All the Time in the World' by E.L. Doctorow

Author E.L. Doctorow (accent on first syllable) may have All the Time in The World, but I don’t. I listened to the audible version of this book during a recent drive to Alpine, and if it hadn’t been on my iPhone, I would have thrown it out the window. Apparently the NY Times reviewer Jess Row and I are the only people in the world who don’t love this book, which is a collection of new and previously published short stories. Row said it well: "A great short story has to function like a black hole, demanding our entire attention, drawing all available light into itself, but Doctorow’s energies are too diffuse and variegated to achieve that effect often."

In a nutshell, All The Time In The World is stream of consciousness writing about despicable characters. Doctorow even admits, "You write to find out what you're writing." One reviewer called it “willfully obscure.”

My sensitivities were put on high alert when in the preface Doctorow said he didn’t believe "…stories collected in a volume have to have a common mark, or tracer, to relate to one another."  Then he said he didn’t believe that they needed to have a resolution or an ending, which sounded like a warning, and it was. Re: despicable characters – granted, characters don’t have to be likable, but I do think that you have to care about who they are, what they’re doing and why. I didn’t. Well, except for the serial husband killer and her accomplice son. They were interesting, in a villainous sense. Click on Read More Below...

One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times – Chapter 70

#70 – “Always put on lipstick so you won’t look so washed out.”
(Photo is of The Book Goddesses, clockwise, Debbie Kern, Loralee Martin, Me, Cathy Crabtree, Cathy Weaver, Debbie Tate and Sandra Martin.)
Anyone who knows me knows that I take this one of one hundred things very seriously. You won’t catch me without lipstick very often. It’s sort of a defining characteristic: my trademark. When I told an old boyfriend one time that I bet the first thing that attracted him to me was my boobs, his reply was, “Actually, they were the second and third things. The first was your lips.”

Mom was never without lipstick either, although her choice of color was decidedly more conservative then mine. I lean towards the “Look at Me” reds and “I’m A Hot Bitch” orange. I think there are some self-esteem issues there, but I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about lipstick.

I loooove lipstick! I’m the Imelda Marcos of lipstick. I just did a quick and dirty count to see how many tubes of lipstick I had in my makeup drawer, purse and car, and was rather horrified to discover there were only 32! Of course I did do a major purge a couple of weeks ago, taking cast offs to Goodwill.

Aside from the emotional investment, my financial investment in lipstick is also substantial. I figure I buy 2-3 tubes of CoverGirl Outlast All Day Lipcolor (my fave) per month, and at $10 a pop that’s about $360 a year on lipstick. However, I used to wear Chanel Rouge Hydrabase Crème Lipstick, went through 2-3 tubes per month, and those cost $30 a tube or $1,000 per year. Just for giggles, lets calculate a lifetime investment: $50,000! Holy Gloss, that’s just obscene! But then, I got to be me. Click on Read More Below...

The Uncoupling by Meg Wolitzer

Greek playwright Aristophanes wrote a clever and humorous play in 411 BC about a one-woman mission to end the seemingly endless Peloponnesian War by convincing all the women to withhold sex from their husbands and boyfriends until the war ended. Lysistrata was the woman, the name of the play, and a defining character in my life.

In 1966 I was a just a little country bumpkin raised in a male-dominated west Texas culture. I enrolled in Drama 101 at Dallas County Junior College and after reading Lysistrata for class I felt I’d seen the burning bush. Women had power! But I didn’t see it as sexual power. I saw it as intellectual power, and that made me feel breathlessly powerful.

When I read that The Uncoupling by Meg Wolitzer was about a community of women in small-town New Jersey who lose their sexual desire, simultaneously to a high school drama class staging of Lysistrata, I snapped it up wondering where in the world Wolitzer would take that theme! Click on Read More Below...

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

I’ll bet when author Siddhartha Mukherjee first sent his manuscript for this book to Simon & Shuster the title was A Biography of Cancer. Whoever came up with The Emperor of All Maladies probably got a huge raise!  By any name, it is a very detailed history of a disease that has evaded cure, seemingly since the beginning of time. Even now, in spite of billions of dollars in research and treatment, “the big C” is still our most feared boogieman. I’m usually all over anything remotely related to science, but this book was much like the disease– complex, unrelenting and exhausting!

Publishers Weekly called it “a sweeping epic of obsession,” and that’s on point. I could only read for 20-30 minutes at a sitting without my brain feeling like it was going to spontaneously combust. When I just couldn’t absorb another minute, I’d switch to something lite, like The Biography of Genghis Khan.

I did learn a lot more about the horrendous evolution of mastectomies and chemotherapy; how the immergence of AIDS was intertwined with the fight against cancer; the battles between the treatment and prevention camps; and the never ending “miracle cure” bunny trails. I also learned that Dr. Sidney Farber, Charles E. Dana and Mary Lasker established the first clinic that specialized in cancer care and research, the Dana Farber Cancer Center in Boston, and spent their lives chasing down this “serial killer”. Click on Read More Below...

This and That

Congratulation To Herbert Clayton Noelke V (Quenten) for winning two 1st, one 2nd and one 3rd in the Alpine Horseshow! Photo to the left is of my son, Cuatro (the IV), Quenten, and Bear (horse).

Khloe (right) watches intently as "Bubba" (brother) performs. Won't be too long before Khloe is riding in competition as well!

Love Happens! 

Here's a photo of good friends Teri and Brandon Wade's beautiful wedding in Leakey, TX. That's Debbie Tate standing next to the bride. 

JAZZ Baby! 

 Had lunch last week with friend Dean Lofton (photo left), whose husband Jeff Lofton (photo right) was recently chosen as Austin Jazz Musician of the Year. I am a Patron of Jeff's, which sounds fancier then it really is. I just send them a small check each month to help them "Kick Start" Jeff's new album, "Chasing The VooDoo Down," which is superb!  Three things:

1. Join me in becoming a Jeff Lofton Patron - just a little each month doesn't hurt, but helps a lot! Click here!
2. Go to Jeff's CD release party at the Cactus Cafe, 8:30 pm, Saturday, May 14.
3. You can see Jeff every Wednesday at Maria Maria and Thursdays at Ruth's Chris.
4. For a sample of Jeff's cool, cool jazz, click here

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