Saturday Story Hour: Mavis Gallant

With "Saturday Story Hour," Fosco provides you with some of his favorite selections from the world of contemporary short fiction.

Fosco is going to stretch the meaning of the word "contemporary" today, in order to bring you an absolutely beautiful story from the Canadian expatriate Mavis Gallant. Mavis Gallant is one of those short story writers who is beloved by other short story writers, but who is much less well-known by the reading public at large. As a Canadian, she is also somewhat in the shadow of Alice Munro (as if Canada were allowed to have only one contemporary master of the short story...). She was born in Montreal in 1922 and has lived in Paris since the 1950s.

The story we're reading today is an absolute jewel. It's called "The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street." It was originally published in The New Yorker in 1963 (hence the stretching of the term "contemporary"). If you are a New Yorker subscriber, you can access the story here. If you are not a New Yorker subscriber, do not fear: Fosco has procured the story as a .pdf file. You may download it here. It can be opened by any .pdf reader (including Acrobat).

The couple at the center of "The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street" are Peter and Sheilah Frazier. They are living the good life, traveling the globe, depending on the generosity of their friends and families--all the while, dragging two dull children behind them. They are charming and they are hapless. Neither of them wants to grow up, to become responsible adults. They wear silk kimonos from Hong Kong at breakfast and consider their one great fortune to be Sheilah's Balenciaga gown. If you think these people sound horrible, well you're right; but they are also sympathetic and psychologically nuanced. As they move from absurd scheme to absurd scheme, you can't help rooting for them: after all, the alternative, as Peter thinks to himself, is to be one of the "white-hot Protestants," living "with a load of work and debt and obligation" (and who wants that?).

There are some amazingly delicate explorations of marriage and love in this story. Consider this bravura passage, as Peter and Sheilah arrive at a cocktail party in the Geneva snow:

She was born in an ugly city, and so was Peter, but they have this difference: She does not know the importance of the first snow--the first clean thing in a dirty year. He would have told her then that this storm, which was wetting her feet and destroying her hair, was like the first day of the English spring, but she made a frightened gesture, trying to shield her head. The gesture told him he did not understand her beauty.

"Let me," she said. He was fumbling with the key, trying to lock the car. She took the key without impatience and locked the door on the driver's side; and then, to show Peter she treasured him and was not afraid of wasting her life or her beauty, she took his arm and they walked in the snow down a street and around the corner to the apartment house were the Burleighs lived. They were, and are, a united couple. They were afraid of the party, and each of them knew it. When they walk together, holding arms, they give each other whatever each can spare.

I think that last sentence is absolutely exquisite.

What provides the dramatic conflict in this story is a mole-like young Canadian woman named Agnes, who becomes Peter's boss. Agnes comes from a hard-working poor family and finds herself increasingly repulsed by the Fraziers and the expatriate community in Geneva. Agnes is a fascinating study in the Protestant work ethic and Gallant is surprisingly sympathetic to a character that could have been nothing more than comic relief. Agnes's speech of accusation to Peter, after a particularly iniquitous party, is remarkably insightful and sad:

She said, "I'm from a big family. I'm not used to being alone. I'm not a suicidal person, but I could have done something after that party, just not to see anymore, or think or listen or expect anything. What can I think when I see these people? All my life I heard, Educated people don't do this, educated people don't do that. And now I'm here, and you're all educated people, and you're nothing but pigs. You're educated and you drink and do everything wrong and you know what you're doing, and that makes you worse than pigs. My family worked to make me an educated person, but they didn't know you. But what if I didn't see and hear and expect anything anymore? It wouldn't change anything. You'd all be still the same. Only you might have thought it was your fault. You might have thought you were to blame. It could worry you all your life. It would have been wrong for me to worry you."

This lament is impressively complex: it's pathetic, yes, but also quite funny--as much as she hates Peter and the other pigs, she still can't bring herself to "worry" him by killing himself. The mix of resentment and consideration is extraordinary. As someone who has had a somewhat similar upbringing to that of Agnes, Fosco can assure you that there is psychological verisimilitude here (note to Agnes: just give in and become one of the pigs--trust me, it's the only way out...)

And so, I hope you enjoy this story as much as I do. There is just something about it that seems strangely appropriate to our times. I hope you agree.

You can purchase Mavis Gallant by following these links:





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Keeps Your Brains Warm?

Sure, most people in San Francisco are now broke or laid off (although things are still better here than in NYC); even so, this city still knows how to have fun.

A few days ago, Fosco erroneously reported that San Francisco had succumbed to a zombie attack and was no longer inhabited by the non-undead. Apparently, Fosco was misled by a performance of the San Francisco Zombie Swarm. Apparently, the Swarm organizes occasional zombie happenings, flashmob-style.

Why are zombies the flavor of the moment? Well, my colleague Ethan has recently written some theoretical reflections on the re-rise of the zombie in popular culture. See, theory can be fun!


But there is even more fun to be had in San Francisco, especially if you like to keep yourself warm. As this article on SFGate notes, Friday night was the first organized Snuggie pub crawl in SF. For those of you who don't watch television, the Snuggie is "The Blanket with Sleeves."^TM Apparently, Snuggies (like zombies) have captured the imagination of young urban hipsters (who may also be cold). Actually, to be accurate, Snuggies seem to have caught everyone's attention, as the article notes:

Buoyed by an inadvertently funny and rhyming commercial ("Blankets are OK, but they can slip and slide/ and when you need to reach for something, your hands are trapped inside"), Snuggies have sold more than 4 million units through online orders and Walgreens drugstores, where they go for a mere $14.99. (Blue is the only Snuggie color sold at Walgreens; online, red and green Snuggies are also available.)

The article reports that more than 200 people showed up in Snuggies for this pub crawl, which is pretty amazing when you think about.

Of course, the obvious question is whether these two trends, the Snuggie and zombies, can be combined. As Fosco discovered, it's not pretty. Here, as fodder for your nightmares, is a Snuggie Zombie:

[Shudder.] Stay safe and warm out there, my friends.

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Hentai Goes High Culture

N.B., there are parts of this post (farther down) that might be a little NSFW. Be warned.

Somehow, Fosco managed to ignore most of the hullabaloo around last year's Takashi Murakami retrospective which started at the MOCA in LA and traveled to the Brooklyn Museum (among other places). Sure, Fosco skimmed the New Yorker review, but didn't pay much attention. Murakami just isn't quite Fosco's style.

Takashi Murakami (not to be confused with Haruki Murakami, whose exquisitely beautiful novels Fosco does love) is something of an art sensation. To Fosco, T. Murakami looks eerily like the future version of Hiro Nakamura from TV's "Heroes." Murakami's art, however, is not from the future--it's insistently of the present. I guess you could call his work "pop art"--in that it owes much to popular forms of animation and illustration (especially manga). Yes, there are lots of anthropomorphic flowers, mushrooms, and god-knows-what:

It's like the materialization of an LSD hallucination--at least, that's what I imagine it would it be like.

It's also relentlessly, and intentionally, commercial. You may recall the frisson caused by the inclusion, in the middle of the actual exhibit, of a fully-functioning Louis Vuitton boutique dedicated to selling Murakami's designs for Vuitton. As this piece in the Village Voice notes, the Vuitton boutique was one of the principle draws of the Murakami show in the first place. You may recognize this Murakami design for Vuitton:

If you think this pattern is unforgivably gaudy, you should see this design translated into actual decor in Fosco's December photograph of the Manhattan Louis Vuitton boutique:

It's eye-catching, sure; but isn't it all a little... vulgar?

Apparently, in all of Fosco's studied ignorance of 2008's Murakami-fest, he managed to avoid knowledge of one sculpture in particular. Somehow, Fosco missed (in Peter Schjeldahl's review of the retrospective) this description of

another, “My Lonesome Cowboy,” is of a masturbating boy whose ejaculate twirls upward like a lariat.

If you're wondering what on earth this might look like, Fosco's got your back. Behold!

Hell's bells, that's disturbing! Are you repulsed, yet unable to look away? Well, here are some more views:



The title, My Lonesome Cowboy (referring to an Andy Warhol film), is pretty great. And sure, there's something cute about his face (he is an anime boy, after all); and yes, I would probably kill to have his hair. But that cum lasso? Freaky. Which I guess is the point.

[Note: in the Village Voice piece, the author claims that the boy "has some kind of disgusting gray effluvia shooting out of his wiener." Ummm, I think we call that "semen." Art interpretation: Ur doin it rong.]

Want to know how Takashi Murakami himself would explain this sculpture? You can take an online tour of this room of the exhibition (choose Exhibition Tour, Part 1).

But wait, this story gets even better: the sculpture just sold at auction for over $15 million (when commission is included). As this blog notes, Sotheby's was expecting the piece to go for $3-$4 million, so this was pleasant surprise. As the shape+colour blogger notes, Murakami is so popular right now that he can do no wrong:

And when you can do no wrong, your life-sized sculpture of a bright-eyed anime manga-boy jerking off and whipping his jizz into a gigantic lasso around his head will sell at auction for $13.5 million US.

I guess that's how you know you've "made it."

Thanks to Todd for bringing this story to my attention.

If you want to read more about Takashi Murakami (or read some novels by Haruki Murakami), you can click through on these buttons:

Fosco will receive a tiny percentage and he will be grateful.

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Breathtaking

Fosco loves anything that is both beautiful and unexpected. And so here, for your Sunday pleasure, are some unexpectedly beautiful things.

From the ready-to-wear(!) collection of Junya Watanabe:



See more from this collection here.

Fosco had never heard of Manish Arora until he saw the pictures below. Ummm, wow. Jaw-dropping. Like nothing I've seen before.



You can see more of this collection here.

You may know that Fosco loves houndstooth--LOVES it! Well, then how can he not love the dress on the right from the Fall 09 collection of Alexander McQueen? It's houndstooth undergoing some magical Escher-esque transformation into a flock of birds. It's ravishing, no?

I mean, LOOK at it! Unbelievable.

You can get a better idea of the pattern itself from this (also pretty gorgeous) dress:

You can see more of this collection here. You can read the NYT review of his collection here.

Sincerest thanks to FABULON, where Fosco saw all of these in the first place.

Dressing One's Boyfriend: John Galliano

I would love to dress Oz in these John Galliano briefs. Not sure I would go for the bonnet, though.

Not that any of you would get to see...

(Via Fabulon.)

Dressing One's Boyfriend: Raf Simons

If Fosco ever wins the academic lottery, he might just start playing dress-up with his boyfriend Oz. Not that Oz doesn't dress well (he does); however, there is always room for some expensive labels in a handsome man's closet. And Oz is indeed a handsome man.

And if Fosco's windfall shows up tomorrow, he will probably buy Oz this coat from Belgian designer Raf Simons (go ahead click on the photo to get a sense of the fabric--that's what makes this coat great).

Also, while perusing Simons's Autumn-Winter 2008-2009 collection, Fosco had to wonder: does the Estate of Mark Rothko get a residual from every sale of this sweater?






Seriously, though, that is a pretty sharp sweater.

From the Annals of "Holy Crap!"

I've been meaning to mention this for a couple of weeks. From SFGate:

Science closing in on cloak of invisibility.

Seriously.


Of course, as cool as it sounds, this is going to be an extraordinarily bad thing.

Pictures of 2008: Please Stay in Vegas

Fosco recently realized that, by only blogging for three months last year, he never got to share tons of pictures with you from the rest of the year. So, for the next week or so, Fosco will offer a series of brief posts with some of his favorite pictures from his adventures in 2008. Check out the whole series here.

Last January, Fosco was in Vegas for an academic conference. You certainly see some things of questionable taste in Vegas:

You might not be able to see it, but those pants are desert camouflage. And can you see the sunglasses strap below the mullet? Sadly, Fosco had to follow this troglodyte for an entire block to get this picture.

Hello Shirt! Goodbye Shirt!

Since Fosco began dating Oz (who was born and raised in the Sandwich Islands), he's become more interested in all things Hawaiian. For example, did you know that "Aloha" can mean both "Hello" and "Goodbye"? Such linguistic efficiency! And did you know that Hawaii is almost entirely populated by an elusive race of people known as the Menehune? It's true. In fact, because of the Menehune's legendary shiftiness, the US Census Bureau refuses to estimate Hawaii's population at all.

One Hawaiian tradition that Fosco has yet to embrace is the Aloha shirt. However, Fosco is rethinking his aversion to such sartorial silliness after reading this piece on SF Gate's "Hawaii Insider" blog. Apparently, one of the true giants of the Aloha shirt died recently:

Alfred Shaheen, who in 1948 opened Hawaii's first factory for designing and printing the tropical-themed fabrics, and quickly became the giant of a new industry.

The "Hawaii Insider" goes on to note that the Aloha shirt has had a remarkable cultural influence:

this is the garment that created "Aloha Fridays," and the very concept of "business casual."

This seems like a noteworthy achievement (although Fosco, who has only limited experience in "business" still cannot understand why every day can't be Casual Friday).

As Fosco considered writing this post, he came across a collection of amazing Aloha shirts at The Hana Shirt Co. The photo above is one of theirs, as is this absolutely gorgeous shirt:

You can order this shirt here, but you need to wear size "Vintage Medium" and be willing to part with $125.

You know what would rock? An Aloha shirt with a Wayne Thiebaud pattern:

Fosco would wear this every freakin' day! What would you want on an Aloha shirt?