The Young Picasso

So I finished that big biography of Picasso last night, it ends right before he painted the above at 26. Although I did feel the book was a bit tedious in all the details of minor figures who came and went in the space of a paragraph, I also felt awe at the speed with which Picasso worked through an idea, conquered it and moved on. Blink and you miss the Rose Period or the Blue Period. You can see other artists near Picasso being left behind still puttering around with something he left years ago. It seems he always had that single minded purpose to create art, everything else in his life is incidental.
It was fun to hear of some of the art you have to peer at in a crowd being so accessible in the early 1900's. A friend of Picasso, no one special or rich, had a Gauguin hanging in his living room that Picasso used to go visit frequently. A lot of Picasso's early work is lost since he had to paint it over because he couldn't afford new canvases. The level of his poverty was a surprise fror me but even in those days grown up sons apparently moved back in with their parents and brought their dirty laundry home. Some things never change.
I plan on reading the next 2 volumes.

Picasso

With the pile next to my bed teetering close to collapse I thought it was time to eliminate the fattest offender so I'm reading the Picasso biography by John Richardson. Not exactly a page turner. And I'm only half way through it but I am sorry that the photos are not in color---black and white doesn't do justice to the Blue Period and I think to tell the story visually you need that progression of color in the work. Richardson seems to be a bit petty in the begining hinting that Picasso rather than acknowledging his juvenalia instead destroyed it all to preserve the myth that he sprang fully formed as an artist from the head of his very mediocre artist father.
But it reads a bit like a social diary recounting names of everyone he ever crossed paths with and all his addresses and mistresses, most of them described by Richardson as "Cecilia, a whore, Rosita, a whore...".
It's fun to read about Picasso's supersticions about age, he would never let old people sleep in his house in case it rubbed off. So when an 80 year old bosom friend visits, the 80 year old Picasso makes him stay in a hotel just in case death enters the house. Apparently he would also steal his son's clothes and keep his toys near him in case "the youthfulness might still cling to them" and rejuvenate him . I have taken to carrying a couple of Liv's Hamtaro's in my pockets. I'll get back to you on the results.

Why Did I Read This?

Because I got it at the best damm booksale in North America...that's why! Marblehead Public Library for some reason has a fantastic booksale every 3 months or so. It is a blood sport however with agressive dealers elbowing aside the more timid or...bookish customers. I have gotten some great books there though. A week or so though ago I got confused and thought the booksale was on and parked in front of the library right at 10 am on the dot. I marched boldly downstairs and towards the sale room armed with steel nerves, sharp elbows and two tote bags. A grey haired woman looked at me questioningly and I saw no one else was there....it turns out they had booked the room for a memorial service (perhaps for a timid book consumer from last quarter's sale?) and the book sale was actually not until the next month. Whoops.
The book, instantly forgetable, had charm only that it reminded me faintly of my mother since the author was in the same era as she, with gardenia corsages and a newsy sort of voice. Don't bother though. But go to the booksale. It's at the end of this month. Or maybe that'll be my memorial service...

Zippy Redeux

The second book wasn't as good. She Got Up Off the Couch, although interesting in a 'Gee I wonder what happened after' way, felt more like everyone had showed up at her readings for Zippy who she would have trashed and she felt like she had to say how nice they were. So if felt much less honest. Alas.

Zippy

A few days ago I read a memoir called A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel. I would like to think I discovered this book but sadly it is not so. Although not an Oprah pick it was Today Show Bookgroup Choice, whatever that is, I'm sure it's something lesser than Oprah but bigger than me. Anyway the author tells of growing up in a tiny town of 300 people in Indiana and although it all sounds very cute it has an edge to it that saves it. It is told through the eyes of a child and so the depressed mother sitting on the couch for days on end eating pork rinds and reading science fiction is not depressed or wondered about, but just there and if you want a hug you go snuggle up to her on the couch among the pork rind crumbs and she absently hugs you never taking her eyes off the book. The father who leaves guns all over the house, who gambles and drinks heavily is still adored, unquestioned and unjudged. Zippy is a very active, passionate little girl and the writing is very funny about pet chickens, school friends, neighbors and attending Quaker church.
There is more going on but like a child you only see what's at your own level. It reminds me of Lyra in the Golden Compass. Philip Pullman said the Dark Materials trilogy echoed a child's waking into adolescence. The first book is still set firmly in childhood, Lyra still selfish and self absorbed, the world goes only as far as she can see. Then in the second there is Will and the begining of life beyond Lyra and in the final Amber Spyglass it's the whole world, ripped open and exposed and huge. I just got Haven Kimmel's second book, a sequel She Got Up Off the Couch and in it Zippy's a little older and the parents are seen in a different light. The dysfunction only hinted at in the first book is much more apparent. The father's agressiveness and anger and the mother's neglect are acknowledged finally and you begin to filter all the old stories through a new lense. It reminds you of how accepting and loving children are.
Even if I'm not Oprah or the Today show I recommend them.

The Movie-fication of Lady Chatterley

I just saw and loved the fairly new French version of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley. It was very slow and plodding in the way I love. The sex was frank (and not so plodding in the way I love) but also somehow completely romantic and touching. It was a beautiful movie.

After seeing it I immediately regretted the fact that I have been denied the romance of a crippled husband and a gameskeeper to frolic in the woods with. I wondered if Penelope the guinea pig perhaps needed a gameskeeper and decided most probably the gameskeeper career is going the way of the newspaper reporter. Anyone any good is either working at the NYT or minding large animals in Kenya. I decided not to put an ad on Craigslist for a gameskeeper.

I scrapped the crippled husband idea since in this day and age he would want all sorts of ramps and handicapped access devices installed in the house. But I clung to the gameskeeper idea.How could I find an equivalent gameskeeper-like person in my life to frolic with on the Swampscott Commons? The closest I got to it was maybe the owner of the gas station who is quite handsome and there is the added benefit of perhaps a little discount on my gas. (I know they never showed it in Lady Chatterley but I'm sure she got quite a few free pheasants and rabbits out of the deal.) The distance from my house to the gas station is pretty much the equivalent between that of her estate and the gameskeeper's cottage, however not as scenic. I am sure the gas station man will be a little shocked when I traipse down the road towards him in my nightie with a gas can, but no doubt he'll be game in the end.

Jim the Dandy

A few years ago I read Jim the Boy by Tony Earley which was a very quiet gentle book about---you guessed it!---- a boy named Jim. Now he's a young man in The Blue Star. Not as memorable this time but still a quiet and gentle book about good people, something you would feel confident in giving an elderly lady as a present.
Unless your maiden aunt is reading Sebastian Horsley's Dandy in the Underworld which I just read about today in the NYT. A rather racy British memoir about heroine, crack and prostitution from the sounds of it by a very dashing looking young man. Although with the way memoirists are being unmasked lately and Mr Horsley being "repeatedly coy about what is real and what is contrived" it may be that we discover him next week sipping tea in a worn cardigan and reading Tony Earley!