I have managed to fill up sixty pages of a new exercise book. I now have in my personal anthology – over 600 poems by some 300 poets. 802 pages written so far. I think that this proves, if proof were needed, that I do not take my vocation lightly.
– J.A. Baker
Baker’s contagious enthusiasm. A young writer, ambitious, looking to master his craft. Not sure where to turn, begins by copying.
The Green Room is like a letter written by hand. If you write by hand it will not be perfect, the writing may perhaps be trembly, but it will be you, your writing. The typewriter is something different. I don’t mean any comparison running down actors, because there are Olivettis with marvelous type, Remingotons which have a lot of personality, and Japy portables. Myself, I adore typewriters!
– François Truffaut
Here Truffaut contends and concedes the beauty of both handwriting and typing. A decade or so before word processors appeared on the scene.
Originally captured in an interview by Daniele Heymann and Catherine Laporte, L’Express, March 13, 1978,
Truffaut, François. Truffaut by Truffaut. United States: Abrams, 1987. pg 160
Every weekday she went doggedly off to work, typically wearing her father’s tweed jacket over smocks and full skirts and sensible flat shoes, her hair bushy and unkempt (no hairdressers’ bills were possible), with no make-up. But also, all the time, she wanted beauty and art and fine language and ideas, listened to the Third Programme on the radio constantly (they had no gramophone), watched television avidly from 1965 onwards, went to art galleries and cinemas and the Old Vic and to pottery classes, made ceramics, drew Christmas cards, studied Spanish and Russian, read incessantly and widely, and travelled as much as she could inside and outside England. Her spirit, her will, her appetite for life, her interests, her energy were vital and powerful.
– Hermione Lee
This coming after her leaky house boat sank, and her husband nearly died. Penelope Fitzgerald kept her interests close, gave them oxygen. Despite near poverty, she kept going.
Keep going.
Lee, Hermione. Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life. United States, Alfred A. Knopf, 2014. pg 161,162
At the end of the year, deep in mid-winter, night falls early in Copenhagen. Along with Rosenborggade, lamplight and firelight and candlelight fill the upper windows by four o’clock. Passers-by who brave the cold streets glimpse Christmas trees in glowing rooms, hear snatches of songs and children’s laughter. Kierkegaard’s rooms are quiet, and he is alone. ‘1848 has raised me to another level,’ he writes in his journal: ‘it has shattered me religiously; God has run me ragged.’
How quickly we forget that Christmas day is the first day of Christmas.
Also, Christmas trees in glowing rooms is Christmas maxxing.
An observations on Clare’s style and prose. Love the phrase “snatches of songs.” The word “snatches” here is part verb, part noun. Delightful.
Carlisle, Clare. Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard. United States, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020. pg180
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!
Scrooge learned.
Dickens knew.
May we all learn to keep Christmas well.
Thank you for a great year everyone, and Merry Christmas.
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol: And Other Christmas Books. United States, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011. pg85
An Italian, born in Palermo, he brought to Hollywood the secrets of the commedia into the deepest dimensions of desperate human situations (I have often wept during the tragic moments of Capra’s comedies) before he reestablished a balance and brought off the miracle that let us leave the theater with a renewed confidence of life.
– François Truffaut
Spot on Truffaut. Spot on.
Truffaut called Capra “the good doctor”.
Tonight, whether you watch It’s a Wonderful Life, or You Can’t Take it With You, you will leave your sofa (or even better, the theater) heartbroken. Heartbroken but encouraged.
It’s what Frank Capra does.
Merry Christmas Eve.
As read from François Truffaut’s essay Frank Capara, The Healer.
Truffaut, F. (1978). The Films in My Life. United Kingdom: Simon and Schuster. pg69
With sands that will bear your enemies' boats, But suck them up to th'topmast. A kind of conquest Caesar made here, but made not here his brag Of 'came and saw and overcame'. With shame - The first that ever touched him - he was carried From off our coast, twice beaten, and his shipping, Poor ignorant baubles, on our terrible seas Like eggshells moved upon their surges, cracked As easily 'gainst our rocks. For joy whereof, The fame Cassibelan, who was once at point - O giglot Fortune! - to master Caesar's sword, Made Lud's town with rejoicing fires bright, And Britons strut with courage. - Queen
Cymbeline is often overlooked. It’s a romance, but not a popular one. Denzel Washington isn’t playing Cymbeline in a black and white film adaptation. Tim Chalamet isn’t appearing as Posthumus on Broadway.
There are plenty of “what’s going on here?” passages in Cymbeline, but then, like above, there are sublime bits of oration.
Dan’s mother being one of the rare mother’s who follows through on the military school threat:
COWEN: What did you learn from your time as a Royal Canadian Army cadet?
WANG: I think the trite answer is just a lot of discipline. I think that I was a bad kid growing up. I was absolutely not a good child, and I’ll be the first to admit that.
COWEN: What does that mean concretely?
WANG: Ottawa is not only the federal capital of Canada, but it is also the drug capital of Canada. It is very easy to fall into a mischievous crowd when you’re over there. I was playing hooky from school a little bit too much, and running off, and trying to do whatever I found fun and not going to school. I never had good grades growing up. To this day, I will admit that I was academically challenged.
I always just enjoyed taking a book to read in the park or something, rather than sitting in class. My main issue was that I played hooky a little bit too much, raised the ire of my parents. My parents threatened to give me to the army, and I laughed that off, because no parents ever do that. Then, my mom did it. She gave me to the Royal Canadian Army cadets, and they straightened me out.
Taking the opportunity seriously and reconceptualizing tough tasks:
I was a very good army cadet. I was awarded recruit of the year. I was the fastest person in my regiment to be promoted to corporal. I was in the marching band, and I did excellent drill as well. Something I take away from some of the commanding officers whom I grew close to, they would tell me that the ethic of the army was that whatever you imagine is the most difficult thing, you should simply reconceptualize it as the easiest thing, and then you just do it. It turned out to have been a fairly robust lesson.
and writing exercises for the curious and ambitious:
COWEN: How did you learn how to write so well?
WANG: I have always grown up loving to read. My grandfather bought so many books for me, first picture books that had text underneath. Then, my mother also encouraged a reading habit. We had so many books growing up. I think that if I were thinking about writing, first and foremost, I pay attention to cadences. I think about beat. I think about the musicality of the effect.
I think that it is really, really valuable to just have a sense of how the words sound before it falls out of your pen. I have a sense of practice. When I was a musician, every so often I would take some time when I was still a college student to just go to the music library, check out some scores. I did this with a Mahler symphony as well as some Mozart symphonies, to just simply copy out the scores, and just write it all out.
I did this exercise also when I was early in my writing. I would just take a New Yorker article that I really liked, and simply rewrite the entire thing. When you engage in that sort of exercise, you really have a sense of what the composer was thinking when he was plotting out the harmonies. When you do that with a really good piece of writing, whether that’s a New Yorker article, or a really good book, you start having a sense of the choices that the author was making in terms of syntax, in terms of sentence length, in terms of the word choices, and being in a position to make those sorts of choices, I think, is very valuable.
Floodlights and Goalposts 