Kindly Disregard the Big Blue Elephant in the Room

We’re feeling a bit idiomatic today: Grandma’s cumbersome mildly malodorous cerulean velvet chair is sitting smack-dab in the middle of the living room, awkwardly inserting itself into both decor and conversation.  In anticipation of un petit design project, we have removed the item in question from Westy Self Storage and deposited it... here, smack-dab in the middle of the living room. Unhurried Upholstery Guy pledged to stop by and pick it up several days ago.  The providential moment has not yet arrived.  What to do, what to do, about the big blue elephant in the room?

Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That? A Modern Guide to Manners by Henry Alford.

Twelve, 2012.  242 pages.
Food for Thought

We scan chapter headings and index pages, frantically seeking counsel on Inherited Furniture, Unfortunate Placement… see also Kindly Disregarding the Big Blue Elephant in the Room.  Or perhaps Northern New Jersey Service Appointments, Interpreting Subtexts… see also 'Sometime This Week' Actually Means 'Sometime Next Week.' Mr. Alford has nothing to offer on these timely topics.  Nevertheless, we enjoy his waggish contemplation of contemporary manners in self-absorbed times.  We temporarily silence our cell phones and suspend texting, tweeting, Facebooking, and other needy forms of self-indulgent communication. We traverse the spittle-spattered sidewalks of New York City and travel the strangely quiet and courteous subway system of Tokyo.  We confer with essayist and etiquette consultant Judith “Miss Manners” Martin and lunch with fashion consultant and television personality Tim “Project Runway” Gunn.

Alford’s conclusions regarding our collective comportment are grim.  Suggested remedies include liberal application of The Golden Rule: generally, increased civility and civic responsibility in life conduct and, specifically, increased reciprocity and civic responsibility in public restrooms.  Maybe good manners are more outward-directed in nature than… originally thought… Maybe good manners are your ability to take on another person’s point of view regardless of your own… Maybe good manners require momentary but total bodily transference… Maybe good manners are imagination. We appreciate Mr. Alford's guidance.  And his imagination.

Thx, he types, a painfully terse response to our long, heartfelt, carefully-considered electronic missive.  No problem, we return, a shrugging, languid substitute for the hopelessly antiquated My pleasure or You're welcome.  Or better still, NO PROBLEM!!!!! Proffered with a surfeit of exclamation points!!!!! AND BIG SCREAMING CAPITAL LETTERS.

Water for Elephants: A Novel by Sara Gruen.
Algonquin Books, 2007 (2006).  350 pages.
Historical Fiction

Listen pal... For decades I've heard old coots like you talk about carrying water for elephants and I'm telling you now, it never happened.  In this story that is exciting and sad and sweet and scary and funny, nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski reminisces about Big Screaming Capital Letter Topics: LOVE, LIFE UNDER THE BIG TOP, AGING, LOSS, DEATH, THE GREAT DEPRESSION, and THE CIRCUS!!!  Mercifully, there are no talking animals thrown into the mix, although Rosie the Elephant proves to be quite communicative and a pivotal player in the denouement.  NWC raises some questions regarding time and memory: who really kills August the Charismatic and Completely Twisted-Paranoid Schizophrenic-Animal Trainer?  Is it Rosie the Elephant… or Marlena, the love of Jacob Jankowski’s long life? 

Panem et Circenses!

Ah, the circus. Give the people bread and circuses... from the Latin panem et circenses.  And preferably, give the people two slices of panem, separated by a hearty scoop of Grandma's Chicken Salad.  As we make our way to the refreshment table, we knock knees into Grandma’s cumbersome mildly malodorous cerulean velvet chair.  You know, the one that's sitting smack-dab in the middle of the living room.  Did we mention that we've selected new fabric for our inherited furniture?  It's a fanciful tapestry print, with a botanical motif and a few frolicking animals.  Deer, rabbits, hounds.  No elephants.  No unicorns.

1066: The Hidden History of the Bayeux Tapestry by Andrew Bridgeford.

Walker & Company, 2005.  354 pages.
History and Travel

Speaking of tapestries, the Bayeux Tapestry is not a tapestry.  But we can’t think of a more deserving nominee for Historical and Artistic Achievement in Textile Design.  It is an embroidered cloth— two-hundred and thirty feet of magnificent storytelling stitched upon coarse fabric, depicting the Norman conquest of England and culminating with the death of King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Probably produced by monks in the 1070s (what a decade for design!) the tapestry that is not a tapestry is preserved and exhibited at the Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux in Bayeux, Normandy.

Hic est Turold.

The book is a different sort of page-turner: our reading experience is located somewhere along the spectrum between worthwhile art history assignment and I Spy Medieval Needlepoint.  We find ourselves toggling betwixt meticulously researched descriptive text and riveting full-color plates.  Bridgeford breaths life into the Tapestry and animates long-ago Western Europe, describing a world teeming with merciless knights, battling bishops, conniving women of power, and outrageous pretenders to the throne. It takes a bit of work to ascertain who’s who and what’s what and how to follow along… but then again, it takes a bit of work to clamber across Grandma’s cerulean velvet chair on our way to the refreshment table, and still we persevere.  NWC marvels that the handiwork in question survived its turbulent history.  BJM is enamored of diminutive Turold: he appears to be a dwarf entrusted with holding the horses of William’s messengers, an embellished historical footnote, immortalized with Latin tituli on an extraordinary winding timeline, worked in woolen yarn on linen.

The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier.

Plume, 2005 (2004).  250 pages.

Historical Fiction

We return from the refreshment table, scramble across the cerulean velvet chair, and find ourselves gazing upon fabulous, sumptuous,  tapestries at the Musée de Cluny in Paris, France.  What’s up with the Unicorn? Tapestry-gazers have been asking this compelling question for centuries, and here Tracy Chevalier twines together historical fact and fictional fabrication, envisioning the days and lives and dreams and schemes of the ladies and gentlemen and mythical feral creatures in The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries.

Sight

In the final decade of the fifteenth century, a crafty upwardly-mobile Parisian nobleman fancies a bit of medieval home improvement, authorizing un petit design project for his “grand enough but poorly placed” suburban mc-château.  How better to commemorate one’s meteoric ascendancy at Court than to commission half-a-dozen sumptuous hand-crafted tapestries? And what better subject matter than the possible seduction of a unicorn?  And who better to retain for the job than compellingly handy seductive craftsman Nicolas des Innocents?  Un petit problème... Nicolas des Innocents, il n'est pas tout à fait innocent!  Nicolas designs several sumptuous hand-crafted tapestries, but his designs on the Ladies wreak fabulous havoc upon the "grand enough but poorly placed" suburban abode. Soon but not soon enough, Nicolas sallies northward to a Brussels workshop where masterful medieval craftsman Georges de la Chapelle steps up his game, hurrying to complete the sumptuous tapestries in a timely fashion.  Did you catch that, Unhurried Upholstery Guy? In a timely fashion.  Long story short, there are compelling and fabulous secrets woven into the tapestries, including several regarding The Lady and even more regarding the Unicorn. 

À Mon Seul Désir

So, what’s up with the Unicorn? Feral creature of the forest, enduring symbol of virtue and grace, susceptible to capture only by enduringly virtuous and graceful virgins of the forest… legend tells us that the Unicorn possesses the power to render mildly malodorous water potable and to heal affliction and disease. We wonder: could the Unicorn kindly summon Unhurried Upholstery Guy to remove Grandma’s cumbersome mildly malodorous cerulean velvet chair from our Living Room?

Four Queens: The Provencal Sisters Who Ruled Europe by Nancy Bazelon Goldstone.

Penguin Books, 2007.  336 pages.

Non Fiction and Biographies

We meet Marguerite and Eleanor and Beatrice and Sanchia, four daughters of the Count of Provence, each sister lovelier and more fetching than the last.  They rise from humble nobility and sequestered anonymity to become fetching queens: the lovelier halves of thirteenth-century power couples in France, England, Germany, and Sicily, if you will. Four Queens delivers pageantry and poetry, chivalry and churlishness, with plenty of consorting and crusading, too. The regal sisters demonstrate remarkable proficiency in ascending the social ladder in a time and place that celebrates physical prowess and masculine intellect far more than delicate loveliness and feminine fetch-ability.

Perhaps we’ll take a moment to celebrate the cover art, April—Courtly Figures in the Castle Grounds, by Herman, Paul, and Johan Limbourg or: Three Illuminators: The Dutch Brothers Who Rocked Late Medieval Miniature Painting...

The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece by Jonathan Harr.

Random House, 2006 (2005), 299 pages.

History and Travel 

It's late in the twentieth century: we are picking our way through a forgotten archive in a moldering Italian palazzo along the Adriatic coast.  In a dimly-lit basement room, a young graduate student makes a brilliant discovery, one that inspires the search for a long-lost painting. The Taking of Christ: oil on canvas, forsaken for almost two centuries in a cobwebbed and dusty attic, destined to be rediscovered and gloriously restored. Not to be mistaken for a cerulean velvet chair, abandoned for almost two months in a cobwebbed and dusty self storage unit, destined to be re-upholstered and glorious restored....

The artist in question is Italian Baroque master Caravaggio.  Over four centuries ago, he rose from down-and-out obscurity to over-the-top fame, creating radical works of visual genius and sublime emotionality, even as he careened through shabby rooming houses, caroused in seedy taverns, and staggered from countless squalid lockups the morning after all that careening and carousing.  Caravaggio’s personal demons eventually ran him straight out of Rome on murder charges. He died prematurely, under mystifying circumstances, forsaken and abandoned, possibly in a cobwebbed and dusty location.

The Taking of Christ, c. 1602

The Taking of Christ is authentic, legit, the real deal, a genuine Caravaggio, full of meticulous physical observation, fanatical attention to detail, and over-the-top light-dark modulation.  Frankly, we can’t think of a more deserving nominee for Historical and Artistic Achievement in Chiaroscuro! Except perhaps the REM video Losing My Religion, a 1991 alternative rock classic that also employs oodles of artsy light-dark contrast.  If Losing Our Caravaggio Masterpiece spells economic bereavement and aesthetic hardship, then Losing Our Religion represents an existential crisis of monumental proportion.  More to the point, Unhurried Upholstery Guy, we wouldn’t mind Losing Grandma’s Cumbersome Mildly Malodorous Cerulean Velvet Chair right about… now.

Oh no, we’ve said too much… We haven’t said enough.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

Penguin Classics, 2011 (1859).  488 pages.

Oldies But Goodies

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.  We are feeling rather crafty and yarny this winter, watching the New Jersey Devils play professional ice hockey while crocheting… scarves, scarves, lots and lots of scarves. 

Hic est Brodeur.

We see: flying pucks and slashing sticks and lacerating skate blades and flashing crochet hooks and lost heads and measuring yarn and face-offs in the corner and cutting yarn and blood and gore, all of this somehow reminiscent of Charles Dickens’ classic novel of the French Revolution.  During the second period intermission, we think of Madame Thérèse Defarge, a ruthless tricoteuse and one of our all-time favorite revolutionary sympathizers. A terribly crafty woman, Madame Defarge frequents public executions and secretly encrypts names of those she would like to see offed into her seasonal knitting projects.

Tricoteuses!

How terrible, how crafty, how creative, how utterly malevolent!  Needless to say, we do not  popcorn stitch a personal hit list into our scarves.  But we do wonder about the tricoteuses, intrepid guillotine groupies like Madame Defarge who wove their tangled webs and wrangled rink-side season tickets to the Reign of Terror.  

Take a look at a trio of Tricoteuses, lovingly captured in 1793 by artist Pierre-Étienne Lesueur.

Scarves!

Idle hands do the devils’ work, Grandma cautioned us from the comfort of her properly-situated cerulean velvet chair.  (Please note: back in the day, the chair was neither cumbersome nor mildly malodorous).  Idle hands do the devil’s work; true, but Mme. Defarge teaches us that busy hands also may be up to no good.

Charlotte's Web by E.B. White.

Harper Collins, 1980 (1952) 184 pages.

Oldies But Goodies

As we speak of tangled webs and crafty yarns, we fondly remember  1953 Newbery Honor Winner Charlotte's Web. This childhood favorite spins the exceptional story of Wilbur, a lovable barnyard pig who is understandably melancholy and vexed when he discovers that he is destined to be the farmer's Christmas dinner-- until his intelligent and true arachnid friend Charlotte decides to lend a helping leg… or eight.  Yes, yes, yes. We are well aware of BJM’s peculiar aversion to talking animals in literature.  But Charlotte’s Web stands as one of the most intelligent treatments of ungulate elocution ever to grace The Cellar Door bookshelves.  And look!  We can create our own Charlotte’s Web Cartoon, suitable for printing, framing, and sharing with our one-thousand-and-sixty-six Facebook friends:

 

 

Pig Latin: Hic est 'Omesay Igpay."