It's My Dog's World: I Just Live In It

All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this book in two big gulps yesterday. I heard Jami interviewed on the radio a few weeks ago, and I came in in the middle of the interview, and wondered just who the hell was this woman (in a good way)? She knew that she wanted to be a writer, she protected that with all her might. She considered herself blessed to know that. Taraji P. Henson recently said, "I am an artist to the bone."

Andrea Bern...is not that. An artist who has stopped making art (except for a project which I will NOT spoil for you), with a pays-the-bills but numbing job, an apartment in gentrifying Brooklyn. Random guys. Booze. And at almost 40, and single, she is not really "All Grown Up." Her activist feminist mother, long-widowed, cannot help herself from sending her one of those Why Are You Still Single books that "everyone" is reading. Everyone meaning: straight unmarried white ladies. The structure of the book is fascinating: mostly told in the first person, one striking bit in the second person, certain stories reflected and repeated. The timeline slightly out of joint. Like Andrea.

But Andrea is not likable. (This has come up in at least two reviews of read of the book--thankfully, after I read it.) She is not Sex and the City likable, and she is too old to be a problematic Girls' girl. She judges people hard, she lets down her family, she blows off her therapist, she drinks, she has sex with whomever. She does her work on autopilot. (She does love her food, though--the descriptions of the meals are terrific.) There are a couple of huge wounds to her soul, slowly revealed, but they arrive late in the book, and don't necessary point to the traditional "now I understand, now I am going to heal" narrative.

Andrea is a mess when we meet her. She quite crucially becomes a little less of a mess by the end of the book. The end.

But. See. This is why the book haunts me: because Attenberg pulls me directly into Andrea's mind and heart...and at the same time, challenges us with the narrative. From the opening pages, "All Grown Up" makes it clear that it is NOT going to be a self-improvement book, it is NOT going to be a rom-com, whatever manic pixie dream girl who now wants to play almost 40 and serious is NOT gonna want to be Andrea. And close to the end of the book, it throws down the narrative gauntlet again, by mocking yet another genre of self-help: the Meaningful Death book, which "everyone" is reading for another reason. Life defies the easy narrative structure. So does this book. So does Andrea Bern.

I will talk gender. Humbert Humbert is not a likable guy, but we come along for the stomach-churning ride. Mr. Ripley's talent? Is murder. And people cannot stop making movies about him. I believe we are still holding our female protagonists to a higher standard of behavior. Andrea's crimes are minor, and they are mostly committed against herself. She does not need to be forgiven, or improved. And I will never forget her.

View all my reviews

Elena Ferrante is Elena Ferrante. Period.

 

Nope, I am not going to link to the loathsome article that "outs" Elena Ferrante. I am not going to read it, either. She asked for privacy and anonymity. She committed no crime. She wrote, I hope will write, spectacular books. That is enough for me. That was the contract she created, and her readers agreed to it.

There is so much I could say about this: how irresponsible the New York Review of Books for pursuing this, how gendered this feels to me. Doxxing comes to an august literary publication. I have used a pseudonym on occasion. I have used my first initial when submitting a sci-fi screenplay to companies and competitions. I am sure you can talk to many many writers, particularly women, gender non-conforming who have made similar choices. We have many reasons for it. Ask us!

This is a bad business.

We love you, Hoboken Terminal. Once, you even stood in for Paris

Lying Down With the Dogs with Casper Beds

 

 

Credit: Casper Beds. Dog: Shelly. Not our dog. But this is a very cute dog about the size of our dog. And this is a medium. 

 

Casper, the disruptive bed company known for their uniquely designed mattress (and sponsors of one of my favorite podcasts, Politically Reactive with W. Kamau Bell and Hari Kondabolu), has gone low. How low? Well, they've gone to the dogs. In three sizes.

I'm talking about dog beds, baby.

Extensively dog-tested. With science and  research and stuff.

At least two reviews I've seen suggest that they are cat-approved, too.  (To which our dog Mavis would say, WTF, Fluffy? But I am all for interspecies love.) 

Casper says:  "Engineered by the same team behind the Casper mattress, our durable dog mattress is a perfect sleep environment designed around dog behavior."

Okay, here's what that means in our house: 

That frenzied call of the wild scratching thing that Mavis does around 9 p.m., where she digs as if she's buried a meaty bone DEEP IN THE RECESSES OF THE EARTH AND SHE WILL DIE IF SHE DOESN'T FIND IT?   

The bed says it can handle it.  

Casper says: "The supportive foam bolsters of the mattress create a safe space for dogs to lay their heads — literally and figuratively." (It makes the bed look like a rectangular dog nest.) 

What I hope that means in our house: we will no longer be spending up to 15 minutes each night gathering assorted pillows, blankets, and towels until Princess Mavis gets in just the right Dog Croissant™ shape to sleep.  And then she leaves our bed to find someplace else to hang. 

Okay, I admit it:  I do wonder about the colors--a restful blue, a neutral sand, an elegant gray. They are beautiful (I want the blue!).  But they look on the light side. We are urban dwellers. Mavis is a bringer of dirt. The bed cover comes off, and is washable.  But.

On the other hand, Casper and The Dodo just donated dog beds to our great local animal shelter, Animal Haven.  That's a wonderful thing to do. Both of the dogs we rescued, I kid you not, came to us seriously sleep deprived. Because even in the nicest shelter, it's hard to feel at ease enough to sleep.  And I am sure Animal Haven pooches will provide Casper with some very on-the-ground feedback. 

And Casper says you can keep the bed for 1000 nights, and still return it.  I'm willing to take that offer. By that time, Mavis may have actually found her Magic Bone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hamilton, Lin-Manuel, and Bill de Blasio. And me

At pretty much the very last minute, I found out that #Ham4Ham--the lottery for 10 dollar tickets to the hit musical Hamilton--was returning to the theater where the show is.  For the last few months, because of the insane crowds, the lottery has purely been online.  Before that, hundreds of people would jam the sidewalks and the streets in the hope of getting one or two of the 21 tickets they offer every lottery.  And at a couple of the lotteries each week, there would be a mini-performance--sometimes some of the cast, or folks from other Broadway show, or, memorably, the young cast of the musical FUN HOME enacting all eight of the Hamilton kids. 

 

Perhaps the first time the word "cholera" has been used in a rap.

 

Today was a little different.  It was Lin-Manuel and the mayor of New York, the very tall Bill de Blasio plus quite a few police officers, keeping things moving on W. 46th Street.  And the hundreds of hopefuls, all of us wanting to be in The Room Where It Happens. The mayor thanked Lin-Manuel in English and Spanish (even translating a line from the play into Spanish), and most of us didn't win tickets, but we all won. Because New York, as Hamilton learned, is a place where you can be reborn. 

 

 

 

Thank you Officers Sasso and Li for doing such a great job (along with your fellow #nypd officers) for overseeing today's #ham4ham lottery. How lucky we are to be alive right now! You folks are stars every day.

A photo posted by @hobokenmartha on Apr 6, 2016 at 10:18am PDT

Sunday thoughts, sexy division

Let us for a moment think on this: that when he was younger, Oliver Sacks was motorcycle hotness.

 

The power of telling a painful story in a culture that tells people to shut up

The New York Times published an essay from Jenny Wilkinson, who writes about her experience both with the legal system and a university panel following her sexual assault on a college campus. This happened almost 20 years ago.  The tag line reads: 

After being attacked by a fellow student, I won my case before a university panel. But winning wasn’t really winning.

I am sharing this not because I agree with all the writer's conclusions, but because it has occurred to me, over and over again, but especially lately, that there are lots of good, kind people who don't know what a rape survivor goes through in order to prosecute her attacker. This is in part because they never hear anyone they know talk about their rape. It becomes too easy to imagine you don't know anyone who survived a rape; it's something that happens on Law and Order.

And rape survivors have very good reasons for not talking about what they went through: the stigma remains profound. The onus remains on the survivor to "translate" for the listener. I am grateful to Jenny Wilkinson for providing some of this translation. And I long for a day when this will no longer be necessary.

As seen in Jersey City: 2 ladies, 2 pooches

Just another day in beautiful Jersey City. These colorful ladies, left to right, are Liz and Venus.  The dignifed gentleman dog on the left is Remington (10), and the golden/color bombed lady dog on the left is Duchess. She is SIXTEEN YEARS OLD. 

 

Reminders

Not in agreement with all of these. But mostly, yes. 

 

 

The Old Coot (me) rants about you soft kids (yes, you, John Oliver) and your Port Authority complaints

 

The renewed focus on the Port Authority, specifically the Port Authority building in midtown Manhattan, was probably set off partly by the ongoing shenanigans of folks in and around the Port Authority and the brilliant John Oliver. Who makes some points (really, Port Authority?-ceasing and desisting Fishs Eddy?), but is, in fact, a young whippersnapper in terms of NYC whinging.  

As is WNYC.

Yeah, the Port Authority is pretty terrible, but it is far from Hell. And it is far from where it was in the 80s. Maybe that's why I have trouble with these headlines. I try not to say this too often, but if you didn't visit/live in NYC inthe 1970s and 80s, you don't really have a clue about how hellish public spaces could get. Sometimes I just sit in Bryant Park and rub my eyes with my fists like a little kid: am I dreaming? Are the Greenmarket vendors at Union Square all actors? Did Will Smith just buy Washington Square Park and turn it into a movie set? Is this real life? 

I have big fantasies about taking a crew of my favorite civic hackers in there, and just data/physically improve the building in a long weekend. Cardboard signs! Putting somebody on the second floor to answer questions! QR codes people could scan to get more information! Tweaks! Just to give a tiny vision of what the Port Authority could be doing NOW. 

Here's what the Port Authority also is: There's a great blood donation center there (don't mock, there is) with cheerful staff and cheerful donors. And as crazy as their Au Bon Pain can be at commuter rush times, their wi-fi has been a life saver when I've had to do a quick online meeting. I've had a wonderful conversation with a postal worker (yes, there's a post office there, too) about Shirley Chisholm. And if you slow down, notice the rotating art gallery on the first floor of the south building, which has included art by two artists on the autism spectrum for the past two years. 

There are TWO. FRIGGING. BOOKSTORES. 

Still, kudos to the lovely funny Adam Wade for brightening up this article. You are the best. http://www.wnyc.org/story/surviving-port-authority-bus-termnal/