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Edith Wharton’s house in Paris

Originally uploaded by Koosama.

Always enjoyed her work (Here’s The Age of Innocence and House of Mirth) more than Lola Henry’s, but he is the Master (The Wings of the Dove).

Untidying the drawing-room
Edith Wharton may have repudiated the customs of her country, but it provided material for her masterpieces. Elaine Showalter reviews Hermione Lee’s biography
Saturday February 10, 2007
The Guardian
In her memoir, A Backward Glance (1934), Edith Wharton recalled her first attempts at writing when she was 11 years old. Her fledgling novel began: “Oh, how do you do, Mrs Brown? … If only I had known you were going to call I should have tidied up the drawing-room.” But when little Edith shyly offered it to her mother, the stately New York matron Lucretia Newbold Jones, the response was chilly and withering: “Drawing-rooms are always tidy.” (continues)

In a book review by James Wolcott that was only tangentially about headless bodies and topless bars, I found the classic New York tabloid headline above. I showed it to Tina, who said she would’ve done the deed herself to be able to run that headline. Tina’s no slouch at headline-writing: as foreign news editor of TODAY her classics included “There’s mice in rice from Thais, solon cries” and (I’m not sure this is the exact wording) “Exiled king attends funeral of playwright who said God was an oval” (Ionesco was the dead playwright).

Our friend Nestor is a connoisseur of tabloid headlines. One of his choice examples is “Pretty Headless Coed Raped”, which raises all sorts of semantic issues. (a) How did they know she was pretty? (b) Was she pretty and headless, or pretty headless as in “The situation is pretty awful”? (c) Did the rape occur before or after the detachment of the head?

At one dinner Nestor presented us with this headline: “Ginang Namatay Sa Tamod” (Wife Dies From/Because of Semen). “How do you think it happened?” he quizzed us like a stern schoolmistress. “Um…she…uh…choked…to death?” Karina ventured, cringing as if she expected Mother Superior to rap her knuckles with a ruler. “No,” said Nestor. “It was on the floor, and she slipped on it, fell, landed on her head and smashed her skull,” I said with the confidence of one who has seen too much C.S.I. “Wrong!” Apparently the woman had been having an affair, and on that occasion failed to remove the DNA evidence. Which her amorous husband discovered, whereupon he flew into a murderous rage. There’s a Valentine story.

Bad enough that there are more good books out there than you can possibly read, but what about your favorite books calling from the shelves, demanding a second look? Ian McEwan’s Atonement is still astonishing. [We have impossibly high expectations for the film directed by Joe Wright (the 2005 Pride and Prejudice) from a screenplay by Christopher Hampton (Dangerous Liaisons), starring P&P’s Keira Knightley, James McAvoy (The Last King of Scotland), and Vanessa Redgrave.]

Emotional Weather Report, today in the Star.

Failed to make dinner reservations? “Forgot” to ask someone out? Dateless? Having a spat with your significant other? Stressed from work? Bored out of your wits? Well screw that. Join Geek Chorus and Lomomanila at Mag:net Katipunan on Feb the 14th, 8ish. Bob Guerrero and Gabe Mercado of DaPulis will perform an acoustic set featuring songs from their albums and sad bastard covers of other people’s songs. The Silly Peoples Improv Theater (SPIT) will read a selection of bad breakup letters. They need more bad breakup letters! Everyone’s been a dumper or a dumpee: now you can profit (well, not in cash) from your misery! Email your bad breakup letters (real or imaginary) to yarr@geekchorus.org or gabe@geekchorus.org. Letters stay anonymous and you may opt to replace names of real people with fake names like Marcelline, Sondra or Randy.

Fearsome jungle cat lurking in underbrush

Originally uploaded by Koosama.

Mel Gibson may be a flaming loony, but the man can direct. Apocalypto is riveting, and as for its supposedly extreme violence, I thought it was less gory than The Passion of the Christ or Braveheart. Apocalypto sticks to basic principles: it’s film as entertainment, and it works. An action movie moves, and this one runs and runs and runs—watch the Mayan Olympic hurdles team in action. All I can say is, Don’t mess with the people who invented the concept of zero. (They also said the apocalypse would come in May 2012; they’re not around to elaborate.) I’ll even explain the appearance of the Spanish conquistadors 500 years before they actually arrived as a vision of the future, or the director’s way of saying, Now you’re really screwed.

The History Boys is lovely, and how often can you say that of a movie about a bunch of teenage boys studying to get into Oxbridge? I suddenly missed my old high school (not that we were anywhere near as clever as those guys). Then I remembered the only time I was ever summoned to the director’s office: it was after the National College Entrance Exams, and in a wall news editorial I asked why we had to take the NCEE when it was chickenshit anyway. It was spelled ‘chickens**t’, but the director didn’t buy the literary editor’s argument that it could’ve meant ‘chickensuit’ or ‘chickenslut’. So I was reprimanded for arrogance, a lesson I’ve never learned, and by the way Riccardo has heard that you can be fined for arrogance by Makati traffic aides to the tune of P2,000. Anyway we loved the movie so much that we stayed on to watch the credits, and when the lights came on we found that of the five people left in the theatre, three had gone to Philippine Science High School: Auraeus, who’s making a movie about Pisay; Noel, who should make movies, and I, who will watch them. So now Rufus Wainwright’s version of Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered is in a repeating loop in my head, and I’d never noticed that it contained the lyric quoted above.

David Byrne Meets Imelda
Time
4 February 2007
By Howard Chua-Eoan