I’ll read anything by Joan Didion because she’s so skilled, but this is not an uplifting work. I once made the mistake of reading Metamorphosis on a beach vacation. Similarly, Play it as it Lays does not belong anywhere near sand. I had to skip Chapter 25. I know I probably cheated myself there, and yet. Still, you should read it. It’s very good.

The best parts of Joan Didion’s Play it as it Lays:

NOTHING APPLIES, I print with the magnetized IBM pencil. What does apply, they ask later, as if the word “nothing” were ambiguous, open to interpretation, a questionable fragment of an Icelandic rune.

…just the snakes stretched out on the warm asphalt and my mother with a wilted gardenia in her dark hair and my father keeping a fifth of Jim Beam on the floorboard and talking about his plans, he always had a lot of plans, I never in my life had any plans none of it makes any sense, none of it adds up.

I’m not crazy about a lot of people. I mean maybe I was holding all the aces, but what was the game?

He was watching a very young girl in a white halter dress dancing on the terrace.
“I’d like to get into that,” he said contemplatively to BZ.
“I wouldn’t call it the impossible dream,” BZ said.

Only by an increased immobility did he acknowledge her presence.

She knew all the indices to the idle lonely, never bought a small tube of toothpaste, never dropped a magazine in her shopping cart. The house in Beverly Hills overflowed with sugar, corn-muffin mix, frozen roasts and Spanish onions. Maria ate cottage cheese.

All the daisies in the garden had been snapped by the wind.

…the infant in the driveway, rattlesnake in the playpen, the peril, unspeakable peril, in the everyday.

By the time Carter came back to town in February the dialogue was drained of energy, the marriage lanced.

By the end of the week, she was thinking constantly about where her body stopped and the air bgan, about the exat point in space and time that was the difference between Maria and other.

In the heat of some mornings she would wake with her eyes swollen and heavy and she would wonder if she had been crying.

Vocabulary
Krait — A highly venomous Asian snake (genus Bungarus) of the cobra family.
presentiment — An intuitive feeling about the future, esp. one of foreboding.
Macht nicht –An American spelling of the German expression “macht nichts” which means roughly, “it makes no difference.”
wen — Pathology a benign encysted tumor of the skin, especially on the scalp, containing sebaceous matter; a sebaceous cyst.

Note to self:
See Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight

Best parts of other books by Joan Didion:
The Year of Magical Thinking
Blue Nights
Democracy

Ed note: Ha! Just went to set this on my bookshelf and realized I already owned a copy. I attempted this one years ago, and abandoned the effort on page 40. Good thing I have a terrible memory for titles. Also, this was made into what looks like an awful movie in 1972.

Tonight, Go Mighty is hosting a book party in NYC for Pamela Druckerman, author of Bébé Day by Day: 100 Keys to French Parenting. Druckerman is a former staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal, who currently lives in Paris with her husband and children. You may remember her previous book, international bestseller Bringing Up Bébé, which had American parents asking, “How did you get your kid to eat that?” I asked her a few more questions about her new book.

When you moved to Paris, what aspect of family life gave you the greatest sense of culture shock?

It was the fact that worrying and anxiety weren’t encouraged, or seen as a sign that that you’re a good parent. In France, from the time you get pregnant, what’s valorized is calm. Of course all pregnant women worry, wherever they live. But French pregnancy magazines run articles about the importance of “serenity,” and how a pregnant “Zen maman” will give birth to a “bébé Zen.” For a neurotic New Yorker, all this talk of calm was unnerving.

You also say that French mothers have a different relationship toward guilt than their American counterparts. How does that manifest?

Guilt, like anxiety, is valorized in America. It’s viewed as a sign that you really care about your kids, and a check on becoming too selfish.

French moms do battle with guilt too. But they do it differently. They don’t valorize guilt. They think guilt is unhealthy and unpleasant, and they try to banish it. When French mothers get together, they say things like, “The perfect mother doesn’t exist.”

And the French let their children “curse?”

French preschoolers have their own curse word: caca boudin. This roughly translates as “poop sausage.” It’s an all-purpose bad word that can mean “no,” “I don’t care,” or “whatever.” My kids liked to shout it as a declaration of freedom.

When you return to The States, which accepted parenting practice surprises you now?

I’m sad when I see kids shunted into a kids’ food ghetto, where they’re fed grilled cheese and chicken nuggets. I also can’t get over all the snacking. I want to walk up to the moms who are handing out cookies in the park and say, “And you wonder why he doesn’t eat at lunch!” But I’m not the person who does that. I’m the person who goes home and writes a book about it.

How do the French address issues of sexuality in the face of a new baby, and the idea of being sexual as a mother in general?

Well for starters, calling it “the issue of sexuality” is not very sexy! Shall we just call it sex? The French believe that for about the first three months post-partum, it’s all hands on deck for the baby. Some call this, presidentially, the first hundred days. But after that, mom and dad are expected to start gradually “finding their couple” again. It’s a kind of rebalancing.

Which idea has transformed the way you parent most dramatically?

It’s a small thing, but I think the “no interrupting” principle makes a very big difference in daily life. The idea is that if a child interrupts you, you turn to him and politely say something to the effect of, “I’m speaking with someone else, I’ll be with you in a minute.” This respect is supposed to go both ways. If the child is absorbed and happily playing, the adult isn’t supposed to interrupt him either.

Which tip do you have the most trouble following yourself?

The no-snacking rule, especially when I’m working from home. Does tea count as a snack? Does an entire baguette?

****
Thanks Pamela, and since when did bread count as a “snack?” I’m pretty sure it’s just what you do with your hands before the entrée arrives. Remember your roots! And congrats on the new book.

The best parts of The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes:

Marshall was a cautious know-nothing who lacked the inventiveness of true ignorance.

When I was going out with her, it always seemed that her actions were instinctive. But then I was resistant to the whole idea that women were or could be manipulative. This may tell you more about me than it does about her.

History isn’t the lies of the victors… I know that now. It’s more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious nor defeated.

… You begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life’s business.

Margaret used to say that there were two kinds of women: those with clear edges to them, and those who implied mystery.

…a crocodile of ex-girlfriends all lined up.

And so, for the first time, I began to feel a more general remorse — a feeling somewhere between self-pity and self-hatred — about my whole life. All of it. I had lost the friends of my youth. I had lost the love of my wife. I had abandoned the ambitions I had entertained. I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded — and how pitiful that was.

Sorry, no, you can’t blame your dead parents, or having brothers and sisters, or not having them, or your genes or society, or whatever — not in normal circumstances. Start with the notion that yours is the sole responsibility unless there’s powerful evidence to the contrary.

VOCABULARY

Berk – Come from the Cockney rhyming slang “Berkshire Hunt” = Cunt.

Plimsole – Slang for someone who isn’t up to snuff academically or culturally.

Severn Bore – A tidal bore seen on the tidal reaches of the River Severn in England. Phenomenon in which the leading edge of the incoming tide forms a wave of water that travels up a river or narrow bay against the direction of the river or bay’s current.

fossicking – rummaging or searching around

clubbable – Suitable for membership of a club because of one’s sociability or popularity.

exegesis – exposition, explanation; especially : an explanation or critical interpretation of a text

nous – Reason and knowledge as opposed to sense perception.

chippy – resentful or oversensitive about being perceived as inferior