The Diamond's Mine

[Pete]

Keep going Lizzy
You're doing just fine

[Andrew McGeever]

Well, I've seen some spam on this board, but not in such epic proportions . I think we needhim to come clean regarding his intentions. I've already pm'd the so-called "Pete" to alert him to the fact that litigation will follow. Yes folks, this one's going to court. I may lose several million dollars, but my integrity will be preserved: how dare he call me "Handy"

Apart from that, it's a wonderful fugue

Andrew.

[BoHo]

>Well, I've seen some spam on this board, but not in such epic proportions. I think we needhim to come clean regarding his intentions. I've already pm'd the so-called "Pete" to alert him to the fact that litigation will follow. Yes folks, this one's going to court. I may lose several million dollars, but my integrity will be preserved: how dare he call me "Handy."<<

Dear Lard: The line of litigiosity grows by the mean-it! Alright, McGeever, up against the wall -- oops, they haven't given it back to Leo, yet -- up against the ghost of a wall, you redneck greenhorn: Pfft! If ya ain't handy, what else you know how to do 'sides write poetry? Time to come clean. I'm sorry. This will not be tolearated. No way. Crisp has come to crunch. If you ain't handy, like, good with the ol' tool here and there, like, with a screwdriver or suchlike -- yeesh -- what's the point?

<*glumble*>

>Apart from that, it's a wonderful fugue<<

Well, we agree on *something,* anyway. Standing "O," PeteHurrah!
p.s. I saved 26 to tell you how much I really enjoyed reading your saga; and, I'm happy to join Handy's _class_ action sweet
--
BOOK OF LONGING 'SITE ENDORSED BY SINCERELY L. COHEN:
http://www.leonardcohencroatia.com/book ... /notes.htm
THE ITEM THAT HE SENT HER:
http://www.judithfitzgerald.ca/leonardcohen.html
ADAGIOS III: ELECTRA'S BENISON, BOUND!
http://www.oberonpress.ca/titles.pl?v=new
JUDITH FITZGERALD'S WRITESITE REFRESHED:
http://www.judithfitzgerald.ca/
POET PARLIAMENTARIAL:
http://tinyurl.com/38ssjq
WISE GUY OFFICIALLY SANCTIONED:
http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/pub.html
BUCKEYE ON FITZGERALD & OLSON IN OHIO'S HOUSE ORGAN:
http://www.judithfitzgerald.ca/bobbuckeye.html
A CELEB OF WOMEN WRITERS:
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/writers.html
JOANNA M. WESTON ON ORESTES' LAMENT:
http://www.danforthreview.com/reviews/p ... gerald.htm

[Pete]

[ Oh, by the way.........it's all fiction depending on the level at which you read it and any resemblance to anyone living, or not living, is entirely coincidental, irrespective of any anagrammatical or rhythmical connotations.

Dear Andrew
I think you read it at the wrong level. Please read it all again.
Pete

[Andrew McGeever]

Dear Pete,
"please read it all again"......must I ?
I do have a life to lead, you know. Anyway, I'm waiting for the printed version to be published.....seriously, you could shift a lot of copies. There are loads of nutters out there (self included) who would really appreciate such an unusual stocking filler
Congratulations again on your wonderful fugue.
Andrew.

[lizzytysh]

I'm still working on my first time... I'm thinking over the weekend should do it. [I have a life to lead, too, y'know ]

Since it's laughingly delicious, however, I may meet with success soon, very soon...


Love,
Lizzy

[lizzytysh]

Reading my bedtime story saga here, Pete... just trying to find my place on Page 1, I scrolled up and caught the line, "Haven't been this happy since I caught the 42" and the word "bus" in near-identical instants. G~d knows, cuz He was here, too... I tried not to laugh, but that section of the screen had already passed and there it was, out loud, my own voice laughing... even trying to hold it in... go figger, as I sit here alone. The laugh had its way with me. Considered scrolling back down to read the poem the line was in, but forced myself to just keep going and not look back. Now, I need to GO back and start nearly over. Can't keep your eyes closed and find your place, too... so wish me luck! So many distractions along the way...

Love,
Lizzy

[lizzytysh]

"I read it as it was," replied Leonard, in a calm, measured tone that anticipated a finale.
Paula felt a warm glow as she gazed adoringly into Leonard's eyes. Leonard had lit a cigarette and his discarded match remained alight in Paula's lap. The children formed a little human chain to the kitchen sink and passed glasses of water from tap to lap in order to extinguish the 'warm becoming hot' glow,
"Sorry about that, Paula. I needed a cigarette to help me think."
"That's OK, Leonard," smouldered Paula. Maybe he would remember the unfinished business to compensate for his clumsiness.
"It's like this, Paula. When I stumble into bed...." (Paula's smouldering started to ignite)
"....and get ready for a struggle, I smoke a cigarette...." (Paula's ignition started to turn)
"...and I tighten up my gut....." (Paula's engine stalled)
"...and I say 'give me a double'...." (Paula's battery went flat)
"...and I can't forget ..... I can't forget....." (Paula's smouldering re-ignited.....)
"... but I don't remember what it is I try not to forget, for fear of forgetting what it was I was trying not to remember." ( ....and quickly fizzled out like a damp squid .....she preferred squids to squibs .....much easier to ignite).

OMG, Pete... my stomach hurts from laughing aloud!! Is there a publisher in the house?? I swear, I'll try to read this without quoting it back in entirety, but dang... it's hard to know where to pick up and stop with blocking for the Quote function . This is really unbelievable!!! I DO need some copies of it. I can't separate out what people would get and not... so much is intertwined with all we know of Leonard's world. You're unbelievable .

Love,
Lizzy

< * back to reading * >

Oh, NO! I can't... I've gotta go to bed... dang ~ well, tomorrow night.

Love, still,
Lizzy

Good for digestion. Good for sleep. Healthy, healthy story.

[lizzytysh]

Must say, Pete, I've never read such a delightfully evocative and entertaining trade journal in my life... what's more... I know I never will , till you write another .

Would LOVE to see this published in one of our Event booklets... Edmonton? 2008 in Europe somewhere? For one you'll attend .


~ Lizzy

[lizzytysh]

Dear Pete ~

This seems the most appropriate place for this. I knew it was enroute [via other own conversations] and now that it's arrived, am posting it here, so you can appreciate first-hand the value of Judith's critiqueing... better to show-and-tell than copy-and-paste a bio, like before.

This is from today's [27 January 2007] The Globe and Mail ~ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books/ ~ It's the lead [!!!] review [Michel le magnifique], and she said readers may need to register to view it; but she also told me that there's no charge for the first week so, " . . . it's free (with an email addie that works)."

You can see proof of the truth that she reads and communicates, and with the truth she sees... no less so with yours . When it comes to writing, she's for value and worth. So, confirmation of this comes to you through her other-world, paid-by-the-word, reality. Enjoy .


Love to you, both,
Lizzydoo

Michel le magnifique
JUDITH FITZGERALD

The Black Notebook

By Michel Tremblay

Translated by Sheila Fischman

Talonbooks, 224 pages, $19.95

Assorted Candies/Bonbon assortis

By Michel Tremblay

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

Talonbooks, 160 pages, $17.95

Although readers will recognize characters and locales Michel Tremblay
resurrects from earlier masterpieces, his freshest works, The Black
Notebook and Assorted Candies/Bonbon assortis, will not disappoint.
Rather, the former, the first in what promises to be an extraordinary
trilogy of bittersweet remembrances, will break your heart. The
latter, the concluding volume of Tremblay's endearing autobiographical
quartet, will piece it together again.

Few will fail to empathize with the demi-heroine featuring in The
Black Notebook's pages. Commencing with the ominously titled Descent
into Darkness, it quickly drops readers into the boiling cauldron of
an obsessive diarist's excruciatingly introspective brain soup: bitter
and frank, yet irresistible and unforgettable. We see the shame,
guilt, anxieties and soul-searing humiliations of a young woman intent
on battling cosmic confusion with writerly analysis: "Confiding to the
blank page and admitting to my idiotic behaviour are my last hope, as
usual."

Céline Poulin straightforwardly introduces herself as "desperately
ordinary [at] twenty years old, not beautiful, a physique that's to
say the least unusual, a waitress who works nights, hopelessly
single." It soon becomes apparent that Céline is far from ordinary,
even as she writes of herself, "I am an insignificant shadow who
threads her way between the tables, a pair of hands that serve and
never make a mistake or spill the greasy dishes my customers order."

Her customers? "Hookers from the Main, drag queens, bums and other
creatures of the night" at a Montréal restaurant called Le Sélect,
known as much for its ho-hum hamburger platters as its garish
late-night clientele.

The utterly human creature animated by Tremblay's magnificent
imagination deepens and blossoms rapidly as she reveals the pair of
rich worlds she negotiates, the interior (home) and exterior (work)
meshing seamlessly.

Trademark Tremblay preoccupations, to be sure. Loathing each other,
her parents clash and thrash about in their crippled interdependence.
Céline's psychotically domineering mother finds refuge in rye benders,
following which she attempts to atone for her histrionic binges by
serving her eloquently silent husband and brattish brood an execrable
shepherd's pie they pretend to enjoy. Relief. Its appearance signals
the return of relative tranquillity.

Her work life is no less chaotic. Boss Nick and co-workers comprise
one constellation of characters, customers the other; both fuel an
explosive range of temperaments she attempts to convey in prose moving
from the incisive to the inane, the pithy to the profound, but always
charged with that exquisite quality whereby Tremblay makes luminous
the quotidian:

"When my customers aren't happy they let me know and there's nothing
subtle about it. Diplomacy is not their strong suit, many of them have
been brought up with kicks in the ass and slaps upside the head, which
makes for side effects in their behaviour."

Le Sélect's night creatures constitute an exotic, dignified and
disturbing crowd. Céline favours the former Frère Jean-Baptiste,
teacher turned drag queen Jean-le-Décollé, who chose the night because
"what he saw in daylight made him puke." Most are marginalized,
grappling with sexual confusion while juggling johns, junk, jail,
hormones, disease, suicide and related dangers haunting their milieu.

A group of regular patrons, students from L'Institut des arts
appliqués, don't quite fit the mould of day or night crowds. Among
these aspiring furniture designers, languishing poseurs and drifters
is a charmer, Aimée, with whom Céline, after initially keeping her
distance, forms a passionate bond. The flamboyant hysteric with a
penchant for disguises draws Céline into her life, enlisting her as a
companion in her earnest yet laughable acting aspirations. Céline
assists her friend in auditioning for The Trojan Women.

Moving inexorably from background to foreground throughout is the
world that Euripides creates in his thoroughly depressing account of
the fate of the women of Troy after its fall. Its tragic theme
resonates brilliantly with the predicament of all actors upon the
various stages where Céline stars. Inevitably, a complex, multilayered
drama of colliding worlds erupts. The protagonist has more than her
fair share of struggles, torments and goals. And Aimée possesses her
own agenda, founded upon the fatally fantastic.

Despite the sometimes inescapable seriousness of his material,
Tremblay will induce chortles, chuckles and belly laughs in hapless
readers, not to mention expanding upon the delight readers will no
doubt take in his mastery of caricature. With a stroke here, a telling
detail there, he creates characters who linger in the mind to
participate in a marvellously mysterious mental dance.

The internationally revered playwright continues to prove his prowess,
economically telegraphing the anguish of savaged youth evaporating
into an anonymous and opaque past, which can only be rescued by brave
new words and lovingly shaping a fictional world that magnifies,
clarifies and illuminates our own obdurate existence.

Assorted Candies/Bonbons assortis, the title of Tremblay's fourth book
of autobiographical sketches (built upon the foundation of Montreal's
Plateau Mont-Royal neighbourhood), features the lid of a chocolate box
covering the goodies hidden under the bed of the narrator's mother. It
helps heal a rift among various now-loveable characters comprising a
child's-eye view of one sprawling family.

When it comes time to come up with a suitable (and affordable) wedding
gift, for lovely and lively example, the hilarious controversy over
the present concludes where the abject humiliation of a young boy
commences.

In Sturm and Drang, a wicked thunderstorm presages a cataclysm in the
mind of a child who loves to be terrified by his grandmother's story,
famous in the family, about her brush with death by lightning. An
equally sparkly vignette reveals the deep sensitivity of an innocent
coming to terms with what's appropriate along the lines of toys for
girls and boys.

It's vintage Tremblay (out-Prousting Proust), filled with primal
privations and inspirations of awe, a family's love and terrors, the
stuff that makes a writer a writer: Family. Church. Lust. Poverty. The
whole enthralling works.


Northern Ontarian Judith Fitzgerald's Electra's Benison, Book III of
her epic poem, has just been published.

[lizzytysh]

This caused great conflicts in the mind of the landlord. His features contorted to such an extent that he adopted the title of L A D L O D. This made Paula giggle..

Oh, G~D, Pete, "giggle"!?! I'm dying laughing and all Paula could manage was a giggle?? I'm STILL laughing out loud, even covering my face, head tilted back, doing it. Maybe Paula feared getting creamed by the
L A D L O D if she laughed?? Now, you've got me wanting to go have a beer with Paula .

... and back to
Traveling lady, walk a mile . . .

I can't stand it... this is SO FUNNY .


Just heard this on Prairie Home Companion [Garrison Keillor]:
"The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up..." ~ thought you'd appreciate it .


~ Lizzy

[lizzytysh]

Y'know, Judith, just rereading your reviews... and they read every bit as well as the books must. I may develop a vocabulary list from out of your word choices and increase my own.


~ Lizzy

[lizzytysh]

"And just who would these three men be?" The landlord had regained his title ...and with no signs of botox abuse.

~ Geez-oh-Pete, Pete... I've barely gotten started again .

"When I say it's closing time, then it's closing time," insisted the landlord, looking Paula squarely in the eyes. "I don't want this place to get wrecked and I care what happens next. This place has already gone crazy twice and I don't want you any ladies tearing blouses off."

~ Now, barely continued...

Okay, I'm going to have to stop quoting and just keep reading and laughing, zat okay with you ? I'll be quoting too much of the story... I haven't even finished page 1 !

The landlord was taken aback. He had never been shouted at before. The silence in the room was rigid. The landlord composed his next utterance.
"I'm getting quite fond of you, young lady."

Okay, that's it... well, I was going to promise right here, but I backspaced so I don't have to... it's just too risky to go to that extreme... I'm going to try to keep going without quoting, but if you hear me laughing, you'll know it's me.

Paula lunged at Timister and beat her fists on his chest ...not too hard but just to give effect. Timister winced as if to say, 'not too hard, you only have to give effect'.

Good thing I didn't promise...

Paula knew that these men were dealers who said that they were through with dealing but this time they had given her shelter and she was not going to surrender. She watched The Dutchman, his golden arm despatching cards, and flecks of rust cascading from his cheap watch. This Holy Game of Poker had commenced . . .

I'm convinced... knowing his music is a pre-req... just can't risk so much being lost in translation .

Okay, I'm at a break and it's time for bed... and I see you're still editing ... now I wonder what I've missed . Stop, Pete, stop!! I'll pick up at "II" later. Goodnight, dear writer man . Thanks for all this .


~ Lizzy

[Pete]

Lizzy
The editing is only superficial..just correcting punctuation etc..
Keep going.
Pete

[lizzytysh]

Whew ~

Thanks for the relief-maker, Peter .

As time allows, I surely will! Good things come to those who wait .

~ Lizzy