Maybe you’re of the hibernation
school. You burrow into your home in December, swaddle yourself in flannel and
goose down, and subsist on frozen pizzas and canned goods until April. If so,
that’s cool. No one will judge you. Even the most winter-loving Rochesterians,
though they dance and hug themselves with every snowfall, will spend one or two
evenings on the couch in fuzzy slippers.
But if you choose a movie or a book
to pass the time, for goodness’ sake, choose wisely. Don’t watch Diehard 18 again. Don’t read the
articles in TV Guide. C’mon. It’s
winter, not the apocalypse. Take some suggestions from these gurus: they’re
willingly sharing the titles of some of their favorites. This way, you’ll have
a few things to talk about when you re-emerge, blinking and dazed, into the
sun.
First, the books.
Nick
DiChario, director of adult workshops and programs at Writers & Books
and fiction editor of the literary mag HazMat,
obliged us with a list of books set strictly in wintry settings.
He calls Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson a “cold, wet, snowy story.”
It takes place in 1954, on a Puget Sound island, where a Japanese-American man
is accused of murder. “A film was made out of it in 1999,” DiChario says, “but
read the book first. The prose is so elegant that the movie pales in
comparison.”
He also recommends An Everyday Savior by Kathyrn Larrabee,
“set in rural, upstate New York in the dead of winter. Readers are treated to
an icy death, a love story, a loyal dog, and terrific characters. The cold,
barren, bitter landscape makes this a great fireside novel.”
And you can get ready for Writers
& Books’ “If All of Rochester Read the Same Book…” campaign (this year’s
is a local pick, Servants of the Map by
Andrea Barrett) with another of Barrett’s books, The Voyage of the Narwhal. DiChario says: “This book sends kindly
Erasmus Darwin Wells into the Northwest Passage late in the 19th century, where
his expedition gets stuck in the ice. The reader gets everything from Eskimos
and frozen corpses to great moments of natural history, all of it so finely
written it will take your breath away.”
Anne
Panning, writer, SUNY Brockport professor, and co-organizer of the
college’s excellent Writers Forum, says that Charles Baxter’s The Feast of Love “should have won the
National Book Award when it was nominated.”
She continues: “I’ve read this novel
twice and the image of a couple making love in the middle of the huge empty
University of Michigan football stadium stays with me still. The book is as
much about loneliness as it is about love and is told from several different
points of view ranging from a 20-something coffee shop employee to a retired
professor.”
Panning was the only expert to
recommend a poet. She continues to go back to Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke because “there is always
something new to be amazed by in these poems.”
“I read this book in college,” she
says, “and in graduate school, and still read the book over and over because of
its dark complexity.”
And although she says that Truman
Capote is “mostly remembered as being a flamboyant alcoholic in later life,”
Panning finds in his Complete Stories “a
warm sincerity.”
“‘Children on Their Birthdays’ is a
great model for how to give away a story’s plot in the very first line yet keep
reader interest,” she says. “‘Jug of Silver’ reminds me of Ryan’s Big M grocery
store in Brockport where they still put out jars of candy for shoppers to guess
how many.”
University of Rochester professor and
accomplished fiction writer Joanna Scott offered a concise but full list:
“On a snowy day, I like nothing
better than to read the stories in The
Portable Chekhov, a compact anthology! Or else, to help me sink into a
dream, I’ll turn to some weather-rich novels by Thomas Hardy — Jude the Obscure, or Tess of the d’Urbervilles.”
Scott also recommended a couple of
more recent works: Wintering by Kate
Moses and The Silver Screen by
Maureen Howard. Of Wintering (which
won Moses the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction by an American Woman from
UR — she’ll be visiting in April) Scott says it is “a beautiful exploration
of Sylvia Plath and her private struggles.” And Howard’s is “a graceful,
intricate novel by a writer who is unafraid of the bold subjects of love and
death.”
And now let’s go to the movies.
Jim
Healy is assistant curator of The George Eastman House’s Motion Picture
Department. He says he’s “really looking forward to luxuriating in the
wide-screen, opulent spectacle of Visconti’s The Leopard when we show it at the Dryden on February 19. I haven’t
seen it in about 12 years and it’s one of the most haunting and beautiful films
I’ve ever seen.”
He also enjoys movies at home: “I’ve
just bought a bunch of special edition Jerry Lewis DVDs and I’m really looking
forward to sitting home with them on a series of cold winter nights. No other
filmmaker or performer — with the possible exception of Vincent Gallo — has
the ability to fascinate and repel me at the same time. It’s everything I want
from cinema.”
Matthew
Ehlers — Rochester filmmaker, founder of Eggwork Productions, and City contributor — is in England
working on a screenplay. But he had four films to recommend via email.
Flirting
With Disaster: “Ben Stiller heads a great cast at its best including Mary
Tyler Moore and Alan Alda. Look for local favorite and Geva veteran Josh Brolin
in his hilarious portrayal of a bisexual FBI agent. Director David O. Russell
(of I Heart Huckabees) delivers one
of the best comedies of the past 10 years.”
Insomnia:
“Although the Al Pacino remake version was good, I prefer the original starring
Stellan Skarsgรฅrd in one of his best roles ever. The original is far darker and
creepier than the remake.”
Stalag
17: “William Holden plays a conniving prisoner of war in one of Billy
Wilder’s most underrated films. It’s a real tough guy film with some amazing
twists.”
Mystery
Train: “One of Jim Jarmusch’s lighter escapades and probably his funniest.
It features a diverse cast including Steve Buscemi and the late rockers
Screaming Jay Hawkins and Joe Strummer.”
Catherine
Wyler, artistic director of the High Falls Film Festival, picked three
favorites and thinks “it’s interesting that they are all war movies, about
conflicts that are vastly separated by geography and time, but doesn’t that
speak to the fact that we’re so surrounded by conflicts in the world today.”
The first is the Oscar-winning Black and White in Color. Wyler calls it
“a satire on colonialism and racism.”
“European colonials living in
remotest Africa learn of the start of World War I,” she says, “and decide they
must replicate the hostilities in their community.”
Second is a story of Quaker farmers
during the Civil War, a movie called Friendly
Persuasion. “Sometimes it takes more strength and courage NOT to fire the
gun,” Wyler says.
And finally, she offers up the
quintessential epic Lawrence of Arabia.
It is, in her words, “simply one of the most entrancing, exciting, eye-popping
epic movies ever made.”
This article appears in Jan 12-18, 2005.
