Read, Listen, Watch

Staff Picks and Suggestions

Boston Book Festival – Saturday, 10/24 in Copley Square

I’ll be volunteering at the first annual Boston Book Festival being held this Saturday (10/24) in Copley Square.  The festival features 90 authors reading from their works and signing books, and 40 exhibitors. Events will be taking place at the Boston Public Library, Trinity Church, and the Old South Church. And, it’s free! The keynote speaker will be Pulitzer Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk. However, I admit I’m most intrigued by the session called “Writer Idol,” in which an actor will read the first pages of unpublished manuscripts submitted by audience members, and a panel of judges (editors and literary agents) will offer their opinions on what works and what doesn’t. Get more info at http://www.bostonbookfest.org/.

Books as Films at Snell: The Trial

Last week sometime I watched Orson Welles’ The Trial, partly because if I only watch The Goofy Movie all the time, I start feeling bad about myself, and partly because I really like Orson Welles.  The Trial is based on the story of the same name by Franz Kafka about a man who is being prosecuted for a crime. The crime is never revealed to the baffled, helpless main character, or to the readers, and a variety of strange events occur. It’s pretty surreal (a la Kafka) and has that eerie Orson-black-and-white look to it that’s so perfect for this story. I also really love Anthony Perkins and his lovely little old-fashioned American accent. He was the perfect K., switching back and forth between assumed indignation, unexplainable guilt, and desperate frustration in the face of the looming, untouchable, unseen, abstract, omniscient authority figure and justice system of which K is an apparent victim. The scenes of K’s office – basically a warehouse with rows and rows and rows of identical desks containing typists, with his office on this large concrete raised platform at the head of the room – were my favorite. They were so surreal and mechanized-looking. I loved the scene when his uncle comes to visit and they chat in his ‘office’ with all the drones in the back typing away outside of his wall-less room. Suddenly all of the typists get up at once and start putting on their jackets all at once, all leaving immediately in perfect synchronization. To work, back home, to bed, awaken. To work, back home, to bed awaken. It was a great little illustration. The Trial can be borrowed at the library in book and film form.

Broadcast Journalist Lynne Joiner at Snell on Friday, October 23

Join us on Friday, October 23 at 12 pm, as Emmy-award winning journalist Lynne Joiner discusess her book, Honorable Survivor: Mao’s China, McCarthy’s America and the Persecution of John S. Service.  John Service was an American foreign service officer, who was often blamed for “losing” China, and who came to be a target for US officials like Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover.  In addition to recently unsealed government documents, Joiner had access to personal papers and photographs of Service and his associates that she weaves into her historical account and presentation. (90 Snell Library).

Researching Your Family History: First Steps

After you decide to do your family history the first step is to decide which side of your family you want to start with and what you want to find out . When you fill out a chart you usually start with your self and go backwards with the information you have. You can either create your own chart or use a family tree program or a web site. 2  Web Sites that offer free charts: http://www.ancestry.com/trees/charts/researchcal.aspx http://www.familysearch.org (At Family Search, look on the left hand side and you will see “Pedigree Charts,” click on the link.) Once you put down the information you already know it’s time to start with relatives and continue to fill in the chart with information they have. You may also find these books and e-resources at Snell useful, as well as Genealogy Basics Online.

Tokyo Story

 Tokyo Story (1953) is a film from Japan by one of the country’s master filmmakers, Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963), who, in the last fifteen years of his career, made some of the most simplistic and quiet films you will encounter in a medium so accustomed to movement and action. It is the story of two aging parents who make a trip to visit their children, who live in and around Tokyo, and a daughter-in-law, who was married to a fourth son, now deceased. The children each have various agendas in their lives and grow tired of their parent’s presence; they send their parents to a spa outside Tokyo, in a clear attempt to simply get them off their hands. Ironically, it appears to be the daughter-in-law who is the most devoted to her in-laws. But then the mother falls ill, and the entire family is forced to draw themselves back together. Ozu’s films firmly introduced domestic situations in to cinema; though of course there had been domestic dramas in cinema before, no filmmaker had realized that such a genre worked best when it was static, straightforward and as unsentimental as possible. Ozus’ films are famous for their camera angles placed low to the floor, similar to the way the Japanese regularly sit on the floor rather than chairs. In his films, shots are repeated again and again, though often without any change or further decoration;  they serve a more metaphysical purpose. His actors perform their parts with intense understatement. These are not common techniques in film, and Ozu’s films have never been as popular as the films of his contemporary, Akira Kurosawa precisely because of their stylistic opposition; Kurosawa’s actors were bombastic, Ozu’s were not; Kurosawa’s camera was constantly moving, Ozu’s was not; Kurosawa worked in a variety of genres that called for more sensationalism and brio; Ozu was an artist of domesticity. Despite this, Ozu has had something of an influence, even on some contemporary directors. Jim Jarmusch’s deadpan compositions recall Ozu’s, and a variety of contmporary Asian filmmakers, such as Hsaio-Hsien Hou are deeply indebted to his films. Even the German filmmakers Wim Wenders has acknowledged Ozu’s profound influence and once made a documentary called Tokyo-Ga, which was an homage to his films. Ozu is a more rigorous director than any of these directors, but watching his best films– also including Late Spring and A Story of the Floating Weeds— are reflective, even relaxing experiences that movies should give us more often.