In the New Yorker...

[Jeff Wrangler]

I'm currently reading the article about Freudian psychoanalysis in China in the January 10 issue. It was interesting to learn that, evidently, traditionally, the Chinese believed that there were seven emotions: happiness, anger, sadness, fear, love, hatred, and desire. Apparently these emotions needed to be kept in balance for you to be healthy.

[Jeff Wrangler]

The Jan. 17 issue is the best I've read in a long time. ... The Lamb Roast was a sweet memoir of a party-giving couple in NY that reminded me of the BBQ.

I'm reading this story now. A sentence in the paragraph where the author describes going to the circus at Madison Square Garden rang memory's bell:

"We met Gunther, the lion tamer, and marvelled at this blond hair, deep tan, and amazing ass--high, round, and firm, like two Easter hams--in electric blue tights."

That could only describe one person, someone I hadn't thought of in years: Gunther Gebel-Williams, who was a big circus star when I was a kid. I never saw him in person, only on TV. He was basically the headliner for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. He performed his animal act dressed in flamboyant costumes--including, indeed, electric blue tights--and no shirt, which showed off his equally amazing abs, instead of the safari gear often associated with a lion tamer.

With my memory jogged, I googled him, and I came up with quite a few images of him in those electric blue tights and no shirt. Sadly, I also learned that he died, of cancer, in Florida, in 2001 at the age of 66 years.

Before there was Seigfreid and Roy, there was Gunther Gebel-Williams.

[southendmd]

[Jeff Wrangler]

I finished The Lamb Roast over lunch today. It sure would be nice to have a barbecue like that one. 

On the basis of the geographic references, I presume the author grew up in or very near to New Hope, Pennsylvania. I know New Hope well, or did, anyway; I haven't been up there in years, now. It's an artsy place--appropriate for the author's scenic designer father and former dancer mother, and something of a haven for gay Philadelphians with automobiles. Her father's studio was in Lambertville, New Jersey, which is directly across the Delaware River from New Hope, and she writes about walking to Jersey after school for music lessons. You can do this by walking across the bridge between New Hope and Lambertville.

[Jeff Wrangler]

I just noticed that the back cover of the January 24 issue includes an ad for Annie Proulx's memoir.

[serious crayons]

I just noticed that the back cover of the January 24 issue includes an ad for Annie Proulx's memoir.

Do I have to turn in my Brokie card if I say that her memoir doesn't sound very good?

[Front-Ranger]

Not in my book, friend. Brokeback Mountain stands out among all the works I've read by Proulx as unique. She is famously regarded as one of the most unreadable great writers, right up there with Pynchon, Joyce, and Faulkner. I have the CD reserved at the library and I will go pick it up as soon as the weather clears. I'm planning to skip past all the real estate stuff. I'm sure there will be plenty of interesting bits about Wyoming and its fascinating characters.

I read all of Postcards, but only because I was in the hospital at the time. I've never been able to make it to the end of Accordion Crimes or Shipping News. I've read two or three of her short story collections, but those are easy. Yet I've read Brokeback Mountain about a gazillion times.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Do I have to turn in my Brokie card if I say that her memoir doesn't sound very good?

If I get around to reading it as quickly as I've read the short story collections, there's little danger of me ever actually reading it.    But if it reads like the essay "Getting Movied," it might have some entertainment value.

She is famously regarded as one of the most unreadable great writers, right up there with Pynchon, Joyce, and Faulkner.

Really? Jeez, I never got the memo. Did somebody actually compare her to Faulkner? That's interesting! 

[serious crayons]

Really? Jeez, I never got the memo. Did somebody actually compare her to Faulkner? That's interesting! 

The only Faulkner novel I've read is "The Sound and the Fury." I would say it was much more difficult than understand than Proulx (or his own short stories) -- I used a Cliff's Notes to help decipher it. But personally, I found it more rewarding.

[Front-Ranger]

Really? Jeez, I never got the memo. Did somebody actually compare her to Faulkner? That's interesting! 

Yes, I did.