Janeites! Grab This Book

I just finished a terrific book about Jane Austen's novels and about more than that:  A Jane Austen Education.

(You!  Rolling your eyes.  Pay attention.)

This book's author, William Deresiewicz, (yes, a guy) started with the same prejudice against ROmance you have, the same girl-talk phobia, the same fear of dreary, verbose 19th century classics written by dead white chicks.

He learned better.

Sure, it's possible to read Austen as gooshy romance (by ignoring her bite, as films tend to) or to read purely for social comedy (by ignoring the suffering), but there's more going on.  But I hadn't considered - in the depth this scholar has - just how much of an instruction manual for life Austen's novels are.  Our age does not much truck with the idea of character building, but that is what Austen writes of: love made possible by understanding another's character and by cultivating our own best self.

Mixing novels with events in his own life, Deresiewicz illustrates Austen's points.  So perfect are his illustrations that I wondered if this was fictionalized.  It's so rare for what is, at one level, a book of literary criticism to be this engaging and this much of a page-turner (I hated putting it down to sleep and started reading again before breakfast) that I can only admit to deep suspicion... (Unworthy suspicion - a character flaw I'm working on.).  Why can't literary and real-life insight be both entertaining and profound...?

(Profound?  Did I type that?  Inconceivable!*)

public domain images mashed

If you, Dear Reader, have read a little Jane Austen, read this book.  Or BUY this book.  (I will.)  If you haven't yet discovered Jane Austen or were taught by 9th grade English class to hate her... please try again.  You'll be a better person.  Start with Pride and Prejudice.  Then read this book.


Earlier post on J. A.

* ( As Vizzini of The Princess Bride would say.)

Film Fest - Catch-Up

Movies I hadn't got round to mentioning:

Charlie Bartlett (played by Anton Yelchin) is the hero a sweetly odd film about a high school student with, it seems, a real calling as a shrink... or maybe as a drug pusher?  Robert Downy Jr. as his unhappy Principal with a daughter.

The Tale of Despereaux is the animated quest of a brave mouse and a down on his luck rat - with a who's who of name actors doing vocals.  A good story and the first G rated movie I've seen in a while.  Luckily little kids don't fully understand the threaten-the-princess-with-eating-alive-by-rats thing, huh?  Or the death-in-Colosseum-by-cat thing either.  I liked the soup theme.

Image borrowed from Thany's Thoughts Blog, which has a good comparison of book to film

Something's Gotta Give with great performances by beautifully ripe Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson.  (Who knew Keanu Reeves could be so charming?)

And on TV: watching the new season of Castle (the first ep is startlingly serious) and waiting on Bones (having finally caught up).

Conclusions?  All of these were, in their separate ways, worth watching.  Strange to say, but no duds in this bunch.

Model Photography

Many set designs can be well described by sketches, but more abstract or 3 dimensional designs demand a model to explain them.  So last night and this morning I've been building a rough but colored model.  This afternoon I've been trying to photograph it.  Guess which is harder?

Okay, okay, building a model is harder than photographing it - but just barely!

Not having a proper indoor photo studio with lights, I ended up carrying a kitchen chair outside, along with two sheets of white cardboard, masking tape (to deploy these with), the camera, and the model with its 10 little accessory pieces.  Luckily no wind.  Also no real sun - but eventually the cloud passed.  Then I could mock up 6 different scenes with tiny accessories: an itty bitty drop, even teenier tinier trees, a minuscule castle, and a teeninesy heraldic doodads...  Fun!

Image copyrighted Clare Floyd DeVries

World Domination!

Just got a note from my publisher, Lulu.com, that my set design book Alice Through the Proscenium will now be distributed by Amazon in Germany, France, Spain, and Italy.  (It's already been available and selling! in the U.K.)

Kinda cool.  I don't exactly expect a huge rush of Italian buyers - being as Alice is in English - but then again, I've bought several books in Italian though I don't read that language... so maybe, eh?

Any one else miss that great random! cartoon Pinky and the Brain?

Brain: "Are you pondering what I'm pondering Pinky?"
Pinky: "I think so Brain, but if we covered the world in salad dressing wouldn't the asparagus feel left out?"

Perfect Words - On Talking about the Work

"It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work." - sculptor Henry Moore

Another Strike

In the Next Room closed last night and the set came down today.

Sad.  But sorta Circle of Life-ish.

public domain image

Because, of course, this set comes down so the next set goes up.  (I saw its fascinating model at the strike for mine.)  In a particularly life-cycle way, some of my hand-carved brick was saved so that it can be used to build someone else's set elsewhere.  I saved the brick fireplace arch to be an insta-fireplace on some future set of my own.  Plus a lot of curtain fabric ditto.  But then, the screens we used for this set had already been used for a locally filmed television show, before being gifted to Kitchen Dog.  Much of the furniture (borrowed from two other theaters) has appeared in many earlier shows and will appear in yet more... some of them mine.  That's kind of nice to look forward to.

In theater, what goes around comes around and around and around...

(Earlier posts about Strikes: here and here.)

Set Designer's Day - Meetings

Funny how meetings seem to flock together.  Yesterday turned into a meeting day - and pretty much the whole day once I reread both scripts (Seven with One Blow or the Brave Little Kid  and The Diary of Anne Frank); added notes and questions to both scripts; doodled; and then actually, you know, met.

Public domain image

Fun meetings with both directors to talk through the plays, the acting space, and what the set needed to accomplish.  Now I'm full of bubbling ideas.

Which is a good thing, because I need to have sketches for Seven by Tuesday!

Comic Goes iPad - Ada Lovelace Day

I'm totally bummed.  My favorite online, Steampunk comic becomes an app... and I don't have an iPad to buy it for!  Those of you who DO should immediately rush to iTunes before they run out of pixels!

Image borrowed from 2D Goggles

I've written about this terrific comic before here and here.  

2D Goggles: the thrilling adventures of Lovelace and Babbage is created by the gifted Sydney Padua, based on real-life characters - Victorian inventor Charles Babbage and poet and first computer programmer Ada Lovelace (daughter of the poet Byron).  Much historic research goes into these stories, thus the footnotes (I love footnotes)... plus a few flying monkeys. 

Today is Ada Lovelace Day!  In honor of all those unsung heroines who contributed to science, math, technology, computers, all that "mathy" stuff that, you know, girls aren't supposed to be good at?  

In the spirit of Ada Lovelace Day I'd love to write a thank you to one particular Woman who showed me that girls Can-Do. 

But the truth is that there were too many strong, smart women in my life to choose only one. I was never given the slightest hint that girls or women couldn't do ANYTHING they chose, including math, until I was old enough not to be daunted by one pitiful redneck and a few architecture professors.  (Wouldn't those professors be insulted by that comparison?  Ha!) When the redneck said, "Architecture is a man's field," I got stubborn.  

There's not much math in modern architectural practice, but it undeniably uses lots of science and technology and thus math, so:

Here's my thanks to those strong, smart women in my life and to the first female architects in the U.S.!  Mary L. Page, Louise Blanchard Bethune, Sophia Hayden, Marion Mahony Griffin, and Julia Morgan.  Special thanks are due to Sophia Hayden - a sacrifice upon the altar of trail-blazer if there ever was one - and to Julia Morgan - who first proved women could succeed without no quarter given, though she sacrificed having a family to do so.  Women architects still struggle between those choices.  But women now outnumber men in architecture schools, so we'll see won't we?

Architect Sophia Hayden

Architect Julia Morgan

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!  Go thank a strong "techie" woman!