Monday, November 28, 2005
The Kite Runner and Other SagasIt's unseasonably warm today, with the sun shining bright and the air
not crisp or cold at all but rather sweet and breezy, a mid-May day,
perhaps, but not a late November one. Tonight it's supposed to drop 40
degrees, which may sound impossible if you've never been to Chicago
where the weather can turn from tropical to arctic with a wind change.
I've had an excellent mail day: the check from NPR came, and an incredible postcard drawing from Doc. How lucky I am! 5:32:57 PM | It's been days since I've written, in part because of the holiday (wasn't that fun!) but also because of my ongoing ceiling saga, soon to be remedied when my contractor tears apart the existing one tomorrow morning. My neighbor will not even let me buy her carpets, and so here we are. I am going to propose to the board that new rules and regulations are adopted that will force her to buy some of her own (and make her subject to fines if she continues to come home at 3, 4, 5 in the morning making a racket like she did again Saturday night), though meanwhile I will spend thousands to have my ceiling soundproofed as much as it can be, which admittedly isn't much because it really needs to happen on her end. Six years with no problems and now this. Got to love city living! Pero basta. I've had it with the ceiling, the ceiling, the ceiling, as I'm sure everyone who knows me has too. Enough already! Thanksgiving I spent at my mom's with two of our friends who own the gallery where my mother is represented. We had a traditional turkey, etc. meal and around dessert time my friends Molly and Eric came by with their darling son Etienne. It was so good to see them, to hear their stories. And Etienne! He's such a doll. Though he's only sixteen months he talks up a storm and can go up and down stairs on his own. On Saturday I saw them again. I took them to a couple of south side neighborhoods -- Pilsen and Bridgeport -- then we went to my friends' house for the most delicious sweet potato pie I've ever had (and that's the truth, Maria!). It was more fun than I've had in months. S has been out of the bush for the past few days so we've talked on the phone several times. He had the hardest, most dangerous mission of his deployment: firefights, rockets, two of his soldiers nearly killed. I miss him so much and he's desperate to come home. We're down to just 80 more days. He's been living in extremely primitive conditions (no water, no electricity, etc.) that has only recently gotten better because of his and his partner's initiatives. They had the water pump repaired and purchased a new water heater (the old one held only 10 gallons). Right now he is back with the special forces for a few days, so he can email and call unlike at his new base. He's ready to be done with it all and I'm ready too. It will be great to have him home again. The past couple of days I read "The Kite Runner" because too many people had told me I should. It's a compelling story, but it is way too contrived, and the writing is, frankly, rather pedestrian. Over and over I found myself rolling my eyes, letting out a heavy sigh because what came next was exactly what I had expected to come next and the telling of it was so plain. The book is not subtle. The emotions are placed right on the page, out in the open, requiring absolutely no work at all. No passages jumped out at me and held me for minutes, even longer, as passages in my favorite books do. Several times the narrator talked about how his writing teachers admonished the use of cliches but how he liked them and therefore used them: "Here is another cliche my creative writing teacher would have scoffed at; like father, like son. But it was true, wasn't it?" Why even include such lines? Why not let us see through the action and beauty of the prose that yes, the father and son were similar, rather than telling it to us? And then why tell it to us in the frame of cliche? I have no doubt "Kite Runner" will be made into a film and unless they hire a know-nothing director the film will be better than the book. Am I the only one who feels this way? I wonder because the book received excellent reviews and so far everyone I know who read it loved it. Soy como un chile verde, llorona, picante pero sabroso, and that's just the way it is. I purchased two excellent CDs this weekend: Chavela Vargas' "Sentimiento de Mexico" and Corey Harris' "Daily Bread." If I could, I'd sprinkle some of these beautiful songs right here on my blog so everyone could hear them. So that's it. All caught up. I hope to get back in the frequent posting rhythm this week. More to come! 
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Last update: 12/1/05; 10:36:46 PM .
