Junk Journal Week 18

I said a few words about Kitamura’s novel recently. I enjoyed it but it did strike me as a bit cold.

Mavis Gallant is a writer’s writer you should be reading. Her stories are about people from elsewhere living in Paris. As an American who has lived outside the United States for five years of my adult life, I understand that feeling of never feeling quite at home, of always feeling like one does not really belong. Poland, Bulgaria, and Lebanon were where I lived.

Shattuck’s stories, at least in my memory, are all set in more rural parts of New England. The story “August in the Forest” I found quite memorable. The narrator, August, writes a story in which he expresses doubts about beginning a relationship with Elizabeth. He never shares those doubts with Elizabeth, and it takes a couple of years for the story to finally be published. August realizes that the story is going to be published in a high circulation magazine and Elizabeth will end up reading the story and seeing the doubts that August never articulated written down and printed for thousands to read.

Bird is an Andrea Arnold picture about a family in Kent, England living on the very edge of poverty. Yet the film is filled with warmth and, in fact, a certain magic.

Drive Away Dolls is a comic crime story with some pretty explicit lesbian content. Try looking for the name Cynthia Dorothy Albritton on Duck Duck Go or another search engine.

I first saw Jamon Jamon on the big screen at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1993. It stars a very young Penelope Cruz and an equally young Javier Braden in a picture about food and EROS.