Pulitzer Project: The Hours

It's been awhile since I thought about the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Back in 2023 I read the 1997 winner, Martin Dressler, and was so thoroughly unimpressed by it that I lost interest in moving on up the list. When I decided to get back to it I wasted about a year in trying to track down a copy of the 1998 winner, American Pastoral. Despite it being a Philip Roth novel and, if I recall correctly, a best seller, the local library did not have it. Nor did any of the other libraries in the library's interlibrary loan network. So then I did the looking for a used copy. Turned out used copies for sale were scarce, too, and the ones I found were priced higher than I felt like spending. I finally decided to step back from the obsessive need to do the list in the order the prize was awarded and moved on to 1999, Michael Cunningham's The Hours.

As usual, I knew nothing about the book before starting to read it. The cover made it clear it had been made into a movie -- even I recognized Meryl Streep -- but I didn't recall ever seeing the film. I'm pretty oblivious when it comes to cinema and had no recollection of a movie that it turns out was both a critical and financial success. According to The Google, it made tons of money and resulted in an Oscar for Nicole Kidman. 

Small digression. I find it intriguing that beautiful actresses, no matter how skilled they are, seem to get tapped for awards when they take on roles that erase their physical attractiveness. Kidman suffered through long sessions in the make-up trailer thanks to the prosthetic nose and other enhancements designed to make her physically resemble the author Virginia Woolf. (The Younger Daughter had seen the film and said she didn't realize it was Nicole Kidman until she saw the credits.) The following year Charlize Theron won an Oscar for her portrayal of Aileen Wuornos in Monster, a role for which Theron gained 30 pounds and shaved off her eyebrows. Of course, male actors do it, too, like Matthew McConaughey for The Dallas Buyers Club. He lost over 50 pounds so he could realistically portray someone suffering from AIDS.

Back to the book.. . . As is true for most of the Pulitzer winners I read, my knowledge of either the book or the author was basically nonexistent when I picked it up. My initial reaction was relief that it was a modestly sized trade paperback and not something with the physical heft of War and Peace or Kristin Lavransdatter. Both of which I enjoyed reading, but they weren't Pulitzer winners. The hefty Pulitzer winners have not been nearly as readable as anything by Tolstoy. If a Pulitzer winner looks like it would make a nice solid doorstop, I don't see that as a good sign.  

The Hours offers vignettes from three different women's lives: the author Virginia Woolf, a fairly young stay-at-home wife in late 1950s Los Angeles, and a middle-aged lesbian in New York City in the early 1990s. The three women are tied together by Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway. Woolf is in the early stages of writing the book, she's working out plot points in her head. The L.A. trad wife is reading Mrs. Dalloway, and the New Yorker was nicknamed Mrs. Dalloway when she was in college. Her first name is Clarissa, the same as Mrs. Dalloway, so the nickname made sense at the time. Now, 30+ years later, she's not as sanguine about it as she was in her 20s. 

I have never read Mrs. Dalloway so I have no idea how the descriptions of the three women match up with themes in the book. I do know about Virginia Woolf's life (and death) but I have never read anything by her. I'm not sure why. Woolf is a feminist icon so maybe I should feel a little guilty about not knowing anything about her actual work. Then again, if she'd been published in one of the genres I have an addiction to (mysteries and science fiction and fantasy) I might have read her but then she wouldn't be the iconic author she is remembered as. 

So, having approached the book with my usual level of blissful ignorance and feeling cautiously optimistic ("How bad can it be? It got optioned for a movie."), how was the actual book? Brief summary: Definitely readable but thin. As noted, the novel offers slices of life, basically one day each, for the three women. The first chapter kind of threw me for a loop -- it's a description of Woolf's suicide in 1941 -- but then the frame shifts. In Woolf's case the narrative jumps back to a summer day in 1923. She's thinking about her next book (Mrs. Dalloway), preparing for a visit from her sister Vanessa, trying to persuade her husband to move back into London proper instead of being stuck in a dull suburb, and worrying about her own mental health. She apparently suffered from headaches so severe they triggered hallucinations. 

The book then jumps forward in time to a day in the life of "Mrs. D," the middle-aged New Yorker. She's running errands, shopping for fresh flowers, fussing about the health of the friend who gave her the Mrs. Dalloway nickname, and remembering incidents from back when she and the friend were young. He's now a well respected poet who's just been awarded a prestigious prize so Mrs. D is planning to host a party celebrating his accomplishments. She's worrying about the guest list (did she inadvertently invite someone Richard wouldn't want to see?), worrying about her 19-year-old daughter's friendship with a feminist activist, worrying about life in general. One odd little bit of business is while she's at the florist she notices a film company is set up down the block. There are a couple trailers for the actors, one of whom is reportedly a major female actress. She wonders if it could be Meryl Streep. Given that Meryl Street plays Mrs. D in the film, that struck me as an interesting coincidence. 

As for the party Mrs. D is stressing about, in the end other events cause its cancellation. 

The Woolf and Mrs. D chapters are reasonably interesting; the trad wife in L.A. was more of a slog. Not surprisingly, it's the thinnest sections. She's young, has been married for a few years, has one child (a boy) and is pregnant again. She is  passionate reader, has always had a reputation as a book worm, and given any sort of a choice she'd rather read than do anything else. She's also suffering from massive insecurity. She worries that she's doing a bad job as a parent, she throws out a cake because the frosting isn't perfect, she worries that she's lost herself. She feels sufficiently unmoored that she brings her 3 year old son to a neighbor to be watched while she drives into the city and gets a hotel room for a few hours so she can have a quiet place to read with no other obligations. Is this nod to A Room of Her Own? (One of the multiple Virginia Woolf novels I've heard of but never read.)

I'm sure book clubs had discussions centering on questions like "What is the theme of this book?" I have no idea. Maybe it's that we all live in our own heads too much and worry about stuff it's not worth worrying about?  Bottom line was The Hours is readable. Michael Cunningham can write. Can he write at an Edna Ferber or Upton Sinclair level? No, but good if not great beats quite a few other Pulitzer winners. On the usual1 to 10 scale, it's a respectable 6 or 7. Better than average and not work to read.

Would I recommend it to other readers? Yes, with the minor caveat of warning them not to be put off by the description of Virginia putting rocks in her pockets and walking into the Ouse in the first chapter. Cunningham must have realized a drowned woman wouldn't have much to say or think about. Virginia breathing in 1923 is a lot more engaging than a very damp Virginia drifting in a river 

Next up on the list, assuming a copy of American Pastoral doesn't drop from the sky, a collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. 

They call me Mr. Cribbs

This is Charlie Cribbs, the orange asshole who decided to adopt us a few months ago. He was living next door but after his favorite human landed in a nursing home Charlie started spending more time at our place. 

My cat Beelzebub was Charlie's bestie. Charlie shadowed Bubba for several years. He adored Bubba. I think it's probable Bubba was the only cat Charlie ever met outside his immediate family (mother and littermates). I know cats can wander amazing distances but I'm not sure just how far Charlie ever ambled because cats are not nearly as common up here on The Rock as they were a few decades ago. Back in the '70s the only neighbors who did not have cats were the households with inhabitants severely allergic to cat dander, like several of the S.O.'s cousins. Now the people who do have pet cats are the exception. No active farms around either so no barn cats. Lots of dogs, but very few felines. Given how much time Charlie spent hanging around our house over the course of several years, I don't think Mr. Cribbs ever succeeded in finding any other examples of Felis domestica.  

In any case, the first time we saw Charlie he was still kittenish. He was probably about 8 months old at the time and had the most amazing tail. He's a long haired cat so of course his tail was fluffy. Nothing notable about that except there seemed to be enough fluff for multiple cats, not just one. It was like he was a 5 pound cat with a 20 pound tail. He's still fluffy, but the tail is more in proportion with the rest of him now.

Charlie apparently wandered over the hill when he got old enough to want to explore beyond his front yard and realized Bubba existed. Cats are surprisingly social. Feral cats will form colonies. Even unneutered males get along with a lot less fighting than one would assume. Charlie met Bubba and it was like, Dude! Once Charlie and Bubba became best buds, Charlie hung out at our house a lot. There were times when it seemed like Charlie was on the porch every day and other times several weeks would go by without him coming around.

Then Charlie's human experienced a CVA severe enough to put him in a nursing home. Family members were making sure the cat got fed, but no one was living in the house. Charlie actually likes people so it was not a good situation for him. I talked with one of the neighbor's adult daughters about rehoming Charlie. The Plan was to make sure Mr. Cribbs was up to date on shots and healthy in general and then place him for adoption. We'd just foster him for awhile. 

Right. And pigs will fly. Mr. Cribbs obviously isn't going anywhere The little orange bastard has decided we belong to him and he's not likely to change his mind, not when being an orange cat means he's got rather limited neural processing capacity to begin with. 

I know there are a lot of jokes about orange cats not being the brightest but I am wondering if the jokes are true. Charlie is the first cat we've had that can't figure out how a pet door works. We put a cat door into the bathroom door because in an RV the best place for a litter box is in the bathtub. The cat door is to provide access for the cat but still allow the bathroom door to be closed so the cat box odor isn't quite as noticeable. Bubba had no problem with cat doors. Charlie does. We keep shoving him back and forth through the door but he still hasn't figured out he can push it open himself. I guess his one brain cell really is fried. 

A disquieting thought

One of the recurring themes regarding the current debacle with Homeland Security in Minneapolis has been that the big problem is new recruits. Everyone knows Immigration and Customs Enforcement has a massive hiring campaign going on, complete with bizarre ads that look like they've been lifted straight from the Third Reich, so the collective assumption is the Big Problem is poorly trained new recruits. When an ICE agent murdered Renee Good there was lots of confidence that it would turn out the agent was a newbie, an inexperienced rookie who had been rushed through an extremely superficial training program.

Except it wasn't. Turned out the man who murdered Good had 18 years experience with Customs and Border Patrol. He was about as thoroughly trained as it was possible to be. He shot an unarmed woman basically because he believed could. He believed he would suffer zero consequences on the job. No review, no administrative leave, he thought it would be business as usual, perhaps a commendation from his supervisors. 

And then Alex Pretti got shot in the back multiple times while being pinned face down to a sidewalk by half a dozen ICE agents. More inexperienced trigger happy rookies? Nope. Once again the shooters had multiple years of experience. 

These two shootings have me thinking a rather uncomfortable thought: all three men have worked for years along the Texas-Mexico border. How many dead mojados are out there in the sagebrush? How common is it for CBP and ICE to eliminate processing paperwork by dropping illegal immigrants in the desert rather than apprehending them and dealing with filling in forms? Maybe it was so easy for Good and Pretti's killers to shoot a couple of unarmed people because they already had lots of practice. 

CBP has had a shit reputation for decades. It's known for corruption and brutality. But what if it's even worse than we thought? 

Welcome to Wag the Dog

Does YamTits really believe stealing Venezuela's oil will make the Epstein files go away? Or is he assuming this is just another grift he can manage to get away with?

Years ago I read a book called, if I remember correctly, The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight. It was about a group of incompetent New York gangsters. If those guys were around today they'd be in the Trump administration. The Maduro fiasco is yet another example of Trump minions (and Trump himself) thinking that cosplay is all it takes. Planning? Considering what to do besides providing news media with dramatic footage of things blowing up in Caracas? Not in their skill set.

I have been wondering just what they planned to charge Maduro with. There was a lot of blustering about a cartel. Rubio designated said cartel as a terrorist organization a couple months ago. Turns out said cartel does not exist. The "cartel" was a nickname South American journalists had coined to describe the loose collection of corrupt officials and businesses that were taking advantage of the system in Venezuela to enrich themselves. No actual organization, no coordinated narco trafficking, Just a conspiracy fantasy. 

Then when you toss in the overall incompetence of the current crop of U.S. Department of Justice attorneys you know that any Maduro trial will be a shit show of stupidity of epic proportions. Does Court TV still exist? I smell a ratings boost. 

As for more evidence that the whole escapade was meant as a squirrel and not to cause serious regime change in Venezuela, the only change is that Maduro is gone. Maduro's vice president is now president, the Maduro administration remains intact, and other than about 80 people being dead (killed in the attack on the Presidential home) nothing has changed in Venezuela.