Monday, May 05, 2008

In other culture news

Your Movie Maven is happy girl this week. I do not have school for eight months, since come July I will be swallowed into the maw of a full-time six-month internship at the arts section of a certain newspaper. I plan to take on a personality akin to Jennifer Jason Leigh in "The Hudsucker Proxy;" so from now I'm "a fast-talkin' career gal that thinks she's one of the boys." Now if only I could find a guy named Smitty...

In other news, the fact that I don't have classes means one thing for me: I get to read for fun. So I went to the library in Copley Square last weekend- America's first large municipal library, doncha know. I came out smelling a little worse for wear, but I had a re-usable tote bag full of delightful goodies to attend to my imagination whilst I'm at my current, soul-sucking telemarketing job.

My first recommendation: Henry James' "The Portrait of a Lady." Specifically, the Oxford World's Classics edition. It's tidily enclosed in a small blue cover, perfect for train travel. And it has a nifty introduction by John Updike. I've read it before several times, but I swoon over James' perfect phrases like "dusky pestiferous tracts," and observations like "'If all good people were hidden away in convents, how would the world get on?'" Poor, wonderful, foolish Isabel Archer is my ultimate female character, whom James most exquisitely (and unfairly) dooms, even after it appears that she's won. The ending will frustrate you, but in a way that miraculously still seems complete.

And for those who will ask, yes, I am still reviewing movies. What is the Movie Maven without her cinematic delights? Expect my review of "Iron Man" (God help me) this weekend.

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