In part two, Ann explains how passion—her passion for her work as a nurse, her passion for her politics—has allowed her now to say, in her mid-sixties, with an enviable confidence, I’ve lived a good life.
It Takes a Village, Part One
In part one of a two-part Tropcast, we’re introduced to Ann DeBellow, nurse, organizer, activist. After a decade living between Tamarind Ave and Bronson Ave in Los Angeles, she realized there was more to this part of town than its houses and shops. It was a village, and it needed a name. And after a national tragedy, it needed a fair.
Relative Weakness
The title of Zadie Smith’s new novel NW refers to North West London, an area encompassing the likes of both Regent’s Park and council estates, large projects of public housing from which the central characters of NW originate. Readers of Smith’s first novel ought to be familiar with North West London, since White Teeth is also set largely in two of its towns, Willesden and Kilburn.
NW is divided into five major sections, each of which Smith renders using different surface effects. In the first section, called “Visitation,” we are introduced to Leah Hanwell, a child of Caldwell, a rough council estate created by Smith that looms over the lives of her characters (“Even relative weakness in Caldwell translated to impressive strength in the world”). Leah is thirty-five, of Irish ancestry, bad with numbers, a onetime student of philosophy, and, as suggested by the style of “Visitation,” impressionistic:
In this weekend abandon there is always something manic and melancholy: the internal countdown to the working week already begun. In the mirror she is her own dance partner, nose to nose with the reflection. The physical person is smiling and singing. Oh how I miss the folks back home in Willesden Green! Meanwhile something inside reels at the mirror’s news: the grey streak coming out of the crown, the puffy creases round the eyes, the soft belly. She dances like a girl. She is not a girl anymore.
Operation Johnny Appleseed
L.A. is the City of Broken Plans. So I take having been stood up in stride. I walk to Lucy’s, a Mexican restaurant outside Paramount Studios, because what I want is a cold margarita and a seat on which to watch the end of the game. I head to the back porch, where, since the game is on but muted, I might as well listen in on the conversation next to me. Pretty quickly, I realize that this isn’t just two buddies sharing chips and guac on some lazy afternoon.
Chaotic, Contradictory, and the Whole Truth
T.M. Wolf’s debut novel Sound (2012) is an early 21st century bildungsroman: Cincy Stiles has dropped out of graduate school, unable to finish his dissertation in philosophy because after semesters of trying, he can’t unify his moods, his free time, and his thesis into something his university’s dissertation committee would continue funding. In other words, he has become just not that into philosophy.
Donguri
With a few weeks left on her visa, Kaoru Kobori drove to Los Angeles from Milledgeville, GA. This is her story of sorts, after she arrived. The poem featured in this podcast is “Donguri” by Kaneko Misuzu, read and translated by Kaoru Kobori.
The Doing and Undoing of Philosophy
In A Treatise of Human Nature, Scottish philosopher David Hume remarked that “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” So it is quite appropriate that for a book owing so much to the 18th century philosopher, Jennie Erdal has imbued The Missing Shade of Blue with characters whose reason, if not wholly enslaved, is at least then passionately indentured.
I Miss You, TAL TV
A few weeks ago in New Orleans I was having drinks with a couple Trop writers, talking about our common love for This American Life. I’ll speak for them when I say that we wish TAL had had a third season on Showtime. But we know television is a much different beast than radio. Its deadlines are scarier because it takes longer to produce, and it requires whole crews to film, which, unlike radio, often needs just a producer with a field recorder.
The Poetry Brothel
Trop sits down in Chicago with Lisa Marie Basile AKA Luna Liprari to chat about The Poetry Society of New York’s eccentric, popular, and only sometimes awkward poetry series known as The Poetry Brothel.