jay's museum of college writing

Jay's CHRISTMAS READING Post - Graham Greene's Brighton Rock - Old-School - Straight-Razor - Cutting Edge Noir Thriller

  I like reading about the ways Graham Greene makes his writing happen.  To many he is known as a travel writer, having written many of his novels and short stories on the road.  Upon touching down in a foreign country he seems to have a sixth sense for the lay of the land.  He knows  his way around an airport bar; this is where he begins making contacts and developing ideas. In this year alone,  I’ve read about his journeys deep into Mexico, Cuba, Viet Nam, Haiti. All these books open my eyes to exotic and hidden cultures and politics.  I don’t know how he does it.  How does he commicate?   Maybe his most powerful novel, The Power and the Glory, caputres the intense division between the rich and the poor in Mexico.  Greene doesn’t speak Spanish.  Nada.

This week, I read his first widely-successful novel, Brighton Rock, published in 1936.  You can’t really call this one a travel novel, for Graham G didn’t have to venture too far from home in London.  He had his nimd set on writing a noir thriller set in an English beach town.  According to today’s travel guides, it’s an hour-and-a-half trip by train to Brighton.  This worked!  He could maintain an office or a hotel room in Brighton and escape all personal and professional distractions.  He shared his address and phone number with no one but his wife.   This is how he may have established his routine of typing up 500 words per morning and drinking the rest of the day.  In between bars, he would make his obversations and develop his plots.  From his propensity to consume martinis, it’s pretty clear he was attracted to the dark side of life.

In Brighton, he stumbled upon a true-to-life news story about a gang of street thugs that staged a bloody attack on a group of horse-racing bookies.  Their modus operandi (MO) was to slash their opposition with straight razors.  On occasion, they splashed acid in the faces of their rivals.  Brighton Rock is the story of a street urchin named Pinkie that rises to the top of his gang at age seventeen.   He becomes the gang leader when his mentor’s throat is slashed.  Pinkie is the logical choice for gangleader.  He is a Scarface Jr. type.  He is violent, psychotic, devoid of any human feeling. Most of all, He’s hellbent on revenge for his mentor’s murder.  This was the only man he ever respected or loved.  Nothing was going to get in his way holding him back.  In Brighton Rock, Graham G comes up with the idea of pitting Pinkie against  an all-Jewish gang who looks to take over the city.  Pinkie is not going to let that happen.  There is an innocent young woman that gets in the way.  Her name is Rose, and she is only sixteen. Pinkie is probably going to have to kill her before he gets to the Jews.    

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At this point, there may be a few reading this that wonder why does Mr. Lewenstein seem to love the work of an apparent anti-semetic author.  This isn’t the first time Green has portrayed his Jewish characters in a nasty light, nor will it be the last. In Brighton Rock, upstart teen thugs visits a Jewish crime boss in a luxurious hotel.  Pinkie feels the poison rush through in his veins when he senses Jews looking at him from all sides. In the lobby, he he sees two “Jewesses” giving him the eye.  The author refers to them as “little bitches.”  This encounter did not pass me by, but I’ve read enough history to know that the attitude directed here to Jews was not unusual.  Brighton Rock was published early in 1938.  Later that year in November – on the night of Krystallnacht – Nazi leaders initiated a series of pogroms on German Jews.  Some 30,000 Jews were rounded up and shipped off to concentration camps, while the world watched and did nothing.

Famously, or infamously, In 1939, 900 Jews paid the Nazi regime everything they had to escape the country with their  lives on the ship the S.S. St. Louis bound for Cuba.  I read about this harrowing event in a novel called The German Girl.  The story of the St. Louis is a nightmare everyone should know about.  937 Jews made the trip but upon arrival to Cuba, corrupt government officials demanded an extra 500 dollars a head to debark. Of course these Jews didn’t have the money because they gave everything they had to the Nazis.   The United States and Canada had strict restrictions for the acceptance of European refugees.  Shanghai, maybe the only port in the world that was taking Jews, was now occupied by a hostile Japanese force.  The world turned its back.  The St. Louis was forced to turn back to Europe.    Of the all the Jews on the boat, more than 600 of them eventually died in Nazi concentration camps.

I’m sure many readers out there may have wanted their authors to speak out against Jewish persecution.  Nowhere in Brighton Rock  does Greene call out for the killing of Jews as a people, but it’s clear he  pushes the ugly stererotypeof the greedy Jew in his narrative.   Pinkie hatred is rooted in a Jewish gangster moving in on his territory. This Jew has an italian name, Colleoni.  I don’t know why Greene couldn’t bring up the image of “Italian bitches.”   Maybe Green was anti-semetic.  Maybe he wasn’t.  He did have a keen eye for detail. In 1938, everywhere you went you may have seen animosity directed against a Jew.

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I, for one, feel a little bit queezy when I see people label my favorite authors based on a small percentage of their writing: Grham Greene,  Ernest Hemingway,  Roald DahlI, etc.    In fact, I don’t like anyone telling me what to read or what to think;  like critics, journalists, and TEACHERS.    I see a problem with reading levels and enthusiasm of our current generation of students – they have come up in a system of standardized education answering questions out of the back of a chapter.  They all know that their best answers will mimic what the teacher says. Teaching English has become BORING, for  I see many students who have  lost interest in  thinking for themselves.  They wait for someone else’s messaging.

In my mind, Graham is is a literary GREAT.  Let me say that here.  He writes on multiple levels. In Brighton Rock, there is a couple of ugly Jews, and there are a lot of failed Catholics.  Each time I read a Graham G novel ONCE, I will read it a SECOND time.  In Brighton Rock, Graham G has created a tight crime thriller.  Others will examine the religious questions he integrates into the narrative.  My students love to speak to me about PSYCHO-KILLERS they see in their movies.   Pinkie, the ironically-named main character in Brighton Rock, will give them a run for their money.  He is devoid of feelings and/or morals.  He has plans to KILL the young girl he MARRIES.  The only reason he marries her is to protect himself from a murder prosecution.  He found out that a wife cannot testify against her husband.    He associates LOVE with PAIN.  Jaja.  The problem Pinkie finds in this novel, is the more AWFUL he treats his wife, the more she LOVES HIM. She is a devout Catholic.  She tells him that she would rather burn in Hell than lose him. 

This is why I read every Graham Greene novel TWICE.  At times this books will be violent.  Other times they will be funny,  historical,  psychological,  religious, but always complex.  There is so much going on in  this novel, I have to think that many readers forget about the depravity of the characters and start to ROOT for them.  (I'm reminded of the Brad Pitt character in the film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.  This is the one Brad P won the Oscar.  We all love Brad!  But if you saw this movie, do you remember that he KILLED HIS WIFE?) 

My favorite character in this novel is a big-breasted lounge singer that enters the picture.   Her name is Ida Arnold.  My mother's name is Ida.  Both these women are relentless when they cling on to an idea.  There is no way you can avoid their grasp.  Ida Arnold has a drunken moment with Pinkie's first murder victim.  Whens he finds that the police are doing nothing to find his killer, she takes on the case herself, as amateur, big-breasted drunk detective. In her quest to find the murderer, she stumbles on Rose who may be a witness to the crime.  She finds out that Pinkie has married her to keep her quiet.  Both Pinkie and Rose hate her. She follows them like a dog.  Pinkie and Rose will never have a moment's peace as long as Ida is on their trail.  WHO IS THIS CRAZY WOMA?, they say.  Neither of them knows.  In the middle of a wicked plot, Ida provides comic relier.  Graham G probably met up with Ida on a real-life drunken afternoon in Brighton.  Let's call it research.  That's how Graham G rolls. 

The other Ida is my mother.  She will never find anything funny in a Graham Greene novel.  Her family escaped religious persecution in Eastern Europe at the turn of the twentieth century. They travelled by foot with whatever they could carry.   Graham Greene wrote Brighton Rock in an atmosphere of Fear and Hatred.  Everyone knew what was being done to the Jews, but few did anything about it.   As I write this, President Trump’s anti-immigration language during his campaign looms heavily over our heads.  Will he really impose his program of mass deportation for undocumented Mexicans?  We are only weeks away from his inauguration  He said he would make his move on Day One. There is nothing FUNNY about this guy, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention. 

 

 

 

 

Jay's QUEEN ELIZABETH TAYLOR Post - The Earth Mother - Cocktails with George and Martha - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

  My students next semester may not recognize the name Elizabeth Taylor.  We will be reading a sixties novel and writing sixties research papers.  I myself just might write a practice essay on Elizabeth Taylor to serve as a model paper  that I can post on canvas and/or my classroom blog.  Here is Liz's identifer:  in 1964 she was often referred to as the most beautiful woman in the world.  She was a child star turned Hollywood icon.  At age 32, she was making an unheard-of one million dollars per picture.  Maybe that’s because her fans were hypnotized by her violet eyes.  That was their real color.  This was before the invention of contacts.   The color  had something to do with the amount of melanin in the iris of each eye. Liz  had recently starred as Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile.  Paparatzi chased her wherever she went.  Fans lined the streets to see her movies.  She may have been the most famous woman in the world.

This is when she was offered the role of a frumpy, angry, fifty-year-old alcoholic wife in the film version of Who’s Afraiid of Virginia Woolf.  Liz had read the Edward Albee play – it was a major hit on the Broadway stage – but she had never seen it performed.  What she didn’t understand was why would a major studio offer this role to her.  She would have to age twenty years and put on thirty pounds.  Martha, the role she would play, was clearly psychotic, and Elizabeth was known for her reticence and control on the big screen.  She intimates with her eyes, not her mouth. She would have to wear wigs, protheses, and ugly costumes, but screenwriter/producer Ernest Lehman must have known what he was doing.  He has  said, “I had seen a photograph of Elizabeth angrily point her finger at her [then] husband in a manner I immediately saw as Martha-like.”  Her new and current husband, Richard Burton, agreed with Lehman. The role of Martha would present Liz with the chance to show her true screen magic.  It would be transformative.  Her fans would look beyond her beauty and see her talent as a serious actress.   Martha would become her Hamlet.  Richard, in fact, would become her George, her henpecked husband in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

This play/film turns the tormented, middle-aged marriage of a frustrated college professor and an angry housewife - like inside out.  They are at each other's throats from the beginning to the end.  They terrorize a young couple who they have invited to the house after a late-night faculty party.  The drinking is hardcore.  The screaming is off-the-hook.  Liz and Dick not only nail the roles of George and Martha, but they become George and Martha.  Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is a veritable horror show.  Moviegoers of the 1960s, clearly unprepared and jolted by the performance, walked out of theaters trembling, while Liz and Dick laughed all the way to the bank. 

I’m not writing a book report here, but I enjoyed reading about the behind-the-scenes story for how this movie was made.  Edward Albee’s play hit Broadway at the heels of 1950s.  This was the "I Love Lucy" era in American entertainment.  Nothing on the stage or on the screen was remotely approaching the complexities of what goes on behind closed doors in a tormented marriage. At least not with this vigor and honesty.   In "Lucy," the networks prohibited their writers to use the word "bathroom" in their scripts.  In Virginia Woolf, characters are puking their guts out on the bathroom floor.  Emotion is laid bare.  Edward Albee grew up as an adopted child by parents he felt didn’t love him.  As a young man, when he recognized he was gay, he broke ties from his adopted family and moved to New York City.   In fact, it was in a Manhattan gay bar, he discovered someone had written in lipstick,  “Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” on a bathroom mirror. This was a transformative moment in his life.  Living an openly gay lifestyle was nothing like it is today.  Until the 1970s, homosexuality was still considered ilegal in many states in this country.   At the time Edward A. may have felt anbandoned, persecuted, angry; in 1961, his play came to him in stages.  The secret lives of George and Martha called out to him to write!

Although Edward A's Virginia Woolf would become a huge success on Broadway, there would be much industry trepidation for it's conversion to a feature film.  In the mid-sixties, these were the run-of-the mill, successful romance films to capture the public imagination: Pillow Talk; Kiss Me, Sutpid; The Parent Trap...  Not a lot of stories about brutal, vulgar hateful arguments between two middle-aged spouses. Most business plans developed by the major movie studios weren't focused on making their audiences uncomfortable or sick.  The language from the original play was not yet to be heard inside a movie theater.  The themes of the play up until then were mostly kept in the dark.  Who would want to see two parents engage in a violent argument over the death of their child?  Rock Hudson and Doris Day, this was not!   Ernest Lehman, the screenwriter, had made a name for himself in adopting Broadway hits for the movies, such as The Sound of Music and West Side Story.  He had recently enhanced his reputation by converting his own novela to the screen, The Sweet Smell of Success.  Not a F-Bomb to be found in any of these. No one could know what to make of first-time film director Mike Nichols.  His success was based on recent Broadway hits with names like Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, and Luv. Something tells me that, despite their proven track records, neither Lehman or Nichols had ever approached the challenge of working with Liz and Dick.

In real life, these two were tour-de-force alcoholics.  Dick, who was born to a Welsh mining family, began his drinking at age eleven.  This was his life.  His father worked in the mines  from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., six days a week, seeing the sun only on Sundays. His father was a boozer.  Dick grew up in a small village where the drinking was constant and cheap.  Fortunately for Dick, once he stepped on the stage in a prep school drama program, the people around him immediately recognized his genius.  They pushed him to pursue a career in the arts at the highest levels.  The failed to recognize, however, his nearly suicidal drinking problems.  By the mid-sixties, Dick boasted  that he could drink a half gallon of cognac or a fifth of whiskey during one night’s stage performance.  At the time of Virgina Woolf, he was drinking 3-4 bottles of hard alcohol per day.  Dick was not only a mentor to Liz in her acting, but he also became an inspiration for her drinking. Liz was proud that she could keep up with her husband, or anyone else for that matter.   

My favorite story in this book features the first meeting between Dick and Liz on the set of Cleopatra. It was in the studio commisary/dining hall.  Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, meets Marc Anthony, powerful Roman General.  They were both in full costume.  Dick was dressed in his mini-tunic.  Liz's eyes were shaded with thick, stormy blue make-up.  It was clear Dick was suffering from a severe hangover. From where Liz was standing, she could see gin blossoms exploding across Dick's face.  When he tried to raise a cup of coffee to his lips he shook so badly, that his drink spilled right down his costume.   He asked Elizabeth for help. “Hold this, love, will you hold it to my mouth?”  Liz must have fallen for his vulnerabiltity.  She found someone she could care for.  The feeling was mutual. “I fell in love at once,” Richard said later. “She was like a mirage of beauty of the ages, irresistible like the pull of gravity.”  It was the beginning of a beautiful and stormy relationship.

For me, this is the most engaging part about Virginia Woolf:  beyond the clear and present violence in the marriage between George and Martha, you can’t avoid seeing the love and need they have for one another.   It’s COMPLEX. From the beginning of the movie, they are obsessed with hurting each other. In the opening scene,  when Martha askes George for a kiss, he rejects her;  Not because he has any bad feelings for her in the moment, but it’s that’s part of their game.  Their marriage is a painful power struggle between a fat wife and a loser professor.  For two more hours of the movie, their behavior will only get worse."I cannot stand it," George shouts at Martha.  "You can stand it," she shouts back.  "You married me for it!"   Everyone assoicated with Virginia Woolf knew they were they were involved in a huge gamble, for no one could honestly predict the reaction of the audience. George and Martha  were terrifying on screen.  They were relentless. TOTAL WAR!   

Liz and Dick were married for ten years.  They divorced and then remarried.  For this time period, they were the most famous couple in the world.   Maybe for all time. Their fans were desperate to know of both their loving and their fighting.  Considering who they were, and what they drank, their passion overflowed in the public imagination.  There is one scene in the film, where George and Martha are fighting outside a roadhouse in the parking lot.  The scene calls for physical abuse, and George appears to lose all control and slams Martha against his car. Liz's head goes CRACK!  Dick reveals a true expression of fear for what he just did. Liz, the million-dollar superstar, demands to do the scene again, but harder. Director Nichols keeps the scene in the movie.  Liz slumping to the ground like a bag of potatoes. Dick standing there dumfounded, not knowing what just happened. Two artists at the top of their game forever capture the Ugly Truth of their marriage on celluoid.

In the end, Virginia Woolf gave audiences what they wanted.  It was the third highest grossing film of the year.  All four of the main characters were nominated for Oscars.  Liz came home with best actress statue.  Somehow, somewhere, whatever Liz and Dick were saying, what ever they were yelling, they seemed to connect with their viewers in the dark.  So much of the darkness of thier marriage was being  illuminated on the screen.  Of all the people associated with the production of Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf  Liz and Dick knew most what the play was truly about. 

 

Jay's CRIME SCENE Post - Death of Marilyn Monroe - Summary of Research Article - 60 Years Later - We Stil Don't Know What Happened

In Tortured Artists, we learn the sordid details of Marilyn Monroe’s untimely death.  When she first began living the life a Hollywood legend, she of all people probably knew she would soon become a dead one.   As a famous star, Marilyn lived her life under enormous scrutiny and criticism.  Drugs became an avenue of escape.  Sadly, she already had a history of mental illness in her family.  The combination of  pressure,  drugs, and  anxiety took her down a dark road for which there was no return.   For example, at the age of four, Marilyn’s mother was placed in an asylum.  Marilyn grew up in an orphanage.  Later she found out her own grandmother had committed suicide.  She must have thought mental illness ran in her genes.  At age thirty six, when she felt herself losing her looks, she intensified her drug use.   She didn’t know who she was anymore. She didn’t know if she was Norma Jean or Marilyn.  The writer makes little comment about Marilyn’s suicide or murder.  Instead, the writing reinforces the image of Marilyn’s living a life underneath a microscope.  What may have pushed Marilyn to her death just may have been us – a public that didn’t want to see her grow old.

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I'm not sure WHEN or HOW it happened, but my students listen to me a lot more closely when I'm talking about Marilyn Monroe. It was an ACCIDENT!  In class, I had  shared what I read in a book titled The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe by Donald H. Wolfe.  The author begins his book by painting a detailed crime scene.  On Saturday, Aug. 4, 1962, West Los Angeles Police Sergeant Jack Cleamons took the call at his watch commander desk. He was told to immediately report to the home of Marilyn Monroe.  The famous movie star had been found face-down, naked, and DEAD in her own bed, apparently from a drug overdose. When Cleamons knocked on the door, he sensed something was wrong.  Marilyn's housekeeper had answered the door.  She apologized for making him wait, but she had been in the back of the house doing laundry.  This was like at 4:30 a.m.  The housekeeper's name was Eunice Murray.  She had been washing sheets while the person she worked for was dead in her bedroom. 

When Eunice led the sergeant to see Marilyn's dead body,  Sergeant Cleamons was surprised to see two strange men in suits at Marilyn's bedside smoking cigarettes.  They introduced themselves as Marilyn's doctors. They were psychologists and they shared the conclusion that Marilyn's death was a suicide.  They showed him the empty pill bottles next to her bed.  They explained Marilyn's history with depression and suicide thoughts.  They also revealed they had discovered the body THREE HOURS before they reported Marilyn's death to the police.  While they were filling in the sergeant in on Marilyn's most recent background, Eunice's nephew was replacing a broken window in the same bedroom where Marilyn lay dead.  The doctors told Sgt. Cleamons that Marilyn's door was locked and they had to break the window to gain entry. Sgt. Cleamons was a seasoned professional.  He saw bruises forming on Marilyn's body.  She lay prostrate, like she had been moved.  This wasn't Sgt. Cleamons' first suicide scene.  Marilyn didn't look like the type of victim that would have swallowed more than fifty pills. Cleamons expected there would be signs of vomit and stress.  Before Cleamons could extend his inquiry, he was replaced by a superior and told to go home. It wasn't going to be his case, he was told. 

In several of my classes, my sharing of Marilyn's Death Scene has inspired many of my students to write research papers on the Life and/or Death of Marilyn Monroe. Of course, I ask them to write a summary of a research article.  I'm happy for them to discover an important historical icon.  They write about her childhood.  They define her  femininity.  Did you know that Marilyn was at the forefront of the Me Too Movement?  She was one of the first Hollywood stars to speak out about sexual harrassment in the workplace.  I know that because I read about it in a Gloria Steinem memoir.  A few years back, EVERYONE in my classes chose to write about Marilyn.  They all chose different facets of her life.  Later I titled the semester, of course, Jay's Project Marilyn.

I encourage students to explore their topics in a way they find the most INTERESTING.  From the beginning of the project, they maintain their research articles in a project binder. Maybe, the third week or so, we annotate our articles and summarize them for use in our research papers.  Below I share something they might see in a a canvas announcement or a classroom workshop.  I try to model my summary for a Marilyn research article I found in an antholgy here on my shelves in Mexicali:

 

I tell my students THIS: There is no ONE way to write a summary of a research article, but a summary of a research article will go a long way to building credibility with YOUR readers.  It shows you have done your homework.  You care about what you are writing. I plan for my students to arrange their  summaries high up in their research paper - Probably the THIRD PARAGRAPH.  Share their most important/interesting research. The charts WORK for them.  They often struggle with WHAT TO KEEP IN and WHAT TO LEAVE OUT.    Focusing upon 5 W's and a H makes for a good beginning. 

 

 

Jay's 'H' IS FOR HOLIDAY READING Post - Alice Munro's Runaway - Pedro Almovodar - Adriana Ugarte - Hache - Heroine - Heroin

   These days, en estos dias, I devote a chunk of each day to follow a Spanish-language telenovela on Netflix.  This one is called Hache.  From Spanish,  Hache translates to the letter ‘H.’  In this case,  H is for Helena, the protagonist of the series, a desperate single mother, who will do anything to provide a safe and meaningful life for her young daughter. Helena lives in the city of Barcelona, Spain in the 1960s. Her labor union leader husband has been wrongfully sentenced to prison for alleged communist activities.  With little chance of taking care of herself or her daughter, Helena fatefully hooks up with a local Mafia leader.  His name is Malpica and he controls the (H for) Heroin that is smuggled into the port of Barcelona. Helena finds herself up to her Head in drugs and murder.

But my title refers to my READING.  I bring up this series Hache for my appreciation of the principle actress, Adriana Ugarte.  She plays the desperate young mother who is forced by circumstance to enter a sleazy and violent underworld. Man, I want so bad to learn Spanish.  I've never been much of a television viewer or moviegoer, but I've developed my own system of learning to suppement my Spanish-reading with my viewing of Spanish-language telenovelas.  I enjoy watching Hache on Netflix, for I can stop the computer to replay anything I don't understand.  I've seen Adriana  U. before, maybe twenty years ago.  She starred in a World War II spy series called El Tiempo entre las costuras.   I found the novel in both English - The Time Between - and Spanish.   I read them both as I watched the series. Later, I did the same with another Adriana U. series, Las Palmeras en la nieve, based on a novel by Luz Gabas. In this story, Adriana U. is a young woman who takes a dangerous journey to Central Africa to find the truth of her family history.  For me learning Spanish is difícil.  My progress is painstaikingly slow.  I'm so happy I've found a Spanish-speaking actor to follow.  Often, in my classes, I ask my students to share their film knowledge in group discussions and activities.  They write about their favorite actors, and explain to me WHY and HOW they connect.  They share poignant scenes they remember featuring Michael J. Fox, Scarlett Johanssen, Jennifer Lawrence.  When they ask me about my favorite actor, my go-to now is Adriana Ugarte.   

I feel my Spanish-speaking self has grown up with Adriana U.  Recently, I came across her name in a Spanish-language Almodóvar film, Julieta. I don't know or understand much about Pedro Almodóvar, but this was a good find for me because I have the Alice Munro short-story collection on my shelves, Runaway, that inspired this movie.  Jaja.  If you thought Almodóvar's films come from Spain, you are correct.  Alice Munro and her stories are based in Canada.  I read that Almodóvar originally began production of his film in Vancouver, but he soon realized that his English skills were not advanced enough to capture the trauma of a Canadian protagonist.  He soon retreated to España.  That's where he picked up Adriana U.  I suppose Pedro M watches the same telenovelas I do.  Adriana U. is a brilliant actor.  I've never heard her speak in English, but she knows how to exude despair on multiple levels. In Julieta, she plays a classics literature professor that loses both her husband and daughter.  Her fisherman husband dies in boating tragedy.  Soon thereafter, her teen-age daughter leaves her behind, runs away, without a word or a trace, never to return.  Almodóvar chose to base his film on three consecutive short-stories from Alice M's work: "Chance," "Soon," and "Silence."  I find the title of the third story the most meaningful.   As a PhD in the classics,  Julieta is obviously a deep and complex woman. This may be one reason she feels so lonely from the beginning of the film to the end.    She's so passionate about her work, she may be numb to everything else around her.   Julieta's deep hearbreak comes from the silence that overcomes her character when she enters emotional confrontations.  When her husband cheats on her with her best friend, she has nothing to say to him, and when he washes up dead on shore, it's way too late to say anything at all.   Her daughter seems adverse to this part of Julieta's personality.  Like many teenagers she doesn't feel she gets the attention she deserves from her mother.  At a certain point, she runs away to join a cult where her she can satisfy her spiratual needs. 

I’m pleasantly surprised for the enjoyment I get in re-reading books off my shelves here in Mexicali.  I guess I have become  older and wiser.  I feel I connect better with the characters in Alice Munro stories than ever I have before.  Maybe it’s the SPANISH in me.  One of my students this semester wrote a research paper about the benefits of language acquisition. He argued that learning a foreign language helps you develop muscles in your brain you may rarely use. I probably will be the last one to know if I am any SMARTER.  My head doesn’t feel any BIGGER.  But, I can tell you I like Alice Munro MORE twenty years after I first read her.  I read her this time before I watched the movie.  B.A. Before Angela.   My favorite story in the book comes after the Julieta triology.  It’s called “Passion.”  It's about a young girl's quest for a "taste" of life.  She's kind of cute, real smart, and here is the most important point: she's really bored with who she is, but she doesn't know who she wants to be. I'm stunned an old man  like me can relate with young Grace, the girl who didn't want to be the way girls were supposed to be like. In fact  - as a young boy of her age - I could have related to her stubborness. Munro gives us the best of both worlds. She has the ability to take us in and out of time. In doing so her writing touches both our heads and our hearts.

In "Passion," Grace goes back to a scene in her life that she is never going to get back. That seems pretty clear. From the time she is an ambitious high school student thinking about teaching herself Spanish, Italian and German, to the time she brazenly chooses a sloppy alcoholic love affair, Grace had shown a courage to go her own way.
The story ends with the insight of an older woman. The older Grace retraces a key event in her life when she was able to leave her farmtown and work as a waitress in a lakeside restaurant. Grace paints a picture of a young girl soon to become a woman. She learns a new culture from the family she lives with. She learns of love from her first serious relationship. She approaches a sense of self-identity through the process. After all these years, we learn that Grace doesn't go back to this scene for any great memory of love or fufullment. She goes back to realize finally what her high school principal once told her before she began her adventure: what does learning have to do with life?

In this story she learns the hard way when at a crucial turning point in her life she abandons the reliable, lover in exchange for his sad, but drugged-out doctor brother. One was predictable. The other offered a "taste" of life. What does Grace know.  What did she know. Everybody who reads the story knows what was going to happen when chooses to hop in the car with the drunk and leave the other brother behind. My favorite part is the end of the story. The older Grace narrates with such sharp disappointment that it turns the landscape gray. No matter how smart she is now, she can't go back... She's lucky to be alive, and he's dead.

At my age, I can now say I can connect much better with the characters Alice M offers in her stories.  They are smart and beautiful, but they are hardly free.  In the story “Chance,”  the author writes, “In the town where she [Julieta] grew up, her sort of intelligence was often put in the same category as a limp or extra thumb and people had been quick to point out the expected accompanying drawbacks.”  In “Passion,” Grace scores very high marks in high-school Chemistry, Trigonometry, Geometry and Biology.  Her school doesn’t offer Greek, Italian, Spanish, and German, but in each, she learns to speak compentenly on her own!   Her parents loved her, and her teachers admired her, but no one was pushing her to seek out high-level academic education.  Alice M's characters grow up at a time where real success is to be sought out in  marriage and motherhood.

I feel the depth of depression in both Julieta and Grace.  Alice M deftly brings us inside her characters.  Pedro A paints  a story on their faces. My Spanish had deepened my empathy for other cultures and perspectives.  There are a lot of scenes in these stories where women characters in all stages of their lives sit alone on busses and trains, and stare out the windows at their lives passing them by.  It doesn't matter if it's in Canada or Spain.   I think I get it now.  These women  want to feel some control of their own destinies,  but their lives won't allow it.  Their only place to run away is inside themselves.