#3 James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

 

In the #100BestNovels category, I finally finished my first book! I’m using Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels list for this category. They rank Ulysses by James Joyce as the best novel of all time, but quite frankly, it’s intimidating as hell and Portrait is #3 on their list so I swapped them. 

Portrait is described as Joyce’s “most approachable” work. Set in Ireland in the 1890s, it follows the life of Stephen Dedalus from childhood through university as he decides what kind of human he wants to be and how much of his family, religious, and national inherited baggage he wants to schlepp into adulthood.

James Joyce’s massive literary influence is in part because of his use of interior monologue, a narrative style that is a stream of consciousness from his main characters’ thoughts. This makes for a difficult but occasionally soothing read. For the first half of the book or so, I would sometimes read it out loud and let the gauzy prose wash over me. I had moments of really enjoying it. This style of writing is very effective in showing Stephen’s age progression and what he was concerned with as he grew up.

The second half of the book felt like page after page of Catholicism hell and damnation as Joyce’s main character struggles with his own religious beliefs. It was seriously slow-going for me and I’m glad it’s over.

The point of this project is not to share my profound insights on artists or their works that people much more qualified than me have been doing for over a hundred years, but to notice what this submersion in art inspires in the real world. In that respect, this was a huge success.

First, I spent hours learning about the Irish quest for independence and the home rule movement. It’s astounding how long things take, how hard activists work to push their vision forward, how flawed some of those visionaries are, so flawed that they hurt the very movement they are trying to help. The history of Ireland is so rich, tortured, and unique, it’s hard to put down once you start learning about it.

You really have to experience it first hand, so…. We’re planning a trip to Ireland! I’m so excited! Husband Rog is a huge soccer fan so we are going to try to wrap in a quick visit to England so he can watch his team play live for the first time. This is my favorite “real world consequence” of The Retirement Project so far.  

Enjoy this cute 11-minute history of Ireland. Let's get flutered!

#3 Joni Mitchell, Blue (1971)

 

I was not at all familiar with Joni Mitchell before listening to this. I was so excited. Her album Blue is ranked 3^rd best of all time and I was sure I would love it. The thing is, I didn’t. After listening to the first two albums on the list, I felt genuinely like they were life-changing, like, I almost left this life without knowing this art existed and that would have been a TRAVESTY. That kind of life-changing.

As an aside, I’ve had numerous late-night, one-person dance parties in my kitchen, listening to Pet Sounds on repeat. And I don’t see that ending anytime soon. And the random new love of drawing, sketching, coloring, inspired by Marvin Gaye, hasn’t stopped yet either.

The album is beautiful and really raw and sad. I just didn’t connect with it. I kind of beat myself up about it a little to be honest.

But I don’t listen to these works of art one time and move on. One night I was having a good COVID cry. We were at 281k dead and I was feeling really ashamed and sad that we have failed so dramatically at managing this massive crisis. I put on this album and immediately felt better.

Her song Little Green is probably my favorite. Mitchell is singing to a child named Green, telling her that sometimes in life there will be wonderful things like “icicles and birthday clothes” and “sometimes there’ll be sorrow”. Listening to the way she sings “sorrow” the last time in that song, whoosh, there is it. Just spectacular. Every full-hearted sadness you’ve ever felt, we’ve ever felt as PEOPLE, and she somehow puts it all in that word. It’s magnificent.

That was the moment that I realized what I’m listening to here. This voice can be optimistic and sweet and playful and achingly sad in the same song and oh my god her poetry. Again, I’m genuinely so relieved that I didn’t escape this life before finding her.  

This album came out in 1971. She wrote some of these songs during her relationship and breakup with James Taylor. She was taking a break from performing and living on a Greek island for a time and now every time I listen to Blue, I picture her dancing on a beach, sometimes happy and sometimes sad, but always missing home.

The most beautiful lines of the album, from A Case of You:

I remember that time you told me, you said

“Love is touching souls”

Surely you touched mine

‘Cause part of you pours out of me

In these lines from time to time

 

Next time you are feeling a little blue, have a listen. She’ll speak to you, too.

# 1 Citizen Kane (1941)

 

Ok peeps, let’s dive into the Greatest American Movies of All Time according to the American Film Institute. I honestly don’t remember if I’ve seen Citizen Kane before, but I watched it the night before the election.

Charles Foster Kane inherited a fortune, and as a result, was ripped away from his mother as a young boy. He got everything he ever wanted: fame, riches, power, women; and he’s miserable and incomplete because what he REALLY wanted was public adoration and anything less than that felt like failure.

This movie has gotten a lot of attention and analysis in 2020 because of Kane’s similarity to Trump. James Owen wrote a column about it, declaring it the best movie of 2020 because of its relevance to our time. As Owen notes, stop reading this and google “Trump and Citizen Kane”. It’s unsettling.

Here are a few tidbits that had me saying WTF.

• Early in the film, Kane is hanging out with Hitler and other dictators and reassuring Americans that there will never be a war.
• Kane blew through his massive inheritance with lavish spending and bad investments.
• When Kane, who owned a major newspaper, lost his election to the Senate, he instructed his paper to print that there was fraud at the polls.
• Eventually Kane loses everything and flees to his Florida estate, a lavish compound called Xanadu, that is filled with expensive useless crap and echoing loneliness after all his friends have deserted him because he no longer has power or because he stabbed them in the back.

A little too on the nose, wouldn’t you say?

When the movie came out, there was a shit-ton of controversy because radio and TV mogul William Randolph Hearst thought it was about him (and he was part of the real-life composite of white dudes that made up Kane). Hearst tried to prevent the movie’s release, threatening the livelihoods of a bunch of immigrants and refugees that worked for the studios. You know, all those folks that had just fled fascism as its marching across the world while we try to decide if we should care? Those folks.

God, assholes are the WORST.

I have a hard time with plot lines that are, here is an asshole, he sucked most of his life, he learned nothing, let’s learn about him (always a him). Why the fuck would I want to learn about him? I am really hoping that 2021 will put this bullshit “assholes are cool and we should listen to them” trend behind us. How about a new era that puts regular folks first, where material wealth and power are no longer worshipped so exclusively. This immorality started in the 1980s so that means we have been heading here for forty damn years. Time for a pendulum swing for goodness sake. Help me push it with all your might, OK?

Don’t get me wrong, the movie is totally a masterpiece, it broke all kinds of new ground, innovations in cinematography and editing and all kinds of crap. It’s worth the watch. Maybe at some point when you don’t feel surrounded by assholes already.