Gum, Grit, and Storytelling

Posted on November 27, 2021 by Art for Housewives

She chewed gum while lecturing. It was a habit she picked up once when, while presenting her thoughts in front of an audience, the words got stuck in her throat. Chewing gum induced salivation and let the words flow once again.

Grace Paley (1922-2007), like Jennifer Lopez, was from the Bronx. But her parents were not. They were Jewish-Ukrainian immigrants who, along with other necessities, had packed their traditions along with everything else. But this was a problem for Grace and many other immigrant offspring. So Grace let her stories do the talking for her to expose the difficulties first generation Americans had– learn how to balance cultural traditions imposed upon them by their immigrant parents while simultaneously trying to integrate with the country they were actually living in. 

Grace was both a high school and a college dropout (she took a course with the British poet W. H. Auden at Hunter College). Married at 19 to a film camera man, Grace had two children and spent more time on the playground with the kids than at her desk writing. A typical story for so many women. Nevertheless, she was also a political activist focused on the ban of nuclear weapons and equal rights for women.

Not discouraged by the many rejections she initially received from editors, Grace used her semi-autobiographical character, Faith Darwin, to help tell her own story. And those of others.

Grace looked at life as if it were this big piece of fabric and all she had to do was simply cut out a part that interested her and then fabricate a story around it. Many of the stories were about a world of women unhappy in their domestic roles and of immigrants crowded into tenements. One such story is “Goodbye and Good Luck”. The story opens with Rose Lieber telling her niece, Lillie, about her past. Rose was an overweight ticket seller at the Russian Art Theater where she met Volodya Vlashkin, an almost famous actor known as the Valentino of Second Avenue. Rose falls in love with Vlashkin and decides to move in with him. Her mother, outraged, protests but Rose insists it’s her life to which her mother responds: “you, a nothing, a rotten hole in a piece of cheese, are you telling me what life is?”

Then Rose learns, casually, that the love of her life is married with kids. Not wanting to be a home wreaker, she leaves Vlashkin and goes back to live with her mother.

For the next several years, relatives try their hand at matchmaking but Rose isn’t interested. She just plods through life until one day, unexpectedly, Vlashkin shows up at her apartment. He says his wife has left him and now he can be with her forever. So Rose tells Vlashkin that for years, while he was married, she was his lover asking for nothing in return. But now that he is free, he should be ashamed of himself if doesn’t show her the respect she merits by marrying her.

Rose had never been against marriage. She just didn’t want to wind up like her own mom who married a man she didn’t love. So, compared to her mother, Rose is the winner as she loves Vlashkin and is going to marry him for that reason. Finally dressed for her wedding day, Rose asks her niece to wish her a long and happy life. And to “Hug Mama, tell her from Aunt Rose, goodbye and good luck.”

Grace Paley didn’t produce a massive body of work as she was too busy raising kids and being politically involved. She participated in many anti-war and anti-nuke demonstrations and was even arrested for her participation. Before her breast cancer related death, Grace said her dream for her grandchildren was that they could live in “a world without militarism and racism and greed—and where w4omen don’t have to fight for their place in the world.”

Epilogue: “Art is too long, and life is too short.” Grace

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Profiling Storytellers

Posted on November 26, 2021 by Art for Housewives

Before the FBI’s criminal profiling, there was Miss Marple. Miss Marple didn’t need an FBI profiler to know a criminal when she saw one. A careful observer of human behaviour, she relied upon her own experience to identify personality types. For example, she would observe someone then say “Oh, he reminds me of Jack, the butcher’s son, who was a petty theft.” Miss Marple had developed the art of abductive reasoning. That is, arriving at a conclusion not based on standardized theories but on careful observation followed by the search for the simplest explanation as to the why behind what’s been observed.

Jane Marple is a fragile looking old lady with twinkling blue eyes. She is not a busybody as much as a sleuth searching for answers. She has found a way to let her unsentimental understanding of human nature help her solve murders.

Agatha Christie (1890-1976), the creator of Miss Marple, was already a well-known author when the WWII broke out.  The summer of 1940, Germans had decided to bomb London to smithereens. The Blitz, as it was called, lasted for 57 days in a row with the Germans systematically dropping bombs on the capital of England. London’s 8 million inhabitants went underground like moles. It took people time to get used to the blare of sirens sending them off to shelters. But once it became the norm, people went to shelters prepared to spend time there. Books were a must as not only did they helped to pass time waiting for the raid to stop, it helped distract them. As a result, sales of books increased dramatically. Crime fiction was a favorite.

Agatha was homed schooled and, not having classmates to play with, she invented them. Agatha called her imaginary playmates “The Girls” and for each one of them she invented a physical look, a personality of her own. When playing with The Girls, as she called them, Agatha talked for herself and for them as well. This is probably where she learned to become so good at dialogue.

A writer of both novels and short stories, Agatha’s style was simple and easy to ready. She liked puzzles so the plot was more important that the murder itself. But her real interest was human nature. Every novel has at least one character who is going through a psychological struggle.

Much had been written about what had made her so successful. One theory was that, by keeping things simple via the use of plain language, short sentences, and much dialogue, she made it easier for the reader to follow the plot. Even experimenting neurolinguists had their say and said Agatha owed much of her success to repetition. If the author repeats words at least three times in a paragraph, the reader becomes more easily convinced.

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Related: My Friend Agatha + Miss Marple, my favorite profiler +

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Bedtime Stories for Adults

Posted on November 20, 2021 by Art for Housewives

Insomnia is still stalking me. I know, it’s all in my brain. Wide awake at 2 a.m. once again, I understood that I needed help in redirecting my thoughts. Maybe by reading.

Reading for just six minutes, according to some studies, can reduce stress related insomnia by at least 65% thus helping the body fall asleep. So what I need is a bedtime story–a bedtime story for grown-ups. A story that can distract me from myself.

My middle school Speech & Drama teacher, Ms. Bardwell, focused on getting her students to express themselves in a comprehensible way. One exercise she used was that of having the students learn a short story well enough to retell it in front of their classmates. The story I chose was Frank R. Stockton’s “The Lady or the Tiger?”

In a far-away land, a barbarous king used public trials and chance to decide a man’s fate. Once accused of a crime, the accused was taken to a public arena and told to choose between two doors in front of him. Behind one door was a lady and behind the other, a tiger. The accused must choose between the two doors. If the door he chooses has the lady behind it, it means he is innocent. However, he must marry the lady immediately whether or not he wants to. If he chooses the door with the tiger behind it, it means he’s guilty and, as punishment, must be devoured by the tiger.

When the king learns that the princess, his daughter, is in love with a handsome, young and caring man but who has zero social status and no money, the king has his daughter’s lover put on trial.

The princess, alarmed by what awaits her lover, is consumed by fear, jealousy, and doubt. She’s forever lost her lover regardless as to the door he will pick. Because he will either be eaten by the tiger or be forced to marry another woman.

The princess uses her connections in the palace to learn what’s behind each door. Once at the trial, the lover looks to the princess for help. Her eyes indicate the door on the right so he chooses it.

It’s a DIY ending as the reader is never told what’s behind the chosen door leaving the lover’s fate in the hands of the reader’s imagination.

“If you decide which it was—the lady or the tiger—you find out what kind of person you are yourself.”  Frank R. Stockton

Epilogue: Choice is a power.

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Related: “The Lady or The Tiger” by Frank R. Stockton pdf + The Lady, or the Tiger? Wikipedia + Short Stories: The Lady or the Tiger? by Frank Stockton online + Five Short Stories pdf + The world’s shortest stories on archive.org HERE + Chris Advansun Bedtime Stories to make you fall asleep, Sleep Stories

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The Aesthetics of Reading

Posted on November 18, 2021 by Art for Housewives

The Uffizi in Florence is a historical gallery containing masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance. One of the most visited paintings is that of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, a painting also famous for provoking Stendhal’s Syndrome. But the Uffizi is also the home of Botticelli’s St. Augustine in his Cell (1490). St. Augustine, a Manichaean, converted to Catholicism after coming in contact with the bishop of Milan, Ambrose.

In his “Confessions”, Augustine describes Ambrose as a small man with a neat beard and delicate hands. But what amazed Augustine the most was the time Ambrose dedicated to reading and, even more surprising, silent reading.

Initially, people read out loud. In fact, during the Middle Ages, carrels (cubicles) were used in monasteries to help minimize the cacophony created by all the monks reading out loud simultaneously. And that’s why Augustine was so surprised at Ambrose’s ability to read silently to himself. Surprised and irritated because, at the time, it was considered rude to read to yourself instead of aloud if other people were present.

Eventually reading became a more common practice and, as late as the 1700s, reading became a social activity. But with the spread of literacy, it became more and more common to read silently to one’s self. By the 1800s people began wanting to read alone. By silent reading, the reader was able to develop an intimacy with the written word and the meanings they tried to construct.

Psychologically, silent reading helps the reader create an interior space and thus emboldens them. It so emboldened women that by the late 19th cen. there was much concern about women reading in bed alone and risking having their thoughts provoked. Lying in bed to read was considered depraved. But silent reading in bed has many positive benefits.

The more you read, the easier reading becomes. Reading can improve one’s memory, lower the risk of Alzheimer’s, as well as increase brain connectivity. Reading can also lower the blood pressure and heart rate facilitating sleep.

Reading helps develop visualization skills—how can you not have images come to mind, for example, when this description given by Anne Bronte in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall:

“His heart was like a sensitive plant, that opens for a moment in the sunshine, but curls up and shrinks into itself at the slightest touch of the finger, or the lightest breath of wind.”

Visualization contributes to our everyday functioning. Being able to imagine scenarios, for example, helps us plan our future. Visualization can also influence our perception.

What I enjoy most about reading non-fiction is that it transports me elsewhere and helps me go beyond boundaries. It’s like taking a vacation from the self.

Reading increases empathy. Because imagining the scenes in which others find themselves is like “walking in their shoes” and helps us better understand why they did what they did.

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Related: The Material Culture of Literacy

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Back to Rome

Posted on October 17, 2021 by Art for Housewives

Once back in Rome and far away from Revolutionary France, I felt safe again. But that feeling quickly disappeared in 1798.

It was a February morning and I was climbing down the Spanish Steps when an overpowering noise like thunder made me quiver. Suddenly there were soldiers on horseback everywhere. I got knots in my stomach when I saw their uniforms—they were French troops. There was no doubt as to what was happening—Napoleon was taking over Rome. The same Napoleon who called himself a “son of the revolution”.

So, this is why they’d cut off the head of a queen? To put France in the hands of the power hungry Napoleon Bonaparte? And what did sequestrating Rome have to do with “liberté, égalité, and fraternité”?

Using military force, Napoleon’s General Berthier invaded the Papal States and took Pope Pius VI prisoner. Rome was then renamed the Roman Republic and annexed into France.

From Rome, General Berthier then went on to Egypt where he joined Napoleon in his efforts to take control of Ottoman territories. But Napoleon’s campaign there ended in defeat and he was forced to retreat. But not before looting many Egyptian antiquities such as the Rosetta Stone.

Ahhh, I know men so well. I’ve learned from my many suitors that the most dangerous men are those lacking in stature. A man who feels the need for power is a man who is basically insecure. And insecurity can make you do devious things.

Napoleon wasn’t interested in getting rid of the French monarchy. He just wanted to get them out of the way so the power could be his. Fixated with conquering the world, Napoleon took control of northern Italy and declared it a kingdom. Then, in 1805 in Milan’s cathedral, he crowned himself king. Napoleon had betrayed the very revolution he’d helped to create.

(from “TONI O, The Beholder” 2021 ©)

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