It’s dry and hot and smoky out there today. Is it just me, or are summers becoming less enjoyable as the climate is fiercer and more dangerous? I’m huddled indoors today in the cool as I writing this.
August’s Installment of Watermarked
I’ve posted the eighth installment of my short story collection here. This is the story that started the whole project.
I was in a workshop run by Traci Skuce and came up with the characters, the two sisters, Brianna and Stéphanie. I hardly knew anything about writing but stumbled on anyway. On the advice of my writing partner at the workshop and poet, Cornelia Hoogland, I even did some research—visiting a recreational vehicle sales lot and inspecting the interiors of various motor homes. That’s the fun about writing fiction: learning the details about places and things that will populate your story.
On Nan’s last wish road trip to Myrtle Beach, Brianna and Stéphanie learn of the illegitimate baby Nan gave up at birth, a loss which diminished her ability to love Claire adequately. Stéphanie challenges Brianna’s dominant role.
What I’m reading
I’m reading The Daffodil Days by Helen Bain, a tender, detailed portrait of the last months of the life of the poet Sylvia Plath, from July 1961 to December 1962. Her story is told from the perspectives of those around her in reverse chronological order. It’s the richness of details of life in early 1960’s England, where I lived as a child, that speak to me. That cold winter that started in December 1962. The clothing. The food. The way men and women were expected to behave.
Sylvia Plath was four years younger than my mother and “died” in February 1963 at age thirty. We’ve all heard the story. Gaslit by her husband the poet Ted Hughes, she died from cellular suffocation—carbon monoxide poisoning—after putting her head in a gas oven. Her children, Frieda, two years old and Nicholas, nine months old, were in another room in her apartment. Interestingly, Hugh’s “subsequent” romantic partner, Assia Wevill, also committed suicide after killing her child.
Oh Ted. Losing two partners to suicide? Careless?
The Odyssey – 2026 style
It’s hard to close without a comment about Christopher Nolen’s interpretation of The Odyssey. I watched it in the large reclining seats at the local theatre. (not IMAX) Vivid visual portrayals of violence distress me. My eyes were squeezed shut for more than a few moments. The sound track is a wonderful guide of when it is suitable to open them.
I haven’t read Emily Wilson’s 2017 translation. It’s now available in a critical edition from Norton. There is also an audio version available read by Claire Danes. There’s a find.
Emily Wilson’s article commenting on the movie caused a a bit of a furor.
“Many of the film’s implicit values directly contradict those of Homer’s poem.
Deception, warmongering, extramarital sex, cruelty to animals, abusing women and yearning for honour – all perfectly fine in the world of Homer – are, in this version, very bad.”
So a hyperbolic interpretation? I’m of the school where any attention to the classics is better than none. (as long as I can close my eyes when necessary)
I hope you enjoy the rest of the summer. For me, warmer swimming in the lake and the sea. Fresh corn and peaches. Light kit on the road bike. What are you doing?
Thanks for reading and I look forward to your comments.
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