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Kanlaon

  • Penny in PLAGUE, a GONE novel

    July 3rd, 2022

    These characters — a whole slew of them — are as vivid and realized as can be. They talk like teenagers, they drink like teenagers, they swear like teenagers.

    p. 220:

    “You okay?” Caine asked Diana.

    “She’s perfect,” Penny said. “Perfect hair, perfect teeth, perfect skin. Plus she has legs that work, which is really cool.”

    “I’m out of here,” Caine said.

    “No,” Diana said. “Help me lift her back out.”

    “Yeah, Caine, don’t you want to see me naked? I’m still kind of hot. If you don’t mind my legs. Just don’t look at them. Because they’ll kind of make you sick.”

    Both of Penny’s ankles are broken. And because all the adults have disappeared, and that includes doctors and nurses, “there was no way to fix her legs . . . and nothing to treat the pain but Tylenol and Motrin.” All that’s holding Penny’s ankles together are “two pairs of socks.”

    How did both of Penny’s ankles get broken? Caine broke them. But Penny still has to live with Caine and his girlfriend, Diana. She doesn’t wash or go to the bathroom, which is why Diana finally decides to take matters into her own hands, and drags Penny to the tub (at least there is running water).

    Diana maneuvered to bear most of Penny’s weight and lower her bottom first into the hot water. Her twisted pipe-cleaner legs dragged, then followed their owner into the tub. Penny screamed. “Sorry,” Diana said.

    “Oh God, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts!”

    Did self mention that these books are listed as YA? But there is nothing YA about these characters. She can’t believe she never heard about these novels until she saw a stack of them on Charles’s desk on the lower floor of the London Review Bookshop, a month ago (There are nine books in the series). To her great surprise, the author turned out to be American. And the characters were American teenagers in self’s own home state of California. To think she had to go all the way to London — to the London Review Bookshop — to find out about them.

    Pretty good reading, this one. And the horror — the horror — is stellar.

    Stay tuned.

  • LOL Louise Penny!

    April 4th, 2021

    Self loves a writer with a good sense of humor.

    The following conversation made her laugh out loud:

    Setting: a Parisian parfumerie

    Reine-Marie, Inspector Armand Gamache’s wife, is trying to help her husband find a murderer. Since this is Paris, the men wear cologne. (Although, if you were a murderer, wouldn’t you prefer to skip this step. Just sayin’)

    “May I help you, madame?” a young man asked.

    “I’m trying to find a cologne. I smelled it recently but don’t know the name,” Reine-Marie said.

    Young Man: “Not to worry. I love this sort of thing. Now, are you sure it was a man’s cologne and not a woman’s?”

    Reine-Marie: “Absolutely.”

    Young Man: “Bon. That helps . . . Can you describe it? Was it earthy? Did it smell like moss or bark? Lots of men’s fragrances do. They think it’s masculine.”

    Reine-Marie: “No. It was lighter than that.”

    Young Man: “Fruity?”

    Reine-Marie: “Non.”

    Young Man: “Citrusy?”

    Reine-Marie: “Yes.”

    Young Man: “Good.”

    Reine-Marie: “Maybe a little woody.”

    Young Man: “Okay.”

    Reine-Marie: “With a kind of chemical-y smell?”

    Young Man: “Are you asking me?”

    Reine-Marie: “Telling?”

    Young Man: “It seems we’re looking for a lemon tree made out of plastic. It’s a good thing you’re not trying to sell fragrances, madame.”

  • From Grimdark to Louise Penny

    April 2nd, 2021

    Is quite a leap, self is sure dear blog readers will agree.

    Just this morning, we were in bloody Valbeck, but now we are in oh-so-refined Paris, in a gracious building in the Seventh Arrondissement . . .

    Hello, Book # 16 of the Inspector Armand Gamache series, All the Devils Are Here.

    Post-dinner, self curls up in bed with two books. One of these will be her next read. She’s indecisive like that.

    Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.

  • Short Stories, Plays, Process: An Interview With Playwright Penny Jackson

    January 11th, 2016

    Penny and self have been friends for a long, long, long time. Since before either of us were even married.

    Self remembers having Penny over to her little one-bedroom in Menlo Park. She met Thomas, Penny’s then-boyfriend, soon-to-be-husband.

    We were in the Stanford Creative Writing Program together. Penny lived in the City. She hitched rides to the writing workshops with Jeffrey Eugenides and his dog. They split on the gas.

    In recent years, Penny has been writing plays at a terrific rate. Her most recent production was during last fall’s Solo Festival in New York City.

    Self wrangled an interview out of Penny. No mean feat, as Penny is terrifically busy. Here are some of her answers to self’s questions:

    What attracts you to playwriting as a form as opposed to, say, writing a novel or a short story? What was the first genre you started writing?

    I first began writing stories when I was in college (Barnard). I am very comfortable with writing in short forms, and I have adapted three of my plays from three stories, All Alices, Louise in Charlestown, and Before, which have worked very well onstage. Although I wrote a novel, Becoming the Butlers (published by Bantam when Penny was a 20-something), I find writing a novel to be more challenging. Keeping track of the plot and characters over a length of time is difficult. Perhaps I like playwriting now because each scene is like a short story to me, with a beginning, middle, and end. That’s not to say I won’t return to novel writing. I still love fiction writing, and unlike playwriting, you have a sense of control you have to somewhat relinquish when you hand your play over to your director and actors.

    Are there conditions that need to be present before you feel you can write your best?

    Absolute quiet and no distractions. I joined The Writers Room, which provides a haven for writers. I wish sometimes that the Internet did not exist. When I was at MacDowell, there was no Internet, and I could really focus.

    What keeps you writing?

    The world. I am inspired all the time by the news and what I see in the city and hear from my friends. I write to be able to understand the complexities, the unfairness, and also the joys of life. If I didn’t write, I think I would go a bit crazy. I hear the same sentiment from actors: if they don’t act, they can’t handle the world. Right now I’m sick about the gun violence in our country, and writing about the issue really helped me with my sadness and disgust at our politicians.

    What is the biggest difference between playwriting now and playwriting when you were just starting out? Does it get easier? Why or why not?

    Playwriting is becoming somewhat easier. I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to work with several brilliant directors, actors, and dramaturges. I understand the form better now. What is not easier is finding a theatre to produce your plays if you are a female writer who is not a recent Yale graduate. Ageism and sexism very much exist in theatres, when I began and still today.

    Do you experiment with form and/or dialogue? Who or what inspires you?

    Because I’m trained in fiction writing, which is character-based, I always begin with people. An old lady drinking in a decrepit Irish bar. Two teenage girls talking to a mysterious older man at Starbucks. A drag queen waiting for his show in Las Vegas and having to talk to his daughter about marriage.

    I love dialogue. I write down snippets of dialogue I overhear in the streets of New York City all the time. And if you follow me on Facebook, you can frequently read about remarkable conversations with New York cab drivers.

    In your opinion, what is the best play ever written?

    I am a huge Eugene O’Neill fanatic, so I will say Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Family secrets and family guilt and pure poetic language. But of course, King Lear is top of the canon. King Lear howling about his dead daughter still takes my breath away.

    Which playwright has taught you the most about your craft?

    Rogelio Martinez is a wonderful playwright who has taught me so many important aspects about playwriting. I also love the Lark Development Center which gives you the space and time to try out new works in a safe environment.

    Did you have a mentor? Do you think playwrights need one?

    Yes, having a mentor is important. So many women directors have been my mentors: Joan Kane, Gloria Kadigan, and Shira-Lee Shalit are three tremendously talented women artists who inspire and instruct me. Writing is a very lonely business. You need a cheerleader!

    What’s the worst thing about being a playwright?

    That it’s just too damn expensive to produce a play in America. Unlike Europe, we don’t have government funding for theatre. The costs are astronomical. As a female playwright, I face other challenges. Walk down Broadway or The West End. Do you see any female playwrights on the marquee? My organization, The League of Professional Theatre Women, is working so hard for gender equality in theatre, but it’s a very long, frustrating, and seemingly endless battle.

     

     

  • Memory and Nostalgia: “Sutil” in The Threepenny Review

    August 16th, 2013

    The Threepenny Review, Fall 1995
    The Threepenny Review, Fall 1995

    Still one of self’s favorite pieces.  It begins:

    I was last home for my father’s funeral.  I say “home” even though I am an American citizen now, sworn in with a twenty-piece Navy band in the grand ballroom of the Marriott Hotel on Fourth and Mission in San Francisco.  Yet, “home” for me was always that other place, that city James Hamilton-Patterson describes as “a parody of the grimmer parts of Milwaukee.”

    I’ve never been to Milwaukee, so I can’t tell whether this is true or not, whether Manila really is like a parody of a city in the far north of this country (or at least what I imagine to be the far north, in a general region of the country I associate with heavy snow and Laverne and Shirley).  But that it is different from here, of course.  It is the differences I loved.

    When I was last home, which was for my father’s funeral, I slept with my mother in the big wooden four-poster in my parents’ bedroom.  This bed, handed down from my grandfather, was familiar and reassuring.  It was of heavy wood, a wood that doesn’t exist today in any Philippine forest, having been cut to extinction.  It may have been called “molave.”  I am not sure of this, as I am not sure of so many things about my culture, which I think I received very young, too young really to understand context or value.

    DSCN1211

    Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

  • Third Friday of May (2011): Sunny, Finally; Penny’s Play; Still Checking Submishmash

    May 20th, 2011

    It is a spectacular day, dear blog readers.  Self spent some time watering, hauling around the old green bucket.  All (or nearly all) of her roses are profusely blooming.  Finally!  Last year, she was ready to give up.  She single-handedly dug holes for each of her almost 20 roses —  the Betty Boop, the Chihuly, the climbing New Dawn, the climbing Don Juan, the Fourth of July, the Sheila’s Perfume, the Sunflare, the Winsome, and so forth and so on  —   nursed them through their early stages with lavish applications of water and fertilizer, and still, her garden refused to reward her efforts.  This year, she decided that she would not worry about her garden any longer.  And as soon as she made that decision, everything bloomed, all at once.

    Tonight is the start of the second (and closing) weekend of Penny’s play, “Booze in the Boroughs.”  Did self impart to dear blog readers how, as she sat in the audience exactly a week ago (the space was SRO), she relished every minute, and wished she’d succeeded in getting her nephew to come along?  (But, Friday night in New York, of course young men have plans!)  The action of the play begins in Central Park, winds through the Bronx, the Staten Island Ferry, Brooklyn, and Queens.  Various characters meet, share, ignite.  Here are the play particulars:  It is showing on Joria Mainstage, at 260 West 36th Street, on the 3rd Floor.  It is showing tonight, Saturday and Sunday.  Penny mentioned it might be taken to other places, one of these others being Seattle.

    Self was sorry that, during her last trip, she did not get to see:

    • Drew
    • the Metropolitan Museum  (She only got as far as the front steps, where she sat and listened to a band sing “Under the Boardwalk.”  But the day was simply too beautiful, self thought, to spend inside a museum.  She remained outside, and indulged in a peanut butter and fudge cupcake from a vendor called “Cakes and Shakes” —  to die for.  That was her lunch)
    • Minette
    • the Whitney (She usually makes it a point to visit this museum, every time she is in New York.  She actually likes it better than the Metropolitan.  It feels less overwhelming.  They had a fantastic Cy Twombly retrospective, a couple of years ago)

    She made an effort to contact Paolo Javier, who she read with years ago, at the Asian American Writers Workshop.  She e-mailed his publisher.  The man was so nice, he answered right away, and said he personally hadn’t seen Paolo in many years.  How do people lose each other?  Time is really a river …

    But, here she is, and tomorrow she and hubby are meeting up with son in Monterey, at a pet cemetery where we will finally lay poor Gracie to rest.

    Self decides she will e-mail that literary journal, the one that supposedly accepted her piece without a formal notification (She only found out when she logged into Submishmash and saw —  Green!  Her first green in a year!)

    She sent out a novella this morning (Deep breath)

    Zack is in New Orleans.  She promised him a lengua burrito from the place at the corner of Jefferson and El Camino, next time he is in her neck of the woods.  In the meantime, here’s something about his book from The Wily Filipino.  (Zack’s going to be in Europe and Morocco in June.  Self is of course dying of jealousy)

    Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

  • Wild Chase Scene, The Chalk Pit

    June 20th, 2022

    Self knows these Ruth Galloway posts of hers are much less popular than her posts of flowers. Nevertheless.

    Every Ruth Galloway book ends with a chase scene. Self should know, this is her ninth.

    Why does she keep reading? Why?

    Who knows? Maybe it’s those goodreads reviews that said there was a hook-up between the two Mains, that ends on a cliff-y.

    What? Another cliff-y? She can’t believe it. For the nth time, a cliff-y? But here she is.

    Also, if she had a penny for every time Ruth calls Nelson (although Ruth, mind you, always always always feels such trepidation for doing so, he being married to someone else after all) and he answers, “Ruth? What’s wrong? Is it Katie?” — ! She’s becoming quite fond of this way of answering the phone, though. (Where is that promised hook-up? There’s only 50 pages left!) In fact, if Nelson were ever to answer the phone without saying, “What’s wrong? Is it Katie?” self would be very disappointed.

    He has just said it again, unfortunately this time Ruth isn’t alone, she’s in the middle of a wild car chase with Nelson’s boss at the wheel, and they’re on speakerphone. To her credit, Nelson’s boss is very poker-faced. Or maybe she’s just British. Who knows.

    Nelson’s boss drives a Porsche. Wow, self did not realize that police superintendents made that much money! Also, this woman wears skinny jeans but can rugby-tackle like nobody’s business.

    Onward.

  • The Very Posh Randolph Smith and His Mum

    May 24th, 2022

    Still avidly reading A Room Full of Bones, #4 in Elly Griffiths’ smashing Ruth Galloway mysteries. Self brought it with her to read on the train to London today. DCI Nelson’s become deathly ill after a trip to Brighton with his wife, the beautiful and saintly Michelle. Whitcliffe, Nelson’s boss, is not that dumb: he makes Judy Johnson the SIO. This earns her the resentment of David Clough, who thought he should have been named SIO.

    Anyhoo, self loves the case: all to do with a lord who owns a stable of race horses and a museum, and his dysfunctional family: eldest daughter Tamsin, a London yuppie; only son Randolph, a handsome wastrel who reminds Judy of Robert Pattinson; and good-looking yet lost youngest child Caroline (who may or may not be appearing in future books; self thinks Caroline makes a good partner for Cathbad).

    Judy gets Clough to go with her when she pays a visit to the family, where they are entertained by Randolph (who surprisingly seems a lot less wan after SPOILER his illustrious father’s untimely death). What really kills is the conversation between Randolph and his mum Romilly (a noblewoman with the heart of a bleeding liberal, who would have thought) after Judy and Clough leave:

    “They’ve gone,” he says.

    “Was it Nelson? He was quite bright, I thought. Not your usual policeman.”

    “No, the woman. Judy something. And another man. Rather an oaf but good-looking, if you like that sort of thing.”

    — A Room Full of Bones, pp. 232 – 233

    Up to this point in the series, David Clough has been distinguished for three things: being a little thick, being utterly loyal to his boss Nelson, and being a junk food addict. Self imagined Clough as looking like John C. Reilly, that curly-haired actor who is in a lot of indie movies and has a vague resemblance to Will Ferrell. Now, Randolph the Robert Pattinson look-alike declares Clough is “good-looking”? So he is a bit like the Armand Gamache sidekick in the Louise Penny mysteries, Jean-Guy Beauvoir? Who IS an oaf, but is also handsome.

    Stay tuned.

  • Early Warning System

    July 11th, 2021

    So every day Elizabeth opens her diary to a date two weeks ahead and writes herself a question. And every day she answers a question she set herself two weeks ago.

    — The Thursday Murder Club, p. 87

    Dearest Mum had her own strategy: she had a huge calendar, and different colored marking pens. Gradually, self noticed that she began spending more and more time poring over it. Could have been as far back as 15 years ago. That must have been when she was just in her late 60s.

    Dearest Mum came to visit self in California and started talking about this wonderful restaurant in Half Moon Bay called Gibraltar, a place she said she had just discovered. Self was quiet. Dearest Mum looked over. “What? I’ve told you this story before,” she said, looking for the first time in her life very unnerved.

    “No. I was the one who took you to that restaurant. A friend in Half Moon Bay told me about it.”

    So, the dementia started a long time ago. Could even have been as far back as 20 years ago. But Dearest Mum had this habit of being very gay and charming. If anyone noticed, they didn’t say a word.

    Self is hugely enjoying The Thursday Murder Club.

    Most of the mysteries she has read this year have been ace:

    • Find You First, by Linwood Barclay
    • One Fatal Flaw, by Anne Perry
    • All the Devils are Here, by Louise Penny
    • Eddie’s Boy, by Thomas Perry

    Stay cool, dear blog readers. Stay cool.

  • Voice: The Ten Thousand Doors of January

    May 2nd, 2021

    Blazed through The Bone Ships in the wee hours. Whoa, self did not realize there was actual intimacy between two characters? Anyhoo, she’s just begun The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow, a writer she has never read before.

    All the books she’s read so far this year are by writers she’s never read before. Except for Louise Penny. Self has read an early Inspector Gamache, but had no memory of Jean-Guy Beauvoir, go figure!

    At seven, I’d spent considerably more time with Mr. Locke than with my own biological father, and insofar as it was possible to love someone so naturally comfortable in three-piece suits, I loved him.

    As was his custom, Mr. Locke had taken rooms for us in the nicest establishment available; in Kentucky, that translated to a sprawling pinewood hotel on the edge of the Mississippi, clearly built by someone who wanted to open a grand hotel but hadn’t ever met one in real life.

    — The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow, p. 5

    Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.

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