he sees a lot of – whether that be a colour, a style, or even people walking gingerly through piles of snow. He doesn’t use a digital camera, and still takes his films into a shop to be developed. His old-fashioned nature extends to manners: he believes all the people he photographs to be beautiful, and is horrified at the idea of using street photography to criticise others – indeed, he has resigned from magazines when they re-wrote his copy to mock.

You might expect Cunningham to be an aesthete himself. No such thing. He wears the same style of blue smock everyday – a cheap workman’s outfit. His apartment, in Carnegie Hall at the time of filming, is filled with ugly filing cabinets, with a bed lying alongside them. Cunningham’s one joy is other people and the clothes they wear.

Press’ documentary is not quite a hagiography, but it is refreshingly willing to allows its subject to be good. Only one prurient moment, asking about Cunningham’s relationships (he has had none) feels out of kilter with the tone of the piece; most of the time, the film looks at Cunningham’s unique work and place in the fashion industry. Interviewees include Anna Wintour (fun fact for fact fans: I lived next door to her son at Magdalen), Iris Apfel (soon to get her own documentary), and lots of people I hadn’t heard of from the fashion industry. Oh, and his neighbour – Editta Sherman, then a 96 year old photographer (who has since died, at the age of 101), who spent most of her time of film putting on hats and pouting at the camera or complaining that the documentary wasn’t about her instead. And she definitely warranted one.

The film is certainly celebratory, and it is rare to see somebody so completely nice and contented on film. At the same time, he remains rather distant from most people, and his past is still something of a mystery that the film didn’t exert much energy into uncovering. We see one or two snapshots of his youth, but hear very little about father or mother, or even how he sustains himself considering he refuses to accept money for jobs: he has a horror of being ‘owned’. A sub-plot (as it were) about Carnegie Hall residents being evicted is intriguing, but not particularly concluded – and certainly isn’t exploited in the sensationalist way it might have been in some hands.

Yet, somehow, a documentary that isn’t invasively curious about its subject works unexpectedly well. Bill Cunningham New York is interested in the man’s legacy and contribution to fashion and photography, and in one moment in time. It is rather joyful to watch, with enough poignancy to avoid being mawkish. I’d heartily recommend it.

And, now I’m on a documentary spree, I’d love some more recommendations. I’m intending to watch Actress, Finding Vivian Maier, Dear Mr Watterson, and Life Itself at some point…

A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham

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A Home at the End of the WorldI read Cunningham’s second novel on the flight to America, having bought it on my previous trip. I loved The Hours and enjoyed Land’s End, and wanted to read more by him. This novel is mostly told from the perspective of two men, Bobby and Jonathan. That is to say, they start as boys. The opening lines, from Bobby’s perspective, are:

Once our father bought a convertible. Don’t ask me. I was five. He bought it and drove it home as casually as he’d bring a gallon of rocky road. Picture our mother’s surprise. She kept rubber band on the doorknobs. She washed old plastic bags and hung them on the line to dry, a string of thrifty tame jellyfish floating in the sun.

A couple of pages later, we shift to Jonathan’s perspective…

We gathered at dusk on the darkening green. I was give. The air smelled of newly cut grass, and the sand traps were luminous. My father carried me on his shoulders. I was both pilot and captive of his enormity. My bare legs thrilled to the sandpaper of his cheeks, and I held on to his ears, great soft shells that buzzed minutely with hair.

So, Bobby is five and Jonathan is five. And, it turns out, A Home at the End of the World was first published on my 5th birthday,  7 November 1990, which is a fun coincidence. But, instead of 1990s Merseyside (where I spent that birthday), these boys are in Ohio in the 1960s.

Had I known the extent to which this novel incorporated the ‘coming-of-age’ genre, I might have fun a mile; it’s not a subset of literature that I often enjoy. In describing this novel, I can’t really deny that it is firmly in that genre. And yet it’s done rather better than I could have hoped for; events and emotions follow on from events and emotions, and Cunningham entirely captivates the reader while they’re relayed. Usually I just roll my eyes or wait for some horizon where they become adults and the prose can start describing a destination rather than a journey. Here, the journey of growing up was made to feel an apt focus.

There are some significant events – including deaths – that affect the lives of both boys. One of the most powerful comes early in the book, when the older brother Bobby idolises dies in a freak accident, running full pelt through glass doors. Their relationship was mostly founded on taking drugs together, so he was hardly a stablising influence on Bobby’s life but Cunningham conveys the closeness of brothers extremely well – and the ways in which Bobby responds to it.

Throughout the novel, he is shown as sensitive, attuned to others, and with a deep-set need to belong. Jonathan, on the other hand, values independence – struggling to accept the overtures of his friendship his mother offers. As Bobby and Jonathan grow older, their close friendship turns into a sexual relationship, albeit one that neither of them want to directly discuss even between themselves. The alternating first person narratives give the reader a chance to see how both characters feel and think about their experiences, while at the same time witnessing their diffidence. Cunningham handles the tension between first-person insight and objective events really beautifully.

Here was another lesson in my continuing education: like other illegal practices, love between boys was best treated as a commonplace. Courtesy demanded that one’s fumbling, awkward performance be no occasion for remark, as if in fact one had acted with the calm expertise of a born criminal.

In a coming-of-age novel, this might be where events would have ended – but, for Cunningham, it is simply the beginning. One chapter of their lives end, and another begins – indeed, takes most of the novel – as Jonathan moves to New York. Bobby remains behind, even moving in with Jonathan’s parents; the men lose touch, until Bobby decides to move to New York too.

Another thing Cunningham portrays brilliantly is the way that friendships peter out. In fiction, once characters bond they often seem ineluctably close forever after. Far more realistic is the awkwardness between Bobby and Jonathan – an affectionate awkwardness, but where all the affection is based on memories. Still, Bobby moves in with Jonathan and his housemate Clare. The three of them form a delicate trio. I shan’t write any more about what happens, but suffice to say that plenty more happens – all of which (as throughout the novel) is played well for plausible emotional impact and character rather than simply the shock of plot.

Easily the greatest achievement here is Cunningham’s writing. I jotted down, in my pencil note at the beginning, that the writing was ‘seductive’ – by which I meant that it seduces the reader into the world of the novel. And that, I think, is by gradually building up composite portraits of its characters (particularly, of course, Jonathan and Bobby) through a sort of restrained intimacy. The first-person narratives feel like they’re telling us everything, but they are not confessional voices: they reveal parts of the people, and keep enough back to reel us in.

Although this novel is not flawless (I think death and dying is used a little too often to maintain its impact, for instance), it’s difficult to fault the creation of character, the exploration of perspective, or the realism of behaviours. He really is an exceptional writer. (And which others do you think I should read?)

Sylvia Townsend Warner Reading Week

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I’m not sure if this had its genesis in blogs or elsewhere, but I spotted on Facebook that this week is Sylvia Townsend Warner Reading Week! There are few authors I’ve had such varied success with (adored Lolly Willowes and her letters with William Maxwell, but loathed The Corner That Held Them, and didn’t especially like Mr Fortune’s Maggot or Summer Will Show) so I’m excited about trying some more. I have lots of collections of her short stories, but have read none, so may start there.

Join in, do!

 

Stuck-in-a-Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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Maybe I should drop those hyphens in this post title, now that I’ve lost them in my URL? Hmm.

Anyway – a few bits and pieces to beguile and delight!Bloomsburys-Outsider

1.) The blog post – Jenny has written a lovely review of Marilynne Robinson’s Lila over at Shelf Love.

2.) The link – vote for your favourite Agatha Christie! I love how she basically unites almost all readers, cos she’s just so fab, but we might be divided in the book we like best. If you don’t see yours pictured, there is a drop-down menu at the bottom. (I voted for And Then There Were None, btw.)

3.) The book – is an enormous new biography of David Garnett, Bloomsbury’s Outsider by Sarah Knights, with, er, quite the striking cover. Mine is on its way, so I’ll report back in due course…

Letter From New York – Helene Hanff

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Letter from New York

Any of us who love books about books have surely read the lovely 84, Charing Cross Road, a collection of letters between American Helene Hanff and a London bookseller. Her other books aren’t as well-known, but I heartily recommend Q’s Legacy if you’d like to read more about the success of 84CCR – and now I can also recommend Letter From New York (1992). I took it to America to read there, and… read it in Worcestershire instead.

These letters were broadcast monthly on Radio 4 back between 1978-1984 (and nothing shrieks ’80s more than Hanff’s unstinting belief that formalwear necessitates a black velvet pantsuit and white satin blouse). They are, indeed, not letters so much as thoughts, and concern life in New York – but, more precisely, life in Hanff’s apartment block.

It reminded me a little of one of my all-time faves, The L-Shaped Room (if you’ve not read it – go and do so. I’ll wait.) in that I sort of fell in love with a building and its inhabitants. Not as much as I did with The L-Shaped Room (have you read it yet? I mean, you didn’t just glide past my previous parentheses did you? DID YOU?) because that will never happen, but Hanff is great at writing enough about her friends and neighbours to make you feel like you know them well. If she described them completely, she would seem (and make the reader feel) like an observer; by referring to them as though we already know them pretty well, Arlene, Richard, Nina, and the rest became friends. Here’s an excerpt…

Big excitement here a couple of weeks ago because the New York Times ran a story about Arlene, with a photograph of her that also included Richard.

Since you know that Arlene and I are opposites, when I tell you that I detest large cocktail parties and dinner dance,s you won’t be surprised to learnt hat Arlene earns her living organizing large cocktail parties and dinner dances. She runs the parties as fund-raising events for Democratic politicians who need money for their election campaigns. Her most famous fund-raiser was a birthday party for the Mayor of New York aboard the Queen Elizabeth II – ‘the QE Two’ to Arlene [Simon adds: …and to everyone else]. She phoned the office of the ship’s public relations chief, who was ‘at sea’ off the Bermuda coast and talked to her via ship-to-shore phone, and Arlene talked him into letting her use the ship for the Mayor’s birthday party. She hypnotized the chef into creating a replica of New York’s City Hall in margarine and a birthday cake bigger than the undersized Mayor.

As you see, Hanff deals not solely (or even much) with the grand moments in New York life – rather, we get the refreshing minutiae of her own life. That might be her neighbour’s dog being borrowed to perform as a greeter at an apartment party; it might be watching a bee in a roof garden; it might be a ticker-tape parade. All of it flows from Hanff’s pen lazily and contentedly; the tone you may remember from 84, Charing Cross Road, albeit mellowed a bit.

Hanff’s writing has three faults, in my mind. Only one of them really counts as a fault: the other two are that she prefers dogs to cats (there is a lot about dogs in Letter From New York) and that she prefers the city to the countryside. Those factors made it trickier for me to connect with her, but the only real ‘fault’ I noticed was that she has trouble with section endings. Each letter has a pat ending, a quip or neat sentence, that often felt a bit forced, or looped back to something she’d only mentioned for the first time a paragraph or two earlier. It’s a small thing, and it didn’t really affect my reading, but it brought about the only instances of Hanff’s writing feeling unnatural in a book that is largely characterised by being natural.

If you’ve enjoyed 84, Charing Cross Road, then Hanff will feel like a friend whom you should revisit. If you haven’t – good grief, go and get a copy! (And read The L-Shaped Room while you’re at it.)

 

3 little links…

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Here are three things I’ve written in other places this week… fill your boots!

1.) I reviewed Aldous Huxley’s The Genius and the Goddess at Vulpes Libris.

2.) 5 things you didn’t know about Mrs Dalloway over at OUP Academic Tumblr (although, spoilers, I think some of you definitely will know these)

3.) My favourite: 12 nouns that are always plural. The most geeky English language thing I’ve ever written AND the most cat-themed thing I’ve ever written. *drops mic*

Seeing Voices by Oliver Sacks

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Seeing VoicesI am currently knee-deep in Oliver Sacks’ autobiography (as it were) and loving it – and being rather surprised by it – but that will all be revealed in the next issue of Shiny New Books. For now, I thought I should quickly write about the latest Sacks I’ve read before I forget, and before it gets tangled up in my head with his autobiography. The book is Seeing Voices, and was first published in 1989. It deals with deafness and language, essentially – looking at the development of sign language, whether it ‘counts’ as a real language, and how the deaf and hard of hearing have been treated over the past century or so.

This might be quite a short review, because it is my least favourite Sacks book to date – and I am such a cheerleader for his work that I don’t want to dwell on one that (to my mind) didn’t live up to Hallucinations, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, The Mind’s Eye, and The Island of the Colourblind. And possibly all the others that I’ve yet to read, most of which are waiting on my shelves.

The irony is that sign language and the senses are things I’m really interested in. Losing, compensating, or confusing senses are topics I find fascinating. And there are certainly sections of Seeing Voices that did fascinate me. Let’s look at them first. Primarily, the protests at Gallaudet University, then (and possibly still) the world’s only liberal arts college for deaf and hard of hearing. These protests came after the election of a new president (from a shortlist of hearing and hard of hearing candidates) ended up with a hearing president; the students and some of the staff went on protest, demanding that they be represented by somebody who knew what it was like to be deaf.

This request doesn’t seem at all outlandish now (although may rear issues of ‘positive’ discrimination; that’s another story), but at the time it was a big step forward in terms of helping people recognise that people who could not hear were still people – intelligent, capable, leadership-demonstrating people at that. Sacks is seldom better than when he feels impassioned on behalf of others who have been downtrodden or underestimated – and he writes in support of those protesters. Elsewhere in the book, more passionately still, he writes about those schools that decided deaf children should learn to speak audibly rather than learn sign language – and the deprivation of communication this forced upon generations of children.

If all of this was great, and classic Oliver, then what didn’t I love so much? Well, as other reviewers have noted in 1989 and since, Seeing Voices is aimed at a rather more scholarly audience than Sacks’ other works. Which is not to say that it’s academic writing; it is still closer to popular science than to a conference paper. But it is the least accessible of the books I’ve read, and I found his focus on scientific and philosophical terminology, not to mention hundreds of endnotes (which take up almost half the book) rather off-putting. Perhaps this is because Sacks mostly deals with theories and histories in Seeing Voices? He is far more captivating when dealing with individuals – whether patients, friends, or Sacks himself.

So, there was a lot of interest here – but the book mostly brings out more of Sacks’ scientific side than his compassion or his storytelling ability; the two attributes that make him such a phenomenal and significant writer, in my opinion. Alternatively, this may make Seeing Voices more appealing to some.

And I have to finish off with this sentence, which amused me:

To be the parents of a deaf child, or of twins, or of a blind child, or of a prodigy, demands a special resilience and resourcefulness.

So, the Reading the End podcast is basically my life now

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You probably know Jenny who writes the super blog Reading the End (previously Jenny’s Books) – from my most recent series of My Life in Books, if nowhere else. That gal is hilarious, as well as loving wonderful authors like Shirley Jackson and Helen Oyeyemi (and, whilst I remember, I must bug her to read Barbara Comyns if she hasn’t – she would definitely love her as the third piece in that triumvirate of Gothic brilliance).

Well, somehow I had not got around to listening to the Reading the End podcast that she does with her friend Jenny. Yes, two Jennys – Gin Jenny and Whiskey Jenny. The episodes are all here, or on iTunes. I have made up for lost time by listening to 8 episodes this week. That’s 6 hours of quality Jenny/Jenny time. And let me tell you, it’s a flipping brilliant podcast.

Right from the off, the ladies are so funny – and erudite and whatnot too, of course. They review books, they talk bookish topics (books as objects; genre classifications; Harry Potter. Always Harry Potter), they play book games (GAME! GAME! GAME!) I am about a year behind with episodes, so who knows what they’re up to now, but I’m enjoying every moment. I’ve giggled uncontrollably in the street and alarmed strangers. Just a ‘Sure’ from one of the Jennys is now enough to make me laugh.

Here’s the weird thing: I’ve listened to them so much, and know Gin Jenny through blogging already, that I now essentially think I’m their best friend. I’m just going to wander into the recording one day, shrieking GAME and telling anecdotes about polar explorers, and they are going to be mystified and/or mace me. For now, I’m just manically tweeting about things they chatted about in 2013.

And here’s the horrendous confession: I can’t tell their voices apart. I have tried so hard. And I can’t do it. So I now think of them both as a single, amorphous Jenny, with contradictory opinions (I particularly warmed to whichever Jenny it was who can’t form mental pictures of places or characters in books – something we all had a fun discussion about when I admitted the same thing). Sorry ladies. It doesn’t make me love you any the less.

So, basically, if you haven’t listened to it – dig out episode 1, download, and have a listen. I’m pretty sure you – like me – will then want to do nothing else for the next few weeks.

 

Nabokov’s Butterfly by Rick Gekoski

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Nabokov's ButterflyDid I write, when I bought Nabokov’s Butterfly (2004) in the US, that it was called Tolkien’s Gown in the UK? It was one of those facts that I kept telling people when I was jet-lagged. Sorry to all those people.

Anyway, it was one of the books I bought from the books-about-books shelves in the US, and I believe Gekoski is American. So it felt a little less exotic than expected when I opened it to find Iffley Road, Oxford mentioned early on – since I live off it. He also mentions Cowley Road bookshop, which no longer exists, perhaps unsurprisingly.

This book has quite a lot in common with Old Books, Rare Friends by Leona Rostenberg & Madeleine Stern, in that Gekoski is a rare books dealer. Indeed, the Radio 4 series from which this book derives was called Rare Books, Rare People. Unlike those ladies, though, his main interest is the 20th century, rather than incunabula and the like. And it will come as no surprise that that was rather more up my street. This collection looks at 20 different famous works of the modern period, from The Picture of Dorian Gray (sneaking into the ‘long’ 20th century bracket) to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – discussing the genesis of each book, and also any notable copies that had ever passed through Gekoski’s hands.

I loved so much about it, even if a lot was already familiar. Those of us who love 20th-century literature – and particularly those of us who have studied it – will probably already know how Ulysses came about, or the events that surrounded The Satanic Verses. But, then again, I knew little about the background to Lord of the Flies or the little-known Graham Greene work After Two Years. And I am always willing to read somebody enthusing about A Confederacy of Dunces.

The potted histories of these works (and Lolita, Bridehead Revisited, Animal Farm, On the Road, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, etc. etc.; there is a lovely variety) is done extremely well. Nothing would astound a fan of each individual work, but having details together, concisely and well-managed, is a treat. And then we get to hear how Gekoski spent time with Graham Greene, was indirectly mentioned in the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, ordered a limit edition of a book and bought all of them, and so on. There is a personal angle that is unique to Gekoski’s perspective.

And that perspective is certainly unusual. I bemoaned, in Old Friends, Rare Books, that they prized books for their monetary value over the content; it didn’t sit well with a bibliophile like myself who cares little for condition or edition. And Gekoski is fighting this in himself, in seems. Early on, he says almost exactly that:

I knew very little about first editions at the time, and if you had told me I would spend a good part of my adult life dealing with them, I would have been astonished and horrified. Who cared about what edition you read? It was content that mattered.

And, later, when discussing why books must be pristine to be worth a lot of money, he writes:

All I ask, in the gleaming light of such perfection, is: why? With antique furniture we value the effects of time on the surface of an object, and call it patina; with paintings, we howl when inept restorers reproduce the way an oil painting would have looked on the day it was painted. The criterion that an object be in perfect, original condition is usually reserved for the collecting of piffling doo-dahs – of stamps, teddy bears, or dinky toys. But books? Books?

How did this happen? And for what reason? What, as an analyst might inquire, is the pathology behind it? because this ludicrous insistence on perfect condition strikes one more as a symptom than a rational goal.

He doesn’t have any answers. He is not a renegade in the book industry – at least not in this way. The nearest he gets in these laments, and pointing out that children’s literature that does well in the rare books world now must never have been appreciated properly by its intended audience.

So, yes, I didn’t much care when he listed how much various books had sold for at different points in his career – not least because (a) it’s at least ten years ago, and will all have changed, and (b) each time the amount was given in dollars in brackets, which got tedious. (Somehow the editors were able to do those exchanges, but didn’t bother removing various references to Tolkien’s Gown in the introduction.) (Did I mention it had a different title?) (Yes, of course I did.)

Basically, it would be difficult to find a book about books that I didn’t like a lot. Throw in humour and a focus on the 20th century, and I’m sold. It was also a perfect book to read on the aeroplane, because I could read it in bursts of concentration between bad films (Horrible Bosses 2 is fabs, guys) and being given endless tiny cups of water.

This review ended weirdly. Sure, ok. YAY BOOKS!